Month: December 2003

Here’s an enterprise that obviously needs some pork.

He may have killed 61,000 people in Baghdad alone. The moral calculus for intervention was always overwhelming. It still is.

PEACE-LOVING, LIBERAL EUROPE: Just chock-a-block with hate crimes and violence.

It’s that time of year. Most of you have heard the spiel before but it’s actually very simple. This website is reader-supported. 95 percent of all our income comes from you. We don’t have an advertizing staff or marketing team or a big corporate sponsor. But the flip-side of this wonderful independence is that we depend on you to keep us afloat. Every year we make a pitch for the next year’s funding – an appeal that last year managed to pay all our debts and provide a modest way to support me, our Letters Page editor, and all the expenses of a blog that now has the traffic (and also the costly bandwidth) of many well-funded political magazines online. It takes an enormous amount of work – around the clock, day in, day out – to keep this site full of content and links; and you’re our only means of support. If you visit here regularly, we ask for $20 for the next twelve months; if you come every day or more than once a day, please consider giving more. Without it, the blog won’t survive. With it, the next year – with an election at home and a critical transition in Iraq abroad – could be a bumper one. So please, please give what you can. All the details are here. The future of this site, in the last resort, is up to you.

RUGBY 1. CHOMSKY 0: You want to know what a big march in London looks like? Check this out. Forget war and peace. This is what red-bloeded Englishmen and women really care about.

New York Magazine picks up on a theme pioneered by the blogs.

QAEDA SHIFTS TO IRAQ? An interesting piece in Newsweek suggests that bin Laden has decided to pull some troops and resources out of Afghanistan and deploy them in Iraq. Newsweek, natch, spins this as bad news. In fact, it’s a good development. Right now, Afghanistan is more dangerous and unstable terrain than Iraq. We have the military resources in Iraq to counter al Qaeda. Bin Laden understands the fatal threat a successful democracy in Iraq would pose to Islamo-fascism. A second front helps us and weakens the enemy. Flytrap may be working, after all. (Hat tip: Lt. Smash.)

LEAVE THE CONSTITUTION ALONE: A new website for conservatives opposed to the religious right’s Federal Marriage Amendment.

The Washington Post’s ombudsman doesn’t buy the idea that the ceremonial turkey story aspect of Bush’s visit to Iraq was up to scratch:

I don’t think the story made the case that this was “a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact” of the trip. Maybe it was planned, maybe not. It would have been better just to record the known details of the saga and let the reader figure out whether it meant anything.

But then Mike Allen wouldn’t have been able to have a bash at Bush, would he?

“Greetings from the Hillary-hating right sector of your fan base.
I realize the focus of your piece is political strategy and politicians’ efforts to manage public perceptions of where they stand on the political spectrum. Nevertheless, the question of Hillary’s sincerity as an Iraq hawk deserves more than passing mention. There’s no maybe about it; her posturing in this regard lacks any shred of real (as opposed to political) credibility. I’m reminded of the age-old Soviet clamoring for “world peace.”
Yes, her attempt at deception concerning her views on Iraq poses a danger — which I suppose is an underlying theme of your piece. If she maintains this strategy well into a Bush second term, it will be wrenching, yet amusing, to watch the establishment-Left, root-for-failure-in-Iraq media trumpet her hawkishness to aid her 2008 candidacy.
Let’s hope few voters are so inept at the identification of flying creatures as to mistake this circling communist witch for a national security hawk.” – more friendly feedback on the Letters Page.

Here’s a classic:

Militants ship a nuclear bomb into a U.S. port and ravage an entire city. More than the plot of a Tom Clancy thriller, it is the ultimate nightmare for many U.S. officials, ports and businesses.

So even if the, er, “militants” detonate a nuke against civilians, they’re still not “terrorists.” What do they have to do to get some respect around here?

BUSH = LENIN: A new wrinkle on the Hitler paradigm.

A SILENT GENOCIDE: Noam Chomsky tries to deny he once predicted humanitarian catastrophe if the U.S. pursued the war in Afghanistan. Damian Penny doesn’t let Chomsky get away with it. Meanwhile, in the Hindsight Check watch, it’s worth checking out the U.N.’s predictions about the Iraq war, back in December 2002. Among the confident statements:

“It is estimated that the nutritional status of some 3.03m people countrywide will be dire and that they will require therapeutic feeding [according to UNICEF estimates]. This consists of 2.03m severely and moderately malnourished children under 5 and one million pregnant women” [para 27]
“It is estimated that there will eventually be some 900,000 Iraqi refugees requiring assistance, of which 100,000 will be in need of immediate assistance, [according to UNHCR]” [para 35]. An estimated 2 million people will require some assistance with shelter [para 33]. For 130,000 existing refugees in Iraq “it is probable that UNHCR will initially be unable to provide the support required” [para 36]

It’s worth remembering that, for all the problems we have now in Iraq, they are minuscule compared to the problems many anti-war groups predicted.

Fascinating interview in the Telegraph with an Iraqi colonel who claims he was the3 source for the intelligence that Saddam’s army had a WMD capacity that could be launched against invading forces within 45 minutes. More interesting: he stands by his story. Money quote:

The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam. “The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight,” he said.
“If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences.”
Col al-Dabbagh, who was recalled to Baghdad to work at Iraq’s air defence headquarters during the war itself, believes that the WMD have been hidden at secret locations by the Fedayeen and are still in Iraq. “Only when Saddam is caught will people talk about these weapons,” he said.

I wonder what the next few months will ultimately reveal.

OKRENT’S GREAT START: What a refreshingly candid piece from the NYT’s new ombudsman (no, my first piece of ornery dissent will be refusing to call the guy what the Times wants me to call him). I liked his description of his politics:

I’m an absolutist on free trade and free speech, and a supporter of gay rights and abortion rights who thinks that the late Cardinal John O’Connor was a great man. I believe it’s unbecoming for the well off to whine about high taxes, and inconsistent for those who advocate human rights to oppose all American military action. I’d rather spend my weekends exterminating rats in the tunnels below Penn Station than read a book by either Bill O’Reilly or Michael Moore. I go to a lot of concerts. I hardly ever go to the movies. I’ve hated the Yankees since I was 6.

Sounds like many readers of this site. Let’s see if he is as unsparing in his assessments as you are. (Some are already impressed.)

The strange turn-around in the matter of same-sex marriage. The issue that once divided Democrats is now dividing Republicans. My take on how Bush can keep his coalition together.

THE ISLAMIST-LEFT ALLIANCE: More troubling signs that some nutters on the far left are toying with sharia. Meanwhile, some strains in the alliance show up in Australia. I love this sane Muslim’s response:

“I couldn’t believe it. I was sitting there with my son and he comes out with comments as if the Koran says it’s OK to attack homosexuals,” Mr Demiri said. “He told us they should have their heads chopped off. My son asked me if what the Imam said was true and I said ‘No, it’s not’. Then, he wanted to know if the Imam was lying and I couldn’t give him an answer that would make any sense. We go there to pray, not to listen to that kind of rubbish. There were a lot of intelligent people there who were offended by it. He (Imam Idrizi) needs to be taken to task for it, because it gives Muslims a bad name.”

Er, yes, it does.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness. But there is a large, seething majority out there against what Bush is doing to this country. This administration is as fundamentalist as the Islamics”. – Graydon Carter, editor with the important hair, at Vanity Fair. The “Islamics”? Who exactly is he talking about? Or is this a relevant question? (Hat tip: Belgravia Despatch.