Today is the first anniversary of Steven's murder.
National Review Online has three articles on Vincent. The first is an interview with Lisa, the second is an update on Nour on his translator, who was severely wounded in the attack on Steven, and the third is a memorial by NRO editor Kathryn Jean Lopez.
There is also three-part online tribute by his fellow bloggers (part 1, part 2, part 3).
The International Federation of Journalists has published a report, "Targeting and Tragedy", on journalists killed in 2005. Steven Vincent's case is discussed on p.34, in Part Two of the report. A word of caution: the passage includes a photo of Steven's body.
According to Aidan White, general secretary of the IFJ, “In more than 90 per cent of all cases there are few serious investigations by the authorities and only a handful of the killers are ever brought to trial. A combination of police corruption, judicial incompetence and political indifference has created a culture of neglect and indifference which makes every day hunting season for attacks on media staff.”
Tomorrow, December 31, would have been Steven's 50th birthday.
At Lisa's request, I have reopened the blog to comments.
On behalf of Spence Publishing (and I think I speak for Lisa as well), let me thank everyone who has expressed their condolences in comments on this blog.
Unfortunately, a considerable number of the comments ranged from tactless to vile. Because these negative comments (and comments that responded to them) were so numerous, I have made the decision to delete all comments from the site and to close the site to further comments. I deeply regret this. We will maintain the blog for the foreseeable future, however.
Mitchell Muncy
Insurgents sabotage Baghdad, Basra fiber link
Associated Press (July 19, 2005)
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents sabotaged a fiber optics cable connecting Baghdad with southern Basra, telecommunication officials said Tuesday.
The attack occurred Monday night in the Rusmaiya area, 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of Baghdad.
All phone communications between Baghdad and most of southern Iraq were cut off due to the attack, said Karim al-Tamim, head of Wasit Province Communication services.
Al-Tamim said the fiber optic cable was expected to be repaired within a couple of days.
OK, it is now Thursday and Steven Vincent still has no email capabilities. Once the optic cables are reconnected he will be posting again, so please keep checking back. Thanks.
Steven is blogging from Basra. The length of his stay there and the frequency of his posts will depend on the security situation. Please check back regularly or use the newly-enabled syndication feature at the top of the menu on the right.
No turbans in government
We neither want to establish a religious nor a secular state in Iraq, we want a state that respects the identity of the Iraqi people and the identities of others
-- Shia political official Ali al-Dabagh, quoted by AP's Rawya Rageh
Writes Mr. Rageh:
Kurds and alliance officials said both sides agreed that Iraq would not become an Islamic state, a desire also expressed by the country's most powerful Shiite cleric - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Sistani, as well? This sounds like extremely good news. Let's hope this Shia-Kurdish comity holds.
It's interesting to note how the AP structured this article. Here's the lede:
Ukraine withdrew 150 servicemen from Iraq on Saturday, beginning a gradual pullout, as Shiite and Kurdish politicians refined plans to form a coalition government that officials said includes an agreement not to turn the country into an Islamic state.
In other words, the AP placed the major positive news of an initial Iraqi agreement to separate mosque and state after noting the minor fact of Ukraine's troop withdrawal. Translation: because good news helps justify the war effort, we better downplay it as much as possible.
Am I over-reading? Mention of the Shia-Kurd agreement comes in the 16th graf of the story--after we are treated to a compendium of bad news from Iraq: from suicide bombings at Mosul, to the friendly-fire death of a Bulgarian soldier to a completely egregious mention that over 1,500 U.S. servicemen have died in the country. And the MSM wonders why it has engendered so much recent criticism! It's not because of pajama-clad bloggers, but rather insufferably biased reporting.
Journalism follows--or used to, at any rate--the precepts of the "inverted pyramid," where the most important facts of a news story received the biggest space and earlier placement in a column. With the AP, however, the guiding technique seems more a "pyramid of denial."
Without a prayer
From the AP: "Thirty Muslims walked off the job at a Dell Inc. plant after alleging the company refused to let them pray at sunset."
Hopefully, this is one of those quarrels involving foreign cultural and religious traditions that American democracy somehow always works out in the end--like the minor dust-up in New York last year over a Sikh traffic cop who fought for, and won, his right to wear a turban on duty.
Still, the salat imbroglio brings a couple of questions to mind: Muslims have been working in this nation--and presumably at Dell--for years without insisting on their right to pray five times a day. Why now, all of a sudden?
Secondly, in my journeys through Iraq, Iran and Jordan--not to mention a quarter century spent in this multi-ethnic stew called New York--I've never seen Muslims suddenly cease their activities and set to praying. I've seen stores in Muslim nations temporarily close (even as customers inside continued shopping) and restaurants respectfully turn down the house music as the muezzin called to believers--and I've witnessed worshipers enter mosques for mid-day devotions. But see people on the street or at working stop what they're doing in order to observe mandatory prayer time? Never. I'm sure it happens. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this point, because I find it curious that Dell employees seem to want to behave with--shall we say--uncommon scrupulousness. Converts, I wonder?
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The Shias' Christian virtues
He who did this is a criminal. He killed Muslims and wanted to ignite sectarian strife. But God willing, we'll not allow that.
-- Ibrahim Moussa, speaking from his hospital bed after being wounded by a recent suicide bombing of a Shiite funeral in Mosul. The attack killed Mr. Moussa's brother.
(Sindbad Ahmed, Associated Press)
According to press reports, fascist "insurgents" are targeting Shia funerals, increasingly preventing these Iraqis from assembling in large family groups to bid the departed final respects. During Saddam's reign, the Baathists would frequently execute people, and forbid surviving family members from ever visiting their graves. Today, these same psycopaths are inflicting a similar form of evil that does not stop with murdering the innocent, but seeks to deny the living the ability to mourn their dead.
With this in mind, it is astonishing how few calls for vengeance--or actual reprisals--have arisen from the Shia community. Many observers--myself included--perceived Arab culture as so sunk in traditions of honor and revenge that such restraint seemed unlikely, if not impossible. So far, it seems, we have been wrong--and I, for one, am quite happy to be in error. The steadying influence of Ayatollah Sistani has much to do with the Shias' patience--one reason why I support his nomination for the Noble Peace Prize.
However, humans can only endure so much; Mr. Ahmed does quote a less conciliatory Iraqi, Sher Qassim Mohammed Ali.
I lost seven of my sons, brothers and cousins. I want to know who carried out this attack … we will avenge those who did it.
Such grief is incomprehensible. As is the evil of the men who inflict it. As is the Shias' forbearance as they turn the other cheek to receive these blows again and again and again.
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Seems not everyone agrees with my support for the "Old Scarecrow."
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Here's some news from a different sort of Arab "street" you don't often hear about. Perhaps that's the best reason for democratic reforms--they will make you rich.
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It's a few days old, but here's a story on the Kuwaiti demonstration for women's rights. Scroll down for yet another example of the MSM passing up no opportunity to run a photo of some Middle Eastern "hottie." No complaints here.
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Good news from Egypt: politician Ayam Nour is free--until his trial, at least. Not that American pressure had anything to do with this. No, of course not.
Less bling for the buck
A country that is now aspiring to an "ownership society" will not find happiness in--and I'll use hyperbole here for emphasis--a "sharecropper's society." But that's precisely what our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us.
-- Warren Buffet, in a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Noting that if the trade deficit continues for another decade, we will be paying three percent of our national income to foreigners "as a tribute for the over-indulgences of the past," he added,
This annual royalty paid [to] the world which would not disappear unless the US massively underconsumed and began to run consistent and large trade surpluses would undoubtedly produce significant political unrest in the US.
It's a sad and disturbing state of affairs when saving money risks creating social upheaval.
(Dan Roberts, Financial Times)
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The sick man of Europe
We were shocked by images of the police beating women and young people...We are concerned to see such disproportionate force used against demonstrators. We ask the Turkish authorities to carry out an arrest investigation into this event to prevent similar incidents in the future.
-- a statement by EU representatives regarding Sunday's disruption in Istanbul of a march commemorating International Women's Day
(Vincent Boland, Financial Times)
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Just as soon as we finish democratizing the Middle East
U.S. urged to end world poverty
-- headline, New York Post, March 7
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Copping a plea
Please send this message. I am not Sadam Hussein. I want to cooperate.
-- Syrian president Bashir Assad, speaking to Time magazine
The National Review's Deroy Murdock on war and language and dead on target.
March 2, 2005:
If you apply for a job then you're an "agent" and if you want to see democracy and freedom in your country then you're an "infidel" and if you say that resistance is terrorism then you're a "traitor".
In all cases your blood is cheap and you have to die.
This is the philosophy of the criminal gangs we're facing and this morning they declared it again in the bloodiest way they could find.
-- Omar at Iraq the Model
Iraqi Bloggers Central has other reactions to the bombing at Hilla. Read them all.
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Gross! "Chemical" Ali's still living up to his name.
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Racial profiling in the U.K.?
The Brave "Resistance"
In this week's The Nation, writer David Enders in Baghdad interviews a man named "Ali Hussein" (not his real name), who claims to be a commander in what Enders calls the "resistance." It's interesting to note the courage of this "resistance," as articulated from a "guerrilla" himself.
We have boys as young as 13 fighting with us. Some of them we use to tell us where American troops are, others we give grenades and they throw them at Humvees and Bradleys. We recently killed a man who owned a uniform company because he was making uniforms for the Iraqi army. We kidnapped a cousin of Mowaffak al-Rubaie [national security adviser for Iyad Allawi's provisional government] and killed him.... There are so many stories of operations. Four days ago we killed four police officers. We warned them three times to quit. We have agents in the government, in the police."
And here is an example of the ethics of Ali's "resistance:"
We don't let people play cards, we don't let people drink. We warn the person, and then break his legs or kill him if he doesn't stop.
To Enders' credit he asks why the "insurgency" doesn't also apply Islamic prohibitions against theft--which is, of course, one way the gunmen finance their operations. "Drinking and gambling lead to desperation," says commander Ali.
As I recover from a slight cold and watch Manhattan dig out from last night's snowstorm, I'm checking out--and so should you:
Amsterdammed Opinionated, where Myrtus, the self-described "Berber for Bush," links us to a discussion of women and Sufism.
The evidently Sunni Baghdad Dweller, who raises some questions--and offers accompanying pics--regarding the Shia't Ali.
Heretical Librarian, where David Durant offers a nice overview on "signs of change in the Arab world:" From your blog to Allah's eyes, David.
Hyscience, who links us to a Newsweek story about how the "noose is tightening" around the Z-Man. I had to double-check the date on the story; it seems we hear this report once a week.
Ninecharlie reminds us of another reason, along with Arthur Chrenkoff and Mad Max, why we love the Aussies.
And this is interesting, if true, from Regime Change in Iran.
Stocks or ballots in Saudi Arabia? And maybe the answer to this question is--lucrative contract kickbacks and other forms of construction hanky-panky?
Finally, ABC News asks the questions that has perplexed me (and what on earth is a 49 year old doing heading up his fan club, anyway?)
Speaking of ABC News--if UFOs are real, why hasn't one ever malfunctioned or crash-landed?
Thought for the day:
To believe in our own thoughts, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men--that is genius.
-- Emerson, Self-Reliance
For your blogging delectation, kind readers, may I suggest you check out:
The always impressive Arthur Chrenkoff, and his interview with Michael Ledeen (among other fascinating bits you will have the pleasure of scrolling through).
Regime Change in Iran (insha'allah) gives us the true story behind the Tehran- Damascus Axis of Evil, and presents the latest insights from our favorite lunatic ex-weapons inspector.
Meanwhile Baghdad Dweller offers the Islamofascist view of democracy.
So, you're opposed to celebrating birthdays and anniversaries because they are an "imported tradition"--what's a Wahhabi Muslim to do? Arab News offers some advice.
Jihad Watch, via Junkyard Blog, updates the Armanious murders.
Little Green Footballs reveals the Saudi connection behind would-be Bush-assassin, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali.
The Saudi-Hungarian spat continues!
Do not mess with this woman!
Thought for the day:
Every little action...makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one does in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the housetops.
-- from An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde
For your edificiation and reading pleasure, why not check out:
Baghdad Dweller for an Iraqi take on Al-Jazeera (well, we knew that all along, didn't we?)
Iraqi Bloggers Central for a story we all wish were true.
Roger Simon, who will take you to this essay by Paul Johnson.
The Daily Star, for aloha Allawi. (Or are we counting him out too soon?)
Women Living Under Muslim Laws for more politically-correct goings on from our neighbor to the north--or the nation that the U.S. would resemble if only we had more sense, eh?
Thought for the day:
Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions; and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
-- David Hume
Hesitant as I am to tax the reader's patience with matters better and more extensively covered by bigger and more extensive blogs--Instapundit and Michele Malkin come to mind here--I couldn't let Financial Times columnist Jurek Martin's two cents on blogs go by without a ha' penny of my own. In this weekend's "Letter to America"--entitled "Attack of the killer blogs"--Martin laments the presence of
bodies all over the place, lynched by the operators of web logs, unfiltered and unaccountable competition to what they call the MSM (mainstream media.)
These "bodies" are, of course, Dan Rather and Eason Jordan.
Back in his younger days, Martin continues, he served as a newspaper "gatekeeper," employing
mental and institutional filters to help decide what was fit to print in a newspaper that took its responsibilities seriously.
The FT's columnist--who seems about as clued into the blogging revolution as former CBS exec Jonathan "Pajamas" Klein--goes on to opine
The web did not invent incivility...but the lack of accountability for what appears online allows anybody to be as vicious, rude and unscrupulous as they like.
Let's overlook the fact that, as any blogger knows, what one posts online is subject to the checks and balances of hundreds--and for some, thousands--of readers and fellow bloggers; credibility is vital to attracting and keeping an audience. Let's overlook, as well, the use of the word "lynching"--which implies that Messrs. Rather and Jordan were innocent victims of the venom of predatory web crawlers. No, rather, let us turn two pages away from Martin's column in "Weekend" section to find a photograph of a street demonstration in some European city where smug protesters are hoisting an effigy of the President which depicts half his face looking like a grinning skull. Pretty tame stuff--but civil? Hardly. Incivility--and stupidity--are not limited to the web.
Besides, there is an online filter, or gatekeeper--you. More specifically, your mouse. Should you find a logger's diatribe offensive, you can simply click away to something more thoughtful and intelligent. Would that we could similarly back-arrow away from some of our fellow citizens--for example, the anti-Bush herd that crowded our coastal cities during the election, enlivening dinner parties, art openings and social gatherings of every stripe by observing the similarities between Bush and Hitler, and the Republicans and Nazis, or noting the striking likenesses between American troops in Iraq and the terrorists. You can avoid Ann Coulter's website and turn the radio dial from Michael Savage to Air America. But try telling a glassy-eyed anti-war activist that, in your opinion, the liberation of Iraq was more than American hegemonic control over Middle Eastern oil and brother, you'll discover might quick the definition of intolerance and incivility.
And let us not forget it was the Hollywood branch of the MSM that brought us Fahrenheit 9-11, a movie of breathtakingly reactionary, Leni-Riefenstahl-like mendacity, exploitation and propaganda. It was Hollywood, as well, that Whoopi-ized political discourse to a level that would make a teenager blush--or would have, had not the MSM introduced teenagers to that paragon of civility, taste and accountability known as Rap. Where are the gatekeepers there? And while we're at it, where are the "gatekeepers" in academia--the people whom society trusts to preserve our universities from frauds like Ward Churchill? Who, we should note, was exposed by bloggers.
One could go on. Instead, I'll simply say that I've found the degree of intelligence, civility, responsibility and craft exhibited by the better blogs on the internet frequently outshines that of my own small bailiwick, the New York art world. You can always shut your computer off, pour a glass of wine and expunge the latest post from Daily Kos or Juan Cole. Too bad we can't do the same click 'n purge for Christo and Jean-Claude's current colonization of Central Park.
Mighty mouse in hand, one would do well to check out:
The newly-redesigned Belmont Club, where Wretchard discusses the latest outrage from the Iraqi "resistance fighters."
A Glimpse of Iraq, where we have a date with a major agricultural product of Iraq.
Dar Al-Hayat, where Abdulwahab Badrakhan weighs in on the Hariri assassination.
Granite State Pundit, where Dan Pierce asks a big question. (Yes; moreover, we must.)
Ibn Alrafidain, for more of his series of "Rambling Posts."
Defending Democracy, where Clifford May brings up an obvious point that can't be repeated enough.
Tigerhawk (credit: Instapundit), for must-read links to speculations about a connection between Al Qaeda and Theo van Gogh's murder.
USS Neverdock, for--well, just keep scrolling, there's computer-screens of stuff on the site today.
Hyscience, where we're linked to this story of good ol' American gumption, Texas-style.
Women Living Under Muslim Laws for the latest sad tale of misogyny and racism eminating from the Religion of Peace and Tolerance--in Canada, no less.
And finally, the AP, for the latest on an Iranian turban-blogger. (Credit: Ron G.)
Enjoy and have a good week-end!
Given time pressures (no blogging tomorrow, I'm off to a anti-terrorism seminar in Washington) and the amount of coverage the Hariri assassination has received already (see today's library for some good links), I don't feel I have more commentary to add regarding the crime. Except perhaps this: tryanni Syriaci delendi sunt!
On the other hand, before the Metroliner departs from Penn, I'd like to respond to reader Tom Strattner's comments on yesterday's post "In the Green Zone." For simplicity's sake, let me excerpt the kernel of his viewpoint. After politely reprimanding me for drifting into matters seemingly beyond my ken, Tom adds,
I assume your (and Tom Friedman's) simplistic and erroneous equation of continued U.S. oil consumption with continued necessity for military intervention in the Mideast stems from passionate environmentalism. Whatever the cause, something clouds your capacity for rational thought on this subject.
Do your loyal readers--like me--a favor and educate yourself with basic information. For instance, the U.S. consumes FIVE TIMES as much oil as the next leading country (China). Removing all SUVs from America's roads tomorrow wouldn't bring that consumption down by even one multiple. More's the point, only three Mideast countries are among the world's top 10 oil exporters. Their contribution to net supplies only makes a difference short term. So if we shut off these countries' spigots tomorrow and returned their ruling classes to relative poverty, do you really think they'd cease exporting Islamofascism?
My answer to that last question is--yes. But more on that in a minute. Right now, let's use Tom's comments as a jumping-off point for discussion. I'm not going to pretend expertise on energy policy. I am, however, interested in symbols, context, ideas, the whole ineffable wizardry of making truth (as opposed to reporting reality). And this brings me back to the SUV.
For argument's sake, I'll assume Tom is correct: that eliminating from America's roadways every one of those vans-on-steroids would hardly dent our nation's oil consumption. But what about all gas-guzzling cars? To me (and others, evidently, see "Xena's" response to Tom's comments), the SUV is a symbol--a synecdoche, for you semioticians out there--for Detroit's unnecessarily fuel-inefficient automobiles. For numerous reasons--from the environment to Koran-quoting terrorists--demanding greater mileage-per-gallon from the automotive industry seems a rational act of self-preservation. The kind of thing school children will read about centuries from now and wonder, couldn't they see this for themselves?
But the SUV is more than just a pointless, roll-over-prone boondoggle which, like bottled water, Madison Avenue has convinced the American people they need. It is a symbol of our nation's heedless profligacy. No, I'm no fan of Jimmy Carter cardigans and 65-degree thermostats (note to Tom: I'm not even an environmentalist--to Warrior Woman's exasperation, I consider the virtues recycling as another urban myth). But unlike the Carter years, today we are at war. Wars call for sacrifices. The Bush Administration, pandering to our complacency, would cut taxes and have us spend the economy into strength. Perhaps that will work. But on a core, visceral level--where the heart, conscience and will intertwine to forge a moral commitment to a cause--it feels wrong to needlessly consume, to squander, energy when we have soldiers in the field fighting enemies who are directly or indirectly funded by our bad habits.
Would turning off the Middle Eastern spigots reduce terrorism? I believe so. There is little doubt that the infiltration of Wahhabi ideology throughout the Muslim ummah has enjoyed the support of billions of petro-dollars which flowed into the House of Saud's royal coffers beginning in the mid-1970s. Iran would most likely prove less energetic in its terrorist funding were its oil fields were not pumping black rials into the mullah's hands. The issue becomes even more serious if you consider that the best long-term solution to jihadism is democratic reform. As others have noted, the "curse of oil" undermines democracy by centralizing the powers of government around a single resource, controlled from a single source, by a single group of people. Reducing the cost of a barrel of oil to $18, as Tom Friedman mused in a recent column, would force these nations to diversify their economies--and their societies as well.
But, again, perhaps none of this would cap the geysers of oil riches pouring to the anti-Western sheiks and mullahs of the Middle East--especially with China about to ratchet oil consumption to unprecedented levels. I return, then, to the level of symbolism. Reducing, or--insha'allah--eliminating SUVs would signal America's commitment to a more directed and concentrated war against Islamofascism. It would help create the context for the much-talked about 21st century "Manhattan Project" dedicated toward new sources of energy. Domestic conservation would also make the drilling of domestic sources of oil more politically palatable. No boxer goes into a fight overweight and expects to win: if we are going to fight the Islamofascists, we must be as lean, mean and willing to sacrifice as they are.
During World War II, people planted "Victory Gardens" and mounted scrap metal drives to assist the war effort. Were these effective, or even necessary? Of course not. But as Roosevelt knew at the time, they gave the American people a sense that they, along with U.S. soldiers, were contributing something to the war. Today, we can do the same. Tom may be right--that giving up SUVs and our profligate energy ways in general may have little practical effect in the war against Islamofascism. But this war, like all wars, is not only practical. There is the symbolic, the moral dimension to the conflict. Lose this, and we lose everything.
Amelia Thomas, writing for the Middle East Times, highlights some recreational activities pioneered by those fun-loving scamps, Hizbullah. According to Thomas, the merry terrorist organization's "Central Internet Bureau" has developed a computer game where players
are able to simulate killing key Israeli figures such as PM Ariel Sharon and Shaul Mofaz, as they assume the identity of an '"Islamic resistance fighter'"
According to the Shi'a cut-ups themselves, "Special Forces"
seeks to redress the balance in a genre dominated by American-produced games in which Arab characters are inevitably the enemy.
Hope they're not watching "24." In any case, another game produced by a Syrian company is called "Under Siege" and--not surprisingly--it deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
{T]he player becomes Ahmed, a young Palestinian man, who faces Israeli occupation during the first intifada. He must then defend his homeland at any cost; Ahmed can throw stones at the Israeli army and kill settlers.
Thomas adds,
According to Adnan Salim, general manager of the game company, the game "is a call to justice, realizing truth, preventing wrong and aggression", aimed at those over 13, and intended to "dry up their tears; heal their wounds; remove all the feelings of humiliation, humbleness and wretchedness from their souls, and draw the smile of hope and the sense of dignity... on their faces."
From killing settlers?
Pray thee, gentle masters, check out
For takes on the Hariri assassination, there's Informed Comment, while Belmont Club muses over "second front" (or a third, considering Afghanistan?) in Syria.
The BBC adds more heat on the the DFI scandal.
The Arab News relates how the Hungarian Prime Minister was un-PC enough to insinuate that Saudi Arabia finances terrorists!
Instapundit takes us to Patrick Ruffini for an extremely cool Iraqi elections map.
Cat Stevens--whoops, I mean Yusuf Islam--exonerated!
Villainous Company reveals the new terror alert à la Francais.
For more on Lebanon, see Unqualified Opinion. And though nobody asked me, it's a little late and not exactly in the balliwick of this blog, let me nevertheless respond to Jim Henley's February 14 post with this:
Fantastic Four Vol. I, 48-50
Spider-Man Vol I, 26-27
Journey into Mystery 131-156
Steranko's "Yellow Claw" series in Strange Tales
'Nuff said!
--that is, engagement of a different sort...
February 14, 2005: the Arab News' Maha Akeel, Ghada Aboud and Lulwa Shalhoub interview some Saudi Arabians about Valentine's Day
Khaled Hamad, a father: The concept of Valentine’s Day encourages girls and boys to go out on dates and exchange gifts. It manipulates the feelings of our sons and daughters. It is unacceptable in our religion and culture.
Motaz Ahmad, a teacher. The idea of specifying a special day to celebrate love, any kind of love, is ridiculous. Do we love each other only once a year leaving 364 days bereft of love? Love and presents must be there always without specifying a special day to do so
An "Islamic culture" teacher: Schools must arrange awareness lectures to inform students about the history of this day and Islam’s opinion toward it.
Ah yes, it is good to see that oil wells, petro-dollars, a corrupt royal family, puritanical religious police and a grandiose world-view have scarce caused the flower of romance to wilt in the Desert Kingdom!
(via: Villainous Company, who has her own choice comments on the subject)
The woman caller loved her SUV. "How else could I ferry around my three small children?" she asked the right-wing radio host, as if families and automobiles--or rather, station wagons--didn't exist before her particular nuclear unit went online. But it wasn't just space for the toddlers that endeared her to a 15-mile-a-gallon behemoth: there was the matter of "safety". "I feel more secure in a big vehicle," she confessed to the approving talk-jock, "especially since my husband is overseas serving in Iraq."
Ah, America. Staring at the radio in amazement, I thought of the t-shirt Warrior Women gave me this Christmas. It shows a stern-looking 1940s-style G.I. glaring at the viewer, his exhausted face framed by the words:
THE MORE GAS YOUR SUV USES,
THE MORE FOREIGNERS I HAVE TO KILL!NOW DO YOU GET IT?
Loud and clear, Sarge. And indeed, sometimes the bumpersticker wisdom of pop culture surpasseth that of the politician, conservo-talk-jock and newspaper columnist. Unless, of course, the columnist is Allah's gift to common sense, the New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman. In a pre-Valentine's Day present to his readers Sunday, he uncorked an exhilerating stingo involving Iran, oil, the War on Terror and--but why don't I let the master speak for himself?
By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax on American drivers, or to demand increased mileage from Detroit's automakers, or to develop a crash program for renewable sources of energy, the Bush Administration is--as others have noted--financing both sides of the the war on terrorism. We are financing the U.S. armed forces with our tax dollars, and, through our profligate use of energy, we are generating huge windfall profits for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, where the cash is used to insulate the regimes from any pressure to open up their economies, liberate their women or modernize their schools, and where it ends up instead financing madrassas, mosques and militants fundamentally opposed to the progressive, pluralistic agenda America is trying to promote.
Pausing for breath, Mr. Friedman continues,
The neocon strategy may have been necessary to trigger reform in Iraq and the wider Arab world, but it will not be sufficient unless it is followed up by what I call a "geo-green" strategy.
Hear, hear. Now I confess to being a neo-con myself--especially when it comes to democratizing the Middle East--but only an ideologically-blinded think-tank mullah could ignore the Achilles Heel in this progressive project: Big Money, Big Oil, Big Military Industrial Complex and a small-minded American public which apparently sees no contradiction between skippering yacht-sized vehicles that consume barrels of fossil fuel and terrorists who fly airplanes into skycrapers and explode roadside boobytraps.
But we cannot fix our blame solely on oil interests which seem to have an unusual presence, shall we say, in our current Commander-in-Chief's adminstration and family. Adding a twist to his argument, Mr. Friedman observes,
We need a grass-roots movement. Where are college kids these days? I would like to see every campus in American demand that its board of directors divest from every U.S. auto company until they improve their mileage standards.
Yeah, and I'd like to see pop culture free itself from that 25 year-old musical error called Rap and 50 (that's five-oh, kids) year-old Rock and Roll. But that's where our youth are these days, hooked like everyone else on our head-banging, nerve-jangling, high-energy culture. Bono may want to save the world, but how much oil does a U-2 concert consume? What about all those CDs and DVDs and iPods and Blackberries and God-knows-what-all silicon gadgets churned out by the great oil-driven turbines of Capitalism? There's no generation gap when it comes to our obeisance to Master Dynamo.
Not that the high-profile enviros have to worry. The Theresa Heinz and Barbara Streisand's of this world will continue to whisk about the globe in the Gulfstream jets and Cadillac Escalades, departing from their Malibu compounds to attend the latest Greenpeace shindig decrying how Americans are destroying the environment. Then it's off to the Sun Valley manse for a run down Baldy before a guest appearance at the Sierra Club fundraiser. But of course, there are minds to enlighten and planets to save! Meanwhile, down there somewhere in fly-over country, a woman is strapping her kids into a heavy-metal off-road vehicle, proud that Detroit produces such invulnerable machines. Pausing a moment, she feels a pang of concern about a husband sent into harm's way against an inexplicable desert enemy--then she's off too, piloting her family tank through the ever-perilous streets of suburbia.
Worth checking out today:
Via Cella's Review, a smart piece by a smart writer, Lee Harris.
Clive Davis takes us through Arts & Letters Daily to a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tarqi Ali.
Al-Hayat's answer to Thomas Friedman, Salameh Nematt, weighs in with another fine piece.
Will McElgin has some thoughts on Pat Buchanan and the Middle East.
Norman Podhoretz continues discussing World War IV.
Little Green Footballs takes us to another voice rallying behind Ward Churchill.
Through Solomonia (and Instapundit), this handy 9-11 conspiracy-theory-debunker from Popular Mechanics.
And one more example why Riyadh beckons for that second honeymoon.
Enjoy!
February 12, "Image Offensive: Rebels Undercut Colombian President," by Juan Forero, New York Times:
...mounting international criticism of government efforts to disarm right-wing death squads...
...negotiations and legislation to disarm the paramilitary death squads that have worked hand in hand with rogue military units
Forero uses the word "paramilitary" at least 10 other times to describe the reactionary gunmen operating in Colombia.
MSM rule of thumb: If right-wing killers speak Spanish, they are "paramilitary death squads" and "rogue military units." But they speak Arabic while they assassinate labor leaders, politicians, journalists and innocent Iraqi civilians, explode car bombs outside of mosques and hospitals and strap explosives onto the bodies of mentally handicapped people--they are "insurgents," "militants" and "guerrillas."
Got it?
*
The military, of course, is a never-ending source of odd terminology, blunt descriptions, cringe-making euphemisms and bizarre acronyms. A few of the last that have turned up in the press recently include:
VBIED -- vehicle-borne improvised explosive device
VCIED -- vehicle-concealed IED
DCIED -- dog-concealed IED
FRE -- foreign regime elements
and one I'm going to adopt as of today:
AIF -- anti-Iraqi forces
Run, do not walk, to check out
Arthur Chrenkoff's invaluable Good News from Iraq.
And then--after reading Red Zone, of course--you might profit from turning to:
A Glimpse of Iraq on why the Westminster Kennel Club will not soon be opening a branch in Baghdad.
Labour Friends of Iraq for an article by Jonathan Steele downplaying the threat of Shia despotism, and (scroll down) a piece by Aaron Gantz about Christians in Iraq.
Frontpage Magazine for more discussion on the Saddam-Osama connection.
Little Green Footballs on the real reason we're not going to the videotape on Davos.
Are we closing in on Zarqawi? The Guardian thinks so.
The Conjecturer gives us a nasty view of the nasty left via Daily Kos.
Via Unqualified Offerings, a dissident's blog from Syria. (And a "go, dude!" from me, too).
And, lastly, is Christianity a religion of "peace and tolerance?"
Today, you might do well to check out
Open Democracy on anti-American chic.
La Shawn Barber on the upside of Western Imperialsim.
Strategy Page on radical Islam's new home base.
OpinionJournal on the proposal everyone's already talking about.
The indispensable Belmont Club on Lynne Stewart. (Excuse me for the inappropriate comment, but were she and Michael Moore separated at birth?)
Meanwhile, Lebanon's Daily Star gets it, and so does Salameh Nematt at Dar Al Hayatt,
yet the situation in Kirkuk continues to worsen.
But for good news, revel in the long overdue resignation of Eason Jordan.
Enjoy!
Today, you might do well to check out
Open Democracy on anti-American chic.
La Shawn Barber on the upside of Western Imperialsim.
Strategy Page on radical Islam's new home base.
OpinionJournal on the proposal everyone's already talking about.
The indispensable Belmont Club on Lynne Stewart. (Excuse me for the inappropriate comment, but were she and Michael Moore separated at birth?)
Meanwhile, Lebanon's Daily Star gets it, and so does Salameh Nematt at Dar Al Hayatt,
yet the situation in Kirkuk continues to worsen.
But for good news, revel in the long overdue resignation of Eason Jordan.
Enjoy!
Here's a partial round-up of some interesting posts you might check out:
Dan Pierce at Granite State Pundit reminds us why there's the MSM--and then there's Tom Friedman.
Ibn Alrafidain has a series of "Rambling Posts" (1-4, read `em all) with some interesting information on Iraq and other matters (plus a kind reference to yours truly).
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies weighs in on the "exit strategy" mantra from the left.
Junkyard Blog airs some opinions on Lynne Stewart's conviction.
Labour Friends of Iraq continue to demonstrate that not everyone on the left is silent on the issue of democracy in the Middle East.
Antimedia gives us some stirring words from a victim of the fascist "insurgency."
The Progressive Policy Institute wonders about Democrats and the War against Islamofascism. (credit: Oxblog)
Legenda has some thoughts on the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
And lastly, Lane Core declares his Lenten "Blogstinence."
Enjoy!
Here's a partial round-up of some interesting posts you might check out:
Dan Pierce at Granite State Pundit reminds us why there's the MSM--and then there's Tom Friedman.
Ibn Alrafidain has a series of "Rambling Posts" (1-4, read `em all) with some interesting information on Iraq and other matters (plus a kind reference to yours truly).
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies weighs in on the "exit strategy" mantra from the left.
Junkyard Blog airs some opinions on Lynne Stewart's conviction.
Labour Friends of Iraq continue to demonstrate that not everyone on the left is silent on the issue of democracy in the Middle East.
Antimedia gives us some stirring words from a victim of the fascist "insurgency."
The Progressive Policy Institute wonders about Democrats and the War against Islamofascism. (credit: Oxblog)
Legenda has some thoughts on the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
And lastly, Lane Core declares his Lenten "Blogstinence."
Enjoy!
Regular reader Sharon Johnson has been mighty busy this week in Ramsey, Minnestoa, getting details organized for her son's homecoming. Today, Allen Johnson returns from 11 months' duty at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, where he performed a variety of administrative and security-related tasks. In the process, he manged to become fluent in Arabic--and received a shrapnel wound to the face. ("Nothing serious, he's just as handsome as ever," Sharon assures us.) Although Allen's enlistment in the Army National Guard ended last August, he has re-upped for another three years. After a few weeks rest, he and wife Katie will move to New Hampshire, where he will pursue a degree in Computer Science at the state university.
Welcome home, Allen, job well done. We are all grateful that you returned safe and sound. It goes without saying, yet can't be said enough, that we are proud of the service that you and your fellow soldiers performed for America--and for the Iraqi people, as well.
Regular reader Sharon Johnson has been mighty busy this week in Ramsey, Minnestoa, getting details organized for her son's homecoming. Today, Allen Johnson returns from 11 months' duty at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, where he performed a variety of administrative and security-related tasks. In the process, he manged to become fluent in Arabic--and received a shrapnel wound to the face. ("Nothing serious, he's just as handsome as ever," Sharon assures us.) Although Allen's enlistment in the Army National Guard ended last August, he has re-upped for another three years. After a few weeks rest, he and wife Katie will move to New Hampshire, where he will pursue a degree in Computer Science at the state university.
Welcome home, Allen, job well done. We are all grateful that you returned safe and sound. It goes without saying, yet can't be said enough, that we are proud of the service that you and your fellow soldiers performed for America--and for the Iraqi people, as well.
No, not an oxymoron. As I--and many others--have argued (see "Pope Ali al-Sistani") we live in an age when revolutionary thinking comes from the conservative wing of the political spectrum. At least in foreign policy, where the right is advocating positions long associated with the left--that is, the left we used to know and admire before it descended into Sunni cleric-style alienation, irrelevancy and sour grapes.
Take for example, the Wall Street Journal. Last Friday, the paper's op-ed page declared its support for President Bush's "necessary radicalism" by uttering a pronouncement that 20 years ago could have appeared on college dormitory walls next to the Che Guevara poster: "No More Somozas."
Instead, the U.S. will seek democratic openings, encourage democratic reform, stand up for pro-democracy movements, keep faith with pro-democracy dissidents, and give authoritarian governments a choice between moving toward reform or else risking U.S. support.
This is far from Jeanne Kirkpatrick's Cold War policy of differentiating between "totalitarian" and "authoritarian" regimes, with the latter being useful to the United States in the fight against Communism. Today, we have the Journal calling for Washington to pressure Egypt over the detention of politician Ayman Nur on "dubious" charges of forging signatures to register his newly-formed Al-Ghad political party.
"What has the West--government or media--done for the dissidents of the Middle East? Very little," writes columnist Daniel Henninger on the same page, adding for good measure, "editors of the U.S. and Europe might consider getting off their anti-Bush fixation and getting on the cause of Middle Eastern dissidents." Then, in a statement that might have come from the old Democratic party a generation ago and still rings loud in the corridors of academe:
The West's political leadership has to come to understand that the former calculus of accommodating the region's autocrats for commercial benefit has become unacceptably dangerous.
This coming from conservatives, while that favorite institution of liberals everywhere--the United Nations--finds itself sinking into the slough of the greatest commercial accommodation of tyrants since Sweden sold coal to the Nazis during World War II.
Henninger is speaking of Iran in the above quote, but his sentiment could--and should--apply to Saudi Arabia, whom everyone can agree is despicable. Indeed, when it comes to the House of Sa'ud and the spread of democracy through the Islamic ummah, differences between liberal and conservative progressives are negligible. At least they should be. In the same way that the Iraqi Shia are trying to coax their Sunni counterparts into contributing to the new Iraq, we right-leaning progressives need to bring the left aboard the project of democratizing the Middle East. Like the Shia, we can't succeed alone. And like the Sunnis, our leftists must realize that their alienation is only presenting them with a future of increased powerlessness and despair.
*
Of course, freedom is not only emancipation from autocrats and dictators. A person back home in the good ol' USA trapped in a low-wage job with no health insurance and little prospect of advancement is not free, either, which is why we hope the left will some day emerge from its cocoon with something more to offer the American people than recycled "Bush Lied" bumper stickers.
Case in point is Halliburton. Yes, I know I'm late to the KBR pile-on, but I have to say their latest wranglings with the military fascinate me. On February 1, the Journal's Neil King and Greg Jaffe reported that Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown & Root--which provides logistical services for our troops (see redzone's "Service Reductions")--announced that its projected budget for the year started May 1 will total $10 billion, at least $4 billion more than the Army says it can pay. And, as we know, the military has accused KBR over overcharging in the past.
Part of the problem, the Journal suggests, seems to be KBR's "cost-plus" system whereby they charge for "services provided, adding on a mark up for profit," rather than adhering to a fixed-price contract. Not that I'm an accountancy expert, but it seems to me this rather spontaneous way of charging Uncle Sam could present KBR with many temptations for overcharging. Which is why Erik Eckholm's New York Times February 4 article about the company was so interesting.
Apparently, the Army is rejecting the advice of two Pentagon auditing units and will not hold back "tens of millions of dollars" to KBR for bills that lacked proper documentation. Writes Eckholm,
In the rush that followed the American invasion of 2003, KBR started work without the detailed agreements on scope and reasonable costs that are normally required, and it handed in nearly $2 billion in invoices that Pentagon auditors said lacked proper backup.
This is rather like submitting an expense account to your employer without all the necessary receipts. Your boss may trust you, but do we trust KBR?
Evidently, the Army does. Under federal rules, Eckholm notes, the government retains 15 percent of invoices that aren't "fully accounted for." Worried, however, about "disrupting vital services to troops in the field," the Pentagon will not automatically withhold the monies from KBR's payments. "This is indeed great news for KBR," Halliburton's COO announced in a news release. I bet.
Like I said, I'm no expert in these fields. But all this begs a number of questions. First off, of course, is why does KBR operate on a "cost plus" basis? Why doesn't the Army hold to government accounting strictures and keep back KBR's 15 percent until they clarify the charges? And what does the Army's fears of "disrupting vital services" mean--that if the Pentagon follows the same accounting rules that apply to other firms, KBR will suddenly stop supplying our troops with necessary logistical services? This might call the company's patriotism into question, if nothing else. Still, I'm sure there are good explanations for all this budget and invoice business. Right?
No, not an oxymoron. As I--and many others--have argued (see "Pope Ali al-Sistani") we live in an age when revolutionary thinking comes from the conservative wing of the political spectrum. At least in foreign policy, where the right is advocating positions long associated with the left--that is, the left we used to know and admire before it descended into Sunni cleric-style alienation, irrelevancy and sour grapes.
Take for example, the Wall Street Journal. Last Friday, the paper's op-ed page declared its support for President Bush's "necessary radicalism" by uttering a pronouncement that 20 years ago could have appeared on college dormitory walls next to the Che Guevara poster: "No More Somozas."
Instead, the U.S. will seek democratic openings, encourage democratic reform, stand up for pro-democracy movements, keep faith with pro-democracy dissidents, and give authoritarian governments a choice between moving toward reform or else risking U.S. support.
This is far from Jeanne Kirkpatrick's Cold War policy of differentiating between "totalitarian" and "authoritarian" regimes, with the latter being useful to the United States in the fight against Communism. Today, we have the Journal calling for Washington to pressure Egypt over the detention of politician Ayman Nur on "dubious" charges of forging signatures to register his newly-formed Al-Ghad political party.
"What has the West--government or media--done for the dissidents of the Middle East? Very little," writes columnist Daniel Henninger on the same page, adding for good measure, "editors of the U.S. and Europe might consider getting off their anti-Bush fixation and getting on the cause of Middle Eastern dissidents." Then, in a statement that might have come from the old Democratic party a generation ago and still rings loud in the corridors of academe:
The West's political leadership has to come to understand that the former calculus of accommodating the region's autocrats for commercial benefit has become unacceptably dangerous.
This coming from conservatives, while that favorite institution of liberals everywhere--the United Nations--finds itself sinking into the slough of the greatest commercial accommodation of tyrants since Sweden sold coal to the Nazis during World War II.
Henninger is speaking of Iran in the above quote, but his sentiment could--and should--apply to Saudi Arabia, whom everyone can agree is despicable. Indeed, when it comes to the House of Sa'ud and the spread of democracy through the Islamic ummah, differences between liberal and conservative progressives are negligible. At least they should be. In the same way that the Iraqi Shia are trying to coax their Sunni counterparts into contributing to the new Iraq, we right-leaning progressives need to bring the left aboard the project of democratizing the Middle East. Like the Shia, we can't succeed alone. And like the Sunnis, our leftists must realize that their alienation is only presenting them with a future of increased powerlessness and despair.
*
Of course, freedom is not only emancipation from autocrats and dictators. A person back home in the good ol' USA trapped in a low-wage job with no health insurance and little prospect of advancement is not free, either, which is why we hope the left will some day emerge from its cocoon with something more to offer the American people than recycled "Bush Lied" bumper stickers.
Case in point is Halliburton. Yes, I know I'm late to the KBR pile-on, but I have to say their latest wranglings with the military fascinate me. On February 1, the Journal's Neil King and Greg Jaffe reported that Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown & Root--which provides logistical services for our troops (see redzone's "Service Reductions")--announced that its projected budget for the year started May 1 will total $10 billion, at least $4 billion more than the Army says it can pay. And, as we know, the military has accused KBR over overcharging in the past.
Part of the problem, the Journal suggests, seems to be KBR's "cost-plus" system whereby they charge for "services provided, adding on a mark up for profit," rather than adhering to a fixed-price contract. Not that I'm an accountancy expert, but it seems to me this rather spontaneous way of charging Uncle Sam could present KBR with many temptations for overcharging. Which is why Erik Eckholm's New York Times February 4 article about the company was so interesting.
Apparently, the Army is rejecting the advice of two Pentagon auditing units and will not hold back "tens of millions of dollars" to KBR for bills that lacked proper documentation. Writes Eckholm,
In the rush that followed the American invasion of 2003, KBR started work without the detailed agreements on scope and reasonable costs that are normally required, and it handed in nearly $2 billion in invoices that Pentagon auditors said lacked proper backup.
This is rather like submitting an expense account to your employer without all the necessary receipts. Your boss may trust you, but do we trust KBR?
Evidently, the Army does. Under federal rules, Eckholm notes, the government retains 15 percent of invoices that aren't "fully accounted for." Worried, however, about "disrupting vital services to troops in the field," the Pentagon will not automatically withhold the monies from KBR's payments. "This is indeed great news for KBR," Halliburton's COO announced in a news release. I bet.
Like I said, I'm no expert in these fields. But all this begs a number of questions. First off, of course, is why does KBR operate on a "cost plus" basis? Why doesn't the Army hold to government accounting strictures and keep back KBR's 15 percent until they clarify the charges? And what does the Army's fears of "disrupting vital services" mean--that if the Pentagon follows the same accounting rules that apply to other firms, KBR will suddenly stop supplying our troops with necessary logistical services? This might call the company's patriotism into question, if nothing else. Still, I'm sure there are good explanations for all this budget and invoice business. Right?
Standing up
They are facing it bravely; they are shedding their blood.
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, testifying in a Senate hearing last Thursday about the state of Iraqi security forces. Noting the 1,342 Iraqi soldiers and policemen killed since June, he added "Those numbers are going up faster than ours."
(Eric Schmitt, New York Times)
Standing up
They are facing it bravely; they are shedding their blood.
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, testifying in a Senate hearing last Thursday about the state of Iraqi security forces. Noting the 1,342 Iraqi soldiers and policemen killed since June, he added "Those numbers are going up faster than ours."
(Eric Schmitt, New York Times)
Too little, too late
How do I say this? I am sorry for everything I have done.
-- Abdel-Qadir Mahmoud, an Egyptian fascist captured in Iraq and videotaped by Iraqi police. He and other terrorists once appeared in a jihadist video where Mamoud helped slit the throat of a bound and gagged captive.
(Christine Hauser, New York Times)
Too little, too late
How do I say this? I am sorry for everything I have done.
-- Abdel-Qadir Mahmoud, an Egyptian fascist captured in Iraq and videotaped by Iraqi police. He and other terrorists once appeared in a jihadist video where Mamoud helped slit the throat of a bound and gagged captive.
(Christine Hauser, New York Times)
February 5, New York Post.
Iraqi thugs kidnap Italian
An article referring to yesterday's kidnapping of anti-war journalist/activist Giuliana Sgrena.
March 30, 2003: Giuliana Sgrena's "Baghdad Diary:"
Wars need symbols, and one of them is Iraq’s new hero, Ali, a martyr in the struggle against the Anglo-Americans...Ali Jaffar Musa al-Nomani, blew himself up, along with his car, at an American checkpoint yesterday. He took 11 Marines with him, the Iraqi media reported, while the Americans speak of four dead.
Ali “the Martyr”: He has become a symbol of resistance to the invasion. Many will follow his example, and not just Iraqis.
And they will still be thugs, as Giuliana Sgrena, to her misfortune, now understands.
February 5, New York Post.
Iraqi thugs kidnap Italian
An article referring to yesterday's kidnapping of anti-war journalist/activist Giuliana Sgrena.
March 30, 2003: Giuliana Sgrena's "Baghdad Diary:"
Wars need symbols, and one of them is Iraq’s new hero, Ali, a martyr in the struggle against the Anglo-Americans...Ali Jaffar Musa al-Nomani, blew himself up, along with his car, at an American checkpoint yesterday. He took 11 Marines with him, the Iraqi media reported, while the Americans speak of four dead.
Ali “the Martyr”: He has become a symbol of resistance to the invasion. Many will follow his example, and not just Iraqis.
And they will still be thugs, as Giuliana Sgrena, to her misfortune, now understands.
[Note: light blogging today, maybe tomorrow, whilst I make a magazine editor happy with an over-due article.]
[Also, I'll be appearing on Fox Monday, at a more humane hour between noon and two. More details when I confirm them. As for now...]
There's the MSM, and then there's Tom Friedman
[The Iraqi] election has made it crystal clear that the Iraq War is not between fascist insurgents and America, but between the fascist insurgents and the Iraqi people. One hopes the French and Germans, whose newspapers often sound more like Al Jazeera than Al Jazeera, will wake up to this fact and throw their weight onto the right side of history.
It's about time, because whatever you thought about this war, its not about Mr. Bush any more. It's about the aspirations of the Iraqi majority to build an alternative to Saddamism.
-- February 3, 2005
*
But didn't Kofi say this war was "illegal?"
I have participated in many elections in my life and I usually say that the day you lose you ability to be moved by people going to vote, you should change your career. This was probably one of the most moving elections I have ever seen.
-- U.N. adviser Carina Perelli, speaking about January 30
*
Jihad 101
A person must be clever. For example, if you wish to buy ammunition..."By God, Sheik Mohammad, we wish to buy corn. The corn is running low, should we buy it or what?"
-- Sheik Ali Hasan al-Moayad, taped by German police while speaking to an confederate, allegedly creating terrorist code words
(Kati Cornell Smith, New York Post)
[Note: light blogging today, maybe tomorrow, whilst I make a magazine editor happy with an over-due article.]
[Also, I'll be appearing on Fox Monday, at a more humane hour between noon and two. More details when I confirm them. As for now...]
There's the MSM, and then there's Tom Friedman
[The Iraqi] election has made it crystal clear that the Iraq War is not between fascist insurgents and America, but between the fascist insurgents and the Iraqi people. One hopes the French and Germans, whose newspapers often sound more like Al Jazeera than Al Jazeera, will wake up to this fact and throw their weight onto the right side of history.
It's about time, because whatever you thought about this war, its not about Mr. Bush any more. It's about the aspirations of the Iraqi majority to build an alternative to Saddamism.
-- February 3, 2005
*
But didn't Kofi say this war was "illegal?"
I have participated in many elections in my life and I usually say that the day you lose you ability to be moved by people going to vote, you should change your career. This was probably one of the most moving elections I have ever seen.
-- U.N. adviser Carina Perelli, speaking about January 30
*
Jihad 101
A person must be clever. For example, if you wish to buy ammunition..."By God, Sheik Mohammad, we wish to buy corn. The corn is running low, should we buy it or what?"
-- Sheik Ali Hasan al-Moayad, taped by German police while speaking to an confederate, allegedly creating terrorist code words
(Kati Cornell Smith, New York Post)
February 3, David Gelernter, in the New York Sun:
You can imagine today's international press on the topic of the American Civil War. "In the eyes of Lincoln, the criterion for tyranny is above all hostility toward the Northern States. Who says the slaves want to be freed? Who says they are capable of democracy? And can't everyone see that the North is only in this war to secure its cotton supplies, on which it depends because of its greedy cotton-guzzling habits?"
The battle lines are drawn. To the opponents of the war, Iraq is Vietnam. To supporters of the war, Iraq is the Confederacy. May the best meme win.
February 3, David Gelernter, in the New York Sun:
You can imagine today's international press on the topic of the American Civil War. "In the eyes of Lincoln, the criterion for tyranny is above all hostility toward the Northern States. Who says the slaves want to be freed? Who says they are capable of democracy? And can't everyone see that the North is only in this war to secure its cotton supplies, on which it depends because of its greedy cotton-guzzling habits?"
The battle lines are drawn. To the opponents of the war, Iraq is Vietnam. To supporters of the war, Iraq is the Confederacy. May the best meme win.
Did Marines shoot up your kabob-stand? A M-1 back over your nebk tree? Perhaps your goat herd got caught in a cross fire? Never fear, Uncle Sam will reimubrse you for any damages caused by soldiers trying to protect you from anti-Iraqi fascists. It's easy, it's profitable, and best of all it's online! All you have to do is find a local internet cafe that Ansar al-Sunnah hasn't shut down, go to this site and click on the right hand link!
Did Marines shoot up your kabob-stand? A M-1 back over your nebk tree? Perhaps your goat herd got caught in a cross fire? Never fear, Uncle Sam will reimubrse you for any damages caused by soldiers trying to protect you from anti-Iraqi fascists. It's easy, it's profitable, and best of all it's online! All you have to do is find a local internet cafe that Ansar al-Sunnah hasn't shut down, go to this site and click on the right hand link!
Maybe it's just you?
"As everyone knows, elections are the best way for people to choose their leaders. So why, in Iraq, is optimism virtually non-existent and despair pervasive?"
-- Baghdad-based "human rights activist" Aziz Jabour, writing in Al-Ahram Weekly before the Iraqi elections
*
Best succinct definition of Constitutional freedoms
"His remarks about the victims of 9-11 are repellent, but our reaction to 'repellent' is how we test the right of free speech."
-- Joan Hinde Stewart, president of Hamilton College, in the aftermath of her college's cancellation of a panel which was to feature University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill.
*
Worst metaphor used for Iraqis' voting
"In thinking about the elections in Iraq, my mind keeps jumping back to last week's train wreck in California."
-- James Carroll, the Boston Globe
*
May the years see many more like her
"We called her Elections because she was born on this historic day when the Iraqis elected their representatives at the national assembly."
-- an Iraqi woman speaking of Intikhabat, her sister's healthy new baby
Maybe it's just you?
"As everyone knows, elections are the best way for people to choose their leaders. So why, in Iraq, is optimism virtually non-existent and despair pervasive?"
-- Baghdad-based "human rights activist" Aziz Jabour, writing in Al-Ahram Weekly before the Iraqi elections
*
Best succinct definition of Constitutional freedoms
"His remarks about the victims of 9-11 are repellent, but our reaction to 'repellent' is how we test the right of free speech."
-- Joan Hinde Stewart, president of Hamilton College, in the aftermath of her college's cancellation of a panel which was to feature University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill.
*
Worst metaphor used for Iraqis' voting
"In thinking about the elections in Iraq, my mind keeps jumping back to last week's train wreck in California."
-- James Carroll, the Boston Globe
*
May the years see many more like her
"We called her Elections because she was born on this historic day when the Iraqis elected their representatives at the national assembly."
-- an Iraqi woman speaking of Intikhabat, her sister's healthy new baby
Supporting our troops in Iraq means more than yellow ribbons and sounding off on Sean Hannity, of course. It also means making sure our men and women have all the material they need--from proper fighting equipment to adequate logistical supplies. We already know about the Pentagon's difficulties with up-armored Humvees; add to that shortage potential cut-backs in day-to-day necessities as food, housing and other services for the troops.
According to the Wall Street Journal's Neil King and Greg Joffe, the U.S. commander in Baghdad has termed "unaffordable" a "budget gap of at least $4 billion between what Halliburton Co. says it will cost to provide food, housing and other services for a year and what the government has budgeted."
It seems that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root--which provides such basic services as meals, mail delivery and telephone service to U.S. troops in Iraq--is claiming that costs to meet Army requirements for a year beginning May will top $10 billion. Unfortunately, the Army has only budgeted $3.6 billion. As a result, the writers observe, "Army officials suggest that ultimately their wish list of services for troops will have to be further slashed."
The Army is still trying to determine if KBR's costs have risen or its own requests have increased. The Journal notes that during the last quarter of 2004, the Army's troop-support bill ran about $18 million a day. Starting in May, KBR estimates costs at $28 million a day.
KBR won a contract in 2000 making it the main supplier of support services to American forces in the Middle East. It was the first private contractor to enter Iraq, and now operates over 80 sites in the country. Interestingly, the Pentagon has spent nearly as much for KBR's efforts as on all private contractors in Iraq combined: last year alone, writes the Journal, the Army paid the company nearly $7 billion, making the total bill since mid-2003 $10 billion.
This is not the first dispute between the Pentagon and Halliburton. Officials have accused the company of overcharging for fuel shipments and for meals, and the Pentagon is still auditing a "series of final bills" stretching back to mid-2003. Meawhile, some 60 employees and subcontractors working for the company have died in Iraq.
Supporting our troops in Iraq means more than yellow ribbons and sounding off on Sean Hannity, of course. It also means making sure our men and women have all the material they need--from proper fighting equipment to adequate logistical supplies. We already know about the Pentagon's difficulties with up-armored Humvees; add to that shortage potential cut-backs in day-to-day necessities as food, housing and other services for the troops.
According to the Wall Street Journal's Neil King and Greg Joffe, the U.S. commander in Baghdad has termed "unaffordable" a "budget gap of at least $4 billion between what Halliburton Co. says it will cost to provide food, housing and other services for a year and what the government has budgeted."
It seems that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root--which provides such basic services as meals, mail delivery and telephone service to U.S. troops in Iraq--is claiming that costs to meet Army requirements for a year beginning May will top $10 billion. Unfortunately, the Army has only budgeted $3.6 billion. As a result, the writers observe, "Army officials suggest that ultimately their wish list of services for troops will have to be further slashed."
The Army is still trying to determine if KBR's costs have risen or its own requests have increased. The Journal notes that during the last quarter of 2004, the Army's troop-support bill ran about $18 million a day. Starting in May, KBR estimates costs at $28 million a day.
KBR won a contract in 2000 making it the main supplier of support services to American forces in the Middle East. It was the first private contractor to enter Iraq, and now operates over 80 sites in the country. Interestingly, the Pentagon has spent nearly as much for KBR's efforts as on all private contractors in Iraq combined: last year alone, writes the Journal, the Army paid the company nearly $7 billion, making the total bill since mid-2003 $10 billion.
This is not the first dispute between the Pentagon and Halliburton. Officials have accused the company of overcharging for fuel shipments and for meals, and the Pentagon is still auditing a "series of final bills" stretching back to mid-2003. Meawhile, some 60 employees and subcontractors working for the company have died in Iraq.
Zarqawi Watch
Our mujaheddin heroes of Iraq's Jihadi Battalion were able to capture American military man John Adam after killing a number of his comrades and capturing the rest.
-- terrorist communiqué, February 1, 2005
Yes, I know I've probably overdone it with this image, but who knew the terrorists would take their cues from the real Cobra Commander and capture a G.I. Joe doll?
Although the Mujaheddin Brigade has threatened to behead Adam in 72 hours, we hear the Pentagon has already formed a special Strike Force to rescue the captive American hero. 
Update: Confederate Yankee gets it right: laughter is the best weapon against the Islamofascist lunatics. (credit: Instapundit) For more on the topic of laughing at the enemy, see "In Osama's Face."
*
Royal U-Turn
It is in Iran's vested interest to have an Islamic republic of Iraq...and therefore the involvement you're getting by the Iranians is to achieve a government that is very pro-Iranian
-- Jordan's King Abdullah on Iraq's elections, Washington Post, December 8, 2004
People are waking up. [Arab] leaders understand that they have to push reform forward and I don't think there is any looking back.
-- King Abdullah on Iraq's elections, CNN, January 31, 2005
*
Osama's Campus Emir
[The Pentagon] and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center...Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Give me a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire.
If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmann's inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
In sum one can discern a certain optimism--it might even be called humanitarianism--embedded in the thinking of those who presided over the very limited actions conducted on September 11.
-- excerpts from "Some People Shove Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," an essay written just after 9-11 by Ward Churchill, chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado. Tomorrow the tenured professor will participate in a panel at New York state's Hamilton College on the limits of free speech.
(John P. Avlon, New York Sun)
Update: The New York Post today reports that "under a cloud of death threat:" Hamilton College has cancelled the panel discussion that was to feature Churchill. Although I understand Hamilton's reasoning, the college's decision is still a pity. Given a chance to speak, Churchill would likely have dug himself an even deeper hole with his rhetorical trowel. More importantly, free speech is one of the values we are defending against the likes of al-Zarqawi and bin Laden. We should not tolerate nor concede to jihadists, whether they lurk in caves and desert hideouts of the Muslim world, or the cities, towns and suburbs of our own.
*
Religion of Peace and Tolerance
Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.
-- an excerpt of literature disseminated by Saudi Arabia in American mosques and bookstores, according to a recent report issued by Freedom House.
Zarqawi Watch
Our mujaheddin heroes of Iraq's Jihadi Battalion were able to capture American military man John Adam after killing a number of his comrades and capturing the rest.
-- terrorist communiqué, February 1, 2005
Yes, I know I've probably overdone it with this image, but who knew the terrorists would take their cues from the real Cobra Commander and capture a G.I. Joe doll?
Although the Mujaheddin Brigade has threatened to behead Adam in 72 hours, we hear the Pentagon has already formed a special Strike Force to rescue the captive American hero.
Update: Confederate Yankee gets it right: laughter is the best weapon against the Islamofascist lunatics. (credit: Instapundit) For more on the topic of laughing at the enemy, see "In Osama's Face."
*
Royal U-Turn
It is in Iran's vested interest to have an Islamic republic of Iraq...and therefore the involvement you're getting by the Iranians is to achieve a government that is very pro-Iranian
-- Jordan's King Abdullah on Iraq's elections, Washington Post, December 8, 2004
People are waking up. [Arab] leaders understand that they have to push reform forward and I don't think there is any looking back.
-- King Abdullah on Iraq's elections, CNN, January 31, 2005
*
Osama's Campus Emir
[The Pentagon] and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center...Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Give me a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire.
If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmann's inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
In sum one can discern a certain optimism--it might even be called humanitarianism--embedded in the thinking of those who presided over the very limited actions conducted on September 11.
-- excerpts from "Some People Shove Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," an essay written just after 9-11 by Ward Churchill, chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado. Tomorrow the tenured professor will participate in a panel at New York state's Hamilton College on the limits of free speech.
(John P. Avlon, New York Sun)
Update: The New York Post today reports that "under a cloud of death threat:" Hamilton College has cancelled the panel discussion that was to feature Churchill. Although I understand Hamilton's reasoning, the college's decision is still a pity. Given a chance to speak, Churchill would likely have dug himself an even deeper hole with his rhetorical trowel. More importantly, free speech is one of the values we are defending against the likes of al-Zarqawi and bin Laden. We should not tolerate nor concede to jihadists, whether they lurk in caves and desert hideouts of the Muslim world, or the cities, towns and suburbs of our own.
*
Religion of Peace and Tolerance
Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.
-- an excerpt of literature disseminated by Saudi Arabia in American mosques and bookstores, according to a recent report issued by Freedom House.
February 1, Financial Times headline:
Voter coercion fails to mar Iraqi election
The FT has it right by avoiding the term "voter boycott"--which implies a voluntary withdrawal from the election process--with "voter coercion," which more accurately describes the terrorists/Muslim Scholars Association's campaign of intimidation, fatwas and death.
*
February 2, New York Times headline:
Iraqis Who Died While Daring to Vote Are Mourned as Martyrs
Right again. (Is there a trend here?) Only to some of us, every Iraqi who died at the hands of the fascist paramilitaries is a martyr to the cause of freedom and democracy.
*
On January 25, Italian judge Clementina Forleo threw out an indictment against five North Africans charged with international terrorism for allegedly recruiting suicide bombers for "combat" in Iraq.
In a statement explaining her ruling, Judge Forleo stated that Italian authorities failed to prove that the Muslims' activities were "exceeding guerrilla activity." In other words, the North African recruiters of homicidal martyrs were guerrillas not terrorists. Proof, if any was needed, that terminology matters.
About those voter turn-out totals
People have asked me why I though the final voter turn-out totals in Iraq may drop below 50 percent--thus giving the "elections-were-illegitimate" crowd further ammunition. It's all in how you count the figures: the percentages we are using now are drawn from the number of registered Iraqi voters; turn-out, however, is normally estimated from the number of eligible voters. Eight million voters out of 14 million is roughly 57-60 percent. Eight million out of 18 million adult Iraqis lowers the total to around 45 percent. Not that I want to detract anything from the Iraqis' accomplishment or give the sour grapes Left any cues, but we should be prepared for this argument.
UPDATE: Jon Henke does some numbers.
February 1, Financial Times headline:
Voter coercion fails to mar Iraqi election
The FT has it right by avoiding the term "voter boycott"--which implies a voluntary withdrawal from the election process--with "voter coercion," which more accurately describes the terrorists/Muslim Scholars Association's campaign of intimidation, fatwas and death.
*
February 2, New York Times headline:
Iraqis Who Died While Daring to Vote Are Mourned as Martyrs
Right again. (Is there a trend here?) Only to some of us, every Iraqi who died at the hands of the fascist paramilitaries is a martyr to the cause of freedom and democracy.
*
On January 25, Italian judge Clementina Forleo threw out an indictment against five North Africans charged with international terrorism for allegedly recruiting suicide bombers for "combat" in Iraq.
In a statement explaining her ruling, Judge Forleo stated that Italian authorities failed to prove that the Muslims' activities were "exceeding guerrilla activity." In other words, the North African recruiters of homicidal martyrs were guerrillas not terrorists. Proof, if any was needed, that terminology matters.
About those voter turn-out totals
People have asked me why I though the final voter turn-out totals in Iraq may drop below 50 percent--thus giving the "elections-were-illegitimate" crowd further ammunition. It's all in how you count the figures: the percentages we are using now are drawn from the number of registered Iraqi voters; turn-out, however, is normally estimated from the number of eligible voters. Eight million voters out of 14 million is roughly 57-60 percent. Eight million out of 18 million adult Iraqis lowers the total to around 45 percent. Not that I want to detract anything from the Iraqis' accomplishment or give the sour grapes Left any cues, but we should be prepared for this argument.
UPDATE: Jon Henke does some numbers.
Arab governments may not say it, but they don't want Iraq's democratic experiment to succeed. Such a success would embarrass them and present them with a dilemma of either changing or being changed.
-- Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi columnist
He could be talking about the Ted Kennedy-Barbara Boxer-Moveon wing of the Democratic Party.
*
From the Dept. of Egregious 'Damning 'Buts'"
"Once the joy of the moment has passed, I have only fear"
-- headline of a Guardian U.K. op-ed piece about the Iraq election by BBC reporter Rageh Omaar
Also from our friends at the Beeb:
The BBC regrets mistakes in its published and broadcast reports.
-- yet another official apology for the news organization's "sexed-up" findings that up to 60 percent of civilian causalities in the second half of 2004 were caused by Coalition-Iraqi forces. The BBC, it turned out, counted anti-Iraqi fascists as civilians and blamed Iraqis killed by the insurgents on Coalition operations.
*
Lastly, from the Sayyid Qutb Dept. of Islamic Grandiosity comes
Our Prophet Muhammad's origins also go back to the Sumerians. Consequently, the Prophet Muhammad was also a Turk...
The society that initiated civilization in the world was the Turks as well. World history began with the Turks. The Ottomans ruled the world for 600 years, and everyone in a great many countries today has respect for the Ottomans. Essentially, the roots of the citizens living in the Western countries today are also Turkish. Westerners are abandoning their existing religion and trying to seek new religions. Their own churches are empty.
-- Turkish scholar Namik Kemal Zeybek, speaking at a conference entitled "The New World Order and Turkey.
Arab governments may not say it, but they don't want Iraq's democratic experiment to succeed. Such a success would embarrass them and present them with a dilemma of either changing or being changed.
-- Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi columnist
He could be talking about the Ted Kennedy-Barbara Boxer-Moveon wing of the Democratic Party.
*
From the Dept. of Egregious 'Damning 'Buts'"
"Once the joy of the moment has passed, I have only fear"
-- headline of a Guardian U.K. op-ed piece about the Iraq election by BBC reporter Rageh Omaar
Also from our friends at the Beeb:
The BBC regrets mistakes in its published and broadcast reports.
-- yet another official apology for the news organization's "sexed-up" findings that up to 60 percent of civilian causalities in the second half of 2004 were caused by Coalition-Iraqi forces. The BBC, it turned out, counted anti-Iraqi fascists as civilians and blamed Iraqis killed by the insurgents on Coalition operations.
*
Lastly, from the Sayyid Qutb Dept. of Islamic Grandiosity comes
Our Prophet Muhammad's origins also go back to the Sumerians. Consequently, the Prophet Muhammad was also a Turk...
The society that initiated civilization in the world was the Turks as well. World history began with the Turks. The Ottomans ruled the world for 600 years, and everyone in a great many countries today has respect for the Ottomans. Essentially, the roots of the citizens living in the Western countries today are also Turkish. Westerners are abandoning their existing religion and trying to seek new religions. Their own churches are empty.
-- Turkish scholar Namik Kemal Zeybek, speaking at a conference entitled "The New World Order and Turkey.
Thanks for dropping by -- and don't forget, you can catch my election blogs, and one final wrap-up (plus many other diverse and extraordinary things) by visiting the Internet's own intrepid Rough Rider, Chester.
Thanks for dropping by -- and don't forget, you can catch my election blogs, and one final wrap-up (plus many other diverse and extraordinary things) by visiting the Internet's own intrepid Rough Rider, Chester.
I'm schedued to appear tomorrow on "Fox & Friends" at 6:15 a.m. to talk about--well, what else?
I'm schedued to appear tomorrow on "Fox & Friends" at 6:15 a.m. to talk about--well, what else?
Tonight, as Saturday in North America moves toward its close, the people of Iraq--most of them, insha'allah--will be preparing to vote. It will be a long night for us, but an even longer day for them, crowded with acts of courage and violence, despair and inspiration--everything we've come to expect in a land that, for some of us, has become more familiar than we could have guessed, or in many cases, wished. There's nothing we can do now, of course, save offer our thoughts to those Iraqis who choose to vote, and anxiously await the course of democracy.
We bloggers intend, or at least hope, that our words are read by as wide an audience as possible. Today, though, I write with but a few people in mind - friends, acquaintances, strangers I met in Iraq during my all-too-brief travels through the country. People whose faces and voices will forever remain with me, who today form the living fulcrum upon which the events of the morrow will turn. People for whom, 10,000 miles away, I offer my prayers.
Like bulky, bearded Esam, whose irrepressible charm disguised the despair most Iraqis feel about their brutal society: recently, I posted a letter from him describing life in a Baghdad bereft of electricity, where nights are broken by the roar of American jets and distant explosions. I pray, too, for Ahmed, perhaps the most easy-going Iraqi I met, who broke my heart last week when he sent me a terse text-message reading "I am OK...not OK...miss you." Perhaps their new democracy will bring, along with accountable government and an independent judiciary, some electricity and heat.
I offer prayers for Zena, the Baghdad housewife who struggles to raise three small daughters in a city where kidnapping children is as common as car bombs. The internet cafe where we met is closed, a victim of the insurgency's targeting of foreigners. She spends her days now in hours-long queues, waiting to fill her car with gas. She is tired, worried, distraught. May the new democracy bring her additional supplies of fuel, along with law and order to the streets.
And Rand, the Christian woman who also worked at the internet cafe. She left the cafe to work for Iraqna, the cellphone company, which provides her the amazing opportunity to travel to Egypt and Syria. Back home in Baghdad, however, the church she used to attend was bombed by Zarqawi. Her Christian friends have begun to fear for their lives. May the new democracy bring the capture of the terror master and his malignant ilk--as well as comfort to the Christians of Iraq.
And Naseer, brilliant, tormented, forever perched on the edge of melancholy and despair. His insights into the Iraqi soul had a profound impact on my own views of his nation. Recently, in a Frontpage essay he expressed a steely resolve to vote and--as he put it--"resist" the paramilitary fascists. He above all the Iraqis I met bears the emotional scars of Saddam and a thirst for justice. May democracy bring an end to the "insurgency" and peace to my dear, tortured friend.
Nor can I forget Nour, my beautiful Basran comrade, guide and protector. For me, she embodied the indominable but endangered spirit of women in a land that treats females as second-class creatures. Her faith that moderate Islam and democracy represent the best hope for her country caused me to re-evaluate my notions of religion and politics. My prayers are never far from her. And by Allah's good grace, she seems to be doing well: an e-mail from her today tells me she is busy working with international journalists covering the elections. May He continue to bring her good fortune, democracy and the freedom she so desperately desires and deserves.
There are others. Mohammad--a good-natured bear of man whose fondest wish was to design books for children; Ahmad, handsome, cosmopolitan, plagued by rumors that he spied for Saddam's secret police; Qasim, the silver-haired, silver-tongued, crypto-Baathist impresario of the Hewar Gallery; Dhia, who took me through the Sunni Triangle at peril to his life; Samir, who rescued me at a religious festival when Zarqawi killed over a hundred people with suicide bombs. May democracy bring them what they never had under the shadow of Saddam, and what the paramilitaries would once again deny them: a future.
Some Iraqis will not vote out of fear, resentment or apathy. Many will not because they are forever beyond the ballot box or the terrorist. They number in the thousands, these men and women, transformed in a flash from living beings to figures on a casualty sheet too long to comprehend. And so I pray for one, an Iraqi woman who worked for the CPA, whom I know only from a faded photograph in a makeshift memorial--although I saw the wreckage caused by the sucide attack that killed her. May democracy bring meaning to her life; may Hadeel not have died in vain.
There are more, many more, enough to tax a reader's patience, and so I will close. But not before I offer a final prayer--for our troops, standing guard over the first stumbling steps of the Iraqi infant America has helped bring into the world. May tomorrow's elections and the democracy it promises bring them something, too: a journey home.
Tonight, as Saturday in North America moves toward its close, the people of Iraq--most of them, insha'allah--will be preparing to vote. It will be a long night for us, but an even longer day for them, crowded with acts of courage and violence, despair and inspiration--everything we've come to expect in a land that, for some of us, has become more familiar than we could have guessed, or in many cases, wished. There's nothing we can do now, of course, save offer our thoughts to those Iraqis who choose to vote, and anxiously await the course of democracy.
We bloggers intend, or at least hope, that our words are read by as wide an audience as possible. Today, though, I write with but a few people in mind - friends, acquaintances, strangers I met in Iraq during my all-too-brief travels through the country. People whose faces and voices will forever remain with me, who today form the living fulcrum upon which the events of the morrow will turn. People for whom, 10,000 miles away, I offer my prayers.
Like bulky, bearded Esam, whose irrepressible charm disguised the despair most Iraqis feel about their brutal society: recently, I posted a letter from him describing life in a Baghdad bereft of electricity, where nights are broken by the roar of American jets and distant explosions. I pray, too, for Ahmed, perhaps the most easy-going Iraqi I met, who broke my heart last week when he sent me a terse text-message reading "I am OK...not OK...miss you." Perhaps their new democracy will bring, along with accountable government and an independent judiciary, some electricity and heat.
I offer prayers for Zena, the Baghdad housewife who struggles to raise three small daughters in a city where kidnapping children is as common as car bombs. The internet cafe where we met is closed, a victim of the insurgency's targeting of foreigners. She spends her days now in hours-long queues, waiting to fill her car with gas. She is tired, worried, distraught. May the new democracy bring her additional supplies of fuel, along with law and order to the streets.
And Rand, the Christian woman who also worked at the internet cafe. She left the cafe to work for Iraqna, the cellphone company, which provides her the amazing opportunity to travel to Egypt and Syria. Back home in Baghdad, however, the church she used to attend was bombed by Zarqawi. Her Christian friends have begun to fear for their lives. May the new democracy bring the capture of the terror master and his malignant ilk--as well as comfort to the Christians of Iraq.
And Naseer, brilliant, tormented, forever perched on the edge of melancholy and despair. His insights into the Iraqi soul had a profound impact on my own views of his nation. Recently, in a Frontpage essay he expressed a steely resolve to vote and--as he put it--"resist" the paramilitary fascists. He above all the Iraqis I met bears the emotional scars of Saddam and a thirst for justice. May democracy bring an end to the "insurgency" and peace to my dear, tortured friend.
Nor can I forget Nour, my beautiful Basran comrade, guide and protector. For me, she embodied the indominable but endangered spirit of women in a land that treats females as second-class creatures. Her faith that moderate Islam and democracy represent the best hope for her country caused me to re-evaluate my notions of religion and politics. My prayers are never far from her. And by Allah's good grace, she seems to be doing well: an e-mail from her today tells me she is busy working with international journalists covering the elections. May He continue to bring her good fortune, democracy and the freedom she so desperately desires and deserves.
There are others. Mohammad--a good-natured bear of man whose fondest wish was to design books for children; Ahmad, handsome, cosmopolitan, plagued by rumors that he spied for Saddam's secret police; Qasim, the silver-haired, silver-tongued, crypto-Baathist impresario of the Hewar Gallery; Dhia, who took me through the Sunni Triangle at peril to his life; Samir, who rescued me at a religious festival when Zarqawi killed over a hundred people with suicide bombs. May democracy bring them what they never had under the shadow of Saddam, and what the paramilitaries would once again deny them: a future.
Some Iraqis will not vote out of fear, resentment or apathy. Many will not because they are forever beyond the ballot box or the terrorist. They number in the thousands, these men and women, transformed in a flash from living beings to figures on a casualty sheet too long to comprehend. And so I pray for one, an Iraqi woman who worked for the CPA, whom I know only from a faded photograph in a makeshift memorial--although I saw the wreckage caused by the sucide attack that killed her. May democracy bring meaning to her life; may Hadeel not have died in vain.
There are more, many more, enough to tax a reader's patience, and so I will close. But not before I offer a final prayer--for our troops, standing guard over the first stumbling steps of the Iraqi infant America has helped bring into the world. May tomorrow's elections and the democracy it promises bring them something, too: a journey home.
They are terrified lest elections prove contagious and spread to Iraq's neighboring states and peoples. The danger to certain Arab governments, whose position has become almost identical to that of bin Laden and al-Zarqawi, is not the alleged "Shiite crescent," or a theocratic and religious "non-Arab" government in Iraq, but the democratic "weapon of mass destruction" that could destroy the structure of tyranny and backwardness that weighs heavily upon the chests of their peoples.
-- Salama Neemat, Washington correspondent for the daily Al-Hayat
(David Hirst, Daily Star)
*
[T]he patience of the Iraqi majority about the crimes committed by the Arab terrorists, who are possibly being supported by some Sunni clerics, will eventually run out, and the world must then be prepared for their angry response.
-- Hassan Hanizadeh, Tehran Times
*
Insha'allah, We will win. The Iraqi Coalition shall win, [Sunni-born Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem] Shaalan shall get nothing, and we shall have insha'allah a strong security force made of children of the martyrs of the south, and go after the Sunni killers and destroy them.
Ya Allah
Ya Mohammad
Ya Ali
-- "ali (the real ali)", commenting on a post appearing on the website Words from Iraq
They are terrified lest elections prove contagious and spread to Iraq's neighboring states and peoples. The danger to certain Arab governments, whose position has become almost identical to that of bin Laden and al-Zarqawi, is not the alleged "Shiite crescent," or a theocratic and religious "non-Arab" government in Iraq, but the democratic "weapon of mass destruction" that could destroy the structure of tyranny and backwardness that weighs heavily upon the chests of their peoples.
-- Salama Neemat, Washington correspondent for the daily Al-Hayat
(David Hirst, Daily Star)
*
[T]he patience of the Iraqi majority about the crimes committed by the Arab terrorists, who are possibly being supported by some Sunni clerics, will eventually run out, and the world must then be prepared for their angry response.
-- Hassan Hanizadeh, Tehran Times
*
Insha'allah, We will win. The Iraqi Coalition shall win, [Sunni-born Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem] Shaalan shall get nothing, and we shall have insha'allah a strong security force made of children of the martyrs of the south, and go after the Sunni killers and destroy them.
Ya Allah
Ya Mohammad
Ya Ali
-- "ali (the real ali)", commenting on a post appearing on the website Words from Iraq
For the next couple of days, I will be working on a major article about moderate Islam for American Enterprise magazine, so blogging will be intermittent. Also, "Fox & Friends" has invited me to appear Monday morning to discuss Iraq's elections--I'll post the time when it's confirmed. Ashoofak is-sabit, insha'allah.
UPDATE: For some dual election coverage, check out The Adventures of Chester where I'll be appearing this week-end. Same posts as here, but they'll enjoy the benefits of Chester's acumen and insight. Hey, you gotta love a man in uniform!
For the next couple of days, I will be working on a major article about moderate Islam for American Enterprise magazine, so blogging will be intermittent. Also, "Fox & Friends" has invited me to appear Monday morning to discuss Iraq's elections--I'll post the time when it's confirmed. Ashoofak is-sabit, insha'allah.
UPDATE: For some dual election coverage, check out The Adventures of Chester where I'll be appearing this week-end. Same posts as here, but they'll enjoy the benefits of Chester's acumen and insight. Hey, you gotta love a man in uniform!
The dispute between Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi defense minister Hazim Shaalan and a missing $300 million (see "Death of a Whistle Blower" below) took another strange and thoroughly Iraqi-style turn yesterday, as reported by the New York Sun's Eli Lake (no web link).
According to Lake, Al-Hayat reported that the Central Bank of Iraq has taken back $200 million of the money Shaalan apparently deposited in a Lebanese bank. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance--the slate expected to win a majority of seats on January 30--will look into embezzlement charges against the defense minister.
Meanwhile, mysteries surrounding the death of American arms dealer Dale Stoffel--who may have been murdered for complaining about graft in the Iraqi defense ministry--remain.
So let's review. In mid-January, Chalabi--a leading candidate on the United Iraq Alliance ticket--accuses Shaalan of corruption involving a $300 million deal to purchase equipment for the Iraqi army. On January 21, Shaalan responds by threatening Chalabi's arrest for defaming his reputation. Interestingly, Shaalan, a figure accused of having served with Saddam's intelligence service, levels his threat against Chalabi on Al-Jazeera--otherwise known as Air bin Laden--from Amman, Jordan--a favorite hangout for ex-Baathists and Saddamite officials. Almost immediately, Iraqi president, and Shaalan ally, Ghazi al-Yawar denied the government planned to arrest Chalabi.
According to the Sun's editorial page, a month ago, Shaalan and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi urged Bush to delay the elections. When Bush refused, "Shaalan threatened to arrest those who are poised to defeat him with the ballot"--among whom, it seems, is Chalabi.
One of the background issues here is the de- (or re-) Baathification of the Iraqi government. a frequent complaint of neo-cons like Reuben Marc Gerecht about Allawi is that his "overtures" to the Baath party only "emboldened the Sunni insurgents in the field" and "introduced into the fledgling Iraqi government Baathist and Sunni fundamentalist moles." By contrast, Chalabi once headed up Iraq's De-Baathification Commission, and was instrumental in convincing Washington to disband the Baath-infested Iraqi army (a correct decision, in my estimation). Complicating Chalabi's role, however, is the U.S. accusation that he--and his security chief Abas Habib--are, or have been, in the pay of the Iran.
Meanwhile, there is Stoffel. As we recall, the American arms dealer was in Iraq to purchase weapons for the Iraqi military. In a letter to U.S. officials dated December 3, he complained of graft among Iraqi Defense Ministry officials and of "problems" with a "Lebanese businessman" acting as a go-between. On December 8, a previously unknown group calling itself Brigades of the Islamic Jihad ambushed and killed Stoffel and another American. Now, however, some investigators believe the murderers may have wanted their actions to appear like a terrorist attack in order to hide their real--but so far undisclosed--motive for killing Stoffel.
So let's review:
On December 3, Stoffel--an arms dealer with extensive experience in Eastern Europe--complains of graft among Defense Ministry officials involved a multi-million dollar weapons deal. On December 8 he is murdered under mysterious circumstances.
On January 22, one day after the Los Angeles Times breaks the story about investigations into Stoffel's murder, the New York Times reveals that earlier this month Shaalan transferred $300 million dollars to a Lebanese bank supposedly to buy equipment from Eastern European sources. Chalabi then accuses the Defense Minister of graft--echoing Stoffel's charges weeks before.
The Sun, which expresses a neo-con dislike for Allawi and his allies (as opposed to the "realists" among the CIA and State Department), excoriates the Bush Administration over the Shaalan affair.
The fact that large sums of money are now going missing from Iraq's treasury before these elections is part of an intelligence failure of a higher order of magnitude than anything yet investigated by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Did the president's best and brightest advisers choose thugs and thieves to steer Iraq from occupation to democracy?
Perhaps Dale Stoffel had an answer to this question. Let us urge further investigation into his death.
The dispute between Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi defense minister Hazim Shaalan and a missing $300 million (see "Death of a Whistle Blower" below) took another strange and thoroughly Iraqi-style turn yesterday, as reported by the New York Sun's Eli Lake (no web link).
According to Lake, Al-Hayat reported that the Central Bank of Iraq has taken back $200 million of the money Shaalan apparently deposited in a Lebanese bank. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance--the slate expected to win a majority of seats on January 30--will look into embezzlement charges against the defense minister.
Meanwhile, mysteries surrounding the death of American arms dealer Dale Stoffel--who may have been murdered for complaining about graft in the Iraqi defense ministry--remain.
So let's review. In mid-January, Chalabi--a leading candidate on the United Iraq Alliance ticket--accuses Shaalan of corruption involving a $300 million deal to purchase equipment for the Iraqi army. On January 21, Shaalan responds by threatening Chalabi's arrest for defaming his reputation. Interestingly, Shaalan, a figure accused of having served with Saddam's intelligence service, levels his threat against Chalabi on Al-Jazeera--otherwise known as Air bin Laden--from Amman, Jordan--a favorite hangout for ex-Baathists and Saddamite officials. Almost immediately, Iraqi president, and Shaalan ally, Ghazi al-Yawar denied the government planned to arrest Chalabi.
According to the Sun's editorial page, a month ago, Shaalan and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi urged Bush to delay the elections. When Bush refused, "Shaalan threatened to arrest those who are poised to defeat him with the ballot"--among whom, it seems, is Chalabi.
One of the background issues here is the de- (or re-) Baathification of the Iraqi government. a frequent complaint of neo-cons like Reuben Marc Gerecht about Allawi is that his "overtures" to the Baath party only "emboldened the Sunni insurgents in the field" and "introduced into the fledgling Iraqi government Baathist and Sunni fundamentalist moles." By contrast, Chalabi once headed up Iraq's De-Baathification Commission, and was instrumental in convincing Washington to disband the Baath-infested Iraqi army (a correct decision, in my estimation). Complicating Chalabi's role, however, is the U.S. accusation that he--and his security chief Abas Habib--are, or have been, in the pay of the Iran.
Meanwhile, there is Stoffel. As we recall, the American arms dealer was in Iraq to purchase weapons for the Iraqi military. In a letter to U.S. officials dated December 3, he complained of graft among Iraqi Defense Ministry officials and of "problems" with a "Lebanese businessman" acting as a go-between. On December 8, a previously unknown group calling itself Brigades of the Islamic Jihad ambushed and killed Stoffel and another American. Now, however, some investigators believe the murderers may have wanted their actions to appear like a terrorist attack in order to hide their real--but so far undisclosed--motive for killing Stoffel.
So let's review:
On December 3, Stoffel--an arms dealer with extensive experience in Eastern Europe--complains of graft among Defense Ministry officials involved a multi-million dollar weapons deal. On December 8 he is murdered under mysterious circumstances.
On January 22, one day after the Los Angeles Times breaks the story about investigations into Stoffel's murder, the New York Times reveals that earlier this month Shaalan transferred $300 million dollars to a Lebanese bank supposedly to buy equipment from Eastern European sources. Chalabi then accuses the Defense Minister of graft--echoing Stoffel's charges weeks before.
The Sun, which expresses a neo-con dislike for Allawi and his allies (as opposed to the "realists" among the CIA and State Department), excoriates the Bush Administration over the Shaalan affair.
The fact that large sums of money are now going missing from Iraq's treasury before these elections is part of an intelligence failure of a higher order of magnitude than anything yet investigated by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Did the president's best and brightest advisers choose thugs and thieves to steer Iraq from occupation to democracy?
Perhaps Dale Stoffel had an answer to this question. Let us urge further investigation into his death.
We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology.
-- Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Used to be, only the bad guys in melodramatic fiction justified their malevolence in the name of "evil"--as when the cackling supervillain waves his clenched fist and shouts, "Now, let evil reign!" And yet, Osama's man in Iraq has essentially done just that, announcing that he and his followers fight to prevent the "evil principle" of democracy from taking root in Iraq--a position so extreme and illiberal that even leftist critics of the war may feel compelled to re-examine their position. If not their consciences.
And indeed, that reappraisal may in fact be happening, especially in light of Iraqi labor leader Hadi Salih's brutal murder earlier this month. (See "Wrong Left Turns" below). Here's Andrew Grice of U.K.'s Independent, hardly a bastion of neo-conservative ideology, quoting Labor MP Harry Barnes:
I was very proud to support the Stop the War Coalition but its leadership has now degenerated into an unrepresentative and totalitarian rump. For me, the war was wrong but we just have to recognise that things have changed and now give increased and active solidarity to all those forces within Iraq who are desperately trying to rebuild civil society, make the elections work, preserve the unity of their country and see the withdrawal of foreign troops.
This, of course, is excellent news. The Iraqis need the support of the progressive elements of both the Left and the Right to help make their democracy work.
Speaking of Zarqawi, has he been captured? Rumors have circulated for weeks, and they don't seem to be going away. January Surprise, anyone?
(For more on the "Z-Man's" Cobra Commander imitation, with various and sundry links to other commentators, see Austin Bay.)
We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology.
-- Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Used to be, only the bad guys in melodramatic fiction justified their malevolence in the name of "evil"--as when the cackling supervillain waves his clenched fist and shouts, "Now, let evil reign!" And yet, Osama's man in Iraq has essentially done just that, announcing that he and his followers fight to prevent the "evil principle" of democracy from taking root in Iraq--a position so extreme and illiberal that even leftist critics of the war may feel compelled to re-examine their position. If not their consciences.
And indeed, that reappraisal may in fact be happening, especially in light of Iraqi labor leader Hadi Salih's brutal murder earlier this month. (See "Wrong Left Turns" below). Here's Andrew Grice of U.K.'s Independent, hardly a bastion of neo-conservative ideology, quoting Labor MP Harry Barnes:
I was very proud to support the Stop the War Coalition but its leadership has now degenerated into an unrepresentative and totalitarian rump. For me, the war was wrong but we just have to recognise that things have changed and now give increased and active solidarity to all those forces within Iraq who are desperately trying to rebuild civil society, make the elections work, preserve the unity of their country and see the withdrawal of foreign troops.
This, of course, is excellent news. The Iraqis need the support of the progressive elements of both the Left and the Right to help make their democracy work.
Speaking of Zarqawi, has he been captured? Rumors have circulated for weeks, and they don't seem to be going away. January Surprise, anyone?
(For more on the "Z-Man's" Cobra Commander imitation, with various and sundry links to other commentators, see Austin Bay.)
BUSH PROCLAIMS THE FIRE OF FREEDOM
-- Headline, New York Sun, January 21-21, 2005
[O]ne day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of the world.
-- President George W. Bush, January 20, 2005
What follows is a short letter from a dear friend in Baghdad named Esam. Esam is a phenomenon you often encounter in Iraq: the polymath. Tall, bearded, with onyx-black eyes (he looks a bit like a Mesopotamian king of old), the twentysomething is a painter and national judo champion who speaks at least four languages. He also served the U.S. in the highly dangerous job of military translator. (Despite that fact, he can't get a visa to travel to America.) During the time we hung out together in Baghdad, Esam possessed a cocky sang-froid and irrepressible air of self-confidence. For that reason, his report from Iraq's capital city is particularly distressing. [Note: for another take on Iraq, check out my friend Nasir Hasan's essay on Frontpage Magazine.]
Steven, you ask about life in Baghdad these days. Well, as you know, I have lived all my life in this city, watching it closely from the inside (I do wish I may someday have the chance to see how it looks from the outside for a change.) Before, no one cared how Baghdad was doing--not until my beautiful city turned into a trap where people are killed and soldiers fight every day...
...I don't care what journalists say or what is happening in the "Green Zone" (which is now called the "International Zone"). I don't care about names, governments and official statements. I only know about what I am facing here and now.
You want to know about my days? My studio is freezing cold as I am writing these lines. Now, it's 11:30 pm. The electricity is off. It has never been good over the last 15 years. No day went by without a cut-off now and then. There were a few days--no more than four or five, I can barely remember--when we got 24 hours of electricity. We got used to doing without the basic necessities that everyone enjoys. You Americans are confident that no one can put you into the frozen darkness--and if it did happen, you would complain and someone would do something. For us, though, we could never complain because in the days of Saddam you could never talk. Today, however, you can cry your lungs out, but nobody listens.
Actually, it was a bit better today, because we received two hours of electricity for every four hours of darkness. And this is better than the last few weeks, when we only got an hour and half of electricity, which went off at 10:30...
My room feels like a cold prison. I look through the window and everything sinks into darkness. Only a few houses have generators, you can see dim light through their windows. But the loud sound of the generator engines drives me crazy. The streets are empty now. The curfew starts at 10:00 pm. That's an hour ago. I still have some gas left to feed my gas lamp, but I can't use it for my gas heater because it expends too much fuel, more than I have saved. I have an electric heater, but it can do nothing. The water is not good either. In the morning, the water pump cannot bring the water up to the second floor. So when I want to fill the tank or take a bath, I have to wait till after midnight when the electricity comes back on so I can turn on my water pump.
So--no lights...so cold. No music...noises of generators and fighting jets and tanks fill the air. I feel like a homeless man with my many blankets I cover myself with in the night so I can stay warm when I sleep. In the streets of Baghdad I see many smiling faces as I walk. But they are on buildings and walls where they put up huge posters of people smiling happily, wearing nice clothes, clean, bright colors. And underneath that, there are promising words and slogans of brilliant life and a great future. And if you look further down you see real people in the streets. They have no smiles, no bright colors, only a frightened look in their eyes. I would smile if I got the electricity that the people in posters get, and have my clothes well-ironed like theirs. And then, when I reach that brilliant future, I would smile, too.
But until then, I am just going to keep the grim look on my face until further notice. After all, I am good at it. I have been using it ever since I opened my eyes as a child and found out that I live in Saddam's time.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course. America was to bring peace and democracy to the people of Iraq. And, God willing, those promises will come true. Until that day, however, let us pray that some flickers of the "fire of freedom" find their way to the "darkest corners" of Iraqi homes, if only to give the inhabitants some light and heat as they wait for the day, so long deferred, of their deliverance.
BUSH PROCLAIMS THE FIRE OF FREEDOM
-- Headline, New York Sun, January 21-21, 2005
[O]ne day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of the world.
-- President George W. Bush, January 20, 2005
What follows is a short letter from a dear friend in Baghdad named Esam. Esam is a phenomenon you often encounter in Iraq: the polymath. Tall, bearded, with onyx-black eyes (he looks a bit like a Mesopotamian king of old), the twentysomething is a painter and national judo champion who speaks at least four languages. He also served the U.S. in the highly dangerous job of military translator. (Despite that fact, he can't get a visa to travel to America.) During the time we hung out together in Baghdad, Esam possessed a cocky sang-froid and irrepressible air of self-confidence. For that reason, his report from Iraq's capital city is particularly distressing. [Note: for another take on Iraq, check out my friend Nasir Hasan's essay on Frontpage Magazine.]
Steven, you ask about life in Baghdad these days. Well, as you know, I have lived all my life in this city, watching it closely from the inside (I do wish I may someday have the chance to see how it looks from the outside for a change.) Before, no one cared how Baghdad was doing--not until my beautiful city turned into a trap where people are killed and soldiers fight every day...
...I don't care what journalists say or what is happening in the "Green Zone" (which is now called the "International Zone"). I don't care about names, governments and official statements. I only know about what I am facing here and now.
You want to know about my days? My studio is freezing cold as I am writing these lines. Now, it's 11:30 pm. The electricity is off. It has never been good over the last 15 years. No day went by without a cut-off now and then. There were a few days--no more than four or five, I can barely remember--when we got 24 hours of electricity. We got used to doing without the basic necessities that everyone enjoys. You Americans are confident that no one can put you into the frozen darkness--and if it did happen, you would complain and someone would do something. For us, though, we could never complain because in the days of Saddam you could never talk. Today, however, you can cry your lungs out, but nobody listens.
Actually, it was a bit better today, because we received two hours of electricity for every four hours of darkness. And this is better than the last few weeks, when we only got an hour and half of electricity, which went off at 10:30...
My room feels like a cold prison. I look through the window and everything sinks into darkness. Only a few houses have generators, you can see dim light through their windows. But the loud sound of the generator engines drives me crazy. The streets are empty now. The curfew starts at 10:00 pm. That's an hour ago. I still have some gas left to feed my gas lamp, but I can't use it for my gas heater because it expends too much fuel, more than I have saved. I have an electric heater, but it can do nothing. The water is not good either. In the morning, the water pump cannot bring the water up to the second floor. So when I want to fill the tank or take a bath, I have to wait till after midnight when the electricity comes back on so I can turn on my water pump.
So--no lights...so cold. No music...noises of generators and fighting jets and tanks fill the air. I feel like a homeless man with my many blankets I cover myself with in the night so I can stay warm when I sleep. In the streets of Baghdad I see many smiling faces as I walk. But they are on buildings and walls where they put up huge posters of people smiling happily, wearing nice clothes, clean, bright colors. And underneath that, there are promising words and slogans of brilliant life and a great future. And if you look further down you see real people in the streets. They have no smiles, no bright colors, only a frightened look in their eyes. I would smile if I got the electricity that the people in posters get, and have my clothes well-ironed like theirs. And then, when I reach that brilliant future, I would smile, too.
But until then, I am just going to keep the grim look on my face until further notice. After all, I am good at it. I have been using it ever since I opened my eyes as a child and found out that I live in Saddam's time.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course. America was to bring peace and democracy to the people of Iraq. And, God willing, those promises will come true. Until that day, however, let us pray that some flickers of the "fire of freedom" find their way to the "darkest corners" of Iraqi homes, if only to give the inhabitants some light and heat as they wait for the day, so long deferred, of their deliverance.
We are strongly standing in the face of this evil plan and any sectarian sedition.
-- Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq speaking to Reuter's Mariam Karouny about Zarqawi's attempts to pitch the Shia and Sunni into civil war.
We are strongly standing in the face of this evil plan and any sectarian sedition.
-- Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq speaking to Reuter's Mariam Karouny about Zarqawi's attempts to pitch the Shia and Sunni into civil war.
The Los Angeles Times broke a disturbing story yesterday (and see Update below) that highlights yet another problem facing Iraq's fledgling democracy: corruption. As Ken Silverstein, T. Christian Miller and Patrick J. McDonnell write,
An American contractor gunned down last month in Iraq had accused Iraqi Defense Ministry officials of corruption days before his death.
The difficulties apparently involved "payment problems" with a "mysterious Lebanese businessman" who was acting as a middleman. in a mulit-million dollar arms deal (See update below).
As the article notes, a week after the killings, a video appeared on the internet purportedly from a heretofore unknown terrorist group called Brigades of the Islamic Jihad which showed photographs and identity documents of the slain men. Reports the Times,
The timing and the unusual details of the killings have raised suspicions in the U.S. and Iraq that the video was a ruse to disguise an assassination.
Stoffel was not your normal businessman. Apparently he worked in the 1990s on a "top-secret" U.S. project "to buy Russian, Chinese and foreign-made weapons for testing for the U.S. military. His particular expertise was Eastern Europe and the Ukraine. For more on his past activites, go here.
In a tantalizing, but vague, element to the story, the Times reporters write that shortly before his death, Shaw met and corresponded with John A. "Jack" Shaw, then deputy undersecretary of Defense for international technology security, "whose office monitored weapons sales to Iraq." Evidently, Stoffel warned Shaw about Iraqi "corruption and self-dealing" involved in his contract to refurbish Soviet T-55 tanks and artillery for the new Iraqi army.
Shaw, you may recall, was one of the loudest voices last October claiming that the Russians had helped transport munitions from the Al-Quaqaa weapons facility into Syria. In July, 2004, he raised the Pentagon's ire by launching unauthorized and ethically clouded probes into cellphone licensing agreements. According to the Times' Miller, Shaw--who seems to be something of a loose cannon--claimed that he had
uncovered serious, credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing by U.S. government employees pertaining to taking official acts in exchange for bribes.
He also claimed to have uncovered a conspiracy by London-based Egyptian tycoon Nadhmi Auchi to take over Iraq's cellphone service (see my post "Iraq, Disconnected"). He himself fell under suspicion of attempting to line his own pockets with cell phone licensing agreements.
In a letter written to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on December 3, 2004--the same day that Stoffel's raised his official warnings about graft--Shaw accused senior Pentagon officials of over $265 million in bribes, missing and misappropriated funds pertaining to Iraq's cellphone service. According to Shaw's letter, figures involved in the scandal included Douglas Feith, his former law partner Mark Zell, Ahmed Chalabi and others. On December 10, the Defense Department dismissed Shaw from his position.
According to the Times a investigation into Stoffel and Wemple's deaths is "ongoing."
Update: Dexter Filkins in the New York Times reports today that early this month, $US 300 million was withdrawn from Iraq's Central Bank and put on a charter jet for Lebanon. Apparently, the money was intended for "international arms dealers" to buy "tanks and other weapons" manufactured in Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States. In short, the very activities that brought Stoffel to Iraq.
The current whereabouts of the money is a mystery, Filkins writes. He adds that the deal--which involved no public bidding, nor approval by the Iraqi cabinet--may have been set up to avoid financial controls which America established in order to help Iraq's international credit.
Reverberations have gone to the top of the Iraqi totem-pole. Last week, Chalabi accused Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim al-Sha'alan of corruption involving the arms deal. Yesterday, al-Shaalan said he would order Chalabi's arrest on charges of "maligning" him and his ministry.
The arms deal was approved by four senior members of the Iraqi government, including Prime Minister Allawi and al-Sha'alan. The idea, according to Iraqi Defense Ministry officials, was to expedite purchases of armaments to fight the fascist paramilitaries.
Still, questions remain. Is Stoffel correct, and Defense Ministery officials are involved in corruption involved in this arms deal? Was Stoffel cut out of the proceedings, and, after threatening to expose what he knew, assassinated? Why did he contact Shaw? What happened to the money? How corrupt is the new Iraqi government?
Second Update: January 22: CNN reports that Iraqi officials are denying that the government will arrest Chalabi, claiming Sha'alan's threat was mere "electioneering." Also Juan Cole notes bad blood has long existed between Sha'alan and Chalabi, and offers a good run-down on the man Dick Cheney sought to groom for Iraq's Prime Minister. The matter of the missing $300 million is still unresolved, however, as is Stoffel's murder.
The Los Angeles Times broke a disturbing story yesterday (and see Update below) that highlights yet another problem facing Iraq's fledgling democracy: corruption. As Ken Silverstein, T. Christian Miller and Patrick J. McDonnell write,
An American contractor gunned down last month in Iraq had accused Iraqi Defense Ministry officials of corruption days before his death.
The difficulties apparently involved "payment problems" with a "mysterious Lebanese businessman" who was acting as a middleman. in a mulit-million dollar arms deal (See update below).
As the article notes, a week after the killings, a video appeared on the internet purportedly from a heretofore unknown terrorist group called Brigades of the Islamic Jihad which showed photographs and identity documents of the slain men. Reports the Times,
The timing and the unusual details of the killings have raised suspicions in the U.S. and Iraq that the video was a ruse to disguise an assassination.
Stoffel was not your normal businessman. Apparently he worked in the 1990s on a "top-secret" U.S. project "to buy Russian, Chinese and foreign-made weapons for testing for the U.S. military. His particular expertise was Eastern Europe and the Ukraine. For more on his past activites, go here.
In a tantalizing, but vague, element to the story, the Times reporters write that shortly before his death, Shaw met and corresponded with John A. "Jack" Shaw, then deputy undersecretary of Defense for international technology security, "whose office monitored weapons sales to Iraq." Evidently, Stoffel warned Shaw about Iraqi "corruption and self-dealing" involved in his contract to refurbish Soviet T-55 tanks and artillery for the new Iraqi army.
Shaw, you may recall, was one of the loudest voices last October claiming that the Russians had helped transport munitions from the Al-Quaqaa weapons facility into Syria. In July, 2004, he raised the Pentagon's ire by launching unauthorized and ethically clouded probes into cellphone licensing agreements. According to the Times' Miller, Shaw--who seems to be something of a loose cannon--claimed that he had
uncovered serious, credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing by U.S. government employees pertaining to taking official acts in exchange for bribes.
He also claimed to have uncovered a conspiracy by London-based Egyptian tycoon Nadhmi Auchi to take over Iraq's cellphone service (see my post "Iraq, Disconnected"). He himself fell under suspicion of attempting to line his own pockets with cell phone licensing agreements.
In a letter written to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on December 3, 2004--the same day that Stoffel's raised his official warnings about graft--Shaw accused senior Pentagon officials of over $265 million in bribes, missing and misappropriated funds pertaining to Iraq's cellphone service. According to Shaw's letter, figures involved in the scandal included Douglas Feith, his former law partner Mark Zell, Ahmed Chalabi and others. On December 10, the Defense Department dismissed Shaw from his position.
According to the Times a investigation into Stoffel and Wemple's deaths is "ongoing."
Update: Dexter Filkins in the New York Times reports today that early this month, $US 300 million was withdrawn from Iraq's Central Bank and put on a charter jet for Lebanon. Apparently, the money was intended for "international arms dealers" to buy "tanks and other weapons" manufactured in Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States. In short, the very activities that brought Stoffel to Iraq.
The current whereabouts of the money is a mystery, Filkins writes. He adds that the deal--which involved no public bidding, nor approval by the Iraqi cabinet--may have been set up to avoid financial controls which America established in order to help Iraq's international credit.
Reverberations have gone to the top of the Iraqi totem-pole. Last week, Chalabi accused Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim al-Sha'alan of corruption involving the arms deal. Yesterday, al-Shaalan said he would order Chalabi's arrest on charges of "maligning" him and his ministry.
The arms deal was approved by four senior members of the Iraqi government, including Prime Minister Allawi and al-Sha'alan. The idea, according to Iraqi Defense Ministry officials, was to expedite purchases of armaments to fight the fascist paramilitaries.
Still, questions remain. Is Stoffel correct, and Defense Ministery officials are involved in corruption involved in this arms deal? Was Stoffel cut out of the proceedings, and, after threatening to expose what he knew, assassinated? Why did he contact Shaw? What happened to the money? How corrupt is the new Iraqi government?
Second Update: January 22: CNN reports that Iraqi officials are denying that the government will arrest Chalabi, claiming Sha'alan's threat was mere "electioneering." Also Juan Cole notes bad blood has long existed between Sha'alan and Chalabi, and offers a good run-down on the man Dick Cheney sought to groom for Iraq's Prime Minister. The matter of the missing $300 million is still unresolved, however, as is Stoffel's murder.
From President George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address.
The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."
*
From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.
*
When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.
*
Other voices were heard yesterday, too. From a communiqué purportedly issued by Al Qaeda executioner, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:
Fighters who have taken the path of jihad have to realize the nature and the demands of the battle toward the required goal...This group has to be patient in the path that it has taken and ... not to hurry victory. The promise of God will be fulfilled no matter what.
But back to Washington. People concerned by the overt religiosity and Crusade-like tones in political discourse would probably find offensive this bit of Presidential rhetoric:
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen
And yes, I'm cheating here again. This passage was actually delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on June 6, 1944, the day of the Allied invasion of Normandy and the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe.
(thanks to Lane Core)
From President George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address.
The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."
*
From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.
*
When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.
*
Other voices were heard yesterday, too. From a communiqué purportedly issued by Al Qaeda executioner, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:
Fighters who have taken the path of jihad have to realize the nature and the demands of the battle toward the required goal...This group has to be patient in the path that it has taken and ... not to hurry victory. The promise of God will be fulfilled no matter what.
But back to Washington. People concerned by the overt religiosity and Crusade-like tones in political discourse would probably find offensive this bit of Presidential rhetoric:
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen
And yes, I'm cheating here again. This passage was actually delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on June 6, 1944, the day of the Allied invasion of Normandy and the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe.
(thanks to Lane Core)
January 20-21: AP headline
Tape Urges Iraqis to Prepare for Struggle
ABC.com added this deck:
Alleged al-Zarqawi Tape Urges Iraqis to Prepare for Struggle; Troops kill Five Suspected Militants
Well, that's certainly clear, right? A leader is exhorting The People (always good) to prepare themselves for battle against "troops" (ours, of course) who have killed five "suspected" (hmmm, could be civilians) "militants" (neutral term implying legitimate cause).
But the lede sentence Mariam Fam's story contradicts the headline: "Iraq's most feared terror leader called on his followers to prepare...for a long struggle against the Americans..." (my emphasis). Hello, AP editors! There's a huge and lethal difference between Iraqis and Zarqawi's followers. And while we at it: Ms. Fam, as you undoubtedly know, Zarqawi is not an Iraqi "terror leader"--he is a Jordanian who is operating in Iraq. Why does this make a difference? Because the Iraqis--Shia, Kurds and even many of the criminal ex-Baathists and Saddamites--hate Zarqawi and his tactics of murdering hundreds of innocent civilians.
In other words, despite the insinuations of the misleading headline, Zarqawi is not calling upon the Iraqi people, but a tiny minority of the population who have dedicated themselves to his nihilistic cause. How could AP editors use the collective noun Iraqis and thus imply that Zarqawi has a broader base of support than, in fact, he does? Perhaps someone should lay down their copy of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth and look again at this conflict.
Nor is Zarqawi (oh, that rumors of his capture--seen here on Al-Jazeera this month--were true!) rallying his fascist supporters to fight just "the Americans." As the Jordanian butcher stated in his tape, the Shia are also targets:
They broke into the safe houses of God. They defiled them and they hung the photos of their Satan, al-Sistani, on the walls and they spitefully wrote: "Today, your land, tomorrow it will be your honor."
(Notice the pitch to the "shame-honor" dynamic--the driving psychological engine of the fascist counter-liberation.)
Obviously, Zarqawi can't be "urging Iraqis" for a long struggle when he's just called the spiritual leader of 16 million of them "Satan." Perhaps a more accurate headline and deck for Fam's AP article would be:
Terror Master Urges Followers to Fight Iraqi People
Alleged al-Zarqawi Tape Urges Terrorists to Prepare for Long Struggle against Democracy; Troops kill 5 suspected Paramilitaries
Why is this important? Because people get their news largely from headlines. And through laziness or ideological malice, AP editors allowed this particular headline to reflect the outdated (but beloved by many leftists) Vietnam-Nicaragua-"Star Wars" paradigm. You know the story: plucky, resourceful and historically-favored indigenous people fight against a brutal, seemingly all-powerful but historically-doomed oppressor. Guess who we root for? Guess who wins? Guess who needs to be told over and over again, this not the 1960s? Why, it's not even Holllywood.
*
Someone who grasps this point--and is rapidly becoming one of my favorite commentators on Iraq--is ex-pat Nibras Kazimi, who regularly appears in the must-read New York Sun. Here's his take on language and the fight against Islamofascism.
The greatest victory so far in the war on terror occurred last week. The evil-doers have ceded the press and broadcast industry battleground and are now scrambling for legitimacy in fending off democracy. Their rhetoric is no longer riddled with loaded catch-phrases like "Zionism" and "colonial occupation" or even the "new crusades." No, today's talking points for the jihadists go something like this: Democracy is a Greek word that means power through the people and not God, which is a heresy that must be eradicated.
Continuing on, Kazimi asserts that the terrorists "are quickly losing the battle of ideas and visions for the future of the Arab and Islamic world." Taking up the Sunni threat to "boycott" (subvert is a better word) the elections, he utilizes one of my favorite metaphors for the reconstruction of Iraq.
In 1864, America had an election during its Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln won a second term through a landslide while most of the secessionist South did not participate. Is anyone today going to make the argument that these results were illegitimate? [Today] elementary school children across America are learning that there was no moral equivalency between slave owners and the unionists. In 20 years time, Iraqi children will also be taught that, during the height of an undeclared civil war that is currently ravishing the country, there was no moral equivalency between the democrats and the beheaders.
Michael Moore, take note.
On a related topic, Kazimi observes that last week, the "much-maligned" Al-Hurra TV, America's Arab-speaking broadcast network in the Middle East, aired a segment that exposed some nasty connections between Saddam and Al-Jazeera. It seems that some footage captured from the dictator's archives that showed Al-Jazeera's former director, Jassim Al-Ali, thanking the Saddam's maniac son Uday for all the help the regime has given Osama bin Laden's favorite TV outlet over the years--and even asking for more instructions.
According to Kazimi, the Arab CNN dumped Al-Ali soon after the invasion of Iraq when his dealings with the Baathists came to light. Still, it reminds me of how my poet friend Nasser Hasan described Al-Jazeera: "Part of the same dark kingdom as Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda." Score another for Naseer.
January 20-21: AP headline
Tape Urges Iraqis to Prepare for Struggle
ABC.com added this deck:
Alleged al-Zarqawi Tape Urges Iraqis to Prepare for Struggle; Troops kill Five Suspected Militants
Well, that's certainly clear, right? A leader is exhorting The People (always good) to prepare themselves for battle against "troops" (ours, of course) who have killed five "suspected" (hmmm, could be civilians) "militants" (neutral term implying legitimate cause).
But the lede sentence Mariam Fam's story contradicts the headline: "Iraq's most feared terror leader called on his followers to prepare...for a long struggle against the Americans..." (my emphasis). Hello, AP editors! There's a huge and lethal difference between Iraqis and Zarqawi's followers. And while we at it: Ms. Fam, as you undoubtedly know, Zarqawi is not an Iraqi "terror leader"--he is a Jordanian who is operating in Iraq. Why does this make a difference? Because the Iraqis--Shia, Kurds and even many of the criminal ex-Baathists and Saddamites--hate Zarqawi and his tactics of murdering hundreds of innocent civilians.
In other words, despite the insinuations of the misleading headline, Zarqawi is not calling upon the Iraqi people, but a tiny minority of the population who have dedicated themselves to his nihilistic cause. How could AP editors use the collective noun Iraqis and thus imply that Zarqawi has a broader base of support than, in fact, he does? Perhaps someone should lay down their copy of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth and look again at this conflict.
Nor is Zarqawi (oh, that rumors of his capture--seen here on Al-Jazeera this month--were true!) rallying his fascist supporters to fight just "the Americans." As the Jordanian butcher stated in his tape, the Shia are also targets:
They broke into the safe houses of God. They defiled them and they hung the photos of their Satan, al-Sistani, on the walls and they spitefully wrote: "Today, your land, tomorrow it will be your honor."
(Notice the pitch to the "shame-honor" dynamic--the driving psychological engine of the fascist counter-liberation.)
Obviously, Zarqawi can't be "urging Iraqis" for a long struggle when he's just called the spiritual leader of 16 million of them "Satan." Perhaps a more accurate headline and deck for Fam's AP article would be:
Terror Master Urges Followers to Fight Iraqi People
Alleged al-Zarqawi Tape Urges Terrorists to Prepare for Long Struggle against Democracy; Troops kill 5 suspected Paramilitaries
Why is this important? Because people get their news largely from headlines. And through laziness or ideological malice, AP editors allowed this particular headline to reflect the outdated (but beloved by many leftists) Vietnam-Nicaragua-"Star Wars" paradigm. You know the story: plucky, resourceful and historically-favored indigenous people fight against a brutal, seemingly all-powerful but historically-doomed oppressor. Guess who we root for? Guess who wins? Guess who needs to be told over and over again, this not the 1960s? Why, it's not even Holllywood.
*
Someone who grasps this point--and is rapidly becoming one of my favorite commentators on Iraq--is ex-pat Nibras Kazimi, who regularly appears in the must-read New York Sun. Here's his take on language and the fight against Islamofascism.
The greatest victory so far in the war on terror occurred last week. The evil-doers have ceded the press and broadcast industry battleground and are now scrambling for legitimacy in fending off democracy. Their rhetoric is no longer riddled with loaded catch-phrases like "Zionism" and "colonial occupation" or even the "new crusades." No, today's talking points for the jihadists go something like this: Democracy is a Greek word that means power through the people and not God, which is a heresy that must be eradicated.
Continuing on, Kazimi asserts that the terrorists "are quickly losing the battle of ideas and visions for the future of the Arab and Islamic world." Taking up the Sunni threat to "boycott" (subvert is a better word) the elections, he utilizes one of my favorite metaphors for the reconstruction of Iraq.
In 1864, America had an election during its Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln won a second term through a landslide while most of the secessionist South did not participate. Is anyone today going to make the argument that these results were illegitimate? [Today] elementary school children across America are learning that there was no moral equivalency between slave owners and the unionists. In 20 years time, Iraqi children will also be taught that, during the height of an undeclared civil war that is currently ravishing the country, there was no moral equivalency between the democrats and the beheaders.
Michael Moore, take note.
On a related topic, Kazimi observes that last week, the "much-maligned" Al-Hurra TV, America's Arab-speaking broadcast network in the Middle East, aired a segment that exposed some nasty connections between Saddam and Al-Jazeera. It seems that some footage captured from the dictator's archives that showed Al-Jazeera's former director, Jassim Al-Ali, thanking the Saddam's maniac son Uday for all the help the regime has given Osama bin Laden's favorite TV outlet over the years--and even asking for more instructions.
According to Kazimi, the Arab CNN dumped Al-Ali soon after the invasion of Iraq when his dealings with the Baathists came to light. Still, it reminds me of how my poet friend Nasser Hasan described Al-Jazeera: "Part of the same dark kingdom as Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda." Score another for Naseer.
Light blogging today--I'm on "Fox & Friends" tomorrow at the caffeine-necessitating hour of 6:45 a.m. EDT, so I'm going to need my sleep. Hope some of you folks can tune in!
TiVo alert! I'll be discussing ITRZ and Iraq with the Rev. Pat Robertson on the 700 Club tommorrow at 9:00 a.m. And this Friday, I'll be appearing on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" (thanks Pat!)--I'll let you know the time when we confirm it.
Anyone interested in what I look and sound like--on camera, at least--might want to check out Fox News Live this Sunday at 2:30 EDT.
Readers who would like to receive notices of publications and major media appearances by Steven Vincent may sign up for the ITRZ email list here. We will not share email addresses with anyone for any reason.
As the world reaches deep into its collective pocket to contribute money (latest count, $5 billion) to the relief of the South Asian tsunami victims, it's interesting to note who's doing the giving, and who's not. While these statistics are fairly well known--especially amidst the blogosphere--they bear repeating, if only to expose some rank hypocrisy among our Saracen friends.
As of today, the top five government donors are, in millions: Australia ($765); Germany ($680); Japan ($500); the U.S. ($350); and the World Bank ($250). Among private donations, however, America leads the pack with $1 billion--the next closest being Germany with $200 million. These figures show that "stingy" Uncle Sam is by far the most generous nation on the planet, especially when it comes to aiding the largely Muslim survivors of last month's natural disaster.
And who's not pulling their charitable weight? Our Friends the Saudis, for one, diverting some of the petro-dollars they usually use to fund Wahhabi-based clerics and anti-Semitic literature to kick in a paltry $30 million. As for other Arab states, in millions: Qatar (25); United Arab Emirates (20); Kuwait (10); and from Algeria, Libya and Bahrain, $2 million each--less than a sheik's nightly baccarat droppings at Semiramis Casino in Cairo. Speaking of Egypt--and Jordan--and Iran--has anyone heard from those fine Muslim nations?
Indeed, inquiring minds among the Arab press want to know. A December 30 editorial in Beirut's Daily Star throws down the gauntlet:
Long-established images--nay, caricatures--of white-robed sheiks sailing their luxury yachts on seas of oil and using $100 bills to light their Havana cigars will only be reinforced in the face of collective miserliness in this hour of human need, especially if the petroleum-rich Gulf states do not dig a bit deeper into pockets that have become quite deep indeed over the last few years of high oil prices.
According to today's Seattle Times, an editorial in the Kuwaiti newspaper Qabas slammed the government's parsimony, reminding officials that Kuwait relies on South Asian workers to carry out menial tasks The New York Sun's Benny Avni reports that a Saudi columnist writing for another Kuwaiti daily, Al-Watan complained that extremists have "hijacked" Islam and Saudi charities must return to "moderation and tolerance" rather than terrorism.
One reason that Islamic nations have been relatively tight-fisted is that Thailand and Sri Lanka are not predominately Muslim. "They are focused on religious solidarity rather than global society," the Times quotes Cairo University professor Heba Raouf. Moreover, Sri Lanka's Muslim minority have long claimed persecution, particularly at the hands of the so-called Tamil Tigers, who in 1990 drove 16,000 Muslim families out of rebel-controlled areas.
Still, there's Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, which suffered at least 94,000 dead. With a tragedy of this magnitude, you'd think the umma would be rushing to Jakarta with bushels of zakaah to disburse. But you'd be wrong, as Jon Alterman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Times: "there's sort of a second-class Muslim idea in much of the Middle East." Or, as the paper explains,
Many Arabs, whose lands gave birth to Islam and in whose language the Koran is written, look down on their brethren in Asia.
So much for "religious solidarity."
As for the U.S. winning Muslim hearts and minds through red, white and blue beneficence--sooner we'll see an NBA franchise in Riyadh. Arthur Chrenkoff quotes an article appearing in Egypt's al-Ahkbar newspaper,
[Washington] uses all occasions and circumstances to consolidate its hegemony, and through all legitimate and illegitimate means...No one is convinced that U.S. motivations are surrounded by humanitarian and moral principles...[The primary American objective is to] consolidate itself as the superpower of the world.
Remind us again of Egypt's contribution to relief efforts? Oh, that's right...
Meanwhile, the Sun's Avni informs us of a rumor bouncing around the Muslim world that the tsunami was the result of a nuclear experiment in the Indian Ocean. Or, as the headline of Egypt's Al Osboa newspaper read: "Was it American, Israeli, Indian Nuclear Tests that caused the earthquakes?" The Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak printed similar speculations.
The conservative Iranian daily Kayhan contended that the U.S. knew about the tsunami but failed to act.
We have to consider that an earthquake of this scale is very important for American satellites, since it may [have been caused by] a nuclear explosion by India in the middle of the Indian Ocean...how can it be accepted that Americans with their super-modern equipment could not [warn people]?.
Despite the lack of apparent urgency from the Islamic community, some Muslim groups are active in Indonesia, especially in the predominately Arab province of Aceh. One of these, according to the Financial Times' Shawn Donnan, is the conservative Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) which has "charted airliners to ferry more than 1,300 volunteers from around Indonesia to Aceh, helicopters to reach remote areas and a fleet of trucks to distribute aid." A rising political force--last year it won 48 seats in Indonesia's 500-seat parliament--the PKS believes that Islamic law should govern the nation's largely secular population.
Another group is the Indonesian Mujaheddin Council, which has linked to Jemaah Islamiyyah, the group responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, among others in Indonesia. As for its opinion of U.S. relief efforts, Donnan quotes a 26 year-old Council member.
The problem is America came here and helped us just to show its power...America uses the country [sic] they help as a toy.
Nothing the U.S. does or does not do will ever appear positive to these ideologues. If it weren't so tragically apparent in Iraq, the old saw might seem mordantly amusing amidst the devastation of this Arab region: no good deed goes unpunished.
UPDATE: Arthur Chrenkoff provides the latest on the relief figures. (My question is: doesn't the combination of private and public monies make the U.S. the single largest donor?) Arthur also provides some refreshingly positive comments from local Muslims about America's efforts to ameliorate their suffering. Along with a round-up of further conspiracy theories explaining how the U.S. is either responsible for, or benefiting from, the disaster. Sigh.
UPDATE AGAIN: Prof. Cole at Informed Comment posts this tid-bit about OFTS--perhaps I had judged them wrong
Saudi Arabia Television held a fundraising drive for the victims of the tsunami and raised a little over $30 million on the first day. Saudi Arabia's per capita income is about $8500 per year according to the Atlas method, and there are about 15 million Saudi citizens. The one-day donation total equals $2 per citizen in absolute terms. Given the difference in per capita income and population, it is as though private US donors gave over $3 billion in a single day.
Still, $30 million compared to the relative wealth of the nation? Better mathematical minds than mine will have to decide if that that figure means a lot--me, I have trouble balancing my checkbook.
Recently I received an e-mail from Khalid, a journalist I met in Basra, where he was an up-and-coming reporter for one of the city's largest newspaper. At the time, he was a very pro-American young man, who, like many Iraqis, felt anxious--but excited--about the future of post-Saddam Iraq. His correspondence, therefore, came as an unpleasant surprise I wish I could offer better news, but if I'm going to invite my friends to contribute on this blog, I must present their comments as they write them, negative assessments and all.
After chastising me for not writing him sooner, Khalid adds,
Steven, I felt exhausted all the time from the stress we suffered. Sometimes, it seemed we needed a priest to not only to tell about our sins, but how others hurt us and we could never ward off that hurt.
You can't imagine what the situation is like now in Iraq. The situation is horrible, nebulous, with many clouds on the horizon. Do you remember when you asked me about the future? My answer was that things looked very good! Now, I have to have the courage to say I was totally wrong. I am very sorry to say that.
There are things that are sometimes lost "in translation"--but Iraq has been lost in occupation. It is such a bitter irony. Our country is run by Mafias. The leaders and parties we know are hauling everything away for their own gain.
Steven, Basra looks like a town in the American West, where gangsters and killers become the only authority and anyone who tries to discover their crimes will be shut-down and presented as a criminal and an outlaw!.
It is like this: the gangsters control the government and steal money through many different ways, but most particularly through fictitious contracts. Their militias wear the uniform of the Iraqi National Guard. They are loyal only to their party chieftains.
Finally, I could not take it any longer and quit my journalism job. I'm no longer "on the ground" in Iraq. I now live in Saudi Arabia and don't know when or if I will return to Basra.
Last spring, my friend Nour and I sat down in Basra's Hamdan Restaurant with Khalid and two other corresondents from his newspaper, where they told me about the difficult problems of carrying out "true" journalism in their country. Under the passive noses of the British, they complained, criminal gangs had taken control of Iraq's second largest city, earning money through extortion, fuel smuggling and liquor and drug dealing. Moreover, favoritism, bribery and graft--particularly through the use of phony contracting--was rampant.
"We can't do our jobs as journalists," one complained. "If we push too hard on certain issues, we can get in trouble. Or worse, we can get killed." When I asked what these "certain issues" were and with whom, he shook his head. "I'd rather not say." I didn't press him on the issue, for such was the climate of fear in Basra that to even suggest the existence of problem could result in a gangland-style warrant of execution.
Khalid's story is not the only bad tidings originating from the Land of Ur this Yuletide season. On December 22, Contrack International announced it was terminating a $325 million agreement it had reached with the U.S. to repair Iraq's roads, bridges, railways and ports. According to military officials, the Arlington, Virginia-based firm based its decision, in part, on security problems. As a officer with the Iraq Project and Contracting Office told the WaPo:
The security environment is such that the insurgents threaten the workforce. They are pretty good at leaving death threats on the homes of workers' doors .
In October, paramilitaries attacked Contrack's Baghdad headquarters. Earlier this year, they kidnapped a Turkish driver employed by the firm, shot him five times in the head, then dumped him beside a Contrack construction site. Pinned to the man's chest was a sign reading "Collaborator." (Ted Rall, take note.)
Contrack is the first major U.S. firm to pull out of Iraq. But don't worry about it's prospects. On December 26, the company reportedly won a $64 million deal with the U.S. military to build bridges in Afghanistan.
More gloomy news came on December 23 when Iraqna, which provides Baghdad's mobile phone service, announced it was thinking of withdrawing from Iraq as well. According to the FT, Naguib Sawiris, the chairman of Egypt's Orascom Telecom --and a man estimated to be worth $800 million--declared "I'm not into the business of putting the lives of my people in danger." It's interesting to note that Orascom owns forty-five percent of Contrack International.
Safety for his employees may not be the only reason Sawiris is threatening to pull out of Iraq. Relations between Orascom, the U.S. and the Iraqi Interim Government have steadily deteriorated. One issue has been Orascom's spotty service in Baghdad--a problem Sawiris blames on the American army's use of jamming equipment to hamper the ability of cellphones to detonate IEDs.
Then, on December 17, Iraqi security forces raided Orascom's Baghdad headquarters, seizing equipment, records and two Egyptian employees accused of aiding the paramilitaries. Although the men were released two days later, their detention added fuel to the suspicion that Orascom workers have provided the Islamofascists with communications information. These allegations have dogged Orascom ever since the press revealed last year that the man with a controlling interest in the firm--London-based Iraqi tycoon Nadhmi Auchi--made a fortune selling arms to Saddam and enjoyed close contacts with the regime. (Incidentally, Auchi is a major investor in BNP Paribas, the French bank which administered proceeds from the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program.)
On December 22, Sawiris further charged that the U.S. and the Iraqis were carrying out a campaign to harass its workers and impede its service on behalf of a competitor--believed to be Kuwait-based Atheer Telecommunications--and a "political figure around whom a lot of controversy has been raised in Iraq" who has heavy investments in the company. Sawiris would not, however, elaborate on this politician's identity.
I remember last spring, when Iraqna first began erecting its jazzy purple logo across Baghdad, it seemed as if a new kind of flower was blooming around the city. Advertising is generally synonomous with visual clutter in the U.S., but Iraqna's signs seemed to herald new growth and hope for the Iraqis. Better yet, the company began hiring local people: at least one of my friends in the country is--was?--counting on Iraqna to provide her with the economic means to escape the oppressive sexism of her society. (Foes of globalization, take note.)
But now, where do these developments leave the Iraqi people? Baghdad blogger Zeyad at Healing Iraq gives an idea with his Christmas Day post. Along with describing the unusually cold weather and lack of electricity and fuel for heaters (I was in Baghdad during last winter, and can assure you, without heat, life is even more uncomfortable) Zeyad notes that the land lines in his neighborhood go on and off--and not even bribes can coax repairman out to fix them.
As for mobile phones, "Horrible doesn't even start to describe it." He notes, however, that while Orascom's service has been bad, the "Atheer network in southern Iraq is more reliable." The real problem, of course, is that without phone communcation Iraqis can't contact one another in case of emergency, or simply check on the safety of friends and loved ones after a terrorist attack. Zeyad relates an incident when he was held up at an American checkpoint for hours and couldn't get through on his phone to inform his family. "When I returned home," he writes, "I found them crazy with fright."
And this is what this war comes down to, isn't it? The plutocrats wrangle over turf and profits, the Islamofascists continue to wreak havoc on the country's infrastructure, while Iraqis shiver in the cold and dark, wondering about the fate of their loved ones, unable to make even a phone call to assure themselves that, this day at least, catastrophe has not befallen them.
For those of you who complain that the MSM does not report positive stories about Iraq, Arthur Chrenkoff's invaluable two-week listing of good news from the Land Between the Rivers is up.
Finding its way south of the equator, In the Red Zone caught the attention of Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff, who was kind enough to review the book--and has now added to his graciousness by interviewing its author.
Conservatives demanding Kofi Annan's head on a barrel of Basran Light Crude are outraged by President Bush's apparent support for the embattled U.N. chief. Others, such as uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds speculates that the White House's seeming volte face indicates that W. either supports the U.N. chief or figures that a discredited Secretary General will prove ineffective in opposing U.S. interests. But there may be an additional element that affects Bush's calculations: the U.N. is turning the heat up on Uncle Sam's own oil scandal.
This week, the U.N.'s International Monetary Advisory Board (IAMB) released a report charging the U.S.-backed Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) with mismanaging the Iraqi economy. The auditor's report accuses officials of, among other things, improperly "metering"--or measuring--oil production, losing track of oil resources, allowing smugglers to steal oil, "bartering" oil at below-market value rates, giving out non-competitive contracts and insufficiently controlling spending at Iraqi ministries. It is the latest in a series of reports from the IAMB and other organizations that have cast doubts on the CPA's stewardship of the Iraqi people's wealth.
The money in question belonged to the Development Fund of Iraq, some $20.6 billion comprised of oil proceeds, Oil-for-Food money and frozen assets of the former regime. While the IAMB concludes that all "known [emphasis original] oil proceeds, reported frozen assets and transfers from the Oil-for-Food Program have been properly and transparently accounted for," its reports raises two basic questions. how much more money could the CPA have drawn from Iraq's oil resources had it applied stricter metering, accounting and security measures; and what exactly did administrators spend $20.6 billion on?
December 10's Financial Times asserts that "hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenues may have been squandered," and notes that the CPA's inspector-general is "investigating 27 cases of alleged corruption by CPA officials." Numerous payouts involved non-competitive contracts, such as a $1.4 billion deal with Halliburton to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure. According to a report issued by the Open Society Institute financed by George Soros, "73 percent in dollar value of all contracts awarded using Iraqi funds" were not competitively bid.
As revealed in the FT's article, the CPA went on a spending spree two months before it handed sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government in June. For example, nearly $1.8 billion went to Kurdish authorities who are now apparently in talks--assisted by Washington lobbyists connected to the GOP--to send part of that money to Switzerland. An additional $1.8 billion went to various Iraqi ministries, while over $1 billion went to projects which were already funded by Congressional appropriations.
Ironically, those appropriations are one reason with the CPA opened the DFI checkbook. Legislators placed so many guards against waste or misuse on the $18.4 billion Congress earmarked for Iraq's reconstruction, that administrators in Baghdad frequently found themselves ensnared in red tape. Moreover, the FT notes, those taxpayer funds evidently fell under the control of the Pentagon, which "was reluctant to let them spend the money." Indeed, CPA officials I spoke to in Iraq constantly complained that they couldn't move Congressional funds "into the field" because of oversight rules, such as demanding multiple bidders for even low-level projects. "How can we find more than one Iraqi construction firm to repair a school or a hospital?" one told me. "It's like the Pentagon has a 10,000-mile screwdriver and is trying to fine-tune everything we do with the money," another said. In the end, it simply proved more expeditious for the CPA to use the less-scrutinized DFI account.
It's difficult to know what to think of this. On one hand, neither the IAMB or any other agency so far has charged any person or group with embezzlement or fraud. Then, too, the understaffed CPA was operating in a chaotic environment, in a country with no functioning banking system, where emergency situations often called for measures not in accordance with standard accounting practices. But we are talking about monies desperately need by the Iraqi people, whose current safety and future stability lie in our hands. It is a painful to think that millions, perhaps billions, of dollars vanished into accounting black holes when child malnutrition, unemployment, gas and electric shortages and sanitation and drainage problems afflict the country.
But there's another dimension to why the CPA felt compelled to raid DFI monies, rather than spend U.S. funds. Of the $18.4 billion appropriated by Congress, only around one-third has been earmarked for projects, with just over $1.2 billion spent. Senator Byrd could blow that much on West Virginia pork-barrel projects over the course of an afternoon; why is it so difficult in Iraq? In some ways, the delay is analogous to the controversy over unarmored Humvees: America, a country blessed with enormous wealth, seems unable to provide enough resources where they are needed most--the reconstruction of Iraq.
We should remember, too, that despite their tactical disadvantages, the paramilitary gunmen in Iraq lack no shortage of weapons, nor do they have the same oversight restrictions on the $500 million in "unaccounted funds" from Saddam's regime, the untold amounts flowing from Saudi sources through Syria, or the $2.6 billion Saddam is said to have shipped to Damascus. This doesn't excuse the CPA's spendthrift ways with Iraqi money, of course--just as the U.S. must abide by rules of combat, so too, it must observe rules of accounting. The irony, however, is frustrating: in fighting black-masked killers lurking in back alleyways, American forces must also contend with the green-eyeshade men sitting in highrise office towers.
The National Review Online is kindly excerpting passages from "The 'Resistance'" --or Chapter Four of In the Red Zone. If you're curious about my take on those ever-charming folks in the Sunni Triangle, or want a quick refresher, go here. If nothing else, it will remind you of the moral imbecility of Michael "Minutemen" Moore and Ted "Collaborators" Rall.
Spreading faster among blue-state politicians than the exit polls from Ohio is the wisdom dispensed by the book, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your Values and Frame the Debate. In this timely tome, Berkeley linguist George Lakoff observes that the mental context—or “frame”—in which we place issues can determine our attitude toward them. Recently, Lakoff lectured Democratic leaders how best to “frame” the party’s core issues to attract average Americans bamboozled by the rhetorical tricks of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh. For instance, Lakoff suggests they advocate for “poison-free communities,” redefine trial lawyers as “public protection attorneys” and affirm taxation as “paying your membership fee in America.” Noting conservative successes with such terms as “tax relief” and the Kerry-bashing “permission slip,” Lakoff warns that right-wingers are more proficient than liberals in using words to “draw you into their world view.”
I hope the Pentagon and State Department read Lakoff’s book. As I’ve argued before, words and concepts matter--especially when it comes to Iraq, where truth is not so much found as it is made: how America views the conflict will determine whether we win or lose it. So in a Lakoffian spirit, I’ve drawn up a short list of locutions that supporters of the war might use when speaking about Iraq.
To start with the obvious, instead of the term “occupation,” why not “liberation”—or, better yet, “reconstruction?” (“The Marines helped liberate Iraq, now they are reconstructing it.”)
Rather than “guerrillas;” “insurgents;” “militants,” and other euphemisms for nihilistic gunmen, we should use “paramilitaries.” After all, any time masked criminals and right-wing murderers launch assaults in Central or Latin American, the media and NGOs invariably call them “paramilitaries”—shouldn’t that designation hold true in Iraq? Why do “death squads” operate only where Spanish is spoken? Therefore, let us call the Sunni Triangle killers “right-wing paramilitary death squads.”
If that sounds too much like Soviet-era propaganda, we can distill the description to a single term that combines simplicity, familiarity and historical truth: fascists. For example, when some boor at a seasonal cocktail party starts sounding off about the “U.S. occupation” and the “Iraqi Resistance,” explain to him that “The democratic reconstruction of Iraq is progressing despite attempts by fascist killers to stop it.”
As for that term “Resistance,” we should consign it to the moral trash heap that is currently filling with DVDs of “Fahrenheit 9-11.” The truth is, the Iraqi people are under attack. Terrorists kill more civilians than they do Coalition troops. The real Resistance is Iraqi policemen, National Guard soldiers, ministers and bureaucrats in the Iraqi government, hundreds of grassroots politicians and every man and woman who votes on January 30. Iraq is not Star Wars, where the rebel “resistance” stands for freedom and democracy, and the Empire represents brutality and oppression. Taking Lakoff’s message to heart, we must stress a new framing narrative, one where Darth Vader plots his evil rebellion in a Ramadi safehouse, while Luke, Han, Leia and the gang ride point with the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
This blog is owned and maintained by Spence Publishing Company, the publisher of Steven Vincent's In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author of the post in which they appear.
