The Dish

I was feeling glum this morning. Don’t know why. Then I read this latest missive from the Jimmy Kimmel of punditry:

Consider for a moment the current French position – and, no, I don’t mean prone. This week they announced that containment works. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, declared, “Already we know for a fact that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process.”
Well, if France knows for “a fact,” then France also knows for a fact that Iraq has such weapons programs. After all, you can’t block or freeze what doesn’t exist (if you don’t find this logic compelling, go right now and tell your wife that your longstanding efforts to bed Filipino hookers have been “largely blocked, even frozen” by her constant inspections into your bank account and that she therefore has no reason to take a more aggressive posture towards you. Then, see what happens).

The Filipino hookers analogy is a little strained, perhaps. But I’m cheered up now, the way sanity always cheers me up.

This story won’t leave my head. Can you imagine what they’re doing to this guy in some Saddam hell-hole now?:

About 40 minutes later, another Iraqi man stopped a U.N. vehicle outside the headquarters pleading “Save me! Save me!” in Arabic, according to the U.N. The man, apparently unarmed, forced his way into the driver’s seat of the stopped vehicle, as an Iraqi guard struggled to pull him out, while an unfazed U.N. inspector watched from the passenger seat.
Appearing agitated and frightened, the young man, with a closely trimmed beard and mustache, sat inside the white U.N.-marked utility vehicle for 10 minutes, AP reported. At first, an inspection team leader sought help from nearby Iraqi soldiers, but the man refused to leave the vehicle as the uniformed men pulled on his sleeve and collar.
“I am unjustly treated!” he shouted.
Then U.N. security men arrived, and they and Iraqi police carried the man by his feet and arms into the fenced compound, journalists said. The man was turned over to Iraqi authorities at a government office adjacent to the compound, U.N. officials said.

Every now and again, the reality of Saddam’s evil peaks through the veil of secrecy and terror. Remember: this is the regime some want to leave in peace to get weapons of mass destruction.

Man I hope not. I believe not. The Washington Post, far more reliable than the New York Times, emphasizes the need to build up military forces in the region as the reason for a war in March rather than February. But every week we delay, the forces of appeasement will grow, Saddam’s allies will regroup, opportunists like the North Koreans will jump in, and the chances of a successful defanging of Saddam with a minimum of casualties decline. I disagree with Bill Keller’s op-ed. We’re in the right. The evidence of Iraq’s non-cooperation is clear. By waiting, we merely give credence to the phony and insincere arguments of the French and the Germans, arguments that are not designed to disarm Saddam, but to weaken the U.S.

“THE ENEMY”: Here you have some anti-war protestors proudly declaring themselves the enemy of the United States. Yes, you could argue that they’re quibbling with Bush’s post 9/11 statement that “I made it clear to the world, you’re either with us or your with the enemy.” At the same time, their complete insouciance about a message that states they side with those terrorists who murdered so many Americans sickens me. It should sicken anyone.

You don’t have to read the editorials at the New York Times to catch the paper’s support for France, Germany and Russia in derailing a possible attempt to disarm Saddam Hussein. Here’s a classic from a piece by Joel Brinkley:

Mr. Schröder spoke today by phone with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and a spokesman said that Mr. Putin had “stressed the closeness of the positions of Russia and Germany in calling for a political solution of the Iraq problem.” At the White House, Mr. Bush’s chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, maintained the administration’s hard line. Saddam Hussein, Mr. Fleischer said, “is engaging in a constant pattern now” of “defying inspectors, refusing to cooperate with inspectors, showing the inspectors facilities in which he knows nothing will be found.” The Iraqi leader, Mr. Fleischer added, “is making the end of the line come even closer by his unacceptable behavior.” [My italics.]

Now why is the administration’s position a “hard line” and the German refusal to contemplate any military means to disarm Saddam not one? The U.S. has tried diplomatic and non-military methods to disarm Saddam for over eleven years. Yes, the eleven-year “rush to war” continues. If that’s a hard line, what would a soft one be?

No, we don’t have any chemical weapons. Who would ever claim such a thing? But if you invade, we’ll use them against you. I guess it will take a French foreign minister to see the logic in that.

I noted it in my weekly dish for the New York Sun and Washington Times today but it behooves me to note it here as well. I linked recently to a Time piece claiming that president Bush reinstituted a practice of laying a wreath at the Confederate Monument in Alrlington. I asked why the administration would do such a thing. Well, they didn’t. Sorry to link to something that wasn’t true. Now let’s all wait to see if Maureen Dowd will retract a more serious error – actually claiming it was true. Or are we supposed to treat Modo’s pieces as fiction anyway?

CARTOON TIME: About “bug-chasing.” I’d like to reiterate the point I made in Salon: I’m not saying that this issue shouldn’t be looked into thoroughly. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about rates of HIV infection among gay men. I’m just saying we need to do so factually and responsibly.

“Iraq’s weapons of mass terror, and the terror networks to which the Iraqi regime are linked, are not two separate threats; they are part of the same threat. Disarming Iraq and the war on terror are not merely related. Disarming Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and dismantling its program to develop nuclear weapons is a crucial part of winning the war on terror.” – Paul Wolfowitz yesterday. I’m impressed by the intellectual caliber and unified message coming from Washington in the last couple of days. (Although a brief perusal of the television coverage makes me wonder if some in the media are even interested in listening.) It was important to disabuse anyone that the passive games being played by Saddam right now amount to anything other than his usual and customary obstructionism. Wolfowitz’s argument that Iraqi scientists are being threatened with death if they cooperate is particularly stunning. If that’s not a material breach, what is?

ARE “BUG-CHASERS” “MONKEY-FISHERS”? Now that’s a headline I never thought I’d write. The Rolling Stone story about 25 percent of new gay male HIV infections being due to a deliberate attempt to get the virus – dubious to begin with – has now fallen apart. The only basis for that bizarre and inflammatory statistic was one doctor, with no evidence. And he now denies ever having made the comment. Check out my new piece in Salon for details. Or Seth Mnookin’s excellent work in Newsweek. Or this new piece in the Washington Times. It seems to me that whoever is responsible for this piece has a lot of explaining to do.

LILEKS ON ED HARRIS: If you missed it yesterday, don’t miss it today. I always save up Lileks for the evening, before a little, er, relaxation.

TOUJOURS LA FRANCE: Is there a murderous thug the French do not want to do business with? The day after an E.U. ban on travel by Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe, Chirac invites him to a summit. You can’t make this stuff up. Meanwhile blogger Collin May gets what the French have essentially achieved:

By taking a hard line against war, the French have more or less increased its likelihood. The previous French position was far more flexible and diplomatically intelligent. It allowed them to take a more conciliatory role while still holding open the possibility of military action. Between outright war and complete appeasement there are various levels of pressure that can be applied. These levels can only be effective, however, when the threat of military force remains in place. France was playing a useful role to this point, but with their latest action, they’ve undermined any degree of flexibility and opted for an either/or solution. There will either be complete appeasement on the Franco-German model or there will be war waged by a divided west.

War, then. And soon.

THE DEMS’ PANDERTHON: Great reporting from the Democrats’ love-in with NARAL. Maybe Howard Dean could become a partial-birth abortionist before New Hampshire. It could vault him to the front of the field.

HOW THE GERMANS EDIT: Great catch by new blogger Amiland on how Der Spiegel grotesquely distorted the meaning of a recent Tom Friedman column. Tom, if you’re out there, give ’em hell.

NUMBER 27: That’s the traffic ranking of the Daily Dish among political websites according to Alexa (a highly imperfect but not completely useless ratings tool). Whatever the real rankings, it’s good to see a few one-man shows easily rivaling and beating big news organizations and magazines in terms of readership.

MICKEY’S SCOOP: I’ve been laying off the New York Times for a while but Mickey Kaus has a pretty good catch regarding our old friend and Enron adviser, Paul Krugman. Last summer, Krugman was dismissing any idea that Howell Raines had any input whatsoever into editorial columns. “I gather that I’m a low-maintenance columnist: normally I come in on time, on length, and without any necessary rewriting,” Krugman averred on his own pseudo-blog last May. “Did the higher-ups at the Times suggest the topic, or intervene in the process? No. In fact, I haven’t communicated with anyone in management for weeks if not months.” But then in this week’s Howie Kurtz profile, Krugman says that “Raines barred him from using the word ‘lying’ for the duration of the campaign.” So Raines actually dictates his columnists’ vocabulary. Or does he do so only during election campaigns? Or when it involves golf?

“I liked the item you ran in the Dish about Joe Millionaire, of which I have seen all extant segments. I think, though, that you and Michelle Cottle may be missing the key subtext that has made this show what it is, i.e. a reality show straight “regular” men watch.

It isn’t just that the women vying for Evan’s hand are shallow and money grubbing. Women like that are so commonplace that they are unnewsworthy. What brings the smile to our hetero-testerone laden lips is the double-standard coming from that half of the human race that whines incessantly about double-standards they’re subjected to. After all, men didn’t invent the fatuous term “inner beauty”, but everyone from Dr. Laura to Rosie O’Donnell to Oprah to Naomi Wolf expect men to see that and only that. These same folks would doubtless sneer if you told a woman to seek the “inner multi-millionaire” in the pet-store employee who, despite being nice, stable and relatively unnarcissistic would be undatable because of his income and status…” More on the Letters page.

Bob Jones preacher Jerry Thacker, who believes homosexuality is on a par with incest and bestiality, just quit the process of joining the president’s Commission on AIDS. Better still, Ari Fleischer decried the far right activist’s opinions, especially his describing AIDS as a “gay plague.” “The views that he holds are far, far removed from what the president believes,” Fleischer said. “The president has a total opposite view … The president’s view is that people with AIDS need to be treated with care, compassion.” Thanks, Ari. Was this appointment another one of Karl Rove’s brilliant ideas?

This website doesn’t get an award nomination because it makes that process seem banal. It’s a flash production presented by a left-wing organization called ‘Take Back the Media,” a group that agrees with Eric Alterman that the U.S. media is hideously biased toward the right. It’s about why George W. Bush is exactly like Hitler. It contains dozens of Hitler-Bush photographs, even giving details of the Bush family’s past, over pictures of Nazi death camps. It makes the NAACP’s 2000 ad likening Bush to a KKK lyncher seem mild. But it gives an insight into what some elements of the American left are now fixated upon.