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"The real reasons for events are beneath the surface, and we frequently don't know what they are."
Sorry, I'm not as cynical as you. Observe a country's actions and not their statements and you will have a better idea what the intentions and motivations are.
>They didn't say "just two more months," they said they were making progress.
Okay, he didn't say "two":
(AP) Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Friday he will leave his job at the end of June, with disappointment that his teams weren't given a few more months to try to disarm Iraq peacefully.
>Well, I haven't heard of any intelligence gains from Ansar al-Islam....
The Associated Press reports that American and Kurdish forces have searched the compound formerly occupied by Ansar al-Islam Islamofascists in northern Iraq, and have found "what may be the strongest evidence yet linking the group to al-Qaida." The search also yielded documents and computer data identifying Ansar members or sympathizers around the world. General Richard Myers says that the Ansar compound is believed to be the source of the ricin that was found in London a couple of months ago.
>And they haven't weighed the unforeseeable consequences of probably creating thousands of other US-hating Islamic terrorists, even as we have killed or jailed hundreds, including leaders, of Al-Qaeda.
Clearly they considered the anti-US consequences, thus the embedded journalists and great care to minimize civilian casualties, unnessary destruction of infrastruture. Let's wait a few months for Iraq's Islamic neighbors to fully digest the testimony of the freed Iraqis. I'm reading more and more everyday as the fear of Saddam's retribution subsides.
>I'd like to wave a magic wand and rid of the world of dictators and corruption.
So would I. Unfortuately, magic wands don't exist and tough decisions need to be made. Again, you believe the negative consequences out-weigh the positive consequences. I disagree. Time might tell who is right, then again, it might not.
>The NYT and the Post also have their conservative columnists and reporters.
Please don't confuse reporters with columnists. I don't care how many liberal vs. conservative columnists there are - they're not assigned to reporting the news - they're not supposed to be fair and balanced.
I still don't see the big take-away from this story. Could we have been clearer? I suppose so. I suppose we could have said "invade Kuwait and we'll kick your ass" (I don't know what the diplomatic translation would be).
Given Saddam's defiance to our pre-Gulf2 threats, I don't know if it would have mattered. Saddam is the master of mis-calculation. I hope we capture the guy so our psychotherapist can determine if he suffers from some sort mental deficiency. What sort of person is unable to recognize obvious and severely negative consequences of their own actions?
"Saddam misinterpreted our silence for agreeing to his attack."
Saddam has exhibited a long history of mis-calculation - I don't believe "mis-interpretation" was the problem. Aziz said "WE knew the United States would have a strong reaction." Obviously, Saddam mis-calculated believing he would get nothing but a verbal reprimand.
In any case, what is the point you're trying to make? Was this an elaborate scheme designed to trick Saddam into invading Kuwait so we could spend billions of dollars kicking him out???
"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."
That's a green light???? I don't know how you interpret the meaning of the words "no opinion", but I take it as meaning we didn't have an opinion on how the borders were drawn, who was right in the dispute.
Does the U.S. have an opinion on who has legal claim to Kashmir? I doubt it. That doesn't mean we believe it would be cool for Pakistan and India to settle it by force.
So, are you saying we won't find WMD?
BTW, I think this story is proof that the US isn't concocting WMD sites.
April Glaspie conspiracy theory debunked:
In November 1992, Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tarik Aziz, gave Glaspie some vindication. He said she had not given Iraq a green light. "She just listened and made general comments," he told USA Today. "We knew the United States would have a strong reaction."
>"Why exactly would the Times or the Post or NPR have "red faces" for their coverage of the war?"
I didn't say the would. I said "how will they cover the red-faces (of the appeasers), meaning will they really press Blix and the UN on their silly assertions of 'just two more months' or long term containment.
>For every paper like the Times or the Post there are many like the Chicago Tribune or Sun-times or LA Times or (of course) the WSJ that lean right, sometimes far to the right, much farther than the Times or the Post leans left.
The LA Times leans right? The WSJ editorial page in clearly right-wing, however the WSJ has a sizable contingent of liberals on their reporting staff over the years: Jeffery Birnbaum, Jane Mayer, Jill Abramson, Alan Murray, etc.
>But there will be blowback from this for sure.
Agreed, but who ever said post-war would be a picnic? The problem I have with they nay-sayers on the left is that there doesn't seem to no weighing of ALL the pros and cons of this conflict. Just one example: have you underestimated the intelligence gains from Ansar al-Islam? How many American lives will be saved as a result?
The pre-1991 list is irrelevant. What did companies do, what did countries allow after the Gulf War and subsequent weapons/technology bans on Iraq?
Good question. At the time, I suppose it made sense (to somebody in the US) given the Iranian situation. The sale of chemical weapons is inexcusable to me, even if administration officials believed they would only be used as a deterent to Iranian attacks. Since that time I think we've made a fundamental change in how we view sales of WMD or enabling technologies to any nation.
Our past dealings with Saddam isn't a justification to post-1991 sales. For anyone who doubted Saddams intentions and disposition pre '91, the invasion of Kuwait should have been the final word on how Saddam should be dealt with. Selling banned weapons to Iraq post-'91 is inexcusable and indefensible.
Are these of post 1991 sales, post ban?
We are at the beginning stages of the egg-on-face and hands-in-cookie-jar phase of this war. WMD finds will be occuring regularly, expect deafening silence from Blix and the UN Security council. The hands-in-cookie-jar phase will be far more interesting though. France, Germany, Russia, Syria, Jordan, etc. -Who was selling what to Saddam's regime? Did Syria allow WMD into Syria for safe-keeping? Hopefully Bush won't be swayed by the doves in the State Department to keep the damning documents under wraps. Also wondering how agressively the NY Times, Washington Post and NPR will cover the red faces on the aftermath of this war?
hmmmmm, I own a gun...three in fact. I don't have any plans to kill anybody. My father, grandfather, uncles and great grandfather all owned guns. Never killed anyone.
When we were kids (my brothers and myself) we always had a contant stream of gun safety being preached to us. Guns were always locked. Guns were never loaded indoors. Guns were never to be pointed at anything you didn't intend to kill (including inanimate objects). Guns weren't a toy. You never crossed an obstacle (steam or fence) with a loaded gun in hand. I could go on and on.
I'm amazed that the public schools don't teach basic gun safety. Kids are required to take the D.A.R.E. program in my state - I'm assuming sex ed is next, but guns are a taboo subject - inapproprate for discussion I guess.
Whether you own a gun or not, every student should be required to take a basic gun safety class (morgue pictures included).
I wonder what steps France, Germany, and Russia are going to take to repair the relationship? Oh, silly me, I forgot, it's all our fault!
I know I'm not
I find it interesting that left-wingers are more intellient, more moral, more schooled in history. They're probably better looking, have better teeth, and better taste in music too. It's so unfair.
"Where have Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and all the other militant groups been during the war? If the outrage on Arab streets is as is indicated, one would think their militant groups would be active participants in the "struggle" against Americans?..Certainly our gov indicated ties between Saddam's gov and terrorist groups... So where are they?"
Well, there were 700 terrorists in Ansar al-Islam camp along with scores of Al Qaidi. They were either flattened by cruise missile strikes or fled to Iran. Reports of hundreds if not thousands of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad terrorists have been crossing into Iraq from Syria in recent weeks. I've seen reports of dead fighters among the vanquished local militias that aren't Iraqis - the assumption is that this is happening.
"Yet the [Arab] press is neither monolithic nor uniformly anti-American."
Oh please! Name the Arab press organization that isn't uniformly anti-American? Does running an anti-saddam + anti-bush op-ed piece make you not uniformly anti-american?
"But the front pages of leading newspapers in and around the Arab world include both American and Iraqi perspectives, and feature dramatic photographs that show United States forces as both aggressors and humanitarians. One recent front page photo even showed an Iraqi civilian pouring tea for an American soldier."
In the photo mentioned, who's being portrayed as the humanitarian?
Using the word "bellicose" makes the story slanted? Kerry even admitted his statement might have been too "harsh".
I agree with you that the reporter did a poor job linking the controversial statement to the Dean campaign. The early speculation (the media calls speculation "analysis") was that Kerry used the "regime" statement in an attempt to court anti-war Democrats, thus erroding Dean support in neighboring New Hampshire. The reporter should have put the Dean connection into context.
As far as the Edwards/Bush blurb, you are correct - it makes no sense. The last part of the story loses focus and turns into a campaign update. I still don't see the right-wing spin, only a poorly edited story.
Ergo, please elaborate on the Wash Times slant. The spin is?
The news spin about the post-saddam diplomatic wrangling came from the usual sources: NY Times, CNN, etc. Sorry, I don't have a transcript in hand.
Ergo, this isn't an argument over semantics. The "regime change" line reportedly came straight from the anti-war protests. Kerry's decision to use the phrase was no accident.
>Do you think Kerry should be restricted in his use of certain phrases?
Kerry should be allowed to make any idiotic statement he pleases. Do you think he'll continue to use the "regime change" phrase?
Racicot said Kerry "crossed a grave line" by suggesting replacement of the commander in chief at a time of war.
>Oh come on look at this sentence. So is it now illegal to run for office?
==========================
No, who said it was illegal? Who said Kerry can't or shouldn't run because he made this statement? Racicot said Kerry "crossed a grave line" meaning his statement was in extremely poor taste.
>Did the Republicans make this an issue or not?
========================
Of course they did. Kerry left himself wide open.
Do you think Kerry "planted" this story? Or do you think the Republicans wanted it out in the public eye?
==========================
Kerry didn't plant the story. He probably wishes he didn't make the comment in the first place. He's in damage control mode.
>Do you think the reporter should have left Kerry's campaign spokesman out of the loop?
=========================
Absolutely not. The comment should have been included. But realize this was an attempt to deflect criticism with an irrelevant retort. Unfortunately the reporter took the bait and the campaign spin grew into four paragraphs, including a one-liner stating Hastert and DeLay's lack of military service. Did you read anywhere in this story an explaination from Kerry's spokesman exactly WHY military service gave Kerry a free pass to make such a comment? Guess the reporter forgot to ask.
Fresh example of journalistic spin in the Washington Post:
Republicans Attack Kerry on 'Regime Change'
Reuters
Thursday, April 3, 2003; 7:02 PM
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders attacked Democratic presidential contender John Kerry on Thursday for saying "regime change" was needed in not just Iraq but also the White House, drawing a sharp rebuttal from the Massachusetts senator.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Republican leader Tom DeLay and Republican Party Chairman Marc Racicot said Kerry's remarks in the crucial presidential primary state of New Hampshire on Wednesday undercut the troops and President Bush's role as commander in chief.
At a campaign stop in Peterborough, Kerry had said relations with our allies had become so damaged in the run-up to the war in Iraq that only a new president could repair them.
"What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States," said Kerry, a four-term Senate veteran.
Republicans quickly pounced on Thursday, with Hastert and DeLay accusing Kerry of putting politics ahead of support for the troops. Hastert said the comments were "not what we need at this time" and DeLay called his statement "desperate and inappropriate.
"America before New Hampshire," DeLay said.
Racicot said Kerry "crossed a grave line" by suggesting replacement of the commander in chief at a time of war.
"This use of self-serving rhetoric designed to further Senator Kerry's political ambitions at a time when the lives of America's sons and daughters are at stake reflects a complete lack of judgment," Racicot said.
Campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs said Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, intended no disrespect toward the commander in chief at a time of war.
"But the point of this campaign is, obviously, to change the administration of this government," he said. "Unlike many of his Republican critics, Senator Kerry has worn the uniform, served his country, seen combat, so he'd just as soon skip their lectures about supporting our troops."
Neither Hastert nor DeLay served in the military. Racicot served in the U.S. Army.
"John Kerry's service to the country is admirable. His remarks about the commander in chief are shameful," responded DeLay's spokesman, Stuart Roy.
Kerry backed a congressional resolution giving Bush the authority to use force against Iraq but has frequently criticized Bush's failure to generate more support for the war effort among U.S. allies.
======================================
So, explain to me how military service is pertinent to this story? The reporter devotes 4 paragraphs to the fact that Kerry served in the U.S. military while Hastert and DeLay did not. The take-away? If you served in the military it's quite alright to refer to the Bush administration as a regime. Question: If Kerry didn't serve, it wouldn't be okay????
NY Times
You're so full of it. I criticized Mr.Fisk for dressing commentary as reporting and you called me a drunk. Guess you got straight As in debate class.
Yeah, spare the personal attacks. CoalTrain is the undisputed king of personal attacks.
"You don't want a free press. I bet you don't think the military should tell the press what it thinks in advance."
So I can't criticize the press without being accused of not wanting a free press? Typical left-wing tactic.
>>>Everyday I see pictures of young Iraqi children and an anonymous soldier, usually with a rifle. I see prisoners of war usually prostrate on the ground with their arms tied behind their back. Another common scene is explosion in the distance of one of our munitions. Only very rarely do I see a dead body, and I have not seen a single American body.
I don't watch TV so I don't know what footage is on the tube. These images are from newspapers and are mainly the ones on the front page.
Is this journalism? Is this a fair view of what it means to be at war?
What is your point Ergo? I don't see any pulling of punches when it comes to the video/photojournalists. I've seen dead childern, dead and wounded soldiers on both sides, live fire fights, destroyed buildings, hungry people, happy people, angry people... It looks like a war to me!
>I almost never read reports of the number of people killed military or civilian.
You need to get some different sources of news Ergo.
>I don't know if I have all the issues in there but my question to you is where is the Liberal press you are talking about?
The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, CNN, CBS, NPR etc. I'm not talking about the op-ed page, or the commentators, I'm talking about the so-called journalist. I posted an example a couple of days ago, guess you didn't read it.
>Where are the pro French pieces?
Haven't you been reading the stories the past few days about the imperialist Bush administration and their unwillingness to let the rightful participation of the UN [France, Germany, Russia] in the post-Saddam Iraq. Read the spin Ergo. Bush is an egomaniacal imperialist who's bucking the stalwarts of international law and righteousness.
Ergo, I want a FREE press that has a clearly defined line between REPORTING and COMMENTARY. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Reports from an embed reporter enroute to Saddam Intl. Airport claimed to see dead Iraqi solders in full chem gear - gas masks and all. Apparently they were expecting someone to use chem weapons. I don't think the threat of chem weapons is over yet.
Thanks for posting. Found this to be a realistic assessment of the political and social landscape of the region.
Whoaaa!! First of all, I don't lump "reporters" and "commentators" together under the vague label of "journalists". Reporters are supposed to report their observations untainted by their own personal opinions. Commentators are supposed to give their personal opinions, supported by facts or not.
Maureen Dowd is a commentator. I don't agree with her opinions 90% of the time, but her views aren't being presented as unbiased news. I don't claim "the media" has a left-wing bias because of Maureen Dowd, Helen Thomas, Elenor Clift, Nat Hentoff, etc.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly etc. are also commentators. I don't expect to get unbiased news from them either, just their opinions.
My complaint is with the so-called "main-stream" media, the reporters and newsroom editors who are supposed to be fair and balanced. Unfortunately, political opinions too often shape what news is reported, the frequency in which a story is reported, and HOW the story will be reported (the spin or takeaway).
I have a big problem with folks who call themselves "journalists". That term sends up a big bright signal flare whenever I hear it. Journalists like to wrap themselves in the respectability of the term "reporter" but claim they do ANALYSIS, not COMMENTARY. Call it what you will, journalists state more opinions than facts.
The left-wing has cornered the market on "journalism". Most honest journalist will admit to this, however they'll deny that their own political bias influences their stories. I find this laughable.
I whole-heartedly agree there are examples of media institutions with a staff of "journalists who lean right: Fox News, The Washington Times, etc. However, there are far more examples of those who lean left.
The Immutable Laws of Maureen Dowd
A guide to reading the New York Times columnist.
by Josh Chafetz
10/14/2002, Volume 008, Issue 05
MAUREEN DOWD'S New York Times columns used to be fun. Whether you agreed with her or not, they were witty and incisive. Sometimes they were even insightful. But recently, many readers are asking the same question as a letter writer to the Denver Post: "What has happened to Maureen Dowd lately? . . . she is no longer informative, clever or entertaining, just childish and vindictive." The truth is, Maureen Dowd hasn't changed; the times have. She's always been a formulaic writer, but the formula has never been less appropriate (and therefore more conspicuous) than it has since September 11, 2001. The formula consists of five basic principles that underlie almost all of her writing.
THE FIRST IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: The first and most important rule is what might be termed the People magazine principle: All political phenomena can be reduced to caricatures of the personalities involved. Any reference to policy concerns or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passé. And, of course, with every caricature goes a nickname.
The First Law is the reason that Dowd used to be so much fun to read--it's the reason she won the 1999 Pulitzer for her columns on the Lewinsky scandal. The Lewinsky scandal was all about personality; more than that, it was about personalities that lent themselves to caricature. So when Dowd wrote about President Clinton ("the Grand Canyon of need") and Monica Lewinsky (the "relentless" woman "clinging to some juvenile belief that the President loved her") and Linda Tripp (who "rides on a broomstick") and Ken Starr (a "sex addict"), it just seemed apt.
The problem is, the nation now has matters of life and death to attend to. But Dowd is still drawing caricatures. For instance, her September 25, 2002, column compares Bush administration officials to middle school "alpha girls" for snubbing Gerhard Schröder's German government after it ran for reelection on an anti-American platform. Says Dowd, "now we have the spectacle of the 70-year-old Rummy acting like a 16-year-old Heather, vixen-slapping those lower in the global hierarchy, trying to dominate and silence the beta countries with less money and fewer designer weapons."
Or consider her August 21 column about a meeting of top officials at Bush's ranch. Her analysis here consists of breaking the world into two opposing camps: the "Whack-Iraq tribe" and the "Pesky Questions tribe." The former includes "Rummy, . . . W., Cheney, Condi, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle." The latter includes "Mr. Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Wesley Clark." How subtle--only the ones she doesn't like get nicknames. The reason that the "Whack-Iraq'ers" are so "gung-ho" is that "the Cheney-Rummy-Condi Axis of Anti-Evil believes in unilateralism so fervently." It's just a character trait, see? They must have a multilateral fiber deficiency.
In any case, it can't be because they think that Iraq poses a serious and immediate threat. We know that, because in her column on the opposing camps in the Iraq debate, Dowd doesn't see fit actually to discuss Iraq at all. What bearing could that have on the debate? Likewise, in the "alpha girls" column, Dowd never considers that there could be sound reasons of state for snubbing Germany--for instance, a "forgive and forget" policy might encourage politicians in other countries to pander to crude anti-Americanism, a pandering that would have the effect of reinforcing and strengthening the sentiment among the general population. But let no such considerations emerge from Dowd's pen: The First Law forbids them.
THE SECOND IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: It's easier to whine than to take a stand or offer solutions. Consider this: In her many columns to date lobbing stinkbombs at the "Whack-Iraq'ers," she has yet to come out and say that she opposes war in Iraq. The reason, presumably, is that she would then have to actually confront and argue against the administration's reasons for attacking Iraq. Instead, she offers this commentary on Bush's U.N. address (from her September 15 column): "But there was no compelling new evidence. Mr. Bush offered only an unusually comprehensive version of the usual laundry list. Saddam is violating the sanctions, he tried to assassinate Poppy, he's late on his mortgage payments, he tips 10 percent, he has an unjustifiable fondness for 'My Way,' he gassed his own people, he doesn't turn down the front brim of his hat."
When confronted with a passage like that, it's hard to know where to begin, but we must be brave. First, notice how she trivializes not only Saddam's violation of U.N. sanctions but even the massacre at Halabja, by including them on "the usual laundry list" along with a joke about being a stingy tipper. Second, notice how she leaves out a few of the more important "laundry list" items--like the fact that Saddam continues to stockpile and build weapons of mass destruction and the fact that he funds terrorism. Finally, observe that she tells us there is "no compelling new evidence" without telling us why the old evidence--"the usual laundry list"--is insufficient. To do that would require considering policy arguments and offering alternative ways to combat Saddam's litany of abuses. Into such territory, Dowd is loath to stray.
And she did almost exactly the same thing during the Afghanistan campaign. On October 28, 2001, she asked "Are we quagmiring ourselves again?" Of course, she didn't offer an answer or any suggestions as to how to get out of a quagmire, if, indeed, we were in one. A week later, on the strength of a single misstep (the murder of CIA-friendly Abdul Haq), she wrote, "We're sophisticated; they're crude. We're millennial; they're medieval. We ride B-52's; they ride horses. And yet they're outmaneuvering us." No doubt spurred into action by Dowd's prod, American-backed forces captured Mazar-i-Sharif five days later, and Kabul fell four days after that. Just over a month after Dowd informed us that we were being outmaneuvered, the Taliban's last stronghold, Kandahar, fell.
THE THIRD IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: It is better to be cute than coherent. Along these lines, Dowd's favorite rhetorical device is parallelism. For example, from her June 12 column: "The Islamic enemy strums on our nerves to hurt our economy and get power. The American president strums on our nerves to help his popularity and retain power." And from August 18: "[Bush Sr.]'s proudest legacy, after all, was painstakingly stitching together a global coalition to stand up for the principle that one country cannot simply invade another without provocation. Now the son may blow off the coalition so he can invade another country without provocation." Her phrasing is so cute that the outrageous moral equivalence she's drawing almost slips by unnoticed: She just compared the president of the United States to the September 11 terrorists and to Saddam Hussein.
Of course, the parallels are total nonsense. The administration's terror warnings to the public (the subject of the first quote) may not have been handled perfectly, but their goal is hardly to terrorize the American public. Officials have to walk a fine line between scaring people too much and too often and not telling them enough (Dowd has repeatedly criticized the administration for withholding information). And Bush's desire to attack Iraq is hardly "without provocation": Baghdad is in violation of U.N. sanctions; Iraq takes regular shots at U.S. and British planes patrolling the no-fly zones; and there was the little matter of attempting to assassinate a former U.S. president. And that's not to mention the justifications on preemptive and humanitarian grounds.
But the worst example of Dowd's favoring cuteness over coherence comes from her August 21 column (yes, the same one featured under the First Law--it was quite a column). "We used to worry about a military coup against civilian authority," she wrote. "Now we worry about a civilian coup against military authority." Now, of course, Dowd is just being cute. Presumably she knows that civilian control over the military is one of the necessary conditions for democratic government, a condition that makes the very concept of a civilian coup against military authority incoherent. But she's using this bit of cuteness to make a point every bit as nonsensical as a literal reading of it. She's trying to argue that because several current and former military officers are distinctly less hawkish than some of the civilian leadership . . . well, it's not quite clear what, since she doesn't tell us where she stands on the issue (see the Second Law, above). But she thinks it ought to give us pause. She writes that Bush "signaled his civilian coup" by telling an AP reporter that he was reading Eliot Cohen's "Supreme Command." She gives a one-line summary of the book (it "attacks the Powell Doctrine and argues that civilian leaders should not defer to 'the fundamental caution' of whiny generals on grand strategy or use of force"), and then drops the matter. Actually addressing Cohen's point, it seems, would require too many words--words that wouldn't be nearly as cute as "Whack-Iraq'ers."
THE FOURTH IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: The particulars of my consumer-driven, self-involved life are of universal interest and reveal universal truths. Nowhere was this law more clearly illustrated than in Dowd's reaction to last fall's anthrax attacks. On October 17, 2001, for example, she opened her column with the line, "I am typing this wearing long black leather gloves." Dowd went on to explain that she had been wearing latex gloves, but she "felt the need for a more stylish sort of sterility" (a Dowd-like commentator might note ungenerously that this line describes her writing almost perfectly).
But for Dowd, fashion isn't just a barrier against germs--it's also her little way of fighting al Qaeda. So, she tells us on October 10, 2001: "I decide to defy the foul men who hate women. I wear high heels to church." The truth is, though, that what really scares her about the anthrax attacks is that the terrorists had the temerity to attack journalists! Again, from the October 17, 2001, column: "Has the creep from Al Qaeda been living in the eighth century so long he hasn't heard about not killing the messenger?" Terrorism is bad enough, but now it's personal.
Finally, on October 21, 2001, she broke down and confessed: "I'm a spoiled yuppie who desperately wants to go back to a time before we'd heard of microns and milling, aerosolization and clumps in the alveoli." And, of course, her wants, her fears, and her sense of style are just what we read the Times op-ed page to learn about.
THE FIFTH IMMUTABLE LAW OF DOWD: Europeans are always right. Whenever Dowd quotes a Continental, she allows the quote to stand on its own, as if it were, by virtue of the very Europeanness of its speaker, self-evidently true. Thus, on May 26, 2002, in the midst of President Bush's tour through Europe, she reported that "some Europeans sneered that 'Bully Bush' had turned into something even more irritating: a missionary." Three days later, she reported that "Parisians were indifferent to the president's arrival, and a few gave his motorcade the intercontinental finger of disapproval, as had some Berliners." Of course, the only European she seems actually to have spoken with is a French journalist at the Bush-Chirac press conference, who told her "with a grimace" that "Bush is so . . . Texan."
Fortunately, Dowd doesn't actually need to speak to people, because, as we learn in the same column, she can read the little cartoon thought bubbles that appear over their heads. While Bush is speaking, Chirac's thought bubble apparently reads, "Quel hick."
More recently, in a September 18, 2002, column that also exhibited classic Third Law behavior, Dowd wrote of the European desire to "contain the wild man, the leader with the messianic and relentless glint who is scaring the world"--President Bush, of course. Europeans "now act more nervous about the cowboy in the Oval Office who likes to brag on America as 'the greatest nation on the face of the Earth' than the thug in the Baghdad bunker." Not a word on how patently absurd it is to compare the democratically elected president of the United States to a mass-murdering, terrorist-sponsoring, anti-Semitic, expansionist despot. If the Europeans think that Bush is a missionary, a cowboy, a menace, and a hick, then he must be. And if the Europeans don't think Saddam poses a threat--then what are we so worried about?
OCCASIONALLY Dowd still turns out a good piece. Her June 5, 2002, column on squabbling between the CIA and the FBI worked well, because it was a petty, personality-based issue, thus lending itself to a petty, personality-based treatment. But the Clinton administration is ancient history; most issues can no longer appropriately be viewed through this prism. Any yet Maureen Dowd keeps plugging away with the same old formula. The Immutable Laws prove . . . well, immutable.
If you don't believe me, hang on to this article. And the next time you read a Dowd column, read it by the numbers.
Josh Chafetz is a graduate student in politics at Merton College, Oxford, and the co-editor of oxblog.blogspot.com, where the Immutable Laws of Dowd were developed with some help from readers (especially Stephen Green and Sean Roche).
Call me Nostradomus -
I predicted over two months ago Jessie Jackson would yet again offer his diplomatic services to negociate for POW releases AND Arafat would offer his services to negociate a surrender/exile for Saddam once U.S. troops enter Baghdad. Okay, the last prediction hasn't come true yet, but it looks likely.
I disagree with Kathleen Parker. I don't believe the media caught a "virus" just in the past two weeks. Maybe it's a birth defect?
Through a minefield, with Iraqi help
WAR DIARY
By Dana Lewis
NBC NEWS
NAJAF, Iraq, April 2 -- As units of the 101st Airborne moved into Najaf Tuesday, Iraqi civilians came forward on at least two occasions to point out minefields in their path. American commanders say that could be an indication that U.S. forces are beginning to win the trust of some Iraqis, a key goal of the U.S. and its allies in their fight to topple the government of Saddam Hussein.
A PLUME OF SMOKE was rising from the center of the city as we began advancing Wednesday morning in the northern suburbs with elements of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne. Hundreds of soldiers were moving forward, accompanied by others riding on armored personnel carriers from the 270th Armored Battalion, while the 1st Brigade of the 101st attacked from the south.
Some of the local residents came out of their homes and approached the U.S. forces, who searched them to make certain they were not armed and then let them go.
But one man began talking to us in Arabic and gesturing toward a nearby field. At first, we thought he used the field for growing crops and was worried that our heavy vehicles would damage them. But then we understood he was saying the field had been mined.
(The Washington Post reported a similar incident in the south of Najaf on Tuesday, where an elderly Iraqi man warned members of the 1st Brigade of a minefield in their path.)
Two of the tanks had already crossed the field and soldiers radioed to them to stop. We followed, moving carefully in the tracks of the tank treads. The gunners on the tanks saw more mines in the road ahead and began firing at the ground with their machine guns, blowing up at least four mines. When a mine exploded, the force could be felt 200 feet away.
About 10 minutes after we'd crossed the field, a U.S. Humvee behind us struck a mine and was severely damaged, with the right-hand seat destroyed. Fortunately, the driver was on the left-hand side and another soldier was on top, and neither was injured.
NO LOVE FOR SADDAM
A U.S. commander said the warning about the minefield was encouraging because Najaf is a city that U.S. officials had hoped might welcome U.S. assistance in getting rid of Saddam Hussein. As the site of the Tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed, Najaf is one of the holiest places in the world for Shiite Muslims, who constitute a majority of Iraq's population. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Najaf was among the first Iraqi cities to rebel, but the insurrection was brutally suppressed by Saddam, whose government is dominated by rival Sunni Muslims. Many believe America's failure to prevent that 1991 rebellion from being crushed partly explains why no mass uprising has occurred in this war.
As U.S. forces entered the northern edge of the city Wednesday, there was some gunfire, but most of the Iraqi irregular forces who had been defending the city seemed to have disappeared. They are seen as a threat, with mortars and AK-47 automatic weapons, but they appear to have no tanks or artillery.
The U.S. commanders took no chances, arraying heavy artillery on the city's outskirts and sending Apache attack helicopters buzzing overhead. For the most part, the artillery fired smoke shells to provide concealment as the U.S. troops advanced.
The armored vehicles went in ahead of the infantry, to probe the narrow streets and draw enemy fire, forcing the Iraqis to reveal their positions. The sound of machine gun fire was heard occasionally, but many streets were deserted.
NOT A FAIR FIGHT
On some streets, however, civilians crossed in front of U.S. tanks, raising fears of possible guerilla attacks by troops wearing civilian clothing. The American forces are on edge because of what they see as unethical conduct by the Iraqis.
There were reports Tuesday morning that the Iraqis were making mines in a building at the local university and that other irregular troops had grabbed a group of young men and used them as human shields.
The most worrisome report, from U.S. central Command, was that some Iraqi forces were hiding inside the Tomb of Ali, which is in downtown Najaf, and firing at their attackers. American commanders know that any damage to the mosque could enrage the Shiite population, so they want to avoid attacking the building. But at the same time they are obligated to return fire if it's endangering their position.
By Tuesday evening, much of the city was in the hands of the 101st Airborne. People came out of their houses smiling, trying in broken English to express how much they hate Saddam Hussein and how happy they are to see the American soldiers.
That may be a big boost for the morale of the U.S. troops here. They haven't felt good wiping out Iraqi soldiers who are running at them with AK-47s in pickup trucks and taxicabs. While they may have rocket-propelled grenades, they're basically committing suicide when they go against an M1A1 Abrams tank.
Members of one tank unit yesterday said there were no "high fives," and no great feelings of victory after one such encounter. They took on the enemy, they beat them, they did what they had to do. Now, they said, let's move on and get this done.
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Dana Lewis is an NBC News correspondent traveling with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq.
Nat Hentoff
Why I Didn't March This Time
Their Tongues Were Cut Out for Slandering Hussein
March 28th, 2003 3:30 PM
Often, the executions have been carried out by the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary group headed by Mr. Hussein's oldest son, 38-year-old Uday. These men, masked and clad in black, make the women kneel in busy city squares, along crowded sidewalks, or in neighborhood plots, then behead them with swords. The families of some victims have claimed they were innocent of any crime save that of criticizing Mr. Hussein. --John F. Burns, "How Many People Has Hussein Killed?" The New York Times, January 26, 2003
I participated in many demonstrations against the Vietnam War, including some civil disobedience--though I was careful not to catch the eyes of the cops, sometimes a way of not getting arrested. But I could not participate in the demonstrations against the war on Iraq. As I told The New York Sun in its March 14-16 roundup of New Yorkers for and against the war:
"There was the disclosure . . . when the prisons were briefly opened of the gouging of eyes of prisoners and the raping of women in front of their husbands, from whom the torturers wanted to extract information. . . . So if people want to talk about containing [Saddam Hussein] and don't want to go in forcefully and remove him, how do they propose doing something about the horrors he is inflicting on his people who live in such fear of him?"
I did not cite "weapons of mass destruction." Nor do I believe Saddam Hussein is a direct threat to this country, any more than the creators of the mass graves in the Balkans were, or the Taliban. And as has been evident for a long time, I am no admirer of George W. Bush.
The United Nations? Did the inspectors go into the prisons and the torture chambers? Would they have, if given more time? Did they interview the Mukhabarat, Saddam's dreaded secret police?
An Iraqi in Detroit wanted to send a message to the anti-war protesters: "If you want to protest that it's not OK to send your kids to fight, that's OK. But please don't claim to speak for the Iraqis."
In The Guardian, a British paper that can hardly be characterized as conservative, there was a dispatch from Safwan, Iraq, liberated in the first days of the war: "Ajami Saadoun Khilis, whose son and brother were executed under the Saddam regime, sobbed like a child on the shoulder of The Guardian's Egyptian translator. He mopped the tears but they kept coming. 'You just arrived,' he said. 'You're late. What took you so long?' "
The United Nations? In 1994, Kofi Annan, then head of the UN's peacekeeping operations, blocked any use of UN troops in Rwanda even though he was told by his representative there that the genocide could be stopped before it started.
Bill Clinton refused to act as well, instructing the State Department not to use the word genocide because then the United States would be expected to do something. And President Clinton instructed Madeleine Albright, then our representative to the UN, to block any possible attempts to intervene despite Kofi Annan. Some 800,000 lives could have been saved.
The United Nations? Where Libya, Syria, and Sudan are on the Human Rights Commission? The UN is crucial for feeding people and trying to deal with such plagues as AIDS; but if you had been in a Hussein torture chamber, would you, even in a state of delirium, hope for rescue from the UN Security Council?
From Amnesty International, for whom human rights are not just a slogan, on Iraq: "Common methods of physical torture included electric shocks or cigarette burns to various parts of the body, pulling out fingernails, rape. . . . Two men, Zaher al-Zuhairi and Fares Kadhem Akia, reportedly had their tongues cut out for slandering the president by members of Feda'iyye Saddam, a militia created in 1994. The amputations took place in a public square in Diwaniya City, south of Baghdad."
As John Burns of The New York Times wrote in January: "History may judge that the stronger case [for an American-led invasion] . . . was the one that needed no [forbidden arms] inspectors to confirm: that Saddam Hussein, in his 23 years in power, plunged this country into a bloodbath of medieval proportions, and exported some of that terror to his neighbors."
When it appeared that Tony Blair's political career was near extinction, he gave a speech in the House of the Commons, as quoted in the March 18 issue of The Guardian:
"We must face the consequences of the actions we advocate. For me, that means all the dangers of war. But for others, opposed to this course, it means--let us be clear--that the Iraqi people, whose only true hope of liberation lies in the removal of Saddam, for them, the darkness will close back over them again; and he will be free to take his revenge upon those he must know wish him gone.
"And if this house now demands that at this moment, faced with this threat from this regime, that British troops are pulled back, that we turn away at the point of reckoning, and that is what it means--what then?
"What will Saddam feel? Strengthened beyond measure. What will the other states who tyrannise their people, the terrorists who threaten our existence, what will they take from that?. . . Who will celebrate and who will weep?"
The letters section of The New York Times is sometimes more penetrating than the editorials. A March 23 letter from Lawrence Borok: "As someone who was very active in the [anti-Vietnam War] protests, I think that the antiwar activists are totally wrong on this one. Granted, President Bush's insensitive policies in many areas dear to liberals (I am one) naturally make me suspicious of his motives. But even if he's doing it for all the wrong reasons, have they all forgotten about the Iraqi people?"
And, in the March 23 New York Times Magazine, Michael Ignatieff, a longtime human rights investigator, wrote of "14,000 'writers, academics, and other intellectuals'--many of them my friends--[who] published a petition against the war . . . condemning the Iraqi regime for its human rights violations and supporting 'efforts by the Iraqi opposition to create a democratic, multi-ethnic, and multireligious Iraq.' " But they say, he adds, that waging war at this time is "morally unacceptable."
"I wonder," Ignatieff wrote--as I also wonder--"what their support for the Iraqi opposition amounts to."
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Next week: The conclusion of my series on affirmative action
Cheney mis-calculated the degree of fear among the civilian population - their fear of Saddam's retribution. Does that mean he was wrong in his assertion that the vast majority of the population would rather see the regime vanquished?
Ergo, I believe the problem we've seen over the past two weeks is the interpretation of such statements, not the statements itself. What Rumfeld said is that "it's not unreasonable to suspect the same (mass surrenders) might occur" but such "hypotheticals" shouldn't be counted on.
I don't know when Rumsfeld was quoted in the interview cited, but it seems to be before CENTCOM and the Pentagon promoted a different option altogether. CENTCOM didn't want mass surrenders, so they leafleted Iraqi troops instructing them to lay down their arms and to return to their barracks. That hasn't stopped the media from criticizing the administration for over-optimistic expectations. Their proof? Lack of mass surrenders.
Saral probably complains that "minute rice" takes too long, much longer than a minute.
"And military conflict could be difficult."
Who in this administration predicted that this war would be over in two weeks? Three weeks? Four weeks?????
Do you believe Gulf I was quick?