The Dish

The Iranian thugocracy now concedes it murdered an Iranian-Canadian journalists by beating her into a brain haemorrhage. This strikes me as a huge deal. It will say a lot about the priorities of left-wing news organizations like ABC News if they cover this seriously. But they are too busy undermining the fledgling democracy in Iraq.

SPINNING “QUAGMIRE”: The media war to undermine our vital mission in Iraq continues. What else did you expect from ABC News? The NYT uses Vietnam-word again. Meanwhile, David Adesnik deconstructs a Washington Post poll to show how a newspaper can spin any data to get the headline it wants.

HEADS UP: This coming Saturday evening at 8 pm, I’ll be giving a short talk and taking questions at the Fine Arts Work Center in the center of Provincetown. If you’re in the vicinity, by all means drop by. It’s open to all. If you want diversity of opinion, come the next night as well, when my fellow Provincetowner, Norman Mailer, will be doing the same thing, at the same time.

No one should under-estimate the scale of the task still in front of us. But the media coverage of the situation in Iraq, directed by many who opposed the war, has now gone way overboard in hostility. Richard Cohen’s moronic notion today that the occupation is a “catastrophe” is an absurd exaggeration. Channel 4 News and the Spectator in Britain just commissioned the first half-way reliable poll of what Iraqis now think. The results are both sobering and encouraging:

By almost three-to-one, Baghdadians expect life in one year’s time to be better (43 per cent) rather than worse (16 per cent) in one year’s time than it was before the war. Looking five years ahead, optimists outnumber pessimists by five to one (54-11 per cent). By then, most people hope that the occupation will be over; but, despite the criticisms, fears and acute day-to-day problems, only 13 per cent want the Americans and British troops to leave immediately. As many as 76 per cent want them to stay for the time being – with a majority, 56 per cent, wanting them to remain for at least 12 months.

There’s still plenty of time to make this work – and to transform Western prospects in the Middle East for a generation. That promise remains. Bush needs to ignore the nay-sayers and focus on the task at hand.

A deeply depressing appointment reveals how completely draconian the Bush administration is on the issue of recreational drugs. Once again, states’ rights appear to mean nothing to some social conservatives who want to control what people do in private with their own bodies.

BLAMING THE VICTIMS: Why is it important for Eric Alterman that the extraordinary evidence of rising French anti-Semitism should be dismissed, and, if anything, blamed on the Jews? Here’s Alterman’s take on a bracing piece in the Washington Post about anti-semitism in France:

Memo to Everyone: In discussing “French anti-Semitism,” take a moment to notice that it is almost entirely a phenomenon of that nation’s North African and Arab immigrant community, not of the traditional (mildly anti-Semitic) French. There is no surge in French anti-Semitism at all and it is probably at a historical low ebb among French men and women. It is certainly not a phenomenon of the French Left. This piece points out: “Most of the perpetrators are not the ultra-rightists and neo-Nazis who once were responsible for anti-Semitic acts, but young North African Arabs of the banlieues, the distant blue-collar suburbs where Muslims and Jews live and work in close proximity.” And if it’s a really big concern of yours, by the way, the best way to ameliorate it would be for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. The occupation is obviously its primary source.

To describe fanatical anti-Semitism among many Arabs today as a function of the occupation of the West Bank is blind enough. To deny the widespread hostility to Israel and to Jews among the French elites, to ignore the way in which the French authorities have turned a blind eye to such fanaticism, to talk as if such anti-Semitism is at a low ebb (with no evidence whatsoever) and to pin the blame for it on Ariel Sharon is truly disgusting. It’s even more disgusting since Alterman’s thesis is that French anti-Americanism is entirely a response to the Bush administration. How long before he cites attacks on Jewish cemeteries or synagogues as George W. Bush’s fault?

Jerking off a lot helps your prostate ward off cancer. Once again, “natural law” is shown by modern science to be, er, unnatural. Will that leave today’s theocons rushing to debunk their Aristotelian science? I doubt it. I just wish more of them were consistent and coupled their hostility to consensual sex with a broad campaign against masturbation. But that would reveal just how extreme they are, wouldn’t it?

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “No one ever judged the outcome of a war by the quality of the intelligence going in. If you look at where we are today and compare it to where we were on the day the Clinton Administration left office: we’ve removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan; we’ve removed from power Saddam Hussein; we’re removing our troops from Saudi Arabia; we’ve established new bases in the Gulf in stable, small countries; Jordan is secure; Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon are acquiescent and very quiet; and there’s a revolution under way in Iran. I’ve named every country between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean. This is the most dangerous, hostile region in the world — and it has been remarkably changed. And I should add there’s also a peace process in the Middle East. …. What’s important [in terms of history] is how has the foreign policy of this Administration changed a region dramatically, remarkably…” – Charles Krauthammer, “Inside Washington,” July 12, 2003.

My analysis of the current campaign to impugn the war against Saddam on the WMD issue is that it will fizzle out fast. My prediction is that it will boomerang against those who are busiest hyping it. Check out NBC’s interview last night with David Kay, the man in charge of the WMD search:

Mr. KAY: We’re finding progress reports. They also got financial rewards from Saddam Hussein by breakthroughs, indicating breakthroughs. They actually took–went to Saddam and said ‘We have made this progress.’ There are records, there are audiotapes of those interviews which give us that. So at this end you had the compressor.
BROKAW: Kay, a cautious professional who is well aware of the political pressure, is confident he can make the case against Saddam Hussein on WMD.
Mr. KAY: I’ve already seen enough to convince me, but that’s not the standard. I’ve got to have enough to convince everyone of that. What worries me is I know if we can’t explain the WMD program of Iraq we lose credibility with regard to other states like Iran, Syria and North Korea.
BROKAW: How long is that going to take?
Mr. KAY: No longer than it takes.
BROKAW: Six months?
Mr. KAY: I think we will have a substantial body of evidence before six months.
BROKAW: Kay could have his first report on the search for weapons of mass destruction by early this fall.

Tom Friedman is absolutely right. All that really matters right now is that we do all we can to bring about a new, representative government in Iraq. The rest is petty politics from people who are still pissed they lost the war over the war.

SHARPTON ON GAY EQUALITY: Debating marriage rights for gay people assumes “that gays and lesbians are not human beings that can make decisions like any other human being. We must stop this separation of gays and lesbians from other Americans… Even with those that are liberal on the issue, there is an understanding that there is something that is different and less than human about you… If people respect you, it is not about gays and lesbians having the right to marry, it is about human beings having the right to marry who they choose. It’s like saying, we give black, or whites, or Latinos the right to shack up but not marry.” -from the Democratic candidates’ debate, hosted by the Human Rights Campaign.

The debt that we will hand over to the next generation is now growing at a fantastic rate. Even the Bush administration’s own rosy estimates predict that this president will have landed the country with almost $2 trillion of accumulated new debt in the next five years. I think you can forgive some extra spending to avoid a depression and to pay for two vital wars and homeland defense. But the sheer scale of damage the administration is doing to our future economic and military strength is still deeply worrying. Non-military, non-homeland defense domestic spending increased by 6 percent in Bush’s first year and close to 5 percent the following year (far beyond the rate of inflation). He is now adding a huge new entitlement to Medicare, tied to one of the commodities with the fastest rate of price increases in the economy: prescription drugs. The defenses of Bush higlight how much of the new spending was vital of our security (a good point), how much more profligate the Democrats would be (not a good enough point) and how the tax cuts will eventually increase revenues (but enough to counterbalance all that spending?). All I’d say is that no conservative can be happy to observe the phenomenal growth of government under this president. The sheer fact of moving from long-term surplus to fast-mounting debt and structural deficits in a mere two years will be a damning election argument. Right now, the president doesn’t seem even to acknowledge that there’s a problem. But it’s a far bigger one than some phony hysteria about a minor CIA goof. He needs to figure out how to reverse this trend and address it in the looming campaign.

Bob Graham tries to woo the red states by sponsoring a NASCAR driver. Hey, why not the WWF? John Edwards tries to emulate (yes, I know it’s a parody).

BUSH AND AIDS: Is he back-tracking on his Africa commitment?

THE RACISM OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Another little glimpse into how the left-liberal mind can work:

The Blair scandal led to criticism that Raines had protected Blair despite a poor record because Blair is African-American and Raines was trying to improve diversity in the newsroom. [Lynette] Halloway’s problems could lead to similar questions, since she is also African-American. Like Blair, she had caught the attention of Raines, who put her in the media section of the paper, insiders said. “She was a Howell appointment,” said one insider. “He wanted to increase coverage of hip-hop music.”

I guess I’m lucky I didn’t work for Raines. He’d have had me covering hairdressers and musical comedy. And he’d have expected me to be grateful.

“I often feel the natural place for a gay person is on the right. Conservatives should be all about an individual’s right to his or her own life, his or her own business, without the interference of hypersensitive, offended others. And it follows that true conservatives ought to support gay marriage, particularly those partial to family values. It’s difficult to argue that society doesn’t benefit from stable relationships. And what better way to encourage stable relationships than to support gay marriage? It is hard not to snicker at the idea that same-sex marriages would threaten straight ones. We straight people in Canada and the US have done a good job of bringing the divorce rate close to 50 percent all on our own.” – Rondi Adamson, Christian Science Monitor.

FIGHTING THE BBC: The beginnings of a protest movement against the BBC seems to be in the air. This week, the BBC released their own annual report. It was full of the usual self-serving pabulum and ignored the massive criticism that the BBC has endured for its pro-Saddam coverage of the Iraq war. It was widely savaged, and the critics included an influential Labor MP:

Committee chairman Gerald Kaufman MP accused the governors of being “utterly gushing” in their assessment of the last year. He questioned how long the BBC could go on arguing that it should be funded by “a tax” as it “goes on shrinking, as it is shrinking and will shrink”. The corporation has also been under political scrutiny following its public row with 10 Downing Street over a BBC story that claimed the prime minister’s office “sexed up” a dossier on Iraqi weapons. Mr Kaufman said the BBC should sack Andrew Gilligan, the reporter who prompted the Iraq weapons row. He added that Mr Gilligan and other journalists should be sacked for writing what he called “contentious” articles for the newspapers.

Meanwhile another Brit has gone to court to resist having to pay the BBC tax.

“I am an admirer of your writing and (generally) good common sense. I contributed to your original fund drive, as yours was a voice I wanted to hear. Even when I disagree with you, as I do on the issue of gay marriage (good Catholics can disagree, right?), I take your arguments seriously enough to consider them as those of a thoughtful human, not the spawn of Satan. Thus I was particularly annoyed to read the snippet today on “the social right’s darling, Pat Robertson.” As you can tell, I’m a social conservative, but I also consider Robertson an ignorant bigot and fast talker who is an embarrassment to me (and many of my friends on the social right). -I refrain from associating you with nutbar leftist homosexuals; I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from associating-me and other-social conservatives with Robertson (whom I loathe).” I take the point. But there was a time when Robertson was regarded as a pillar of the consrvative establishment, defended by the likes of Norman Podhoretz, etc.

An attendee describes the goings on at the political blogathon.