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Should be interesting to see how it plays out
I did mispeak- there's no proof on that , yet.
Sorry, but that just doesn't match the reality of the world at that time. Look at the timeline of events in the relations between the 2 countries:
Under Kennedy- The bay of pigs fiasco that lend to the confrontation in Cuba that we actually lost- having to remove US missles form Turkey. He began the Vietnam war. East Germany erested the Berlin Wall
Under Johnson-Communist regimes were established in South Yemen and the Congo. China exploded it's first hydrogen bomb.
Under Nixon- A marxist regime established in Benin. He fought in Vietnam until watergate diluted his power and we didn't have the will to fight on
Under Ford- South Vitenam, Cambodia and Laos fell to communism. Communist regimes were established in Guines, Ethpoia, Angola< and Mozambique. Million of paople were killed under communist rule in Southeat Asia>
Under Carter-Marxists came to power in NIcaragua, The seychelles and Grenada. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan> ON May 22, 1977 Cater gave a speech exhorting Americans to asbandon their "inordinate fear of Communism" Days later CUba dispatched a military force to ethiopia. TRhat doesn't sound like a regime that is about to crumble- their sphere of influence was expanding. There was not one president who thought that the Soviet Union could be beaten. The best that they hoped for was "detente" and coexistence. Reagan decided that we could win, which was a great departure from his predecessors. Even Kissinger in 1976 siad that he thought "We cannot prevent the growth of the Soviet empire" Kissinger, later in his book Diplomacy said " Reagan was the first president to present a direct moral challenge to the Soviet Union"
He installed Pershing missles in Europe. He invaded Grenada,He openly supported anti- communist regimes in Angola, Afghanistan,Ehtiopia, Poland and Nicaragua. He opposed Russia in all corners of the world and weakened them militarily, economically,and psychologically.. They just couldn't compete with our buildup.They had to begin withdrawing some troops.The final straw was the SDI project. The soviets were terrified of it, they knew they could pose no threat to us if that system was in place. In 1989 they left Afghanistan, and the wall came down in Berlin. That was all she wrote.
The same people whoa t the time opposed his every effort now say that the soviets system would have collapsed anyway. Eventually, yes, that might have been true, but it is undeniable that by attacking them ferverently, he accelerated the whole process. The Vast majority of he Democrats were appeasers. Look at the Kerry campaign leaflet from 1984 where he lists opposition to EVERY missle system that was proposed. The comman wisdom at the time was that reagan was mad and that his plsn would never work. Those same people are now saying that they would have collapsed of their own anyway. I think the evidence points otherwise.
And in terms of appeasement, communism/socialsim was popular in the country during the depression. It wasnt until later on that the threat it cuased was really taken seriously. There was a project (venona) of the CIA that broke the soviet spy code that revealed that a number of high level officials in the state department were actually spies. This information was largely ignored. The true nature of the threat was not fully understood until later
On the second issue, we were also involved in arms sales to Iran as well-remember Iran Contra. Iran and Iraq were at war at the time. The theory was to arm both sides and weaken them both.
The promotion of chemical weapons is of course indefensible.
I agree in theory that some sort of organization like the UN or IAEA could be helpful. It's just that looking at the un's role in the oil-for-food scandal and thier tendency to pass resolutions without doing any follow through, I just wonder how effective they could ever be. Some sort of regulatory body with a real mandate and a strong backing of consequences for violations would be a great help. It just doesn't seem like the UN or IAEA is equipped to fill that role.
I think that Iran would probably be happier to obliterate Isreal than occupy it
Yes, I can "simple respond"
I was at least inclined to actually read the book that outlined the charges in great detail with much backup documentation ( although definitive information is not available in some cases due to Kerrys refusal to sign the form 180 to release ALL his records as he told Tim Russert he would do on national TV months ago )
There must have been a grain of truth in their assertion that Kerry lied about his "Christmas in Cambodia" fantasy because he has had to admit that that never happened. There must have been a grain of truth that his first purple heart was due to a self inflicted wound, becasue his people have now admitted that "that may be true'. There must have been a grain of truth to their assertion that Kerry lied that his boat was the only one to stay when the other boat was mined as he asserted in Tour Of Duty and again during his speech at the Demo. convention. Kerry has now admitted that that was not true and in point of fact his was the only boat that FLED and left the scene where the other boats was incapacitated.
So, I guess you were incorrect when you asserted that there was "no truth" in those allegations.
Using the fact that Nixon didn't come done hard on Kerry back in the 70's to prove that therefore all the allegations must be baslesss is absurd. It might be an interesting sidelight question, but logically it cariies no authority.
It's like you assertion that because Bush chose not to respond to the trash written by Kitty kelly he must be guilty as well.
Sheeeesh
Just like Reagans "Evil Empire" speech created more destabilization and acceleration of nuclear ambitions in the Soviet Union.
NOT
His refusal to try and appease them and his decision to try and win the Cold War led directly to the collpase of the Soviet empire,and freedom for millions .
No big conspiracy theories here as I never paid much mind to Zeev in the first place anyway. Anybody curious coulod easily check back on his posts from 2-3 years ago and I would guess you would see the difference as well.
Not a subject that means anything to me one way or the other
As I said I haven't read any of your posts for over 2 years and the difference in the level of language used is striking. I really don't care one way or the other, just noticed it and thought I would point it out to see if other had noticed. The Zeev that I read previously was very literate and had excellent command of the language. I don't see how even if it was your 4th language, that could have deteriorated so markedly over the years.
"that book's historical details have been greatly discredited."
From the Beldar blog:
A challenge to those who claim that the SwiftVets' allegations have been "debunked" or are "unsubstantiated"
My lawyer readers will immediately recognize this as an invitation to Kerry supporters to make a motion for partial summary judgment on the SwiftVets' claims.
This short paragraph from a New York Times article perfectly illustrates the liberal media's widespread characterization of the results to date of the SwiftVets' campaign (boldface added):
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which drew national attention with advertisements making unsubstantiated attacks against Mr. Kerry's military service, has less money and uses several strategies to stretch its dollars, said one of its leaders, John O'Neill.
To find a similar example from the blogosphere, one need look no farther than Andrew Sullivan's passing dismissal of the SwiftVets' campaign (boldface added):
As word spread, anti-Kerry forces sent in more money to the Swift Boat Veterans for truth website, allowing them to ramp up their ad efforts. And within a few days, the old media was forced to cover the claims extensively — even if much of their coverage amounted to a debunking.
As someone who's followed the SwiftVets' campaign closely — someone who's read Brinkley's Tour of Duty, O'Neill's Unfit for Command, and Kranish et al.'s John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography cover to cover, plus all of the mainstream media reports I could find on the internet and a goodly portion of what's appeared from both political sides of the blogosphere — I'm simply stunned to read these sorts of statements.
I can think of one major SwiftVets allegation on which they've arguably failed to offer more than circumstantial evidence — that Kerry "gamed the system" to get his medals. Kerry's stonewall — his refusal to sign Standard Form 180 and thereby release the documentation that should, if it exists, reveal still-hidden details like how he came to get his first Purple Heart — has been effective in keeping the SwiftVets from nailing down that point with direct evidence. Yet the circumstantial case is powerful — Kerry's commanding officer at the time, Skip Hibbard, says he refused to approve that Purple Heart in December 1968, yet Kerry showed up with the medal anyway in March 1969 in some as-yet-unexplained fashion.
I can think of other SwiftVets allegations on which there is directly competing evidence that requires the public to draw conclusions. For example, does one credit Adm. Bill Schachte's account of his first-hand knowledge of how Kerry received the trivial wound that led to his first Purple Heart, or does one credit Zaldonis' and Runyan's claims that Schachte wasn't aboard the skimmer? Which of the eyewitnesses does one choose to find credible on the question of whether Kerry was or wasn't under enemy fire when he plucked Rassmann from the Bay Hap River? Other allegations require an exercise of subjective judgment. For example, was Kerry's pursuit and dispatching of a single VC soldier sufficiently valorous to merit his Silver Star?
But on none of these issues I've just listed have the SwiftVets' allegations been "debunked" or proven "unsubstantiated." Andrew Sullivan or the NYT repeating over and over that they have been simply don't make them so. To employ the legal jargon of summary judgment proceedings, a rational factfinder could conclude from the evidence that the SwiftVets have produced on each of these allegations that, indeed, they're true. A trial judge who dismissed these allegations outright, without letting the factfinder (typically a jury) consider them, would certainly be reversed on appeal and told to let the jury do its work. They haven't, in lay terms, been "debunked" — but rather, they're fiercely disputed by competent evidence (some of it eyewitness, some of it circumstantial, some of it documentary).
Hence my challenge for the weekend to my readers — you're probably a minority, as these things go, but I know from my comments pages that you're out there — who may agree with the NYT or Mr. Sullivan:
Can you identify even one specific and material SwiftVets allegation that you believe to have been fully "debunked" or fully proven to be "unsubstantiated"?
Some ground rules for this challenge that I think are not unreasonable:
By "specific," I mean to exclude sweeping conclusions like "John Kerry wasn't as big a hero as he's made out." By material, I mean to exclude trivia like "the VC soldier John Kerry shot was in a uniform instead of in a loincloth." And I ask that if you're to make an honest effort to meet my challenge, you provide quotes and links, both to the SwiftVets' allegations and to the evidence that you offer to show debunking or lack of substantiation.
If you rely on documents — for example, Larry Thurlow's Bronze Star citation as support for the proposition that he and Kerry were under enemy fire after PCF 3 was struck by a mine — then to reach "debunked" status, you ought to show that there are no contrary eyewitness accounts to those documents, nor other contrary documents. Otherwise, you've merely established that a dispute exists — what lawyers would call a "genuine issue of fact" that must be resolved by a judgment call as to which side has the greater weight of the credible evidence.
Saying your side has the greater weight of the evidence isn't "debunking" or showing that something is "unsubstantiated," it's saying that your side ought to ultimately prevail on the factual dispute, and that's a very different kettle of fish. To use a converse example by way of illustration: I would argue that the "Christmas in Cambodia" story repeatedly told by Sen. Kerry has indeed been thoroughly debunked and proved unsubstantiated — that is, there simply is no credible evidence from which any rational factfinder could conclude that Kerry's claim to have spent Christmas 1968 several miles inside Cambodia, under friendly fire and on a secret mission, was truthful.
I of course reserve the right to offer a rebuttal, as will, I'm sure, my like-minded readers. But I'm genuinely curious about this, and will try to summarize the results of this challenge fairly in a new post sometime early next week.
Posted by Beldar at 06:52 AM in Politics, SwiftVets / Permalink "
Go ahead, who ever you are, here's your chance to be a hero on the blogosphere- prove Beldar wrong. He's a trial lawyer by the way so get someone to do some research for you.
This is not the same Zeev- this is too funny
"
I haven't read any of Zeevs posts for a long time until this one, and this seems very different than the Zeev that I read before. The grammar and syntax are completely different-
-"par and parcel????"
- folly conflict????
_ does he really expect Bush to respond to the charges of Kelly in her trash book about his supposed drug use????
- "tax burden to retiree"????
_"We Republicans must admit it, our party has been kidnapped by extremists of our own, if you are a real Republican, you'll do what I will do, make a major effort to defeat Bush, since only a major defeat will bring back the party to its original roots."
This is a sentence that seems written by someone to whom english is a second language. Making the charge that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor beforehand.
This was not written by the same Zeev that I knew previously.
Anybody else notice this??
Battling for Iraq
By David H. Petraeus
Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page B07
BAGHDAD -- Helping organize, train and equip nearly a quarter-million of Iraq's security forces is a daunting task. Doing so in the middle of a tough insurgency increases the challenge enormously, making the mission akin to repairing an aircraft while in flight -- and while being shot at. Now, however, 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up.
The institutions that oversee them are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously in the face of an enemy that has shown a willingness to do anything to disrupt the establishment of the new Iraq.
(An Iraqi National Guard Soldier/Aladin Abdel Naby -- Reuters)
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• Missing Hues in the Debates (Post, Sept. 26, 2004)
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In recent months, I have observed thousands of Iraqis in training and then watched as they have conducted numerous operations. Although there have been reverses -- not to mention horrific terrorist attacks -- there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security, something they are keen to do. The future undoubtedly will be full of difficulties, especially in places such as Fallujah. We must expect setbacks and recognize that not every soldier or policeman we help train will be equal to the challenges ahead.
Nonetheless, there are reasons for optimism. Today approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection forces are performing a wide variety of security missions. Equipment is being delivered. Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished.
Most important, Iraqi security forces are in the fight -- so much so that they are suffering substantial casualties as they take on more and more of the burdens to achieve security in their country. Since Jan. 1 more than 700 Iraqi security force members have been killed, and hundreds of Iraqis seeking to volunteer for the police and military have been killed as well.
Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations. Two of these battalions, along with the Iraqi commando battalion, the counterterrorist force, two Iraqi National Guard battalions and thousands of policemen recently contributed to successful operations in Najaf. Their readiness to enter and clear the Imam Ali shrine was undoubtedly a key factor in enabling Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to persuade members of the Mahdi militia to lay down their arms and leave the shrine.
In another highly successful operation several days ago, the Iraqi counterterrorist force conducted early-morning raids in Najaf that resulted in the capture of several senior lieutenants and 40 other members of that militia, and the seizure of enough weapons to fill nearly four 7 1/2-ton dump trucks.
Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January, in time to help with security missions during the Iraqi elections at the end of that month.
Iraqi National Guard battalions have also been active in recent months. Some 40 of the 45 existing battalions -- generally all except those in the Fallujah-Ramadi area -- are conducting operations on a daily basis, most alongside coalition forces, but many independently. Progress has also been made in police training. In the past week alone, some 1,100 graduated from the basic policing course and five specialty courses. By early spring, nine academies in Iraq and one in Jordan will be graduating a total of 5,000 police each month from the eight-week course, which stresses patrolling and investigative skills, substantive and procedural legal knowledge, and proper use of force and weaponry, as well as pride in the profession and adherence to the police code of conduct.
Iraq's borders are long, stretching more than 2,200 miles. Reducing the flow of extremists and their resources across the borders is critical to success in the counterinsurgency. As a result, with support from the Department of Homeland Security, specialized training for Iraq's border enforcement elements began earlier this month in Jordan.
Regional academies in Iraq have begun training as well, and more will come online soon. In the months ahead, the 16,000-strong border force will expand to 24,000 and then 32,000. In addition, these forces will be provided with modern technology, including vehicle X-ray machines, explosive-detection devices and ground sensors.
Outfitting hundreds of thousands of new Iraqi security forces is difficult and complex, and many of the units are not yet fully equipped. But equipment has begun flowing. Since July 1, for example, more than 39,000 weapons and 22 million rounds of ammunition have been delivered to Iraqi forces, in addition to 42,000 sets of body armor, 4,400 vehicles, 16,000 radios and more than 235,000 uniforms.
Considerable progress is also being made in the reconstruction and refurbishing of infrastructure for Iraq's security forces. Some $1 billion in construction to support this effort has been completed or is underway, and five Iraqi bases are already occupied by entire infantry brigades.
Numbers alone cannot convey the full story. The human dimension of this effort is crucial. The enemies of Iraq recognize how much is at stake as Iraq reestablishes its security forces. Insurgents and foreign fighters continue to mount barbaric attacks against police stations, recruiting centers and military installations, even though the vast majority of the population deplores such attacks. Yet despite the sensational attacks, there is no shortage of qualified recruits volunteering to join Iraqi security forces. In the past couple of months, more than 7,500 Iraqi men have signed up for the army and are preparing to report for basic training to fill out the final nine battalions of the Iraqi regular army. Some 3,500 new police recruits just reported for training in various locations. And two days after the recent bombing on a street outside a police recruiting location in Baghdad, hundreds of Iraqis were once again lined up inside the force protection walls at another location -- where they were greeted by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
I meet with Iraqi security force leaders every day. Though some have given in to acts of intimidation, many are displaying courage and resilience in the face of repeated threats and attacks on them, their families and their comrades. I have seen their determination and their desire to assume the full burden of security tasks for Iraq.
There will be more tough times, frustration and disappointment along the way. It is likely that insurgent attacks will escalate as Iraq's elections approach. Iraq's security forces are, however, developing steadily and they are in the fight. Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition -- and now NATO -- support, this trend will continue. It will not be easy, but few worthwhile things are.
The writer, an Army lieutenant general, commands the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq. He previously commanded the 101st Airborne Division, which was deployed in Iraq from March 2003 until February 2004.
"I love to imagine what the conservatives in this country would say if France suddenly told the US we couldn't do this research."
The problem with this line of argument is that you're assuming a moral equivalence between the US and Iran and North Korea. I don't see our nuclear arsenal as a threat to the world that would be used without reason.
Iran on the otherhand,could not be trusted to not use their nukes to destroy Isreal without any provocation other than the fact that they're Jewish. Doesn't the instability and paranoia of the North Korean leadeship scare you given that they have access to nuclear weapons?
The thing is that absent any kind of strict supervision (that was ended long ago) Sadaam would have pursued nuclear weapons and would have been a serious threat. would you agree with that?With the addition of ballsitic missles that he was developing, he was a threat to a very wide area.
I'll see if I can copy it for you
Also this:
As has been widely reported, Wilson conducted a half-baked investigation into the uanium report. But here is the most astonishing fact uncovered by the Senate Intelligence Committee: in his book and in countless interviews and op-ed pieces over the past year, Wilson has been lying about the contents of his own report to the CIA!:
The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.
Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
So: what Wilson actually told the CIA, contrary to his own oft-repeated claims, is that he was told by the former mining minister of Niger that in 1998, Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from that country, and that Iraq's overture was renewed the following year. What Wilson reported to the CIA was exactly the same as what President Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address: there was evidence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
Recall Wilson's famous op-ed in the New York Times, published on July 6, 2003, which ignited the whole firestorm over the famous "sixteen words" in Bush's State of the Union speech. In that op-ed, Wilson identified himself as the formerly-unnamed person who had gone to Niger to investigate rumors of a possible uranium deal between Iraq and Niger. Here are the key words in Wilson's article:
n January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them.
It was this flat-out lie about what Wilson learned in Niger, and what he reported to the CIA upon his return, that fueled the "sixteen words" controversy and led to the publication of Wilson's best-selling account, titled, ironically, The Politics of Truth.
Josh Marshall just happens to be a coproducer of the CBS show that was supposed to be aired on this tpoic. Do you think the reason they won't run it really has to do with timing near the election?? That didn't stop them 2 weeks ago from airing claims based on obivouly forged documents. The article consists of hearsay about Marshalls supposed contacts in the CIA. It's not "the whole story" as there are credible sources that contradict that and have done so on the record
In the article that Marshall quotes the SIS states that :
1 Iraq was intent on sourcing the necessary raw materials to continues their nuclear program
2SIS comtinued to believe the Iraquis were attempting to negotiate the purchase of uranium from Niger. We conclude that was reasonable.
Read the FT article- it goes into more detail.
I hope CBS does go ahead and airs the program
It's not really possible to disprove what Wilson said in his article- he just recounted his memories of what occured there. He sipped mint tea for 8 days and and met with officials who assured him that no sales had been made. You left out this quote from the Times article
" Administration officials also claim that Wilson took at face value the claims of Nigerien officials that they had not sold uranium ore to Saddam Hussein. (Such sales would have been forbidden under then-existing United Nations sanctions on Iraq.) "He spent eight days in Niger and he concluded that Niger denied the allegation." Fleischer told reporters last week. "Well, typically nations don't admit to going around nuclear nonproliferation,"
Doesn't that make at least a little sense to you?
HItchens wasn't implying anything. Did you read the FT article I mentioned. It was a front page story with the following headline:
"
58. FRONT PAGE - FIRST SECTION: Intelligence backs claims Iraq had talks on uranium Requires subscription
By Mark Huband, Security Correspondent
Financial Times, Jun 28, 2004
Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the...
59. "
Rather than recounting their liquid consumption, the article deals with intelligence agencies doing throrough research and providing facts to back up their position.
I could quote you several instances where he has been caught in lies, but I really don't think it would matter to you.
Even Kerry, who devoted a page on his web site to Wilson, ahs seen the light. That page was dissapeared without comment when he was first discredited.
It does come down to an issue of credibility. Someone who was supposed to investigate a criminal act, proceeds by asking the people who would have been involved in the criminal act if they were guilty. Shockingly, they refused to incriminate themselves. Case closed. Forget the Senate Intelligence Report that discredits Wilson- that was what- something I made up???
"Wilson has never been discredited"
OK, to bolster that claim, you use an article by Wilson himself. I don't see how that could be persuasive to anybody.
The next quote is from July, 2003. The British agency involved did another report and cited evidence that showed that they were indeed correct in that Iraq had been interested in purchasing yellowcake>
Here's an article by Christofer Hitchens that cites a Senate report snd an article IN the June 28th Financial Times regarding the credibility of Wilson. It also notes that the the original British report has not been disavowed or withdrawn.
Of course discredit is a subjective thing and certain paople will never admit that regardless of any information provided to them
Two recent reports allow us to revisit one of the great non-stories, and one of the great missed stories, of the Iraq war argument. The non-story is the alleged martyrdom of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wilson, supposed by many to have suffered cruel exposure for their commitment to the truth. The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.
The Senate's report on intelligence failures would appear to confirm that Valerie Plame did recommend her husband Joseph Wilson for the mission to Niger. In a memo written to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, she asserted that Wilson had "good relations with both the Prime Minister and the former Minister of Mines [of Niger], not to mention lots of French contacts." This makes a poor fit with Wilson's claim, in a recent book, that "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." (It incidentally seems that she was able to recommend him for the trip because of the contacts he'd made on an earlier trip, for which she had also proposed him.)
Wilson's earlier claim to the Washington Post that, in the CIA reports and documents on the Niger case, "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong," was also false, according to the Senate report. The relevant papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after he made his trip. Wilson now lamely says he may have "misspoken" on this. (See Susan Schmidt's article in the July 10 Washington Post.)
Continue Article
Now turn to the front page of the June 28 Financial Times for a report from the paper's national security correspondent, Mark Huband. He describes a strong consensus among European intelligence services that between 1999 and 2001 Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its "yellow cake" uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. The bogus document produced by an Italian con man in October 2002, which has caused such embarrassment, was therefore more like a forgery than a fake: It was a fabricated version of a true bill.
Given the CIA's institutional hostility to the "regime change" case, the blatantly partisan line taken in public by Wilson himself, and the high probability that an Iraqi delegation had at least met with suppliers from Niger, how wrong was it of Robert Novak to draw attention to the connection between Plame and Wilson's trip? Or of someone who knew of it to tell Novak?
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, notionally violated by this disclosure, is a ridiculous piece of legislation to begin with. It relies in practice on a high standard of proof, effectively requiring that the government demonstrate that someone knowingly intended to divulge the identity of an American secret agent operating under cover, with the intention of harming that agent. The United States managed to get through World War II and most of the Cold War without such an act on its books. The obvious disadvantage of the law, apart from its opacity, is that it could be used to stifle legitimate inquiry about what the CIA was up to. Indeed, that was its original intent. It was put forward by right-wingers who wanted to stifle and if possible arrest Philip Agee, a defector from the 1970s whose whistle-blowing book Inside The Company had exposed much CIA wrongdoing. The act is now being piously cited by liberals to criminalize the disclosure that someone who shuttles dangerously "under cover" between Georgetown and Virginia and takes a surreptitious part in an open public debate, works for the agency and has a track record on a major issue.
To say this is not to defend the Bush administration, which typically managed to flourish the only allegation made about Niger that had been faked, and which did not have the courage to confront Mr. and Mrs. Wilson in public with their covert political agenda. But it does draw attention to an interesting aspect of this whole debate: the increasing solidarity of the left with the CIA. The agency disliked Ahmad Chalabi and was institutionally committed to the view that the Saddam regime in Iraq was a) secular and b) rationally interested in self-preservation. It repeatedly overlooked important evidence to the contrary, even as it failed entirely to infiltrate jihadist groups or to act upon FBI field reports about their activity within our borders. Bob Woodward has a marvelous encapsulating anecdote in his recent book: George Tenet on Sept. 11 saying that he sure hopes this isn't anything to do with those people acting suspiciously in the flight schools. ... The case for closing the CIA and starting again has been overwhelming for some time. But many liberals lately prefer, for reasons of opportunism, to take CIA evidence at face value.
I prefer the good old days. It was always alleged against Philip Agee, quite falsely, that he had identified Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens who was gunned down by Greek anarchists in 1975. In fact, Agee had never mentioned his name in any connection. This did not inhibit the authors of the Protection Act from going ahead, or Barbara Bush from saying in her memoirs that Agee had fingered Welch. I actually contacted Agee at that time, pointing out that the book was being published in London and suggesting that he sue. He successfully got Mrs. Bush to change the wording of her paperback version. But we are still stuck with the gag law that resulted from the original defamation, and it is still being invoked to prevent us from discovering what our single worst federal agency is really up to.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.
Kerry: Bush Made Iraq Terrorist Haven, Cost U.S. Jobs
by Scott Ott
(2004-09-24) -- President George Bush has made Iraq a magnet for terrorists and as a result has deprived New York City, Washington and other major American cities of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of economic activity.
"Say what you will about terrorism, and I'm not making any value judgements, but it's an industry that generates huge cash streams for construction, medical and legal services, law enforcement and other key economic sectors," said Mr. Kerry. "By invading Iraq, George W. Bush sent all of that cash overseas. It's another example of how this administration has outsourced our future."
"If we weren't spending that $200 billion making Iraq a terrorist haven, we would have money to put 150,000 fully-armed homeland security agents on the streets of New York, D.C. and L.A.," said Mr. Kerry, a professional Vietnam veteran who is also a U.S. Senator, "And we'd have enough money left over to make sure every one of those street-corner soldiers had full body armor."
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Kerry Offers Allawi Guided Tour of Iraq
by Scott Ott
(2004-09-24) -- Democrat presidential contender John Forbes Kerry today offered to give Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi a guided tour of Iraq to clear up misunderstandings that Mr. Allawi has about the situation in his own nation.
"I'm grateful to Sen. Kerry for his generous offer," said Mr. Allawi at a joint Rose Garden news conference with President George Bush. "I'm sure he has a much clearer perspective on events in my homeland than I do."
A spokesman for the Kerry-Edwards campaign said the tour will help Prime Minister Allawi to "see the ugly face of American foreign policy and petro-imperialism, and strip him of his misplaced optimism."
Asked about Mr. Kerry's trip to Iraq, President Bush said, "He might as well go now, because after I'm re-elected, he'll probably get called up in the draft."
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Kerry: I'll Kill Bin Laden with My Bare Hands
by Scott Ott
(2004-09-24) -- As part of his continued effort to portray himself as tougher on terrorism than President Bush, Democrat rival John Forbes Kerry said today, "When I'm President of the United States, I will kill Usama bin Laden with my own bare hands."
"George W. Bush let bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, because Bush never served in combat," said Mr. Kerry, a professional Vietnam veteran who is also a U.S. Senator. "When I'm president I will make it my personal priority to track down bin Laden and slay him with these mighty, sinewy hands."
Mr. Kerry said he would "hunt bin Laden like a migratory waterfowl--pursuing him on bicycle, windsurfing board, skis and even my family's SUV if necessary. Yes, I'm so serious about defending America from terror that I'm willing to sully the atmosphere for a time, if that's what it takes."
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What about the fact that the story was inappropriate because it was based on a lie? The story was about forged memos involved in the yellowcake uranium matter. I wonder why CBS would be leery of running a story based on forged memos- lol
The thrust of the stories was that the forged memos that showed Iraqi interest in the uranium is what fooled Bush and the other foreign- mainly British- intelligence services that investigated it. It was used by Bush as a rationale for action against Iraq.
Bush was soundly criticized by Joe Wilson and others after it was found out that the memos were forged.
The only thing is that Bush came out with his statement and the British intelligence report came out BEFORE the date on the memo. It had no influence on their decision. Wilson's story about this and other matters has been completely discredited. British and other foreign intelligence services have come fotht with additional evidence that Iraq indeed had expressed interest in purchasing the uranium. Maybe the fact that the thesis that the show was based on has been proven to be false is the reason that they decided that it was "inappropriate", but then again they are CBS, so you never know.
How is that relevant to the post I made questioning your assertion that it was only the reps that engage in character assasination? MY point was that it would be naive to ignore all the character hits form the highest level of the dem party- gores "digital brownshirts"etc etc ad infinitum.
Do you deny that the dems are engaged in the same thing in at least the same volume as the reps?
Lets get real here- the dem 527's have outspent the repubs by factors of 10. The bush-hitler analogy gets dragged out daily. It's politics and is a fact of life utilized by both sides. It has been a demo mainstay as well, don't you think?
Chris:
September 24, 2004 — CLINTONISTA-turned- John-Kerry-strategist Joe Lockhart’s account of his role in Memogate boils down to this: I did not have National Guard conversations with that man, Mr. Burkett.
Even though Lockhart called Bill Burkett at the request of CBS producer Mary Mapes, who had alerted him that Burkett was providing records that Dan Rather planned to use to accuse President Bush of shirking National Guard duty.
Lockhart’s “I did not” claim may well turn out to be more truthful than ex-boss Bill Clinton’s denial of sex with Monica Lewinsky. But if so, then Lockhart has gone from a very hard-nosed political player to a lazy old softie.
Imagine you’re Lockhart and you’ve just become a top strategist for the struggling Kerry effort, brought in to shake things up and get the campaign into “fight back” mode. Then imagine that a producer calls with a hot tip and phone number and says please call this guy who’s being “helpful” and has some dirt on Bush’s Guard records that CBS is planning to use in a big Dan Rather story.
“She basically said there’s a guy who is being helpful on the story who wants to talk to you,” Lockhart told the Associated Press, adding that Mapes also spoke of records “that might move the story forward. She didn’t tell me what they said.”
So Lockhart calls this guy after being told he has the dirt that just might shift the 2004 race in Kerry’s direction — yet Lockhart claims he didn’t ask a single question about the mystery memos.
Zero curiosity? Really?
Instead, Lockhart claims he just chit-chatted for a few minutes on how to handle Vietnam questions, then said bye-bye without a word about the memos.</I>
Chris, you never answered my question. Do you seriously think that Lockhart didn't mention the memos with Burkett. I (unlike CBS) realize that Burkett is NOT an unimpeachable source.
CBS News and Dan Rather did not make a "good faith error"
Every law student learns during his first year of law school a pithy old legal definition of the term "good faith" — "honesty of intention and freedom from circumstances which ought to put the holder upon inquiry."
It's a term used throughout the law and in many different contexts, but always with both a subjective component, unique to the individual being inquired about and dependent upon his state of mind (honesty), and an objective component, governed not by the individual's state of mind, but by whether a reasonable person in the same circumstances would have been alerted to a problem.
Thus, for instance, Justice Harlan, writing for the United States Supreme Court in an admiralty case, The Kate, 164 U.S. 458, 468 (1896), had occasion to quote Justice Clifford's opinion from an even earlier case, The Lulu, 10 Wall. 192, 202-03, 77 U.S. 192 (1869), on the subjects of "good faith" and the circumstances that prevent it from being claimed as an excuse:
[A] party to a transaction, where his rights are liable to be injuriously affected by notice, cannot willfully shut his eyes to the means of knowledge which he knows are at hand, and thereby escape the consequences which would flow from the notice if it had been actually received; or, in other words, the general rule is that knowledge of such facts and circumstances as are sufficient to put a party upon inquiry, and to show that, if he had exercised due diligence, he would have ascertained the truth of the case, is equivalent to actual notice of the matter in respect to which the inquiry ought to have been made.
If one has ignored red flags in the circumstances that would have alerted a reasonable person to a problem, he cannot thereafter claim to have acted in "good faith." Nor, of course, can he claim to have acted in "good faith" if he had actual, subjective knowledge of the problem.
From Dan Rather's statement about the use of the forged Killian memos (boldface added):
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where — if I knew then what I know now — I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
Not only Mr. Rather, but also CBS News itself has repeated this claim of making a "good faith error" (boldface added):
This was an error made in good faith as we tried to carry on the CBS News tradition of asking tough questions and investigating reports, but it was a mistake.
But this was not an error made in good faith — not as that term is known in law, or in journalism, or in common English. Indeed, a previous version of the Society of Professional Journalist's Code of Ethics noted that "[g]ood faith with the public is the foundation of all worthy journalism," and that "[t]here is no excuse for inaccuracies or lack of thoroughness."
CBS News, "60 Minutes II," and Dan Rather used the Killian documents despite numerous and obvious indicia that they weren't authentic — including express warnings from the very experts whom they had consulted on the question of the documents' authenticity. No reasonable journalist, nor any reasonable person, would have ignored those warnings. Moreover, CBS News and Mr. Rather continued to assert the documents' authenticity for a full week while concealing the identity of their confidential source — a known crank with an axe to grind against President Bush — and while continuing to insist that their confidential source was "unimpeachable." They insisted that they had confidence in the documents' "chain of custody"; they belittled anyone and everyone who questioned the documents' authenticity, including their own experts; and they've yet to issue a decent retraction or apology.
Dan Rather and CBS News did not merely "willfully shut [their] eyes to the means of knowledge which [they knew were] at hand" — as would have been true had they recklessly failed to consult any experts whatsoever — but indeed, they shut their eyes to the knowledge their own experts were serving up. And as such, they cannot claim now to be excused, in whole or in part, by virtue of having acted "in good faith" — for they cannot satisfy either the subjective or objective part of that term's definition.
Simply put, for CBS News and Dan Rather to claim now that they made a "good faith error" is itself a knowing lie — an act of bad faith from any objective standpoint, and indeed even from their own subjective standpoint regardless of how self-deluding Mr. Rather and the other responsible individuals at CBS News have been or continue to be.
Fom Beldar blog
Chris<
Some more background:
Meanwhile, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Jack Douglas, in an article distributed by Knight-Ridder, reports from his own interview with Mr. Burkett that he claims not only that CBS News put the Kerry campaign into contact with him, but that Kerry campaign official Joe Lockhart vigorously sought copies of the documents:
He said, however, that during the meeting in which he gave the memos to CBS, he was also told by a producer that his phone number would be passed on to Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart.
"I was absolutely and clearly told that that was as far as anyone could go without crossing the line of (journalistic) ethics," Burkett said.
During a single phone conversation with Lockhart, Burkett said he suggested a "couple of concepts on what I thought (Kerry) had to do" to beat Bush. In return, he said, Lockhart tried to "convince me as to why I should give them the documents."
In case you've forgotten, on Monday Mr. Lockhart admitted to having called Mr. Burkett at the suggestion of CBS News producer Mary Mapes, but told a different story than Mr. Burkett's telling now:
Earlier, Lockhart said he thanked Burkett for his advice after a three- to four-minute call, and that he does not recall talking to Burkett about Bush's Guard records. "It's baseless to say the Kerry campaign had anything to do with this," he said.
Later, Lockhart said he was sure he had not talked to Burkett about the Guard documents.
OK
He hasn't admitted that he discussed the memo with Burkett. BUT, he was calling Burkett based on a call from mapes of CBS, who told him that she had some documentation about Bush's Guard duty that he would be interested in. If you're to believe Lockhart, he called Burkett, not vice versa, because he was interested in campaign advise from a political no body from Texas. He has admitted discussing the conversation with Cahill and Cahill has admitted discussing it with Kerry.
Do you honestly believe that the conversation wasn't about the memos. Remember , this is the same Lockhart who steadfastly denied that Clinton had any contact with Lewinsky until the facts came out to prove otherwise.
He's a political hack- they are PAID to lie- it's their job.
"You have clearly asserted the superiority of "blind faith" over reason"
I am doing nothing of the sort. YOU are the one who's claiming superiority. YOu know nothing of what my beliefs are. You completely misunderstood what I wrote. Let me make it clearer for you. What I stated was NOT that blind faith should replace all reason . What I did say is that, IN THE MATTER OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS- the belief in the existence of God, is not a matter of reason, it is a matter of faith. Yes, faith and reason are opposites. As I stated, the proof of the existence of God, or the non existence of God can't be decided through reason. Would you agree with that?
Again, you arrogance shows through again. You can decide what the correct proportion of faith and reason that would make the world happier. You decide on what behaviors are unholy and stupid. Based on what guidelines???? You assume that strong faith and reason can't exist in the same person. There are a number of books out by physicists ( highly "reasonable" people) that state that thier research has only led to a stronger faith on their part.
The thing is that you really don't understand the arrogance of your position.
I like Laura, but I think she's way off base here also. The problem with the Ryder cup team was home grown. The Euopean side was truly gracious in victory. Hal Sutton was really one of the major causes of our defeat. He couldn't have been a worse captain. THe Europeans played beautifully, and we started out in the hole because of the anchor Sutton we dragged around
"It is sad to see so many people abandoning their powers of reason to embrace psuedo religions."
This is typical of the liberal attitude that assumes that only they are in tune with all the great truths of life. It is exactly that attitude of condesencion that limits their chances of political success.
You, in you infinite knowledge, can determine what is a real or psuedo religion. Exactly what are your criteria? Don't you realize that religion IS a matter of faith that goes beyond reason? How can you logically prove or disprove the existence of God?
I think the pseudo religion with a greater impact to ouir way of life is the one that celebrates beheadings as a holy act.
Maybe Teresa Kerry can develop a department of acceptable religions after she gets done with the departments of wellness and cheerfulness
Yes,
It was in the papers yesterday, and his on air interviews. She stated that she then spoke to Kerry about it
It was an article I read 2 months ago- will try to find it
New Republic- The intifada is over:
ISRAEL'S UNEXPECTED VICTORY OVER TERRORISM.
Center Right
by Yossi Klein Halevi & Michael B. Oren
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Post date 09.21.04 / Issue date 09.27.04 Email this article. E-mail this article
Jerusalem, Israel
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had planned on offering the usual complaints when he visited Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week. There was the stalled road map, Israel's security fence, and the recently announced expansion of West Bank settlements close to the Green Line. But, before he arrived in Jerusalem, something happened that changed Lavrov's agenda: the massacre of Russian children by Chechen Islamist terrorists. And so, when he met Sharon on September 6, the main topic of discussion was what advice and assistance Israel could offer Russia in the fight against terrorism.
Ironically, Israel had just buried 16 people--many of them Russian immigrants--after the simultaneous suicide bombings of two buses in the southern city of Beersheba. According to Hamas, those attacks were retaliation for the assassination, five months earlier, of its spiritual and political leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Yet the fact that it took Hamas almost half a year--and dozens of failed attempts--to make good on its threat to inflict immediate and massive punishment proves just how successful Israel's war against terrorism has been.
During those same six months, the Israeli army destroyed most of what remained of Hamas's organization in the West Bank and a substantial part of its infrastructure in Gaza. Just last week, Israeli gunships rocketed a Hamas training camp in Gaza, killing 15 operatives. Hamas leaders, who once routinely led rallies and gave interviews to the media, don't dare show their faces in public anymore. Even their names are kept secret. Hardly a night passes without the arrest of a wanted terrorist. Hamas's ranks have become so depleted that the organization is now recruiting teenagers: At the Gaza border, Israeli forces recently broke up a Hamas cell made up of 16-year-olds.
Meanwhile, life inside Israel has returned to near normalcy. The economy, which was shrinking in 2001, is now growing at around 4 percent per year. Even the tourists are back: Jerusalem's premier King David Hotel, which a few years ago was almost empty, recently reached full occupancy. AP Photo/Brennan LinsleyAll summer, Israel seemed to be celebrating itself, with music and film festivals and a nightly crafts fair in Jerusalem that brought crowds back to its once-deserted downtown. Everyone knows a terrorist attack can happen at any time. Still, Israeli society no longer lives in anticipation of an attack. The Beersheba bombing, which once would have seemed to Israelis part of an endless and unwinnable war, is now perceived as an aberration. Terror that no longer paralyzes is no longer terror.
Israel's triumph over the Palestinian attempt to unravel its society is the result of a systematic assault on terrorism that emerged only fitfully over the past four years. The fence, initially opposed by the army and the government, has thwarted terrorist infiltration in those areas where it has been completed. Border towns like Hadera and Afula, which had experienced some of the worst attacks, have been terror-free since the fence was completed in their areas. Targeted assassinations and constant military forays into Palestinian neighborhoods have decimated the terrorists' leadership, and roadblocks have intercepted hundreds of bombs, some concealed in ambulances, children's backpacks, and, most recently, a baby carriage.
At every phase of Israel's counteroffensive, skeptics have worried that attempts to suppress terrorism would only encourage more of it. They warned that Israel couldn't close Orient House, the Palestinian Liberation Organization's de facto capital in East Jerusalem, without provoking an international backlash and strengthening Yasir Arafat's hold there. They warned that, by isolating and humiliating Arafat, Israel would only bolster his stature at home and abroad. They warned that, by reoccupying Palestinian cities and targeting terrorist leaders, Israel would only deepen Palestinian rage and despair.
In fact, Israel shut down Orient House in August 2001 with relative impunity, and today, few even recall where it was. Not only has Arafat been confined to the ruins of his Ramallah headquarters for the last two years, but he has become a near-pariah figure even among many European foreign ministers and the target of a revolt in the territories against his corrupt rule. In late August, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer visited Jerusalem, but not Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. And, for all their rage at Israeli assassinations and despair over the reoccupation, growing numbers of Palestinians are now questioning the effectiveness of their terrorist war. Last year, in Gaza's Beit Hanoun, residents protested against terrorists using the village as a base for launching rockets into Israel; just recently, a Palestinian teenager was shot dead there after he tried to bar terrorists from his home.
The price Israel has paid for its victory has been sobering. Arafat may be a pariah, but Israel is becoming one, too. Increasingly, the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty is under attack. Former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, for example, has called Israel's creation a "mistake." In Europe, an implicit "red-green-black" coalition of radical leftists, Islamists, and old-fashioned fascists has revived violent anti-Semitism. Along with the desecration of Jewish cemeteries by neo-Nazis and the assaults on Jews by Arab youth, some European left-wingers now sense a sympathetic climate in which to publicly indulge their anti-Semitism. In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Greek composer and left-wing activist Mikis Theodorakis denounced "the Jews" for their dominance of banks, U.S. foreign policy, and even the world's leading orchestras, adding that the Jews were "at the root of evil." In the Arab world, a culture of denial that repudiates the most basic facts of Jewish history--from the existence of the Jerusalem Temple to the existence of the gas chambers--has become mainstream in intellectual discourse and the media. Government TV stations in Egypt and Syria have produced dramatizations based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Boycotts of Israel are multiplying: The nonaligned states recently voted to bar "settlers"--including Israelis who live in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem--from their borders. Among young Israelis across the political spectrum, there's growing doubt about the country's future and widespread talk of emigration.
In its victories and its defeats, Israel is a test case of what happens to a democracy forced to confront nonstop terrorism. In their daily lives, Israelis must contend with the most pressing questions of the global war against terrorism: Can terrorism be defeated? And, in doing so, can basic democratic principles be maintained? Finally, does the moral necessity to defeat terrorism supersede the moral necessity to address the grievances of those in whose name terrorism is committed?
So far, Israel has answered these questions affirmatively, providing valuable lessons for the United States in its own war on terrorism. Arriving at answers, though, has been a tortuous process. Four years ago this Rosh Hashanah, when the Palestinian leadership launched this war, Israelis were caught by surprise and demoralized by the violent collapse of a peace process whose success many had assumed was imminent. Prime Minister Ehud Barak was not only negotiating under fire, but offering additional concessions. Cabinet ministers and security figures were insisting that the war against terrorism couldn't be won by military means alone. The Israeli army seemed as disoriented as the politicians: When two reservists were lynched and mutilated by a Palestinian mob inside a police station in October 2000, Israel's initial response was to bomb mostly empty buildings belonging to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). And, when a French TV crew filmed the death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad Al Dura, killed in crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen, Israel apologized even before thoroughly investigating whether it was responsible for Al Dura's death. (James Fallows, in an exhaustively researched article for The Atlantic Monthly, concluded it wasn't, as did the reporting of a German TV station.) Rather than calling the terrorism assault a war, Israelis reflexively adopted the misleading Palestinian term intifada--implying an unarmed civilian uprising against an armed occupation. In fact, this was a war by armed Palestinians aimed mostly at Israeli civilians and launched after Israel had agreed to end the occupation--an anti-intifada.
Meanwhile, European and even American leaders were still passionately courting Arafat. In one particularly degrading episode, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright literally ran after Arafat as he stormed out of cease-fire talks in Paris in October 2000 and begged him to return to the table. Washington didn't even place Hamas and Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations until November 2001. Rather, most of the international community held Israel responsible for weakening Arafat and his ability to restrain terrorism. Conventional wisdom insisted that the Fatah movement was different from Hamas and that "political" Hamas was different from "military" Hamas.
This is the disaster Sharon faced when he assumed the premiership in March 2001. To respond effectively, he first had to convince Israelis that negotiating under fire would only encourage terrorism and that a military solution for terrorism did indeed exist. And so, one of Sharon's first acts in office was to meet with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) general staff and demand a plan for victory. Still, he didn't immediately go to war. The Lebanon fiasco of the early '80s had taught him the danger of initiating a military campaign without the support of both the mainstream left and the U.S. administration. (By contrast, Sharon didn't waste time wooing France and other European Union countries that wouldn't support the war on terrorism no matter what Israel did.) This is the first lesson Sharon could teach democratic leaders facing a war against terrorism: Insure domestic consensus and the support of vital allies.
Sharon imposed on himself a regimen of single-mindedness and patience. He concentrated almost exclusively on security, leaving the country's economy and its foreign relations--with the exception of relations with the Bush administration--to other ministers. Nor did he allow himself to be distracted by divisive domestic issues like the secular-religious divide. By becoming the first Likud leader to endorse a Palestinian state, Sharon broke with his own party's ideology and recast himself as a consensus politician. And he established a national unity government with the Labor Party. He acted liked the leader of a nation at war, not a party at war.
Sharon's first major test came in June 2001, with the suicide bombing of Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium discotheque, in which 22 young people were killed. His own constituency demanded that he retaliate by reoccupying West Bank cities, but Sharon refused to launch a counteroffensive until the Labor Party agreed. Though denounced by the right as a defeatist, Sharon's restraint was the first step toward effectively combating terrorism.
Meanwhile, Sharon was gradually escalating. He increased the number of targeted killings, further erasing the distinction between "political" and "military" terrorists. And he began the process of isolating and delegitimizing Arafat, curtailing the Palestinian leader's movements. Unlike Barak, Sharon held Arafat personally responsible for terrorism.
One way terrorism succeeds is by obscuring its tracks, allowing its patrons to evade retribution. Initially at least, Arafat conducted the war by remote control, not only maintaining the fiction of a division between Hamas and Fatah but even of a division within Fatah itself, between a supposedly moderate mainstream and dissident groups like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which were funded by the P.A. Sharon's effort to expose Arafat's ruse culminated in January 2002 with Israel's seizure of a P.A. arms ship, the Karine A, loaded with C-4 explosives likely intended for bomb belts. That was the moment Israel exposed Arafat's equivalent of WMD.
The Karine A incident substantially strengthened the emerging Bush-Sharon alliance--an alliance that was by no means assured, not even after September 11. Indeed, Bush's initial reaction to the Al Qaeda attacks was to draw a distinction between terrorism against Israelis and terrorism against Americans. And he seemed intent on excluding Israel from his international coalition as his father had done in the Gulf war. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited the Middle East shortly after September 11, he skipped Israel. Sharon responded with deft brinksmanship. Even as he publicly warned Bush against appeasing the Arabs at Israel's expense, he acceded to Bush's demand that Israel refrain from exiling Arafat.
Sharon's policy was vindicated in March 2002, the bloodiest month in the war, with 133 Israelis killed. Now, even the mainstream Israeli left was finally convinced that Palestinian terrorism wasn't aimed at Israel's policies but its existence. For Israelis, the war on terrorism had become a war of ein breira, no choice, no different from 1948 and 1967. The response to the call-up of reserve soldiers for Operation Defensive Shield--the reoccupation of the West Bank--was over 100 percent; reservists who hadn't been called volunteered to serve.
Though Israelis would continue to disagree about how to solve the Palestinian problem, they now agreed with Sharon that Israel must not try to solve that problem until terrorism was defeated. Even Shimon Peres appeared on CNN to defend the counteroffensive. Here was another lesson Israelis had finally internalized: Addressing terrorists' grievances before terrorism is defeated only encourages terrorism and makes those grievances harder to resolve.
No country has been subjected to more relentless terrorism than Israel; nor has any country been subjected to greater scrutiny or vilification. Though the terrorist war was launched by the official Palestinian leadership--and polls have consistently shown a Palestinian majority in support of suicide attacks--Israel considers itself at war with only the perpetrators of terrorism, not with the Palestinian people. Israel has not resorted to the indiscriminate bombings, mass expulsions, blockades of food and fuel that modern states have frequently adopted in wartime. Despite intense fighting, no city in the West Bank or Gaza remotely resembles Dresden in 1945, Hanoi in 1972, or Grozny today. In contrast to Palestinian terrorists, whose goal is to kill the maximum number of Israeli civilians, Israeli soldiers have risked their lives to minimize civilian Palestinian casualties, searching out terrorists in house-to-house fighting rather than calling in artillery. According to the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, an Israeli think tank, over half of Palestinians killed in the last four years have been combatants, while nearly three-quarters of Israelis killed have been civilians. Yet another lesson Israel offers the world is that one can defeat terrorists without annihilating the society that hosts them. Though abuses against civilians have occurred--over 600 are now being investigated by the IDF and many more have obviously gone unreported--Israel proves that a war against terrorism can be fought while preserving basic democratic principles. Still, much of the world has branded Sharon a war criminal. In waging war against terrorists, then, especially those who enlist children and pregnant women, one must be prepared to endure some measure of international censure and isolation.
For all its hard-won achievements, Israel's victory is hardly guaranteed. A key component of winning the war on terrorism is convincing the Palestinians that terrorism doesn't pay. That goal will fail if the Israeli Supreme Court, overriding the army's objections, succeeds in placing the security fence along the pre-1967 border. Given that the future border may well be determined by the fence, such an outcome would grant the Palestinians territorial gains through terrorism beyond what they were offered at the negotiating table--and without even recognizing Israel's existence in return.
Israel could also lose if Byzantine domestic politics prevent the emergence of a national unity government capable of implementing decisions, such as unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, that are backed by the Israeli majority. Failure to withdraw from Gaza could provoke widespread refusal to serve in the army and strain Sharon's hard-won rapport with Bush. Conversely, failure to demonstrate that the withdrawal is supported by a majority of Israelis could encourage settlers to resist violently. Sharon, after all, lost a Likud Party referendum on withdrawal. To neutralize his right-wing opponents, he needs to hold a national referendum or new elections to establish beyond doubt that he has a solid mandate to withdraw. Otherwise, the war that began with Palestinians shooting at Israelis could end with Israelis shooting at Israelis.
Americans would be wise to study this final lesson, too: Perhaps the greatest danger in fighting terrorism is the polarizing effect such a campaign can have--not just internationally, but domestically. To avoid this pitfall, a strong political consensus for military action is necessary. That means the president must actively reach out to domestic opposition. But American leaders must also heed Sharon's other lessons. That means an ability to endure criticism from abroad and even to risk international isolation, a willingness to define the war on terrorism as a total war, and a commitment to focus one's political agenda on winning, not on divisive or extraneous concerns. Fulfilling those conditions does not guarantee success. But it does make success possible--as Israel is, at great cost, showing the world.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor at TNR and an associate fellow of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Michael B. Oren is a senior fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem and the author most recently of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press).
I really don't think that we view NATO as an end all/be all. We have already started forming security alliances with many other nations- making the UN and Nato less important to us
The only longs I'm holding now are security stox and some energy plays
I'm just very anxious about long term longs given the likelyhood of a terrorist event
How so?
TVIN- you meant a surge upward right?
Interesting. I think that europe taking responsibility for policing it's own neighborhood rather than expecting us to do it is not soemthing we would discourage. I really don't see how they could be viewed as a threat to us. They could either support or not support any action that we took
The fact that he still refuses to admit that the memos are forged is really scary. I've contacted all the local advertisers for CBS news and told them I'm boycotting till Rather is gone
OK,
Exactly what are you referring to?
At this point there is no definitive proof, BUT, Lockhart has admitted that he talked to Cahill about the memo. Cahill has admitted that she has talked to Kerry about Burkett. This whole thing is just beginning. I think it would be unwise for anyone on the left to completely rule out that complicity will be proved.
The idea that Lockhart called Burkett- not vice versa- and did NOT talk about the memos is a bit much to believe. Mapes called Lockhart and told him to call Biurkett-what else would they be talking about????