ConservaPundit

OUTRAGE! US RESCINDS EXEMPTION FROM ANTI-US, UNDEMOCRATIC ICC FOR TROOPS

06.30.04 (5:17 am)   [edit]
I'm behind the times on this, apparently. Since my job changed I haven't been able to get all the news. But this is an outrage-- how on earth can the US subject its troops to de facto participation in a treaty it did not sign and is unconstitutional?

Make no mistake,the ICC exists for one reason- to kill the US, to rein us in. It is part of the EU's attempt to "contain" and ultimately defeat the US. The only problem is, if anyone bothers to understand the International Criminal Court, they'll find how it is anti-freedom, anti-democracy, and anti-rights.

From the Freedom ALliance--

[b]US Military Troops Face Potential Danger in UN Peacekeeping Missions[/b]
by Freedom Alliance
June 23, 2004

Dulles, Virginia – Today at the United Nations, the United States delegation withdrew an imperative resolution from consideration before the Security Council which would have exempted U.S. military personnel who are participating in UN peacekeeping missions from prosecution before the International Criminal Court, an institution to which the United States is not a party. This was done simply because the resolution faced stiff opposition in the Security Council, the United States withdrew the proposed resolution.

Freedom Alliance President, Thomas P Kilgannon said, "America lost another piece of her sovereignty today and U.S. military personnel were placed in greater danger of indictment and prosecution by the International Criminal Court, a global court which will be used for political vendettas by the enemies of the United States.

"With not only the possibility - but the likelihood - that U.S. military personnel will be targeted for indictment and prosecution by America's political enemies, the United States will have to prohibit U.S. participation in UN peacekeeping missions.

"According to the Rome Statute, the ICC retains the right to review U.S. court decisions and re-try individuals if the ICC determines decisions 'were not conducted independently or impartially.' The ICC does not provide protection against double jeopardy. It also lacks the constitutional safeguards like the right to confront one’s accusers; due process; trial by jury; a public and speedy trial by an impartial jury; and protection from cruel and unusual punishments.

"There is simply no way to reconcile the International Criminal Court with the United States Constitution and therefore, no way our leaders can allow U.S. military personnel to engage in UN missions which will subject them to this kangaroo court."

Through the Farenheit spin-- all embassies have Secret Service protection

06.30.04 (4:32 am)   [edit]
From the Farenheit Fact blog--
http://fahrenheit_fact.blogspot.com/" title="http://fahrenheit_fact.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"http://fahrenheit_fact.blogsp...

[b]Fahrenheit Fact no. 16: All Embassies Have Secret Service Protection[/b]

[i]NARRATOR: Even though we were nowhere near the White House, for some reason the Secret Service had shown up to ask us what we were doing standing across the street from the Saudi embassy.

MICHAEL MOORE: We're not here to cause any trouble or anything. Uh, ya know, is that...

OFFICER: That's fine. Just wanted to get some information on what was going on.

MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah yeah yeah, I didn't realize the Secret Service guards foreign embassies.

OFFICER: Uh, not usually, no sir.[/i]

(Emphasis mine)

But the agent was wrong- Moore does not mention this. He allows us to believe that only the Saudi Embassy has secret service protection, which is untrue. For example, the Secret Service http://www.secretservice.gov/... has this to say:


[i]After several name revisions, the force officially adopted its current name, the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division in 1977. While protection of the White House Complex remains its primary mission, the Uniformed Division's responsibilities have expanded greatly over the years.

They now protect the following:

* the White House Complex, the Main Treasury Building and Annex, and other Presidential offices;
* the President and members of the immediate family;
* the temporary official residence of the Vice President in the District of Columbia;
* the Vice President and members of the immediate family; and
[b]* foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and throughout the United States, and its territories and possessions, as prescribed by statute. [/b][/b]

Emphasis mine.

posted by curtis @ 9:40 PM

***

[i]"But the fact remains that the more you think Michael Moore is an insightful and honest person the less reason there is for the rest of us to pay attention when your lips are moving."[/i]
-Jonah Goldberg, NRO

[i]"I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic."[/i]
-Christopher Hitchens, Slate

Media relies on bias, inaccurate reporting for Iraq-- revealing

06.29.04 (8:28 am)   [edit]
From Commentary Page--http://www.commentarypage.com...

[b]The Untouchable Chief of Baghdad[/b]
By Eric M. Johnson
06/29/2004

Iraq veterans often say they are confused by American news coverage, because their experience differs so greatly from what journalists report. Soldiers and Marines point to the slow, steady progress in almost all areas of Iraqi life and wonder why they don’t get much notice – or in many cases, any notice at all.

Part of the explanation is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post. He spent most of his career on the metro and technology beats, and has only four years of foreign reporting, two of which are in Iraq. The 31-year-old now runs a news operation that can literally change the world, heading a bureau that is the source for much of the news out of Iraq.

Very few newspapers have full-time international reporters at all these days, relying on stringers of varying quality, as well as wire services such as Reuters and Agence France-Presse, also of varying quality. The Post's reporting is delivered intravenously into the bloodstream of Official Washington, and thus a front-page article out of Iraq can have major repercussions in policy-making.

This effect is magnified because of the Post's influence on what other news organizations report. While its national clout lags behind the New York Times, many reporters look to the Post for cues on how to approach a story. The Post interprets events, and the herd of independent minds bleat their approval and start tapping on their keyboards with their hooves.

Chandrasekaran's crew generates a relentlessly negative stream of articles from Iraq – and if there are no events to report, they resort to man-on-the-street interviews and cobble together a story from that. Last week, there was a front-page, above-the-fold article about Iraqis jeering U.S. troops, which amounted to a pastiche of quotations from hostile Iraqis. It was hardly unique. Given the expense of maintaining an Iraq bureau with a dozen staffers, they have to write something to justify themselves, even if the product is shoddy.

This week, Chandrasekaran has a Pulitzer-bait series called "Promises Unkept: The U.S. Occupation of Iraq." The grizzled foreign-desk veteran -- who until 2000 was covering dot-com companies -- now sits in judgment over a world-shaking issue, in a court whose rulings echo throughout the media landscape. He finds the Bush Administration guilty. Such a surprise.

Before major combat operations were over, Chandrasekaran was already quoting Iraqis proclaiming the American operation a failure. Reading his dispatches from April 2003, you can already see his meta-narrative take shape: basically, that the Americans are clumsy fools who don’t know what they’re doing, and Iraqis hate them. This meta-narrative informs his coverage and the coverage of the reporters he supervises, who rotate in and out of Iraq.

How do I know this? Because my fellow Marines and I witnessed it with our own eyes. Chandrasekaran showed up in the city of Al Kut last April, talked to a few of our officers, and toured the city for a few hours. He then got back into his air-conditioned car and drove back to Baghdad to write about the local unrest.

"The Untouchable 'Mayor' of Kut," his article's headline blared the next day. It described a local, Iranian-backed troublemaker named Abbas Fadhil, who was squatting in the provincial government headquarters. He had gathered a mob of people with nothing better to do, told them to camp out in the headquarters compound, and there they sat, defying the Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

Chandrasekaran was very impressed with the little usurper: "'We thank the Americans for getting rid of Saddam's regime, but now Iraq must be run by Iraqis,' Fadhil thundered during a meeting today with his supporters in the building's spacious conference room. 'We cannot allow the Americans to rule us from this office'....Fadhil has set up shop in an official building and appears to have rallied support across this city of 300,000 people.

"The refusal of Marine commanders to recognize Fadhil's new title has fueled particularly intense anti-American sentiments here," Chandrasekeran continued. "In scenes not seen in other Iraqi cities, U.S. convoys have been loudly jeered. Waving Marines have been greeted with angry glares and thumbs-down signs."

Readers must have concluded that Kut was on the verge of exploding. The entire city was ready to throw out the despised American infidel invaders and install their new "mayor" as their beloved leader.

What utter rubbish. In our headquarters, we had a small red splotch on a large map of Kut, representing the neighborhood that supported Abbas Fadhil. When asked about him, most citizens of Kut rolled their eyes. His followers were mainly poor, semi-literate, and not particularly well-liked. They were marginal in every sense of the word, and they mattered very little in the day-to-day life of a city that was struggling to get back on its feet.

We knew the local sentiment intimately, because as civil affairs Marines, our job was to help restore the province's water, electricity, medical care, and other essentials of life. Our detachment had teams constantly coming and going throughout the city, and Chandrasekeran could have easily accompanied at least one of them.

Since he didn't, he couldn’t see how the Iraqis outside of the red splotch reacted to us. People of every age waved and smiled as we rumbled past (except male youths, who, like their American counterparts, were too cool for that kind of thing.) Our major security problem was keeping friendly crowds of people away from us so we could spot bad guys.

None of those encouraging things made it into the article. Nor did anything about how we had been helping to fix the city’s problems as soon as we arrived. Just a quick-and-dirty sensationalistic piece about a local Islamist thug bravely going toe-to-toe with the legendary United States Marines. The general reaction to Chandrasekeran’s article was either laughter or dumb bewilderment.

Soon afterwards, a Marine commander met privately with Fadhil and told him he would be forcefully removed if he did not leave the government building. Fadhil, chastened, asked if he could slither into exile without the appearance of coercion, so he could save face. The commander agreed. Suddenly faced with a real confrontation, the "mayor" had backed down, and he left without any riots or bloodshed. The Americans took over the office that Fadhil said we should never occupy. The Post didn't cover any of that, either.

Don't take my word for it that the Post’s reporting is substandard and superficial. Take the word of Philip Bennett, the Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news. In a surprisingly candid June 6 piece, he admits that "the threat of violence has distanced us from Iraqis." Further, "we have relied on Iraqi stringers filing by telephone to our correspondents in Baghdad, and on embedding with the military. The stringers are not professional journalists, and their reports are heavy on the simplest direct observation." Translation: we are reprinting things from people we barely know, from a safe location dozens of miles away from the fighting.

Bennett flatly concedes that they have a “dim picture” of what is happening in Iraq, (not that you would know it from the actual news articles he approves for publication.) "The people of Iraq...are leading their country, and ours, down an uncertain path. This is a story waiting to be told."

Waiting to be told? They have four or five full-time reporters there at any given time. What are they doing, if they're not telling the story of Iraq's new birth?

Bennett might have added that not only are the reporters "distanced" from Iraqis, they're distanced from Iraq itself. Covering it from Baghdad is like covering California from a secure bunker in south-central Los Angeles. Sure, a lot happens in L.A., but you're going to miss important things if you don't go to San Diego or San Francisco, or even Bakersfield once in a while.

Chandrasekeran’s meta-narrative admits of no ambiguity. For him and his reporters, they report in straightforward, declarative sentences, with none of the caveats that Bennett mentions. The Americans are still bumbling, the Iraqis continue to seethe. So it shall be in the Washington Post, until Iraq succeeds and they can no longer deny it, just like journalists were forced to admit reality at the end of the Cold War. Or else their words will have their effect, and Western journalists have to flee the country as it disintegrates.

Since I saw Rajiv Chandrasekaran's integrity up close, I haven't believed a word he writes, or any story coming out of the bureau he runs. You shouldn't, either.

[i]Eric M. Johnson, a writer in Washington D.C., participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a Marine Corps. reservist.[/i]

What the UN should look like, and why it is easily the most corrupt organization in the world

06.29.04 (3:13 am)   [edit]
The UN, like hangnails, will always be around. It is simply too huge and too corrupt of an organization, it is simply too unjustifiably legitimized, to ever be reformed or obliterated.

If the UN miraculously were reformed to become what it is supposed to become-- an international body designed to prevent world wars-- and not an world government, we would certainly start with the UN Security Council.

The world is a lot different today than it was in the late 1940s. The UNSC should reflect emerging powers in today's world instead of the victors of World War II. The new makeup of the UNSC should be, the permanent members should be, in no particular order:

Russia,
the EU (as a single entity-- if it has its own constitution, it is a single state)
India,
Pakistan
Brazil
China
Japan
South Africa
the US,
Egypt,
Israel.

This scheme covers the nuclear powers (the bening and largest nuclear powers) and includes large developing world countries. Japan was a loser in World War II, but it's high time they were taken seriously (they do have the world's second largest GDP).

I hate the UN. It should not exist. But if it does exist, it should at least do what it is supposed to do.

[b]The UN: Corruption Junction [/b]
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 29, 2004

The United Nations may indeed be the answer, as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy insist it is. But only if the question is ‘what is the most morally corrupt international organization in the world?’ Without argument the UN has degenerated into what esteemed journalist Claudia Rosett refers to as an institution mired in corruption, secrecy, venality and total lack of accountability.

That degree of ethical collapse might still be repairable, but only if the UN admits its errors. To date there are no signs of institutional remorse. In fact, the organization flouts its criminal actions in the face of the world, then wraps itself in sanctimonious platitudes in order to retain power. Given such an attitude there are few options left to the U.S. other than to demand top-down reform of the international body.

Demonstrating how disconnected the UN is from reality, Rosett notes that in a recent UN survey Secretary General Kofi Anan frets over ‘tone at the top,’ a reference to the ‘less positive’ opinion most UN staffers have of their senior leaders. The problem isn’t tone, she continues, but ‘accountability at the top’ (emphasis added). In detailed testimony provided to the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, Rosett elaborated at length the incredible web of corruption that defined and obscured the UN Oil for Food Program.

Oil for Food was in theory a program whereby Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, though under international UN embargo, could sell limited amounts of oil and in return use the funds generated to purchase needed commodities such as food and medical supplies for its population. It was established by December 1996 and continued under UN supervision until Coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein in last year.

As part of the search to find WMDs, links to terrorist organizations and other violations by the Saddam regime, extensive files were discovered that catalogued the Oil for Food Program. Saddam used Oil for Food as a way to circumvent economic sanctions, bring in prodigious amounts of money and lavish that money on himself and his cronies.

Along the way Saddam made certain that the right UN and complicit government pockets were well lined. For example, Kojo Anan, the Secretary-General’s son was in on the take as were government officials from Russia, China and France (surprise!). The UN administrator of the Oil for Fraud program, Benon Savan, reported directly to Kofi Anan and no one else. Even at this late date accounting and secrecy at the UN is so guarded that it cannot even officially verify the actual amount of money that went into the program. Anan’s figures are $111 billion, but that could easily be understated.

Tragically, little if any relief was afforded the Iraqi people as a result of Oil for Food. Infant mortality rates soared under the program. People lived in squalor and disease without potable water and electric power. Infrastructure decayed. Hospitals had no medicines and test equipment. Education spiraled downward. A potentially developed, sophisticated society was allowed to sink deeper and deeper into poverty, disease, terror and death while a corrupt dictator was propped up. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who strutted in palaces of gold and jewels while his people starved. Make no mistake; the UN was an accomplice to gross fraud with all its consequences. UN officials responsible for the Oil for Food program have the blood of tens of thousands of Iraqis on their hands.

Who in the UN? According to most observers the degree, scope and depth of corruption in the Oil for Food program is so extensive and pervasive that it is difficult to grasp. Rosett says that ‘had the UN deliberately set out to design a program opened to manipulation by Saddam Hussein’s regime, it is hard to think how the UN could have improved upon the arrangement that was put in place.’ In other words, this was no accident: the UN from the onset envisioned the Oil for Food program as a get-rich-quick program.

Okay, you might think, is skimming this money such a big deal? Well, yes, it was so big that this scam has been characterized as involving ‘staggering levels of corruption,’ with an estimated at $10 billion-plus in bribes, kickbacks and other payoffs to individuals and to governments. Anan’s Secretariat office alone collected more than $1.4 billion over the life of the program supposedly to monitor, audit and administer it, yet due to a UN policy of extreme secrecy there are no public records of the program.

It was not until Coalition forces cracked open the extraordinarily thorough files kept by Iraqi intelligence offices that the entire putrid deal was exposed to light. Names from the UN, France, Russia and China immediately were discovered. Again, the numbers were in the billions and billions of dollars. For economic basket cases like France and Russia, with a long history of corruption, Oil for Food must have been the golden goose in the desert.

Now the motivation for the intense lobbying to prevent Coalition enforcement of UN resolutions becomes clearer. All those Ministerial-level trips to Baghdad to assure Saddam that they would never permit the U.S. to topple him are explained. Forget about human rights or international law.

The fraud represented in the Oil for Food program, encouraged and virtually administered by the UN, gave Saddam funds to continue to procure missile technology from North Korea, pursue WMD research and development programs, and funnel money to his own thugs and terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam, Islamic Jihad and suicide bombers. In short, the UN kept in power the very dictator they professed to condemn in the Security Council chambers.

The harsh truth is that any institution composed in majority by authoritarian, dictatorial governments – as the UN is – cannot be better than its component parts. The UN, like its predecessor the League of Nations, is an idealistic concept but a dysfunctional reality.

The leopard does not change its spots by changing its environment. Place it in a cathedral and it is still a predator. Neither do thugs and crooks from dictatorial nations reform simply by crossing over the threshold of the United Nations building. They are still dangerous characters who have no moral authority to lecture anyone.

The UN, far from promoting world peace and safeguarding human rights, has sunk to the level of accomplice if not perpetrator. Oil for Food is the tip of the iceberg, not the entirety. Virtually every so-called ‘peace keeping’ mission has turned sour because of ineptitude, cowardice and corruption. The UN record for human rights protection evaporated in such hell holes as Rwanda and the Balkans. The record of failure is long and shameful.

The solution is first to recognize that the UN is a failed institution. Instead of American politicians talking about subverting American sovereignty in defense, military and economic matters to this pit of corruption, they ought to be demanding accountability on behalf of our citizens and taxpayers. The most effective way to do convince people of UN failure is through investigation, disclosure and transparency. Once the shocking truth is revealed, the UN is unlikely to be able to continue to operate in its present form.

The time is long overdue to draw up an international organization whose membership is predicated on existence of a representative government. Euro-socialist states like France would still be members but would not be able to dominate. An institution of democracies would have infinitely greater moral credibility and fortitude than the money- and power-hungry collection of reprobates that now inhabits the buildings on Turtle Bay.

Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu has been an Army Green Beret lieutenant colonel, as well as a writer, popular speaker, business executive and farmer. His most recent book is Separated at Birth, about North and South Korea.

Watch this space: the EU, Galileo, NATO, and Iraq will have huge US implications

06.28.04 (11:51 pm)   [edit]
[b]Watch this space[/b]
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
June 28, 2004

The past few weeks have seen a number of momentous developments formalized by four highly publicized international events. If, at the moment, we can only guess what these developments will ultimately portend, their potentially far-reaching implications demand that all of us, at the very least, “watch this space.”

First, there was the European Union (EU) summit that hammered out what passes for agreement to a new European Constitution by the various member countries’ heads of government. The final document was achieved after years of wrangling thanks to prose that was, in key places, sufficiently impenetrable as to allow the British government (among others) to declare that national sovereignty had been preserved.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. [b]The European Constitution is largely the product of a long-running Franco-German campaign to construct an economic, political and strategic rival to the United States. That can only be accomplished by garrotting the freedom Britain and the recently admitted states of Central and Eastern (a.k.a. “New”) Europe have so recently displayed – to the enormous displeasure and disdain of Paris and Berlin – in forging their own relationships with this country and self-determined policies towards things like the liberation of Iraq. [/b]

To be sure, Prime Minister Tony Blair manfully asserts that he has retained the sovereign rights that have made possible a U.S.-U.K. “special relationship” independent from Continental Europe. [b]The EU Constitution’s creation of a European Foreign Minister and “Common Foreign and Security Policy,” however, are intended to – and will, inexorably, if not immediately – preclude the sorts of military cooperation, intimate intelligence-sharing and strategic partnership that have made the Anglo-American relationship special.[/b] America’s best hope is that the sort of revulsion for Europe uber alles suggested by recent voting for the European Parliament will result in the Constitution’s rejection in upcoming national referenda by Brits and others who cherish truly representative and accountable government, and close ties to their exemplar, America.

The second meeting of note was President Bush’s summit with EU leaders in Ireland. While the participants engaged in much discussion there of Iraq, trade and other issues, the most significant result of [b]the meeting may have been an agreement to ensure that Europe’s Galileo navigation system does not interfere with the frequencies used by America’s Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system. [/b]

It remains to be seen whether this understanding will, in fact, prevent [b]France’s fairly transparent objective in promoting Galileo – namely, to compete with and ultimate displace the U.S. GPS system. Even if that is not the case, Galileo may prove problematic for the United States if, for example, it affords extremely high accuracy information to enemy targeteers, be they terrorists or hostile militaries.[/b]

The third meeting was the NATO summit in Istanbul. There, President Bush secured a potentially momentous commitment from the organization’s members acting as an alliance – including, for the first time, the French and Germans – to help in the reconstruction of a liberated Iraq. For the moment, NATO forces will confine themselves to training Iraqi security personnel. Still, [b]the Franco-German participation in a collective effort to build a free Iraq is not only a welcome change from their efforts heretofore to prevent and undermine such an outcome. It also should cut the legs out from under Mr. Bush’s critics who seem to believe that the only international initiatives that can have legitimacy are those endorsed by Paris and Berlin.[/b]

Finally, and most important in the near-term, were the meetings that occurred Monday in Baghdad in which the Coalition Provisional Authority formally handed over power to a sovereign Iraqi government and its new members were sworn into office. It is regrettable that such an option could not have been exercised long before now;[b] Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others now holding senior positions in the Bush Administration argued for creating a provisional Iraqi government as an alternative to Saddam’s regime back in 1998. Had that advice been taken, the liberation of Iraq could have been led by Free Iraqis and an interim administration put into place immediately thereafter, allowing multinational forces to help provide security rather than “occupy” the country. A year later, things might have looked very different on the ground in Iraq than they do today.[/b]

As with the results of these other meetings, the prospects that this interim government in Iraq will translate into something desirable for the people most immediately affected – the Iraqis, themselves – for their neighbors or for us are uncertain, at best. Much will depend upon whether the popular perception takes hold that the future lies with freedom and a rejection of its enemies. If it does, the Iraqis certainly have the human and physical resources to transform their nation into a model of prosperity, civilization and opportunity in a region of the world that has known too little of these things of late.

[b]The common denominator in each of these developments is that their ultimate outcome will have profound implications for U.S. interests and security. That means we actually must do far more than “watch this space.” [u]America must remain engaged directly and creatively in promoting endgames that will: preserve accountable, sovereign governments in Europe; assure vital U.S. interests in outer space; lead a reinvigorated, as well as expanded NATO; and conduce to a peaceable and free Iraq. [/u][/b]

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., is President of the Center for Security Policy, a Townhall.com member organization.

©2004 Center for Security Policy

F911 exposes the sorry state of Left-wing political discourse and intellectual poverty

06.28.04 (11:32 pm)   [edit]
Excellent NY Post article-- http://www.nypost.com/postopi...

As Noguru http://noguru.tblog.com would say, [b]some lard[/b]--

[b]* Moore asserts that the Afghan war was fought only to enable the Unocal company to build a pipeline. In fact, Unocal dropped that idea back in August 1998. Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan are looking at the idea now, but nothing has come of it so far, and in any case Unocal has nothing to do with it.

* In a "congressmen with no kids at war" stunt, Moore claims that no one in Congress has a son or daughter fighting in America's armed services, then approaches several congressmen in the street and asks them to sign up and send their kids to Iraq. His claim would certainly surprise Sgt. Brooks Johnson of the 101st Airborne, the son of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). And for that matter the active-duty sons of Sen. Joseph Biden and Attorney General John Ashcroft, among others.

The most offensive sequence in "Fahrenheit 9/11"'s long two hours lasts only a few minutes. It's Moore's file-footage depiction of happy Iraq before the Americans began their supposedly pointless invasion. You see men sitting in cafes, kids flying kites, women shopping. Cut to bombs exploding at night.

What Moore presumably doesn't know, or simply doesn't care about, is that the building you see being blown up is the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in Baghdad. Not many children flew kites there. It was in a part of the city that ordinary Iraqis weren't allowed to visit — on pain of death.

And if Moore weren't a (left-wing) version of the fat, bigoted, ignorant Americans his European friends love to mock, he'd know that prewar Iraq was ruled by a regime that had forced a sixth of its population into fearful exile, that hanged dissidents (real dissidents, not people like Susan Sontag and Tim Robbins) from meathooks and tortured them with blowtorches, and filled thousands of mass graves with the bodies of its massacred citizens.

Yes, children played, women shopped and men sat in cafes while that stuff went on — just as people did all those normal things in Somoza's Nicaragua, Duvalier's Haiti and for that matter Nazi Germany, and as they do just about everywhere, including in Iraq today.

Moore has defended deliberate inaccuracies in his prior films by claiming that satirists don't have to tell the exact truth. Fair enough. But if you take the lies, half-lies and distortions out "Fahrenheit 9/11," there isn't much of anything left.[/b]

Well done, comrade: good news in Iraq is spun to favor Kerry

06.28.04 (9:01 am)   [edit]
Was watching CNN and there was a commentator on who basically said that all of the "good" things going in Iraq (i.e. NATO involvement, UN involvement) was evidence that Bush was following Kerry's lead.

Talk about spin. When Kerry was bitching about getting the UN involved, for example, most people understood that it was the UN, not the US, that didn't want the UN involved. Ditto that for NATO. Since September 12, 2001 the US has tried to get the rest of the world to take terror as seriously as it was forced to. That still hasn't happened, but NATO and UN involvement helps-- and that's a testimony to the Bush administration's tenacity to get them to do something, not John Kerry's idiotic rantings.

Michael Moore does what the Left accuses the Right of

06.28.04 (7:47 am)   [edit]
June 28, 2004, 9:44 a.m.

[b]Moore Politics
Michael Moore does what the Left accuses the Right of.[/b]
Jonah Goldberg
National Review Editor-At-Large

I haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11 and I have no intention to. So, if you want to make one of those pious declarations about how you can't judge the movie unless you've seen it, be my guest. It's a fair response as far as it goes. But just for the record, I haven't seen the Bare Wench Project either. But few would argue I need to see it before I can form any opinions about porn movies. Such opinions might include: bad lighting, too many fat hairy guys getting in the camera's way, etc.

Which brings me to Michael Moore. He has officially become one of those rare figures who simply by his existence illuminates a great deal about politics. I don't need to know very much about you or your ideas to know that if you think Michael Moore is just great, a truth-teller and a much-needed tonic for everything that is wrong in American life, you are not someone to take seriously about anything of political consequence, or you are French. But I repeat myself.

Now that is not to say that if you think Moore is useful or coming from the "right direction" or some such that you aren't a serious person. One liberal friend (a prominent journalist) who went to the premiere noted that while Moore is for the most part a fraud and a hack, he serves the "cause" by pulling the debate back toward the left; he keeps people on their toes; he raises useful issues, etc. After all, Moore was the one who reintroduced the whole Bush-is-a-deserter canard, which may have torpedoed Wesley Clark's already sinking ship but buoyed the Democrats generally. I have some sincere problems with this sort of "side of the angels" argument — one that is frequently heard on the right about some of our own embarrassments, by the way. But it's certainly true that you can be intellectually honest and serious and hold such opinions. (See David Edelstein's review in Slate for an example.)

But the fact remains that the more you think Michael Moore is an insightful and honest person the less reason there is for the rest of us to pay attention when your lips are moving.

Now, I have no doubt that I will be getting some e-mail from someone or other shouting "What about Limbaugh!?" — or Robertson, or Coulter, or Michael Savage. These are different people each deserving different defenses (and different criticisms). But whatever these guys may or may not be guilty of is beside the point. The point is that the Moore-lovers themselves think there are absolutely no redeeming qualities to the alleged monsters in the right-wing parade of horribles, and yet they hypocritically create their own Frankenstein just so they can have a brazen liar of their own. In other words, if you think Rush Limbaugh is a hateful liar who is destroying America, you do not defend Michael Moore or yourself by saying "Moore is our Limbaugh!" Fighting fire with fire is fine in war, but in debates fighting perceived lies with willful ones wins you few points.

What's worse is that most conservatives, including myself, do not think Limbaugh is a brazen liar. Most of the Washington liberals celebrating Moore — outside the DNC where he is simply a hero — concede that Moore is a liar, a propagandist, a crafty fool. Moreover, Limbaugh can answer a question about what he believes without changing the subject or reaching down his pants for a fistful of red-herrings. Moore cannot. Indeed, Moore's contempt for the press and fact-checking is greater than anything that ever came out of Ari Fleisher's mouth, and yet his fans do not care. After his bitchy speech at the Academy Awards, Moore insisted he wasn't booed by anybody, or the booing was artificially amplified by conspirators, or the booers were actually being booed because everyone likes Mike. But the one thing he was sure of was that the press shouldn't tell the truth. "Now do your job," he instructed reporters. "Don't report it was a divided house. Only five loud people were booing." What else do you expect from a guy whose response to questions about his accuracy are met with threats of lawsuits?

Anyway, as I said, if you think Moore is great you are generally immune to the power of facts and reason, so I doubt the above will even be a speed bump for the e-mail to come.

Now, I have no doubt that there's much fine craftsmanship in Moore's film. And I'm sure there are gut-wrenching scenes of violence, loss, fear, anguish, etc. Several friends and reviewers have noted that the film's greatest successes come with its various depictions of the costs of war. Fine.

But there are two things to keep in mind about this. First, to the extent that Moore's depictions of grieving mothers and remorseful soldiers are accurate, they are true of pretty much every war ever fought. The notion that the Iraq war is somehow unique because some American soldiers did not want to fight it or because some mothers didn't think it was worth losing their sons to it is bunkum. All things being equal, it would be easy — easier in fact — to show similar grief and remorse about World War II or the Civil War (and I have little doubt that had Moore been given the opportunity, he would have). But that is not a persuasive argument against fighting those wars. It would merely be an indication of the very real costs of those wars.

Which brings us to point number two. The powerful emotions unleashed in Moore's film have nothing to do with the slanderous, fact-free arguments he makes.

In fact — hold on a minute — he doesn't make arguments. Arguments require the marshalling of facts under the yoke of reason. Moore makes claims and assertions. He offers visual innuendo. He raises your passions about X so that you will believe Y must be true. He is a whispering Loki who values passion over persuasion, which is one reason he's changed his claims against Bush so many times. See Christopher Hitchens's review for more on that.

But let's call Moore's concatenation of half-truths an "argument." Also, let's stipulate that the Iraq war is terrible, horrendous, mistaken, and evil (it is none of those things). How does any of that prove it was launched to obscure Bush's ties to the bin Ladens? It doesn't and neither does Moore. That's at least what everybody who has seen the film says, on the left and the right (Terry McAuliffe excepted). Or listen to Gwen Ifill — famed right-winger that she is — on yesterday's Meet the Press: "You know, I look at this movie as a journalist, and as a journalist I have this affection for facts and accuracy. And even though there are facts in this movie, on whole it's not accurate. Michael Moore is guilty of the same thing that he and a lot of Democrats say that the Republicans are guilty of." By which she means that Moore juxtaposes one set of facts with another and says they must be related — precisely the complaint the Left makes about ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

Moore grabs at your base passions to power through his narrative. Which brings me back where I started. The one genre that has mastered the stringing together of unrelated or barely related scenes and facts without much care for the coherence of the narrative solely for the purpose of a visceral response in the audience is, in fact, pornography and Moore is the master of the masturbatory craft.

Tim Russert was right yesterday when he said Moore doesn't deserve to be called a "documentary maker" — but he most certainly deserves his Palme d'Or.

Supreme Court does all it can to galvanize a loss in war on terror with rulings

06.28.04 (7:30 am)   [edit]
Here's a question, everybody:

If you were a US citizen and took up arms against your country in a time of war, and were caught, would you be a US citizen or a prisoner of war/enemy combatant and where would you be tried, in a court of law or in a military tribunal?

Guess what? It doesn't matter! Today SCOTUS ruled-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
that US citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was caught in an act of war against the US, deserves to have his day in court and not be held indefinitely. SCOTUS ruled similarly that the 600 or so other detainees at Guantanamo, all foreigners, can contest their captivity through the US legal system.

Of course, usually enemy combatants are held throughout the duration of a war. When they are tried it is in a military tribunal for obvious reasons, namely because of the fact that there is a war going on and public disclosure of information could hurt what is going on in the field of battle.

Now, you may say, this is a perpetual war! Oh yawn. No war has a set schedule-- we never know when a war is going to end. What is obvious is that ridiculous court rulings like this one ensure that terror gets a leg up, that it can hide further behind our legal system, and that the war will last even longer.

Which is the point we keep coming back to. For all of their love of the abstract, for all of their claim to be deep thinkers, Leftists in the west are all of a sudden black and white fundamentalists on the law. Suddenly the law is the law. The one time where the US Constitution (and Geneva while we're at it) needs to be seen in the context of a revolutionary kind of war it isn't-- all of a sudden the Left doesn't want to follow the logic.

And it's because the Left, and SCOTUS, believe that we're not really in a war. Nope-- it's all Bush-Cheney imperialism, they say. They want the world ruled by Leftists so they can bash Israel in peace and issue pathetic arrest warrants to make it look like they're fighting terror instead of what they're really doing.

What rights does a US citizen have if he wars against this country? Not only that, but what US rights do foreign aggressors have?

This is supreme judicial overreach here-- it is meant to make winning the war on terror harder, and it is yet more evidence that we'll have another 9-11 coming shortly.

We're at war, but no one really thinks so. How sad.

A preemptive strike! Iraqi sovereignty turned over two days early!

06.27.04 (11:02 pm)   [edit]
Instead of Wednesday, the US had handed sovereignty back to Iraq today, June 28. This is brilliant move, for it keeps the terrorists off balance and now makes Iraq's government legitimate again.

On this day, June 28, 2004 Iraq became the freest Arab nation in the world-- and the Arab world's only democratically-oriented government. Thanks to the US and the Coalition of the Willing.

According to CNN, the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) is abolished, Bremer will no longer be making any appearances,and the US has requested to the Iraqi government that it resume full diplomatic relations with the US again.

This is historic and might actually make the war on terror easier. With NATO helping the US train Iraqi soldiers, the US is free to take a broader lead in fighting the terrorists until Iraq can secure itself.

A lot on the Left believed this day would never come. But it has. Just as with Hussein's capture, and the future capture or killing of OBL, the US will keep its promises.

God bless the United States. Its positive action in Iraq will be felt for generations.

Peter Jennings falsely reports on reality at Guantanamo, ignores real savagery by Al Qaeda

06.27.04 (8:41 pm)   [edit]
[b]Jennings and Guantanamo[/b]
Jay Bryant
June 27, 2004

You'll have to pardon my insensitivity, but I'm just not much concerned about the abuse of the detainees we're holding at Guantanamo Bay.

ABC's Peter Jennings doesn't see it that way, of course. He actually seems to believe the lamentations of the relatives of one Guantanamo detainee who claim he was in Afghanistan only to work with refugees. In fact, no humanitarian aid agency ever heard of him, and the one thing we know for sure is that when the remnants of the Taliban army high-tailed it out of the country he went with them.

So I'm just a little suspect of his do-gooder credentials. Nonetheless, Jennings gave the family tons of face time in his hatchet job "documentary" last night.

Remember, ABC is the network that won't even give its own monthly poll any coverage when it shows Bush ahead of Kerry, but puts it front and center whenever it shows the opposite.

Jennings has been on the Guantanamo story for some time now. Back in November of 2002, he introduced a story about how "human rights organizations" were upset over the treatment of prisoners there, and then cut to reporter Bob Woodruff, who related the tragic tale of a Pakistani detainee who had never seen air conditioning before and assumed it was a kind of torture. Yep, that's what we're doing down there – air conditioning those poor bastards until their will is broken and they talk.

Jennings went to Gitmo himself in April of this year, and wrapped up his report thusly: "The biggest health issue here is mental. Isolation and uncertainty have led to numerous attempted suicides. And at any time of the day or night, the detainees may be interrogated, a subject of enormous controversy in itself. There is no thought here of rehabilitation. Some of these men may be here for years, and as of now, they have no appeal. Hard place to photograph. Harder place for many people to understand."

I'm hear to tell you folks, when the biggest health issue in a prison is mental, that's a pretty good prison. Mental was never the biggest health issue in the Gulag. Of course, they didn't use air conditioning to terrify the zeks, either.

In May, Jennings did an exposé on Halliburton (How original is that?) and managed to find it worthy of mention that the giant construction company had built the Camp Delta terrorist housing complex at Guantanamo. Well, if Halliburton built it, it's got to be a chamber of horrors, now, doesn't it? No doubt a little further research would turn up the fact that Halliburton also built Devil's Island, Dachau and the Lubyanka, but ABC may be holding that story for October, just before the election.

Another prison story ABC has yet to get around to is the one referenced by Marine Lt. Col. Stan Coerr, in his celebrated essay "No One Asked Us," which remains as good an essay on the real meaning of the Iraq War as has yet been written (you can find it a million places on the web, including http://www.smcgop.us/_fileCab...). Coerr writes that the "1st Battalion, 5th Marines, out of Camp Pendleton, liberated a prison in Iraq populated entirely by children. The Ba'athists brutalized the weakest among them, and killed the strongest."

To be fair, I have to tell you that at least some of the detainees taken to Cuba were underage, too, but they were typically released pronto. One of them, a 13ish Afghan boy, told the left-wing Guardian newspaper in London, "I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great." Apparently this kid didn't mind the air conditioning, and he specifically praised the food. He also reported that he took up snorkeling, apparently during those few minutes of the day when his captors loosened the thumb screws. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he told the Guardian. "If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer -- or an American soldier."

Brainwashed that sucker, didn't we? But don't expect him to show up on ABC anytime soon.

Earlier this week when the Supreme Court heard a case asking them to rule on whether the Gitmo detainees had the right to access the U.S. judicial system, only ABC among the three network news organizations made the story Numero Uno for the day, dispatching Jennings to Washington and giving three soundbites to a rag-tag group of anti-Bush protesters outside the court and otherwise savaging the Administration.

A guy from New York named Ed Voyer sent me an email this week in response to an earlier column of mine. I think his summary of the awfulness of our War on Terrorism prisons is worth quoting. "I was just reading the DoD's interrogation methods both pre and post January 2003," he writes. "One thing struck me, that amused me to no end. Most of the tortures are those I voluntarily submitted to in Army Basic Training of 1977 (though we had nothing as tasty as MRE's back then). Shouting, sleep deprivation, forced shaving, prolonged standing, twice daily calisthenics, good guy bad guy, and much more. It seems that the terrorists will come out fit and healthy under such torture."

My friends, we are the good guys in this fight. The bad guys chop off the heads of the prisoners they take, and send the videotapes to the deceased's relatives. If Peter Jennings can come up with any examples of where we've done that, then maybe I'll join him worrying about how we're abusing detainees' rights.

Veteran GOP media consultant Jay Bryant's regular columns are available at www.theoptimate.com, and his commentaries may be heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.'

©2004 Jay Bryant

Review: F911 connects dots that aren't there

06.27.04 (6:59 pm)   [edit]
From The Weekly Standard--

[b]Un-Moored from Reality[/b]
From the July 5 / July 12, 2004 issue: Fahrenheit 9/11 connects dots that aren't there.
by Matt Labash
07/05/2004

CONSIDERING THAT I'm writing this from inside the bunker of what many regard as the Alliance of Neocon Warmongers, it bears mentioning that Michael Moore and I have one surprising trait in common: We both believe that the war in Iraq was ill-advised, ill-planned, and ill-executed, an apparent failure bordering on unmitigated disaster, that was never in our best national interest. Around our office over the last two years, I've made these arguments to colleagues, open-minded types who, after they put me through my water-boarding/naked pyramid sessions, say they'll take it under advisement. And I make the disclosure now so that readers will not be confused. I do not trash Fahrenheit 9/11 because it's a piece of antiwar propaganda. I trash Fahrenheit 9/11 because it's an offal-laden piece of junk.

It is proof, as if we need more, that [b]Moore doesn't make art, he makes fudge.[/b] Since fact-checking his work has become a near full-time cottage industry, it is worth remembering that in his debut film Roger & Me, his indictment of heartless General Motors,[b] he was caught fudging evictions, showing people getting bounced onto the street who'd never been GM workers.[/b] In 2002's antigun screed, Bowling for Columbine, he fudged his tear-jerking closer. While hectoring Alzheimer's-ravaged NRA mascot Charlton Heston, he related the heart-tugging tale of a mother whose 6-year-old son, largely unsupervised because of oppressive welfare-to-work laws, found a gun in her house and killed one of his classmates. [b]Moore failed to mention that the family member Mom entrusted him to was running a crackhouse out of her home, that the gun had been left on a mattress, and that she'd admitted beating another son while sitting on him after duct-taping his hands, feet, and mouth. Not exactly a model of responsible parenting, gun ownership, or filmmaking.[/b]

As has become my custom at Moore screenings, I began by scratching hash marks in my notebook, counting his conspiracy theories. Not only does this train the mind, but it distracts me from laughing inappropriately and disturbing fellow filmgoers. But in Fahrenheit 9/11, I quickly abandoned counting for cackling. By the time the opening credits rolled, Moore had already explained how George W. Bush rigged the 2000 election by stealing votes from black people, as well as fallen back on his shopworn class-war claptrap to imply that Bush was out of touch with the common folk, since on September 10, 2001, he "went to sleep that night in a bed made with fine French linens." (The next day's terror victims doubtless slept on burlap.)

The intro credits are accompanied by creepy acoustic guitar runs--third-world atrocity music--which play under a montage of our leaders/war criminals sinisterly readying themselves for television appearances. There's Dick Cheney getting his rake-over fluffed. There's Tom Ridge diabolically laughing. There's Paul Wolfowitz smoothing a cowlick with spittle. They smile. They have make-up applied before going on TV. Bastards!

From there, [b]Moore offers a full hour's worth of Bush-centric conspiracies so seemingly random, disjointed, and pointless that one's ticket stub should come with a flow-chart and a decoder ring.[/b] In my line of work, when you hear this strain of rhetoric, it's usually from a man in a sandwich board touting the apocalypse or Mumia's innocence, pushing stacks of literature at you while standing on the wrong side of a police cordon. It doesn't typically come from someone whose premiere is attended by half of respectable Democratic Washington, and whose film won the coveted Palme d'Or prize at Cannes.

Moore never passes up a chance to make Bush look like a lightweight, smirking chimp. In fairness, Bush provides more than enough source material. There's Bush, to the strains of the Go-Go's "Vacation," casting fishing lines and speeding away in golf carts, with Moore informing us that the president spent 42 percent of his first eight months in office on vacation. There's Bush in a grade school classroom photo op, sitting shifty-eyed and paralyzed for a full seven minutes after being told the second plane smacked into the World Trade Center, while a teacher reads My Pet Goat. (As a friend of mine says, "Maybe he just wanted to see how it ended.")

Moore uses Bush's momentary inaction as a device to ask what he was thinking, which, to paraphrase Moore's answer, was how to cover his tracks. This allows us passage into the paranoid labyrinth of Moore's mind, which is illustrated by news footage and a string of experts (Moore spends less time physically on screen than in any of his other films, a fact which recommends it, comparatively speaking). He never fabricates out of whole cloth. [b]Rather, Moore the filmmaker takes a perfectly reasonable proposition (our government generally, and the Bush family specifically, have been too solicitous of the Saudis), while Moore the fudgemaker throws entire trays at the wall, never overtly making allegations that amount to anything, but crossing his fingers that some of it sticks.[/b]

The insinuation is that Bush had to keep us scared, with color-coded alerts and a citizen-terrorizing Patriot Act, to distract the country from his tangle of conflicts of interests and to build sentiment for invading Iraq. [b]Moore mentions that the Taliban visited Texas while Bush was governor, over a possible pipeline deal with Unocal. [u]But Moore doesn't say that they never actually met with Bush or that the deal went bust in 1998 and had been supported by the Clinton administration.[/b][/u]

Moore mentions that Bush's old National Guard buddy and personal friend James Bath had become the money manager for the bin Laden family, saying, "James Bath himself in turn invested in George W. Bush." The implication is that Bath invested the bin Laden family's money in Bush's failed energy company, Arbusto. He doesn't mention that Bath has said that he had invested his own money, not the bin Ladens', in Bush's company.

The family members who had disowned Osama were mainstays of American business, to the point that they were members of the nefarious Carlyle Group, a fact Moore naturally mentions, along with the fact that George's daddy was a member, too. One of the Carlyle Group's investments was United Defense, maker of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Moore says September 11 "guaranteed that United Defense was going to have a very good year." See it all coming together? Moore tells us that when Carlyle took United Defense public, they made a one-day profit of $237 million, but under all the public scrutiny, the bin Laden family eventually had to withdraw ([b]Moore doesn't tell us that they withdrew before the public offering, not after it[/b]).

At their own request, the bin Laden family was quickly shuttled away after 9/11, back to Saudi Arabia. Moore finds it suspicious, as well he should. Who would be stupid enough to let that happen, without working them over for a good couple of weeks? Actually, according to a May interview he gave to The Hill, [b]it was Richard Clarke, Bush's former counterterrorism adviser and the new patron saint of Bush-bashers. Moore makes use of him in the film, though he manages not to mention Clarke's role in the departure of the bin Ladens.[/b]

Here, if we're going to play connect-the-dots, a few questions are in order. For starters, [b]are we really supposed to believe that 9/11 and the ensuing wars were a collaborative profiteering scheme between the bin Ladens, the Bushes, and defense contractors? Furthermore, will Moore's DVD director's cut elucidate Bush ties to the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and the Freemasons? Who knows? Who cares? Moore doesn't seem to, as he speedily moves on, making another tray of fudge.[/b]

[b][i]When Moore takes us to Iraq, on the eve of war, he shows placid scenes of an untroubled land on the brink of imperial annihilation. With all the leisurely strolling and kite-flying, it is unclear if Iraqis are living under a murderous dictatorship or in a Valtrex commercial. In Moore's telling of the invasion, the shock-and-awe is less high-value-target/smart-b ombing, more Dresden/Hiroshima. According to the footage that ensues, our pilots seem to have hit nothing but women and children. If Moore's documentarian gig were to fall through, he could easily seek employment as an Al Jazeera cameraman.[/b][/i]

This is, it nearly goes without saying, his downfall as a storyteller. In his unctuous morality tales, everyone is assigned black and white hats. The white hats mainly belong to the oppressed people of Iraq, subject to our soldiers' midnight raids under the jackboot of occupation, and to other victims of the administration, such as the poor, underemployed people of Flint, Michigan (Moore's obsessively referenced hometown), who serve as helpless recruiting chum for Bush's killing machine.

The black hats (administration types) seem to be motivated solely by world domination and the desire to steer no-bid contracts to Halliburton. [b]There is no allowance for moral ambiguity, or what would've been even more interesting, misguided moral clarity--the possibility that Bush made a bad judgment call, but did so for the right reasons (security concerns, the elimination of a brutal despot, and the liberation of his people).[/b]

One of this film's only pure moments occurs when Moore spends time with the mother of an American soldier who died in Karbala. The mother is a conservative Democrat from a family with a long military history. She used to rage at war protestors, but since losing her son, she seethes at the administration who sent him to his death, crying almost animally, "I want him to be alive . . . and I can't make him alive." (But even this is sullied by Moore's smarmy, gratuitous insistence to her that "yeah, it's a great country," an obvious inoculation against charges that he hates America.)

Critics have accused Moore of milking her grief until it moos. But on this, he deserves a pass. Anyone wishing to discuss war, either for or against, should also be prepared to seriously consider its tolls, especially the human ones. Moore being Moore, however, steps on his most effective material by following it with yet another cheap stunt: ambushing congressmen to ask if they will enlist their children to go to Iraq, as if anyone can. He finds no takers, then says he can't blame them, since who would want to give up their child? Nobody, of course. Not the parents of soldiers in Iraq, nor the parents of those who died at Normandy. But few would argue that World War II wasn't a war worth fighting.

Which is not to say Iraq is in the same class. And it is why real questions should be continuously asked, and skepticism applied. The kind of skepticism that forces leaders to account for whether they've taken the right course of action. Not the crank, grab bag of stitched-together conspiracies that encourages Moore's political opponents to be reflexively dismissive--and causes the leftish reviewer sitting next to me to say, "He infuriates me because he makes my arguments badly."

There is plenty of grist for skeptics of the war to argue that the chances of a shiny, happy democracy's flowering in Iraq reside somewhere between slim and nil. But those are still better odds than the ones on Moore's someday making an intellectually honest film.

Matt Labash is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Blogger's note: don't we have an all volunteer armed forces? One in which most folks are white? Just checking.

F911 dishonors troops, applauds terrorists, exploits every facet of war-- a dense maze of lies

06.27.04 (6:36 pm)   [edit]
From columnist Debbi Schlussel-- http://debbieschlussel.com/

[b]FAKEN-heit 9-11: Michael Moore’s Latest Fiction[/b]
June 25, 2004

Mark Twain, once said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

But Twain lived in the 19th Century. In the 21st Century, there are lies, damn lies, and Michael Moore "documentaries."

Like Twain, Moore wants to be the great social commentator of our era. But, "Fahrenheit 9-11" (F911), his latest propaganda film, shows why he will forever remain in "wanna-be" status.

It’s typical Moore: lies, half-truths, far-left wackos and kooks as experts, snarky cheap shots, and just plain nonsense.

F911 starts out by recounting the tired liberal-left canard about George W. Bush "stealing" the 2000 Presidential Election. Gee, we haven’t heard that one before. And for those who actually read the paper and peruse bookstores, there’s little else new in this waste of celluloid.

Moore shows endless shots of Bush and administration officials being made up for TV appearances, montages of Bush golfing and on vacation, a shot of Bush with his dog – all accompanied by the sarcastic vocal commentary of Michael Moore. (You didn’t expect the self-important, schlubby Moore to spare us and stay off-screen, did you?)

In Moore’s world, liberal politicians never get made up or hair coiffed for TV appearances. In Moore’s world, Bill Clinton never golfed, never vacationed for months on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, never had a dog named "Buddy" – all while Slick Willie had the opportunity (several times) to have Osama Bin Laden handed over to him, but declined.

But that’s Moore’s world. He has learned the Costas Gavras (the famous Socialist-Communist director who produced Anti-American films) technique well. Bush and other administration "villains"--so cast by Moore--are shot from down below, to make them look even more evil.

Moore spends much time on Bin Laden family members flying out of the US when the rest of America was grounded, right after 9-11. Showing a clip of Khalil Bin Laden at the airport, a chyron on the screen cleverly reads "days after 9-11." But, how many days? In fact, while some Bin Ladens did get to fly out early, most of the Bin Laden family flew out of America, after the rest of America could already fly. Moore says the FBI was not allowed to interview them, but in fact, the FBI was allowed to interview them and chose not to. That is disturbing, but it’s not what Moore "reported".

The close relationship between the Bush family, including the current President, and the Saudi Royal Family is troubling. But it’s nothing new, and Moore offers no alternative. The Saudi Royals are, no doubt, despicable. They foster and fund madrasas, mosques, and clerics who preach the death of the West, Christians, and Jews. They hold telethons to fund the "martyrs" and allowed Al-Qaeda to grow. Women can’t drive, and non-Muslims are the equivalent of slaves. Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar is slimy and dishonest.

But the precarious Saudi Royal Family is better than the alternative--the Saudi masses who hate us even more and who love Osama Bin Laden.

If Crown Prince Abdullah is deposed by its extremist population, Bin Laden is the most popular replacement. Given the large Saudi investment in our economy (upon which Moore touches) and large holdings in our banking system, a change in Saudi leadership could result in the collapse of our economy. $2 a gallon oil? That would be a pleasant memory from the past, and only rich phonies like Michael Moore would be able to afford to drive. The Saudis are the largest producers of oil, and the radical Saudi population would see to it that we go back to the horse and buggy.

That is why it’s important for Bush to remain on good terms with the sleazy country that is the home to public beheadings and 15 of the 19 hijackers. Leftists from Moore’s "Amen" crowd won’t let us drill for oil in Alaska, so we can get away from dependence upon the Saudis. Not a peep about that in F911.

And while there’s plenty of factual material to use against the Saudis, Moore fabricates on that, too. He claims that the US Secret Service’s Uniformed Division protects only the Saudi Embassy, no others. That’s just plain false. Any tourist to Washington, DC, will see plenty of Secret Service Police guarding all of the other foreign embassies which request such protection. Other than guarding the White House and some federal buildings, it’s the largest use of personnel by the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division.

Since Moore lies about little things like that, what else has he lied about in this master docu-fakery?

Then there are Moore’s Congressional "experts." F911 features extensive interviews with two of the biggest wackos ever elected to Congress, Reps. Jim McDermott and John Conyers, both far-left Democrats. They spout off against everything from the USA Patriot Act to the War on Iraq.

But he fails to tell us that Jim McDermott was on the take from Saddam Hussein. McDermott was one of three Congressmen who went on Saddam’s propaganda tour of Iraq in Fall 2002. The trip was funded by Life for Relief and Development (LRD), a "charity" which laundered money to terrorist group Hamas’ Jordanian operation. LRD is funded in part by Shakir Al-Khafaji, a man who did about $70 million in business with Saddam through his Falcon Trading Group company (based in South Africa). LRD’s Iraqi offices were raided by US troops last week, and the Detroit-area "charity" is suspected of funding uprisings, such as the one in Fallujah. Its officials bragged of doing so at a recent private US fundraiser.

Mr. Alkhafaji, one of two Americans named in Iraqi newspapers as a participant in Saddam’s "Oil for Food" scam, gave Congressman McDermott $5,000 in October 2002 for McDermott’s legal defense fund in a lawsuit against him. He’s not biased about Iraq, right?!

Then there’s Conyers. He’s the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Heaven help us if the Democrats retake the House majority, and he becomes Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The far-left Conyers never met a terrorist he didn’t like.

Take the June 13 Muslim American Society fundraising dinner for Islamic Relief, a charity with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Conyers and his wife were the guests of honor. They watched and clapped as the Sanabel Al-Quds "dancing" troop from Milwaukee—featuring boys as young as seven—sang in Arabic of martyrdom and jihad for Allah and Palestine. They didn’t need to understand Arabic, as the young boys used a rifle to simulate killing and pistol-whipping, simulated throat-slittings and beheadings, and dishonored the American flag.

The War in Iraq is a major focal point of the film. Moore shamelessly dishonors our brave soldiers. He makes fun of soldier’s musical choices in Iraq ("The Roof is on Fire") and depicts multiple wounded and dead Iraqis and soldiers raiding a home in Iraq searching for a militant. That’s what happens in war. People get wounded and killed. Moore shows the militant’s female relatives crying. "He’s a college student," they cry out in Arabic. College students would never be terrorists, would they? Tell that to the Israelis, where the "colleges," such as Bir Zeit University, are the breeding grounds for terrorists.

Very telling is the presence of the Al-Jazeera microphone in one segment of a women crying, "Allah Hu Akbar" (Allah is Great). Moore apparently thinks the sympathetic Terrorist News Network (Al-Jazeera) is the epitome of accurate news reporting.

Other BS in the Moore film:

* He shows Britney Spears saying she supports the President on Iraq. As if there weren’t a host of brain-dead bimbo celebs, (Madonna, Sean Penn, Russell Simmons, Lenny Kravitz, Susan Sarandon, The Dixie Chicks, etc.), spouting off on the other side.

* Moore repeatedly features Sam Kubba, of the American-Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, denouncing the War in Iraq as money-driven. But Kubba is a fringe character. Most Iraqi-Americans and their prominent leaders, such as Nabil Roumayah of the Detroit-based Iraqi Democratic Union, supported the war, whether they were Chaldeans (Christian Iraqis) or Shias.

* In very selectively edited clips, Moore poses the absurd notion that the main news anchors—Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Ted Koppel—wholeheartedly support Bush and the War in Iraq. Jennings, Rather, and Koppel supporting the War and Bush? Puh-leeze! Has Moore forgotten the hour-long Saddam softball interview Rather did just prior to the war, Jennings’ condescending coverage and Koppel’s critical "Nightline" episodes every step of the way?

* Moore exploits the grief of Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. She denounces Bush and the War. But there are many mothers and relatives of US soldiers, alive and dead, who served there who don’t agree with her. Don’t look for them in this agit-prop "film."

*
Moore, as many misinformed "journalists do, makes light of the claimed Bush connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. But what about the meeting between hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi Intelligence agents in the Czech Republic before 9-11? What about the Iraqi training camp in Salman Pak where Al-Qaeda used abandoned planes to train to hijack them? What about Ramzi Youssef, the Iraqi Secret Service agent and mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing, who is the nephew of 9-11 Al-Qaeda mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? What about Iraqi Intelligence and Secret Police (Mukhabarat) at a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Al-Qaeda terror planning convention? These are just some connections, and there are others in "The Connection," by Stephen Hayes, that you won’t see in Moore’s silver screen screed.

Not just the film--but the audience that populated the promotional screening I attended--looked like it came out of far-stage-left of Democratic Party central casting.

Those surrounding me were literally the "Great Unwashed." They smelled as if they hadn’t taken a shower in weeks, not because they couldn’t afford running water, but because it’s cool to be dirty and nasty in the far-left. Not for any good reason, but just because they can. With their awful stench wafting universal, they want to make the rest of us as miserable and skanky as the Hate-America crowd.

It’s emblematic of the filmmaker and his fake-umentary. Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9-11" stink.

Bush vindication, part 6,005,643: Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'

06.27.04 (6:18 pm)   [edit]
This is a toughie because even if the claim wasn't true, it wasn't Bush's actual claim [i]and[/i] it had the benefit of being a piece of intelligence, the merits of which always rest on its likelihood of being true for a consensus of serious thinkers, in this case the British government.

What the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about Bush's Iraq-Niger claim in his 2003 SOTU address in which he reiterated the British claim that Hussein sent agents to Niger to buy uranium, the country's chief export. Since this was part of his case for war, although not nearly the cornerstone (we all know that was the UN resolutions), it has also become part of the Left's case for calling Bush "Hitler". Sourpuss Joseph Wilson spent a week or so in Niger asking government officials softball questions they readily denied, and so claimed that the Niger claim was false. This, from an admitted Clinton admirer and Bush hater.

The only thing more inexplicable than how this man received a paycheck for vacationing in Niger is how the Bush administration decided on such an anti-administration jerk to do it.

(If you recall Wilson used the phony scandal of Robert Novak's release of his wife's name, known to everyone, even listed in "Who's Who" as proof that Bush was,er, "Hitler". He even got a book out of it...)

Anyway, it appears that Bush and the British intelligence service are even more correct about Niger and Iraq than they were before. Look for his to get buried in the NY Times and all the McTimes across the nation.

Helpful reminder: Niger is a former French colony with French business interests dominating the country.

Behold, I give you....

From the Financial Times:

[b]Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'[/b]
By Mark Huband
Published: June 27 2004 21:56

When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions.

The identity of the thieves has not been established. But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines.

The break-in is one of the murkier elements surrounding the claim - made by the US and UK governments in the lead-up to the Iraq war - that Iraq sought to buy uranium illicitly from Niger.

The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

But the US intelligence community, officials and politicians, are publicly sceptical, and the public differences between the two allies on the issue have obscured the evidence that lies behind the UK claim.

Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials.

When the US State Department later passed the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, they were found to be fake. US officials have subsequently distanced themselves from the entire notion that Iraq was seeking buy uranium from Niger.

[b]However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.[/b]

These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored.

The fake documents were handed to an Italian journalist working for the Italian magazine Panorama by a businessman in October 2002. According to a senior official with detailed knowledge of the case, this businessman had been dismissed from the Italian armed forces for dishonourable conduct 25 years earlier.

The journalist - Elisabetta Burba - reported in a Panorama article that she suspected the documents were forgeries and handed them to officials at the US embassy in Rome.

The businessman, referred to by a pseudonym in the Panorama article, had previously tried to sell the documents to several intelligence services, according to a western intelligence officer.

It was later established that he had a record of extortion and deception and had been convicted by a Rome court in 1985 and later arrested at least twice. The suspected forger's real name is known to the FT, but cannot be used because of legal constraints. He did not return telephone calls yesterday, and is understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel.

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. [b]Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.[/b]

This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.

(Blogger's note: we have Bush's 'Axis of Evil' in there, and we are effectively dealing with Libya and China)

The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles.

One nuclear counter-proliferation expert told the FT: "If I am going to make a bomb, I am not going to use the uranium that I have declared. I am going to use what I acquire clandestinely, if I am going to keep the programme hidden."

This may have been the method being used by Libya before it agreed last December to abandon its secret nuclear programme. According to the IAEA, there are 2,600 tonnes of refined uranium ore - "yellow cake" - in Libya. However, less than 1,500 tonnes of it is accounted for in Niger records, even though Niger was Libya's main supplier.

Information gathered in 1999-2001 suggested that the uranium sold illicitly would be extracted from mines in Niger that had been abandoned as uneconomic by the two [b]French-owned mining companies[/b] - Cominak and Somair, both of which are owned by the mining giant Cogema - operating in Niger.

"Mines can be abandoned by Cogema when they become unproductive. This doesn't mean that people near the mines can't keep on extracting," a senior European counter-proliferation official said.

He added that there was no evidence the companies were aware of the plans for illicit mining.

When the intelligence gathered in 1999-2001 was thrown into the diplomatic maelstrom that preceded the US-led invasion of Iraq, it took on new significance. Several services contributed to the picture.

The Italians, looking for corroboration but lacking the global reach of the CIA or the UK intelligence service MI6, passed information to the US in 2001 and to the UK in 2002.

The UK eavesdropping centre GCHQ had intercepted communications suggesting Iraq was seeking clandestine uranium supplies, as had the French intelligence service.

The Italian intelligence was not incorporated in detail into the assessments of the CIA, which seeks to use such information only when it is gathered from its own sources rather than as a result of liaison with foreign intelligence services. But five months after receiving it, the US sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to assess the credibility of separate US intelligence information that suggested Iraq had approached Niger.

Mr Wilson was critical of the Bush administration's use of secret intelligence, and has since charged that the White House sought to intimidate him by leaking the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.

[b]But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.

As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to.[/b]

Farenheit 9/11 being called a blockbuster, with numbers showing it isn't

06.27.04 (11:23 am)   [edit]
Michael Moore, inventor of the crockumentary, noted for making things up as he goes along and truly embodying the word 'hypocrite' (making money off of the culture of fear he says America has become), has been getting the soft-glove treatment by his brothers in the media for years. Now that his movie is out, his comrades have gone even further.

"Farenheit 9/11", which is not a documentary, by the way, a film in which Moore has built its premise on lies, received 8 million dollars in its opening night. I contrast this with "The Passion of the Christ" an independent film that the media turned into an anti-Semitic, hate-filled attack on the same Jews they consistently think should be exterminated in Israel, which made $26,000,000 (that's twenty-six million and change for the numerically impaired) in its first day, and which is on its way to make a billion dollars this year (it is already at 609 million) worldwide.

In the former we have a man who created his own "censorship" controversy in order to gain notice for the film. He was told a year in advance that Disney would not release the film (interesting stuff Disney= Big Corporate Sleaze employing Robin Hood in a muu-muu), and then screamed "censorship", even though it wasn't. No one has a right to be distributed, and companies have the right to refuse an artist's work.

The media latched on like slugs to this angle and played it up for weeks, even though they would have done this anyway.

In the latter we have a man who spent his own money making a film no one would distribute. "The Passion"'s rejections barely registered a blip on the media's map. In fact, most commentators worried what happened to Mel Gibson. Were it not for Abe Foxman slandering Christians and Gibson, the media would have let it sleep.

(In fact, even with the negative media attention, "The Passion" is one of the most succesful films of all time. And for an independent film, that is truly remarkable, even miraculous.)

So Moore's film is basically a dud, it is not making nearly the money Gibson's film made, yet here's how the media will spin it. Gibson's film only made money because of the "hype" surrounding it, hype the media says it has nothing to do with, while Moore's film will be trumpeted as an instrument for social change because the money it makes means that people are responding to his convoluted, mixed up, confused message about Bush and the war on terror.

To take one example of how the film is dishonest, we have the scene at the school in Florida on September 11 where Bush learns about the second plane. Moore let's the entire 7 minutes roll where Bush looks stunned and then does nothing but continue to read to children. In college-dropout Moore's world, this means Bush is unable to lead, is a dunce, is a pathetic frat-boy drunk.

Bush says, in a monument to common sense, that he didn't want to act like there was a national crisis and go running out of the building, getting people in a panic. My guess is that he probably knew that since he was the president, and America was under attack (SOMETHING THE LEFT STILL DOESN'T REALLY BELIEVE), he had to, well, lead.

Can you imagine what the Michael Moore line would have been if Bush had run out of the building or started screaming "Oh shit! we're under attack! Get me AF1 and get me out of here!"? Of course! It would be the same line-- Bush is a terrible president-- he can't lead. Moore would be implying that Bush should have sat down and acted calmly as AF1 powered up and fighter jets scrambled to attempt to fight whoever it was that was attacking us.

The main reason Michael Moore, and the rest of the Left, can go ahead as planned with this unprecedented, hateful, attack plan on Bush is that they a)don't believe he is president and b) don't believe America is at war because c)America is a big, ugly, evil hegemon that probably deserves what it gets.

But thousands and thousands of trees will die proclaiming how fat-ass Michael Moore's untruthful piece of slander called "Farenheit 9/11" is rocking the box office.

There hasn't been this much attention paid to such a miserable failure of a man since, well, Bill Clinton's reemergence last week.

Maybe Cheney should have chopped Leahy's head off

06.26.04 (7:28 am)   [edit]
From Powerline-- http://www.powerlineblog.com/... :

"Meanwhile, the New York Times has an in-depth analysis of Dick Cheney's swearing at the despicable Pat Leahy. Maybe he should have chopped Leahy's head off; [b]then, based on recent experience, the Times would have buried the story."[/b]

Damn straight.

John Kerry gave enemy aid and comfoort while a member of US Navy -- he should resign

06.26.04 (4:32 am)   [edit]
[b]Aid and comfort to the enemy: The Kerry record...[/b]
Mark Alexander
June 25, 2004

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
--George Washington

It's no surprise that John Kerry has devoted so much time and energy questioning George W. Bush's record as commander-in-chief. Nor is it any surprise that he recently launched a campaign calling on Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld to resign after a handful of military personnel humiliated al-Qa'ida terrorists in Abu Ghraib prison while attempting to obtain actionable intelligence about their plans to kill more of our troops.

These political attacks are just the latest round on Kerry's long list of black-bag antics designed to undermine America's military strength and resolve.

Kerry, who fancies himself a war hero, has spent much of his political career denigrating American military personnel and the nation they defend. But his anti-American actions preceded his first campaign for Congress -- indeed, they were the platform from which he launched his political career.

Like his comrade "Hanoi Jane" Fonda and so many other Leftist protagonists from the Age of Aquarius, Kerry was a child of wealth and privilege. Today, he is the wealthiest member of Congress (the "F" stands for "Forbes," after all) but don't expect that to be a central theme of his "man of the people" campaign. (In fact, the top five wealthiest Senators are all Democrats.)

Kerry grew up hobnobbing with the Massachusetts Cape glitterati, a life of leisure including all the accoutrements -- the best schools, the best vacation homes, the best yachts, etc. He socialized with the rich and famous, especially the Kennedy clan elites, where he was taken under the wing of his future patron saint, Teddy. He attempted to emulate John Kennedy's PT-109 heroics by joining the Navy and using his connections to obtain an assignment for a short tour on a swiftboat in Vietnam. Kerry then went on to collect three Purple Hearts in just two months -- all of dubious merit, but requisite for a ticket home to pursue his political aspirations.

Unlike John F. Kennedy, however, when John F. Kerry got home, there was no hero's welcome. The nation was in turmoil over our continued role in Vietnam, the result of limited but well-publicized Leftist protests against the war. So Kerry, ever the opportunist, endeavored to become the Left's most "useful idiot" (as Lenin called Western apologists for Soviet propaganda), collaborating with Fonda, et al., and leading protests accusing his "brethren" in Vietnam of all manner of atrocities.

Kerry was (and remains) an effective spokesperson for his Leftist cadre. His anti-war protest period culminated with his 1971 congressional testimony, after which he told the press,

"There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions...."

Regarding the substance -- and source -- of Kerry's claims, Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet bloc, says:

"KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. ... As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, 'our most significant success'."

As for the success of Kerry's anti-democracy protests and his leadership of the VVAW and association with Fonda's Winter Soldier Investigation, General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam's most decorated military leader, wrote in retrospect that if not for the disunity created by such stateside protesters, Hanoi would have ultimately surrendered.

But the consequences of Kerry's actions should not stop with the fall of Saigon.

Kerry, by his own account, violated the UCMJ, the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Code while serving as a Navy officer, and he further stands in violation of Article three, Section three of the U.S. Constitution.

Upon entering the Navy in 1966, John Kerry signed a six-year contract (plus a six-month extension during wartime) and an Officer Candidate contract for five years of active duty and active Naval Reserve. This indicates that Kerry was clearly a commissioned officer at the time of his 1970 meeting with NVA Communists in Paris -- in direct violation of the UCMJ's Article 104 part 904, and U.S. Code 18 U.S.C. 953. That meeting, and Kerry's subsequent coddling of Communists while leading mass protests against our military in the year that followed, also place him in direct violation of our Constitution's Article three, Section three, which defines treason as "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of warfare. (As General Vo Nguyen Giap is his witness....)

Thus, we refer our readers to the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, which states,

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President ... having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

It is for this reason -- for his record of giving aid and comfort to the enemy while a member of the U.S. Armed Forces in violation of his oath -- that we insist John Kerry resign his seat in the U.S. Senate. He has dishonored his family, dishonored his state and dishonored our nation. He is not fit for public office at any level of government, much less, the highest office in the land. John Kerry should resign.

Mark Alexander is Executive Editor and Publisher of The Federalist, a Townhall.com member group.

©2004 The Federalist

Now we have Cheney's "SwearGate" TM

06.25.04 (8:49 am)   [edit]
The left, the same folks who give us sodomy, murder in film, moral equivalence and the promise of a sexual, consequence free utopia, are going freaky over Dick Cheney's f-bomb he dropped on the guy that deserved it, Patrick Leahy.

Of course, the argument was about Halliburton, a company often maligned for just existing. Halliburton is Cheney's old company, but if we're going to be pointing a special interest finger at that, a charge that has no base (what do you think the libs have been trying to do for years-- they've been trying to find dirt, but so far have had to resort to the sport of just making it up), we might as well look at Patrick Leahy's special interests, which just happened to hijack the judicial committee last year in its considerations of Bush's nominees (noted in a revealing Democratic memo that was turned into a theft scandal that didn't exist).

In short, perhaps Dick Cheney was sick of the sh--.

Anyway, for the left to go ape over this is hilarious. The left employs swear words as a means of everyday communication. That is when they're not trying to say them to look relevant.

Remember John Kerry's f-bomb in Rolling Stone? That was portrayed by the left as either no big deal or, in some cases, cool.

Why isn't the left treating the Cheney f-bomb, one completely out of character, the same? Well, because he's an evil Republican, of course!

And please, don't give me this excuse that Cheney's expletive was bad because it happened on the Senate floor. A lot worse has happened on the Senate floor. Like Christopher Dodd praising Robert Byrd, a former KKK member, as a perfect leader for anytime, including the Civil War.

But the left brushed that off, too.

Oh well, what the f--k.

Bill Clinton-- a small man, a small legacy

06.25.04 (8:20 am)   [edit]
[b]The Clinton legacy[/b]
Charles Krauthammer
June 25, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Since 1960 we have had only two politically successful presidents -- reaffirmed and re-elected, dominating their decades: Reagan and Clinton. (Except for Kennedy, whose presidency was cut short, the others -- Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush 41-- were repudiated.) Clinton's autobiography, appearing as it does in such close conjunction to the national remembrance of Reagan, invites the inevitable comparison.

The contrast is obvious. Reagan was the hedgehog who knew -- and did -- a few very large things: fighting and winning the Cold War, reviving the economy and beginning a fundamental restructuring of the welfare state.

Clinton was the fox. He knew -- and accomplished -- small things. His autobiography is a perfect reflection of that -- a wild mish-mash of remembrance, anecdote, appointment calendar and political payback. The themeless pudding of a million small things is just what you would expect from a president who once gave a Saturday radio address on school uniforms.

Small, but not always unimportant. Clinton did conclude NAFTA and did sign welfare reform. His greatest achievement was an act of brilliant passivity -- he got out of the way of one of the largest peacetime economic expansions in American history. And though he takes personal credit for all the jobs created -- a ridiculous assertion to make about the decade of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates -- he does deserve credit for not screwing things up. Presidents often do. He easily could have.

His great failing was foreign policy. Viewing the world through the narrow legalist lens of liberal internationalism, he spent most of his presidency drafting and signing treaty after useless treaty on such things as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. All this in a world where the biggest problem comes from terrorists and rogue states for whom treaties are meaningless.

Like the 1920s, the '90s were a golden age permeated by a postwar euphoria of apparently endless peace and prosperity. Both decades ended abruptly, undermined ultimately by threats that were ignored as they grew and burrowed underground. Clinton let a decade of unprecedented American prosperity and power go without doing anything about al Qaeda, Afghanistan or Iraq (where his weakness allowed France and Russia to almost totally undermine the post-Gulf War sanctions). And although al Qaeda declared war on America in 1996 and, as we now know, hatched the Sept. 11 plot that same year, it continued to flourish throughout the decade.

Looking the other way was largely a function of the age -- our holiday from history, our retreat from seriousness, our Seinfeld decade of obsessive ordinariness. Clinton never could have been elected during the Cold War. In the 1990s, history produced the president perfectly suited to the time -- a time of domesticity, triviality and self-absorption.

Its essence is captured perfectly, and inadvertently, in one sentence, Clinton's own account of his response to al Qaeda's most spectacular and murderous pre-Sept. 11 outrage -- the African embassy bombings of Aug. 7, 1998. Ten days afterward, Clinton made his televised confession of having lied to the nation for seven months about the Monica affair. He then retired to a chilly vacation on Martha's Vineyard with wife and daughter. Two days later, he emerged by helicopter on the White House lawn, gave a snappy salute, and marched into the Oval Office to announce the bombing of an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and a chemical factory in Sudan.

Clinton writes: ``I spent the first couple of days (after the national television confession) alternating between begging for forgiveness (from Hillary) and planning the strikes on al Qaeda.''

Or as he told Oprah just this week, ``I'm bombing Osama bin Laden's training camp and sleeping on the couch. It was a strange time.''

That produced a strange man. His associates called this compartmentalization. I call it trivialization.

One is inevitably reminded of the quite unbelievable image of the president of the United States on the phone with a congressman discussing Bosnia while being simultaneously serviced by Monica Lewinsky.

What was always staggering to me about this scene was not what it says about Clinton's sexual practices -- I couldn't care less one way or another -- but about his unseriousness.

I never hated Clinton. On the contrary, I often expressed admiration for his charm and for the roguish cynicism that allowed him to navigate so many crises. Nor was I scandalized by his escapades. What appalled me then, a feeling that returns as Clinton has gone national revisiting his own presidency, is the smallness of a man who granted equal valence to his own indulgences on the one hand and to the fate of nations on the other. It is the smallness that disturbs. It is that smallness that history will remember.

©2004 Washington Post Writers Group

The US is winning in Iraq-- when will the media wake up and see it?

06.25.04 (5:28 am)   [edit]
From Victor Davis Hanson in today's National Review Online--

A long, long, article, but accurate. Here's a good, and telling, quote:

[i]Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong. In fact, they did just that. Abu Ghraib is on the front pages daily. Stories of thousands of American soldiers in combat against terrorist killers from the Hindu Kush to Fallujah do not merit the D section. Senator Kennedy's two years of insane outbursts should have earned him formal censure rather than a commemoration from the Democratic establishment.[/i]

Full article-- http://www.nationalreview.com...

North Korea threatens to test nuke-- the usual blackmail

06.25.04 (4:57 am)   [edit]
At talks Friday in China North Korea played an oldie but a goodie: a nuclear test unless the US dropped its "hostile policy" towards North Korea.

Let's examine what this hostile policy is: making the North Koreans keep their promise with South Korea and the world (through the NPT) that it wouldn't make nukes.

Of course, the entire reason why we have a nuclear North Korea to blackmail us, and why the North Koreans think it will work is not because of Bush's "hostile" foreign policy, but because of President Clinton's indifferent policy toward North Korea.

Just for a reminder, it was the Jimmy Carter that popped up in Pyongang to chat with his communist friends about their banned nuke activities. Rather than to risk war with North Korea (because Clinton was afraid of taking any political risks) and take out the nuke facilities or employ some other harsher method, Clinton acceded to Carter's talks and pushed through the ridiculously one-sided Agree Framework in which the US would build NUCLEAR power plants and give huge amounts of food aid to the North Koreans in exchange for a promise-- the promise that these communists would not make nukes.

As we all know, the North Koreans started breaking their promise before the ink got dry. Clinton didn't notice until 1998, when North Korea tested a missile over Japan, but didn't do anything about it from 1998 on because he was trying too hard to win peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Clearly Clinton was a president who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time.

As with everything else, we've had to see things more clearly after 9-11. So President Bush understood that the threat of North Korea, like Iraq, another Clinton problem that was left alone, had to be dealt with. Instead of becoming a cowboy, like the Left accused him of being, Bush has had two years of endless "talks" with the NoKors, , talks that always have the same ending-- the promise of more talks and more Agreed-Framework type blackmail from the North Koreans.

Bush has some very important decisions to be made. He could just agree with the NoKors and kick the can down the road, for another president to handle and for another people to worry about. But that would be the Clintonian thing to do, wouldn't it?

Article-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

Interrogation documents puts Bush "torture" myth to rest

06.25.04 (4:38 am)   [edit]
Editorial from OpinionJournal.com--

[b]Tortured Arguments
How to interpret those Bush interrogation documents.[/b]
Friday, June 25, 2004

The good, if under-reported, news is that the pile of documents released by the Bush Administration this week effectively rebuts the charges of "torture" that have been flying around. [b]While White House and Justice Department lawyers did explore the legal limits of permissible interrogation techniques--something it would have been irresponsible not to do after 9/11--it turns out that none of the practices actually authorized even comes close to the abuses depicted in the photos from Abu Ghraib prison.[/b]

The bad, and entirely ignored, news is that our most deadly enemies now know where the U.S. will draw the line should they fall into American hands. Worse, in disavowing an August 2002 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that wrestles with the definition of "torture," the White House has hung a few very fine lawyers out to dry and ensured a hypercautious approach to advice that could very well hamstring future antiterror efforts.

The incentive from now on will be for lawyers to provide internal counsel along the lines of former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick's infamous 1995 memo instructing FBI agents and federal prosecutors to go "beyond what the law requires" in limiting their collaboration against al Qaeda. We trust the folks who've forced this retreat stand ready to offer their mea culpas to the commission investigating the next major terrorist attack on the United States.

[b]Some of our media colleagues are painting the document release as insufficient, perhaps because they've been given nothing to support their innuendo that there was some kind of connection between the Geneva Convention status of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the incidents at Abu Ghraib.[/b]

It was always unlikely of course that the likes of alleged abuse ringleader Charles Graner and Private Lynndie England were even aware of the Guantanamo detainees' legal status. And the idea that a classified legal debate to which only a handful were privy could have "set the tone" or "created the climate" for anything at all defies logic. [b]True, Major-General Geoffrey Miller visited Iraq from Guantanamo last summer to advise on interrogations. But if he's the missing link in the alleged "culture of permissiveness," why didn't abuses happen in his own jail too?[/b]

What matters are the actual policies authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld and his commanders, and the memos show that the Defense Department has been as consistent privately as it has been in public that Afghanistan and Iraq were different conflicts to be fought according to different sets of rules. [b]Captives from the former were denied prisoner of war status for the solid legal reasons that neither al Qaeda nor Taliban detainees [i]met such Geneva criteria as fighting in uniform and belonging to an army that was itself committed to upholding the laws of war.[/i] In Iraq, Defense said from the start that Geneva protections for POWs and civilians did indeed apply to most detainees.[/b]

We realize that making any distinction at all between legitimate POWs and unlawful combatants is controversial in some quarters--which unfortunately seems to include the International Committee of the Red Cross. But this is a policy dispute and the media should treat it as such, rather than go along with attempts to conflate unrelated issues such as whether a detainee is being accorded POW status and whether he is in fact subject to overly coercive interrogation.

Far from fostering an anything-goes culture at Guantanamo, it turns out that in December 2002 Mr. Rumsfeld actually rejected a number of proposed techniques as too harsh. They included suggestions of imminent death or severe pain, and actions "to induce the misperception of suffocation." He did approve the removal of prisoners' clothing, only to rescind the approval the following month. That's a long way from authorizing the piles of naked prisoners photographed by one unit at Abu Ghraib.

The bottom line is that everything we've learned over the past month supports the assessment that the Abu Ghraib abuses were an aberration caused by a few bad apples and enabled by poor command leadership. And many of the appropriate lessons seem already to have been drawn.

Major-General Antonio Taguba is probably right that military police should never have been involved in the interrogation of such detainees. Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski may also have a point that there were simply too many prisoners at Abu Ghraib for the number of MPs she had to handle. [b]But there remains no evidence that anyone told Specialist Graner to do what he allegedly did, and there is no doubt that what he is accused of violated stated DOD policy.[/b] Should this picture change during the courts martial to come, we'll be among the first to take note. Reports yesterday that two military intelligence officers may face charges in the suffocation death of an Iraqi general also bear watching.

A further word on that August 2002 Justice memo is order, since it complicates the argument of those who want to locate blame for a "culture of permissiveness" in the office of the Secretary of Defense. In fact, the lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel went as far as they did in the memo--including questioning the constitutionality of a U.S. anti-torture statute--because they were asked to do so by Attorney General Ashcroft.

[b]And we are told by reliable sources that Mr. Ashcroft in turn was responding to a direct request from the CIA, whose officers wanted absolute immunity with respect to their own interrogations. We are further told that the National Security Council was also aware of and sanctioned this request. No doubt everyone can now claim that the arguments in the memo were at the least politically tone deaf. But blaming them on rogue Justice lawyers or the Defense Department is rewriting history.[/b]

[b][u]Instead of repudiating its own lawyers, Bush officials would be better off explaining that what they are trying to do is the very difficult and complicated business of protecting a free society that believes in the rule of law from terrorists who believe in neither.[/b][/u]

A note to PresentMoment about your reasoning and my "anger"

06.25.04 (4:29 am)   [edit]
PresentMoment sez:

[i]I really bothers me how upset that my comment made you too. Love thy neigbhor. I guess we should torture people because there terrorists even if they believe there doing gods will. We all know that terrorists aren't the same human beings as us and likewise shouldn't be treated with the same respect as a human being after they get capture. *sarcasm*- a poor form of my communicatoi.

I hope your blog or the comments you get gives resolve to your anger at me.[/i]

What anger? I thought my blog was reasoned and well thought out. I'm not angry at all.

But I do get a little upset at folks who do not think. And PresentMoment isn't thinking when she says:

[i]I guess we should torture people because there terrorists even if they believe there doing gods will.[/i]

Only a person desperately trying to win an argument would say that. Torture is not what you get when you don't give terrorists Geneva protections. In fact, the entire sum of George Bush's position on Geneva and terrorists is this: terrorists deserve to be treated humanely but do not get Geneva protections because Geneva protection allows terrorists, who do not represent any of the parties that signed Geneva, and who are high value targets of intelligence, to abuse Geneva to kill more of us.

Abu Ghraib was not torture, and was not a result of Bush's wise stance on Geneva and terrorists.

In a perfect world, it would be nice if these folks "understood" things a little better. But they don't, and they don't want to. Nick Berg was in Iraq trying to help these people. Ditto Paul Johnson. Ditto Kim. All were beheaded. 800 US soldiers died for the freedom and happiness of Iraqis.

By the way, PresentMoment, the real way that terrorists might get a bit of sanity and some relief from their delusion is if they live in a tolerant, free society, and economically prosperous society. A lot like the one your fellow Americans are trying to create.

I'm a little put off by your sanctimony, also. That's not anger, though.

But if you write a comment that judges me you can expect a response.

Sounds reasonable.

PresentMoment, in a fit of hypocrisy, calls me a hypocrite

06.24.04 (7:00 am)   [edit]
I just posted a prayer. Some of you that know me know that occasionally I post on religious topics. But apparently this was too much for PresentMoment to stand, as she, I'm guessing it is a she, says I am a hypocrite. Of course, being human and sitting in judgment of another is already hypocritical, so perhaps we can lay off a bit.

But this is what PresentMoment wrote to me in comment:

[i]Pretty hypocritical to work jesus and god into your blog when you were saying that terrorists don't deserve basic human rights. Love thy neighbor.[/i]

If ya'll will recall, I did not say that terrorists did not deserve basic human rights; I said that they didn't deserve Geneva protection, which allows them to kill more of us because they hide behind our adherence to international law while defying it as a matter of policy.

Again, I'll ask anyone, including PresentMoment, to answer me how the US should fight terrorists if we have to pretend they adhere to civilized law? A little history, folks: Geneva was fashioned between states, with governments, that take care of the people living within their boundaries. When these states, unfortunately go to war, these accords must be honored. And indeed, the US has honored them, you will find, much more to the letter than any other country.

But terrorists are not responsible to anyone but themselves. They have no state. They take care of no one. The exist for one reason only, Dear PresentMoment and that is? That's right, that is to kill and terrorize. They take no stock of anyone's basic human rights and depend on us to treat them as equals so they can always make sure they'll kill us with impunity.

Since states have responsibilities, Dear PresentMoment, they have to defend the people living within those boundaries. NO SOVEREIGN STATE IF IT IS CHARGED WITH DEFENDING ITS PEOPLE CAN DEFEAT TERRORISTS WHILE GIVING THEM THE PROTECTIONS OF GENEVA, AND THAT IS BECAUSE TERRORISTS ARE A NEW KIND OF THREAT, AND A NEW KIND OF FIGHTER-- THEY USE OUR GOOD NATURE TO ADVANCE THEIR OWN EVIL NATURE.

Now, let's go back to the religous angle. Apparently I'm a hypocrite because I don't think we should allow terrorists to abuse the laws of the civilized world in order to destroy it. PresentMoment confuses this with Christian behavior.

Let's take another look.

Jesus isn't an idiot. "Love thy neighbor" does not mean "be stupid and allow him to kill you." No one said these terrorists can't be forgiven. No one said that they are going straight to hell. But since the world is imperfect, and wars are being fought now that roughly fashion a battle of good versus evil (good roughly being the civilized world versus bad roughly being those that WOULD KILL CIVILIANS FOR IDEOLOGICAL REASONS), I think it is not only practical, but Christian, actually, to wage the war on terror.

And denying terrorists their Geneva rights, rights they do not deserve because of their very nature, is part of that war.

Hypocrite? I am on lots of things. And gee, so is PresentMoment. But I am not a hypocrite on this.

Never known to fail intercessory prayer to Mary

06.24.04 (5:38 am)   [edit]
This is a powerful prayer to Mary for her help in an urgent and serious (I stress again "urgent" and "serious") need. When we pray to Mary we are asking her, as a mother, to talk to her Son. And what kind of Son can refuse his mother?

We can always go to Jesus Christ, Mary's Son, our Lord and Savior, for prayer, but it pleases God to pray with others, whether they are on earth or in Heaven.

(Remember: community prayer [i]is[/i] intercessory prayer).

[b]Never Known to Fail[/b]

Pray this prayer once a day for three days. Then publish.

O most beautiful flower of Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendor of heaven, Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate VIrgin, assist me in this necessity. Oh Star of the Sea, help me and show me herein, you are my Mother.

O Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and Earth, I humbly beseech thee from the bottom of my heart to succor me in this my necessity ([i]make request here[/i]). There are none that can withstand your power.

O show me here that you are my mother. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee ([i]say three times[/i]). Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands ([i]say three times[/i]). THank you for your mercy on me and mine.

Through Him, with Him, and in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Amen.

Army claims victory over Sheik Sadr

06.24.04 (5:12 am)   [edit]
[b]Army unit claims victory over sheik[/b]
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Army's powerful 1st Armored Division is proclaiming victory over Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr's marauding militia that just a month ago seemed on the verge of conquering southern Iraq.

The Germany-based division defeated the militia with a mix of American firepower and money paid to informants. Officers today say "Operation Iron Saber" will go down in military history books as one of the most important battles in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

"I've got to think this was a watershed operation in terms of how to do things as part of a counterinsurgency," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, a West Point graduate and one of two 1st Armored assistant division commanders, in an interview last week as he moved around southern Iraq. "We happened to design a campaign that did very well against this militia."

When the division got word April 8 that Sheik al-Sadr's uprising meant most 1st Armored soldiers would stay and fight, rather than going home as scheduled, it touched off a series of remarkable military maneuvers.

Soldiers, tanks and helicopters at a port in Kuwait reversed course, rushing back inside Iraq to battle the Shi'ite cleric's 10,000-strong army. Within days, a four-tank squadron was rumbling toward the eastern city of Kut. And within hours of arriving, Lt. Col. Mark Calvert and his squadron had cleared the town's government buildings of the sheik's so-called Mahdi's Army.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, 1st Armored commander, huddled with Gen. Hertling and other senior aides to map an overall war strategy. The division would shift from urban combat in Baghdad's streets to precision strikes amid shrines of great religious significance.

Hunting the enemy in tight city streets broadened to patrolling a region the size of Vermont.

Gen. Dempsey first needed the locations of Sheik al-Sadr's rifle-toting henchmen. Average Iraqis, fed up with the militia's kidnappings and thievery, quickly became spies, as did a few moderate clerics who publicly stayed neutral.

Once he had targets, Gen. Dempsey could then map a battle plan for entering four key cities — Karbala, Najaf, Kufa and Diwaniyah. This would be a counterinsurgency fought with 70-ton M-1 Abrams tanks and aerial gunships overhead. It would not be the lightning movements of clandestine commandos, but rather all the brute force the Army could muster, directed at narrowly defined targets.

Last week, Sheik al-Sadr surrendered. He called on what was left of his men to cease operations and said he may one day seek public office in a democratic Iraq.

Gen. Hertling said Mahdi's Army is defeated, according the Army's doctrinal definition of defeat. A few stragglers might be able to fire a rocket-propelled grenade, he said, but noted: "Do they have the capability of launching any kind of offensive operation? Absolutely not."

The division estimates it killed at least several thousand militia members.

Gen. Dempsey designed "Iron Saber" based on four pillars: massive combat power; information operations to discredit Sheik al-Sadr; rebuilding the Iraqi security forces that fled; and beginning civil affairs operations as quickly as possible, including paying Iraqis to repair damaged public buildings.

"As soon as we finished military operations, we immediately began civil-military operations," said Gen. Hertling. "We crossed over from bullets to money."

The strike into Kut was followed by an incursion into Diwaniyah. Then an 18-tank battalion entered Karbala, a holy city where precision operations were needed to spare religious shrines. Then soldiers moved into Najaf and Kufa, where Sheik al-Sadr was hiding out and where about 3,000 of his fighters occupied government buildings, mosques, amusement parks and schools.

"We were going from outside in to get this guy," Gen. Hertling said. "We had to go after them one city at a time."

Why does media ignore Putin's claim that Hussein was to launch attacks against US?

06.24.04 (5:06 am)   [edit]
Editorial from the Washington Times

[b]Ignoring Putin's revelation[/b]

At a press conference on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an extraordinary statement that might explain why President Bush felt such a great sense of urgency about driving Saddam Hussein from power. Mr. Putin said that Iraq was planning some kind of attack against the United States. Unfortunately, the same major media that have erroneously suggested that the September 11 commission's report debunks any linkage between al Qaeda and Iraq have shown little interest in Mr. Putin's revelation.

According to Mr. Putin, sometime between the September 11 attacks and the start of the Iraq war, Russia's intelligence service "received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests." The Russians passed this information on to the United States, and Mr. Bush personally thanked a Russian intelligence official for the information.

This story is a potential blockbuster for manifold reasons — not least of which is the fact that Moscow had long been one of Saddam's closest allies and Mr. Putin was staunchly opposed to the war. Given Saddam's history of supporting terrorism — and his attempt in 1993 to assassinate the first President Bush — one would think that the American media would take this story seriously, and be deluging American and Russian officials with questions about the specifics of the Iraqi plot.

But the reaction has been subdued. While ABC's "World News Tonight" covered the story on Friday, other networks felt that they had more important things to talk about than a possible attack on America by Saddam . According to the Media Research Center, Friday's CBS "Evening News" didn't mention Mr. Putin's revelation, even though it spent more than two minutes on the debate over ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. (Dan Rather thought that a more important story was Bill Clinton's statement, in his new book, that he warned President-elect Bush about Osama bin Laden, but Mr. Bush didn't care.)

NBC "Nightly News" skipped the Putin story and focused on something else: a story undermining the Bush administration's contention that arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — given refuge by Saddam — is linked to al Qaeda. On "Today" the next morning, NBC buried the Putin story behind excerpts of Mr. Clinton reading a passage from his book about how Martin Luther King Jr. had inspired him. On Saturday, The Washington Post relegated the story to Page A11.

The public is poorly served by such coverage. The fact that the president of Russia effectively is taking Mr. Bush's side on the question of whether Saddam posed a threat to this country is a major news story and should be treated as such. That it is not getting this kind of coverage suggests that many journalists do not have their priorities straight.

How many low wage workers does Kerry want to throw out of work?

06.24.04 (4:53 am)   [edit]
From Opinionjournal.com--

[b]The Wages of Politics
How many low-wage workers does John Kerry want to throw out of work?[/b]
Thursday, June 24, 2004

John Kerry says he wants to raise the minimum wage to $7 an hour from $5.15, and his proposal has us thinking: Why stop there? Why not $10 an hour, or $20, or for that matter whatever a U.S. Senator makes? If Mr. Kerry thinks government is obliged to guarantee Americans a certain level of income, why not simply elevate everyone at least into the middle class?

The reason, as Mr. Kerry well knows, is that wage floors aren't manna from heaven. Here on Earth, they tend to price certain kinds of labor out of the job market. Businesses hire and pay workers what they think their skills are worth relative to other ways they can spend their capital. Force the price of labor too high, and suddenly businesses hire fewer workers, especially those at the lower rungs of the skill ladder.

This is one of the most settled propositions in economics, second only perhaps to free trade. Sure, Mr. Kerry has found a few economists willing to lend their credibility to his proposal, but even they don't deny that some people may lose their jobs--which is why they don't want to raise the minimum too high. The debate is over how many poor people Mr. Kerry would throw out of work.

To answer this question, you first have to look at who earns the minimum wage. The Labor Department believes that 1.5% of the work force, or 2.1 million people, earn $5.15 an hour or less. More than half of them are under the age of 25, meaning they are likely working a temporary or entry-level job. Three-fifths are in the leisure and hospitality industry, which means in jobs that often come with tips in addition to wages. Studies have also shown that most people earning the minimum wage are not poor--more than one-third live with a parent or relative. Only 15% are the sole breadwinner in a family with children.

These low-paying jobs are important because they are a gateway into the world of work for people who lack experience and skills. One study showed that, of a sample of workers earning minimum wage, fully 63% were already making more a year later.

The truly unfortunate are those who cannot find work at all. These tend to be the least skilled Americans, which means the young, or the poorly educated. It's no accident that under current minimum wage levels the unemployment rate for teenagers is 17.2%, three times the national average. For black teenagers it is a scandalously high 32.5%.

How much worse does Senator Kerry want to make it? Bill Clinton's Small Business Administration followed a group of workers after the last increase in the minimum wage, in 1997, and found it slowed wage growth at small businesses and more than doubled the likelihood that low-wage workers at large firms would be unemployed. And that was at a time when the national jobless rate was falling rapidly and hamburger flippers in some places were earning $8 an hour.

One reason employment and productivity are so much higher in the U.S. compared to Europe is that we have switched from trying to alleviate poverty with a high minimum wage to the Earned Income Tax Credit. This scheme, along with the Child Tax Credit and other assistance programs, pay cash and benefits to supplement the incomes of the working poor.

These programs have incentive problems of their own, and the EITC in particular has been subject to abuse. But at least it preserves the incentive to take up low-paying jobs, and in combination with welfare reform discourages the growth in dependency seen in the 1970s and '80s when the minimum wage was higher in inflation-adjusted terms. The success of this gradual shift will be undermined if these lower-wage jobs disappear.

The minimum wage gambit sends a bad signal about the direction of Mr. Kerry's economic policy. It is one of the mustier items in the liberal playbook and suggests a candidate who dances to the tune of unions rather than thinks creatively about how to reduce poverty. If Mr. Kerry really wants to raise take-home pay, he could help raise American skills by challenging the catastrophe of inner-city public education. But that's politically hard; it's so much easier to pose as the champion of the poor and worry about the consequences later.

We're dealing with our prison abuses. Is the Arab world?

06.23.04 (5:05 am)   [edit]
From National Review Online--

June 23, 2004, 8:49 a.m.
[b]Throwing Stones
We’re dealing with our prison abuses. Is the Arab world?[/b]
By Steven Stalinsky

Responding to the Abu Ghraib controversy, several Arab journalists have noted that the actions of a handful of Americans pale in comparison to what occurs daily inside Arab prisons. This has led to articles in the Arab media calling on Arab leaders to end human-rights violations within their own prisons.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak described Abu Ghraib as "abhorrent and sickening, and against all human values and human rights." But as Yusri Fatyan wrote in the Egyptian paper Al Arabi on May 23: "Frankly, what happens in Egypt doesn't differ much from what happens in Iraq's prisons... So that we don't get a surprise when foreign organizations start talking about some of our police stations, like Helwan, Al Sahel, Bilqas, and others."

Another Egyptian journalist, Muhamad Ali Al Farra, wrote in the Islamist paper Al Shab: "Some Arab rulers have practiced torture on people which no one would believe, and even finishing with tortured bodies by burning them in acid, so how could such rulers condemn torture of Iraqi prisoners? Who is going to throw stones at others when his own house is made of glass?"

Saleh Bin Humaid, chairman of the Saudi Shoura Council, called the Abu Ghraib abuses "hideous scenes of human-rights violations." This, despite the fact that Saudi prisoners have almost no legal rights, and that their punishments are based on Islamic law — including the severing of fingers and hands for stealing, and beheadings for drug-dealing.

Syrian Minister for Expatriate Affairs Buthayna Shaban, who recently returned from a trip to the U.S., wrote in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on February 18, 2004: "The pictures that one lone soldier managed to smuggle out of the Abu Ghraib prison aroused revulsion and condemnation in the world, because of the extent of the contempt for human dignity and fundamental human rights — particularly on the part of the forces that claimed [they had crossed] the oceans to rescue the Iraqi people from the inhumane actions [by the Saddam regime] and to bring freedom and democracy... It is the American administration's supercilious view of the Arabs and Muslims, particularly after the events of September 11, and the racist campaign against Islam and the Muslims in Europe... that leads to crimes of this kind."

Ahmad Jarallah, editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa and noted critic of the Syrian regime, responded in an editorial: "Dr. Buthayna Shaban, who is 'revolted'... should be the last to express her revulsion — because the kinds of torture carried out in the prisons of the regime of which she is a part and in whose services she acts are too numerous to count. No atrocity surpasses the kinds of torment and torture [in the Syrian regime]... We have gone overboard in our talk of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal... None has dared acknowledge that the U.S. behaved properly in uncovering [this] scandal, for having sufficient courage to apologize. It could have remained silent, or denied it — as is the custom of some Arab regimes that torture, assassinate, bury alive, rip out fingernails, and dissolve [people] in pits of acid, and appear before the world like innocent children with angels' wings."

Other Arab journalists have recognized that U.S. actions in Iraq are not based on any sinister plans and that, while the U.S. has made mistakes, it has done more for Iraqis than any Arab state. On the liberal Arabic website Elaph.com, Syrian columnist Hayan Nayouf wrote: "After the scandal of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American and British soldiers, the Arab media handled this affair in a way arousing ridicule, proving that the Arab media and intellectuals possess everything but objectivity, transparency, and disclosure of the truth and the facts... The American president, the president of the most powerful country in the world... apologized for the deeds of the American soldiers, and all the Americans also apologized for this shameful deed. And then the Arab intellectuals came, with their mocking, idiotic, and illogical media, and ridiculed this apology. The question arises whether Saddam or any other Arab leader [ever] apologized. Did Saddam apologize to the Iraqi people for burying a million Iraqis in the ground, for expelling millions of Iraqis, for murdering innocents in his prisons, for his crimes in neighboring countries, for invading Kuwait, and for murdering the Kuwaiti prisoners?"

Since the fall of Saddam's regime, much has been revealed about what transpired within his prisons. The treatment of prisoners went far beyond the terrible incidents of humiliation and the beatings that occurred at the hands of Americans in Abu Ghraib. Iraqi human-rights activist Ibrahim Al Idrissi, the president of the Association for Free Prisoners, an Iraqi NGO, has documented the execution of 147,000 political prisoners under Saddam's regime. Idrissi recounted one incident in which a woman was raped by twelve men, and then had her unborn child cut from her stomach. He told Lebanon's The Daily Star on May 24 that U.S. abuse in Iraqi prisons was a "joke" compared to what was endured under Saddam's regime.

— Steven Stalinsky is executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

One more time,world:Geneva doesn't apply to terrorists;the US is not bound by it when it fights them

06.23.04 (4:56 am)   [edit]
Here's another misleading news article about Bush and "torture", specifically referring to the White House's release yesterday of internal memos related to enemy combatant detention, the only relevant parts I'll post here--

[i]But critics said the developments left unresolved some questions about the administration's current guidelines for interrogating prisoners in Iraq (news - web sites) and around the world. For example, a 2002 order signed by Bush says the president reserves the right to suspend the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war at any time.[/i]

[i]Bush's previously secret Feb. 7, 2002, order also agrees with Justice and Pentagon lawyers that a president can ignore U.S. law and treaties.

"I accept the legal conclusion of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice (news - web sites) that I have the authority to suspend Geneva (conventions) as between the United States and Afghanistan," Bush wrote. "I reserve the right to exercise this authority in this or future conflicts." [/i]

Treaties exist between states. Geneva exists and must be honored by all states that signed and ratified the agreement. Last time I checked, Al Qaeda and other enemy combatants are not states and they certainly do not honor anything close to the Geneva Conventions.

It is basic knowledge that if the US applies Geneva to terrorists it lets terrorists win because the US cannot compel information out of the detainee. As we all know, terrorists have vital intelligence that must be known if attacks are going to be stopped.

Geneva doesn't address terrorism or terrorists in any way.

So it seems pretty damn logical that Bush would not feel bound to Geneva when dealing with terrorists. In fact, the import of the crisis, the war on terror, demands he not recognize Geneva with terrorists because Geneva, like all good-intentioned laws by civilization, are used by terrorists as cover to kill civilization.

That's some pretty straightforward arithemetic, ,right?

In Afghanistan, enemy combatants were detained in Guantanamo and were given, I stress the word "given" Geneva treatment. They did not deserve it, and only received it because the administration realized that these were some pretty unimportant fish in the terror sea.

But if we have caught a terrorist who possesses knowledge that could save the lives of thousands of Americans and we apply Geneva, we are required not to squeeze info out of him but merely treat him like a guest in our house.

What kinds of rights do terrorists have, when they respect absolutely no laws on earth?

Any president that would insanely apply civilized and limited standards to the very terrorists that use them for protection and cover while they plot to kill Americans deserves to be impeached.

Bush did the right thing by understanding the threat to terror and our world, and understanding that the limits we place on ourselves become weapons to those who already know no limits.

Any leftist that doesn't realize this is either a hate-filled, morally vacant nutjob, or is simply being retarded for the benefit of his argument.

Oh, by the way, here's the article-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

UN oil-for-food scandal biggest cash cow in the world

06.23.04 (4:28 am)   [edit]
From the NY Times--

[b]The Great Cash Cow[/b]
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: June 23, 2004

"This was the biggest cash cow in the history of the world," says one of the insiders familiar with the $10 billion U.N. oil-for-food scandal. "Everybody — traders, contractors, banks, inspectors — was milking it. It was supposed to buy food with the money from oil that the U.N. allowed Saddam to sell, but less than half went for that. Perfume, limos, a shipment of 1,500 Ping-Pong tables, for God's sake."

Another whistle-blower, often on the "graveyard shift" of round-the-clock operations at the U.N.'s New York Office of the Iraq Program, explains the workings of the historic rip-off:

Well-connected international traders — called "the usual suspects" by low-level U.N. staff, who knew they often fronted for sellers of luxury products — would make their deals, including kickbacks, in Baghdad. Letters of credit, as many as 150 a day, would be issued in New York by the U.N.'s favorite bank, BNP Paribas.

But before the sellers, called "beneficiaries," could be paid (at Saddam's request, in euros, harder to trace than dollars) the bank required a C.O.A., "Confirmation of Arrival," from the U.N.'s contracted inspector, Cotecna of Switzerland.

"The key was Cotecna," says my graveyard source. "Ships were lined up at the port of Umm Qasr, stacks of containers already onshore waiting for inspection. You won't believe the grease being paid. The usual suspects got preferential treatment when the U.N. bosses in New York called the BNP bank to get Cotecna to issue a C.O.A. to release the money."

Last week, Secretary General Kofi Annan claimed that my reporting of what he told me at a luncheon was "a private conversation" (no such ground rule was set) and that "some are jumping to conclusions without facts, without evidence. It is a bit like a lynching, actually."

However, my call for a Congressional subpoena to overcome his attempt to limit investigation to his internal Volcker committee has flushed out a fact not hitherto disclosed. Annan's press aide complained to The Times that a subpoena had already been served secretly on BNP Paribas (the initials once stood for Banque Nationale de Paris) by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Although the U.N. had warned its bank, as well as Cotecna, the oil monitor Saybolt and all its other oil-for-food contractors, not to cooperate with anybody but Paul Volcker — and had blown off the House International Relations Committee's requests — Annan's advisers knew it would be unseemly and foolhardy to insist that its bank fight the Senate in court.

With his subpoena and investigation thus publicly revealed by the U.N., Chairman Norm Coleman of Minnesota, a Brooklyn-born Republican, felt free to take my call. "This is a major priority for us," he says. "There's a lot of stuff to cover, a big universe of documents, and we're being aggressive about it. Yes, Cotecna, Saybolt, all of them."

He sent out four "chairman's letters," countersigned by the ranking Democrat, Carl Levin, in early June. One was to the U.S. State Department for the minutes of the "661 committee" meetings at the U.N., which reviewed oil-for-food contracts (though not yet for copies of the contracts themselves). Another to the Government Accounting Office, which had first estimated the skimming at $10 billion. Another to Paul Bremer in Baghdad for copies of documents being turned over to the interim government — and the Senate still awaits a response; apparently the White House doesn't want to offend the U.N. Finally, a friendly letter to Annan about the subpoena that would require his bank to open its letter-of-credit files.

Now let's review the investigative bidding. The Senate seems serious; though Coleman is a freshman, the subcommittee staff is experienced and nonpartisan. The House is doing what it can. The U.N. allocated $4 million to Volcker, but he hasn't yet submitted a budget or announced a staff. The New York Fed defers to its old boss, and the New York State Banking Department is overdrawn.

But since this involves possible fraud, bribery and larceny on a grand scale, where is law enforcement? Interesting: the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, David Kelley, served subpoenas last week on Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco and Valero about Iraqi oil purchases. That deals with the income side of the scandal, the money for Iraq (less kickbacks) supposedly to buy food.

I suspect Kelley was moved to empanel a grand jury by probable competition from the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morganthau, on the scandal's payoff side. These two offices compete, and Morganthau's office has expertise on global banking.

Without imputing wrongdoing to any individual, I suggest investigators supplement their document search by talking to people who should be in the know. At the U.N., these include Benon Sevan's deputy, Teklay Afeworki, and at the bank, Pierre Veyres and Eva Millas-Russo.

But defenders of U.N. malfeasance can take heart. In a counterattack, our global servants hired an accountant to warn of "fraudulent acts" by the U.S. after it took over the U.N.'s mismanaged Iraqi oil account. Now, that will get media coverage.

Bush to release all memos on interrogation to prove there is no pro-torture policy

06.22.04 (9:44 am)   [edit]
But don't expect the Democrats to read it. I mean, the Left has no problem being intentionally stupid, as long as it allows them to pursue an argument.

By the way, those nice guys that the left says deserve Geneva protection just beheaded Kim, 33, a Korean hostage who was there to help Iraq be free and happy-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

Beheadings or humilitation? Ah, they're all the same, right?

[b]White House Releasing Interrogation File[/b]
By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The White House has decided to release a thick file of papers documenting its internal deliberations on rules for interrogating prisoners in facilities from Abu Ghraib in Iraq (news - web sites) to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The two-inch stack of papers was to be released late Tuesday. It is intended to counter what White House aides fear is a growing perception that the administration authorized torture as an interrogation technique.

"We believe it's important for the American people to have an accurate picture of the policies that we put in place and an accurate picture of the techniques that were approved by the Pentagon (news - web sites). It's important to set the record straight," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

President Bush (news - web sites) "has never and has no intention of ever" authorizing torture in questioning prisoners, McClellan said.

"The president recognizes that his most important responsibility to the American people is their safety and security," McClellan said. "We are a nation that is at war but we are also a nation of laws and the president expects our government to comply with laws and our treaty obligations."

White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales intended to brief reporters on the documents.

The documents are meant to show "the White House's deliberative process" in arriving at rules for complying with the Geneva Convention and rules on interrogation techniques, one senior official said, requesting anonymity on grounds that Gonzales was to talk on the record later Tuesday.

The administration decided to release the papers to fight the "constant drip on this issue" — a continuous stream of leaks and accusations that the administration had stepped outside the bounds of international law, the official said. "Everyone reached the conclusion that the administration had authorized torture," he said.

The official, saying the United States is facing a new kind of war with an enemy that does not respect or operate under the rules of the Geneva Convention, pointed to the kidnapping and beheading of American civilian engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr. in Saudi Arabia last week. The papers being released Tuesday show that the White House and other agencies are wrestling with "how best to address that foe," one official said.

The documents cover a period of several months and were generated by several agencies, including the Department of Justice (news - web sites). One set of papers alone spans 50 pages.

Among the papers are some that have already been seen by the public, including previously confidential memos in which Justice Department (news - web sites) lawyers concluded that Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are not protected by the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war because they do not satisfy four main conditions of the treaty itself.

Democrats criticized those memos as laying the legal foundation for Iraqi prisoner abuses, but administration officials said they were aimed mainly at showing that international treaties banning torture do not apply to al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners.

At a June 10 news conference, President Bush sidestepped questions about whether he had seen or authorized the Justice Department papers.

"The authorization I issued was that anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations. That's the message I gave our people," Bush said in Savannah, Ga. "I can't remember if I've seen the memo or not, but I gave those instructions."

That memo, which surfaced earlier this month, intensified criticism from congressional Democrats and human rights activists about what they consider a concerted effort to circumvent U.S. and international laws against torture during the fight against terrorism.

Human rights lawyers took the unusual step of filing a racketeering lawsuit this month against U.S. civilian contractors who worked at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The suit alleges contractors conspired to execute, rape and torture prisoners during interrogations to boost profits from military payments.

A series of government lawyers' memos, many of them still secret but leaked to the media this month, said the president had the legal authority to allow torture of detainees during interrogations. Administration officials, however, said such a policy never was adopted.

But some of the papers to be released Tuesday have never been disclosed, a senior official said.

Iran's arrest of UK troops part of Iran's plan to defeat President Bush- excellent article

06.22.04 (5:35 am)   [edit]
From National Review Online--

June 22, 2004
.
[b]Ready for $60-a-Barrel Oil?
The Iranian election strategy at work.[/b]
--Michael Ledeen

So the Iranians seized some British "warships" yesterday, and arrested eight British naval officers. That's what the Iranians announced in the morning, and that's all we've heard. The chatterers were agog. Why would the Iranians do such a crazy thing? Do they really want war (If that isn't a good old-fashioned causus belli, what is?)? Etc.

Yes, they're crazy, no doubt. But they're not stupid. And if an Iranian action seems stupid, you're probably misinterpreting it. There's a perfectly straightforward explanation for the whole episode: [b]The Brits were laying down a network of sensors to detect the movement of ships toward major Iraqi oil terminals. The Iranians considered that a bit of a threat. So they attacked.[/b]

And why, you might ask, did the Iranians feel threatened?

Because they were planning to attack (or have their surrogates attack) the oil terminals, silly.

And why attack the oil terminals?

Because [b]they want to defeat President Bush in November, and they figure if they can get the price of oil up to around $60 a barrel, he'll lose to Kerry.[/b]

Not to mention a considerable side benefit: At $60 a barrel, they can buy whatever they may be lacking to get their atomic bombs up and running.

It's not that hard to understand the mullahs once you learn to think as they do, and understand their hopes and fears.

[b][u]What do they hope? That Bush will lose; that the Coalition will collapse; that they can dominate Iraq and create an Islamic republic in the Iranian image. That will expand their power in the region, totally demoralize the internal democratic opposition, and drive America from the Middle East, thereby permitting them to complete their nuclear-weapons program at their leisure. A dream come true.[/b][/u]

What do they fear? Above all, their own people. (And a free, relatively stable Iraq would inspire the Iranian people to demand the same freedom for themselves, meaning the end of the mullahcracy). An aggressive American policy in support of democratic revolution in Iran, for the same reason. A collapse in oil prices. The reelection of George W. Bush.

So you see at once the bases of Iranian policy: Drive oil prices up and the Americans out of Iraq, whatever the cost. The Brits were in the way, blocking easy access for saboteurs to the Iraqi oil facilities. Ergo the "crazy" action. Which turns out to be not so crazy at all.

And one other thing: [b]The Iranians figure they've got the Brits under control, because the Brits have lots of contracts with them. Thus far, the Brits have behaved like good little boys, forestalling any effective steps to get in the way of the nuclear program, and lobbying the Bush administration to be "reasonable" and "patient." You can be sure that the British foreign office has every confidence that no harm will come to their officers, and that the incident will be resolved quickly and even amiably.[/b]

Not crazy at all. In fact, they're winning.

If anybody cares, it's a good bet that Iranian-sponsored hit squads will be going after lots of oil terminals and refineries in the next couple of months.

But it's hard to find anyone who cares. I guess we can afford $60 a barrel, and I suppose Foggy Bottom and the CIA will be able to manage a nuclear Iran. Right?

Hitchens: Moore film is sinister exercise in political cowardice and moral frivolity

06.22.04 (5:27 am)   [edit]
This is one of the finest reviews I've read of Moore's film, and from a Leftist at that.

[b]Unfairenheit 9/11[/b]
By Christopher Hitchens
Slate.com | June 22, 2004

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. A

nd these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts.

However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Munich and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country.

In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights.

I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.

Clinton responsible for his impeachment badge of 'honor'

06.22.04 (5:04 am)   [edit]
[b]Clinton's badge of honor[/b]
Rich Lowry
June 21, 2004

Bill Clinton told "60 Minutes" in his promotional appearance for his book, "My Life," that he wears his impeachment as a "badge of honor." As far as honors go, it's a far cry from the Distinguished Service Cross or the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But Clinton has to pretend to cherish it. It is imperative for his legacy that he portray his impeachment as illegitimate, as the work of hateful fanatics.

The truth is that the scandals and investigations that built toward Clinton's impeachment -- from Whitewater to the China fund-raising scandal to Monica Lewinsky -- were a product of the world created by post-Watergate liberals. They created the independent-counsel statute; they celebrated an adversarial press; they wrote exacting campaign-finance rules; they instituted an anti-sexual-harassment regime in the workplace -- and then they supported an attempt to defy all of it when it inconvenienced Bill Clinton.

Clinton reauthorized the independent-counsel statute almost immediately upon taking office, calling it "a foundation stone for the trust between the government and our citizens." The point of this "foundation stone" was to initiate investigations at the slightest instigation. That is why it was Clinton's own attorney general, Janet Reno, who set in motion independent-counsel investigations of the Whitewater controversy, Vince Foster's suicide, Travelgate, Filegate and corruption allegations surrounding six cabinet officials and White House aides.

On "60 Minutes," Clinton maintained there was nothing to the Whitewater investigation, the probe into fraudulent schemes in Arkansas and whether the Clintons were involved. Not quite. Independent counsel Ken Starr successfully prosecuted Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and the Clintons' partners in Whitewater, Jim and Susan McDougal, and won guilty pleas from or convictions of 12 other people.

Clinton complains that Starr's work took so long. Whose fault is that? Starr's investigation dragged on partly because of Clinton's stonewalling. After the Democratic screaming about the savings and loan scandal in the early 1990s -- Democratic Party Chairman Ron Brown called it "one of the biggest scandals in the history of our country" -- the Clintons were embarrassed about their dealings with Jim McDougal, a crooked S&L operator, and wanted to tell less rather than more about them.

Starr was winding up his investigation when the Monica scandal hit. Clinton had lied under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky in sworn testimony in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case, and suggested to others that they lie. The very purpose of the independent-counsel statute was to keep presidents from committing such crimes against the truth. Starr wouldn't have been doing his job if he ignored Clinton's conduct in the case.

Did Clinton really lie? Of course. In the "60 Minutes" interview, he cited Judge Susan Webber Wright, who presided over the Jones case. He didn't mention that she ruled that there is "simply no escaping the fact" that Clinton gave "intentionally false" answers to questions from the Jones lawyers in a way "designed to obstruct the judicial process." Clinton's lawyer, Bob Bennett, warned him prior to the Jones deposition: "The only thing you have to worry about is if you lie in there. The crazies will come after you. They'll try to impeach you if you lie."

It wasn't just "the crazies." Nearly everyone agreed on the need to undertake an impeachment inquiry. Thirty-one House Democrats voted for the Republican inquiry plan, and the rest voted for an alternative Democratic plan. There was consensus in the country for punishing Clinton. In December 1998, Clinton himself asked to be censured. A proposed Democratic censure resolution stated he had "egregiously failed" his constitutional oath, "violated the trust of the American people" and "dishonored the office."

People wanted Clinton rebuked, but not removed from office -- and so impeachment served as a kind of monster censure resolution, expressing the country's disgust at the president's conduct and his lies. If that's something Clinton considers a "badge of honor," well then, he has a very idiosyncratic notion of honor.

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review, a Townhall.com member group, and author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

©2004 King Features Syndicate

Divided, we'll fall-- 9-11 Commission tragically turns into a soap opera

06.22.04 (5:00 am)   [edit]
From OpinionJournal.com--

[b]Divided We Fall
The 9/11 Commission becomes another Beltway soap opera.[/b]
BY DEBRA BURLINGAME
Tuesday, June 22, 2004

"Is this real world or exercise?"

Those haunting words were heard on audiotape at the 9/11 Commission hearings last week. It was what the duty officer on the other end of the phone at the Northeast Air Defense Sector of Norad wanted to know when alerted about a hijacking by Boston Center, the Air Route Traffic Control Center handling American Airlines flight 11, the first plane to disappear from radar screens on Sept. 11, 2001. The time was 8:38 a.m., 25 minutes into the first attack of the first battle of the first day in the war on terror. One hour and 25 minutes later, 3,000 men, women and children would be dead.

This was indeed the real world. But somehow the 9/11 Commission hearings have succeeded in turning this, the most stunning and deadly attack on the U.S. homeland, into another Beltway soap opera--awash in politics and finger-pointing, complete with media satellite trucks, conspiracy-theory hecklers and witnesses made to feel the heat by having to stand and take an oath under bright lights. How have we gotten from that real world terror to this self-destructive exercise in such a short amount of time?

The 9/11 Commission was chartered a year and a half ago, amid much controversy, for the purpose of preparing "a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks." I vehemently supported its creation and was angry with the Bush administration for initially opposing efforts to make it happen.

When a group of dedicated New Jersey women whom I'd never met organized a rally in a park near the Capitol, I was there under the hot summer sun, carrying a poster that said, "The men who murdered my brother were listed in the San Diego phone book." It had a large picture of him, Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 757 with a big smile on his face. Chic was the captain of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that was flown into the Pentagon. The picture was especially meaningful to me because he was smiling at our dad, who took the picture. It is the way I like to think of Chic, in the cockpit of a jet, smiling, the way he would have looked if Hani Hanjour, the young Saudi who had once lived in San Diego and who steered Chic's plane into the Pentagon's west wall, had knocked on the door at the end of an ordinary flight and asked for a cockpit tour. So, yes, I was mad. Damn mad. And I wanted to know how the hell this could have happened.

Today, the great hopes I had for an independent, bipartisan investigation into the events of 9/11 have given way to great sadness. After the Senate and House Joint Inquiry into intelligence activities leading up to 9/11 was published in 2002, I had a different perspective about who was responsible for the attacks. It was everyone, and no one. It was the systemic and institutional problems in the information-gathering, analysis and reporting structures of our dozen or more intelligence agencies. It was the legal barriers that prevented law enforcement and intelligence services from talking to each other. It was Cold War modalities that no longer applied to very evil men with apocalyptic delusions operating in adaptive networks with cell phones and laptops, and supported by millions and millions of dollars. It was our own fat complacency, refusing to see what was happening around us as American soldiers, sailors and civilians were being blown up abroad. It was the airline lobbyists who looked after their well-heeled clients as we fashioned airline security measures that called upon ACLU lawyers rather than law enforcement experts for advice about passenger screening.

I am no longer angry at the Bush administration, or at any Americans for that matter. I'd read the Joint Inquiry and wept. I now knew that Chic's murder was a long time in preparation. In 1998, while on a trip to Africa, I stood in front of the American Embassy in Kenya just two weeks after it was blown to pieces. Little did I know that the men who did it had my dear brother's fate in the works, even as I stood there. No, I am no longer angry at any Americans.

After the hearings last week, I witnessed once again how the nation's media stake out a position, set it up in a box, the size and shape and color of which senior editors and producers have a bigger say in dictating than the reporters who are filling it, then rearrange the contents to conform with their version of the truth come what may. The hardworking commission staff presented a chilling tutorial about the history of al Qaeda and how it is currently constituted. We learned that Osama bin Laden remains intensely interested in nuclear weapons and "dirty bombs," that he has actively sought biological weapons material and shown an interest in the widely available industrial materials that are found in chemical weapons. We learned that Islamic jihadists rationalize the killing of Muslim children who are the collateral damage in their thirst for more blood and that they tell parents to be grateful that their children are martyrs in paradise. The media took this information--and there was more, far more--and stuffed it out of sight in the box called "Bush's Phony War in Iraq."

Some of the tenacious family members who started it all in that park in Washington were there last week. They are still angry, and who among us can say that they shouldn't be? But there is something wrong here. Upon hearing the voice of that duty officer asking a standard protocol question, "Is this real world or exercise?" with the kind of military-trained blankness crisis personnel are noted for, a few of them snorted with contempt. They mistook the calm demeanor of a professional with no use for prepositions for the clueless question of a fool. And that contempt, for all the people whom they feel contributed to a loss of life on the day their loved ones didn't come home, is what they carry around with them now. It mirrors what is happening, not just at the 9/11 Commission hearings, but in newsrooms across the country, this corrosive tendency to tear down our rescuers, our public servants, our heroes.

According to some of the headlines after this last round of hearings, on the morning of 9/11, errors in judgment as well as communication breakdowns up and down the line at the FAA created chaos and confusion, preventing Norad commanders from scrambling jets in time to intercept the four doomed airliners. What media reports do not make clear is that the tragic outcome was based on a combination of factors: Four missing planes were airborne within the same time frame, need-to-know information crucial to understanding the scope of the attack was not available to all involved air traffic control centers--each of which looks at only one piece of a very big sky--and everything was compounded by the need to manage 4,873 other planes during the attacks and eventually put them on the ground. That feat was accomplished just one hour and 15 minutes into the crisis, itself an unprecedented event nothing short of astonishing. In sum, the nationwide air traffic control system was stressed to the limit.

The decisive factor was the loss of the transponders, the radar signatures which identify the airline, flight number and altitude. Without this radar signal, the planes were virtually invisible. After they were gone, the location and altitude of the missing planes was anyone's guess. In the words of the Norad officer at Otis Air Force base who was ordered to scramble F-15s to look for American Flight 11, "I don't know where I'm scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination." No matter how much notice they might have received, searching for a target without a vector is like looking for a needle in a haystack. They were circling in military airspace off the Eastern Seaboard because they simply didn't know where to go.

As the 9/11 Commission's staff statement reported, these valiant men and women "struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never encountered and had never trained to meet." Now they are being blamed because these improvised efforts didn't work. Even worse, they are being told that their hard-fought but doomed efforts amounted to incompetence and poor judgment that cost lives. What a rotten deal.

And how outrageous for any commissioner to lambaste the FAA administrator who had his hands full with a system carrying tens of thousands of passengers, with invisible rogue airplanes hurtling through unsterilized airspace, and who was tasked with making critical judgments based on scarce or no information and unverifiable facts that changed from moment to moment. The session's low point was when former senator Bob Kerrey--previously a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee--subjected this aviation crisis veteran to a dressing down for not revamping response policy based on the 1995 intelligence that Ramzi Yousef was planning to blow up 12 commercial airliners over the Atlantic ocean. If simultaneous Pan Am 103-type bombings were such a definitive and actionable foreshadowing of things to come, where were Mr. Kerrey and the rest of Congress in making this a priority in both the legislative agenda and the national consciousness? Instead of hotheaded preambles as the cameras rolled at the 9/11 hearings, where were his impassioned speeches in the well of the Senate, inveighing against the toothless 1997 presidential report on airline security? That report expressly mentioned 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, the Bojinka plot to blow up planes and terrorists "who are not afraid to die to carry out their plans," yet none of its meager recommendations were enacted.

It was a strange and unsettling experience last week to hear commission members, witnesses, and even some 9/11 family members nonchalantly describing the inability to shoot down four airliners carrying a total of 261 passengers and crew as a regrettable "failure." One 9/11 relative described Norad's failure to shoot American 77 out of the sky as "emotionally devastating." A closer examination of a shoot-down scenario reveals how futile this lives-for-lives trade-off really is. American 77, the airplane most talked about as a "missed opportunity," wasn't observed after it disappeared from radar over northern Indiana at 8:55 a.m. until it was six miles from the Capitol. While the commissioners were able to squeeze an ambiguous statement from Norad's commander, Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, that "given more time" all four planes could have been intercepted, the truth is, they can't shoot at something they can't find, no matter how frantically people are looking for it.

By the time American 77 was sighted, it was one minute from impact and circling right over Crystal City, a vast complex of high rise offices, apartment buildings, hotels, shopping malls and an underground metro system where thousands of Pentagon employees arrive for work every day--a kind of sprawling version of the World Trade Center complex. Assuming the fighter jets could have located the plane and confirmed its identity (not all that easy with those other planes flying at nearby Dulles and National airports)--I would ask those who have been the most vocal in complaining about fighters scrambling "too late" to imagine the kind of grilling Gen. Eberhart might have received after a 200,000-pound aircraft filled with 66,000 pounds of jet fuel was blown out of the sky directly over what might have later been dubbed "Ground Zero II."

As the 9/11 Commission puts the finishing touches on its findings and recommendations due next month, I am steeling myself for the media's breathless rush to publish all the shocking revelations that show how incompetent we are as a nation. While I am skeptical of the commission's stated determination to keep politics out of its final report, I have no doubt whatsoever that with the presidential election just months away, those editors and producers who package the news will find it impossible not to do what they've done since Watergate changed the face of journalism: find a smoking gun, present it to the American people, and congratulate the effort as "what distinguishes us from our enemies." Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden and his murdering tribe will sit back with satisfaction as they watch the infidels tear themselves apart.

Yes, let's have a debate, but let's stop this self-battering, which is weakening us in the only place where al Qaeda can never penetrate, the core of who we are. Instead of pulling together at such a crucial time to prevent even more lethal attacks in the future, we are displaying a divisiveness that energizes our adversaries. They know us better than we know them. Their strategic kills in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and beyond are aimed at breaking our resolve to root them out at home and hunt them down abroad before they can do us more harm. We will not win every battle, but we will only prevail in the war on terror when we unite, not as Republicans and Democrats, but as Americans.

[i]Ms. Burlingame is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.[/i]

Hatred of Bush, unprecedented-not only worse than Nixon, but completely unjustified

06.22.04 (4:49 am)   [edit]
From Townhall.com--

Money quote:

[i]Therefore, good reporting of the kind which ultimately led to Nixon's demise, will in this case lead instead to Bush's exoneration. So the major news media do no good reporting, nothing, for example, like that done by Stephen F. Hayes, who has actually gone out and committed journalism, following up leads and piecing together the puzzle that documents the case for an Iraq/al Qaeda link.[/i]

[b]Nixon, Bush and the Media[/b]
Jay Bryant
June 21, 2004

What the American news media are doing to President Bush this year is both unprecedented and inexcusable.

In the summer of 1973, I was a rank newcomer to Washington, having just moved to town to take a job as a Senate staffer. Our office had a softball team, and one evening near first base in a field not far from the Washington Monument, a somewhat beery reporter for a major national newspaper chain put his sweaty arm around my shoulder. "Jay," he said, "you're new here, so let me tell you how it works."

He loosened his grip and picked up a bat. "We reporters, we like to beat politicians over the head again and again," he said, using the bat to demonstrate the technique. "And then," he continued, raising the bat one more time over his head, but stopping the motion at that point, "When we've got them on their knees, we knight them." And he slowly lowered the bat to the presumed top of the imaginary kneeling politician and gave him a gentle ceremonial tap.

Then he turned to me and his face, which had been smiling at his little joke, turned ugly. "But that son of a bitch Nixon …we're going to pound his ass right into the ground," he hissed, beating the barrel of the bat into the dirt over and over again.

Over the ensuing thirty years, I've seen some knighting done, but I've never seen another pounding like that which fell upon the ears of Richard Nixon…until now. Indeed, what is being done to Bush is worse than what was done to Nixon, because in the latter case, there was at least a cassus belli in the form of the Watergate break-in.

The press treatment of George W. Bush is motivated by hate, spite and a vicious disregard for the truth and the national interest. It even lacks the Nixon case's one saving grace – good investigative reporting. Woodward, Bernstein and their colleagues were certainly dedicated to ground pounding Nixon, but the weapons they used were the weapons of journalism. Today's media has come up with nothing on their own to justify their vendetta against Bush, and are reduced to the most shoddy sort of propagandistic trickery.

A good reporter would have broken the Abu Ghraib story back in January, when the indictments were announced. But it appears there are no good reporters in Iraq, so nobody bothered to follow up on the announcement for months.

A good reporter would have followed up the release of the 9/11 Commission's staff report by asking at least a few questions about the language regarding phrases like "collaborative relationship" and "cooperated on attacks against the United States." They might also have asked for the names of the "two senior bin Ladin associates," who "have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." Al Qaeda leaders are mentioned by name elsewhere in the document. Why not here? And why should they be believed anyway?

But no, the reporters breezily assumed "collaborative relationship" was a synonym for "like" and burst out with stories and headlines proclaiming the Commission had found no "links" between Iraq and al Qaeda, when indeed the report specifically references several such links.

If the top Democrat on the Watergate Committee had made a statement comparable to the one former Congressman Lee Hamilton, the top Democrat on the 9/11 Commission made the day after the staff document flap ("there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. … the sharp differences that the press has drawn ... are not apparent to me."), it could not have been ignored.

The basic difference, you see, is that Nixon was guilty of covering up the Watergate break-in. Bush, on the other hand, is entirely innocent of "lying to the American people" in order to promote the war in Iraq.

Therefore, good reporting of the kind which ultimately led to Nixon's demise, will in this case lead instead to Bush's exoneration. So the major news media do no good reporting, nothing, for example, like that done by Stephen F. Hayes, who has actually gone out and committed journalism, following up leads and piecing together the puzzle that documents the case for an Iraq/al Qaeda link.

How good is Hayes' work? Let me just put it this way. If it worked against Bush, we're talking Pulitzer, hands down. But as it is, it scarcely registers among the populace, because it doesn't fit the agenda of the ground pounders who control editorial decisions in New York and Washington.

So let me repeat. What the media is doing to Bush is unprecedented – worse than what was done to Nixon because it lacks journalistic virtuosity. What the media is doing to Bush is inexcusable because, unlike in the case of Watergate, there is no smoking gun, precisely because there was no crime.

"Bush lied!" they shout. Well, if that's true, they ought to be able to find a lie somewhere, but they can't – not about WMD's, the Iraq/al Qaeda connection or any other aspect of Bush's buildup to the war. There's no pony under that pile of horse do- do, and the media knows it. Why get all smelly looking for one?

Veteran GOP media consultant Jay Bryant's regular columns are available at www.theoptimate.com, and his commentaries may be heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.'

©2004 Jay Bryant

Why Americans and Jews are so hated

06.22.04 (4:46 am)   [edit]
From Townhall.com--

[b]So, we're hated[/b]
Dennis Prager
June 22, 2004

There are many ways to philosophically divide Americans. Liberal-conservative and religious-secular are two obvious ways. But there is another, no less significant, division: Those who are ashamed of America for being hated and those who wear this hatred as a badge of honor.

I am in the latter group.

I understand such hatred. I am a Jew, a member of the most consistently and deeply hated people in world history. As such, and as coauthor of "Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism" (Simon & Schuster), I have devoted decades to thinking about Jew-hatred.

There are basically two possible ways to look at anti-Semitism. One is that anti-Semites are essentially decent folks and Jews have usually been so bad that they have merited anti-Semitic hatred. The second is that the Jews have generally been a decent people who antagonized many of the morally worst people of their time and place.

Anti-Semites would, of course, choose the first explanation. Others would acknowledge that those who have hated the Jews have usually been the vilest of their generation. Whether Roman torturers, Crusaders who massacred Jewish communities on their way to the Holy Land, Nazis or Communists -- they all hated Jews. The monsters of the 20th century, the Nazis, made Jew-hatred the centerpiece of their ideology. And the monsters of our young century, militant Muslims, have done the same.

Why have the Jews, always among the weakest and smallest of peoples, attracted the hatred of the most evil people? Because of what the Jews represented. The civility of the Jews' lives and the values the Jews brought into the world -- especially ethical monotheism, i.e., a standard of right and wrong based on a moral and judging God -- made them loathsome in the eyes of those who led particularly uncivil lives and who celebrated moral chaos and cruelty.

Turning to hatred of America, the same questions and answers apply.

Either America is evil and hatred of it is merited, or America is a decent country and the haters are evil.

The correct explanation is so obvious that only one who already hates America or who is simply morally confused would choose the first.

To assess the veracity of this, all one need do is compare America -- a country that has liberated more people from tyranny than any other, and which has been a place of refuge, tolerance and opportunity for more people from more backgrounds than any other in history -- with those who hate America.

Militant Muslims hate America. These people include the Taliban of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists, the Islamic regimes of Iran and Sudan, members of Hamas and the many Palestinians and other Muslims who support it.

Now, what types of people are these, and what societies have they made or seek to make?

To call the Taliban primitive is to insult the many primitive peoples who were light years more civilized than these totalitarians who forbade girls to get an education and prohibited women from such innocent activities as going to the zoo. They murdered anyone who loved liberty, beheaded any Muslim who converted to another religion, and blew up some of the most priceless sculptures of the ancient world because those works of art were of a different religion. Is it a good or bad reflection on America that the Taliban hated this country?

Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists seek to impose Taliban-like regimes on everyone in the world, beginning with the Muslim world. They routinely slaughter innocent people -- literally slaughter, as cutting off the heads of their human sacrifices is their preferred method of murder. They are monsters in human form. Is it a good or bad reflection on America that Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists hate this country?

The Islamic regime of Iran has taken one of the brightest nations on earth back into the darkest past of human civilization. Their great ally is the genocidal regime of North Korea. Is it a good or bad reflection on America that the Islamists in Iran hate this country?

The Arab Islamic regime in Sudan has killed about one million non-Arab, non-Muslim blacks in the south of its country. Rape and enslavement of these blacks is routine. Is it a good or bad reflection on America that the Sudanese regime hates this country?

Hamas and its many supporters among Palestinians have developed a new theology of cruelty and death -- that a Muslim boy who blows himself up while maiming and murdering as many innocent Jews as possible goes to heaven where he is then sexually serviced by dozens of virgins. In the annals of the history of religion, no analogous theology of cruelty and vulgarity has ever been devised. Is it a good or bad reflection on America that Hamas and its Palestinian supporters hate this country?

One more point. When you look at the roster of the America-haters and realize that none of them hates France or Sweden, this assessment of America-hatred is rendered even more obvious. America, largely alone, calls these groups and regimes what they are -- evil.
America, largely alone, wages war against them. America, largely alone (with Israel), prevents them from assuming far more power.

As I said to my synagogue on the Sabbath after 9-11, "I stand before you as a proud member of the world's two most hated peoples -- Americans and Jews."

©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

The Intl Criminal Court-- no state should be forced into a treaty it opposes (for good reasons)

06.21.04 (9:29 am)   [edit]
From National Review--

June 21, 2004, 8:45 a.m.

[b]Justice by Fiat
No sovereign state should be forced into a treaty it opposes.[/b]
By Brett D. Schaefer

For the third time in as many years, the United States is seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution to prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from investigating or prosecuting cases involving U.N. peacekeepers from countries that are not parties to the court. Needless to say, devotees of the court — which was established to prosecute war crimes: crimes against humanity, genocide, and the as-of-yet undefined crime of aggression — are beside themselves. A statement by a spokesman for the Coalition for the International Criminal Court is typical: "...people disagree with this double system of justice, one for Americans and one for the rest of the world."

Although supporters of the court have a noble purpose, trying to impose their idea of justice on unwilling nations is no virtue. One of the most basic principles of international law is that a state cannot be bound by a treaty to which it is not a party. Further, long-standing international legal norms hold that a state cannot be bound to legal assertions that it has specifically rejected. The ICC, however, directly contravening the norms and precedents of international law, claims jurisdiction to prosecute and imprison citizens of countries that are not party to the Rome Statute and, more shockingly, over those who have specifically rejected the court's jurisdiction.

This unprecedented break with international legal norms has required the U.S. to take unusual steps to protect its citizens and military personnel. America's strategy is two-fold. First, it seeks to protect American personnel participating in U.N. peacekeeping operations through Security Council resolutions preventing ICC prosecution. America succeeded in getting two resolutions approved by the Security Council in 2002 and 2003. Second, the U.S. seeks to protect its people through a network of non-surrender agreements (or "Article 98" agreements, after the section of the treaty that permits such arrangements) with as many countries as possible. Countries that sign such agreements with the United States promise, in effect, not to surrender U.S. nationals to the ICC without the consent of the U.S. government.

Despite the best efforts of pro-ICC countries and groups, America has made good progress securing Security Council resolutions 1422 and 1487 and is working toward a third renewal. America has also concluded Article 98 agreements with 90 governments, in every region of the world, that agree with U.S. concerns about the court. Significantly, over two-thirds of these agreements are with ICC parties and signatories.

WHY AMERICA MUST PROTECT ITS PEOPLE

America is pursuing this policy out of concern that the ICC could be used as a tool by those opposed to its foreign policy to make political statements through ICC prosecutions. Supporters of the ICC disparage America's policy as unnecessary. They claim that there are protections in the ICC treaty to prevent abuse of the court — after all, the court can only intervene in cases committed on the territory or involving a person of an ICC party, and then only if a nation proves unwilling or unable, in the judgment of the court, to investigate and prosecute alleged crimes.

This is cold comfort. No nation is more dedicated than the United States to preventing crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, and to bringing criminals to justice. The deplorable crimes committed in Abu Ghraib serve to support this contention. America continues to fully investigate and is proceeding to punish those responsible with the full weight of U.S. law.

America's determination to punish perpetrators of these crimes offers no protection from politically motivated charges, however, as demonstrated by those alleging that the incident constituted war crimes and insinuating that the U.S. is covering up particulars of the incidents. These and similar experiences — like the ridiculous charges under Belgium's "Universal Competence" law against President George H. W. Bush, Secretary Powell, Vice President Cheney, and General Tommy Franks, among others, for their roles in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom — reinforce America's determination to protect itself from politically motivated criminal allegations.

Unscrupulous individuals and groups will seek to similarly misuse the ICC for politically motivated attacks. America is uniquely vulnerable to these kinds of charges, because of its extensive network of military bases and deployments in defense of its myriad interests around the world. In many cases, its interests require a presence or deployment to an ICC party, or military action against the nationals of an ICC party. Each instance opens a Pandora's box of legal vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation.

That the ICC can be used for such abuse is demonstrated by over 100 charges against U.S. persons submitted to the ICC in only two years of its existence. While the court's chief prosecutor has announced his decision not to investigate these charges, the decision was all but a forgone conclusion because most of the charges involved cases where the ICC clearly has no jurisdiction — crimes allegedly committed by a non-ICC party in the territory of a non-ICC party. However, American personnel will not always fight military campaigns in the territories of non-ICC parties. As noted by international lawyer Lee Casey, "The real test will come when there is a demand for an investigation in circumstances where there's a disagreement about that jurisdiction, and that will happen when Americans are accused of offenses before the court on the territory of a state party."

Since the vast majority of the court's discretion lies within the Office of the Prosecutor, the ICC offers little opportunity to resolve these issues diplomatically and, because of its lack of appropriate checks and balances to prevent it from being misused, represents a dangerous temptation for those with political axes to grind. Americans need more reliable protection than the goodwill and good judgment of an international legal bureaucrat.

A POLICY MISUNDERSTOOD

The Bush administration could have adopted policies designed to cripple the ICC. Instead, out of respect for nations that support the court, the U.S. has pursued a policy of minimal disruption by using provisions of the ICC treaty to shield its people from the court. Unfortunately, America's careful effort to satisfy its concerns by using a provision contained within the treaty has been misunderstood or mischaracterized.

Advocates of the ICC have ratcheted up a campaign against America's measured policy, including a European Union-led campaign pressuring countries not to sign Article 98 agreements. This campaign is peculiar, as many of these same EU countries urged America to address our concerns by relying on Article 98 of the treaty rather than the United Nations Security Council or some other mechanism outside the treaty.

These efforts by the EU are totally unacceptable and undermine trans-Atlantic relations. Worse, they show a lack of understanding on the part of our allies. America sees these agreements as the avenue through which it may minimize the impact of the ICC on our bilateral and multilateral relationships, and the impact on how we fulfill our international obligations. When questioned about the U.S. policy, a senior ICC official asked, "All we need from the United States is benign neglect. Is that too much to ask?" Indeed, that is the essence of U.S. policy — America is not discouraging countries from joining the court, but simply asking that they respect America's decision not to be bound by a court to which it objects.

Worse than the effort to impose the ICC on an unwilling United States is the potential impact of this effort on international peace and security. If the U.S. is not successful in renewing the Security Council resolution protecting non-ICC parties participating in United Nations peacekeeping operations from the court, U.S. participation in those operations would be severely curtailed. Moreover, U.S. support for those missions could be severely eroded and set the U.S. on a more aggressive course vis-à-vis the ICC, particularly if Congress takes offense. America is committed, proven through its sacrifice of blood and treasure, to opposing despots and bolstering democratic systems of government based on the rule of law. If successful, those lobbing politically motivated charges designed to deter American policy may reap the unintended harvest of a world rendered less secure and less peaceful by an America disinclined to act.

PROTECTING AMERICANS FROM THE ICC

Claims by the ICC to represent the will of the world are patently false. The fact of the matter is that, although nearly three-fourths have signed the ICC treaty, less than half of the world's nations are party to the ICC, and ICC parties comprise a minority of the world population and economic output. Seeking to impose international legal requirements and jurisdiction on unwilling sovereign states is unsupportable, and a clear contravention of international law. The United States is not alone in its concerns about the court, as demonstrated by the many nations that are not ICC parties, America's 90 Article 98 agreements, and likely success in renewing the Security Council resolution protecting non-ICC party nationals from the court.

Even if every nation except the United States were a party to the ICC, America would still be entirely justified in its effort to ensure that its nationals and military are not affected by the illegitimately asserted jurisdiction of the ICC. As long as the U.S. determines that it is not in America's interest to join the ICC, a president who fails to pursue every effort to protect Americans from the ICC would be derelict in his responsibility to the American people.

— Brett D. Schaefer is Jay Kingham fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at the Heritage Foundation and former assistant for ICC policy at the Department of Defense.

Clinton says he'll leave it to the 9-11 commission to judge him-- yah, that's a risk

06.21.04 (3:18 am)   [edit]
In his HOUR LONG "60 Minutes" interview over his ridiculous book "My Life" Bill Clinton regretted that he had not been able to get Osama bin Laden, but that he'd leave it up to the 9-11 Commission to judge his handling of terror pre 9-11.

The thing is, Bill Clinton [i]was[/i] able to get OBL, three times at least, but he refused to do so. That was back in the day that John Kerry wants to go back to-- seeing terror as criminal behavior instead of warmaking. It is this view that makes fighting terror easy: issue an arrest warrant, and then, when the countries the terrorists are being nurtured in refuse to cooperate, throw up your hands and say "I did all I could".

That's what Bill Clinton did. He had no intention of fighting terror, he didn't fight terror,and he knows it.

That is why he's banking on the 9-11 Commission's whitewash of all of the vital years of US inaction and cowardice that led to 9-11. Predictably, the commission will bash President Bush for not stopping the 9-11 attack, an attack that started being planned in 1996, despite his cabinet not being finished (because of Gore's trying to steal the election) and despite the fact that the Clinton administration left the Bush administration no national terror strategy to work from (that's why Bush had to make his own, the nation's first, which he did).

Everything that Clinton was responsible for in the 1990s-- terror attack after terror attack, the refusal of OBL, Somalia, useless attacks against Iraq, his treatment of terror as lawbreaking-- will not be examined in the final report.

That's why Clinton will leave it up to the commission. He knows a fellow conspirator when he sees one.

God help this country.

Truth is the antidote to the current Clinton revisionism

06.19.04 (4:57 am)   [edit]
[b]The Antidote to the Clinton Revisionism[/b]
Jason D. Fodeman
June 18, 2004

Like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, he is back, catapulted to the front pages, plastered all over our television screens, blanketing the airways. Last year Hillary’s book was the primer for History Rewrite 101. Now we hear from the master himself, the professor of circumlocution, a man who elevated doublespeak to an art form, one who can parse language with the precision of the most highly skilled surgeon. He is smooth as silk, soft as butter, sincere as a summer breeze. Not unlike his compatriot, however, it is a pack of lies and distortions: half truths intertwined with no truths.

Certainly he did all possible to prevent terrorism and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. There simply was not enough evidence to extradite and bring criminal charges. Otherwise, Clinton would have been the first to try him anywhere in the world, perhaps the World Court at The Hague. He would have done whatever was necessary to satisfy the United Nations Human Rights Commission co-chaired by Syria and Cuba. With respect to the infamous wall that prevented the pooling of resources between FBI and CIA, it was necessary for it to reach new heights during his administration. How else to impede those pesky investigators from linking illegal Chinese campaign contributions to waivers of regulations? If there were collateral repercussions, a leader always has to set priorities.

The scandals were all trumped-up allegations by bitter, jealous, revengeful conservatives, the flames fanned by vicious right-wing talk show hosts. What about those pardons of fugitives and terrorists that were so important normal Justice Department procedures had to be short-circuited? They were all justified. Why waste taxpayer money observing inconvenient formalities? Furthermore, there was a presidential library to be funded. Susan McDougal earned her pardon by remaining silent, declining immunity, even going to jail rather than testifying truthfully. Indeed, her classic honor among thieves mentality demonstrated loyalty worthy of a pardon. If Monica Lewinsky was just about sex, this was all about payoffs.

Lying under oath, forget about it! Those involved merely personal matters. As if one could pick and choose what issues required truthful answers in a court of law. With respect to signing an agreement with the special prosecutor admitting wrongdoing at the end of his term, what better time to move on for the good of the country.

The excuses go on and on with the adoring media and most prestigious book reviewers lapping it up - all with the expectation of being in his presence, receiving a signed copy while attending some lavish party.

Perhaps the truth is that as a nation we have all been corrupted. So be it, but what about the sanctity of values and heritage of a great country? What about the lessons taught to our children and the obligation owed posterity to prevent this rewriting of history? That is the problem. That is the dilemma.

For twenty years, whenever Richard Nixon appeared in public, the media never missed an opportunity to state that this was “the disgraced former president.” Now, despite actually having been impeached, Mr. Clinton is portrayed prancing with the celebrity and cachet of a movie star. As the cameras flash and the film rolls, leading newsmen jockey for position to kiss his ring. “Disgraced,” “shamed,” and “discredited” are words never uttered.

How could it happen that one of the most momentous events of the twentieth century, the impeachment of an American president, is becoming little more than a footnote in history? That the leader of the most corrupt, scandal-plagued administration has shed his true image and morphed into a media superstar? Hush money was paid to convicted associates. He failed to meet with the CIA chief for two years as the terrorist threat incubated. There was sexual harassment of subordinates, fines, perjury, and disbarment. An anything-goes atmosphere was created that allowed unprecedented corporate corruption to fester. He even told our youth oral sex was not sex and led by example. To say, “The economy was good” is like justifying Saddam Hussein’s torture, rape, mutilation, and murder of his countrymen by rationalizing that he would occasionally feed hungry pigeons in the park.

To demonstrate the nonpartisan nature of this criticism, I am offering, in conclusion, sound advice to both Clintons on how to maximize their legacy: JUST GO AWAY! Out of sight, out of mind. It is only when they are shoved down our throats, selling their distorted version of events, that a rebuttal is necessary. If they disappear, time plus friends in the media, academia, and professional spinmeisters will do the reconstruction job for them. They can rewrite history without a shot being fired, so to speak. Those on the right will not know what hit them. The Clintons’ goal will attain fruition. Unfortunately, they do not want to leave center stage. They do not want to win the war if it means conceding a single battle. They want to spit in our eye and laugh in our face one more time. All to prove they will ALWAYS prevail, no matter how much they shame the office and debase the country.

The virus is still out there. Truth is the antidote.

Jason D. Fodeman (jdfodeman@att.net) is the author of How to Destroy a Village: What the Clintons Taught a Seventeen Year Old. He is a senior at Johns Hopkins University.

©2004 Jason D. Fodeman

Thoughts on Iran, by therealspartacus

06.19.04 (4:51 am)   [edit]
Sez therealspartacus in a comment about Iran and its nukes:

"So Iran has nukes.... I've got a great idea! Piss them off!
But seriously, if they honestly are close to having nuclear weapons, then we need to be rather, well, diplomatic with them. We averted the Cold War from breaking out through diplomacy and communication, not an invasion. Reagan knew how to handle things."

1)Iran is breaking the vauned "international law" that you seem to think the US is breaking re: Abu Ghraib. But instead of humiliating insurgents in a prison, Iran is breaking the NPT-- which it signed years ago. The UN, not the US, found weapons-grade uranium and Iran has yet to come clean about how they got it.

2)This is important, for Iran is a terrorist state. Like in the case with Iraq, the worry isn't that Iran would use nukes against the US (though that is a real fear for Israel and most of Europe), but that the Mullahs, who signed the NPT remember! would give these nukes to Hezbollah, it's home-grown terror group, or Al Qaeda.

The Cold War did not work. When Harry Truman started it in the late 1940s until President Reagan's election, the US did not effectively contain the USSR, either through diplomacy or "containment". Throughout the Cold War the Soviets ignored US, UN diplomacy and gobbled up territory either by itself or through its communist friends.

Ronald Reagan believe that communism had a fatal flaw economically and exploited it. If he had been president during Clinton's years he would have further prevented Russia from proliferating, which it did throughout the 1990s.

Bush knows how to handle things. That is why he's taking the diplomatic track, i.e. going through the UN, and not "pissing" off the Mullahs. But my guess is that the Mullahs will get pissed off anyway, just like the North Koreans.

Bad folks in the world want nukes. Only the US is trying to stop them. I think Bush deserves a lot of credit for this.

Photos show that Iran is concealing its nuclear plants

06.18.04 (9:44 am)   [edit]
From the Fox News website (click for images of facilities)-- http://www.foxnews.com/story/...,2933,123081,00.html

[b]Images Show Iran May Be Hiding Nuke Plants[/b]
Friday, June 18, 2004
By Liza Porteus
FOX NEWS

NEW YORK — Satellite photos of two locations in Iran show the nation may be continuing to pursue and hide a program to produce nuclear weapons, images obtained exclusively by Fox News show.

One site at Natanz appears to show a hidden uranium enrichment plant, possibly surrounded by defense fortifications capable of thwarting an attack. The other site, Arak, is a heavy water facility used to make plutonium.

The two sites together could be capable of building atomic bombs. "You have to conclude this is not part of an energy program, this is part of a weapons program," John Pike, the founder of Globalsecurity.org , told Fox News.

Iran — one of three nations President Bush labeled as part of an "axis of evil" in 2003 — has come under heavy criticism by the international community for not doing away completely with its nuclear program, which has been under investigation for nearly two decades.

Iranian leaders argue that the nation is enriching the uranium in order to produce nuclear power; the United States says the program is a front for developing atomic weapons. Enrichment can be used to produce power or bombs.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog is investigating the photos. The U.S. intelligence community also has the images.

On Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (search ) censured Iran for past cover-ups in its nuclear program in a resolution that warned Tehran to be more forthcoming.

Iranian officials have said that if the United Nations were to pursue a resolution like that agreed upon Thursday, Tehran would continue with their enrichment program.

"I'm not at all sure that's a threat that should deter us that much," former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger told Fox News. "I think we have a very serious problem and we'll have to pursue it very hard."

Before and After in Iran Images

The pictures of the Natanz facility — taken on Sept. 20, 2002 and Feb. 29, 2004 — show that Iran has been trying to cover up the compound, Pike said.

"We're really quite amazed at what we were seeing in this imagery and we're also quite amazed at what we're not seeing," Pike said.

Remarking on the most recent image, Pike said, "we don't see much of anything after all, it's basically just a big empty field, but if we had looked at it earlier, we can see this is their primary, their main enrichment facility."

The 2002 images show buildings under construction. But in the 2004 images, "you can see that they completely covered it up with a thick layer of dirt," Pike noted, perhaps to make it difficult to see it and harder for precision-guided munitions to target the underground facility.

A thick network of what could be fighting positions also encircle the plant, according to Pike's interpretation of the images.

"Possibly they would be fighting positions in case a commando raid was launched against this facility," Pike said. "It really looks like the Iranians have a fear someone is going to try to destroy this building before it can make bombs."

Alireza Jafarzadeh, a Fox News foreign affairs analyst, exposed the two sites on Aug. 14, 2002, after obtaining information from Iranian opposition forces with access to the regime.

Construction of buildings at Natanz began in 2000, he told Foxnews.com. There are two major parts, one of which consists of about six white buildings while three more in the images are under construction. In those three buildings are two large underground hallways.

It's in those hallways — one of which is about 32,000 square meters in size, the other is close to 8,000 square meters — Jafarzadeh said, where centrifuge machines are to be lined up.

"Once fully operational, it would have as many 50,000 centrifuge machines lined up there," he said. "These are the main enrichment halls that would produce enriched uranium en masse … once that's fully operational, perhaps just this site in Natanz would be able to produce 15 to 20 bombs a year."

The building is protected by 8-feet thick concrete walls, "primarily to protect it against air strikes," Jafarzadeh noted. Also, the entrance to the main building consists of a U-shaped tunnel.

"This way, even smart bombs cannot sort of glide or crawl into the hall," he said. "That tells me this is definitely built underground for air strike protection."

Photos of the Arak facility show that between Aug. 18, 2001 and Feb. 28, 2004, heavy construction took place at the plutonium-production facility.

"What is significant about this pictures — it shows how rapidly they have actually advanced in the construction of these sites," Jafarzadeh said.

"Because in such a short period of time, they have made big advancements … this facility can be used both for producing low-enrichment uranium, which as Iran claims, is for supporting fuel for nuclear reactors for what they call peaceful purposes and at the same time, it can be used for enriching uranium for weapons grade."

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told Fox News that the agency first received allegations that these sites were used for nuclear bomb-making programs in 2002 and they immediately began "intensive" inspections that continue to this day.

"We are in Arak and Natanz quite frequently," she said.

Although the agency still has a number of questions about both sites, they "are both known to us and our investigation is focusing elsewhere right now," she said.

IAEA also has regular access to the scientists that work at both facilities and has visited the Natanz site since Feb. 29, 2004 and found nothing untoward, she said.

"If it had been razed we certainly would know something about it," she said of the site.

U.S.: Iran Denials 'Hollow'

Some experts warned that the satellite images can't be considered a smoking gun quite yet.

"It's clear Iran is trying to deal with the knowledge the IAEA has this two-decade long program," Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association (search), told Fox News on Friday. "I think it's unclear to me from this satellite imagery what's been hidden and what's not been hidden, which makes it all the more important for Iran to cooperate more fully" with weapons inspectors.

"We need to be careful that the pressure does not ratchet up so high that Iran kicks out inspectors" and closes the blinds to the global community about its nuclear activities, Kimball continued.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei (search) acknowledged Thursday that he had to revise one part of his report on Iran saying they had not disclosed the purchase of 15 magnets for P-2 centrifuges, when in fact Iran had admitted it in May.

Contrary to interpreting that as proof Iran is coming clean, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "It only points out more how hollow Iran's denials and statements have been ... So we're once again left in the situation where we find that Iran has spent months and months and months denying things that were known, months and months trying to pretend that it was not doing things that finally became known and that it finally admitted."

Perhaps even more disconcerting, Boucher notes, is the satellite imagery showing Iran is actually trying to hide its activities.

"That report shows that Iran does have a track record of trying to hide clandestine nuclear activity since — for many years, including a practice of trying to remove equipment and sanitize buildings," Boucher said. "It's deplorable but not surprising that Iran's deception has gone to the extent of bulldozing entire sites to prevent the IAEA from discovering evidence of its nuclear weapons program."

Boucher said satellite images indicate that Iran has completely razed a different facility at Lavizan Shiyan, which the IAEA had not visited. The site first became known when an exiled Iranian opposition group said it was connected to a biological weapons program.

Jafarzadeh told Foxnews.com that at that site is now something called the Center for Readiness and New Defense Technology, which is affiliated to the defense ministry of the Iranian regime.

The center supposedly is part of new special military unit that now overseas all nuclear programs of the regime, separated from the "peaceful" uses of the program and under the control of the military, Jafarzadeh said. It's at this center where P-2 machines — more efficient enrichment devices used in producing the fuel used in nuclear power plants and atomic bombs — are allegedly produced.

A small number of fully assembled P-2 machines were found at one location in Iran earlier this year, U.S. and European officials said. Iran reportedly was looking to import 100,000 magnets, which can be used for 50,000 machines — two magnets for each machine.

"This raises serious concerns and fits a pattern, as I said, that we've seen from Iran of trying to cover up on its activities, including by trying to sanitize locations which the IAEA should be allowed to visit and expect," Boucher said.

Fox News' Amy Kellogg and Teri Schultz contributed to this report.

Breaking: US hostage beheaded in Saudi Arabia

06.18.04 (9:39 am)   [edit]
Yet more proof as to the kind of folks we're dealing with.

Expect the Left to blame Bush and Abu Ghraib, even though that has absolutely nothing to do with this. They did kill 3,000 Americans in the span of about 2 hours....[i]right?[/i]

There is simply no moral equivalence between beheading this man, who was a lover of the Arabic culture no less, or Nick Berg, who also wanted to help Iraqis and Muslims, and the events at Abu Ghraib. At the very least these folks at Abu Ghraib were prisoners, most of them apprehended for killing US soldiers or fellow Iraqis, and these Americans were innocent civilians.

Folks, this is what terrorists do. They've been doing it for decades. We can expect the usual disconcern for this man's death in favor of the political opportunity of blaming this on the relatively tame transgressions at Abu Ghraib, the same tactics the terrorists use themselves to get away with murder.

God help us all.

Dems, Left want Bush impeached for approving Abu Ghraib. One problem: he didn't approve it.

06.18.04 (8:27 am)   [edit]
The Democrats, who are a minority party, by the way (even though the act like they're still running things in D.C.) want to impeach Bush either for "lies" about Iraq that are only lies because the Dems made them up or for Abu Ghraib. We read this, however, from the UK Guardian:

"The best way to solve things ``is to elect John Kerry,'' said Kennedy, appearing beside two Harvard professors at a news conference upstairs from his Senate office.

The professors presented a letter signed by more than 400 legal scholars urging members of the House and Senate to consider impeaching the president and any high level administration officials who approved the Iraqi prisoner abuses."

Did you catch the magic word? That's right. "Approved". There is zero evidence that any high level administrator, much less the President approved of the abuses. So what, exactly, would he be impeached for?

I guess it really wouldn't matter if the Dems were in power. THey don't believe in substance, in following the rules. For example: Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice, but the Dems believe he was impeached because he "lied about sex".

This is intentional, for it reveals the Democratic mindset-- the politics of hatred. It opens the door for the Democrats to impeach Bush based on nothing but their own hate, and damn the facts.

Thankfully, the children aren't running the place right now, and would have to wait until they got the majority in the House to lay any charges, or find enough moderate anti-Bush Republicans to impeach him.

Abuse of power, slander, lies, propaganda, hypocrisy, and crusading hatred-- that's the Left for you.

From the UK Guardian, "Kennedy Sidesteps Impeachment Endorsement"-- http://www.guardian.co.uk/wor...,1280,-4214922,00.html

Basketball Star Thankful Mom Chose Life Over Abortion

06.18.04 (6:06 am)   [edit]
From LifeSiteNews.com--

[b]Basketball Star Thankful Mom Chose Life Over Abortion[/b]
6/17/04

Last September, Swintayla Cash, USA champion captain of the Detroit Shock basketball team, after winning the 2003 WNBA championship trophy, sat down in the locker room and cried. Now, with a chance to go to the Athens Olympics, she revealed why.

Cash is a beautiful and talented young woman who rose from a life of poverty to success as a professional athlete. She has ambitions beyond the basketball court and wants to go into acting and modeling and does motivational speaking about "fighting through life's adversity." Last week she made the U.S. Olympic team. She was born in 1979, six years after Roe v. Wade and her high-school-aged mother had agonized over whether to abort her. "There were 1,000 things going through my mind," she said about the day last September when she was caught crying in the locker room,[b] "My mom went through a whole ordeal about whether to have an abortion, or to keep me because she was a senior in high school."[/b]

Staff at crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. are well aware that [b]abortion facilities set up shop in the poor subsidized housing neighborhoods and target vulnerable young girls with scare tactics about a life of unending poverty. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger made no secret of her intention to cleanse the U.S. of racially and economically "undesirable" people, especially African Americans, Jews, Catholics and Eastern Europeans.[/b]

Today, though only 14 percent of women in the U.S. of childbearing age are African American, up to 50% of all abortions were committed against African American women.

Cash's mother, Cynthia, says Swin is an inspiration to the children of their hometown, McKeesport, Pennsylvania. "Some of the kids that live in public housing look at her and see that you can achieve anything you want if you're willing to work hard," she said. "We didn't have a whole lot but Swin never let that stop her." Cash says of her mother, "Without her sacrifice, love and support I have no idea where I would be today. She is a phenomenal woman and mother but most of all she is my best friend."

Iran massing troops on Iraq border to move in when we move out

06.18.04 (5:51 am)   [edit]
Of course, the US military will be in Iraq for awhile, and will always be near if the Mullahs try to invade Iraq.

Iran is probably the next step in fighting the War on Terror. It supports Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, and worse, is building a nuke with Russian help.

Meanwhile, there is a pro-democracy surge among the young people in Iran desperate for US help.

We'll take out their nuke plants, and defend the Iraqi border (along with the Iraqi army), but I doubt we'll invade and replace the regime.

[b]Iran massing troops on Iraq border[/b]

Beirut, Lebanon, Jun. 15 (UPI) -- Iran reportedly is readying troops to move into Iraq if U.S. troops pull out, leaving a security vacuum.

The Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, monitored in Beirut, reports Iran has massed four battalions at the border.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted "reliable Iraqi sources" as saying, "Iran moved part of its regular military forces towards the Iraqi border in the southern sector at a time its military intelligence agents were operating inside Iraqi territory."

Bush never said Hussein had anything to do with 9-11-- More of the Dems' Big Lie Campaign

06.18.04 (5:37 am)   [edit]
Once more the Democrats have lied about what Bush justified the war against Iraq on. The war was not based on an Al-Qaeda-Hussein link, it was not based on whether or not Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi Intel in Prague, it was not based on Iraq having nukes (Bush didn't even say they had nukes-- But Clinton did, in 1998), it was not based on any belief whatsoever that Hussein had something to do with 9-11.

(If you recall, pathological nutjob Richard Clarke said that after 9-11 happened, Bush wanted him to see if there was a Hussein link. THis makes a lot of sense, if you recall that Hussein was behind the first WTC attack.

Secondly, the reason why Bush didn't see Al Qaeda as a huge threat was because a)he was still formulating his national terror strategy, something the Clinton Admin, never had, and b)the previous administration did not take Al Qaeda seriously. Al Qaeda was no part of US strategy when Clinton left office. This is conveniently ignored by the Left.)

Bush also never said that Hussein was an imminent threat, repeatedly, and explicitly in his January 2003 state of the union.

No, Bush justified his war with Iraq for the same reasons that Clinton did-- broken UN cease-fire resolutions by Hussein that demanded he disarm and verify. For 12 years the UN watched as resolution after resolution was broken, and they just sat on their thumbs.

We had "contained" Hussein.

But, after 9-11, Hussein even in containment looked a lot worse. This was the most brutal dictator in the Middle East, who had unaccounted for WMD, and who hated America and had terrorist sympathies. After 9-11 the idea that we could sit on our thumbs any longer with Hussein was suicidal. It was time to force Hussein to own up to the UN resolutions or invade his country and replace him.

That was the justification, folks.

The UN is filled with leftists, but the facts are that even they, along with the rest of the world, believed Hussein still had WMDs--UNSCOM's last report on Iraq lists the various weapons and dual-use equipment he had.

Even Hans Blix, an uber-lefty, admits that there was legal justification for force against Iraq, given Hussein's violations of UN rez 1441.

Oh, and let's remember: John Kerry authorized force in Iraq and many democrats who were against regime change for Bush were all gun-slinging cowboys filled with bloodlust in 1998 when they supported Clinton's Iraqi Regime Change act and believed with religious faith his far more declarative justifications.

We should remember Bush's words to the UN on 9-11-02:

[b]“The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?” [/b]

What the Left actually wants in running the campaign of the Big Lie is to go back to the way things were-- when places like the Middle East and Africa were ignored, where the really hard decisions that had to be made about terror weren't, and where every day we had our left-wing "ethical" leaders lying straight to our faces about how secure and progressive our world had become.

A good article about the Big Lie-- http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...

Media ignores important new info in 9-11 hearings

06.18.04 (5:17 am)   [edit]
From OpinionJournal.com--

[b]Spinning 9/11
The press ignores the commission's most interesting findings.[/b]
Friday, June 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

We'll say this on behalf of the latest staff reports from the 9/11 Commission: They are far more interesting than the media coverage suggests. Americans who go online to read the reports will actually learn a few things.

For example, they'll discover new details about the links between al Qaeda and Iran. The conventional wisdom has been that these Shiite and Sunni cultures couldn't meet, but the report says they did so "to cooperate against a common enemy"--the infidel U.S.

Specifically, al Qaeda operatives trained in Iran, and al Qaeda helped Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists obtain explosives. Al Qaeda was also probably involved in two attacks on U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, including the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers that killed 19 Americans and injured 372 and had previously been blamed largely on Hezbollah. This certainly sheds some useful light on State Department attempts to "engage" Tehran's mullahs as they attempt to build a nuclear bomb.

Another revelation concerns al Qaeda and anthrax. The 9/11 panel says al Qaeda had an "ambitious" biological weapons program and "was making advances in its ability to produce anthrax prior to September 11." It cites CIA Director George Tenet as saying that al Qaeda's ability to conduct an anthrax attack is "one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face." Given that we already were attacked by anthrax, and that we still don't know who did it, this sounds like news too.

Yet nearly all of the media coverage has focused on what the 9/11 panel claims it didn't find--namely, smoking-gun proof that al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were working together. The country has traveled a long way psychologically from the trauma of September 11 if we are now focusing on the threats that allegedly don't exist instead of those that certainly do.

Or, to be more precise, we're further from 9/11 but very close to an election. The "no Saddam link" story is getting so much play because it fits the broader antiwar, anti-Bush narrative that Iraq was a "distraction" from the broader war on terror. So once again the 9/11 Commission is being used to tarnish the Iraqi effort and damage President Bush's credibility in fighting terror. John Kerry surely thinks so because he jumped on the coverage to once again assail Mr. Bush on Iraq.

Even here, though, the staff report is less a "slam dunk," as the CIA likes to say, than the coverage asserts. We are supposed to believe, for example, that the Commission has found out once and for all that there was no meeting in Prague between the Iraqi agent al-Ani and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. But the only new evidence the report turns up is that some calls were made from Florida on Atta's cell phone at the same time he was reportedly in Prague. And since that phone would not have worked in Europe anyway, how do we know someone else wasn't using it? The Czechs still believe the Atta meeting took place, and the truth is we still don't know for sure.

There's also the testimony the Commission heard Wednesday from Patrick Fitzgerald. The former Manhattan prosecutor was asked about his 1998 indictment against Osama bin Laden that asserted that al Qaeda had an "understanding" with Iraq that it would not "work against that government" and that "on certain projects, specifically including weapons development," they would "work cooperatively." Mr. Fitzgerald testified that "there was that relationship that went from opposing each other to not opposing each other to possibly working with each other."

Somehow the Commission also omitted any reference to Mr. Tenet's 2002 letter to Congress. "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade," he wrote. And, "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda's leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

We could go on, but suffice to say that the report hardly disproves any Saddam-al Qaeda link. Mr. Bush was entirely correct when he said yesterday that, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." The extent of those ties is the issue, and it is essential to U.S. security that we keep probing them. In particular, the President should order the release of some of the official Iraqi documents that coalition forces have captured in Iraq and that shed additional light on that relationship.

We thought everyone had learned the hard way on 9/11 that the greatest security danger comes not from taking threats too seriously but from dismissing them too easily. Apparently some people have forgotten that lesson already.

If the US is internationally feared, why isn't Canada gearing up for war?

06.18.04 (5:14 am)   [edit]
[b]Who’s Afraid of the U.S.A.[/b]
Rich Tucker
June 18, 2004

A national political campaign allows a country to focus its attention on critical matters, make decisions about the future and express what’s important. No doubt our presidential election someday will include serious discussions about Iraq, Medicare, the Patriot Act and more.

Meanwhile, a national campaign is underway in Canada. And it puts the lie to the oft-stated claim that the United States is feared internationally.

NBC News White House correspondent David Gregory hauled out this sad charge during President Bush’s recent visit to Europe. “In much of the world, people fear the United States,” Gregory claimed, “but, particularly after the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, [they] appear to have lost faith in its ideals.”

Well, that may be what people in other countries say, but it’s not what they believe. If Gregory were correct, we’d see fear manifested in Canada. After all, they’re our immediate neighbor and would be on the front lines if the U.S. started to throw its weight around.

Think of it this way: Once, Greece and Rome possessed great military power. Both invaded their neighbors. When the Ottoman Empire had great military power in the 1500s, it invaded its neighbors. When France had great military power in the 1800s, it invaded its neighbors. The Soviet Union held half of Europe for generations -- because it could.

But we have great power, and we’re benevolent. If we decided to, we could conquer the entire planet. Even if all the militaries of all the world combined, we’d still defeat them. Easily.

We’d shoot down every enemy plane, sink every enemy ship, and kill as many enemy soldiers as necessary before they all surrendered. And it’s not just atomic weapons. We could win, and would win, with only conventional weapons.

This sort of restraint is new. It’s never existed before, and, based on history, it should inspire fear around the world. But it doesn’t. Canada’s the proof.

Canadians will choose a new government on June 28. One key issue is defense spending. The governing Liberal party wants to add some 5,000 troops to Canada’s undermanned force, still leaving the country with only about 60,000 people in uniform.

The more hawkish Conservative party has stirred controversy, because it wants to bring Canada’s troop levels up to 80,000. That would cost about $4.8 billion Canadian dollars over four years. Even this small amount is considered controversial, although a study by Queen’s University has warned that if Canadians don’t vastly increase spending, they’ll have virtually no military within 15 years.

By contrast, the U.S. has more than 1.4 million people on active duty and plans to spend more than $400 billion on defense just next year.

Now, some will wonder why we would ever want to invade Canada. Well, that’s simple. After all, leftists assure us that the war in Iraq was all about oil. Well, if we were willing to send our boys halfway around the world to fight -- and die -- for oil, surely we’d be willing to send them to much a safer, northern clime.

Canada is already the largest supplier of oil to the U.S. Plus, tar-sand deposits in Alberta contain an estimated 1.6 trillion barrels of oil. Surely Halliburton would love to get its greedy hands on that. It’s there, with nothing but an undefended 4,000-mile border between it and us.

And if the entire Canadian military geared up to stop us, how long could they hold out? Half a day? Half an hour? Half a minute? It surely would be a suicide mission.

Simply put, if Canadians feared us, they’d be ramping up military spending. Similarly, if the French feared us, they wouldn’t block all of our president’s plans for Iraq. If the Germans feared us, their prime minister wouldn’t run for -- and win -- re-election by bashing the U.S.

In fact, the entire Western world knows it can scrimp on defense, because we will defend them. And we will never invade or conquer them.

We’re unique. We’re special. We’re the great hope of mankind. That’s why terrorists seek to destroy us -- because they fear and detest our freedoms and realize those freedoms eventually will be spread everywhere, because freedom is the only idea that really works. Their idea, a Muslim caliphate, has already been tried and has already failed.

There’s no historical precedent for the idea of the United States. But when our great grandchildren sit down to write history, our ideas will seem so elemental they’ll say, “Why didn’t people think of that before?” And they’ll realize David Gregory got it exactly backward. People don’t fear the U.S. They depend on us for political and moral guidance.

Rich Tucker is manager of professional training in the Center For Media and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, a Townhall.com member group.

©2004 The Heritage Foundation

Attention Lefties, once and for all: Bill Clinton broke law, deserved impeachment

06.17.04 (6:11 am)   [edit]
Apparently there is a new film out by Clinton legacy rewriters continuing Hillary Clinton's claim of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Of course, the conspiracy was conservatism itself, as lefties cannot fathom someone disagreeing with them.

This movie has great objective folks like Joe Conason and Susan McDougal offering their opinion.

Still we have to hear the tripe about how Republicans went on a witch hunt over a bad land deal and adultery. Uh, one more time, for the record: the bad land deal involved shady figures and a lot of unexplained and unethical business dealings, and FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, REPUBLICANS DID NOT INVESTIGATE BILL CLINTON GETTING BLOWN BY A FAT INTERN BUT HIS PERJURING HIMSELF (LYING ABOUT IT) AND THEN ASKING OTHERS TO LIE ABOUT IT (INCLUDING THE PARTICPANT) IN A SEXUAL HARASSMENT TRIAL (A COURT OF MOTHERF--KING LAW, FOLKS).

Perjury is impeachable. Obstruction of justice is impeachable. Clintonistas can't get over the fact that Bill Clinton committed an impeachable offense and was duly impeached.

But I know that until my dying breath school books will be written saying that Bill Clinton:

a)"Created" 22 million jobs

b)Had a terror plan and "did all he could" to stop OBL (despite refusing his capture multiple times and the lack of mention of OBL and his terror organization in Clinton's last threat report in 2000)

and

c) Was the victim over a Republian moral crusade, an impeachment, over an affair with an intern (despite that that is 180 degrees from the real reasons Clinton was impeached-- like lawbreaking).

God help us all-- Clinton was one of the worst, most ineffective presidents we've ever had. We Americans managed to create 22 million jobs in the face of multiple Clinton tax increases, all the while Clinton failed to respond to terror attacks, Iraq, nuclear proliferation in N Korea and China, and duplicity from the Russians.

Clinton was a victim of his own arrogance and immorality, not a Republican conspiracy.

China's quest to become a superpower going as planned while world worries about Iraq

06.17.04 (5:49 am)   [edit]
Does anyone think a Leftist president would be tough with China? Clinton wasn't.

From The Weekly Standard--

[b]Remember China?
While the war on terror rages, a new report reminds us that China's ascent to great power status continues apace.
by Christian Lowe[/b]
06/17/2004 12:00:00 AM

WHILE ALL EYES are focused on enemies who present clear and present dangers, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, another country whose military was a chief concern during the '90s has faded to the background.

A recently released Pentagon report provides a stark reminder that America needs to keep an eye on developments in the far east. Though few in the news media paid heed to the 2004 report on Chinese military power, it offers an enlightening glimpse into Asia's fast growing economic and military powerhouse and a vivid, although highly interpretive, look into how China sees the conduct of America's wars.

In the 2000 National Defense bill, Congress required the Pentagon to report annually its assessment of China's military strength, development, and strategic focus. That requirement came not without controversy, since these reports could be construed as hindrances to Sino-U.S. détente. After all, throughout the Cold War, the Pentagon printed a voluminous yearly report titled Soviet Military Power.

The first report on China, which was reluctantly released in June of 2000, stressed China's overwhelming focus on a potential conflict erupting across the Taiwan Strait. China reacted to the victory over Iraqi forces in the 1991 Persian Gulf War by stressing the modernization of its forces and the development--or purchase--of precision-guided munitions, including cruise missiles, laser-guided bombs, and short-range ballistic missiles. The Chinese also learned from Operation Allied Force in 1999, which stressed the need for a capability to strike targets at long range using air power and to leverage space for greater battlefield information and intelligence.

Allied Force also offered lessons to the Chinese in the need to counter U.S. space systems, prompting increased development of anti-satellite weaponry and computer hacking attacks, previous reports state. And China recognized the importance of denial and deception, placing a greater emphasis on the ability to camouflage equipment, mask transmissions, and fortify complexes below ground.

THIS YEAR'S REPORT, which was released May 28, builds on previous ones, emphasizing the Chinese military's interpretation of the global war on terrorism and the lessons drawn from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. [b]According to the report, the Chinese military high command recognized the speed and shock of the American assault on Saddam's forces and its ability to maintain lines of supply and logistics within a non-linear battlefield. Gone was the idea that one nation need only long-range precision airpower to dominate another.[/b]

The Chinese military also sees the global war on terrorism in a larger context, with some reading American victories in the Middle East and Central Asia not as steps toward a lasting security, but rather as further solidifying a U.S. global hegemony.

"While seeing opportunities for cooperation with the United States emerging from the [global war on terrorism], [b]China's leaders appear to have concluded that the net effect of the U.S.-led campaign has been further encirclement of China, specifically by placing U.S. military forces in Central Asia, strengthening U.S. defense relations with Pakistan, India, and Japan, and returning the U.S. military to Southeast Asia," the 2004 report states. [/b]

"Although most Chinese observers believe the U.S. force posture post-September 11 is based on a legitimate need to prosecute the GWOT, many remain suspicious and have implied that the 'real' U.S. intentions behind the realignment will not be known until the GWOT is more or less over."

China has increased defense spending over the last several years, more than 11 percent in 2004 to $25 billion--though the report admits the exact amount of Chinese defense expenditures remains a close-held state secret. Increased resources have gone toward the purchase of advanced [b]Russian[/b] attack aircraft, accelerated space programs (including manned flight and intelligence satellites), and the deployment of ballistic and cruise missiles. Additionally, China has put an increased emphasis on coordinated command and control between the People's Liberation Army, People's Liberation Army Navy and People's Liberation Army Air Force, due in large part to lessons learned from the U.S.-British assault on Iraq last year.

"PLA theorists and planners believe that future campaigns will be conducted simultaneously on land, at sea, and in the air, space, and the electronic sphere," the report states. "As more advanced weapons, sensors, and platforms enter the inventory and training begins to reflect multi-service operations, further development of a joint operations capability may provide the PLA with significant enhancements to its overall military capabilities."

Further, China continues to leverage the military technological advancements of former Soviet bloc nations by purchasing or bartering significant defense systems, such as the Russian Su-30 strike fighter, advanced Russian Sovremennyy destroyers, and Belarusian intelligence systems.

As America focuses increasingly on the Middle East and Central Asia and fights a tough war on terror, [b]it is important to remember that China's military modernization continues apace. The potential for superpower competition in East Asia has not diminished, as these yearly reports show, nor has America's need to keep abreast of the military progress of the communist nation in order to guard against any surprises.[/b]

As the report's authors note, "China's aspirations and efforts to achieve great power status have accelerated in recent years, especially the past two, as China's leaders have evinced a greater sense of confidence in the international arena," the report states. [b]"Various Chinese observers have noted, for example, that U.S. focus on counterterrorism has reduced perceived U.S. 'pressure' on and 'containment' of China, opening opportunities to strengthen internal security and create a more favorable situation along the periphery."[/b]

Christian Lowe is a staff writer for Army Times Publishing Company and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.

Iran's mushrooming threat-- if you're a leftist, disregard

06.17.04 (5:41 am)   [edit]
[b]Iran's Mushrooming Threat[/b]
By Washington Times
Washington Times | June 17, 2004

When it comes to displaying a calculated contempt for the United States, Europe and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear weapons development, the mullahcrats in Tehran are in a class with the Pyongyang Stalinists.

As the IAEA meets in Vienna to consider a European-drafted resolution pointing to Iran's continued refusal to come clean about its nuclear program, representatives of the Islamist regime continue to threaten the agency. The speaker of the Iranian parliament yesterday warned that members may not ratify Iran's signature to an additional protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — something insisted on by the IAEA after it discovered that Tehran was attempting to develop atomic weapons in violation of its obligations as a signer of the NPT. The speaker, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, suggested that by pressing Iran to tell the truth, the Europeans were doing the bidding of nefarious "Zionists." [b]Late last month, the head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards warned that that the regime was prepared to launch suicide attacks or missile strikes against "29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West." [/b]

Iranian President Mohammed Khatami (who is usually depicted in the Western press as a moderate) has denounced three European Union countries (Britain, France and Germany, known as the "EU 3") who have tried to put together a compromise arrangement in which Iran verifiably ends its pursuit of atomic weapons — much as Libya has. Indeed, Mr. Khatami has hinted that Iran will withdraw from the NPT if the international community tries to force it to tell the truth about its nuclear activities.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence thus far that either the United States or the EU will move decisively to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. While Britain and France seem to be inching toward a somewhat tougher approach, they have shown little interest in putting any kind of a deadline on Tehran. While Washington has done a commendable job of articulating the problem that would be posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue governments like the one in Iran, it has shown little stomach for confronting the regime anytime this year. While the West delays taking action, congressional investigators reported yesterday that [b][u]Beijing is sending nuclear technology to Iran in exchange for oil. [/b]
[/u]

In short, while we pass resolutions at the IAEA, the situation grows more dangerous. It is looking more and more like 2005 will be the critical year when the West will decide whether it is prepared to live with an Iranian atomic bomb, or take decisive action to prevent one from being developed. We understand that the United States and Europe are exhausted by Iraq, but we don't have the luxury of being exhausted. [b]The truth is that the world will become a much more dangerous place if Iran — ruled by a violent, paranoid cabal that routinely employs terrorism as an instrument of state policy — is allowed to acquire a nuclear capacity. That would be intolerable. [/b]

9-11 Commission says there is no Hussein- Al Qaeda link. They're wrong.

06.17.04 (5:35 am)   [edit]
[b]More Lies about the Saddam-Osama Connection[/b]
By Joel Mowbray
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 17, 2004

As newspaper headlines are sure to scream in page one, above-the-fold stories, the 9/11 commission found "no credible evidence" that Saddam played a role in the terrorist attack.

But what you won't hear is that Saddam's possible role in 9/11 had little to do with the case for war in Iraq.

Quite simply, war was waged in Iraq to prevent another 9/11. Apparently, this is too much nuance for most of the media to handle.

Did the administration make Iraq's substantial terrorist ties, including to al Qaeda, one of the primary reasons for going to war? Of course. But did the administration try to pin 9/11 on Saddam? No.

Yet the casual reader probably couldn't glean that from the initial media reaction to the commission's interim report.

Nor could the casual reader discern that the "news" on Iraq was but one paragraph in a 12-page document.

Reuters newswire, the outlet where al Qaeda is merely an "extremist network," pronounced in its headline, "Panel says no signs on Iraq, Qaeda link." The headline writer, though, must have missed the second paragraph, which acknowledged that the commission found that bin Laden himself had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in 1994.

The Associated Press was no better, and in fact, played a more overtly political hand. Its lead sentence stated that the commission's report was "[b]luntly contradicting the Bush administration." Except that it wasn't.

The primary "contradiction" contained in the report is that the panel has a different view of the credibility of the evidence suggesting a meeting between 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. Vice President Cheney has presented this meeting as a possibility, but he never claimed that it was ironclad.

The AP headline, though, was even more troubling. It stated that the commission found that "Iraq Rebuffed al Qaeda." But that's simply not the case. The report failed to find evidence that the 1994 meeting produced substantial follow-up, but that is a far cry from a "rebuff."

Obviously, if the administration had made the case for war based on Saddam actively supporting 9/11, the media would be pulling those quotes. Which explains why the media instead had to distort the administration's words.

Exhibit number one is Vice President Dick Cheney's comment Monday that Saddam had "long-established ties" to al Qaeda. The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin, for example, claimed that Cheney's statement was "at odds" with the commission report.

But the commission report noted that Saddam didn't play a significant role in 9/11, not that he didn't have "long-established ties" to al Qaeda. That' s not an unimportant distinction.

Explains 9/11 Commission spokesman Jonathan Stull, "The report doesn't close the book on connections between Iraq and al Qaeda." And how could it, with only one paragraph on the issue?

More important, it couldn't have "closed the book," because Saddam did have "long-established ties" to al Qaeda. The best case to date, in fact, has been made by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard in his new book, "The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America."

Far from some crackpot conspiracy theorist, Hayes is a cautious, seasoned journalist who is careful to add caveats about each piece of evidence. Even though, as he is quick to point out, a number of the stories and events may turn out not to be true, the sheer volume of ties-in terms of both depth and breadth-between Iraq and al Qaeda should leave little doubt that this was a determined, ongoing relationship.

"The Connection" lives up to its title in exploring Saddam's support for and sheltering of one of the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing, as well as extensive meetings between various Iraqi intelligence officials and bin Laden over the years. And recent events serve to
corroborate Hayes' reporting on Zarqawi's substantial Iraqi ties.

Hayes even documents evidence suggesting an agreement for Iraq to aid al Qaeda in developing WMD. The danger is obvious: stockpiles or no, no one disputes Saddam's WMD know-how.

With heaps of evidence documenting at least a substantial relationship, the question becomes: what more do the media need? A photograph of a Saddam-bin Laden tea party?

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

How can anyone call assisted suicide, or murder, compassionate?

06.17.04 (5:32 am)   [edit]
[b]Compassionate or Callous?[/b]
Assisted suicide undermines our essential humanity.
By Wesley J. Smith

Compassion, literally defined, means, "to suffer with another." That is why I have always found the monopolization of that word by proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide so discordant. Euthanasia isn't about suffering with anybody. It's about using someone's suffering — and the pity it evokes — as a justification to kill.

The Netherlands has allowed euthanasia for more than 30 years, supposedly under strict guidelines to protect the vulnerable from abuse. But the list of those "eligible" has steadily lengthened, to the point that it now includes depressed people without organic illnesses. And now, the Dutch government has opened the legal door to killing patients with Alzheimer's disease. In doing so, the nation sent a powerful message to Alzheimer's patients and their families: The lives of those with this dreaded disease are so burdensome and undignified that they are not worth maintaining or protecting.

Contrast this with the message Nancy Reagan and her family sent the world by lovingly caring for Ronald Reagan in his declining years. This is what true compassion looks like. Through their unwavering devotion — giving wholeheartedly to Reagan even when he had little to give back in return, and taking some of his suffering on their own shoulders for ten difficult years — the Reagan family provided a vivid demonstration of the power of unconditional love. Nothing that has been done to recognize the late president — the naming of an airport after him, the public outpouring of respect during the week of mourning, the burying of political hatchets — could have honored Ronald Reagan the man, husband, and father more appropriately.

Ronald Reagan understood clearly how crucial it is to value all people equally, regardless of their capacities or state of health. Writing in Human Life Review in 1983, in words that are especially poignant considering what befell him ten years later, he warned:

[i] Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value. Some have said that only those individuals with "consciousness of self" are human beings.[/i]

This dehumanization offended Reagan to his core. He warned that the philosophy established at the Founding of the United States that all are created equal, possessing an inalienable right to life, is subverted when some of us are seen as disposable. And he recognized that sanctioning their killing — even in a desire to alleviate suffering — undermines our essential humanity.

Of course, some would say that the reverse is true, that a life with Alzheimer's isn't really living. Better to put people out of their misery than allow them to die slowly, while losing their identities. Such an end is seen as especially burdensome for those who have lived robust lives of independence, intellectual rigor, achievement, and accomplishment — people who would be humiliated to see themselves having to depend so totally on others for their care.

But the life Reagan led in his declining years demonstrates how wrongheaded such views are. True, Reagan was no longer able to occupy the public stage. True, he was very ill. True, this caused him and his family tremendous anguish. But it is untrue that falling prey to catastrophic illness meant that he possessed less human dignity and moral worth than he did when telling Michael Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." Indeed, what we have learned in the last week about Reagan's gentle life in his final, private years demonstrates that there can be profound meaning even in the most difficult and trying circumstances.

Betsy Streisand's "Memories of a Friend in the Park," a first-person observation piece published in the June 21, 2004 U.S. News and World Report, was especially touching in this regard. Streisand recounts how, as Reagan's Alzheimer's forced him out of the public limelight in the late 1990s, he frequented a park in Beverly Hills. Reagan, accompanied by his nurse, liked to sit on a park bench and watch children at play. She recalled:

Reagan didn't speak much to adults. It was our children he was interested in. Time and again these sticky little specimens encrusted with juice and sand would come up next to him as they made their way to the bags of snacks on the bench. And he would beckon them closer...And although he gradually stopped speaking to us — and our children — we never stopped speaking to him or having the kids play close by where he could watch.

As Reagan's cognitive and verbal abilities collapsed, his human desire to love and be loved remained undiminished. Reagan's son Michael spoke emotionally to this when he described his dad's joy at hugging and being hugged. "As the years went by and he could no longer recognize me," Michael said in a tribute to his father, "I began a process of hugging him whenever I would see him." Most poignantly, the son recalled once forgetting to hug his father goodbye. As he was about to get into his car, Michael's wife told him to turn around. There in the doorway was Ronald Reagan, arms outstretched, waiting for his hug. Tears in his eyes, Michael rushed back to his father and the two embraced.

Even at the very end, love triumphed over disease. Reagan loved his Nancy deeply and intensely, and as he was breathing his last breaths, somehow, some way, he dug deep within himself and found some final reserve of devotion. He opened his eyes, recognized her, and giving her one final look, he died. Nancy Reagan and the family called his final great communication a "wonderful gift."

Now juxtapose this story of anguish — as well as love, grace, and devotion — with euthanasia in the Netherlands, which will now be applied to patients with Alzheimer's. The best view of it is found in a book by a nursing-home doctor named Bert Keizer. In Dancing with Mr. D. Keizer describes several euthanasia cases in which he provided lethal injections. In every case, he depicts the lives of frail and dying people under his care as pointless, useless, ugly, grotesque. Those with whom he interacts all seem to share these views, including his colleagues, family members of patients, and the patients themselves — allowing Keizer to kill patients without bad conscience.

One man he describes probably has lung cancer but the diagnosis is never certain. When a colleague asks, "Why rush?" while pointing out that the man isn't suffering terribly, Keizer snaps, "Is it for us to answer this question? All I know is that he wants to die more or less upright and that he doesn't want to crawl to his grave the way a dog crawls howling to the side walk after he's been hit by a car."

Keizer either doesn't know or doesn't care that with proper medical treatment, people with lung cancer don't have to die in unmitigated agony. The next day, he lethally injects the patient, telling his colleagues as he walks to the man's room, "If anyone so much as whispers cortisone [a palliative agent] or 'uncertain diagnosis,' I'll hit him."

Another patient Keizer kills is disabled by Parkinson's disease. The patient requests euthanasia, but before the act can be carried out, he hesitates after receiving a letter from his religious brother who warns that God is against suicide. This upsets Keizer, who writes: "I don't know what to do with such a wavering death wish. It's getting on my nerves. Does he want to die or doesn't he? I do hope we won't have to go over the whole business again, right from the very start."

Keizer decides to push the process along. He asks the nursing-home chaplain to assure the man that his euthanasia will not upset God. The man reconsiders and again decides he wants to die. Keizer is quick with the lethal injection, happy the man has "good veins." The patient expires before his uncertainty can disturb his doctor's mood again.

Where is the compassion in this? Caring, unlike killing, can be costly in time, money, and emotional anguish. But, as the near universal outpouring of admiration for Nancy Reagan as caregiver demonstrates, it also ennobles and liberates. Indeed, as Ronald Reagan wrote long before he knew the words would apply so personally:

[i] My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.[/i]

— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture.

Hussein torture, murder vids get zero press, while Lefties bleat on about Abu Ghraib

06.16.04 (8:40 am)   [edit]
And of course, with Hussein a day of torture, decapitation, and rape was any day.

Abu Ghraib was an anomaly, something that isn't done by the US military routinely, or by that many soldiers. It was unlawful, the crimes are being prosecuted. It certainly isn't Bush policy.

Just ask the International Red Cross, no friends of the Bush administration, to find out that the military was quick to respond to these charges even before the IRC offered its report.

Meanwhile, a day in Hussein's government went something like this:

"Peace be upon you, Akbar, how was your day?"

"Well, I decapitated three girls who failed to recite the pledge to Saddam correctly, and I threw the goalie who lost our soccer game to Yemen in the industrial plastic shredder. You know, same shit, different day."

"I hear ya. Hey did you hear about Jaleem?

"What about him?"

"He got promoted to mass grave filler!"

"Oh, praise Allah. Praise Saddam!"

"Well, I gotta go. I have to carve some poetry from Saddam (peace be upon him) on a woman's forehead."

"Later."

"Later, dude."

Moral equivalence is the disease of the west, it clouds truth. There is a huge moral difference between the US and the rest of the world, between the US army and the Iraqi government. And the difference is: we're civilized, we're Christian, and we don't hurt people intentionally. Better yet, when incidents happen where people are hurt intentionally, we prosecute.

By contrast, the terrorists that the Left have gone to the wall for have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They recognize no civility, no international law, not even the pacifist laws of the Islam they claim to cherish (there are some). It is telling that, like in so many conflicts in the past, the Left has defended the enemy instead of the very folks dying for their freedom.

A pretty good gauge that Abu Ghraib was abnormal behavior was by the outrage by the American people-- not Lefties, because they falsely claim a moral highground they can't justify, even while they're judging you with moral equivalnce.

But if you want real outrage, look at what life was really like in the Iraq where murderous dictator Saddam Hussein was defended by the "human rights" focused left-wing.

It is an outrage that the truth of what real torture is and how horrible Hussein was has been suppressed by the Left-wing press.

Read on--

[i]We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse — so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under "U.S. management." [/i]

[b]REPORTING FOR THE ENEMY [/b]
By DEBORAH ORIN

June 16, 2004 -- THE video only lasts four minutes or so — grue some scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.
Some who stayed wished they hadn't. [b]They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises. [/b]

Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.

[b]But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news. [/b]

In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it.

No surprise, [b]since no newscast would air the videos of Nick Berg and Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl getting decapitated, or of U.S. contractors in Fallujah getting torn limb from limb by al Qaeda operatives.

But every TV network has endlessly shown photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib. Why?

"Because most [journalists] want Bush to lose," says AEI scholar Michael Ledeen, who helped host the screening of the Saddam video. [/b]

It's not just journalists. [b]The Pentagon has lots of Saddam atrocity footage — but is loathe to release it, possibly for fear it would be taken as a crude attempt to blunt criticism of Abu Ghraib.[/b]

[b][i][u]So the world sees photos of U.S. interrogators using dogs to scare prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But not the footage of Saddam's prisoners getting fed — alive — to Doberman pinschers on Saddam's watch. (That video's been described by former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.) [/b][/i][/u]

Former Pentagon official Richard Perle raps "faint hearts in the administration," saying they've bought into the idea that it's "politically incorrect" to show the horrors of Saddam's regime.

But he also faults the media — after all, AEI's briefings on Iraq have been standing-room-only, but the room was half empty for the screening of the Saddam torture video.

But part of the issue is simply that Saddam's tortures, like al Qaedas tactics, are so awful that they're unbearable to watch.

If I couldn't watch them myself, I'm hardly arguing that others should have to. Yet it raises a very complex problem in the War on Terror. It's worse than creating moral equivalence between Saddam's tortures and prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. [b]It's that we do far more to highlight our own wrongdoings precisely because they are less appalling. [/b]

In this era, a photo is everything. We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse — so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under "U.S. management."

Terrorism is sometimes called asymmetric warfare — America had to adjust to new tactics to deal with small bands of terrorists who were able to turn our airplanes into weapons against us. [b]Now it turns out that we also face asymmetric propaganda — where the terrorists gain a p.r. advantage precisely because what they do is so horrific that our media aren't able to deal with it. [/b]

The U.S. military hasn't figured out a strategic way to deal with this problem.

But neither has the press.

Media analysts like Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler admit it sounds "sanctimonious" to justify publishing prison abuse photos — but not al Qaeda beheading videos — in the name of showing "the reality of war." But that is just what he did.

[b]AEI spokeswoman Veronique Rodman, puzzled by the minimal interest in the Saddam torture video, is sure that if it was a video of equally horrific torture committed by U.S. troops, the press would find ways to show or report it. [/b]

Reporters have to face up to the fact that right now, if we highlight the wrongs that Americans commit but not — out of squeamishness — the far worse horrors committed by others, we become propaganda tools for the other side.

This isn't to argue in any way against reporting the Abu Ghraib scandal. But reporters have to face up to the problems — and find ways to achieve a more balanced account.

Saddam's torture videos may be too awful to show, but it's hard to explain the low media interest in the story of seven Iraqi men who had their right hands chopped off by Saddam's thugs — and then got new prosthetic arms and new hope in America.

They're eloquent, they're available, they're grateful for the U.S. liberation of Iraq. No one can better talk about Saddam's tortures — and no one is more eager to do so. [b]Yet, as of yesterday, the New York Times had written 177 stories on Abu Ghraib — with over 40 on the front page. The self-proclaimed "paper of record" hadn't written a single story about those seven Iraqi men. [/b]

Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington Bureau Chief

Billionaire Soros continues to fund hypocritical Left wing in new Hollywood anti-Bush ads

06.16.04 (8:12 am)   [edit]
Not only is it hilarious and sad to watch Lefties talk up and down about special interests, shady campaign financing and all of the other bugaboos they blame Republicans for generally and Bush for specifically while greedily lapping up Daddy Warbucks Soros' billions to fund their illegal campaign ads, ads based on lies, fear, and stereotypes, it is also hilarious and sad to read tortured Left-wing defenses of one of the world's biggest freakin' corrupt capitalists ("robber barons" as WinstonSmith, CheckItOut, Sam Adams, et al might call him if he were in any way conservative).

How is this a serious ideology? How are the Democrats a serious party? All this talk you hear about Democrats being for the working man is just talk. They belittle the working man, raising taxes on him because they feel they're entitled to the his money. They blather on and on about special interests corrupting our government, but John Kerry, the man they want to be president, is among the Senate's chief receivers of PAC money. They celebrate working-class phonies like Michael Moore, who like MoveOn makes money off of lies that spread disinformation and fear and hasn't spent time with a poor person in decades. They hate to work-- they like to take everyone else's money. THey don't earn their positions and they refuse to be civil. They believe they have a birthright to lord themselves over you and make you eat their shit.

They believe in the expansion and rule of government over the people, which is about as far away from the nature of our country's founding impulse as you can get.

Now Soros has gotten more losers to spread his evil message: Hollywood. I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. Actors are about as deep as bird baths, feeling that they deserve to get millions for pretending for a living. These are the people that lecture everyone about the environment and fly around in private jets or drive around in 200,000 dollar Hummers.

Give me a break.

It should shock everyone that foreigner Soros has made his intentions clear-- in the age of Campaign Finance Reform, he has made it his goal to get rid of Bush by any means necessary, even if it means using all of his money to finance the convenient and illegal "527" ads, ads that can lie and slander the president but just can't explicitly tell you to vote for Kerry (even though everyone knows the implication).

It would be one thing if the Left was just honest and said "yeah, we know that money talks", but they take Soros' money with one hand and point a finger at "special interests" with the other, saying that CFR is needed because of corrupt money. What the f--k is Soros' money if not corrupt? He's an outsider trying to sway an election using lies!

Maybe we shouldn' be surprised-- after all hypocrisy is like breathing for the Left. Maybe we can't blame them.

All this crap you hear from the moronic left-wingers on this site about Bush being "Orwellian" and a "Robber baron" are all titles more fitting for the Left-wing.

God help us all.

[b]Hollywood puts stamp on bid to stamp out Bush
SHOW-BIZ GLITZ AIDS DEMOCRATS' CAMPAIGN BLITZ AS MOVEON.ORG CHANGES FACE OF POLITICAL ADS[/b]
By Daniel Rubin
Knight Ridder

Turned off by political attack ads? Get your news from late-night comedy shows? Try this:

A comely cartoon flight attendant, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, lights the cigar of a nervous businessman, read by Kevin Bacon. ``How's the reconstruction going?'' he's asked. ``Great,'' he replies, ``I mean profitable. Very profitable.''

As a plane full of businessmen strap on parachutes, grabbing their briefcases and guns, the announcer asks: ``What if the same men who profited from the war had to fight it?''

Moved?

How about a television ad written by satirist Al Franken, in which a $25,000-a-year waitress (Ione Skye) explains Bush's tax cuts to a wealthy lawyer (Illeana Douglas).

Recognizing how eyes glaze over when confronted with traditional appeals, Democrats are turning to Hollywood messengers in their quest to uproot President Bush this fall.

At least 10 such ads are being readied to run before the November election -- all funded by MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group largely backed by billionaire George Soros.

It has signed up director Rob Reiner (``When Harry Met Sally . . .,'' ``The American President'') and writer Aaron Sorkin, creator of ``The West Wing.'' Woody Harrelson (``Cheers,'' ``Natural Born Killers'') and Richard Linklater (``School of Rock,'' ``Dazed and Confused'') will also direct ads.

Movies with political ambition will be playing on the big screen, too: Michael Moore's Cannes-conquering ``Fahrenheit 9/11''; John Sayles' ``Silver City,'' in which Chris Cooper plays an inarticulate president from a right-wing dynasty; at least two Kerry-celebrating documentaries; and an environmental horror flick already playing the red states, ``The Day After Tomorrow.''

Do any of these have a chance of changing minds? There's little precedent, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Many predicted ``The Right Stuff'' would guarantee the presidency for former astronaut John Glenn in 1984, she notes.

But in a tight election, anything might tip the balance, says Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich says watch out for ``Fahrenheit 9/11,'' which charges that Bush has bungled the terror war and sent U.S. troops to Iraq for specious reasons.

The film feasted on free publicity when Disney blocked its subsidiary Miramax from distributing it. Miramax's co-chiefs, the Weinstein brothers, since have bought the film on their own and are teaming with Lions Gate and IFC Films for a June 25 release.

``The more fighting there is about the film before its release, the more publicity, the more it becomes that kind of show-business phenomenon where people just feel they have to see it to have an opinion, even if it's to hate it . . .,'' Rich says.

Should that happen and some pro-Bush audiences end up in the theater, ``they may find themselves moved by the more emotional and less polemical parts of Moore's account of a family that loses a son in the Iraq war,'' Rich says.

The film's distributors have signed on some veteran political hands to massage the media for ``Fahrenheit 9/11,'' including Clinton White House advisers Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani, said a Miramax official.

Conservative author and former New Left activist David Horowitz doubts Hollywood can turn an election.

``I'm not really shaking in my boots as a Republican when extremist radical leftists in Hollywood -- people out of touch with any semblance of political reality -- go about making campaign spots,'' says Horowitz, editor of the frontpagemag.com Web site.

`` . . . In my view, Hollywood has become an asset to Republicans because it is so lunatic.''

Still, no one doubts the power of pictures or the ability of comedy to go where screed is uninvited.

``The Day After Tomorrow'' may make people think about global warming, but if it doesn't have a tipping effect, it won't be for lack of trying by MoveOn. The group held a rally last month at the New York premiere, where 500 members heard speakers including former vice president Al Gore, who lit into the Bush record on the environment.

The weekend before last, MoveOn dispatched 8,000 volunteers to hand leaflets to moviegoers leaving theaters across the country.

Richie predicts that the film will preach to the converted: ``What it will tend to do is harden beliefs of those who think it is important to do more -- like MoveOn.''

Horowitz doubts global warming will be high on voters' minds: ``The election is going to be decided on the war,'' he says. ``And that is it. It's not going to be decided on the silver screen or a couple TV ads.''

The timing of the John Sayles film is a mix of commerce and politics. ``Whenever there's a lot of attention on politics, it's a good time to put a political movie out,'' Sayles told Entertainment Weekly.

Steve Rosenbaum, director of ``Inside the Bubble,'' a documentary about the Kerry campaign's brain trust, is still debating the right release date, recognizing it's good business to release the film before the election, while interest is highest. But that would leave the film without the best ending.

Rosenbaum says his goal is to show people ``that there is a side to John Kerry that hasn't been able to see the light of day.'' He says he is not making a 90-minute ad: ``We don't think people are going to pay $9 to see a political commercial.''

Another documentary aims to show off Kerry. George Butler, whose ``Pumping Iron'' lifted Arnold Schwarzenegger, turns his lens on Kerry's Vietnam experience in ``Tour of Duty,'' from Douglas Brinkley's book. The film is scheduled for September.

Swing-state undecideds make up about 11 percent of voters, according to an Annenberg survey released June 3.

The messages with the most potential to reach undecideds may be the MoveOn commercials, aimed at the heart of the undecideds -- a group that Adam Clymer, political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey, describes this way: ``They pay less attention to politics. They read less news. They are younger; they are a little more negative than everyone else about the war and the economy.''

How can there be a question on Iran's nuclear "intent"?

06.16.04 (5:47 am)   [edit]
The title of this article is just a little to charitable.

[b]Iran Gives Mixed Signals on Nuclear Intent [/b]
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria - Iran's president said his country had no "moral" obligation to stop enriching uranium even as support grew for a resolution reprimanding — but not punishing — the country for blocking a U.N. probe of its nuclear activities.

President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) stopped short of saying Iran will resume enrichment or stop all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

But he said Iran would reject any resolution from the agency's board of governors that strongly criticizes Iran.

"With the ongoing trend, we have no moral commitment anymore to suspend uranium enrichment," Khatami told reporters in Tehran. "Of course, we don't declare that we want to do something ... it also doesn't mean that we are withdrawing from (the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty)."

A toughly worded draft resolution under consideration at the IAEA 35-nation board of governors meeting lacked a direct threat of sanctions but did keep pressure on Iran to come clean on aspects of its 20-year covert nuclear program that was discovered two years ago.

The document — written by Germany, France and Britain — was expected to be accepted by the meeting later this week, diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

In Vienna, Iranian chief delegate Hossain Mousavian said his country had "no option" but to continue working with the nuclear agency.

But he suggested Iran could terminate talks with France, Germany and Britain — the authors of the draft — on future sales of nuclear technology to his country in retaliation for the tone of the document, which he called "counterproductive for the continuation of cooperation."

The three European powers have held out the prospect of such sales if Iran agrees to scrap its uranium enrichment program. Iran has instead suspended enrichment but reserves the right to resume them — a threat implied by Mousavian on Wednesday.

Khatami addressed the same theme in Tehran.

"If the draft resolution proposed by the European countries is approved by the IAEA, Iran will reject it," Khatami said. "If Europe has no commitment toward Iran, then Iran will not have a commitment toward Europe."

Iran maintains that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gives it a legitimate right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program, including enrichment.

"A resolution that denies us of our definite right (to keep a peaceful nuclear program) will not be valid. There will be no guarantee for its enforcement and we won't accept it," Khatami said.

Chief U.S. delegate Kenneth Brill accused Tehran of engaging in a "full-court press of intimidation" to sway the IAEA meeting to tone down the language of the draft.

The new draft toned down demands on Iran to abort plans to build a heavy water reactor and slightly modified language taking Tehran to task for hampering the IAEA probe. But the overall wording remained tough, according to the envoys.

One key phrase in the planned resolution "deplored" Iran's spotty record on cooperating with the agency. Other omissions by Iran were noted with "concern" or "serious concern." All the phrases are tough language in the diplomatic context.

The draft contained no deadline or "trigger mechanism" as sought by the United States and its allies that could set into motion possible sanctions if Iran continued its foot-dragging past a certain date.

However, in an apparent nod to the United States, Canada, Australia and other nations calling for more action, the draft contrasted the "the passage of time" — a year since the IAEA probe began — and the still blurry contours of Iran's nuclear program.

The draft appeared to echo the sentiments of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who said Monday in unusually blunt comments that his agency's probe "can't go on forever."

The United States wants the IAEA to declare Iran in breach of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and to refer Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.

A diplomat — speaking like all delegates on condition of anonymity — told The Associated Press that Washington recognized it could not get majority board support for a direct or implicit threat of U.N. sanctions.

Instead, he said, the Americans were looking ahead to the next board meeting in September with the expectation that new revelations about Iran's nuclear program would surface by then.

The results of analysis of enriched uranium traces found on military sites in Iran and now being evaluated by the agency could provide the trigger in September, said the diplomat, suggesting such a finding could support suspicions that Tehran enriched uranium domestically.

Iran denies working on enrichment beyond the experimental stage and says the traces found within the country, which include minute amounts at weapons-grade levels, were inadvertently imported.

Under growing international pressure, Iran has suspended uranium enrichment and stopped building centrifuges. It also has allowed IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities without notice. But recent revelations have raised new suspicions.

An IAEA report, written by ElBaradei, says Iran inquired about buying thousands of magnets for centrifuges on the black market — casting doubt on Iranian assertions that its P-2 centrifuge program was purely experimental and not aimed for full uranium enrichment.

Maybe if Whoisjohngalt didn't act like an ass, he'd get more 'debate'

06.15.04 (11:35 am)   [edit]
Whoisjohngalt is going on a well-earned vacation, I guess, and basically wanted to inform everyone, as he has a way of doing every time he punches out an entry, that folks who argue on the 'net are retarded.

Fascinating stuff, because this dope has had his share of acting like one on his own blog, even when he's not arguing anything.

This guy likes to make fun of other people. Because he disagreed with a blog of mine he decided not to "debate" with me but make fun of me. He is your typical left-wing hypocrite: he engages in sub-civilized behavior while claiming to be above it.

I would think that arguing with this ass in real life would be no different than arguing with him on the 'net. And after he finished with his arrogant, childish remarks, he'd then claim to be bigger than them.

Of course, this is a guy who thinks Wes Clark's 'presidential' looks override his psychotic tendencies and qualify him for president.

Enjoy your vacation, schmuck.

Video shows UN ambulances transporting PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS to murder Israeli soldiers

06.14.04 (10:38 pm)   [edit]
From Fox News-- http://www.foxnews.com/story/...,2933,122648,00.html

[b]Second Front[/b]
Monday, June 14, 2004
By David Asman

The United Nations is covering its rear in the oil for food scandal. And now it's engaged on a second front as new evidence is emerging that a U.N. ambulance was used by Palestinian terrorists for their getaway following an engagement on May 11, in which 6 Israeli soldiers were killed.

The Israelis have been making the charge for years that the U.N. and Red Cross have been providing cover for terrorists, with American taxpayers footing some of the bill.

But now there's evidence to back up the charge. In video shot by Reuters in Southern Gaza, Palestinian gunmen are seen piling into the back of a clearly marked U.N. ambulance in the midst of a firefight.

Israel further charged that the U.N. ambulances were used to transport body parts of the Israeli soldiers who were killed.

When Israelis leveled the charge, the U.N. denied the incident and demanded an apology.

A U.N. spokesman now concedes that armed Palestinians used the vehicle, claiming the driver was forced into service. But Israel's deputy ambassador to the U.N. notes that the driver didn't report the incident until after the videotape was shown.

And that's the Observer.

The Abu Ghraib bait and switch

06.14.04 (2:16 pm)   [edit]
From Junkyard blog--

[b]THE ABU GHRAIB BAIT AND SWITCH[/b]- http://junkyardblog.transfini...

As I predicted weeks ago, the Abu Ghraib scandal is the one line of attack available to everyone who opposed the Iraq war--the Western left, Democrat demagogues the likes of Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, the press, and most obviously the terrorists themselves--that has any chance of succeeding. And because it has a chance of succeeding, it is being pursued with untrammeled vigor. I'm sure Biden and Kennedy and their allies can see the top of the hill they're climbing now, unmindful or uncaring that their possession of that hill all but dictates that we lose the war in Iraq and on terrorism itself. That's fine with them, as long as anybody but Bush is in the White House this time next year.

The latest round of the Abu Ghraib abuse-a-thon has to do with the Justice Department memos written up presumably for the Attorney General and President's consideration in the wake of 9-11. Gleeful Democrat Senators have adopted a slashing tecnique of demanding the Attorney General's testimony before their committees, then mocking each of his answers to all of their questions. They are also, in the process, pulling a bait and switch. They are holding up Justice memos that suggest, correctly, that al Qaeda terrorists are not subject to treatment under the Geneva Conventions because in their techniques, their tactics and their mode of dress have taken themselves outside Geneva's strictures and therefore its protections. Those memos are then being used to suggest that they created policy that became the abuse in Abu Ghraib.

Geneva works like this: If you sign on to it, you pledge to treat enemies on the battlefield and those you subsequently capture under its guidelines. The benefit you are supposed to receive from this is the assurance that any enemy you happen to fight who is also a Geneva signatory will likewise treat your soldiers in battle and in confinement. That's all fine and nice if we, say, fight a war with England, a nation that shares more than just a language with us. But it all gets blurry the further you get from solid and recognized nation-state conflict, and it is downright incomprehensible once you get to a situation in which a nation-state finds itself at war with a loose confederation of criminal gangs operating across several international borders. When those gangs target civilians (which is not encouraged in Geneva), and when those gangs do not wear regular uniforms, do not answer to any national government, operate within several nations which sometimes provide them succor but not in all cases direct command authority, Geneva becomes more than difficult--it becomes counterproductive. And in such a case, even Geneva signatories are under no obligation to follow it.

That's the situation we have found ourselves in since 9-11. We are fighting a multi-national criminal enterprise that has as its goal the eradication of our way of life and the imposition of its own on us. That criminal enterprise isn't using tanks and ships and military aircraft to target our military bases, materiel and personnel--it's using subterfuge to target us as citizens in order to sap our will and bring us down gradually.

When captured, the plans an individual terrorist may carry around in his head could be invaluable. Jose Padilla, for instance, was arrested in the progress of his "dirty bomb" plot based on information obtained from terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. Had we followed the Geneva Conventions, which require captors only to obtain name, rank and serial number of detainees, we would likely never have known of Padilla's plots, which included blowing up several apartment buildings full of innocent people. And what good is demanding name, rank and serial numbers of terrorists anyway, when they use multiple aliases and operate without specific rank and without any kind serial number? We would have allowed the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent Americans in order to rigorously follow a set of laws that end up handcuffing our operations while expanding those of the terrorists. Surely that isn't what Senate Democrats have in mind?

I end that with a question mark, because I honestly no longer understand just what it is the Democrats want to prove or what they want to accomplish. We are in Iraq now, having toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago. Do they really want to undermine our moral authority in Iraq to the point that no matter what happens there--civil war or peaceful transition to sovereignty--the US ends up the loser? Do they really want our military and law enforcement personnel so restricted in their operations that innocent Americans die in terrorist plots that could have been prevented? Would they applaud total adherence to Geneva even if it led directly to more 9-11s? Of course not. They would castigate the administration for not doing more, not doing everything it could to stop attacks. They constantly play games with the war, creating gotchas that expose our interrogation techniques and further restrict the tools we can use to fight the war. But that's a discussion for another time.

For now, I want to return to Abu Ghraib and the bait and switch. The memos about which Attorney General John Ashcroft was grilled last week are suggestions based on a changing and chaotic atmosphere. Andrew McCarthy does a very nice job out outlining the circumstances in which they were drafted--we had no idea when the next strike or wave of strikes would come. We had little idea how to fight a war against an enemy like al Qaeda, a war that for all we knew would take place right on our streets. In that climate, Justice lawyers drafted a series of recommendations, and those recommendations have found their way to the demagogues who did nothing about terrorism during the 1990s and apparently want nothing done about it now. And those demagogues--Democrats--ar e attempting to draw a line from those memos to that prison in Iraq.

The problem with that is, thus far there is no evidence to connect them. The Bush administration didn't enact the more exotic recommendations in those memos, and there was no memo that outlined stacking naked terrorists in pyramids for photographs. The bulk of the Abu Ghraib abuses took place on a single night, and it's still apparent that the participants in them were not acting under orders from Washington. And in any case, abuse and torture are not the same things, and what went on in Abu Ghraib looks more like abuse than outright torture.

But let's take the extreme case and explore it a bit. If the abuses turn out to have come directly from a Bush directive, what are we to make of that? At the risk of sounding incredibly crass, I hope the average American makes very little of it. Wars are terrible things. You kill people, break their things, overrun their country and destroy their government if you're successful at it. If you're not successful at it, all those things and more are done to you and your country. Given the great range of possible crimes committed in war, from massacres to genocides and the like, the Abu Ghraid abuses are not great crimes. They pale in comparison to the kidnapping and beheading of civilian non-combattants, as the terrorists have done, and they even pale in comparison to the internment of Japanese Americans and the theft of their property during World War II. That last crime didn't cause us to lose the war, and we don't look back today and say we should have lost that war because Roosevelt was too heavy-handed with loyal Americans who happened to have blood links to the enemy at the time. Abu Ghraib should similarly not cause us to lose this war, but if the press and Democrats get their way, it just might.

Abu Ghraib, awful as it is, does not put us on the same moral plane as the terrorists any more than Japanese internment put us on the same moral plane as the Nazis. Terrorists killed 3,000 in a single morning, those killed just going about their workaday lives or flying off to Disneyland or going to visit kin. To fall to that moral level, we would have to do far worse than what was done in Abu Ghraib.

Posted by B. Preston at 12:40 PM

Washed up ex-ambassadors, diplomats, and military officers oppose Bush

06.14.04 (1:44 pm)   [edit]
So we have *some* ex Reagan, Bush, Sr. and Clinton officials, all who either kicked the can down the road on the question of how to fight terror or put it off for more pressing reasons bitching about President Bush and his handling of the war on terror.

Naturally, most of these guys are diplomats, ambassadors and ex-State Department types (State is the perennial liberal department in any presidential administration).

All things considered-- and that includes no help from the UN and the EU-- Bush has done a masterful job in fighting the war on terror. These has beens are just that-- their thinking is in the old days, when terrorism was ignorantly treated as a law enforcement problem. They're upset that Bush is taking terrorism seriously and seeing it as a war against Islamofascism, and that he has to do what it takes to win it-- including upsetting our limp-wristed left-wing and useless allies.

Money quote from the article:

"The group does not endorse Kerry, although it more or less goes without saying in the statement," said Harrop. (Harrop is, interestingly enough, the ex US ambassador to Israel).

These folks like Kerry because Kerry would sell out the country to "internationalism", would give our sovereignty over to the UN (see Harvard interview, 1971). The diplomats would all sit around and drink while freedom shrunk around the world and terrorism continued undeterred (see: Arafat, the Taliban, etc.)....

Everyone wants things to go back to the way they were-- back to the days when diplomats belittled what terrorism was (which is why it was treated as a "law enforcement problem-- all State had to do was say 'we've issued an arrest warrant' and let it go-- the warrant showed that they were doing something, dammit!). If we go back to the way things were we allow new 9-11s and, if Kerry or any other left-wing nutjob is in charge, we create a country beholden to terrorism.

Why can't people get it that terrorism has to be defeated? There are no redeeming goals to terrorism. It is not a form of legitimate resitance-- its goal is not political but ideological. These terrorists don't want people freed, or some other political goal met. [b]These guys want every western man, woman, and child dead for no reason other than that they are not Islamic. And they'd probably want women dead anyway, regardless of their religion.[.b]

If we elect John Kerry we lose the war on terror and we doom America. These elitists against Bush either don't care or think that they will be spared when terrorists strike again. They won't.

The article-- http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/...

Whaddya know-- UN missions painted as booze-soaked orgies

06.14.04 (9:25 am)   [edit]
This is an older article (from May 27), but I figure better late than never.

[b]U.N. missions painted as booze-soaked orgies[/b]
By Stewart Stogel
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

NEW YORK — A book by three current and former U.N. employees about peacekeeping operations portrays wild parties with alcohol and drugs, and convicts and mental-asylum inmates passing as soldiers.

Embarrassed U.N. officials have threatened firing or other disciplinary action against two of the authors, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson. U.N. rules bar employees from writing about their work without approval, which had been denied in this case.

The third author, former U.N. employee Kenneth Cain, works full time as a writer.

The book, "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Matters," covers the authors' experiences during the mid-1990s in Cambodia, Somalia and Haiti and paints unflattering pictures of the operations and the peacekeepers. It is due out on June 1.

The U.N. peacekeepers sent to Cambodia in 1993 to restore normalcy and supervise open elections, resembled "the international jet set on vacation," writes Mr. Cain, a Harvard law-school graduate.

The writers describe sex parties in "a villa" in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, that was "well-known for its Friday night parties," where alcohol and drugs were commonly used.

A favorite drink among the U.N. personnel at the parties was the "Space Shuttle." It was made "by distilling a pound of marijuana over a six-week period with increasingly good quality spirits. It is a work of love, and the final product is an amber-colored liquid that tastes like cognac. We drink it with rounds of Coke."

In another section, the authors say the "peacekeeping troops" sent to Cambodia by Bulgaria were not really soldiers.

They write that the Bulgarian government, starved for hard currency, actually cut a deal with inmates, offering them pardons if they accepted the U.N. assignment. Bulgaria, in turn, received financial compensation from the United Nations for its troops.

"The Bulgarians wanted the money, but didn't want to send their best-trained troops. So ... they offered inmates in the prisons and psychiatric wards a deal: Put on a uniform and go to Cambodia for six months, you're free on return," the book says.

Scores of criminals accepted the offer, were given uniforms and became U.N. peacekeepers, the authors say.

Mr. Cain describes the Bulgarians as "a battalion of criminal lunatics [who] arrive in a lawless land. They're drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable Cambodian women and crash their U.N. Land Cruisers with remarkable frequency."

The Bulgarian Embassy yesterday denied all accusations of wrongdoing in connection with its dispatch of peacekeepers to Cambodia.

"It is totally untrue that the mission was made up of prisoners. Its members were reservists, and they were led by military commanders. Our regular army units were forbidden by law from undertaking foreign assignments at that time," Ambassador Elena Poptodorova said.

On the charge that Bulgaria undertook the job because it needed hard currency, she said, "U.N. compensation for our expenses came much later."

She acknowledged that there were incidents involving the peacekeepers, but maintained that they were "the exception rather than the rule."

Without going into the merits of the accusations in the book, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard conceded that the United Nations does not have a system to "verify" the credentials of troops offered for peacekeeping.

"When it comes to formed military units, we rely on the donor country to give us professional soldiers. ... There is not a quality-control test, and units vary in the degree of their training from country to country, even from unit to unit," he said.

Dr. Thomson, a U.N. physician, says in the book that he was sent to Haiti in mid-1993 to investigate human rights violations by the junta of Gen. Raoul Cedras.

In the country just a month, Dr. Thomson complained: "I'm already enraged, not by the work, but being unable to work. My patients are all either headless and rotting or alive and rotting, out of reach behind prison walls."

As conditions worsened, the United Nations decided on a pullout and sent Dr. Thomson to the nearby Dominican Republic.

"The U.N. yanked us out against our will into this catatonic tropical suburbia, this retirement home for failed humanitarians, leaving us sidelined with no way back in," he wrote.

Mr. Eckhard said a decision on whether to discipline the authors is "a political decision, but the authors have violated staff rules."

But he acknowledged that the world organization has no legal recourse to stop the publication of the book. A spokesman for the publisher, Miramax Books, said the company is not bound by obligations between the United Nations and the authors.

Air AMERICA big in Canada-- more Canadian than the CBC, actually

06.14.04 (8:17 am)   [edit]
[b]AIR AMERICA, CANADA BOUND[/b]
Mark Steyn
National Review
06-07-04

Remember Air America? The brilliant pre-publicity campaign marred only by an ill-advised decision to actually launch the product? The hype was coast to coast, but the station was only in a handful of markets, and a couple of those dumped the station after a bounced check, and most of the senior executives departed after a couple of weeks, which, according to whom you believe, was either part of the original business plan or extremely necessary because one of them was a “former Republican activist from Guam” and thus likely a double-agent for the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Many decades ago, Richard Mellon Scaife planted scores of deep sleepers in Guam on the off-chance it might get statehood in the next century.

So I was amazed to discover the other week that Air America is still out there. I divide my time, as the book jackets like to say, between New Hampshire and Quebec, and motoring ‘tween the two on the northern side of the border I’ve taken to listening to the Big 1070 WTWK Plattsburgh, serving not just the burgeoning twin-state market of remote north-eastern New York and remote north-western Vermont but also much of southern Quebec. I’m proud to be an Air America listener, even if I have to go to Canada to do it. You may not be able to listen to Al and Janeane in Chicago or Los Angeles, but once you leave the country they come booming in loud and clear, in the same way that Michael Moore always looms larger in Cannes, in every sense.

What’s wrong with Air America? Well, the trick for Democrats is to be like WTWK’s reception in Vermont – distorted and fuzzy. Distorted and fuzzy are the twin pillars of effective leftie strategy. Remember that favourite statistic of Bill Clinton – that 12 “kids” a day are killed by guns. When you examine the data, it turns out five-sixths of those 11.569 grade-school moppets are young adults between 15 and 19, many of whom are engaged in convenience-store hold-ups, drug deals and other activities which, though potentially lucrative, have a tendency to go awry. But fuzziness (the inevitable invocation of “the children”) makes the distortion difficult to question. And that’s how the left advances its agenda – muffling ruthless partisanship in fluffy talk.

Air America is distorted, but it’s not fuzzy. Take Randi Rhodes, whom I hear more of than anybody else. She’s on from three to seven Eastern, noon to four Pacific. That’s a big chunk of the broadcast day. When you’ve got a four-hour show, you need to be able to nudge the story along – you can’t be making the same complaint about Rumsfeld at seven o’clock that you were making at three. But Miss Rhodes doesn’t seem to know enough to be able to advance the narrative. She has a gay assistant, and the other day she was speaking highly about the attractiveness of his ass. This being radio, we’re obliged to take her word for it. But up at the other end the gay assistant leaves a lot to be desired: he doesn’t seem to be able to mine the Internet for those little items that effective radio hosts use to refresh their take on the issues.

Recently, she observed that Republicans are the way they are because they don’t get enough sex. This seems an odd observation from a host who’d spent much of the previous hour complaining that she wasn’t getting enough herself. The brave few who called in seemed motivated to do so by a gallant urge to remedy this deficiency rather than any insights into the issues under debate. One fellow went on to compare what America was doing in Iraq with the bombing of Dresden, and Miss Rhodes then explained that the Allies had bombed Dresden after the end of World War Two, which suggests she may have been reading the grade-school history primer back to front. The caller then went on to compare Bush and 9/11 with Hitler and the burning of the Reichstag. “Kinda sorta,” said Randi.

Kinda sorta. What did she mean? Was she really lending credence to the idea that Bush was behind September 11th? Or was she bluffing, stalling for time till the gay guy could find a reference book with this Reichstag thingy in it?

It’s a good thing Air America is such a flop or it would cause serious problems for the Democratic Party. Miss Rhodes, for example, has been urging those called up for Iraq to refuse to go – to desert, in other words – which, if I understand his nuances, isn’t exactly on message with John Kerry.

Perhaps one notices this more tootling along the autoroute in a province that’s still home to many graying pony-tailed draft dodgers from last time round. Indeed, in its combination of whiney victim complex and smug Bush moron jokes, Air America sounds far more Canadian than the CBC. I appreciate that “Air America! Nobody covers south-western Quebec like we do!” is probably not what their promotions guys foresaw in the original marketing strategy, but I offer it in a friendly spirit, and in hopes that they’ll extend the benefits of their toll-free number to my fellow Quebeckers. I heard the same guy from Long Island calling on successive days in May, so it couldn’t hurt to vary the diet with Yvan from Trois-Rivieres. Allons-y, Air America!

Supreme Court Keeps God in Pledge: Rejects Nedow's Authority to Speak for Daughter

06.14.04 (7:49 am)   [edit]
[b]Supreme Court Preserves 'God' in Pledge[/b]
By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court preserved the phrase "one nation, under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance, ruling Monday that a California atheist could not challenge the patriotic oath but sidestepping the broader question of separation of church and state.

At least for now, the decision — which came on Flag Day — leaves untouched the practice in which millions of schoolchildren around the country begin the day by reciting the pledge.

The court said atheist Michael Newdow could not sue to ban the pledge from his daughter's school and others because he did not have legal authority to speak for her.

Newdow is in a protracted custody fight with the girl's mother. He does not have sufficient custody of the child to qualify as her legal representative, the court said. Eight justices voted to reverse a lower court ruling in Newdow's favor.

Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) removed himself from participation in the case, presumably because of remarks he had made that seemed to telegraph his view that the pledge is constitutional.

"When hard questions of domestic relations are sure to affect the outcome, the prudent course is for the federal court to stay its hand rather than reach out to resolve a weighty question of federal constitutional law," Justice John Paul Stevens (news - web sites) wrote for the court.

"I may be the best father in the world," Newdow said shortly after the ruling was announced. "She spends 10 days a month with me. The suggestion that I don't have sufficient custody is just incredible. This is such a blow for parental rights."

The 10-year-old's mother, Sandra Banning, had told the court she has no objection to the pledge. The full extent of the problems with the case was not apparent until she filed papers at the high court, Stevens wrote Monday.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist agreed with the outcome of the case, but still wrote separately to say that the Pledge as recited by schoolchildren does not violate the Constitution. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites) and Clarence Thomas (news - web sites) agreed with him.

The ruling came on the day that Congress set aside to honor the national flag. The ruling also came exactly 50 years after Congress added the disputed words "under God" to what had been a secular patriotic oath.

The high court's lengthy opinion overturns a ruling two years ago that the teacher-led pledge was unconstitutional in public schools. That appeals court decision set off a national uproar and would have stripped the reference to God from the version of the pledge said by about 9.6 million schoolchildren in California and other western states.

Newdow's daughter, like most elementary school children, hears the Pledge of Allegiance recited daily.

The First Amendment guarantees that government will not "establish" religion, wording that has come to mean a general ban on overt government sponsorship of religion in public schools and elsewhere.

The Supreme Court has already said that schoolchildren cannot be required to recite the oath that begins, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America."

The court has also repeatedly barred school-sponsored prayer from classrooms, playing fields and school ceremonies.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) said the language of the First Amendment and the Supreme Court's precedents make clear that tax-supported schools cannot lend their imprimatur to a declaration of fealty of "one nation under God."

The Bush administration, the girl's school and Newdow all asked the Supreme Court to get involved in the case.



The administration had asked the high court to rule against Newdow, either on the legal question of his ability to sue or on the constitutional issue. The administration argued that the reference to God in the pledge is more about ceremony and history than about religion.

The reference is an "official acknowledgment of our nation's religious heritage," similar to the "In God We Trust" stamped on coins and bills, Solicitor General Theodore Olson argued to the court.

It is far-fetched to say such references pose a real danger of imposing state-sponsored religion, Olson said.

Newdow claims a judge recently gave him joint custody of the girl, whose name is not part of the legal papers filed with the Supreme Court.

Newdow holds medical and legal degrees, and says he is an ordained minister. He argued his own case at the court in March.

The case began when Newdow sued Congress, President Bush (news - web sites) and others to eliminate the words "under God." He asked for no damages.

On Monday, Newdow said he would continue that fight.

"The pledge is still unconstitutional," he said. "What is being done to parents is unconstitutional."

Congress adopted the pledge as a secular, patriotic tribute in 1942, at the height of World War II. Congress added the phrase "under God" more than a decade later, in 1954, when the world had moved from hot war to cold.

Supporters of the new wording said it would set the United States apart from godless communism.

The case is Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 02-1624.

Joe Biden's the weasel: his son is not serving in the Persian Gulf

06.14.04 (7:21 am)   [edit]
From Michelle Malkin's blog-- http://michellemalkin.com/arc...

[b]JOE BIDEN IS A WEASEL[/b]
By Michelle Malkin- June 14, 2004 08:36 AM

If you got the impression last week that Joe Biden has a son in the military on active duty in the Gulf, that's exactly the impression he wanted to give. While hissing at Attorney General John Ashcroft last week about the so-called "torture memos" and the Geneva Convention, Sen. Biden made a grand stand of noting that "there's a reason why we sign these treaties -- it's to protect my son in the military."

Biden's son, Beau, has been serving in the Delaware Army National Guard since last August, when he was commissioned a first lieutenant doing legal work as a judge advocate. He is serving honorably--and according to this article,-- http://www.delawaregrapevine....%20lt%20beau.asp he would be doing so without fanfare if not for his braying, exploitative stage dad.

Based on Sen. Biden's backtracking on the weekend talk show circuit, it seems as though Beau may have given his shameless dad a dressing down. On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Biden slyly amended his remarks about his son: "I don't have a son in the Gulf. He hasn't been called yet."

And even if he is, the chances of Beau ending up on a battlefield and being captured are slim to none.

Poor Beau. Listening to his dad must be, uh, torture.

New HBO documentary fails to prove Rosenbergs innocent of espionage

06.14.04 (12:27 am)   [edit]
[b]We Spy[/b]
By New York Post
New York Post | June 14, 2004

MORE than 50 years after they were executed as So viet spies, the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg continues to generate intense emotion on both sides of the political spectrum.

For the left, it has long been an article of faith that two wholly innocent radicals were framed and executed solely because of their politics.

Now, the couple's granddaughter, Ivy Meeropol, has made a documentary that largely reinforces that viewpoint.

Heir to an Execution, which premieres Monday on HBO, is a portrait of two people so filled with love and warmth they couldn't possibly have betrayed their country.

This is an often-compelling film. It plays to the viewer's emotions, and there are some powerful moments, such as when Ivy's father and uncle, Michael and Robert Meeropol (they took their adoptive parents' name), return for the first time to the Knickerbocker Village apartment in which they watched their father being arrested in 1950.

Ivy Meeropol uses images of classic liberal villains from the '50s — Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover — to reinforce what she sees as the nefarious nature of those who opposed her grandparents.

And in what is meant to be the film's dramatic highlight, she takes a drive past the home of Ethel's brother, David Greenglass — the prosecution's star witness.

It's clear from the outset that this isn't meant to be an honest or objective look at the Rosenberg case. Which is why so little of the film is devoted to the avalanche of previously secret documents — from both U.S. and Soviet sources — released in the past decade that overwhelmingly confirm Julius Rosenberg's role as a major spy for the USSR.

Even when the new disclosures are addressed, it's in a way that casts doubt on their truthfulness.

"A reasonable case can be made that Julius Rosenberg, with Ethel Rosenberg's knowledge, was involved in military and industrial espionage," says Robert Meeropol. "But a reasonable case can also be made that this is all government- manufactured disinformation."

Even hinting that their parents might have been spies is a dramatic about-face for the Meeropols. Which is no doubt why they offer tortured excuses to explain why Julius and Ethel continued to maintain their innocence.

"They weren't guilty of what they were charged with," namely stealing the atom bomb, says Michael Meeropol. "That's why they said they were innocent."

Indeed, while the brothers now admit that the Venona files — decrypts of intercepted Soviet cables — suggest that Julius "did stuff," they also insist that their parents "were framed."

In her effort to portray her grandparents as loving people, there is no discussion whatsoever about their ideological zealotry; indeed, the C-word — communism — is hardly mentioned.

But it was that fanaticism that allowed the Rosenbergs to voluntarily choose martyrdom, leaving their two young sons behind as, in their final message, they proudly proclaimed themselves "the first victims of American fascism."

And that's what's missing from this film: any honest exploration of why the Rosenbergs kept silent, when admitting the truth would have spared their lives.

Those who know little about the case may well come away agreeing with Ivy Meeropol that "because of the position my grandparents took, we get to live a life in which we're proud." But the truth is that this tragic destruction of a young family was self-inflicted.

Ted Rall, the Left's Dunce of Death

06.14.04 (12:23 am)   [edit]
[b]The Left's Dunce of Death[/b]
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 14, 2004

Cartoonist Ted Rall struck again early last week, this time publicly stating that Ronald Reagan is currently in Hell “turning crispy brown right about now.” Rall defended his repugnant treatment of the fallen national hero, saying, “Reagan was a public figure and he was an idiot.” Rall then re-affirmed, “If there is a hell, this guy is in it.” Rall still had enough invective left over to fill his next syndicated column, entitled “Reagan’s Shameful Legacy.”

Attempting to deflect the predictable (and massive) public backlash, Rall has tried to paint himself as a moderate, protesting, “I’m not a knee-jerk left-wing guy…I think that this country has shifted so far over to the right that anyone who is a garden-variety Democrat circa 1972 is painted as a Marxist-Leninist.”

But Ted Rall doth protest too much….

His own cartoons and syndicated columns speak for themselves. He believed Bill Clinton’s 1998 bombing of an empty Afghan tent invited 9/11. (Forget that Clinton launched Operation Monica’s Dress in retaliation for the twin African embassy bombings; what caused those, Mr. Rall?) He called our war in Afghanistan “genocide,” perpetrated to build an imaginary oil pipeline through the region. He supported Marxists Jean Bertrand-Aristide, Hugo Chavez and the Castroite government of Grenada; and he opposed sanctions against Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Serbia. He has also said George W. Bush is worse than Hitler and strongly hinted that leftist Senator Paul Wellstone was assassinated.

Rall’s only intellectual calling card is his uncanny ability to confront human tragedy with shallow partisanship and base callousness. Just one month ago, Rall slandered Pat Tillman, the NFL star who turned down a multi-million dollar contract to serve (and ultimately, die) in Afghanistan. Rall derided Tillman as an “idiot.” I wrote at the time:

"Rall has made a tidy living demeaning the deceased. He berated the victims of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and their families as Nazis, while apologizing for the two neo-Nazi murderers who perpetrated it. However, he found his greatest notoriety not long after 9/11, when he portrayed that tragedy’s widows as money-grubbing media hounds in his cartoon “Terror Widows.”

In other words, Ted Rall is a scumbag.

For all of this, Rall was rewarded as one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1996."

I failed to point out that Rall was also a two-time winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. His column appears in some 140 newspapers nationwide, as do his equally sophomoric political cartoons. He is, in other words, a well-paid and widely read spokesman for the Left’s activist base.

Were Ronald Reagan alive to hear this detractor, the man who never turned a political enemy into a personal foe would not begin with a cretin like Rall. Reagan would laugh, not at Rall’s diseased sense of humor, but rather at the comfort of knowing that while Reagan’s legacy and popularity will only grow with the turning of history’s every page, Rall is condemned to be remembered (if he is remembered at all) as a failed hack who espoused an equally failed ideology, a hatemonger who utilized the suffering of others to cement his position within in the lowest tier of political commentators.

Ted Rall’s popularity speaks as much about the Left as Ronald Reagan’s sunny disposition does about conservatism, and the difference is not coincidental.

Ted Rall is, I pray, wrong about the final destination of Ronald Wilson Reagan. In his current residence, I trust Reagan has responded to Ted Rall’s hatred with a forgiving prayer, as he did to his own failed assassin – a prayer he uttered [i]before[/i] praying for himself. And if Rall is correct about Reagan’s resting place, Reagan must be uttering the words of Jesus: “Behold, I go to prepare a place for you.”

Ben Johnson is Associate Editor of FrontPage Magazine.

Re: Proofs of God's non-existence- Part One: Discrepencies in the definition of God

06.14.04 (12:07 am)   [edit]
God is not a being we can conceive of, and the truth of Himself that he has allowed us to grasp can and will be messed up because we are imperfect. In short, the fact that there are definitions of God out there is not God's problem, but ours, and it does absolutely nothing to prove God's non-existence.

We have various definitions of what it means to cry or show emotion, but because we have them doesn't deny that we are rational creatures.

Judaism and Christianity are closer to each other than any of them are to Islam, but they all believe in a monotheistic God, the God of Abraham. The fact that well over half the world's population believes in the God of Abraham might give some weight to the fact He exists, too.

The gods (notice the plural) of the other religions Dragon cited have nothing to do with the God of Abraham.

Dragon lazily equates all religions that believe in a God or multiple gods to futher her unsubstantiated case that God does not exist and to discredit all religions as equally false. But that's just dumb.

"Given that there are so many religions that maintain different views on what the exact nature of God is, it is only natural to reach the conclusion that there can be no God....If each religion’s God exists, God’s nature is questionable- many religions assume that their God is the supreme being and coexisting with other supreme beings would be counter to their definitions of God."

Each religion's god cannot exist if we are talking about one God, right? The God of Abraham is not the same God of the Hindus. Clearly, some folks are just 100% wrong on who God is.

Hundreds of years ago scientists debated the nature of the laws of physics-- in fact, they still do. But no one is going around saying that such laws do not exist.

The mere fact that Dragon tries and fails to throw out the baby with the bath water-- that she tries to use human error as a springboard to some sort of universal truth-- shows that she cannot prove that God does not exist.

If we are to say that no religion is right it still wouldn't make the case that there is no God-- Dragon would only be right in saying that the God of Abraham and the other gods of other religions are false.

Dragon has to prove that there is not a God, an intelligent being, behind creation and this world. Merely pointing out differences between religions that claim to believe and possess the truth of such a God doesn't disclaim such an existence.

It was Nancy Reagan who vetoed a Clinton eulogy at Reagan's funeral- he 'sullied' the Oval Office

06.13.04 (10:24 pm)   [edit]
From Newsmax's Insider Report--

[b]Nancy Reagan Vetoes Clinton Eulogy[/b]

It was reported earlier this past week that former President Bill Clinton was furious that he had not been invited to speak at the Friday state funeral of former President Ronald Reagan.

Clinton, so the story went, felt that the Reagan rites were being 'politicized' and he preferred the Nixon funeral 10 years ago in which both former Democratic and Republican presidents spoke.

In fact, Newsmax.com's John LeBoutillier has learned, it indeed was Nancy Reagan's adamant wish that Bill Clinton not speak at her late husband's funeral.

LeBoutillier, a former U.S. congressman with friends close to the Reagan White House and Nancy, said Nancy feels that President Clinton stained the image of the Oval Office.

Both Ronald and Nancy Reagan revered the Oval Office.

As President, Ronald Reagan made it a policy always to wear a suit and tie in the Oval Office.

Before taking office in early 1981, Reagan told aides he was stunned to see photos of Jimmy Carter lounging in the Oval Office in blue jeans and no tie. The soon-to-be-inaugurated 40th president then vowed that "things are going to change."

Revelations during the Starr investigation disclosed that President Clinton conducted an illicit affair in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky.

A source close to Nancy told LeBoutillier that Mrs. Reagan would have loved to have had the popular Democrat president eulogize her husband - but she did not want the funeral service "sullied" by the man who desecrated one of Ronnie's favorite places: the Oval Office.

AIDS-- exposing the myth that it is "everyone's epidemic"

06.13.04 (9:58 pm)   [edit]
President Bush gets accused of falsely scaring people into supporting his war on terror. But from the 1980s to today the left-wing establishment and its media has tried to scare the American public into believing that AIDS can infect anyone-- straight, gay, drug user or not. Why? Because that kind of scare-tactic gets the money rolling in for a cure. Sure, AIDS needs to be cured. But let's do it honestly, mmmkay?

By the year 2000, the Centers for Disease Control had compiled these stats on AIDS since its outbreak in the US:

*751,965 people, living and dead, contracted AIDS.

*[b]50 percent[/b] of the victims were men who had sex with other men.

*[b]28 percent[/b] were IV drug users.

*[b]6 percent[/b] were men who had sex with other man AND injected drugs through an IV.

*1 percent got AIDS from blood transfusions.

*1 percent were Hemophiliacs.

Of those 14 percent left (99,483 people), the cases of AIDS are officially listed as through "heterosexual contact". But 35,000 heterosexuals got AIDS from having sex with an IV user (usually a woman having sex with a man who injected drugs).

*4,000 women got HIV and eventually AIDS from [b]bisexual[/b]male.

*1,681 got AIDS from having sex with someone who got AIDS from a blood transfusion or was a hemophiliac.

That leaves about 58,517 straight folks left, or about 7% of all AIDS victims, that feeds the myth that AIDS is not based on drug use or sexual orientation.

But even these numbers are misleading. Many straight folks that have AIDS don't want to admit that they got AIDS from having gay sex or using drugs. According to the New York Times, in a feature on Anastasia Lekatsas, a New York city health department employee who researched the phenomenon of straight people blaming their AIDS on heterosexual contact:

"If a man claimed to have gotten AIDS from a woman, she would visit him, revisit him, interview his family and friends-- and eventually she would almost always find that he'd been sharing needles or having sex with men."

AIDS is a tragic disease and should be cured, no question. But the idea that it is a disease that affects everyone regardless of sexual orientation or drug use is pure myth. Overhwhelmingly, in almost all cases, AIDS is contracted from gay on gay sex, straight on gay sex, or drug use.

This scare message actually does a disservice to those who want a cure. Communicable diseases are most quickly cured by identifying the largest at risk groups. Straight people who don't do drugs aren't one of those groups.

The world shrugs as Iran builds its nuclear bomb

06.13.04 (8:57 pm)   [edit]
The US created a world in which nuclear war seemed old-fashioned. We won the Cold War but yet the aftermath was dominated by the left. Clinton told us we could sleep safely at night while Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia all stepped up their WMD and nuclear activities (Agreed Framework anyone? Chinese campaign cash and espionage? Wen Ho Lee? Useless UN inspections in Iraq, letting Iran do what it wanted in the 1990s?). The EU coalesced into a "superstate" bent on spreading its socialist message and "uniting" Europe under the hidden motivation of economically destroying the US.

We live in a world that doesn't think any threat is real. When George Bush talks about the evils of terrorism, all of a sudden he is "scaring" the world into doing his will. But Bush was exactly right: the world is becomng a terror playground because no one is cooperating with the US in the war on terror. Europeans, Russians, and the Chinese believe that since terrorists focus on the US and Israel they can stay out of it (while materially supporting them with "dual-use" technology allowed under NPT provisions) and benefit from the destruction of a superpower and a bunch of Jews (who they hate). But it won't work out that way.

Iran is part of Bush's accurate but oft- criticized "Axis of Evil" It is building many nuclear reactors-- WITH RUSSIAN HELP-- for the purpose of "electricity". This, in a country with one of the world's largest oil reserves. When the Iranian government parades missiles through Tehran that can carry nuclear warheads and say "death to Israel" or "death to America", it's pretty damn clear what the nuke reactors are being used for.

So far Iran doesn't have missile capability to reach the US, but it certainly does for Israel and Europe. North Korea recently tested a missile that can travel 6 or 7 thousand miles, which may be able to reach US interests (and obviously Japan and So. Korea). The axis of evil exists because the Cold War enemies are funding it or letting it happen by opposing US will in the UN.

The Left hates the US and Israel much more than it fears terrorism and a nuclear Iran that can not only threaten Israel but give its nukes to the terrrorists its supports. Since the Left has infected most governments all of the media, and the UN that is charged with stopping Iran's nuke buildup, it is no surprise that Iran is going about its sinister business without any real alarm.

Further perspective--

From OpinionJournal.com--

[b]Coddling the Mullahs
The world shrugs as Iran builds its nuclear bomb.[/b]
Monday, June 14, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

If Iran goes nuclear within the next year or two, don't blame the inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Earlier this month Mohammed ElBaradei's U.N. team issued yet another damning report on the mullahs, describing a pattern of deception and non-cooperation that all but screams "bomb program." But the international community, with the apparent acquiescence of the Bush Administration, is treating it all as a matter of indifference.

OK, that's a mild overstatement. IAEA member states have been going through the motions required by their inspection process. But when they meet today in Vienna the consuming issue will be whether to "deplore" Iran's deceptions or note them with "serious concern." The Iranians are protesting that they consider even those words as all but a casus belli, but they are reported to be privately pleased as punch that the IAEA will yet again fail to refer them to the U.N. Security Council for sanction.

For the record, here's a sample of what the latest IAEA report says:

• "The information provided to date by Iran has not been adequate" to explain the origin of traces of near-weapons-grade uranium found by inspectors.

• "Important information about the P-2 centrifuge [uranium enrichment] program has frequently required repeated requests, and in some cases continues to involve changing or contradictory information"; and

• "Iran's postponement until mid-April of the visits originally scheduled for mid-March . . . resulted in a delay in the taking of environmental sample and their analysis."

Or to put that all in context, inspectors had found multiple traces of 36% enriched uranium, which has no civilian use. Iran has not offered a satisfactory explanation. Iran had also lied about having a sophisticated P-2 uranium enrichment program of the kind peddled by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. It turns out the Iranians have sought magnets for thousands of such centrifuges. Iran has not been able to explain experiments with polonium-210, a radioactive element primarily useful as a bomb trigger. Most incriminating of all, the Iranians barred access to sites for a month while they almost certainly sanitized them.

Remember that Iran is a petroleum-rich country that doesn't need nuclear power and whose former president has declared that "the world of Islam" should acquire the bomb so it can threaten the existence of Israel and thwart American "colonialism" in the Middle East. On Saturday, AP quoted Iran's foreign minister as declaring that Iran "has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club. This is an irreversible path." All of this has finally provoked even the U.S. State Department to declare that Iran's nuclear activities "are in no way peaceful" and "specifically designed to create weapons."

We've heard a disturbing number of quiet remarks in Washington and other Western capitals recently to the effect that the world will just have to "get used to" the idea of the Iranians having nukes. Have these people thought through the consequences of such resignation? With the presumed American security umbrella suddenly jeopardized by the mullahs' bomb, the political calculations of every Mideast government would change. Many countries may conclude they themselves have no choice but to go nuclear, and the world could be off to another nuclear arms race.

Last year the U.S. deferred to the Europeans as they brokered an inspection agreement with Iran that the mullahs have since violated with impunity. In other words, the "multilateral" diplomatic path is failing. The question is whether anyone important is going to admit this reality. If not, we at least hope Washington is preparing covert and military options to sabotage the Iranian program, and to step up aid to those Iranians wishing a fundamental change in their terror-sponsoring regime. History will not look kindly on the leaders who let Iran get the bomb on their watch.

My apology to the Arab world

06.13.04 (8:38 pm)   [edit]
From the Mike Adams column of the same title-- http://www.townhall.com/colum...

"Dear Arabs,

"I am truly sorry that Americans decided to take up arms and sacrifice their own youth in the defense of Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the first Gulf War. After we clear up this mess in Iraq, we will refrain from any such activity in the future.

"I am truly sorry that I did not hear any of you call for an apology from Muslim extremists after 911. After all, the hijackers were all Arabs.

"I am truly sorry that Arabs have to live in squalor under savage dictatorships throughout the Middle East. I am also sorry that the "leaders" of these nations drive their citizens into poverty by keeping all of the wealth in the hands of a select few.

"I am also sorry that these governments intentionally breed hate for the U.S. in their religious schools while American schools do the exact opposite.

"I am sorry that Yasir Arafat has been kicked out of every Arab country and has attached his name to the Palestinian "cause." I am also sorry that no other Arab country will offer nearly as much support to Arafat as we offer to them.

"I am sorry that the U.S. has continued to serve as the biggest financial supporter of poverty stricken Arab nations while wealthy Arab leaders blame the U.S. for all of their problems.

"I am sorry that left-wing media elites would Rather (pun intended) not talk about any of this, thereby perpetuating your anger towards us. It's probably really bad for your blood pressure. I am also sorry that most of you lack the medical resources to measure your blood pressure. And, of course, I'm sorry that few of you have indoor plumbing. That's bad for your health, too.

"I am sorry that the U.N. cheated so many poor people in Iraq out of their "food for oil" money so they could get rich while the tortured, raped, and poverty-stricken citizens of Iraq suffered under Saddam Hussein.

"I am sorry that some Arab governments pay the families of homicide bombers after their children are blown to pieces in pursuit of Arafat�s "cause."

"I am sorry that these homicide bombers have as little regard for babies as the local office of Planned Parenthood.

"I am sorry that so many people are unable to differentiate between the gang rape rooms and mass graves of Saddam Hussein on the one hand, and the conditions of Abu Ghraib on the other.

"I am sorry that our prison guards do not show the same restraint that Arabs show when their brothers in arms are killed. By the way, you shouldn�t be sorry about that.

"I am sorry that foreign trained terrorists are trying to seize control of Iraq and return it to a terrorist state. I am sorry we have not yet dropped at least 100 Daisy cutters on Fallujah in order to stop that effort.

"I am also sorry that cleaning up the mess in Iraq is taking so long. It only took Saddam Hussein about 30 years to accomplish all he did in the realm of human rights. Come to think of it, that�s about ten years less than the duration of our War on Poverty in the U.S. Come to think of it, I'm sorry we haven't sent all of our gang bangers from South Central Los Angeles to Fallujah.

"I am sorry that every time the terrorists hide, it just happens to be inside a "Holy Site."

"I am sorry that Muslim extremists have not yet apologized for the U.S.S.
Cole, the embassy bombings, and for flying a plane into the World Trade Center, which collapsed in part on Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which is one of our Holy Sites.

"I am sorry that we have not taken a portion of the diet of Michael Moore and shipped it to one of your starving villages in the Middle East. You need it Moore (pun intended) than he does.

"I am sorry that your only supporters are professors, journalists, and other assorted Leftists who also support homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, partial birth abortion, and everything that you abhor in this world. I am sorry that everyone else in America is against you.

"Finally, I am sorry that I am going to have to end this apology by asking you to kiss the right side of my conservative butt. I'm probably just having a bad day.

For that I am truly sorry."

Vindicated: UN inspectors say Hussein shipped out WMD before and after war

06.13.04 (5:06 am)   [edit]
So why was the war illegal now? OHHHHH, because the US decided not to get the UN's permission? The same UN that said before the war started that Hussein had WMD, but then he didn't, and now says that Hussein did indeed have them and shipped them out.

I can hear the liberal argument already: George Bush's war made things worse! Now the WMD are all over the globe thanks to the evil neo-con Bush!

Of course, if the US had gone in as it wanted to, instead of waiting for a year to get the lefties at the UN on board, Hussein wouldn't have had as much time to ship his WMD out.

Before the US went to war the UN did squat to stop Hussein's WMD program. After the war it failed to help the US.

And amid all of this, the US is the one that gets blamed.

The UN is always right, even when it's wrong. That's the rationale all of its supporters use. Bush has been right on everything regarding the Iraq war, but he's always wrong.

I don't know how lefties look at themselves every day.

From the World Tribune--
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking _1.html" title="http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking _1.html" target="_blank"http://www.worldtribune.com/w...

[b]UN inspectors: Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after[/b]
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, June 11, 2004

The [b]United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.[/b]

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

[b]The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.[/b]

UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that "the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap," Middle East Newsline reported.

[b]"It's being exported,"[/b] Perricos said after the briefing. "It's being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal."

[b]"The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks," Perricos told the council. Perricos also reported that inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.[/b]

He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East. [b]at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destionations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey.[/b]

The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads.

"It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax."

[b]The UNMOVIC report said Iraqi missiles were dismantled and exported to such countries as Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile, one of at least 12, was discovered in a junk yard, replete with UN tags. In Jordan, UN inspectors found 20 SA-2 engines as well as components for solid-fuel for missiles.[/b]

"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," Buchanan said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors."

UN inspectors have assessed that the SA-2 and the short-range Al Samoud surface-to-surface missile were shipped abroad by agents of the Saddam regime. Buchanan said UNMOVIC plans to inspect other sites, including in Turkey.

In April, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed El Baradei said material from Iraqi nuclear facilities were being smuggled out of the country.

Copyright © 2004 East West Services, Inc.

Reagan funeral money shot: Bill and Hillary Clinton fast asleep

06.11.04 (8:57 am)   [edit]
CNN couldn't help itself in its coverage of Ronald Reagan's funeral. The kept panning over to gaze at the Clintons, Bill with his nose in the air, Hillary looking like she could barely stand to be there. Then they panned one too many times and got a disgraceful screen shot of both Clintons nodding off, fast asleep, apparently unable to muster the respect required of decent people to honor one of the nation's greatest presidents.

After that, CNN didn't go back to the Clintons until the tail end of the service, when the Clintons had to stand.

Besides the Clintons' typically bad behavior, the service was indescribably beautiful and majestic, worthy of the man it was held for.

UN's Iraq election plans will legitimize terrorists, create civil war

06.10.04 (5:38 am)   [edit]
OpinionJournal.com editorial--

[b]Next Up, Iraq Elections
The U.N. has some more bad ideas.[/b]
Thursday, June 10, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

With our friends at the U.N., it's always something. The Iraq resolution that passed the Security Council Tuesday dodges the limits on U.S. military action that some of us had feared. But the next challenge for Iraqis is to scrutinize with equal care the U.N.'s plans for elections.

Regarding the new resolution, what would we do without the French? They tried to be more Iraqi than the Iraqis, insisting that the new interim government in Baghdad have a veto over coalition troops. But the Iraqis themselves said they didn't need it. They seem to appreciate that to provide proper security the U.S. military needs flexibility. And the hardest calls--whether to clean out Fallujah, say--will require Iraqi assent in any event. Yesterday a mortar round wounded four Iraqis from the unit given control of Fallujah in April, and the new government is going to have to ensure that that city doesn't become Iraq's version of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

All the more so since this U.N. imprimatur comes without more foreign troops. Until Iraqi security forces can be adequately trained and outfitted, the coalition is the only protection the fledgling Iraqi government has. The good news is that the Iraqi public seems to have accepted its new leaders as legitimate, as long as they are seen as moving toward elections by next January. Which brings us to the dubious and risky plan that U.N. elections "expert" Carina Perelli is promoting.

The U.S. and Britain have what's known as constituency-based democracy. That is, voters in neighborhoods or districts select a single person to represent them in Congress or Parliament based on whoever wins a plurality of the vote. This system has many virtues, producing stable and effective governments that can be held accountable by voters at the next election. When Prime Minister Tony Blair came to power, for example, the Tory defense and foreign ministers lost not just their cabinet posts but their seats in Parliament--an outcome almost unthinkable under a system of "proportional" representation.

Yet the latter is precisely what Ms. Perelli proposed last week for Iraq. In this system, voters choose not among individual candidates but among parties that are awarded a share of legislative seats based on their percentage of the vote. Proponents say the system better allows all significant voices to be heard. But even in the best of cases--Italy over much of the past 50 years--proportional systems tend to produce unstable governments easily paralyzed by the little parties they have to cobble into a majority coalition. Would-be candidates are beholden to party bosses who determine their place on the electoral list and thus their chances of success.

In Iraq especially, with its many ethnic divisions, the risks of such a system are huge. As much as possible we should be encouraging Iraqis to think of themselves as Iraqis rather than as Kurds or Arabs, Shiites or Sunnis. First-past-the-post elections in Iraqi neighborhoods, many of which are multi-ethnic, would help accomplish this. Where local elections have been held thus far in Iraq, voters have chosen pragmatic and secular figures rather than religious or ethnic extremists.

By contrast, Ms. Perelli's nationwide proportional system will encourage voters and parties to separate themselves along sectarian lines. What's more, where constituency systems tend toward centrist politics as candidates seek a majority, proportional systems empower extremists who could never win outright in any single area but who can garner a significant minority of the vote. Look for the mad Shiite Muqtada al-Sadr, for one, to get elected under these rules.

So what's driving this strange push for a party-based proportional system in a country with no well-established parties besides the Baath? A big part of the motivation appears to be the dogmatic desire of the U.N. and State Department to ensure that at least 25% of Iraqi legislators are women, which is a goal but not a requirement of Iraq's interim constitution. You can rig a party-list election to ensure such an outcome, and Ms. Perelli wants to mandate that every third candidate be a woman. She couldn't do that with constituencies.

It seems to us that advocates for Iraqi women would be better advised to concentrate on creating a stable democracy first. A 25% showing for Iraqi women in the first election isn't going to matter much if an unstable system then gives way to fundamentalist takeover or civil war. It's also more women than either the U.S. Congress or British Parliament can boast.

Ms. Perelli has said her proposal is provisional, to be used only for the elections to the first National Assembly due by next January. But surely she knows that whoever is empowered by such a system will write a permanent constitution that preserves it in some form. Just about every country that has proportional representation regrets it--think of Israel--but can't change because of the vested interests it creates.

Thus by handing over the seemingly minor detail of electoral mechanics to the U.N. could the Bush and Blair Administrations undo much of their good work so far to bring stability and democracy to Iraq. Let's hope Iraqi leaders, who recently revolted against some of U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's picks for the interim government, have the good sense to question the U.N.'s electoral imperialism as well.

Lefties have revisioned themselves as Reagan admirers, but they hated him like they hate Bush

06.10.04 (4:46 am)   [edit]
[b]So now they think he was charming[/b]
Ann Coulter
June 10, 2004

America's greatest president has gone home. God worked through Ronald Reagan on Earth and now He's taken him back. Reagan is survived by his wife, three children, and the hundreds of millions of people he saved by winning the Cold War. Thanks to him, the United States of America never ceased to be, as Reagan said, "a place to escape to" – the last stand on Earth.

No thanks to liberals, I might add. More enraging than their revisionist history of Reagan, is liberals' revisionist history about themselves. Now liberals claim they liked Reagan at the time. This is extremely believable – aren't we all fond of someone who regularly exposes us as liars, cowards and hypocrites? It's just human nature.

In fact and of course, liberals loathed Reagan. Their European friends loathed Reagan – the protests against our current president are positively anemic compared to the massive protests against President Reagan when he went to visit our dear "allies," whose sorry asses we spent billions of dollars defending against the Soviets for 50 years. Even the moderate Republicans currently trying to insinuate themselves onto Reagan's legacy weren't especially fond of Reagan at the time – especially when attacking him publicly would get them invites to the tonier Georgetown cocktail parties. Only authentic Americans loved Reagan.

From the descriptions in the media, you would think the reason Reagan was beloved by Americans was that he was an affable fellow who could tell a good joke. That's a description of Bob Dole, not Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was a March hare right-winger. He had enough faith in the American people to know that as long as the facts were clear, they would rise to the occasion and be March hare right-wingers, too. As Reagan himself said, back in 1964: "Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and me believe that this is a contest between two men ... that we are to choose just between two personalities."

Reagan forced Americans to confront the real ideological divide between conservatives and, as he said, "our liberal friends." But now liberals are trying to muddy the political waters by passing off Reagan's popularity as a result of his personal magnetism. I note that liberals were strangely immune to that magnetism at the time. Only now do they talk about Reagan's outsized personality as if he worked some sort of beguiling magic over the electorate and tricked them into supporting policies they never quite understood.

While Reagan had undeniable magnetism, what set him apart was that he had the courage to speak the truth and trust the American people. In the 1964 speech that launched his political career, "A Time for Choosing," Reagan never smiled. He told no jokes – though he did say some amusing things inasmuch as he was talking about "our liberal friends."

In the throes of the Cold War – still hot in Vietnam – Reagan forthrightly said liberals refused to acknowledge that the choice was not between "peace and war, only between fight and surrender." In words that would have come in pretty handy in Spain just a few months ago, he said liberals tell us "if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us." All who disagree with the "peace" crowd, he said, "are indicted as warmongers." To this, Reagan said: "Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace – and you can have it in the next second – surrender."

This wasn't sunny old grandpa carrying candy around in his pocket for children. After watching Walter Cronkite's coverage of the Vietnam War in December 1972, Reagan told President Richard Nixon, "under World War II circumstances, the network [CBS] would have been charged with treason."

Reagan quoted "Mr. Democrat himself," Al Smith, for the proposition that the Democratic Party was no longer the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland, but was now the party of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. (And that was 30 years before they tried to push Hillarycare on us.)

Reagan was a bulldog, completely, implacably right-wing on every issue. He was the right-wing Energizer Bunny. He never quit and he kept beating liberals. He cut taxes 25 percent across the board his first year in office; he walked away from Gorbachev at Reykjavik; he fired all those air-traffic controllers – and wouldn't let them come back even when they wanted to; he gave speeches about "welfare queens" and polluting trees; he nominated Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; and he enraged grim liberals when he warmed up his radio mike by saying, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

But now they're telling us Reagan was a "pragmatist." Well, not according to him. As he was wrapping up the Republican primaries in 1980 and moderate weenies in the Republican Party were trying to move him to the "center," Reagan said: "No, I'm not moving my positions any. ... I believe the same things that I've been speaking on for years, and I don't see any reason to change."

Thank God he didn't. Because Reagan lived, the world is a better place.

Ann Coulter is host of AnnCoulter.org, a Townhall.com member group.

©2004 Universal Press Syndicate

Reuters uses discredited, pathological liar Richard Clarke to accuse Reagan of creating Osama

06.09.04 (10:08 am)   [edit]
It must be noted, everyone, that many fighters that the Reagan administration supported ended up not as Taliban or Al Qaeda but as Northern Alliance members.

In a perfect world absent of the Soviet Union's nuclear threats and hunger for world domination, Reagan might be more deserving of criticism. But the big picture at the time was the Cold War, and it had to be won.

Reagan won the Cold War, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this nation's focus should have been on terrorism. But despite Bill Clinton's soothing assurances that the Cold War is over and that we were entering a new American era, he did zero to quell Islamic radicalism, including the power struggle that occurred in Afghanistan THROUGHOUT the 1990s.

In short, blame Bill Clinton for the rise of the Taliban and OBL, not Reagan. Reagan had a damned good excuse for supporting the insurgency against the occupying Soviets in Afghanistan. What was Bill Clinton's excuse for ignoring the rise of Islamic radicalism in the area after Reagan and Bush, Sr. left?

To blame Reagan for the emergence of OBL is to blame FDR for the rise of Stalin. And we know that no good left-wing media conglomerate is going to do that.

God bless Ronald Reagan. If he had been president during the 1990s we wouldn't have had 9-11.

Richard Clarke, who flew the bin Ladens out of the US after 9-11, who worked for a president (Clinton) who never mentioned Al Qaeda as an imminent threat, a man who flip-flopped at least 3 times on Bush pre-9/11 had no credible leg to stand on. He's a minor player, and cannot tarnish the greatness of one of the greates US presidents ever.

[b]Reagan's Legacy in Afghanistan Debated[/b]
Tue Jun 8, 2004 05:43 PM ET
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ronald Reagan's support for mujaheddin fighters helped oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989, a defeat that ultimately contributed to the communist superpower's own collapse.

But should Reagan, who died last Saturday at 93, carry some of the blame for the rise of extremists headed by Osama bin Laden and the current instability in Afghanistan? Like so much about America's 40th president, that is a matter of debate.

Richard Clarke, former anti-terrorism adviser to President Bush, wrote in a new book that acquiescing to the involvement of an "army of Arabs," including bin Laden, in Afghanistan in the 1980s was one of four Reagan administration "mistakes" that affect the United States today.

Milton Beardon, who ran the CIA's covert aid program in Afghanistan during the Soviet period, thinks that argument is misleading. "The whole concept of the Arabs and the (Afghan) war has been overblown," he said.

If mistakes occurred, it was the price of forcing Moscow to withdraw from Afghanistan, said Beardon, adding: "There is always an unintended consequence of war."

Reagan was so committed to confronting the "evil empire" that he forged an aggressive policy of backing anti-communist insurgents in proxy wars worldwide.

According to Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies," Afghanistan was Reagan's best opportunity to drain the Soviets because they were ill-equipped for such a major deployment.

STINGERS AND MORE

At first Reagan did not offer much financial aid to the Afghan resistance, but later he provided them with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and boosted funding from $35 million in 1982 to $600 million in 1987, Clarke wrote.

"The idea of trying to hit at what was perceived as the vulnerable underbelly of the Soviet Union had wide support among experts and in retrospect, it definitely contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union," said Kenneth Katzman of the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service.

Some say bin Laden financed and recruited fundamentalists to fight alongside Afghan tribal leaders, but Beardon said most of the money went for orphanages and homes for widows. Bin Laden was in one important battle in 1987, but his military role was also minor.

While Afghanistan did become a magnet for "Arab bad boys," Islamic extremists were already active before they arrived, Beardon said. Also, Reagan's administration did not give weapons to Arab "volunteers" but focused on Afghan factions, experts said.

Nevertheless, Clarke said, when Washington engaged Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the anti-Soviet fight, "America sought (or acquiesced in) the importation into Afghanistan and Pakistan of an army of 'Arabs' without considering who they were or what would happen to them after the Soviets left."

Nobody predicted these tacit U.S. allies would later turn so threatening toward America. "I think it would have been very difficult to forsee," said Katzman.

Critics complain the United States should have given its funding to moderate Afghan tribal groups and accuse Washington of being beholden to Pakistan's intelligence service, which channeled U.S. aid to the most extreme Afghan factions.

More broadly, experts fault Reagan's successor, father of the current president, and President Bill Clinton, for "walking away" from Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Soviet departure, allowing extremists to find havens there.

Kurds threaten to leave Iraqi govt if Shiites get too much power

06.09.04 (9:46 am)   [edit]
Kurds Threaten to Bolt Iraqi Government
June 9, ,2004
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kurdish parties warned Wednesday that they might bolt Iraq (news - web sites)'s new government if Shiites gain too much power. In another challenge to the interim administration, saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline, forcing a 10 percent cut in electricity output.

Kurdish fears of Shiite domination rose after the Americans and British turned down their request to have a reference to the interim constitution — which enshrines Kurdish federalism — included in the U.N. resolution approved Tuesday.

The country's most prominent Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, rejected any mention of the interim charter in the resolution. Shiites oppose parts of the charter that give Kurds a veto over a permanent constitution due to be drawn up next year.

Meanwhile, clashes persisted Wednesday around Fallujah, a rebellious Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad. Four members of an Iraqi force given control of the city last April were wounded when a mortar round exploded.

The pipeline attack appeared to be part of an insurgent campaign against infrastructure to shake confidence in the new government, due to take power on June 30.

The blast occurred about 9:30 a.m. near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, said Col. Sarhat Qadir of the Kirkuk police. Huge fireballs rose into the air, witnesses said.

Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told Dow Jones Newswires that the attack would not effect exports from the northern oil fields. However, the blast cut supplies to the Beiji electric power station, forcing a reduction of 400 megawatts in power generation, Jihad said.

Iraq now produces around 4,000 megawatts. Power cuts in the country have now reached more than 16 hours a day, making it difficult to cope with soaring heat, which is already more than 100 degrees.

The U.S.-run coalition had made its ability to guarantee adequate electricity supplies a benchmark of success in restoring normalcy to Iraq. However, sabotage and frayed infrastructure have impeded efforts to eliminate power outages, especially in the capital.

Coalition officials fear that insurgents may step up attacks on infrastructure targets to undermine public confidence both in the U.S. occupation authority and the new regime.

The new U.N. resolution, adopted unanimously by the Security Council, affirmed international support for the new Iraqi government.

Both major Kurdish parties — the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan — conferred Wednesday to consider a response to the decision not to refer to the interim constitution in the resolution. The interim charter, adopted in March, affirms the principle of federalism.

Kurds fear that the interim constitution, which the Americans hailed as the most progressive in the Middle East, will be sidelined once the occupation ends and the Shiite clergy gains ascendancy.

The Kurds have been running their own autonomous mini-state since 1991, and many Kurds would prefer their own independent country.

At the United Nations (news - web sites), Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) sought to reassure the Kurds, saying that while the resolution doesn't refer to the constitution, it "does have language that refers to a united federal democratic Iraq."

Diplomats said reference to the interim constitution was omitted because of opposition by al-Sistani. Shiites are believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million while Kurds number around 15 percent.

In a statement addressed to the U.N. Security Council earlier this week, al-Sistani warned that mentioning the interim charter in the resolution would be "an act against the will of the Iraqi people and will have dangerous results."



Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the first Kurd to hold the post, said he had lobbied unsuccessfully for an acknowledgment of the charter during his meetings at the Security Council last week.

But he said he was satisfied that the "spirit" of the charter was in the final resolution.

Still, Kurdish leaders in Iraq were unconvinced.

"Now our future is ambiguous," said Nesreen Berwari, a Kurdish member of the interim government. "The interim constitution would have been the clear and bright roadmap to the all components of the Iraqi people."

Berwari said she would resign if asked to do so by the Kurdish leadership.

"Until now, we have not called for a separate Kurdistan, but if the Kurds' rights are not recognized, then we will take political measures that serve the interests of the Kurdish people," said Mulaha Bekhtiyar of the PUK. "For the time being, we will commit to a united Iraq."

Bekhtiyar said that the Kurds would not agree to the Shiites having the "lion's share" of any government.

Meanwhile, some Iraqis welcomed the new resolution, which the United States and Britain had to repeatedly alter to accomodate demands that the interim government be given greater authorities. Iraqis have worried that the continued presence of U.S.-led troops will limit what is supposed to be the new administration's full sovereignty.

"Full sovereignty won't come overnight particularly because Iraq has been subject to threats and terrorist acts," said Baghdad resident Tareq Rasheed. "As far as I'm concerned, the troops could stay, but outside the cities, until the government is able to control security."

But another Baghdadi was against any foreign interference in Iraq. "I don't welcome any resolution issued by the Security Council regarding Iraq. All their resolutions are fabricated and they impose them on the Iraqi people," Abdul-Karim Hassan said.

In other developments:

_ A group holding two hostages — a Turk and an Egyptian — threatened to kill the captives after Friday prayers unless their home governments condemn U.S. actions in Iraq. The threat was made in a statement distributed in Fallujah.

_ Insurgents attacked a Baghdad city council member Tuesday, wounding him and killing two of his bodyguards, the military said. The incident is under investigation.

Ashcroft hearing: Joe Biden shows why he's an idiot.

06.08.04 (3:13 pm)   [edit]
Joe Biden on the importance of the Geneva Conventions, which apply to the conduct of war between [i]nations[/i], directed at John Ashcroft:

"That's why we have these treaties. So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That's the reason, in case anybody forgets it."

Far be it from me to remind any leftist, but what treaties and laws do terrorists respect? Isn't it the whole nature of terrorism to work against and exploit a nation's laws and treaties? Methinks so!

The Geneva Conventions do not cover terrorists and, in a tribute to common sense, the Bush administration realized that since terrorists are state-less and work against the civilized world, they are high-value intelligence targets. Which means they have to be harshly interrogated because time works against you. Which means torture can be just dandy.

Ashcroft pointed the nuances of the Geneva Conventions and the war on terror to the idiots in the Senate, but it left little impression. Even Ashcroft's reiteration that Bush ordered Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisoners to be treated in accordance with many of the Geneva Conventions failed to leave a mark.

By his stupidity Biden legitimizes Al Qaeda. Which is reason number 5,000,000,642 why Democrats should not run the country.

News article-- http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

Brokaw interview with Bush was deceitfully edited-- full revealing transcript here

06.08.04 (2:56 pm)   [edit]
Tom Brokaw's recent interview with George Bush recently went out of its way to make Bush look bad. Fortunately, one blogger has the entire transcript with revealing questions and answers not included in the video bolded, including the famous " You think of yourself as a Ronald Reagan Republican?” exchange.

Just remember that you have to be on your toes with the left-- they don't believe in being truthful.

From the New England Republican blog-- http://nerepublican.blogspot....

Meanwhile in Fallujah, the insurgents rule (Wash Post)

06.08.04 (9:38 am)   [edit]
[b]The Washington Post
Despite Agreement, Insurgents Rule Fallujah[/b]
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
June 7, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The travelers entered Fallujah first through a checkpoint
operated by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a U.S.-trained paramilitary unit
meant to add muscle to the American-led occupation. The men in black berets
distractedly waved cars past, onto the city's main street.

Then it became apparent who was really in charge. A few yards in, wild-eyed
young men in masks pulled cars over at will, searched them and demanded
identification documents. No one could leave or enter without passing
muster. Other groups of fighters in masks roamed side streets and alleys,
brandishing rifles at all sorts of angles.

It was not supposed to be like this. Under an agreement made last month with
U.S. Marine commanders, a new force called the Fallujah Brigade, led by
former officers from Saddam Hussein's demobilized army, was to safeguard the
city. The unruly gunmen -- many of them insurgents who battled the Marines
through most of April -- were supposed to give way to Iraqi police and civil
defense units.

Instead, the brigade stays outside of town in tents, the police cower in
their patrol cars and the civil defense force nominally occupies checkpoints
on the city's fringes but exerts no influence over the masked insurgents who
operate only a few yards away.

The Marines gave the brigade the task of apprehending the killers of four
American contractors whose bodies were burned, mutilated and hung from a
bridge in March, capturing foreign fighters and disarming the insurgents.
None of that has happened.

President Bush endorsed the Fallujah solution on the grounds that it made
"security a shared responsibility." But the sight of insurgents still in
control of byways and the kidnapping of foreigners and Iraqis with impunity
suggests that they are sharing their power with no one.

Moreover, continuing mayhem on Fallujah's outskirts raises the question of
whether the Americans have simply created a safe haven for anti-occupation
fighters. On Saturday, a Fallujah-based group calling itself the Mujaheddin
Battalions announced it was transferring its fight to Baghdad -- but was
still committed to the truce in its home city.

Fallujah byways are a hell of roadside bombs and ambushes. On Friday, an
armored sport-utility vehicle carrying this Washington Post reporter and his
driver was attacked close to Fallujah on the main highway to Baghdad. Four
men in an orange-and-white taxi pumped dozens of bullets from AK-47 assault
rifles into the vehicle for more than two minutes, each round causing a loud
thump on the vehicle's metal plating and reinforced windows. They shot from
behind, from in front and from the sides, where their determined frowns and
mustached faces were clearly visible, as they and we weaved down the highway
at 90 mph. The fusillade stopped when the SUV, its back tires missing and
its rear windows shattered, spun out of control. The gunmen sped down the
road, evidently thinking their mission was accomplished. Neither the driver
nor the reporter was injured.

Marines were once determined to put an end to the threats in and around
Fallujah. After the April fighting, they were poised to stage a full-blown
assault on Fallujah, but a public outcry over casualties and calls from
Iraqi allies for a negotiated solution led to the new arrangement. A similar
dynamic has slowed the U.S. pursuit of Shiite Muslim rebels in southern
Iraq, where fear of igniting a broader revolt has stayed the hand of U.S.
forces. So far, two cease-fires have been called in the south.

In Fallujah, despite the compromise, the Marines' brash adversaries dominate
the streets. Yet no U.S. offensive is in the works.

"We don't intend to go in wholesale. There's no doubt we could clear
Fallujah out, but to what end?" asked Col. Larry Brown, an operations
officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force camped outside the city. "We
measure progress in small steps. We prefer to bring them back into the fold
slowly. It is a good sign that Iraqis are handling their problems."

Brown acknowledged that Marines were concerned that Fallujah could become a
guerrilla staging area, but said, "it is only supposition that Fallujah is a
sanctuary for insurgents. If it is in any way, then the deal's off. There is
probably a small contingent of hard-core gunmen there," he said.

"Inevitably, if we went in, there would be a lot of collateral damage.
People would defend their homes. We would only go as a last resort," Brown
said.

Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad in an area known as the Sunni
Triangle, has been a center of anti-occupation rebellion among Sunni Muslims
for more than a year. It is a city renowned for smugglers and for supplying
recruits for Hussein's army and security services. It is also known for
piety; residents call Fallujah "the city of 100 mosques," several of which
were used as redoubts for fighters firing on Marines.

Since the truce, Islam has emerged openly as a potent force, according to
Brown and Iraqis familiar with the city. Islamic law, or sharia, is
beginning to take root, to the point where clandestine vendors of alcohol
have been flogged and paraded naked on the street; beauty salons have been
shut down and barbers told to eschew Western cuts and not shave off beards.
Among strict Muslims, beards are a requirement.

Foreigners have frequently been kidnapped by gangs of masked gunmen, who
have released their captives only in response to requests by religious
leaders.

On Friday, masked men in Fallujah handed out a manifesto signed by 18 groups
with names such as the God Is Great Battalions, the Muhammad Messenger of
God Forces, the Islamic Resistance Brigades and the Jihad Battalion. They
rejected Iraq's newly named interim government and accused the United States
of "acts of killing, destruction, violation of holy places and organized
plunder."

"America shall reap, with God's help, what it has sown," the document said.
It pledged to "continue resistance in all its forms as the only way to
achieve victory."

Fallujah residents who supported the creation of the U.S.-backed Fallujah
Brigade said the city was unsettled but not out of control. Jasim Saleh, one
of the brigade's commanders, said "it is a mystery" who was kidnapping
foreigners and that he opposed imposition of Islamic law in the city.
Insurgents who came to Fallujah from elsewhere are being pressured by local
leaders to leave, he said, adding that the killers of the American
contractors have probably already fled the city. In any case, he said,
"Everyone in Fallujah condemns the mutilation."

Saleh said there was no need for the Marines to resume patrolling the city,
because about 1,700 brigade members are equipped to take control. "There are
still influences in Fallujah trying to spoil the accord. Many are from
outside the city and some from outside Iraq, but we will soon be able to
dominate Fallujah," the former army officer said in a telephone interview.
Esawi Barakat, a local tribal leader described by Marines as a power broker
in the city, played down the imposition of Islamic law. Restrictions on
alcohol and hairdressers only complement Fallujah's conservative
personality, he argued.

"After so many deaths, people who misbehave in front of Fallujah's families
must be punished," he said. "If you want to drink, you should go to Baghdad.
Western hairstyles offend our rural tastes."

Barakat said that danger to foreigners originates with a lust for revenge
after a year of turmoil that climaxed with heavy fighting in April and May.
"There have been too many dead. People only think of revenge," he said. "If
people discover a visitor is an American agent or traitor, they are all
happy to punish him."

U.S. forces jailed Barakat for six months on suspicion of leading
anti-occupation actions. He was released in April. If the city is tense, he
argued, it is because residents suspect the Marines will move in again.
Another tribal leader and former army general, Khalaf Aliyan Khalaf, said
that keeping Marines out of Fallujah is only the first step.

"As long as the Americans are inside Iraq, there will be no security
anywhere," he said.

Saleh, Barakat and Khalaf all said that forces such as the Fallujah Brigade
ought to be given control of other cities in central Iraq. Brown said it was
too early to expand the experiment. "The jury is still out on Fallujah," the
Marine colonel said.

In Fallujah on Friday, neither police nor the brigade showed any eagerness
to clear the streets of masked men. Their inaction made for a nerve-wracking
trip. When my driver and I approached four policemen who were sitting in a
squad car and asked them to escort us out of the city, one answered, "If we
did that, they would kill us as spies, and kill you, too."

The policemen suggested that the best escape route lay on the northeast side
of town, on the approach to Fallujah Brigade headquarters. As it turned out,
the insurgents had set up another checkpoint there, but the gunmen manning
the post remained huddled in thin shade and did not pay heed to The
Washington Post's vehicle as it passed.

At the brigade headquarters, a group of recruits stood idly among new
U.S.-installed tents in a small military complex. Brigade members said that
they had not entered Fallujah for several days but insisted that the masked
men had no authority to stop anyone. "We are all cooperating, so it does not
make any difference if we are there or not," said one guard.

The brigade has been billed as a trained unit of former Iraqi soldiers, with
some additions of Fallujah fighters. At their base, a group of brigade
members appeared to be unimpressed by their chain of command. They
repeatedly interrupted a portly man, who said he was the commander on duty,
when he advised us to move north, away from the city. The men insisted
instead on escorting us back into Fallujah, and from there, would lead us to
the highway. They said there was no way to get on the road to Baghdad by
heading north. "Come with us. We will protect you, no problem," a bearded
man said.

The suggestion appeared odd, since the Fallujah police had said there was a
gravel on-ramp to the highway just a few miles north of the brigade camp. We
turned down the offer.

Instead, we decided to follow a U.S. military convoy just a few hundred
yards away. The convoy had stopped because someone had spotted a roadside
bomb, and the troops were waiting for engineers to arrive and blow it up.
The Fallujah Brigade members then tried to block the Post vehicle from
proceeding when the U.S. troop convoy moved out. They allowed us to pass
only when a U.S. military Humvee topped by a menacing machine gun rolled
back to the brigade headquarters to see what was going on.

On the highway, the military convoy peeled off to travel to its home base
just east of Fallujah. The Washington Post vehicle continued toward Baghdad.
Ten miles down the road, the orange-and-white taxi carrying the gunmen
appeared and began firing.

Despite damage to the vehicle, it eventually limped to Abu Ghraib prison,
about 20 miles west of Baghdad, where U.S. military police gave us refuge.
Few residents of the notorious facility probably ever entered the compound as happily as we did.

A WAR FOR OIL? IRAQ CLAIMS FULL CONTROL OF OIL SECTOR

06.08.04 (9:26 am)   [edit]
Ah, the lefties will say-- this is a US puppet government! A government which just happens to be devised and supported by the UN....

More left-wing lies disintegrate...

[b]Iraq Claims Full Control of Oil Sector[/b]
Tue Jun 8, 9:49 AM ET
By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials declared Tuesday that the interim government has assumed full control of the country's oil industry ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation administration.

[b]"Today the most important natural resource has been returned to Iraqis to serve all Iraqis," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. "I'm pleased to announce that full sovereignty and full control on oil industry has been handed over to the oil ministry today and to the new Iraqi government as of today."[/b]

The announcement came as Allawi and Oil Minister Thamir Ghadbhan toured the al-Doura oil refinery in southern Baghdad.

After meeting and shaking hands with the refinery workers, the two ministers thanked oil sector workers.

[b]"We are totally now in control, there are no more advisers," Ghadbhan said. "We are running the show, the oil policies will be implemented 100 percent by Iraqis."[/b]

Allawi said the handover of the oil ministry before June 30 reflects "our full confidence in the oil minister. It's evidence that oil ministry has worked perfectly."

Referring to the former regime of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), Allawi said that "in the past, Iraqi oil was used in building palaces, buying weapons to achieve one person's goals."

Iraq (news - web sites) has the world's second largest oil reserves, with more than 110 billion barrels of crude oil and about 100,000 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, Allawi said.

A force has been established solely for the protection of the oil infrastructure, made up of about 14,000 guards.

None of the Reagan bashers predicted the collapse of Soviet Union, Communism during his term

06.08.04 (9:01 am)   [edit]
**Reagan beat the Soviets while the historians and thinkers claimed that the Soviet Union was unbeatable. History textbooks have already recorded the lie that Reagan inherited a collapsing USSR, but no one actually believed that at the time. And besides, it was Reagan's plan to ruin the USSR economically that cause the collapse. Period.**

From the New York Post--

[b]THERE THEY GO AGAIN[/b]
By DINESH D'SOUZA

June 8, 2004 -- WRITING on Ronald Reagan's achievements in Newsweek, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. notes, "Reagan's admirers contend that his costly re-armament program caused the Soviet collapse. Maybe so; but surely the thing that did in the Russians was that time had proved communism an economic, political and moral disaster."

Funny: [b]Here's Schlesinger in 1982, observing that "Those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves."[/b]

[b]Many historians and pundits have refused to credit Ronald Reagan's policies for helping to bring about the Cold War victory, blaming communism's chronic economic problems. Yet, like Scheslinger, they failed to describe it as inevitable while Reagan was actually in office.[/b]

In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote in Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability."

But the genius award undoubtedly goes to [b]Lester Thurow, an MIT economist and well-known author who, as late as 1989, wrote: "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today [u]the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."[/b][/u]

Throughout the 1980s, most of these pundits derisively condemned Reagan's policies. Strobe Talbott of Time magazine faulted the Reagan administration for espousing "the early '50s goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic.

"Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end," Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind, "it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the USSR has learned to live."

[b]Talbott, later an official in the Clinton State Department, would eventually insist that the Soviet Union had failed "not because of anything the outside world has done or not done . . . but because of defects and inadequacies at its core."[/b]

Perhaps one should not be too hard on the wise men. After all, explained Schlesinger in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse: "History has an abiding capacity to outwit our certitudes. No one foresaw these changes."

Wrong again, professor: [b]Ronald Reagan foresaw them. In 1981, Reagan told the students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame: "The West won't contain communism. It will transcend communism. We will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written."[/b]

In 1982, Reagan told the British Parliament in London: "In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis. . . . But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union."

Reagan added that "it is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying freedom and human dignity to its citizens" and he predicted that if the Western alliance remained strong it would produce a "march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history."

In 1987, Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin. "In the communist world," he said, "we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards. . . . Even today, the Soviet Union cannot feed itself." Thus the "inescapable conclusion" in his view was that "freedom is the victor." Then Reagan said: "General Secretary Gorbachev . . . Come here to this gate. Mr Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Not long after this, the wall did come tumbling down, and Reagan's prophecies all came true. These were not just results Reagan predicted. He intended the outcome. He implemented policies that were aimed at producing it. He was denounced for those policies. Still, in the end his objective was achieved.

Margaret Thatcher remarked a few years ago that Reagan would go down in history as the man who "won the Cold War without firing a shot." Perhaps it is too much to ask the wise to admit their errors. But it's only right that we who have enjoyed the benefits of the post-Cold War boom should give Reagan due credit during his lifetime for his prescient statesmanship.

Dinesh D'Souza, is a scholar at the Hoover Institution and author of "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader."

E-mail:thedsouzas@aol.com

Snag in Hussein case shows why treating tyrants and terrorists to law enforcement model is flawed

06.08.04 (8:49 am)   [edit]
From Power Line blog-- http://www.powerlineblog.com/...

[b]Just An Innocent Bystander[/b]

AFP reports that the prosecution of Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity has hit a snag:

"Prosecutors are struggling to build a case against Saddam Hussein because they lack both witnesses and evidence to prove the ousted Iraqi dictator is guilty of atrocities. Although the US-led coalition has caught 40 of the 55 people on its list of "most-wanted" Iraqis linked to Saddam's former regime, none of them will testify for the prosecution, according to a British official quoted by The Times on Monday.

"The newspaper's source also said the Iraqi dictator, ousted by the US and British invasion in March 2003, had hidden any written proof of his direct responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. "Saddam was very clever at power-laundering, which meant that decisions were filtered down to junior levels, making it difficult to prove a direct line of responsibility", the source said."

I assume they'll succeed in getting a "conviction" in the end, although, who knows? Maybe an O. J.-style acquittal is in Saddam's future. This shows the folly of trying to apply a law enforcement model to tyrants like Saddam or, for that matter, to terrorists.

Posted by Hindrocket at 09:40 AM

More startling connections between Osama and Saddam

06.08.04 (8:01 am)   [edit]
[b]More Connections Between Saddam and Osama[/b]
By Stephen F. Hayes
Weekly Standard | June 8, 2004

Saddam Hussein "always had links with international terrorist organizations."

On the face of it, this is not a controversial statement. It comes from a CNN interview of Iyad Allawi, recently chosen as the interim prime minister of Iraq. Allawi expanded on this assessment in a December 31, 2003, interview with CNN's Bill Hemmer, when he estimated that more than 1,000 al Qaeda terrorists were operating in Iraq. But his more interesting comment came moments later. The al Qaeda fighters, he said:

[i] were present in Iraq, they came and they were active in Iraq before the war of liberation. They were inflicting a lot of problems on the--and inflaming the situation in northern Iraq, in Iraq Kurdistan. They killed once about a year and a half ago 42 worshipers in one of the mosques in Harachi [ph] in a very ugly way.[/i]

Again, on the surface, this was not a particularly revealing statement. After all, Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that al Qaeda was operating in Iraq--almost certainly with the knowledge and approval of the Iraqi regime--before the war. CIA Director George Tenet has testified to the presence of al Qaeda in Iraq on several occasions. Allawi went on:

[i] Those people have had the backing of Saddam prior to liberation, and they remained in Iraq after the collapse, and after the vacuum was created. After the way, they remained in Iraq. Many joined them since then.[/i]

Allawi's declaration that the Iraqi regime supported al Qaeda terrorists before the war in Iraq is intriguing not because of the claim itself, but because of the man making it. Allawi for years ran an Iraqi exile group called the Iraqi National Accord. In recent years, he was the Iraqi exile closest to the CIA. And although George Tenet has spoken repeatedly about the prewar Iraq-al Qaeda connection, he has been at odds with many in the bureaucracy beneath him.

Allawi's claims about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection--claims he has made for several years--have not always been solid. In December, Allawi provided journalists with a document indicating that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta trained in Iraq weeks before the 9/11 hijackings. That same three-page document also claimed that Iraq had--as President Bush claimed in his State of the Union Address--sought uranium from Niger. The report was a bit too politically convenient and was quickly dismissed as a forgery.

But Allawi isn't the only prominent member of the new Iraqi government to have suggested Iraq-al Qaeda connections. His deputy, Barham Salih, has also repeatedly alleged that Saddam's regime supported Ansar al Islam, al Qaeda-linked Islamists in Kurdistan. "Yes, they hate each other, but they're very utilitarian," said Salih. "Saddam Hussein, a secular infidel to many jihadists, had no problem giving money to Hamas. This debate [about whether Saddam worked with al Qaeda] is stupid. The proof is there."

ABC News' outstanding Pentagon reporter, Martha Raddatz, also reported on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection last week. But her May 25, 2004, report on Abu Musab al Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate who joined forces with Ansar al Islam terrorists, buried an important detail. "In late 2002, officials say, Zarqawi began establishing sleeper cells in Baghdad and acquiring weapons from Iraqi Intelligence officials." (emphasis added).

Reagan's death hypes false promise of embryonic stem-cells

06.08.04 (7:56 am)   [edit]
There is something fundamentally evil about human nature when abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem-cell research are treated by lobbyists and those in power as if they are simple decisions with virtues far outweighing the side effects.

Why are we always inclined to take the evil approach?

[b]Cell Wars
The Reagans’ suffering and hyped promises.[/b]
National Review Online
By Wesley J. Smith
June 8, 2004

Opponents of human cloning and federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research are being fast marginalized by a myth that cloning will be an immediate panacea to the ravages of degenerative disease and disabling injury. The intensity of belief in science as savior, combined with a desperate desire that it be so, has become so fervent that faith in this research has come to resemble a secular religion. And now, supporters of cloning for biomedical research are using the death of Ronald Reagan from complications of Alzheimer's disease as a bellows to blow the political winds in their favor.

Take New York Times political columnist William Safire as just one example. This week, in a column he named " Reagan's Next Victory," Safire urged President Bush to open the federal-funding spigots to embryonic-stem-cell research and, more ominously, to legalize research into human cloning as a medical treatment (while still outlawing the creation of cloned children). In doing so, [b]he summarily dismissed the prospect for cures being derived from adult-stem-cell and related research — as cloning proponents almost always do — writing: "Some argue that we should see if adult stem cells may someday do the regenerative trick. But 'someday' doesn't help today's victims."[/b]

Safire has it completely backwards. Cloning is in its embryonic stage. Even if it could be used as an efficacious treatment (though that is a gargantuan "if"), its success would be a decade or more away. [b]But adult-stem-cell and related tissue therapies are already treating human maladies. Indeed, ignored by Safire and other advocates, the science is moving forward at an exhilarating pace both here and abroad in animal and human studies.[/b]

Consider the hopeful news: Early human trials have commenced for conditions such as heart damage, multiple sclerosis, corneal injury, spinal injury, and Parkinson's disease, among others, generally with very encouraging results. For example, in Lisbon, Portugal, Dr. Carlos Lima has helped restore some muscle and bladder control in paralyzed human patients using their own olfactory tissues. At least one patient regained the ability to stand with the aid of braces. Meanwhile, mice at the end stage of juvenile diabetes were cured using human spleen cells, a feat that no embryonic-stem-cell experiment has come close to matching. [b]And it was just announced that bone-marrow stem cells have successfully regenerated liver tissue. The list goes on and on. Thus, if our goal is to create effective treatments for degenerative conditions in the quickest possible time, pursuing non-embryonic approaches would seem to be our best bet.[/b]

Therapeutic cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research also face daunting challenges that may keep them from ever becoming a regular part of medicine's armamentarium. These include:

*Tissue Rejection: According to an article in the May 2004 Scientific American, a major hurdle to the use of embryonic stem cells in regenerative medical treatments taken from leftover in-vitro-fertilization (IVF) treatments is the likelihood that the body would reject them as it would a transplanted organ. One suggested way out of this dilemma is tissue typing, but according to the article, that could require "hundreds of thousands of ES [embryonic stem] cell lines...to establish a bank of cells with immune matches for most potential patients. Creating that many lines would require millions of discarded embryos from IVF clinics." If true, this would doom embryonic stem cells as a viable medical treatment.

*The Need for Tens of Millions of Human Eggs: The authors' way out of the rejection conundrum is therapeutic cloning, because the embryonic stem cells derived from cloned embryos of each patient would likely not be rejected. But therapeutic cloning would be even more wildly impractical than making hundreds of thousands of embryonic-stem-cell lines. Human cloning, also known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), requires an egg for each try. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) claims there are more than 100 million Americans who could benefit from regenerative medicine. A NAS report last year also suggested that based on mouse studies, it could take about 100 human eggs per patient just to derive one cloned embryonic-stem-cell line for use in regenerative therapy. (South Korean scientists recently announced that they managed to create one human cloned embryonic-stem-cell line using 242 eggs.) If true, there is no prospect of bringing therapeutic cloning to your local clinic, because we will almost surely never be able to accumulate the billions of human eggs that widespread therapeutic cloning would require. (One suggested way out of this dilemma would be to use animal eggs, but that would introduce animal mitochondrial DNA into human patients, with unknown consequences.)

*The Probable Expense: Even if developed, such treatments would be prohibitively expensive. Human eggs used in infertility treatments are sold by young women of childbearing age today for about $1000 to $2000 apiece. If it would take 100 eggs per therapeutic-cloning treatment, that is about $200,000 per treatment, just for the eggs used by one patient! And this price doesn't take into account the wild inflation in egg prices that therapeutic cloning would cause, owing to the sharp spike in demand. Thus, even if the biotechnology could be developed, it would either be available only to the super rich or so costly that it would have to be stringently rationed.

*Tumors: In animal studies, [b]embryonic stem cells cause tumors, making them unsafe for use in human patients at this time. Using cloned embryos to derive stem cells would not solve this difficulty.[/b]

Safire's desire to legalize human cloning for use in research while barring the technology's use in reproduction is also dangerously naïve. [b]Human cloning is a dual-use technology, which means that going in for an inch is going in for a mile.[/b] The same procedure used to create a cloned human embryo for research could also be used to bring about the birth of the first cloned baby. Indeed, attempts are already underway to make this dreaded prospect a reality. [b]Giving such research the imprimatur of U.S. law would only legitimize cloning, open the spigots of private and taxpayer funding for the research, and thus hasten the day when a rogue scientist will take the knowledge derived from the research to accomplish what Safire called "an abyss of unrestricted human cloning."[/b]

The problems with ESCR and therapeutic cloning are fundamental and complex. Some may be intractable. In contrast, [b]adult therapies are making tremendous strides. But apparently, these facts don't count for much in a society that increasingly looks to science as a religion and biotechnologists as its new high priests. In such a milieu, empirical analysis is trumped by the hyped promise of cures every time.[/b]

— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His next book, to be published in the fall, is Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World.

The new Iraqi government is thanking America and Bush. Why are the media silent?

06.08.04 (7:41 am)   [edit]
I think I know!

From OpinionJournal.com--

[b]Iraqi Gratitude
The new government is thanking America and Bush. Why are the media silent?[/b]
Tuesday, June 8, 2004

A myth has developed that Iraqis aren't grateful for their liberation from Saddam. So it's worth noting that the leaders of Iraq's new interim government have been explicit and gracious in their thanks, not that you've heard this from the U.S. media.

First in Arabic and then in English, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in his inaugural address to the Iraqi people last Tuesday that "I would like to record our profound gratitude and appreciation to the U.S.-led international coalition, which has made great sacrifices for the liberation of Iraq." In his own remarks, President Ghazi al-Yawer said: "Before I end my speech, I would like us to remember our martyrs who fell in defense of freedom and honor, as well as our friends who fell in the battle for the liberation of Iraq."

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the U.N. Security Council much the same thing last Thursday: "We Iraqis are grateful to the coalition who helped liberate us from the persecution of Saddam Hussein's regime. We thank President Bush and Prime Minister Blair for their dedication and commitment."

We thought our readers might like to know.

Message in "The Day After Tomorrow" mostly hot air

06.08.04 (7:22 am)   [edit]
A good Schlafly article, but I wonder when she wrote it: she mentions in the last that Putin refused to sign Kyoto. In the past 2 weeks or so Russia has decided to sign the disastrous treaty in exchange for a WTO bid.

Why did Russia do this? Russia and Europe are going to offset the cost of implementing Kyoto by punishing the US i the WTO. So even if the US didn't sign and ratify Kyoto, the EU and Russia will make things "fair" and have their cake and eat it too by trying to use the WTO to destroy the US economy.

[b]Movie message in 'The Day After Tomorrow' is mostly hot air[/b]
Phyllis Schlafly
June 7, 2004

Unable to develop a coherent political ideology to oppose President George W. Bush, the anti-Bush cabal has turned to humor and Hollywood. The CBS Evening News borrows jokes from late-night comedy shows to jab at Bush every Friday evening, and we have just been treated to big fanfare about a new anti-Bush movie.

The thesis of "The Day After Tomorrow" is that the Bush administration has failed to protect us from global warming. According to this theory, global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions will melt the ice at the North Pole, which will then warm the Atlantic current, making Northern Hemisphere temperatures drop precipitously and bring about a new ice age within hours.

New York City is hit by a huge tidal wave and a catastrophic ice storm. It's all pretty grim; only the wolves that escape from the Bronx Zoo are having a good time.

This climate disaster might come tomorrow, 100 years from now or in 1,000 years.
Regardless, it's all the fault of our insensitive, out-of-touch president who refuses to ratify former Vice President Al Gore's favorite treaty, the Kyoto Protocol. In the movie, the president meets the fate he deserves when he is frozen to death along with everyone else in Washington, D.C.

The real bad guy is the vice president, a look-alike for Dick Cheney, who puts budgetary constraints ahead of incurring the gigantic costs of environmental regulations demanded by global-warming fear mongers. He is made to eat crow at the end of the movie, publicly confessing the error of his ways and thanking the Third World for accepting the mass migration of U.S. citizens fleeing south to escape the ice.

We must credit the movie producers for making the audience laugh out loud at the scene of Americans wading across the Rio Grande to cross our southern border illegally, begging for entry into Mexico to escape the cold. At first, Mexico tries to seal the border against the influx of Americans, but our president's cozy relationship with the Mexican president enables them to work out a deal: the United States forgives all Mexico's debts and Mexico graciously allows Americans to enter Mexico.

The hero of the movie, the scientist who predicted it all, is a man of unbelievable endurance. He warns his son to stay inside the New York Public Library because, if he ventures outside, he will freeze to death within minutes. But the father somehow walks through ice and blizzard all the way from Philadelphia to New York to join him.

The son and friends holed up in the library keep warm by burning books. The movie audience responded with lusty cheers when the volumes containing the tax code were tossed into the fireplace.

We see Manhattan covered with ice up to the roof of the public library and the arms of the Statue of Liberty, as well as tornadoes in Los Angeles, ice sheets breaking up in Antarctica, hail the size of baseballs in Japan, and snow in India. The special effects of "The Day After Tomorrow" are fun to watch, but their utter improbability defeats the propaganda message.

Nevertheless, Gore, Al Franken, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are hoping this summer disaster flick will make Americans take global warming seriously and turn it into a presidential campaign issue. MoveOn.org and the National Resources Defense Council are distributing leaflets at theaters to explain the message to moviegoers.

Environmental groups are urging Americans to do their part to save the environment by riding bicycles to the movie theater. I didn't notice any movie stars giving up their SUVs or Gore riding his bike; it is President Bush who has made news by bicycle riding.

Global warming isn't science; it's leftist propaganda to promote global regulation of our economy. If the predictions of the movie were true, it is obvious that absolutely nothing we could do - even abandoning every automobile in America - would make any difference.

In April, a team from Harvard University concluded the most comprehensive study ever made of global temperature over the last 1,000 years. The team reported that the world was much warmer during the Middle Ages, between A.D. 800 and 1,300, than it is today.

Bush is in good company in rejecting Kyoto. The U.S. Senate voted 95-0 in 1997 against Kyoto because it would cost jobs and drastically reduce the standard of living in the United States, while exempting most other countries from its regulations. The various international conferences on global warming have produced mostly hot air, and Russia gave Kyoto the kiss of death last year when Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled out, saying that Kyoto would stunt his country's economic growth.

©2004 Copley News Service

Ronald Reagan's death: Goodbye, freedom man

06.07.04 (11:40 am)   [edit]
Editorial from the Jerusalem Post, June 6, 2004--

[b]Goodbye, freedom man[/b]

[i]Ronald Reagan had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility, and the humor that comes with wisdom. He leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save.[/i]
– President George W. Bush

It is fitting that Bush was in France to commemorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day when he said these words on the passing of Ronald Wilson Reagan. D-Day began the rollback of fascism in Europe. Reagan led the rollback of the Soviet communism. And America has, since 9/11, taken on the rollback of the third great global bid to spread tyranny in the world in the modern era, the jihad against America and Israel.

We now look back at World War II as the ultimate war of American consensus, the war that produced the Atlantic alliance, NATO, and the United Nations. Indeed, it was obvious after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, that this was not a war in which America could stand on the sidelines. But by this time the Nazis had already overrun Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and France, and were sitting on the English Channel. Yet America, to a great degree, held back.

According to his Republican opponents, Franklin Roosevelt was dragging America into war not its own. The isolationist "America First Committee" had an impressive lineup of leading lights behind them – such as e.e. cummings, Henry Miller, Sinclair Lewis, Frank Lloyd Wright, and H. L. Mencken, among others. Even the young John F. Kennedy was a junior member of the AFC at his prep school.

Like World War II, the Cold War is now viewed retrospectively through American eyes as inevitable, just, and ending in the West's victory. But as Reagan himself pointed out in his farewell address, the policies that he espoused were widely derided as "dangerous" before and during his tenure.

Reagan's critics accused him of risking nuclear war. Reagan seemed almost alone in understanding that the only way to end the Cold War was for the Soviet Union to cease to exist, and that that day would come. In the end, it came even quicker than he imagined.

Reagan was vilified at the time for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire," much as Bush has been derided for fingering the "axis of evil." And Bush seems to have a similarly unpopular insight that the jihad will only end when the regimes that support it have gone the way of either Gaddafi or Saddam and the entire region is on the path to freedom.

In all three modern global conflicts the pattern has been the same: a Western reluctance to recognize both the scope of the danger and the power of its own secret weapon, the power of freedom. In World War II the need for complete victory was eventually recognized, but in the Cold War and the current conflict, the assumption of indefinite, perhaps even deteriorating, stalemate is widespread.

Given his focus on freedom, it is not surprising that Reagan was considered one of the most "pro-Israel" presidents ever. Missteps aside, such as the condemnation of Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, supporting Israel came naturally for him.

In his final Oval Office address in 1989, Reagan told a story of an American sailor patrolling the South China Sea. "The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. ...As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, 'Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.'"

"A small moment with a big meaning," said Reagan. "Because that's what it was to be an American in the 1980s. We stood, again, for freedom. I know we always have, but in the past few years the world again, and in a way, we ourselves rediscovered it."

After 9/11, America rediscovered that the quest for freedom could not exclude a particularly recalcitrant region, the Middle East. It is a notion that even today is widely met with skepticism and derision. Someday, however, as in the case of other global conflicts, we will look back and see that peace was not possible without victory, and freedom was victory's measure. Ronald Reagan was the father of moral clarity. He remains an inspiration for the road ahead.

Man's negative effect on climate change officially debunked

06.07.04 (9:05 am)   [edit]
From Crisis Magazine

[b]The Emperor's New Climate: Is Global Warming Real?[/b]
By Duncan Maxwell Anderson

Everyone knows that the planet Earth is heating up disastrously. Everyone. If you listen to the news at all, you know that the 1990s was the hottest decade in 1,000 years. That Delaware-sized chunks of Antarctica are melting. That the sea will rise and swallow cities like Amsterdam and New Orleans, and that there has been a record number of storms and killer heat waves worldwide. That tropical diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and Ebola are spreading to northern countries because their climates have become so warm.

Scientists know this: The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) just published a petition with 1,000 signatures saying that computer simulations show that mankind is causing a dangerous warming of the planet.

The United Nations (UN) and the U.S. Catholic bishops know it, as do famous actors and actresses. Little schoolchildren have learned it. So have teenage boys who weren?t paying attention in class but who read Outside magazine (for young men interested in risky sports and pictures of babes in hiking gear). One of the cover lines on the December 2003 issue reads, "Dude, the Alps are melting!"

Global warming is "a wea6pon of mass destruction," says Sir John Houghton, the former head of the British Meteorological Office, who also served with other prominent scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group convened by the UN. American policy and American factories, power plants, and cars are largely to blame, according to UN scientists, because it?s disproportionately their exhaust that?s putting carbon dioxide (CO2) into the air, causing the planet to heat up.

Global warming has become part of our culture's common sense. Who among us, whether a tree hugger or a free-market zealot, has not shrugged to himself inwardly as he started his car on a frigid winter evening to go pick up the kids? You pull out of your driveway, waiting for the roaring internal-combustion engine to burn some more dinosaurs and kick the waste heat to the defroster and to the heater at your feet?to make you more comfortable, for now. But where is this heat and exhaust going in the end?

It scarcely seems an exaggeration to say the whole world is going to vaporize like an Oklahoma town zapped by a B-movie spaceship, just from you and me driving to the mall and back. But how is this possible?

Here?s how Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) explains the "greenhouse effect" by which, he says, the planet's temperature will probably rise 6 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit this century, and on to even more catastrophic levels thereafter for the next 1,000 years: The sun shines, sending us energy. Some of the energy, mostly in the form of high-frequency waves of visible light, passes through the layer of gases we call our atmosphere and hits the earth. As it does, it changes from visible light into the lower-frequency, invisible waves we call infrared energy, or heat. That's what's going on when the sun shines on a rock and the rock becomes hot to the touch.

Heat is then radiated from the earth back toward space. But because the frequency of infrared waves is lower, they can't pass as easily through the earth's layer of atmospheric gases?including CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor, and are trapped.

The heat stays trapped for a time, heating up the atmosphere and the earth below it like a greenhouse warming in the winter sun. The heat-trapping gases are called "greenhouse gases." The greenhouse effect isn?t all bad, though.

"The earth can only sustain life because it is wearing a light blanket of greenhouse gases," Mahlman says. "Without them, the planet would be 65 degrees [Fahrenheit] colder?" which is to say it would be an ice ball.

But Mahlman says we've been making the planet warmer and warmer by adding to the layer of greenhouse gases: Every time we burn something, whether we're driving a car, generating electricity in a power plant that runs on coal or oil, or staring dreamily into the fireplace on a winter evening, we?re adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (especially CO2), which are formed when burning substances in the fuel combine with gases in the air. The more we burn, the more gases are released into the atmosphere and added to the earth's insulating layer.

The effect, Mahlman says, is that "each year, the blanket gets a little thicker," less heat escapes into space, and the world gets warmer.

That's the theory of global warming in a nutshell.

"Only a fool," Mahlman warns me, "would argue against this."

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Global warming first became big news as a doomsday scenario about 15 years ago. just as the Soviet bloc was about to collapse. A joint session of Congress held hearings on global warming as a possible threat to life on earth. The environmentalist lobby Friends of the Earth (FOE) arranged for a NASA scientist named James Hansen to testify. Officially, Hansen would be speaking as a private citizen to avoid having his testimony edited by his employers, the (first) Bush White House.

Hansen was originally invited to address Congress in November 1987 but protested to FOE that in the cold of autumn, his remarks wouldn't get much attention. Instead, the following summer, on June 23, 1988, during a drought, with the temperature at 101 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, D.C., Hansen spoke. He testified that according to computer simulations he and other scientists had been developing, the hot weather was no mere summer heat wave but a sign of much worse to come.

There is "a strong cause-and-effect relationship," he said, "between the current climate and human alteration of the atmosphere." Impatient with the scientific etiquette of probability and uncertainty, Hansen told reporters afterward, "It?s time to stop waffling so much, and [to] say that the greenhouse effect is here and affecting our climate now."

Hansen's remarks made a sensation in the media, and Hansen himself was lionized by Senator Al Gore in the Senate and later in Gore's best-selling book, Earth in the Balance. By 1990 President George H. W. Bush and the Senate cooperated to begin spending more than $1 billion per year to fund scientists at universities and institutes to study global warming.

The sense of crisis about the world's climate hasn't abated. The threat of global warming is the heavy breathing behind every weather report. Do you feel a bit guilty when you read that this has been an unusually hot June, a surprisingly mild winter, or a shockingly warm Thursday? I do.

Since the UN's global warming panel, the IPCC, was formed in 1987, it has issued three scientific assessment reports, which have all relied heavily on computer modeling. You start with an idea of how the earth's climate works, plug in the prevailing winds, so much rainfall, so much sunlight, so many tons of greenhouse gases?and you try to predict: If CO2 production goes up 1 percent per year, what will the earth?s temperature be in 2050?

Think how many times you hesitate, given the accuracy of weather reports, over whether to bring an umbrella to work, and you have some idea of how hard it might be to project what the average global temperature will be 50 years from now. Nevertheless, the summary of each IPCC report got a little bolder, saying in the Third Assessment in 2001, "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

It also contained something much sexier: a chart of global temperatures from 1000 a.d. to the present, with the early years' temperatures deduced from the fossil record. The researcher was Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia. His chart showed the global temperature bumping along steadily since 1000, and then shooting up in the 20th century like the handle of a hockey stick, with the highest recorded temperature occurring in the most recent year, 2000. Beyond that, the line projects the temperature to continue rising even more steeply in future years to reach what appears to be the boiling point of stone.

The IPCC's Sir John Houghton was photographed for the press in front of the chart. It was possibly the high point of the global warming cause.

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The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina, uses weather stations, satellites, ocean buoys, weather balloons, and more to measure the atmosphere and its weather from sea level up to the stratosphere. When I called, I reached the chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch, a quiet, steady-sounding man named Jay Larrimore.

I asked Larrimore if the average temperature had risen dramatically in America during the 20th century.

"From 1910 to 1945, there was a pretty rapid increase," he said. "From 1945 to 1975, the temperature was pretty flat. Then from 1975 to 2000, it went up again."

"So," I asked, "what would you say was the total warming for the century?"

"There's not much disagreement that temperatures have gone up about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past century."

"That's funny, I thought you just said "1 degree.?"

"One degree is about right."

"One degree? We?re spending $2 billion a year and drawing hockey sticks for 1 degree?"

I continued. "So?what has a 1-degree global warming meant for mankind? Are there more droughts, more heat waves, like we've been told? You know. "the greenhouse effect is here."

"We haven?t seen much of a change in the frequency of droughts," Larrimore replied. "Some models predict it more than others. And we don?t have the data to say heat waves have increased."

"You don?t?"

"There are certainly problems with the model runs. That's why they?re continually working with them. Our job over here is just to collect the data."

"So, what has happened with a 1-degree warming?"

"Fewer frost days, less snow cover, more precipitation, a rise in minimum temperatures rather than maximum temperatures?" Most of the warming, Larrimore tells me, has occurred in the coldest places on earth, such as Siberia and Western Canada.

If global warming is real, then why am I so cold? I live just outside New York. It's 19 degrees Fahrenheit this morning?again. That's 5 degrees below the normal minimum for this date. My son is three weeks old as I write this, and he has already lived through two major snowstorms, one of which set an all-time record for the most inches (16) at the earliest date (December 5).

And winter hadn?t even started yet.

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Michael Mann must have been furious. In public, scientists are at least tepidly respectful of each other's reputations and character, which are essential to making a scientist employable. To breach that wall is to invite mutually assured destruction.

Yet in July of this year, Mann sat before James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and testified that the professional work of the Harvard professor sitting at the table next to him was "pure nonsense" and "fundamentally unsound." He added, "There is little that is valid in that paper. They got just about everything wrong."

The object of Mann's ire, Willie Soon, a mild-mannered Malaysian native teaching at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had done something unthinkable. He and his colleague at the center, Sallie Baliunas, with other researchers, had published a paper in Energy and Environment arguing that the 20th century had not been the warmest in the last 1,000 years. It did not seem to mollify global warming's true believers that the basics of Soon's claim had been well established in the peer-reviewed literature for decades.

Soon and Baliunas confirmed that from 800 to 1300 a.d., average temperatures in many regions worldwide were 2 to 4 degrees or more higher than the allegedly sweltering 20th century. It's referred to as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), and the extra warmth made life better, not worse. It is not only the arcane techniques of paleoclimatology, such as testing core samples of glacial ice for radioisotopes, that testify to the MWP, but history, such as people's contemporary accounts of what they grew in their fields. Decent wine grapes grew in Merrie England. (No more, alas.) Olives grew in 13th-century Germany, where St. Albert the Great also noted abundant fig and pomegranate groves in Cologne and the Rhine valley?places too cold for those crops today. Renaissance culture awakened and flourished throughout Europe.

The MWP also explains why Greenland, now essentially a glacier, could credibly be called Greenland. It was a Danish colony, and things actually grew there.

Following the MWP, the Greenland colony died out as average temperatures plummeted 3 to 5 degrees?about 2 degrees colder than our climate today. This Little Ice Age (LIA) finally moderated but lasted in most places until about 1900. For whatever reason, many regions have warmed up about 1 degree since 1900.

Because of Soon and Baliunas?s paper, Mann?s hockey stick was not so much broken as shattered. Interestingly enough, the two studies don?t entirely contradict each other. The Mann ?hockey stick? study used such a small number of temperature record samples to create its dramatic trend line that the margin of error is substantial. Indeed, it?s so wide that you could draw a variety of lines through the chart?including a trend of global cooling.

Soon says, ?They?re showing incomplete sets of data. If you do that, it?s easy to show the curve you want people to see. For explaining this, they called me a ?right-wing extremist.? I don?t care what wings are. I want to know what the facts are.?

The Soon and Baliunas study included more up-to-date research published in the four years since Mann?s study had been released.

Soon speaks enthusiastically of logic and measurement. ?One of the most important pillars of the claim that CO2 is producing global warming,? he says, ?is the thermometer readings taken over the last 150 years. They show warming from 1900 to the 1940s. But the amount of CO2 produced then was negligible compared to the next period?from the 1940s to the 1970s?when there was cooling. So how can the CO2 be producing the warming? That is the contradiction. They have yet to show why this would be.?

But there?s another reason global-warming scientists have it in for Soon and Baliunas: The point of their work is not merely to demolish the ?hockey-stick? model of history. They aim to replace it.

Since they?re astrophysicists, Soon and Baliunas know about sunspots?powerful pulses of electromagnetic energy whose effects are felt hundreds of millions of miles distant. It turns out that while increased CO2 emissions don?t correlate very well with global warming, something else does?something as far out of our control and as firmly in the hands of God as it can be: the fluctuating heat of our ultimate heat source, the sun.

More research is needed, but it appears that, stretching back 1,000 years, when sunspot activity went up, the earth got warmer; when the activity went down, the earth got colder. Soon is co-author of a new book on the sun?s variability, The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection (World Scientific Publishing, 2004).

As Soon painstakingly told me, ?I am still trying to disprove my theory, to see if it is correct. But from the data, I still cannot rule out the possibility that I am right.?

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I?m shocked by the lengths some scientist-believers go for the global warming cause, and I mention this to Patrick J. Michaels?a climatologist, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, and author of The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air About Global Warming.

Michaels is surprised that I?m surprised.

He says: ?No one in Washington gets large grants by saying something isn?t a problem. Meanwhile, the $10 billion thrown at climate modeling research in the last 15 years was wasted.?

I protest, ?Where?s their concern for the truth? Some of these guys are worse than the politicians!?

?I believe you guys in the Catholic Church have a concept called original sin,? Michaels explains. ?Picture this: It?s 1992 and there?s a hearing. Senator Albert Gore says he thinks global warming is a serious issue, and do you think it would be worthwhile to spend $1 billion or so studying it? No one is going to speak up and say it?s an overblown problem. If he did, all his colleagues would take out their knives and throw them into his back before he could leave the hearing room.? The result is a theory of impending doom that?s hard to test, since the proof is 100 years away. In the meantime, you could argue that it has become a form of welfare for liberal scientists.

Michaels is fond of bringing in Thomas Kuhn?s thinking from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Scientists have created a global-warming paradigm for themselves that benefits them?as a cause and as a livelihood. They won?t easily be dissuaded from it. According to Kuhn, scientists tend to resist new information that upsets their paradigm till a new paradigm from a new generation finally supersedes it. In the meantime, when their hypotheses don?t work out, it?s typical to see them come up with more and more complicated explanations and lash out personally at their critics.

The agreement called the Kyoto Treaty, proposed through the UN in 1997 to limit CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, is likewise seen by Michaels and many other critics as a vehicle for economic self-interest rather than for the environment.

Long in the works at previous international meetings, Kyoto would have been a ticket to a second Great Depression. Its provisions assume the truth of the CO2?global warming hypothesis and obligate the wealthy industrial countries to reorder their nations to cut CO2 emissions to their 1990 levels by 2010. Since that in effect puts commerce under tighter state control, it pleased the anticapitalist environmentalists of the West. ?Developing? states favor the treaty because it puts no limitations on their CO2 emissions?even though countries like China burn increasing amounts of high-carbon fuel such as coal.

The UN and European Union (EU) support the treaty because it establishes their authority to set CO2 standards, collect fees, and regulate transportation. For the EU, there?s also the chance to entangle the powerful U.S. economy in a web of regulation sufficient to bring it to the 17th-century level of innovation and efficiency that Europe now enjoys.

Meanwhile, even scientists in the global-warming camp deride the treaty as ineffective. As Mahlman put it, ?If Kyoto were successful, it would produce a small decrease in the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. It would take 40 Kyotos to actually stop the increase.?

Even after President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and the environmentalist lobbies urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, the Senate passed a resolution 95-0 against it, and Clinton dropped the matter. President Bush opposes the treaty.

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To see how profligate a CO2 offender I might be, I took an audit of my household?s ?carbon footprint? at [link], which is run by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Earth Communications Office (ECO).
The Anderson cars drive around 2,500 miles per month, and we burn about 140 gallons of heating oil in the same period. That made us ?average,? according to the animated key. When I typed the answers in, a little pawn-shaped creature set in a desert landscape came to life. He emitted a little cloud from his hindquarters, propelling him briefly into the air. Nearby, in response, a flower wilted and a flying bird fell down and died.

This is how the progressives see humanity: a collection of gas-producers. But their concerns don?t end there. On the site?s news feed, I read how New Zealand farmers are chafing at their government?s restrictions on?no, I?m not kidding?cow farts. Methane is one of the greenhouse gases, after all, though I don?t know how they aim to make Bessy more continent?put Rolaids in her salt lick?

I also read that the European Parliament has decided that each country will give out CO2 credits to each business in that country, which entitles it to emit so much CO2. If they come out under their limit, they can sell their credits to other, more?flatulent businesses.

The Web site features pictures of Hollywood actors and actresses supporting the war against warming. Kevin Bacon says, ?Global warming isn?t cool. Stopping it is,? while Jacqueline Obradors of NYPD Blue assures us that stopping global warming is ?as easy as changing a light bulb or hanging laundry.?

The site also features private individuals?global warming saints, if you will?who are held up for emulation.

Here?s Mike Tidwell: ?For Catherine and me, last January?s bombshell findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change motivated us strongly to plot our home energy revolution. Planetary warming of 10.4 degrees by 2100 is doubly horrifying each time you look down at your innocent son playing with building blocks on the carpet.?

This is Mike Totten, who brings out an important theme, which is that normal life looks innocent on the surface but is actually desperately evil: ?If everyone in the world adopted what appears to be a relatively benign U.S. lifestyle, this would in fact lead to certain disaster for the planet?. Thus I?ve spent the past several decades trying to shrink my carbon and ecological footprints, to ?live simply so others may simply live.??

Here?s one way he does it: ?For the past quarter-century I have largely eliminated meat, fish, fowl, cheese, eggs, and most milk products from my diet....? He goes on:

Stabilizing world population as rapidly as possible is the single biggest long-term, footprint-reducing action humanity can promote. I have joined the growing ranks of families who adopt children rather than have their own biological offspring. I have become the father of a wonderful stepdaughter and stepson, both of whom have accepted me as part of their family since the early 1980s.

And a female Episcopalian minister, Rev. Sally Bingham, is the ?Environmental Minister? of Grace Cathedral in (surprise!) San Francisco. She is cofounder of Episcopal Power and Light, which markets ?green? electricity (20 percent generated from non-fossil fuel sources) to churches.

There are links to all the usual suspects here, of course, including [link], where you?ll see a picture of a blond actress kissing an albino turkey. (You can never make this stuff up.)

Global-warming people are trying to be good stewards and plan for the future; the only problem is that their future doesn?t include people. Or if it does, the people are living in mud huts and dying very young, so as not to hurt the earth. Their virtues have run amok.

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A funny thing happened as James Hansen was fielding questions from reporters in Washington, D.C., in 1988, terrifying senators with global warming predictions: The forests of eastern North America?no doubt including the Blue Ridge Mountains 60 miles to the west of the capital?were quietly absorbing CO2. A study by Princeton University, Columbia University, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducted between 1988 and 1992 showed that the eastern forests were so efficient a ?sink? or absorber of carbon dioxide that they more than made up for all the emissions from America?s factories, power plants, campfires?even its SUVs. Published in Science in 1998, it got comparatively little notice, but if the years covered by the study are typical, the implications for the world?s climate could be enormous. It would mean that America, rather than being a force oppressing the rest of the world with its huge economy and its greenhouse emissions, is actually picking up other countries? greenhouse ?trash.? If CO2 is a problem, it?s the rest of the world that?s causing it.

Peter Huber, a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, shares the environmentalists? desire for a cleaner, wilder planet less dominated by man?but he says their solutions are all wrong. Fossil fuels are good, he says, because they take up so little space. Solar cells are bad, because they block out the sun over an area that can?t be a habitat for trees or animals. He even says that to go a given distance, an SUV is more earth-friendly than a guy on a bicycle, because the extra food consumed by the cyclist to make the journey takes more area to grow than all the space consumed by the SUV, its gasoline, and its share of the road.

America, not the low-tech world, is earth-friendly, because our farms are so efficient that they leave more room for the wilderness that heals the world?s air and serves as wildlife habitat. America?s forests, he points out, have been expanding every year since 1920, as people have left farms to live in cities, while our agricultural production has vastly increased. Another factor: Feeding the horses and donkeys formerly needed for transportation and farming tied up twice the acreage used today by all our roads and highways, oil pipelines, refineries, and wells. Much of that extra acreage has reverted to trees.

The environmentalists can say, ?If everyone lived like Americans, we?d need two planets?one to live on and one to exploit.? But turnabout is fair play: If the whole world farmed as efficiently as Americans?using fossil fuels, productive cultivars, and modern tillage techniques?and most of the population lived in cities, as in America, there would be no environmental problems. People would have plenty to eat, even in the Third World, and tropical forests everywhere would be expanding, instead of getting slashed and burned for primitive agriculture. The air would be clean, as it is even in America?s industrial cities, instead of choked with ozone, as it is in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria. Instead of trying to shackle enterprise in rich countries, Huber says, the greens should be promoting American-style democracy and entrepreneurship in the Third World?which is fast becoming the source of most of the world?s pollution.

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*****

Out there in the media, the meltdown is still just around the corner. In the December 5, 2003, issue of Science, NCDC?s Thomas Karl and NCAR?s Kevin Trenberth say the ?likely result? of human activity on earth is ?more frequent heat waves, droughts, extreme precipitation events, and related impacts, e.g., wildfires, heat stress, vegetation changes, and sea-level rise.?

Yawn. I?m sorry, but ?likely? is pretty tepid soup 16 years after James Hansen promised us disaster, standing in the sun by the Capitol. If Hansen could say that global warming is ?affecting our climate now,? shouldn?t we now be seeing a sign or two that even a nonscientist would recognize? A mass extinction, maybe? A news story about someone?s tires melting in a parking lot in Akron in April. No? How about a 15 percent falloff in snowblower sales?

Global-warming believers place their hopes, so to speak, on disasters in the future. Which is to say, on their computer simulations?the limitations of which are creaking audibly. It?s not a good sign if sunspot patterns predict the climate better than the UN?s favorite scientists, as Soon and Baliunas contend.

The surface of the planet has warmed one Fahrenheit degree over the past century. If that warming had been caused by a blanket of CO2 trapping heat and transferring it back to Earth, the atmosphere should heat up first, then the surface.

Is that what actually happened? At the end of the 20th century (1976-2000), the surface of the planet was heating up 0.27 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. To warm the earth at that rate, the atmosphere should have been heating up even faster, at 0.41 degrees per decade.

But according to independent readings from weather satellites and weather balloons, the atmosphere warmed more slowly than the surface, at 0.13 degrees per decade. The model is off by a mere 200 percent.

It?s a pagan temptation to think, as some environmentalists seem to, that God is angry at us for enjoying the comforts of civilization?rather than to accept human ingenuity as His gift to us. The global-warming believers? vision seems to be for everyone to live like graduate students on a hiking trip: bringing the latest, lightest, high-tech gear, but eating only gorp and dried tofu and bearing no children.

The Emperor?s New Climate promised by the computer models should be so warm, we can all go around naked. If you must believe the scare stories, you can plant some palm trees and buy extra sunblock. But I don?t suggest you spend much. And if you live where I live, I promise you that for at least one season every year, you can expect to shovel some snow. Thanks be to God, spring is just around the corner.

[i]Duncan Maxwell Anderson writes on science, religion, and politics when he is not splitting firewood to heat his house in upstate New York[/i]

It's time to expand the US Armed Forces-- permanently

06.07.04 (8:50 am)   [edit]
[b]More Boots On The Ground[/b]
New York Post | June 7, 2004

The Pentagon is reportedly preparing to withdraw its two Army divisions from Germany — thus freeing them for more strategically significant regions.

That makes sense; the fall of the Soviet Union 15 years ago substantially diminished the need for a huge American military presence in the heart of Europe.

Unfortunately, combined with the announcement last week that Army personnel whose enlistments expire while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan will have their active duty extended until their units return home — maybe for months — this news sends an unhappy message:

That the Iraq mission has seriously taxed the U.S. military.

Yes, the American military is an all-volunteer force. Contrary to the heated rhetoric of Bush critics, those volunteers upon joining are told that extraordinary circumstances could cause their service time to be extended indefinitely.

"Hot" conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of other operations in the war on terror — and ongoing peacekeeping missions across the world — certainly qualifies as "extraordinary circumstances."

Even so, it has become obvious that the U.S. military — particularly the Army — needs to be expanded.

Yes, it seems that the 480,000-strong, 10-division regular Army ought to be able to commit 138,000 troops to a low-intensity war like Iraq. But that's not so.

But for every combat-capable brigade in Iraq or Afghanistan, another needs to be resting after deployment — and a third must be in training to replace the first.

The Army has asked for a temporary increase in "end-strength" of 30,000 troops — two new divisions, essentially — to complete the stabilization of Iraq.

There is surprising agreement across the political spectrum on this issue.

Even John Kerry reportedly supports adding 40,000 active-duty troops to the Army. Like Army planners, he also says that it should only be "temporary."

Why?

No one can safely predict that the world will be stable enough in five or 10 years that the United States could start drawing down its troop strength.

After all, more than 50 years after the Korean War, thousands of U.S. troops are still stationed in South Korea.

The cost of adding more troops shouldn't really be a major consideration. In fact, it's an almost insignificant amount.

Fielding a division of 15,000 troops costs about $5 billion a year — less than a drop in the bucket in the $11 trillion U.S. economy.

Total defense spending is currently less than 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. One-half of 1 percent of GDP equals $55 billion.

So $5 billion a year is a small price for an essential investment in well-trained troops.

Contrast that with the financial and human cost of another successful terrorist attack on New York City or Los Angeles or Chicago.

For the long-term continued success of U.S. security and strategic aims, it's time to expand the U.S. Army — permanently.

For quite a few lefties, the death of Alzheimer-sufferer Reagan was cause for celebration

06.07.04 (7:41 am)   [edit]
What would you expect?

June 07, 2004, 9:41 a.m.
[b]Sore Losers
Juvenile cheers from the radical Left.[/b]
By Daniel J. Flynn

This weekend, while antiwar activists outside the White House denounced the "terrorists," "war criminals," and "torturers" in the Bush administration, attention quickly shifted to one of George W. Bush's predecessors. But if the current president inspires unhinged anger, news of president Reagan's fading health put many protesters in a more celebratory mood.

"Good riddance to Reagan," remarked Virginian Jared Hermann. "He deserves what he gets and more. He should be tried for war crimes." A friend concurred. "You just wish the worst on him that you can possibly wish," admitted Ian Roberts. "I don't want to wish death on anyone, but it seems with Reagan you really want to...." Reagan's poor health, he opined, was "karma."

As a nation mourns President Reagan's passing, many on the hardcore left cheer.

"We need to clap when he dies," declared protester David Barrows, who stood in front of the White House wearing a George W. Bush mask and giving Hitler salutes. Barrows said Reagan should be remembered "as the villain he really was. He was responsible for the deaths of students at Berkeley. He was responsible for deaths in Grenada — the trumped-up silly revolution to prove how big a man he was. He was responsible for the torture of a lot of people in Central America. He should be despised. Sorry, I do not forgive people who cheat the innocent out of their lives and kill peasants."

"I'd almost be willing to say I hope he doesn't die too soon because that just means more things are going to be named after him," said a D.C.-area high-school student; another teenage boy labeled the 40th president a "fascist." For a woman who traveled to the protest from New York, Reagan was a "reactionary," "the arch-enemy of the poor people of the world and of the people of the United States," and the man who ushered in "the beginning of the end for some civil rights that people held in this country."

"My general practice is to speak only well of the dead or not at all," noted Leonard Sanford of Waldorf, Maryland. "However, Mr. Reagan and his clique caused a lot of evil to this country and started this country on the wrong path. They did it with malice. They maliciously hurt a lot of people. It won't be with sorrow that I grieve his passing."

Some were more moderate in their sentiment. "I didn't like his policies at all," said World War II veteran Joseph Murphy, "but there was a gentleman I couldn't help but like." Cinda McGwynn of North Carolina reacted to news of Reagan's fading health saying, "That's too bad." "He was an old idiot and a lousy president, but I'm sorry he's sick and everything."

Expressions of compassion, however, were heavily outnumbered by venomous words.

"He's a fascist, of course," New Yorker William H. Depperman said of Reagan. "He is a slime; basically, a horrible, horrible person. People didn't like him. They despised him."

No, they actually loved him. And perhaps that is the key to understanding why even on his death bed Reagan evoked such hate from these extremists. President Reagan's policies not only proved wildly popular, but they proved the Left wrong.

Reagan defeated the Evil Empire while academics told us to resign ourselves to peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. Campaign rhetoric depicted candidate Reagan as a trigger-happy warmonger, but President Reagan expanded the defense budget and became the greatest peacemaker of our time. The Left derided Reagan's tax cuts as "trickle-down economics," but by slashing top rates from 70 to 28 percent, Reagan helped unleash 92 months of economic growth, create 18 million new jobs, and enlarge the gross national product by a third. After a decade of Watergate, Communist expansion, gas lines, defeat in Vietnam, the Iranian hostage crisis, and economic malaise, many liberals argued in the late 1970s that America should accept our new, debased position. Reagan rebelled and restored a nation's pride.

At nearly every turn, Reagan succeeded where the Left said he would fail. Sore losers have yet to get over it.

— Daniel J. Flynn is the editor of www.flynnfiles.com.

Ronald Reagan freed the world from Communism's grip-- that is his paramount achievement

06.07.04 (7:34 am)   [edit]
For if we are not free, we cannot be prosperous. We cannot achieve if we aren't free.

Reagan, the guy who was called a dunce, an airhead, and a moron, proved the left-wing snobs wrong. And the world should be eternally thankful.

[b]Dutch Courage[/b]
By Mark Steyn
SteynOnline.com | June 7, 2004

All Saturday across the networks, media grandees who’d voted for Carter and Mondale, just like all their friends did, tried to explain the appeal of Ronald Reagan. He was “The Great Communicator”, he had a wonderful sense of humour, he had a charming smile…self-deprecating� ��the tilt of his head….

All true, but not what matters. Even politics attracts its share of optimistic, likeable men, and most of them leave no trace – like Britain’s “Sunny Jim” Callaghan, a perfect example of the defeatism of western leadership in the 1970s. It was the era of “détente,” a word barely remembered now, which is just as well, as it reflects poorly on us: the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the free world had decided that the unfree world was not a prison ruled by a murderous ideology that had to be defeated but merely an alternative lifestyle that had to be accommodated. Under cover of “détente”, the Soviets gobbled up more and more real estate across the planet, from Ethiopia to Grenada. Nonetheless, it wasn’t just the usual suspects who subscribed to this grubby evasion – Helmut Schmidt, Pierre Trudeau, Francois Mitterand – but most of the so-called “conservatives,” too – Ted Heath, Giscard d’Estaing, Gerald Ford.

Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is fine print.

At the time, the charm and the smile got less credit from the intelligentsia, confirming their belief that he was a dunce who’d plunge us into Armageddon. Everything you need to know about the establishment’s view of Ronald Reagan can be found on page 624 of Dutch, Edmund Morris’ weird post-modern biography. The place is Berlin, the time June 12, 1987:

[i] ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ declaims Dutch, trying hard to look infuriated, but succeeding only in an expression of mild petulance ... One braces for a flash of prompt lights to either side of him: APPLAUSE.

What a rhetorical opportunity missed. He could have read Robert Frost’s poem on the subject, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ to simple and shattering effect. Or even Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lines, which he surely holds in memory…

Only now for the first time I see
This wall is actually a wall, a thing
Come up between us, shutting me away
From you ... I do not know you any more.[/i]

Poor old Morris, the plodding, conventional, scholarly writer driven mad by 14 years spent trying to get a grip on Ronald Reagan. Most world leaders would have taken his advice: You’re at the Berlin Wall, so you have to say something about it, something profound but oblique, maybe there’s a poem on the subject ... Who cares if Frost’s is over-quoted, and a tad hard to follow for a crowd of foreigners? Who cares that it is, in fact, pro-wall - a poem in praise of walls?

Edmund Morris has described his subject as an “airhead” and concluded that it’s “like dropping a pebble in a well and hearing no splash.” Morris may not have heard the splash, but he’s still all wet: The elites were stupid about Reagan in a way that only clever people can be. Take that cheap crack: If you drop a pebble in a well and you don’t hear a splash, it may be because the well is dry but it’s just as likely it’s because the well is of surprising depth. I went out to my own well and dropped a pebble: I heard no splash, yet the well supplies exquisite translucent water to my home.

But then I suspect it’s a long while since Morris dropped an actual pebble in an actual well: As with walls, his taste runs instinctively to the metaphorical. Reagan looked at the Berlin Wall and saw not a poem-quoting opportunity but prison bars.

I once discussed Irving Berlin, composer of “God Bless America”, with his friend and fellow songwriter Jule Styne, and Jule put it best: “It’s easy to be clever. But the really clever thing is to be simple.” At the Berlin Wall that day, it would have been easy to be clever, as all those ’70s detente sophisticates would have been. And who would have remembered a word they said? Like Irving Berlin with “God Bless America”, only Reagan could have stood there and declared without embarrassment:

Tear down this wall!

- and two years later the wall was, indeed, torn down. Ronald Reagan was straightforward and true and said it for everybody - which is why his “rhetorical opportunity missed” is remembered by millions of grateful Eastern Europeans. The really clever thing is to have the confidence to say it in four monosyllables.

Reagan was an American archetype, and just the bare bones of his curriculum vitae capture the possibilities of his country: in the Twenties, a lifeguard at a local swimming hole who saved over 70 lives; in the Thirties, a radio sports announcer; in the Forties, a Warner Brothers leading man...and finally one of the two most significant presidents of the American century. Unusually for the commander in chief, Reagan’s was a full, varied American life, of which the presidency was the mere culmination.

“The Great Communicator” was effective because what he was communicating was self-evident to all but our dessicated elites: [b]“We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around.”[/b] And at the end of a grim, grey decade - Vietnam, Watergate, energy crises, Iranian hostages – Americans decided they wanted a President who looked like the nation, not like its failed government. Thanks to his clarity, around the world, governments that had nations have been replaced by nations that have governments. Most of the Warsaw Pact countries are now members of Nato, with free markets and freely elected parliaments.

One man who understood was Yakob Ravin, a Ukrainian émigré who in the summer of 1997 happened to be strolling with his grandson in Armand Hammer Park near Reagan’s California home. They happened to see the former President, out taking a walk. Mr Ravin went over and asked if he could take a picture of the boy and the President. When they got back home to Ohio, it appeared in the local newspaper, The Toledo Blade.

Ronald Reagan was three years into the decade-long twilight of his illness, and unable to recognize most of his colleagues from the Washington days. But Mr Ravin wanted to express his appreciation. “Mr President,” he said, “thank you for everything you did for the Jewish people, for Soviet people, to destroy the Communist empire.”

And somewhere deep within there was a flicker of recognition. “Yes,” said the old man, “that is my job.”

Yes, that was his job.

[i]Mark Steyn is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.[/i]

Forget world opinion: the determination of the US,not the Euro-weenies, will win the war on terror

06.07.04 (7:22 am)   [edit]
[b]Forget About World Opinion[/b]
By Alex Epstein
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 7, 2004

It is a testament to the perverse priorities of our politicians and journalists that the biggest American outcry over Abu Ghraib has been not about the gruesome decapitation of American Nicholas Berg by terrorists, but about the fact that many Arabs and Europeans are mad at us.

"We are the most hated nation in the world," laments Ted Kennedy, "as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons."

The alleged solution to this alleged crisis of "world opinion" is to show more deference toward the rest of the world. Otherwise, we are told, the world's anger will bring more terrorist attacks and less "international cooperation" against terrorism.

All of this evades one blatant truth: the hatred being heaped on America over Abu Ghraib is undeserved. Throughout the Middle East, torture--real torture, with electric drills and vats of acid--is official policy and daily practice. Yet there are no worldwide condemnations of the dictatorships that practice such atrocities--let alone the Arab-Islamic culture that produces so many torturers. But when, during a war, a handful of American prison guards subject a handful of Iraqi POWs to comparatively mild humiliation--which the U.S. government denounces and promptly investigates--"world opinion" proclaims itself offended and condemns America.

Abu Ghraib is just the latest example of the injustice of "world opinion." Since September 11, the United States--the freest nation on Earth--has been ceaselessly denounced for any step in the direction of self-defense against terrorism, while terrorist regimes Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority get a moral free pass.

So-called "world opinion" is not the unanimous and just consensus that its seekers pretend. (Observe that the phrase never includes the many pro-American foreigners, such as freedom-fighters in Iran.) It is the irrational and unjust opinion of the world's worst people: the Islamists who seek to subjugate the world to Islamic rule, the socialists and pacifists who seek to subjugate U.S. sovereignty to UN rule, and the legions of "moderate" followers who support or sympathize with these goals. These people oppose us not because of any legitimate grievances against America, but because they are steeped in irrational doctrines like Islamic fundamentalism, collectivism, and pacifism--which lead them to oppose and resent American freedom and individualism, and our resulting wealth and power.

The proper response to the anti-American voicers of "world opinion" is to identify them as our ideological and political enemies and dispense justice accordingly. In the case of our militant enemies, we must kill and demoralize them, especially the Arab and Islamic regimes that support terrorism and fuel the Islamist movement; as for the rest, we must politically ignore them and intellectually discredit them, while proudly arguing for the superiority of Americanism. Such a policy would make us safe, expose anti-Americanism as irrational and immoral, and embolden the world's best elements to support our ideals and emulate our ways.

President Bush, like most politicians and intellectuals, has taken the opposite approach to "world opinion": he has tried to appease it. Instead of identifying anti-American Muslims as ideological enemies to be discredited, he has appealed to their sensibilities and met their demands (e.g., sacrificing American soldiers to save Iraqi civilians and mosques, and striving to make the Iraqi occupation not look "too American"). Instead of seeking to crush the Islamists by defeating the causes they fight for--such as Islamic world domination and the destruction of Israel--he has appeased those causes, declaring Islam a "great religion" and rewarding the Palestinian terrorist jihad with a promised Palestinian state. Instead of destroying the terrorist regimes that wage war against the West--including Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority--he has sought their "cooperation" and even cast some as "coalition partners."

Such measures have taught the enemies they appease a deadly lesson: anti-Americanism pays. "Denounce and oppose America," they have learned, "no matter how irrationally and hypocritically, and American leaders will praise your ideals and meet your demands." "Attack America via terrorist proxy," terrorist states and movements have been taught, "and America will neither blame you nor destroy you, but redouble its efforts to buy your love." Is it any wonder that anti-Americanism is gaining prominence, and that the "War on Terrorism" has no end in sight?

Every attempt to appease "world opinion" preserves, promotes, and emboldens our enemies. Every concession to angry Muslim mobs, every denunciation of Israel, every consultation with Prince Bandar or dictator Assad gives hope to the Islamist cause. Every day we allow terrorist regimes to exist gives their minions time to execute the next September 11. America needs honest leadership with the courage to identify and defeat our enemies--world opinion be damned.

Alex Epstein is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, California, which promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Send comments to reaction@aynrand.org.

Baby boomers heap insincere praise on the "greatest generation."

06.07.04 (7:15 am)   [edit]
[b]Too Much, Too Late
Baby boomers heap insincere praise on the "greatest generation." [/b]
BY DAVID GELERNTER
Friday, June 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

My political credo is simple and many people share it: I am against phonies. A cultural establishment that (on the whole) doesn't give a damn about World War II or its veterans thinks it can undo a half-century of indifference verging on contempt by repeating a silly phrase ("the greatest generation") like a magic spell while deploying fulsome praise like c