Month: July 2003

Am I the only one to be a little taken aback by the tone of David Sanger’s piece this morning on the president? I guess it’s a “notebook”-style piece and some wry comments are merited. But the unremitting loathing of the president in the prose, the sneers at anything he might say, the contempt for him that oozes out of every sentence: is this supposed to give us confidence that the worst of the Raines era is now over?

It’s worth recalling that the suspect BBC journalist in the David Kelly tragedy has a record. Yep, it was Gilligan who refused to believe that U.S. troops had reached Baghdad the day they did. His deep hostility to the war against Saddam has been his motivating force as a reporter since the conflict began. Here’s a link to a story explaining his role that day:

Cut to: Andrew Gilligan, the BBC’s man in downtown Baghdad. “I’m in the center of Baghdad,” said a very dubious Gilligan, “and I don’t see anything. But then the Americans have a history of making these premature announcements.” Gilligan was referring to a military communiqué from Qatar the day before saying the Americans had taken control of most of Baghdad’s airport. When that happened, Gilligan had told World Service listeners that he was there, at the airport – but the Americans weren’t. Gilligan inferred that the Americans were lying. An hour or two later, a different BBC correspondent pointed out that Gilligan wasn’t at the airport, actually. He was nearby – but apparently far enough away that the other correspondent felt it necessary to mention that he didn’t really know if Gilligan was around, but that no matter what Gilligan had seen or not seen, the airport was firmly and obviously in American hands.
It was important to the BBC that Gilligan not be wrong twice in two days. Whatever the truth was, the BBC, like Walter Duranty’s New York Times , must never say, “I was wrong.” So, despite the fact that the appearance of American troops in Baghdad was surely one of the war’s big moments, and one the BBC had obviously missed, American veracity became the story of the day. Gilligan, joined by his colleagues in Baghdad, Paul Wood and Rageh Omaar, kept insisting that not only had the Americans not gone to the “center” – which they reckoned to be where they were – they hadn’t really been in the capital at all.

What are the odds that this guy hyped the modest criticisms made by David Kelly in order to wound the Blair government? The BBC, it seems to me, broadcast something they knew to be untrue for political purposes. I have one suggestion: believe not a word the BBC is reporting on Iraq right now. They cannot be trusted. They want the liberation of Iraq to fail.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to find that the tragedy of British scientist David Kelly’s death may well be linked to the corrupt journalism of the BBC. It was clear to anyone with eyes and ears that at some point in this past year, the BBC decided to launch a propaganda campaign against the war against Saddam and to tarnish, if not bring down, the premiership of Tony Blair. When news organizations turn into political parties – as we saw with Howell Raines’ New York Times – it’s only a matter of time before they over-reach. May 29 was such a moment. On that day, the BBC produced a story claiming that a “senior intelligence official” had told them that the Blair government, in the person of Alastair Campbell, had “sexed up” its dossier on Iraqi WMDs against the wishes of the intelligence services. One central claim was the notion that Saddam could launch WMDs within 45 minutes. We learned yesterday that David Kelly was indeed the source of such a claim. But Kelly denied that he had made such broad claims when he was alive; he was never a “senior intelligence source,” but a mere, if excellent, scientist; and it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, sexed up his own story in order to further the BBC’s campaign against the Iraq war. Kelly’s member of parliament, Robert Jackson, has drawn the obvious conclusion:

“I think the fact of the matter is that Gilligan, under pressure from his news colleagues for a scoop, for an exclusive story, under pressure from the wider BBC establishment and its general vendetta against the government on the question of the war against Iraq, I believe he sexed up the whole story and this created the situation that led to the death of my constituent.”

That’s a very serious charge, and we may not yet know every detail of this story. It is certainly not to the credit of the Blair government that, when Kelly told his superiors of his contact with the BBC, they pushed Kelly into the limelight in their defense. But they are still not ultimately responsible for this tragedy. Kelly deserved to have his views accurately represented by the BBC, rather than hyped in a way that made him the center of a grueling public storm. That very hype destroyed his privacy and led this very private man to despair. Someone at the BBC must be held accountable. And resign.

My defense of Lawrence vs Texas, in response to Jeffrey Rosen’s article in the New Republic, is now posted.

MARRIAGE AND PROCREATION: One of the lamest arguments against same-sex marriage is that it violates the principle that marriage is for procreation. Tell that to Pat Buchanan, who has no kids, or to the hundreds of thousands of childless couples who consider themselves rightly married. But there’s even a statute in Arizona, a legal scholar/friend of mine notes, that takes this discrepancy further. It grants marriages on the grounds that at least one of the parties is infertile. Here’s the statute (the cite is A.R.S. Section 25-101):

Void and prohibited marriages
A. Marriage between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren of every degree, between brothers and sisters of the one-half as well as the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews and between first cousins, is prohibited and void.
B. Notwithstanding subsection A, first cousins may marry if both are sixty-five years of age or older or if one or both first cousins are under sixty-five years of age, upon approval of any superior court judge in the state if proof has been presented to the judge that one of the cousins is unable to reproduce.
C. Marriage between persons of the same sex is void and prohibited.

Note how same-sex marriages are prohibited but explicitly non-procreative near-incestuous marriages are not. A similar discrepancy occurs in the Catholic Church, which allows marriages between the infertile or the post-menopausal but denies such marriages to gay people partly on the grounds of thier inability to reproduce. When John Kerry invokes reproduction, he needs to address this argument. So do all who agree with him.

It’s tough being an intellectual, journalist, or even pollster when you live in a place that’s run by a bunch of thugs. Dan Drezner has a round-up of how the Palestinian Authority and its compliant mobs keep free thinking at the end of a gun.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “[P]eople should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into… [Marriage] is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that’s appropriate. I don’t think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area.” – vice president, Dick Cheney, in the 2000 Vice-Presidential debate. A pretty convincing stand against the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, I’d say.

Here’s a useful webpage on the gruesome practice. Here’s another. Most scholars seem to think that victims were commonly tied to crosses; and that if they were nailed, they were nailed through the wrists, not the hands. Another reader says the jury is still out:

I have followed the debate over the nail entry points with some interest.
There are two schools of thought – each with some archeological support. The first is that the nails would have had to enter the wrists and ankles to support the weight of the victim. The newer theory holds that indeed the hands and feet were entry points, but that wooden washers made from the cut trunk of young trees were used for additional support.
I don’t think there is a consensus.

Interesting. The trailer also shows that rope was used – which may make nails in the palms more plausible. Then there’s this:

You should also note the apparent inaccuracy of showing Our Lord carrying a complete cross, i.e., with the horizontal beam affixed to the vertical beam.- As far as I know, this is not how it was done.- Victims had the horizontal beam tied across their shoulders (as depicted in the 1977 mini-series “Jesus of Nazareth,”-a very Catholic depiction of Our Lord)-which they would then carry some 600 yards to Calvary.–After having the wrists nailed to the beam, they would be lifted by means of ropes through over a scaffolding that was permanently planted into the hill for the purpose of crucifixions.- Once the horizontal beam was dropped into a slot, one foot (or one heel) was placed over the other, with a single nail driven through.- Constructing-complete crosses for victims would seem to be more expensive, inefficient and clumsy.
I suggest we keep an open mind as to why Gibson is depicting the Passion with these traditional yet apparently unhistorical details.- It would seem that a traditional Catholic should have no fear of depicting things accurately, even if they conflict with traditional (small “T”) artistic interpretations.- But I’ll be waiting for an explanation.

I doubt we’ll get one. I also noticed that the Latin pronunciation is more Catholic 14th Century than Roman First Century. If my own years of Latin lessons hold up, the Romans pronounced, “Ecce Homo” “Ekke Homo” not “Eche Homo.” Oh well. I’ll wait for the movie.
UPDATE: Josh Claybourn has more details.

One small thing about the Mel Gibson trailer for his upcoming movie about Jesus, ‘The Passion.’ As I understand it, one of the true merits of this movie is its attempt at historical accuracy. But the trailer’s scenes portray a very traditional Catholic passion scene. In particular, they show Jesus being put on a cross with nails into the palms of his hands. I may be wrong about this, but hasn’t it been established that such nails would have penetrated Jesus’ wrists, not his palms? Would anyone surivive long on a cross if held up only by nails into palms? Maybe someone out there knows. But if Gibson is merely making a traditional passion movie, then it strikes me as far less interesting.

“Apropos of the media, I feel like John Adams, in the musical, “1776”:
Is anybody there?
Does anybody care?
Does anybody see what I see?
Because I was out of town yesterday, I stayed up late last night to listen to the news, and “Charlie Rose,” and “Nightline” (didn’t make it to 11:30, though). No one led with Tony Blair’s speech – no one even played any portion of it. If it weren’t for Mark Levin, on WABC radio in New York, I wouldn’t even have known what Blair had said. Levin read portions of the speech during his show, and I started to cry while I was listening to it, as I was driving home – weeping at the wheel, really! I was thinking – “This is a great man. We are lucky to be living at the same time he is.” I think of what he has gone through in his own country, and of his strong convictions and actions. (It’s not so surprising, actually – I have them, also. But given what’s going on in Europe these days….)
I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe. I turned “The Today Show” on this morning, and while there was a piece from Iraq by Brokaw (who’s coming around on this issue, I think), the next story was, of course, about Kobe Bryant. Is anybody there at all? Does anybody care? What is wrong with the world these days, or is it just the media? Couldn’t we start some sort of news channel that really DOES deal with what’s going on in the world – the important, earth-shaking events going on in the world currently?
Listen: when a moderate-to-liberal lesbian has come to appreciate (and listen to) Mark Levin and WABC talk radio, the world has turned seriously upside-down.”

Tony Blair’s speech yesterday was a masterpiece of concision, precision and passion. One day, someone should write a good book on how two British prime ministers, Thatcher and Blair, have come to have such high and powerful profiles in the U.S. My favorite extract from Blair’s speech was the following Ciceronian paragraph:

Can we be sure that terrorism and WMD will join together? If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. But if our critics are wrong and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in face of this menace, when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive.

This is what the carpers and nay-sayers still don’t understand. The West is at war with a real and uniquely dangerous enemy. When the consequences of negligence become catastrophic, the equation of intervention changes. The burden of proof must be on those who counsel inaction rather than on those who urge an offensive, proactive battle. Does it matter one iota, for example, if we find merely an apparatus and extensive program for building WMDs in Iraq rather than actual weapons? Or rather: given the uncertain nature of even the best intelligence, should we castigate our leaders for over-reacting to a threat or minimizing it? Since 9/11, my answer is pretty categorical. Blair and Bush passed the test. They still do.

BLAIR’S LIBERALISM: But what Tony Blair’s speech does more than anything else is reveal the decadent state of American liberalism. Imagine if a Democratic candidate could speak as clearly and as forcefully about the war on terror – and then criticized the Bush administration on domestic matters or progress on homeland security. When was the last time you heard a ‘liberal’ actually speak of liberty in so enthusiastic and unambiguous a manner? Here’s Blair in full throttle:

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack. And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify around an idea. And that idea is liberty. (Applause.) We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the compassion to make it universal. Abraham Lincoln said, “Those that deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” And it is this sense of justice that makes moral the love of liberty.

Blair has helpfully reminded us once again of the urgent need to deal with the threat of Islamo-fascism, to rebuild those societies plagued by it however long it takes, to pursue every possible avenue to bring a settlement between Israel and Palestinian Arabs – to place the toughness of war in the context of a rebirth of liberty. He also reminds us of the need to bring as much of Europe along as we possibly can.

BUT HE ALSO GETS AMERICA: Beyond this, Blair seems to get America. He has an amazing instinct for public mood, for what others need to hear, and yesterday, he delivered. I found his peroration intensely moving – for its clarity and for its empathy:

We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind — black or white; Christian or not; left, right or merely indifferent — to be free — free to raise a family in love and hope; free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts; free not to bend your knee to any man in fear; free to be you, so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others. That’s what we’re fighting for, and it’s a battle worth fighting. And I know it’s hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I’ve never been to but always wanted to go — (laughter) — I know out there, there’s a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, “Why me, and why us, and why America?” And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do. And our job — my nation, that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond — our job is to be there with you. You’re not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and our courage firm, the world will be with us.

It doesn’t get much better than that, does it? The president is bloody lucky to have this prime minister. We all are.

The leading anti-Blair BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan, has received a withering assessment from the parliamentary committee looking into his charges that the Blair government politically manipulated intelligence findings. They claim in the Guardian today that Gilligan changed his story in mid-interrogation, calling him “an unsatisfactory witness.” These people aren’t Blair stooges. And they’re getting a strong whiff of the BBC’s Rainesian corruption. Meanwhile, the Times’ Tom Baldwin weighs in on “Bye Bye Credibility.”