Weekend Roundup

Fantastic shots of yesterday's lunar eclipse by jehather. I didn't take a pic because unfortunately, the eclipse was not visible from here in Europe

I'm going to Rome for labor day weekend, and don't expect to blog. But here's a load of stuff to keep you entertained:

- Most of us ordinary mortals can't do anything about the situation in Darfur. But there is an online petition you can sign.

- In 2004 an asylum seeker from Somalia went berserk on a public bus in Norway and stabbed five people with a knife, one of them fatally. Flash forward to 2007 - he is now suing the Norwegian government, claiming it's their fault because he never should have been released from a hospital earlier. What's even more worrisome: the murder victim's mother agrees! At Overlawyered.com, one reader points out a similarly outrageous case in the US, and another remarks: "He kind of has a point. Not that I'd give him money he might spend on a new knife or anything..."

- A long article on how the media has systematically distorted the situation in Iraq. Most of it is right on the money.

- Here's a devastating critique of a LA Times article that claimed 47 million Americans don't have health insurance. Turns out, 10 million of them aren't Americans! Oops.

- Some good News from Palestine? Big reversal in the West Bank, Palestinian police save an Israeli soldier (but not his car) from angry mobs! A similar situation happened seven years ago, but in that case the Palestinian police could not protect two Israelis reservists, and they were killed by the mob.

- To say that the field of "Peace studies" may be a bit of a scam, is a gross understatement. On a logical level, the idea is a little non-sensical anyway. "Peace" is essentially "not war". So how do you study something that's not there? You obviously have to fill the gap with something, and therein lies the problem...

- Yahoo!, MSN, and Google have sold out Human Rights in China over the all-mighty profit margin. A human rights group is suing Yahoo! over this practice. Yahoo! claims it must obey the laws of the countries it operates in. That's true, but you don't have to operate in China. Normally I can't stand Human Rights Watch, as their anti-American streak too often clouds their judgement on other issues. But they have a good article on this issue (even a stopped clock is right twice a day).

Yes, I know that Google hosts blogger (the service I use to host this blog), and Yahoo! owns Flickr (which I used for my photo page). Unfortunately, these web giants have bought up so much territory that I just can't escape them,

- This past week in eastern Germany (which tends to hold more criminal elements and neo-Nazis than the west, a crowd of 50 people chased and beat several Indian nationals allegedly shouting "foreigners out". The Indian government is demanding an investigation, and threatening a boycott. Other Indians sound off that Germany is not safe. The attack was senseless, and terrible, but it is a great aberration in Germany, one of the most tolerant countries in the world. This is also great hypocrisy from India, a country where Hindus and Muslims kill each other on a regular basis (almost on cue, this week 42 people are killed in a terrorist blast in Hyderabad), and the "untouchable" caste of people are treated like dirt.

- Complete surrender by South Korea. The Taliban release all their Korean hostages, and South Korea promises to withdraw from the country (which they were doing anyway) and halt all missionary work (which they weren't planning to do).

- The Teamsters, AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, and Public Citizen are reliably liberal organizations who tend to vote Democrat in US elections. Yet, in one of those strange convergences they are now joined together on a cause that only right-wing anti-immigration extremists have : Blocking Mexican trucks from using US roadways. Their fear is safety, pollution, and loss of local jobs. The conservative's fear is illegal alien smuggling, drug smuggling, and loss of local jobs. The plan is actually part of a NAFTA agreement from 1994 that was never implemented.

- Finally, I may have been wrong, and this is one of the few times that I hope it! The Baji dolphin, previously thought extinct, may have been sighted again. See my earlier post here.





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UK Editor Calls for Nuclear Destruction in Israel [Updated]

This is the logo of a London newspaper?

Smith is not a man. He is an intelligent creature with the genes and ancestry of a man, but he is not a man. He's more a Martian than a man. Until we came along he had never laid eyes on a human being. He thinks like a Martian, he feels like a Martian. He's been brought up by a race which has nothing in common with us. - from Robert Heinlein's classic novel "Stranger in a Strange Land"

Abd Al-Bari Atwan is the editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an Arabic language daily newspaper in London. During an interview on Lebanese television, where the topic was Iran's nuclear capability, he remarked:

"If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight...

If a war breaks out, where will the Iranians retaliate? If Iran is able to retaliate, it will burn the oil wells, block the Strait of Hormuz, attack the American bases in the Gulf and, Allah willing, it will attack Israel, as well"

In the comments section, the very first person replied:

I hope no one is surprised by this callous remark. After 9/11 many Arabs did just that [dance with delight], in case anyone has forgotten!

This is not, by any stretch, the only lunacy to come from this islamacist, who has appeared not only in his own newspaper and Al-Jazeera, but Sky News, Dateline London, BBC World, CNN World, and Fox News as well.

In 2001, during an Al-Jazeera special on Osama Bin Laden, Atwan remarked:

"If you want to talk about terrorism against a legitimate government, fine. The U.S. dropped two atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the victims were innocent. … This is the legitimate power you are defending. … Didn't it kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Can we call this government legitimate? It is a terrorist regime that has killed innocent people since 1945 to this very moment."

In March 2003, at the start of the Iraq war, if there was any doubt how deep his admiration of Saddam Hussein's Iraq went, he cast it all aside writing an article titled: "Baghdad Burns But There Is No Savior":

"I ask what the heroic Egyptian army, and we ask what the Syrian officers and soldiers are doing these days, and we inquire about the Saudi armed forces and the billions spent on their equipment with the most modern tanks and planes. If these Arab armies do not move to defend a brotherly country and a people facing death by fire, when would they [move]?"

"Silence means collaboration, and the increase in the oil production in order to lower prices is more dangerous than participation in military operations. They have refused to use the oil in the service of the Arab causes. They said that oil is a commodity and its revenues are required to serve the growth plans. But they use it to serve American aggression against Iraq."

"We are not asking the kingdom of Abd Al-Aziz to suspend the export of oil as King Faysal had done in 1973 in solidarity with Egypt and Syria in the 1973 war. But we are asking it not to increase its oil production by 1.2 million barrels [a day] as it is happening now to reduce price and support American aggression."

In 2004, he tried to convince us that the former leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq, and the world's #2 terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was no threat at all:

"Al-Zarqawi has become ... the perfect bogeyman... He is a foreigner, so it is the perfect way for the Americans to discredit the resistance and say these attacks are not coming from the Iraqi people"

This statement might have been a bit more forgivable, if it wasn't only two months after Zarkawi, on video, cut the head off of Nicholas Berg and dumped his decapitated body near a Baghdad overpass. Another inaccurate quote:

There is no real proof that he is alive. If he is supposedly moving around freely in Iraq, why haven't Iraqis spoken about him? He can't be that difficult to recognise with his wooden leg"

Since he was killed in 2006, then he probably was alive in 2004...


Most likely, the absolute epitome of his nonsense is this article, he wrote on the 5th anniversary of the terror attacks on Sep 11th. He claimed that Al-Qaida "won the war on terror" and that:

The spread of the Islamophobia phenomenon in Western societies, and the European and American ones in particular, did not lead only to the fall in the integration of at least 40 million Muslims in their new homelands but led the second and third generations of Muslim communities to lean toward extremism as a reaction to the campaigns of hatred waged against them

Apparently, it doesn't occur to him that certain terror attacks might be the reason why the "hatred" happened in the first place! Or that Arab pundits like him who function as cheerleaders of terror groups might be one of the reasons that integration within Europe is so difficult...

On the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, he remarked:

"I wish the Iraqi president had fought and fallen martyr like his sons"

On the death of Saddam:

"We are sad and pained when we see an Arab leader approaching the noose while there is silence and indifference on the part of his fellow Arab leaders and more than 300 million Arabs spread out over five continents in the world."

Munir Al-Mawari, a moderate Arab journalist wrote of Atwan:

"The Abd Al-Bari Atwan [appearing] on CNN is completely different from the Abd Al-Bari Atwan on the Al-Jazeera network or in his Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily. On CNN, Atwan speaks solemnly and with total composure, presenting rational and balanced views. This is in complete contrast with his fuming appearances on Al-Jazeera and in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, in which he whips up the emotions of multitudes of viewers and readers.

Abd Al-Bari Atwan is part of the problem… and our problem is that it is not only America that we hate. Our Arab societies are societies of hate; we were raised to hate each other even before we hated others…"

Keep in mind that Atwan has lived in the UK since 1978, and presumably is a citizen by now. Leaving aside the remark about Israel, he is openly praising his adopted country's enemies in a public newspaper, on more than one occasion, and while they are at war. One thing that is highly disturbing here, is now many Muslims like Mr. Atwan continue to attack, trash, burn, and abuse the hospitality of host European nations that have allowed them to live there. If Middle Eastern nations are so much better, why did he leave in the first place? Why doesn't he move back? He certainly had the opportunity; he was born in a Palestinian refugee camp, but was educated in Jordan, and worked in Egypt before moving to the UK.

This is one of my biggest grievances about people like this. If the UK took me in as an immigrant, I would never trash it or aid its enemies the way this man does. Even as a US citizen, I wouldn't, and in fact, I am proud that I served alongside UK forces on more than one occasion. It's ironic that as a foreigner, I have more love and more in common with Britain than a man who has lived there for the past 19 years! This is further evidence (if you didn't need it already) that Britain's Muslim population has grown far faster than it can be responsibly assimilated (also see this earlier article here).

UPDATE 30/08/2007 10:25:00 AM: Thanks to Little Green Footballs for linking here. Also, if you want to watch the actual interview, video is available here.

Israel is certainly taking these threats seriously. They have now confirmed that they are constructing a nuclear blast shelter to protect the government ministries and military command centers.

I should also point out one great irony here. Mr. Atwan is a Palestinian by birth. But Israel is so small, with millions of Palestinians living in, near, or passing through it, that any significant nuclear strike on Israel would likely kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Palestinians as well. Does he care? Look at Munir Al-Mawari's quote above. People like this are so infused with hatred for themselves and others, that they ultimately don't care who they kill, and why.

Also, here is one amusing comment from LGF:

I can confirm (as previous posters have done so) that this wanker appears on BBC all the time as the 'sensitive' 'moderate' 'muslim' speaking for the 'Arab street'. He's always speaking jibberish and going on about the Is-ra-eeeleees 'stole my country'. As a general rule of thumb, I always tune out when ever anyone pronounces 'Israelis' that way on the news. You know they're going to be frothing genocidal morons.
Like this one, Mister I'm-gonna-slip-over-the-pigeon-shit-in-T rafalgar-Square.Of course, in the typical Arab manner, pushing for everybody else to fight and kill the 'eeeveeel Zionist Entity' as he sits on his arse. Nobody in the Middle East gives a damn about the Palestinians. If they did, the Palos wouldn't be sitting in 'refugee' cities (camps? with huge 10 story buildings? where's the camel, Achmed?) living on dole paid for by the West. They just one more of the everlasting 'grievances'.

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Some Good News...

Apache Helicopter, over Baghdad, Jan 2007

...because we need some.
From the AP:

Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi forces backed by helicopters and jet fighters killed 33 Sunni insurgents who were holding back the water supply to the Shiite town of Khalis, the American command said Tuesday.

To say "asking for it" is an understatement. Sometimes, the utter stupidity of these insurgents astounds me. I can't think of any better way to provoke an attack than to shut down a city's water supply. They deserve exactly what happened to them.

It doesn't say where this attack happened, but Khalis is about 40 miles north of Baghdad and surrounded by Sunni territory. The Sunnis should actually thank the Americans for this; what do they think their fate would have been if the Americans weren't in the country, and the Muqtada Militia or the Shia-dominated Iraqi Security forces captured them instead?





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Stop the Presses: Muslims Offended!

Embedded photo from the Internet Haganah

This week has been awash with accusations of Western Nations intentionally insulting the Islamic religion. Or are Muslims just a little too sensitive over their religion? I'll let you decide.

- The US gives out free footballs (soccer balls) to kids in Afghanistan. These balls had pictures of many nation flags on them, to make them look more festive and promote a spirit of worldwide unity. Unfortunately, since the Saudi flag includes the name "Allah" on it, I guess it would be disrespectful to kick "Allah" around, so here is another excuse to protest against the evil Americans (several flags contain Christian crosses on them too, but so far the Pope has been silent on the issue). Of course, the locals were about to do the usual: get outraged, violently protest, burn cars, threaten death, etc, until the province governor calmed them down (I guess it does, in a sense, show the government is working there). Of course, the infidels apologized, as usual. Meanwhile, three Canadian soldiers, three German police, one Polish soldier, and one British soldier were killed by bombs or gunfire from the Taliban this month. No apology for any of these deaths has been publicly announced.

Incidentally, where did the insensitive Americans buy these blasphemous soccer balls? In Kabul.

Incredibly, Little Green Footballs racks up nearly a thousand comments over this issue.

- Cartoonist Berkely Breathed's "Opus" is pulled from several publications because of fears of offending Muslims. To their credit, Salon.com, who have often been loathe to criticize Muslims, reprints them on their site (here)

One of the title characters decides to go "burkah". I don't really see what is so offensive about this, but apparently Muslim staffers at the Washington Post (which syndicates the strip) reacted "emotionally". Strangely, earlier strips mocking George Bush, Christianity, and recently, Jerry Fallwell, were allowed to remain.

- In Sweden, Lars Vilks, an artist and a former professor of art at the Academy of Art in Bergen, Norway, entered an art exhibition having dogs as its theme. Lars decided to do something provocative, and draw dogs with the head of Mohammed (dogs are unclean animals in Islam). His drawings were called "roundabout dogs" (a "roundabout" is a traffic circle, much more common in Europe than the US), which refers to the wooden dogs that people set up in the middle of roundabouts, as sort of prevention against the ugly artwork that is sometimes put there instead. Some art galleries pulled Lar's work, but the illustrations were printed in some newspapers. As usual, there were protests, and of course, there were death threats as well. Even the Iranian government was involved:

Iran summoned a Swedish diplomat to its foreign ministry on Monday to protest against a cartoon in a Swedish newspaper depicting the head of Prophet Muhammad on a dog's body, Sweden's foreign ministry said.

"Gunilla von Bahr, Sweden's charge d'affaires, was summoned to the Iranian foreign ministry today where she received a protest from the Iranian government," foreign ministry spokeswoman Anna Björkander told AFP.

The Iranian government told Von Bahr the cartoon was "offensive to Prophet Muhammad,"

I hate to tell you this Iran, but unlike your country, Europe is not governed by Shariah law. If I have to put up with disrespectful depictions of Christ or the Pope, then I think you will have to put up with the same thing over Mohammed...

Earlier this week, to avoid offending Muslims, the villains of the opening episode of a new BBC Series "Casualty" were changed from Islamic terrorists to animal-rights extremists, and earlier this month, Gwen Stefani agreed to avoid wearing skimpy outfits during her Malaysia concert, after a protest by the "National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students".

Michelle Malkin says:

As we’ve learned from Rushdie Rage, MoCartoon Rage, Burger King Ice Cream Cone Rage, Koran Flushing Rage, Valentine’s Day Rage, Veil Rage, Pope Rage, Fallaci Rage, Miss World Pageant Rage, and Rushdie Knighthood Rage, they’re pretty damned “sensitive” (read: ready to riot) about everything.

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Ana Belen Montes; From Cuba With Love

If you read quite a bit about real-life spy cases, then certainly you've heard of Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and the Rosenbergs.

If you are really, really a real-world spy buff, then names like John Anthony Walker, Klaus Fuchs, Larry Wu-Tai-Chin, Clyde Lee Conrad, and Earl Edwin Pitts might ring a bell.

But who has heard of Ana Belen Montes? Although I'm supposedly an intelligence expert I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't heard of her until a new book about her case was discussed on Frontpagemagazine. Apparently, not many other people have either. A google search on here case brought me a few links but almost no major media outlets or publications. Part of the reason might be that she was arrested in 20 September 2001, and of course, the media were still saturated with the news of 9/11.

Ana Montes had a Top Secret clearance and worked at the highest levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency, while all the time she was passing on classified material to Cuban intelligence from 1985 to 2001. Read the article, it's well worth it, or better yet, buy the book.

Aside from the incredible damage this woman did in compromising the United State's security for 15 years, the other very disturbing aspect is that unlike the other spies mentioned above, she was a true idealist; she was never paid anything for her services.

Not a cent. So how did the Cubans recruit her? Easy. They just asked her to do it. In the 1980s, it somehow came to their attention that she was a fairly typical left-leaning woman of the day; she opposed Reagan's policies in Central America, and the Cuban embargo. So on a hunch, they simply approached her, asked her to spy for them, and she agreed.

I guess what's scary about this is how many people I know personally who also disliked Reagan, his foreign policies, and have a highly naïve and view of real life Cuba (filmmaker Michael Moore comes to mind). Now granted, most of them don't work in high level sensitive intelligence positions, but quite a few do, and you can't use someone's personal politics to deny them a security clearance (otherwise Ana would have lost hers).

Another thing that's a little out of whack: she only got 25 years, and may be eligible for parole eventually. This is even though she still believes she did nothing wrong. (Compare this to Jonathan Pollard, who got life without the possibility of parole, and he was spying for Israel, essentially an ally of the United States).

In a statement in court, Ms. Montes said:

"My greatest desire is to see amicable relations emerge between the United States and Cuba. I hope my case in some way will encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and to work with Havana in a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding...it would permit the two neighbors to work together and with other nations to promote tolerance and cooperation in our one `world-country,' in our only 'world-homeland.'"

I have a couple questions:

1) You are going to bring this about by giving Cuba military aid? How?
2) Since the US is a democracy, don't you think that Cuba is the one that needs to change it's policy - like the policy of having a dictator for life?

To those that think this is no big deal, because Cuba is just a small, weak island, and no military threat to us, consider: if war had broken out with Cuba, we could have really paid for it, thanks to this vile woman. The Cuban military would have known exactly where and when such an attack would take place. This is the single biggest reason why the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion failed (even more so than the lack of airpower). Moreover, there is just no way to know how much of this information Cuba passed on to other enemies of the United States.

For any intelligence service, getting a mole like Ms Montes right in your enemy's house is like winning the lottery; there is just no substitute.

I'll end this with a quote from the Sci-fi classic Dune:

[Baron Harkonnen]: I will have Arrakis back for myself! He who controls the Spice controls the universe and what Piter did not tell you is we have control of someone who is very close, very close, to Duke Leto! This person, this traitor, will be worth more to us than ten legions of Sardaukar!

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Late August Round Up

The Coast in Bray, Ireland, July 2007

A few important things you may have missed in the news recently:

- In a rather disturbing sign of the times, "stab proof" clothing is now becoming popular in the UK to protect kids from knife attacks. (Remember years ago when British police didn't even carry guns?) I would also be curious how effective it is; in my experience, thin kevlar can make a decent bulletproof barrier but a sharp knife could still go through it.

- Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard thinks that since tide of illegal immigration is is coming no matter what, US Repubicans should just lie back and ride it, not fight it. However, Steve Sailer has pointed out on several occasions why these predictions are usually wrong about the hispanic electorate. (Also, look at the item below)

- The results of a recent Rasmussen survey on US attitudes toward immigration are quite astonishing: 58% favor cutting off federal funds to "sanctuary cities", 56% favor continuing work on the border fence, and a whopping 71% favor requiring all foreign residents to carry a universal ID card denoting their status. This is an idea brought up by Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, but I thought there already was such an ID. It's called a Passport!!

- This story about the Iraqi boy who was badly burned by criminals who doused him with gasoline, practically brought me to tears, especially when he said the other children wouldn't play with him becaus of his appearance. It brought an outpouring of offers of support, but for some reason CNN didn't help by providing any contact info whatsoever. Of course politics can't escape even this, over at the Daily Kos, diarists were not only blaming Bush and Americans for this boy's attack (even though the guys that did it are the very people we are fighting in Iraq), but trying to take credit for helping the boy before a deal was even set up! Now, help is on the way for him, however. This is wonderful, but it also makes me sad, because there are a lot of Iraqi children who need help but don't get the massive publicity of a front page CNN story.

- "Diversity hurts civic life...In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings" The ravings of a hate group? No, it's the results of a massive Harvard study whose lead researcher was disturbed his own results. Nonetheless, he's sticking by them. As I said many times, Diversity has a good and bad side; it is not always a source of strength.

- Iranian hostage Dr. Haleh Esfandiari has been freed on bail in Iran. She still cannot leave the country and faces charges of espionage. I wrote about this case earlier here.

- The Bush administration has now reached a deal to allow Virginia mining companies to literally remove the tops of mountains for coal mining, and dump the debris in the valleys. I'm no expert on mining, but this goes against every fiber in my body. Anyone remember the classic 1948 Bogart film "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"? After they were finished digging the gold out of the mountain, the old miner said they had to fill the mine back in, like allowing the mountain to heal itself from the wound they made. What healing is going on here, and how will these mountains look after the coal miners have moved on?





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Andrew Sullivan: Bush is Weimar (i.e. Hitler, again)

The Reichstag Building, a symbol of Weimar, destroyed by the Nazis

This week, Sullivan is comparing Bush and Hitler again, which is not terribly surprising; after all he's done it several times before (See here and here).
This time he's using an analogy to Germany's Weimar Republic of the 1930s, but not only is his analogy incorrect, if he had a good background in history, he would know that it actually works the opposite of the way he intends.

Sullivan's logic goes this way: because Bush gave a speech comparing Iraq and Vietnam, and mentioned the anti-war movement that helped end that war, then it's the same thing as blaming the failures of the Iraq war on the anti-war movement. So, in other words, it's the same thing as when Hitler claimed that Germany lost WWI because they were "stabbed in the back" by enemies at home.

That's quite a stretch, isn't it? But that's how this reasoning goes, and it's not the only problem here.

Look, can we actually have an honest debate about this without Hitler factoring into it? Where does Bush actually say the anti-war crowd is to blame for all our failures in Iraq? Nowhere. But to ignore the fact that the tremendous political pressure to end the war is a real factor, and does have a real effect, would be intellectually dishonest.

Don't just take my word for it. Here's a true expert on the matter: Former North Vietnamese General Bui Tin, in an interview he gave to the Wall Street Journal in 1995:

Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."

Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.

Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.

Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

Incidentally, even if you agree with Sullivan, the analogy is still wrong. Why? Hitler was not Weimar, in fact, he was the enemy of it. He used the "stabbed in the back" argument to get into power in order to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

Comparing Bush to Weimar would only be apt if you thought Bush was the weak and frail President Hindenburg, unable to take decisive action to keep his nation from sliding into chaos. Now that you mention it, this analogy sounds much more apt for Iraq instead...

Bonus: Here's a good quote by Lance at "Second Hand Conjecture":

Sullivan has sadly deteriorated as his self righteousness overwhelms his talent.

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The "Happy Jewels" in Iran [Updated]

Old Testament Scroll in Mullah Jacub's Synagogue, Isfahan, Iran by Hamed Saber(also see note at end)

There is a ludicrous article titled "Israel's Problem in Tehran" that hit the front page of Digg yesterday. The author is Jonathan Cook, a British "journalist" living in the Middle East who is a frequent Muslim apologist and regularly writes hit pieces on Israel (more on that below). From the article in question here:

Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the new Hitler. Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential. And if the latest media reports are to be trusted, it looks like they may again be winning the battle for hearts and minds: Vice President Dick Cheney is said to be diverting the White House back on track to launch a military strike.

That last line is classic - "Cheney is said" to be preparing a military strike on Iran. In other words, there is no evidence, but we can correctly report that someone, somewhere has said it...

But back to the subject, the rest of the article is much more pernicious; it is pure Iranian propaganda, and it might as well have been written by the Mullahs themselves. It claims that the Jews live there happily and peacefully, with full freedom to travel, and even huge bribes by Israel won't convince them to leave:

If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel's Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?

This is literally journalistic malpractice. Why didn't he mention that so many have left already? Before the Iranian revolution, there were an estimated 65,000 Jews living in Iran. In fact, the vast majority of Persian Jews don't even live in Persia anymore; there are approximately 75,000 former Persian Jews living in Israel, and 45,000 in the United States (One of whom is Jimmy Delshad, the mayor of Beverly Hills!)

In the meantime, the 25,000-strong Iranian Jewish community is the largest in the Middle East outside Israel and traces its roots back 3,000 years. As one of several non-Muslim minorities in Iran, Jews there suffer discrimination, but they are certainly no worse off than the one million Palestinian citizens of Israel -- and far better off than Palestinians under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Here he does at least acknowledge that the Jews suffer discrimination, but tries to whitewash it as much as possible. They are certainly "worse off" than the Arab Israelis, since Israel's Arab citizens have full rights under the law and the Persian Jews do not! I'll agree that they probably have a better and safer life than Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, but there is one crucial difference: The Palestinians are sponsoring terror and suicide attacks against Israel, while the Persian Jews are doing nothing to terrorize Iran. But it's certainly not all roses; since the revolution, several Jews have been arrested and executed in Iran, on charges of spying for Israel or helping Jews to emigrate, although these have fallen off in recent years.

His choice of words here is telling too. There is no such thing as "Palestinian citizens of Israel". There are Palestinians, and then there are Israelis. Two different nations altogether (well maybe three, with the Hamas-Fatah civil war...) What he is doing is deliberately trying to lump in the Arab-Israeli citizens with the Palestinians, as if all Arabs in the region truly belong to Palestine, which he sees as the only legitimate state.

Iranian Jews have little influence on decision-making and are not allowed to hold senior posts in the army or bureaucracy. But they enjoy many freedoms. They have an elected representative in parliament, they practice their religion openly in synagogues, their charities are funded by the Jewish diaspora, and they can travel freely, including to Israel.

So now he acknowledges a little discrimination, but he leaves out a good deal of info. Not just the "Army or the bureaucracy" but Jews also cannot serve in the Judiciary, or become a school headmaster, including at a Jewish school. Yes, that's right, the headmasters at several Jewish majority schools have been replaced by Muslims, and lessons in Hebrew have been deliberately curtailed. Additionally, Iran insists that all schools remain open on Saturday, in accordance with the normal Iranian schedule, even though Saturday is the Jewish sabbath.

And yes, there is a Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. But that's not out of any particular love of Jews, or any evidence that Iranians would vote for a Jewish leader. Rather, it's more a device for Iran to project a public image of inclusiveness: there is exactly one seat reserved in the Iranian Parliament for a Jew (and another one for a Zoroastrian). Moreover, the Parliament has little power anyway, since Iran's Supreme Revolutionary Council controls everything.

The "traveling freely" is also a canard. Iran forbids travel to Israel (although they have granted certain exceptions) - in fact, this rule is clearly printed in every Iranian passport. So if Jews want to travel there, they normally have to take complicated measures in their travel and avoid getting a telltale Israeli stamp in their passport. Additionally, Iran is very aware of losing the community and puts restrictions on entire families moving together. There are also no postal or telephone services from Iran to Israel either, although certainly the Internet has now made contact easier.

Regarding the monetary incentives for Jews to emigrate to Israel:

The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews, which issued a statement that their national identity was not for sale. "The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews."

This quote is real, but remember the few remaining of the Jewish community tend to be the die-hard few who are comfortable or successful where they are. There are the travel restrictions (mentioned above) to be considered as well.

Cook goes on:

More important than the welfare of Iranian Jewish families, it seems, is the value of Iranian Jews as a propaganda tool in Israel's battle to persuade the world that coexistence with the Muslim world is impossible.

This would be funny, if it weren't indeed so tragic. Apparently, the possibility that the Persian Jews are being used as an Iranian propaganda tool never even occurs to the author.

It also doesn't occur to him the real reason why the Jews are living there in relative peace. Shariah (Islamic) law open allows peoples of other religions to coexist with Muslims as long as they do so in as "dhimmis", subservient to Islamic rule, like a conquered nation. That's why Israel is so hated in the Middle East. Muslims can't stand the fact that a sovereign state in the region is not governed by Muslims, refuses to submit as a dhimmi, and not only that, has defeated the Arabs in several wars.

I should also add that Cook makes the tired claim that President Admedinijad never really said he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map":

He was not threatening to exterminate Jews or even Israel... Nonetheless, this erroneous translation has survived and prospered because Israel and her supporters have exploited it for their own crude propaganda purposes.

This is sheer nonsense, which I debunked in an earlier article.

And if all that's not enough, the very picture on the article is misleading as well. It's not of the Persian Jew community (of which you can see photos here) but of a holocaust denial conference in Tehran last year.

And something that's really creepy about the article is that in the comments section, nearly every comment, whether for or against the article, refers to "Jews" as "Jewels", or in a few cases, "Jays". What's up with that? Is this some moderation attempt by the web site to prevent the word "Jew" appearing too often? Or is the word automatically being filtered somehow?

Jonathan Cook

So who is the author Jonathan Cook anyway? He is a freelance "journalist", author of such articles as "Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes", "The Lies Israel Tells Itself" and "Nearly All the War Crimes Were Israel's". A visit to his full list of articles, shows that his area of focus is solely on the Middle East issues and is fanatical in his support of Islamic nations and hatred of Israel. And strangely, according to one of his articles anyway, he is not a Muslim but an atheist. What is scary is that he's not just limited to his own web site or Al-Jazeera, but to mainstream newspapers like The London Times, The International Herald Tribune, and The Guardian.

Now as I write this, I pause for a little self-reflection. Aren't I biased as well? Don't I tend to defend Israel on this site? Yes, I do, and like every human being, I have biases. I see a tiny country like Israel, fighting for its very existence, while most of the rest of the world is cheering its enemies on. But at least I try to look at the other side of the picture. And more importantly, I am not a journalist, and I don't pretend to be writing newspaper articles here. If I were, I would inject far less of my own opinion into them (I would also insist on being paid for it).

Miscellaneous, but important additional information

I need to mention that although the article appears on Al-Jazeera.com, it's a different organization and not to be confused with the popular Al-Jazeera news and satellite channel, whose web site is www.Al-Jazeera.net.

If you are not big on religion or ancient history, you might wonder: why are Jews living in Iran anyway? Their presence in Iran (and Iraq) dates to the Babylonian Captivity around the 6th Century BC. The Babylonian emperor conquered Israel and forced many thousands of Jews to emigrate to Mesopotamia. This was described in many Biblical books, including Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Psalms. For a quick history, one good source is here.

Note about the picture above: it was taken by an Hamed Saber, an Iranian photographer on Flickr, who claims that Muslims have asked him to take it down, and that he's been harassed with questions like: "Are you advertising Israel?"

[UPDATE 26/08/2007 09:40:00 AM]:
Cook's article appeared even earlier on the Guardian's web site. Also, Karmel Melamed, who (unlike Jonathan Cook) actually is a Persian Jew, also takes Cook to task here.







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Science Under the Knife

In the United States, the religious right is often criticized for "not believing in science", usually over disagreements relating to evolution or global warming (just for the record, I firmly believe in evolution, seeing it as part of God's plan, and I am open to the current theories of global warming).

But the truth is, the leftist thought police doesn't like science either, when it's not on their side.

I have seen a lot of legitimate research into race, IQ, and gender generally dismissed or censored from the University because it didn't toe the politically correct party line. It will even cause liberals to turn on their own; Harvard ran Larry Summers out of his job for merely suggesting that inborn differences between men and women might be one reason why women are unrepresented in the sciences.

Yesterday, the NYT ran an article about another strong case in point. In 2003, Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University (and hardly a religious conservative), wrote a book titled The Man Who Would Be Queen that dared to suggest that "gender identity disorder" was a myth. It went directly against conventional liberal thought, and for that, he was savagely attacked, wrongly accused of misconduct, and forced out of his job.

(To help illustrate how controversial the book is, look at it's Amazon ratings. 55 "5-star" ratings, 35 "1-star" ratings, and virtually none in between!)
From the article:

In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. This idea runs counter to the belief, held by many men who decide to live as women, that they are the victims of a biological mistake — in essence, women trapped in men’s bodies.

If you're like most of us, and aren't really into transgender issues, you might be thinking: "Why would they care so much about that? What real difference does it make?"

Here's why: If this "dangerous idea" caught on, the practical result is that it could force many folks to end up paying for sex-change operations themselves, instead of forcing the government or insurance companies to, since it might not be considered a legitimate medical need anymore.

For years, "gender identity disorder" is the justification that many have used to force others to pay for what amounts to a very expensive, unnecessary, and destructive procedure. With current technology, it's also ultimately pointless, since it doesn't actually change a person's biological gender; the changes are fully cosmetic (DNA would still identify the person as their original gender, they need hormone treatments all their lives, and they can never reproduce as a member of their new gender).

Lynn Conway, himself a "transgendered" person and a computer scientist, set up a web site devoted solely to attacking Dr. Bailey as if he was the Devil incarnate.

Attacks from elsewhere were downright disturbing:

Ms. James [a transgender advocate] downloaded images from Dr. Bailey’s Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided. (Dr. Bailey is a divorced father of two.) Ms. James said in an e-mail message that Dr. Bailey’s work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect.

If they really disagreed with him, then I think further research into the subject would be a better counterweight to his book than ad hominem attacks. The fact that the backlash was so severe shows how much his detractors were genuinely afraid of his research.

I don't really lean one way or the other on this issue, except that I have always been skeptical of "gender identity disorder" as a real diagnosis. It's also contradictory, since feminists have been trying to tell us for years that gender is learned, not inborn to us.

As further evidence that many liberal extremists aren't interested in science, they have pushed hard for changes in many states to allow people to even alter their sex on their birth certificates. In New York, a measure was recently adopted that allowed people to do this even if they never had sex reassignment surgery! As the article put it:

But some psychiatrists and doctors are skeptical of the move, saying sexual self-definition should stop at rewriting medical history.

“They should not change the sex at birth, which is a factual record,” said Dr. Arthur Zitrin, a Midtown psychiatrist who was on the panel of transgender experts convened by the city. “If they wanted to change the gender for all the compelling reasons that they’ve given, it should be done perhaps with an asterisk.”

Another interesting quote:

“I’ve already heard of a ‘transgendered’ man who claimed at work to be ‘a woman in a man’s body but a lesbian’ and who had to be expelled from the ladies’ restroom because he was propositioning women there,” Dr. Paul McHugh, a member of the President’s Council of Bioethics and chairman of the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in an e-mail message on the subject. “He saw this as a great injustice in that his behavior was justified in his mind by the idea that the categories he claimed for himself were all ‘official’ and had legal rights attached to them.”

Incidentally, Brazil recently joined the ranks of nations that now require taxpayers to pay for people's sex change operations, declaring it a "constitutional right". That's very generous for a nation that has 31% of its population living below the poverty line... The USA is heading that same direction: earlier this month in Idaho, taxpayers were forced by court order to pay for a prisoner's hormones treatments. I wrote earlier on similar nuttiness here.






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Host Nation's Rights

"Columbus taking possession of the New World", lithograph by the Prang Education Company, 1893

Certainly, the most basic human rights of immigrants everywhere should be respected by every nation, and be clearly defined by local laws. There has been plenty of debate and discussion over this issue.

But the other side of the coin is often ignored. What about the rights of the host nation or the affected native population?

Via "Gates of Vienna" I found a Norweigian site called "honest thinking", which deals with a lot of issues about political thought control and censorship. They run the website in several different languages, and their English is sometimes a little awkward. However, they have very eloquently written what they call is an "Immigration Manifesto":

The immigration policies currently in vogue in most Western countries show increasing signs of being unsustainable, and the associated problems are likely to grow ever more severe in the coming years. This is one of the largest ethical dilemmas of our time. We therefore believe the entire foundation for the prevailing regime needs to be reconsidered, and submit this manifesto as a starting point for reasoning about these challenges.

1) It is a moral duty to promote human rights all over the world.

2) The concept of human rights must not be confused with any particular legal implementation or formulation of that concept, since such explications could contain internal inconsistencies or imply consequences that would cause conflict with the previous tenet.

3) The worth of a human being is independent of his or her gender, religion, ethnic background, sexual preferences, culture, language, and other such markers.

4) Cooperation across cultural, language, religious, and ethnic borders is desirable and necessary.

5) Even so, culture, language, religion, and ethnicity are instrumental in establishing each individual’s identity, and thus central in forming his or her sense of belonging and loyalty. Any policy aimed at sustainability must take this into account.

6) It is therefore legitimate for any sovereign state to implement restrictions towards non-citizens in such a way that control over its demographic development is retained.

7) It is unacceptable, without foregoing careful consideration and proper democratic processes, that political dispositions be made to alter the demographic composition of a state in such a way that its stability, its inner cohesion, and the mutual loyalty of its population be threatened.


We are apprehensive of individuals, organizations, and other legal entities that try to quench free and open debate on the above issues, and regard such political actors as having little or no legitimacy in questions of democracy and human rights. Moreover, ideologies and political movements whose goals are irreconcilable with the above tenets should be considered devoid of moral and intellectual integrity, unless they are able to justify said discrepancy.


Ole Jørgen Anfindsen, Ph.D., editor, HonestThinking
Jens Tomas Anfindsen, Ph.D., editor, HonestThinking

To be honest myself, #2 above could be written a little more clearly. I believe what they are essentially trying to say is that trying to force equality and human rights through legislation, is often counter productive (eg censorship, affirmative action, etc). But the rest of it is rock solid. The authors are certainly referring to European cities such as Brussels or Malmö, but the same concepts apply to US cities such as Los Angeles as well.

To anyone who thinks this is racist, just consider this for a moment: What do you think would have been the impact if the European powers actually respected such nation's rights in the 16th-17th century Americas, or 19th century Africa or China? Simply put, many Native American genocides, African slavery, and the opium trade in China would never have occured. Period. Let's avoid the mistakes of the past.

(And no, I'm not saying that the Europeans never should have settled in the Americas. It's just that the real tragedy was that at that time, there was plenty of room for both peoples to coexist)





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Response from Paul Rieckhoff

I got a great letter from Paul Rieckhoff, in response to my last article. Here it is in full, along with my response:

John,

I read your blog entry from Friday about me with interest.

I'd like to send you that free copy of my book you stated that you would read. It will give you a much better understanding of my experiences and my views on the war which I believe you oversimplify in your blog tremendously.

I am not "anti-war." I have been extremely critical at times. Absolutely. But so have people like Senator John McCain, who few would call anti-war. I reject the label because I honestly believe the entire situation is more complicated than black and white, anti/pro war. And I believe that my voice, like yours and the thousands of other vets that have served on the ground, is critical to creating a better national understanding, better policy and greater military success. Having served there, I am sure you agree. I come down on different sides on different issues. I urge you to check out my recent letter to the NYT supporting the O'Hanlon pro-surge piece:

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00913FA3C550C718CDD
A10894DF404482

Regarding Franken: he is a good man. I urge you to look a little deeper than the public persona. He is a huge supporter of the military and a regular USO performer. Any celebrity who gives up a comfortable life in the US to perform for us deserves some respect in my opinion. He has been to Iraq a number of times to entertain our troops--and understands our community and it's people fairly well.

As for our work at IAVA, chose not to support if you like. But understand that IAVA is made of of thousands of veterans nationwide from all sides of the political spectrum. We are bringing OIF/OEF veterans together, and fight every day for them and their families on issues ranging from better VA funding, to the implementation of the Dole-Shalala Commission recommendations, to a new GI Bill. More at www.iava.org and here:

http://www.iava.org/about-iava/2007-legislative-agenda/

I think these are initiatives that all veterans (and all Americans) can support. And I invite you to join us. We'd love to have your involved. Especially given your writing talents.

Send me your address if you are interested in that book, and I'll have a copy out to you next week. I think you will find that my positions are hardly in line with those of the folks at the Nation.

Thanks for your time, and for your service.

Best regards,

Paul.

--
Paul Rieckhoff
Executive Director
Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)
http://www.iava.org

My Response is below:

Paul,

Thank you very much for your letter. And thanks for reading my blog! I would love to see a copy of your book, and I'll discuss it on my web site when I'm finished. You can send it to [address inserted].

Now, just to clarify, I never said you were "anti-war", but rather "anti-Iraq war". That's the impression I got from your articles and interviews, and if that's not accurate either, I apologize.

But like I said, I have actually read your articles. And if I get a skewed impression, imagine someone who just glances at your stuff or hears a couple sound bites? Generally, anyone praised by the likes of Stephen Colbert and the notorious Scott Ritter (who changed his views on WMD when it was convenient for him, financed a documentary with Iraqi "oil for food" money, and was arrested for soliciting underage girls on the Internet) are usually clearly on one side of the political fence. Al Franken is another one. I have seen one of Al Franken's USO shows and it was very good, and non-partisan. It's wonderful that he does USO tours. The guy is actually funny, but I think he's much better when he sticks to what he does well, i.e. comedy, vs. political opinion. Some of these guys quite literally do not want us to win the Iraq war, and see Bush as the enemy instead of the terrorists.

The Huffington Post (where you are a regular contributor) is a forum for far-left extremists. Some of the threads have been so bad (outright calling for Bush or Cheney to be assassinated, etc) that entire comment threads have had to be shut down and deleted altogether on occasion. One such example is saved here: http://hotair.cachefly.net/video/2007-02/HuffPoCheneyTalibanThread.pdf

I know this is all guilt by association. But that's the point. Perception is important, many people view you (and by extension, the IAVA) as part of the leftist protest movement. That's why I cannot join IAVA at this time (although I wouldn't rule it out in the future). If you don't clearly define yourself, others will do it for you, for better or worse. I believe this "misunderstanding" with the magazine The Nation is a direct result of that. If you are truly concerned with the welfare of the soldiers and are politically neutral, then show it. Write a few pages about the enemy who is actually harming our soldiers (the insurgents, not Bush or Walter Reed). Write about some of the stuff we've done right in Iraq, instead of just the wrong. No, it doesn't sell as well as Bush-bashing these days, but it will help clarify where you stand. In the military, whenever we do an AAR (for civilians: "after action review") after a mission or training exercise, we usually ask participants to give their opinion, and list at least 3 things that went right, and three that went wrong ("pros" and "cons"). "Cons" are easy since people love to gripe, but "pros" generally harder for people to think about. But they are important too, so when we adjust fire we don't throw out the good with the bad.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not happy about the progress in Iraq. I do agree that much of the war was mismanaged and we need to try some different strategies. I also like some of the suggested legislation at your web site, and think your heart is in the right place. What I don't agree with is being used as a tool by the political left, and when I criticize our leaders, I try to keep in mind that they are on our side. Bush's record is far from perfect, but so is every other wartime President our nation has ever had. Just as one example, for every mistake/impeachable offense that Bush's enemies want to hang him for, Franklin Roosevelt has also done, and more. See here, for example:
http://shieldofachilles.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-its-too-late-to-impeach-president-i.html

In any case, thanks for visiting my humble blog. You are welcome back anytime. I wish you and IAVA all the best, and look forward to your book.

John Rohan


[Minor Update:] Mea Culpa - originally I published Paul's personal email address at the bottom of his letter. Unfortunately, that's a sure way to attract spam to someone. I should have caught that. I deleted it and his telephone number, at his request.






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Rieckhoff's New Neighbors

Evening in Khadra, Baghdad, Sep 2006

Here is an interesting development on the article that recently appeared in The Nation, called "The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness", that claimed to spotlight regular atrocities by US forces in Iraq. I wrote about this article previously, and why I didn't feel it was very reliable. You might want to look there before you read further. Some other good info here.

Someone else didn't like The Nation's article either. Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America) is complaining his people were misrepresented in the article. This was actually kind of surprising; You would think that The Nation, the authors of the article (Hedges & Al-Arian), and Rieckhoff would be a good fit together since they are all strongly anti-Iraq war.

While IAVA doesn't take an official stand on the war, Paul Rieckhoff has made himself quite a bit of media notoriety by his criticism of it and the Bush administration in general. He has appeared on several news programs as well as "The Colbert Report" to plug his book Chasing Ghosts. He is also a regular columnist at the Huffington Post. Al Franken says:

Anyone who would question Paul Rieckhoff's unquestioned authority on the war and its cost is dangerously dangerous.

Well, I guess I'm "dangerously dangerous", since I question his authority on the war. I don't question his book, because I haven't read it (yet). I'll check it out when I can read a free copy. Right now, I don't support Rieckhoff or the IAVA, so I don't want to send any money their way.

In any case, Paul Rieckhoff was unhappy. He told the Mudville Gazette:

I wanted to contact you ASAP to let you know that we agree with you about The Nation piece 100%. It was a total hit job. We do not approve of or support this piece of trash in any way. We responded immediately here.

Of course the Nation buried our letter, and gave the authors a chance to respond before it was posted--a courtesy they didn't give us.

In the letter, he says, among other things:

The Nation violated the trust of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and many of the service members interviewed. Reporters told our members that the focus of this piece was their experience in Iraq generally, not civilian casualties specifically. Many of the veterans involved spent hours talking to Ms. Al-Arian and shared deeply personal recollections on a variety of subjects, only to have their experiences misrepresented and/or isolated. The most graphic recollections were removed from context and used to bolster a preconceived conclusion by the authors about the patterns and frequency of civilian deaths. Critical facts were obscured or omitted entirely. This entire piece is a glaring example of the type of low-quality journalism that has been all too common in the coverage of the war in Iraq since it began.

It's strange that I find myself agreeing with him here, because that's the same criticism I've had of the media since the war began. If I had to guess, I would bet that Hedges and Al-Arian just assumed that the IAVA vets were "on their side", so they could write the piece any way they wanted. Other subjects in the article vented their frustrations as well.

How could Rieckhoff have been so naive? If he did even a cursory check he would have known the elements he was dealing with. On The Nation's web site reads a banner (which floats on and off around the site):

"WE'RE LIKE FOX NEWS. ONLY SMART. AND NOT CRAZY. AND WE DON'T LIE."

The authors of "The Other War" have issues as well. Chris Hedges has been a vocal critic not just of the war, but of Christians everywhere, of whom he seems to have a fanatical hatred. He wrote a book called "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America" as well as numerous articles claiming that Christians are an "imminent threat" to American Democracy.

Well, I don't know about you, but I am terrified of fellow Catholics walking into my Church with a suicide vest on... After all, just this week we have seen Southern Baptists sniping at police, Methodists attempting to hijack airplanes, and Presbyterians trying to obtain enough fuel to build a nuclear weapon.

Oh wait - my mistake; those were Muslims, not Christians I was thinking of. Like Hedges, I seem to get the two confused. In fact, he's so confused, he decided to speak up for Islam in a debate against atheist Chris Hitchens and (by his own admission) was totally trounced.

Last year, he wrote an article called:"Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse"

War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.”

Someone, please tell me, where did Bush ever claim he was anointed by God?

The other author, Laila Al-Arian, is the daughter of convicted terrorist supporter Sami Al-Arian, and writes occasionally on Muslim or Palestinian issues. Together, Hedges and Al-Arian are currently writing a book entitled: "Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians"

What has happened here is that Paul Rieckhoff has chosen his political side of the fence, but seems to be very unhappy about the neighbors he's finding over there.

Well, Paul, if you change your mind, you can always move back to this side. We'll welcome you back with open arms.





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The Beauchamp controversy: Many Foots in Many Mouths [UPDATED]

This is one of the few articles that has been pure joy to write. A lot of pundits are now eating crow over the Scott Beauchamp affair. I know it's unseemly to be a gloating winner, so I'll refrain from sarcasm and keep the side comments to a minimum.

I'll give a brief background primer for those that haven't been following this: The New Republic printed a story called "Shock Troops", by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who was at first anonymous, but later identified himself as an infantry soldier in Iraq, and it turned out he was married to a reporter at TNR. The article made some claims about crimes/bad behavior by US soldiers that many military people (including me) and several conservative web sites pointed out were quite impossible. The backlash was so strong that on Aug 2, the editors of TNR claimed they stood firmly by the story, did a "re-investigation", and found only one inconsistency. So the many supporters of The New Republic felt vindicated over what they felt had been dishonest, right-wing smear jobs designed to silence all critics of the war!

This is where the article you are reading now comes in. In the midst of all their premature jubilation, this group, largely clueless of the military and living in ivory towers, wrote many self-congratulating articles that they probably regret now (fortunately, they are all saved in Google's cache).

The reason they probably regret them now (and some must be livid with anger at Beauchamp), is because the Army decided to conduct it's own investigation, and could not find one single soldier to corroborate the TNR or Beauchamp's claims, and decided to impose administrative punishment against him (meaning local restriction only, no court martial). Beauchamp himself refuses to talk to anyone about it now.

Yes, he had his laptop and cell phone confiscated during the investigation, but he still has access to MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) computers with internet, MWR telephones, Iraqi internet cafes, and the good old-fashioned US Postal Service.

As Mark Steyn puts it:

It seems silly and rather sad for The New Republic to be crawling further and further out on the limb for this guy [Beauchamp] when he's all but sawn it off

But this might be a little harsh. My gut feeling is that PVT Beauchamp never expected that the article would generate so much publicity, or that it would be scrutinized so closely by other veterans. He just wanted to help out/impress his reporter wife, and now that the whole thing has blown up, he wants to keep quiet so he doesn't jeapardize his wife's job at the magazine, and is now hoping the whole thing would just go away. But that's just a guess.

Of course, he has some die-hard fans who will claim that the Army is just covering this up, or is coercing or brainwashing Beauchamp. I can't help people who think this - (there's quite a few that even believe the Moon landing was faked) except to point out, as I remarked before, that his story itself did not stand up to scrutiny. We didn't really even need to do an investigation. In any case, both I and many other military bloggers, warned other bloggers about this a long time ago. Those that tried to hitch their wagons to Beauchamp's star have only themselves to blame now.

Anyway, enjoy. The range of authors here is from the well-known to the truly obscure. In no particular order:

Franklin Foer, editor of TNR (requires media player):

My magazine this last week has been subject of basically a smear job by the Weekly Standard and a lot of the conservative blogosphere over a piece that we published from a soldier in Iraq, which we have gone back and re-reported and it turned out to be aside from one mistake to be the case and I just wish that there was, and this sounds like a trite mainstream media criticism, but that those in the blogosphere who kind of move from one reckless allegation to another reckless allegation for once apologize when they get something wrong.”

(As of right now, Mr. Foer has not apologized for the story)



Andrew Sullivan, on 26 July:

Obviously, my love for TNR and my respect for its new editor, Frank Foer, makes me hope that every single aspect of his [Beauchamp's] stories is true.

(At least he's up front about his biases here. A note of background: Andrew Sullivan used to work for TNR, and is the one who hired Stephen Glass, another well-publicized fraud. That may be why he reacted very differently to this story than he did to this similar 2004 story of fraudulent Iraq abuse photos printed in the British tabloid, The Daily Mirror)

Also, Sullivan on 27 July:

Well, I trawled through the various knuckle-dragging websites and there's still no actual, you know, evidence that he fabricated anything. Maybe he did. First-person war-stories are always hard to verify beyond a shadow of a doubt, no? But if Malkin can't dredge up something and fling it by now, no one can.

Sullivan, again on August 2:

Read TNR's accounting. It is as I predicted: honorable and, except for one small inaccuracy, it checks out. All the aspects aggressively challenged by the usual propaganda organs have been verified and corroborated. The military is now conducting its own investigation. Given the record of such formal investigations, I'm not as confident in the Pentagon as I am in TNR. Can we now expect apologies from the people who smeared and maligned the magazine and its soldier-reporter? I doubt it. The attackers are not the kind to acknowledge their own errors.

(Neither, apparently, is Andrew Sullivan. As of right now, he has not issued an apology for these statements)




Matthew Yglesias on 26 July:

as best I can tell nobody has yet brought forward any serious reason to doubt his story...
All these people [Beauchamp's critics] need to stop. They need to take a deep breath. They need to apologize to the people at TNR who've wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense.

And Yglesias again on 2 Aug:

Well, it looks like The Weekly Standard and the right-wing blogosphere really turn out to have the goods be full of shit... Nevertheless, despite being totally wrong, it's arguably mission accomplished for the right...And there you have it -- if the troops say things the right doesn't like, they get mau-maued into silence. Meanwhile, anyone who says the war may not be so fantastic hates the troops.

Glenn Greenwald, at Salon.com:

I would simply add that right-wing troop-exploiters always reserve their most hateful, vicious and deeply personal attacks for soldiers and veterans who deviate from their political church

Ezra Klein on American Prospect:

these people are thugs. They freaked out about The New Republic's anonymous diarist because his words clashed with the childish mythology they've constructed around the US Military. Despite lacking any actual evidence disproving or even calling into question his story, they were able to make enough noise to spark an investigation and media attention.

Also, later:

If Beauchamp is indeed a liar, I'll be surprised

Jon Swift, on his blog:

even though no one has proven a single factual inaccuracy, this did not discourage our brave milbloggers. Nor did the fact that Scott Thomas does exist and is a soldier do anything to give his story more credence. In fact, knowing the author's real name makes it even easier to discredit him [sarcasm].

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly:

you can already see how this is going to play out. Not only will Thomas's character be dragged savagely through the mud (Michelle Malkin is leading the charge over at her site), but eventually some small part of Thomas's account will turn out to be slightly exaggerated and the right will erupt in righteous fervor

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

Imagining that every story that doesn't kowtow to the Bush personality cult is another Rathergate in the making, the rightwing blogosphere exploded with a wave of accusations and fabrications, all alleging in one fashion or another that the stories were made up. The charges even got recycled and trumpeted in the Washington Post.

Unfortunately for them, TNR did a in-depth re-fact-check of the pieces (which given the Glass backstory, was, I am sure, extremely thorough) and with the exception of one relatively minor error they all check out.

Digby at his/her blog:

now that they know he does in fact exist, they are working their way into a complete frenzy going after this soldier as if he were al Qaeda and acting as though the hawkish New Republic has just endorsed Cindy Sheehan for president. It's like watching a bunch of piranhas attack some kids who accidentally fell into the water.

I have never been to war... But if you have the habit of reading books you will have come across descriptions of war that make your hair stand on end. (Emphasis mine)

Steve Benen on the "Carpetbagger Report":

A U.S. soldier was in the right’s good graces until he strayed from the party line and noted the personal toll the war has taken on him and his compatriots. For that, he’s been smeared, rather viciously.

Professor Brad DeLong's blog:

When the New Republic published Scott Thomas, the right-wing slime machine swung into action:

Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns, and Money wrote:

very simple, people. A TNR diarist wrote about a series of events. Righties freaked out, insisting that the stories couldn’t possibly be true. Lefties didn’t assert that it was true, but insisted that it could be factual. Battle ensues. It turns out that the story is, apart from an irrelevant detail, true.

Harto, at Democraticdaily:

the Wingnuts of the rightie hate machine have launched a typically mindless, reflexive attack on the Columbia Journalism Review for having the temerity to toss some water on the bonfire of the vanities that the “milbloggers” and the drooling wingnuts are up in arms about: the ‘high tech lynching’ to discredit, destroy and either jail or frag Private Beauchamp

"dday", a diarist at Daily Kos:

But the insaneosphere doesn't want to deal with that, so they attack a member of the military personally. It's revolting. It's grade-A thuggery. To protect the President and his failed war, they will frag an American soldier. Nice people.

"Catwoman" at Democratic underground:

Since the wingnut blogs are scrambling to try to discredit him, good for Scott for coming out from the shadows. Will he get apologies for all the ugliness they’ve thrown at him? I don’t think so either…

Upyernoz at the Rubber Hose blog (through Huffington Post):

they shift gears and declare that beauchamp (the now non-anonymous soldier) must be destroyed and so they set out to smear him, his patriotism, his honesty, his military service, pretty much everything. what started as a comedy is now turning into a tragedy.

for me, this whole thing just confirms that a lot of the bigwigs of right blogistan (i'm referring to people like malkin, ace, the folks of hotair, townhall, powerline, the corner, etc.) are quickly losing touch with reality

Jonathan Swartz at Tiny Revolution, wrote:

At first it seems amazing that Orwell [in his book "1984"] could have precisely described today's right-wing blurgh world sixty years ago. But the right-wing blurghs are just an outgrowth of human nature, which never changes...

Gavin M. at SadlyNo:

1) WingNet accuses soldier/journalist of being an impostor.

2) WingNet proven wrong.

3) WingNet backfills, engages motorized goalposts, attacks with redoubled fury.

3.5) Developing: WingNet completely loses narrative; forms digital lynch mob; redefines success to mean utterly destroying the targeted person by any means available, short of leaving the safety of their heavily-farted computer chairs.

(Hey Gavin, I ran 3 miles this morning, starting at 0630 AM. How is your exercise regimen going?)



Steven Perez at "Empty Head":

Even when all of their [The TNR's critics] claims are proven to be dead wrong, they still twist themselves into hyperbolic pretzels in a vain attempt to prove to anyone who will listen that they were correct all along.

Ryan at "flickertail":

So the whole affair is incredibly stupid and the right-wingers prove they don’t care about truth, especially in journalism.

Wolfgang at "statistical mechanic"

The story of brave right-wing bloggers sitting at home, trying to discredit a soldier serving in Iraq.

"Apostropher" wrote:

I really should set up an f-key to insert the text "you'd think they'd get tired of being 100% wrong about everything, but you'd be mistaken".

Now, since the Army's findings have been made known, Beauchamp's defenders have been rather quiet. Very quiet. For the few who mentioned the episode since then, there has been a bit of backpedaling and trying to change the subject. The theme now seems to be that now the truth/untruth really doesn't matter, because the article wasn't going to change the war anyway (although I couldn't find anyone who ever claimed that it would):

John Cole, at the "Balloon Juice" Blog:

My position on Beauchamp has been clear- who cares?

(This is after he has blogged about Beauchamp no less than 14 times. For comparison, I have done it only three times)

Really, while you all are trying to excuse your chest-thumping groupthink by claiming “TERRIBLE CRIMES HAVE BEEN COMMITTED” and whipping yourself into a lather screaming about how much this hurts the troops and it just can’t be true, the rest of us are looking at you and wondering what the hell is wrong with you. First, the enemy doesn’t read TNR. They really don’t. Al Qaeda in Iraq is not going to justify their next IED because Beauchamp reported that some GI’s made fun of a woman in a mess hall.
...
The funniest thing in all of this is that there is no way to prove one way or another Beauchamp is lying, but now, even if Beauchamp is lying, he comes out looking better than the asshole armchair commandos attacking him.

Matthew Yglesias:

The Beauchamp article, meanwhile, no matter how true or false it may be, has no implications whatsoever. "This dude killed some dogs, therefore we should leave Iraq" would be an absurd argument.

One common theme I saw through all these web sites was the claim that Beauchamp was being smeared, attacked, & dragged through the mud, even threatened. There were some anonymous comments like that (just like you see for all public figures), but I never saw any columnists take cheap shots or threaten him. They certainly treated him more nicely than Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert would have done...

Personally, I didn't call him anything other than a liar. But as far as I'm concerned, I have no beef with Beauchamp now. The Army officially handled the problem and it's finished. Now he's another ordinary soldier, just trying to get by in Iraq. For now, he needs to concentrate on that.


UPDATE 08/15/2007 10:35:00 PM:
Wow - Thanks to Little Green Footballs for linking here. The response is like an avalanche! I added a little more on John Cole above, and changed "Digby" to his/her (if that's really important).

And here are some more priceless web articles that the authors would now probably prefer to forget:

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Gun, and Money:

Showing how much my instincts can be trusted, the "Scott Thomas" story turns out to have been solid, with the only demonstrable error a trivial detail irrelevant to the main thrust to the story.

Kathy at "Shakespeare's Sister":

All of the behavior and incidents Beauchamp described were confirmed by other soldiers in Beauchamp's unit... Have you ever remembered an incident accurately, and you know it happened that way, but you just get the time or the place mixed up? Apparently that never happens to right-wingers who are blinded by their ideological hatred for anyone who implies that U.S. troops could ever be anything but blameless, noble heroes

John Quiggan at "Crooked Timber":

The Beauchamp case fits the general pattern pretty well. First, the wingers claimed that the Diary was a fabrication and that “Scott Thomas” was the creation of a writer who’d never been near Iraq. Then, when it became evident he was a real person, they rolled out the slime machine to discredit him. Then they engaged in amateur forensics to discredit particular items in his account

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News:

TNR reconfirms nearly all details of the formerly anonymous soldier's stories. Shamed right-wing nuts lead by Ace of Spades, among many others, spin more furiously. The one wrong detail is significant, the story is correct, the location is wrong, but overall by my count it is another swing and a foul ball by the usual collection of idiots. This ended up mainly demonstrated the right blogger's lack of military knowledge and experience and their ability to raise a hue and cry over nothing.

Jay Stevens at "Left in the West" wrote:

So...remember the brouhaha over Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the miliblogger for The New Republic? His anecdotes check out.
Case closed, right?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, not so fast! Hugh Hewitt, Michael Goldfarb, Michelle Malkin twist their panties in histrionics

UPDATE 08/16/2007 11:16:00 PM:
I'll make one thing clear. Some people claim that because the army botched the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman investigations, then they can't be trusted here. The problem is, the comparison is not apt, and the cases weren't "botched". In both these cases, the subject him/herself was not able to help investigators. Lynch remembers almost nothing, and Tillman was killed. So you can understand why it took a little while to get to the truth. Moreover, the rumors about Jessica Lynch, fueled by a hungry media, started before there was a real investigation. And her entire convoy was either killed or being held by the Iraqis, so they weren't much help either. Anyway, in both these cases, it was Army investigators who found out what happened, and released it to the public (although Tillman's investigators inexplicitly held their info for few days before telling the family). If the Army wanted to bury it, we still would think Lynch was a combat hero and Tillman was killed by the Taliban. In any case, I would like to see some evidence here before I would accuse them of a cover-up.

But even if you instinctively just can't trust the Army at all, that doesn't matter (But remember, Beauchamp is in the Army too). Just look at the hard evidence of the matter, the circumstantial evidence, and the fact that Beauchamp himself is refusing to comment on the matter any further. The fact that his supporters are very quiet now is pretty telling too.

And incidentally, if by some fluke, powerful evidence came up that said that Beauchamp was telling the truth, and the Army was involved in a big cover up, would I apologize? Damn straight I would, right on the front page of my blog. It's called honesty and integrity, and if I didn't make a real effort at it, then my blog would be pretty worthless wouldn't it?

Speaking of that, I still have yet to see any kind of apology from any one of the individuals I quoted above. I wonder how long I'll have to wait?





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