Schroder, alas, clinged on to power last night, but only by a whisker. His razor-thin victory is still a victory, but might, with any luck, temper his posturing on Iraq in the coming months. Maybe he’ll recall the following recent quotes from leading German figures about the danger of a re-armed Saddam. Rantingscreeds blogger has tracked them down. Here’s former defense minister, Rudolf Scharping:
I would like to state the central issues once again. First, there is only one individual who bears the responsibility for the current confrontation with the United Nations, and that is Saddam Hussein. Second, he has to see to it that Iraq satisfies all the UN resolutions. Third, every possible political effort has to be made to arrive at a peaceful solution. Fourth, the danger posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is a matter that no one can view with indifference, and that is the case for all the other states in the region, especially Israel, as well as for the Europeans and the Americans. That is why Iraq should stop refusing to cooperate, and if all the political efforts that are being made do not result in success, a military operation cannot and should not be ruled out in this case. The United States and Great Britain can absolutely count on German solidarity.
And then there’s former foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, of the Free Democrats:
Incidentally, I believe that we Germans in particular have good reason to work toward preventing a dictator from causing something terrible yet again. There was one dictator who was stopped too late. This one has to be stopped in good time… We are maintaining intensive contact with the United States and with our partners and friends in the EU. However, our experience of Saddam Hussein to date, and I believe that this is also of key importance, shows that, unfortunately, he is only prepared to observe UN Security Council resolution when he is under pressure. The international community cannot simply accept always being made a fool of. That is why the military option must remain available. He who wants a peaceful solution in particular cannot waver in this regard.
Those quotes are from February 1998. Four and a half years later, the SPD and the German government are refusing to support military action against Saddam, even if the U.N. mandates it.
WHO SAYS THE ARAB WORLD CAN’T BE FEMINIST? I loved this woman-fights-back story from, of all places, Jordan.
BRODER ON THE DEMS: It’s rare that this genteel op-ed uniter sticks the boot in. His simple argument is that the Democrats have no principled position on the the two most important issues to the president: the war and the tax-cut. They won’t actually oppose either, because they fear the political consequences. Yet they carp and obstruct and criticize – without offering any serious credible alternative. Until they tell us why Saddam is not a threat meriting war or that they will repeal the Bush tax cut, they should be treated with the contempt Broder says they deserve.
EVEN THE GUARDIAN: Well, actually, its sister Sunday paper, the Observer, concedes that the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam is desperately trying to build weapons of mass destruction. Here’s the money quote:
‘You can say many things about what Iraq is up to,’ said one diplomat familiar with the material. ‘You can argue about what weapons he has, if any, how many, and if they will ever work. You can argue about whether he will takes two months or 10 years to build or acquire a nuclear bomb. But what you cannot argue with is the evidence that that Saddam has set up his secret weapons procurement network once again. That is the real worry.’
Yep, sure is.
OSAMA’S SPIN-DOCTOR: A reader sends in the following story archived in Salon, a magazine which has its fair share of embarrassing Osama-bin-Laden-is-harmless stories from before September 11. But this one is a beaut. The author pours scorn on the notion that there was any evidence linking bin Laden to terrorism against the United States in the 1990s:
So far, for all of the accusations, no government, not even that of the United States, has established enough credible evidence against bin Laden to conclusively prove his direct participation in, much less leadership of, any of the ugly plots and acts he stands accused of. To date no formal request for his extradition has ever been made, either to the Sudanese government that once housed him or to his current hosts, Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.
The piece reads like an exercise in spin-control for bin Laden and al Qaeda. The lame excuses for the Islamofascist go on and on:
When a car bomb exploded at a Saudi National Guard office in Riyadh in 1995, killing five Americans, and another blew up at the Khobar Towers Barracks in Dhahran a year later, killing another 19, bin Laden seemed the most likely suspect. But neither the FBI, the CIA nor the Saudi intelligence services has ever been able to establish bin Laden’s links to those crimes after years of trying. What evidence that has emerged from those ongoing investigations points the finger at dissident Saudi Shiites, perhaps with the logistic support of the Lebanese Hezbollah organization, or even Iran … Bin Laden may be a dangerous anti-American zealot with a mouth as big as his bankroll. But the evidence so far does not support him being a cerebral Islamic Dr. No moving an army of terrorist troops on a vast world chessboard to checkmate the United States.
Who wrote this? One Loren Jenkins. What does he do now? He’s NPR’s Senior Supervising Editor for foreign news, paid in part by you and me. And NPR is biased in its coverage of the Middle East? Naaah.
WRIGHT ONLINE: That awesome New Yorker profile of al Qaeda’s number 2 is now online. Endless, but unmissable.
HATE CRIME UPDATE: Perhaps goaded by this blog, the Los Angeles Times has now covered the Muslim anti-Jewish attack in West Hollywood last week. Here’s the piece.
HEY, ALTERMAN: I wonder if the story of Lynne Stewart worries him in any way. Here’s a former left-wing radical who has seamlessly shifted toward support of Islamist terror. She even allowed an attorney-client prison meeting to be turned into a means for terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who is a key figure in world-wide Islamist terror, to broadcast a message to his murderous supporters. I wonder if many on the far-left who have been at pains to deny that they could ever support terror will find it possible to defend this woman. It will be revealing who backs her and why.
ANGRY YOUNG MALE FOR B
USH: Here’s a letter worth passing on, helping explain why the Republicans have such lopsided majorities among young men (a demographic, I might add, that closely matches this website’s readership):
I’m a male under 44, and while I’ve been a Republican since I was 20, I didn’t support Bush until after the 2000 convention, and then only because I had to.
That has changed, and I support him completely today. It’s not lack of life experience, and I’ve known that the Democrats are an institutionalized Ponzi scheme for twenty years now. No, here’s why I support Bush: I grew up in the Middle of North Dakota, amid the missile silos, during the Cold War. The threat of senseless oblivion was all around me. My most fervent prayer was that my own kids wouldn’t have to grow up with that over their heads. I considered it a near-miracle that the Cold War, and that threat, ended right when my daughter was born, in 1991. The missile silos I grew up among have been decomissioned and blown up. I relaxed for a bit.
That ended September 11. Not only is oblivion from the blue a possibility again – it happened. And can happen again. And I know that Bush is the one who’s going to not only contain that threat, but uproot and burn it away. Yeesh, what if Gore had won? I’d expect to see a speech asking us all to learn how to co-exist with terror and come to terms with our own accountability for it. The reasons may be different – but I suspect a lot of us young (angry? white?) males have a similar feeling.
HITLER AND SADDAM:
“In targeting Iraq, the United States administration is acting on behalf of Zionism, which has been killing the heroic people of Palestine, destroying their property, murdering their children and seeking to impose their domination on the whole world, not only militarily, but also economically and politically.” – Saddam Hussein, in his letter last week to the U.N.
“…For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim … all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle…”
– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
I guess, according to some, Hitler was just an anti-Zionist.
The Dish 