The Dish

Josh Marshall picks up the baton on the growing story that German officials deliberately concealed evidence of Saddam’s smallpox stockpiles last summer to avoid any campaign distraction from the notion that it’s the U.S. that’s the main threat to world peace. Josh cites this Deutsche Welle piece with the following astonishing sentence:

In the interviews, two German government ministers let readers know that there is little danger now that American-hating terrorists could unleash the small-pox virus on the German population.

Don’t worry, in other words. By appeasing these thugs, we could deflect the horror toward the Brits and Americans. I do think that’s an underlying assumption on the part of Germany and France. By taking the anti-American line, they risk nothing. They know the US will deal with the threat; but by appeasing the Islamofascists, the Franco-German axis hopes to avoid any blowback. This is what they call being an ally.

In an encouraging sign of non-p.c.-ness (what a word), Harvard students busied themselves over the weekend building a large penis out of snow. It was quite a work of art, apparently, and was featured in the Crimson, under the headline, ‘Winter Wonder.” But now the photo is nowhere in the web and the usual suspects are “offended.” A letter-writer to the Crimson wondered whether the Crimson would ever show a photo of a snowy vagina. I think this deep and troubling issue cannot be fully understood or debated until we actually have a picture online of the great white monster, don’t you? C’mon, fellow Harvardians. Post it!

You’d think they’d be a little queasy about shipping vast quantities of sodium cyanide – a percursor of nerve gas – to the rogue state of North Korea. They have signed an agreement saying they wouldn’t. But Germany is now in a position of selling the chemicals for international chemical and biological terrorism, while disavowing any military attempt to deal with the global threat these weapons pose. Is it still possible to think of Germany as an ally? Or France?

A Times of London writer, Stephen Pollard, lets it rip today in words that certainly echo for me:

In all my 38 years, I have never before felt such a sense of personal shock. I am shocked that so many of my friends would rather a brutal dictator remained in power – for that would be the direct consequence if their views won out – than support military action by the United States. I am ashamed that they would rather believe the words of President Saddam Hussein than those of their own Prime Minister. I am nauseated that they would rather give succour to evil than think through the implications of their gut feelings. It is a shocking experience to realise that your friends are either mindless, deluded or malevolent.

He doesn’t mince words, does he? And yet he’s right. He’s particularly good on the self-righteousness of the masses in London on Saturday, and their facile, asinine support for “peace”:

I have tried to point out that saying you are in favour of ‘peace’ is meaningless. Which sane person is not? The question is: peace on whose, and what, terms? If it is peace on the terms of brutal dictators, secured by allowing them to build up whatever weapons arsenals they wish, then that is not peace. It is suicide.

Read the whole thing.

At the E.U. meeting, it seems responsibility took over from showmanship, as Chirac, of all people, became cornered in the discussion over his deeply duplicitous dealings with U.N. Resolution 1441. His response? He emitted bullying noises towards the smaller Eastern European powers that have had the temerity to side with Washington in the war on terror. It was, of course, way over the line. But his very frustration implies that among European governments, there is not now and almost surely never will be unanimity in defense of the French position on Iraq. Chirac’s petty and self-interested posturing is a game, and that game will soon be over. But we shouldn’t forget the vision that sustains Chirac. As a reader put it:

What we have been witnessing since the Blix-Chirac-Schroeder “let the inspections go on” joint press conference in mid-January is nothing short of an attempted “preemptive strike” on the part of our putative allies. By binding together with one another, the goal is to pull the rug out from under the Bush and Blair administrations in an effort to sow domestic dissent in the US and Britain, to stop the war, and ultimately to trigger “regime change” in both the U.S. and Britain. That, my friend, is the gambit.

A little hyperbolic perhaps but not unconvincing. Chirac and Schroder particularly want to destroy Blair. He represents an alternative vision of Europe – more decentralized, more liberal, more flexible, more Atlanticist. And they would love to wound Bush. It seems to me the U.S. policy should now be a new deadline with clear guidelines as to what constitutes Saddam’s cooperation – destruction of the al Samoud missiles for a start. Then we need to focus entirely on the war itself – minimizing casualties while trying to make it as speedy as possible, above all, ensuring a democratic structure post-Saddam. Nothing else will undermine the current Franco-German position as effectively – both within Europe and with respect to the wider world. Then we have to cut France out of post-war Iraqi reconstruction.

The sheer litany of personal smears in Edward Said’s latest rant touches every crass populist chord. From questioning the patriotism of Ari Fleischer – “(who I believe is also an Israeli citizen)” – to the pathetic “chicken hawk” slur assigned to vice-president Cheney and others, the piece is a sign of how desperate the anti-anti-Saddam left is. Notice in particular Said’s outrage at the hopes of Wolfowitz et al to bring democracy to the Arab world:

Isn’t it outrageous that people of such a dubious caliber actually go on blathering about bringing democracy, modernisation, and liberalisation to the Middle East? God knows that the area needs it, as so many Arab and Muslim intellectuals and ordinary people have said over and over. But who appointed these characters as agents of progress anyway? And what entitles them to pontificate in so shameless a way when there are already so many injustices and abuses in their own country to be remedied?

Said gets it exactly wrong. What matters is not who brings democracy to the Arab world. What matters is that it might actually be on the brink of happening at all. Why, one wonders, should that be such a sad day for the left?

Is the Bush administration serious about democracy and reconstruction in a post-Saddam Iraq? If they are, they’d better get a better grip on the country’s finances. So far, their war budgeting and domestic spending plans are a scandal. My latest column opposite.

THE FUTURE OF I.Q.: Fascinating new research from some Washington University researchers into the nature of general intelligence. We’re beginning to be able to measure such intelligence not simply from the results of written or practical tests but from live imaging of actual brain activity. Egalitarian ideologues have long resisted the notion that there is such a thing as general intelligence and that it is at least partly hard-wired and inherited. But as science advances, and our understanding of working memory and intelligence deepens, the evidence for such intelligence could become irrefutable. Imagine at some distant date going into an exam room and getting hooked up to brain monitors. No need for grad students grading papers. No need for SAT results. Just a brain scan to check how smart you are. Fantasy now. But you can already see the implications of current research. Blank slaters, be afraid. Your time is running out.

Another reader anecdote of NPR on leftist steroids:

Two Sundays ago, as my wife and I were traveling, I tuned into BBC America on my XM Satellite Radio. It was indeed a love-fest for the anti-war movement. They interviewed an Anglican Bishop who found it appropriate to single-handedly changed the tenets of just war theory without any indication that it was, in fact, a very new interpretation. For instance, the tenet of ‘right authority’ was changed to ‘highest authority’ in an effort to remove a sovereign nation as a proper decision-maker in security matters and make those decisions exclusive to the UN. He also said that the tenet of ‘proportionality’ prevents ANY war at all in modern warfare, because the brutality of modern warfare was so ‘indiscriminate’ that any use of force would automatically fail the test of proportionality. The reporter did ask, ‘Well, doesn’t that invalidate just war theory as a whole?’ The Bishop replied, ‘Not at all. It validates it.’ The only just war, it now appears, is the one that is not fought. Augustine and Aquinas, I’m sure, are very upset to hear that their theory has been co-opted in such a way. The host then turned to America ‘for another view’ and interviewed an employee of ‘The Nation,’ who then decried the use of force in Iraq as imperialism, an attack for oil, etc. Yes, that’s right, ‘The Nation,’ is now the view from America. They never introduced a single person with a differing viewpoint.

Here’s yet another email from someone forced to watch the Beeb as their only source of information:

I have a suggestion that affects me personally but I’m sure applies to millions of others. Please, please, do a proper and systematic fisking of the BBC. Do the world a favor – get readers to help by sending in examples, line up influential people who support you, anything. I can’t bear it any longer – I am now based in China and the BBC is somehow the only English news channel I can receive. I see now how they can manipulate British public opinion. This is hell!

Herewith an appeal to British readers, or anyone who watches the BBC closely. Please send me details of any ludicrously biased BBC report, show, program, discussion. If there’s a webpage, please send me the URL. Aux armes, confreres, bloggeurs, and so on.

THE SCHRODER-SMALLPOX COVER-UP: This link should work.

Astonishing piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung today. Just before the German elections last year, German intelligence found very serious evidence of Iraq’s stockpiling of smallpox bioweapons. The report came with a “high degree of confidence.” The piece alleges that Schroder helped bury the report, so as not to get him off-message during his anti-American campaign. I’m afraid I can’t seem to find the story in the English language edition of the FAZ. But here’s the German version.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “There was, I thought, one slogan which was missing. There were quite a number which called for ‘Freedom for Palestine’; I looked in vain for one which called for “Freedom for Iraq”. I did not hear all of the speeches, though I watched Jesse Jackson on television. From what I did hear, none of the speakers expressed any wish to free Iraq, let alone proposing any policy which might help to achieve that.” – William Rees Mogg, the Times.

An email from a traveling reader gives you the picture:

We headed to the Alps, me shaken by the simplicity and vacuousness of the “arguments”. There, I had my first chance to truly experience the BBC – the only English-speaking channel that we got.
“Shocking” is one adjective that comes to mind. I now understand your reference to “Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation”. Every reporter, every desk anchor, every clip – and I mean every – pleaded the case not to bring military force to enforce the resolutions against Iraq. At times, the desperation to find someone to support this position bordered on a piece from “the Onion”: “we are here in Pennsylvania with Quaker school children who are against the war”… – really.
Even more offensive than the position that simply defy logic is the arrogance of the reporting. I saw an open forum involving the Prime Minister and some reporter from the BBC named “Jeremy”. I have never witnessed less respect for a nation’s leader than that which I saw during this forum. “Jeremy’s” disdain for Blair was palpable as he spit idiotic questions/statements at the Prime Minister: “we were told where the weapons were, we sent the inspectors there, and they found nothing: how do you explain that?”

Abolition of the BBC is essential to any serious political reform in Britain.