Archive for 2003
April 4, 2003
BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS. First the bad news: the Martin Savidge quote that everyone was excited about turns out to be a hoax. Now the good news: before he found out, Joe Katzman wrote this post. Which, together with the comments, is damned good.
So, as usual, is this news and background roundup from Winds of Change.
UPDATE: Check out Defense Tech, too.
HERE’S A GALLERY OF IMAGES from the Toronto pro-America rally mentioned below, emailed by various readers. Enjoy!
It looks damn cold in Toronto. Brrr. Thanks to all the wonderful Canadians who turned out.
UPDATE: How cold? Reader Patrick Brown emails:
I live about 2 hours southwest of Toronto. In my regular Friday morning Statistics class today, I had less than one-quarter of the normal turnout, because of the very bad weather here. An ice-storm hit overnight. Trees are down, power is out in many places, and roads are bad because (at least in my town) it appears that the city has already put away the salt trucks and plows. So, the turnout at the Rally for America in Toronto is doubly impressive.
This story from The Globe and Mail says that “thousands of Canadians” appeared in “driving, freezing rain.” As I said before, brrr. I love you guys, but I don’t think I’ll be leaving Tennessee for Toronto any time soon.
ANOTHER UPDATE: And speaking of Tennessee, here’s a report on Knoxville’s pro-war rally. It says there were more than a thousand people. InstaLawyer has some more photos. Note the sunny weather and blooming dogwoods.
And Mark Wickens has a report and more pictures from the Toronto rally.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a link to video from CTV of the Toronto rally. (Via Kathy Shaidle). And David Janes has multiple posts, and notes the different slant in the CBC coverage.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON WRITES that the real story of the war and its related diplomacy is the American public’s response:
Something weird, something unprecedented, is unfolding, driven by American public opinion — completely ignored in Europe — and the nation’s collective anger that Americans are dying by showing restraint as they are slandered by our “friends.” Despite the protestations of a return to normalcy, this present war will ever so slowly, yet markedly nonetheless, change America’s relationships in a way unseen in the last 30 years.
With little help from Saudi Arabia or Turkey — “allies” and “hosts” to our troops — damned by many of our NATO allies, stymied in the U.N., turned on by Russia, opposed by Germany and France, the Coalition nevertheless is systematically liberating a country under the most impossible of conditions. This experience in turn will oddly — if we avoid hubris and maintain our sanity — liberate us as well.
Far from making the United States hegemonic, the success in Iraq will have a sobering effect on Americans. Contrary to pundits the hard-fought Anglo-American victory will not make us into hegemonists, but simply less naïve about tradition-bound relationships and the normal method of doing business. I would expect military spending to increase, even as reluctance grows to get involved with any of our traditional allies.
Read the whole thing.
HERE’S AN ACCOUNT OF ANOTHER PRO-U.S. RALLY IN TORONTO:
TORONTO — About 1,000 Canadians gathered in the freezing rain Friday to show their support for the United States at a downtown rally.
Organizers of the Friends of America said the rally was not formed to champion the U.S.-led war in Iraq but to show friendship and goodwill between the two countries.
”We’re not fair-weather friends,” emcee Ted Woloshyn, a local radio host, told the crowd bearing American and Canadian flags and Union Jacks. Others held placards with slogans such as Canada Loves America, Chretien Doesn’t Speak For Me and Freedom Isn’t Free.
Political speakers included Canadian Alliance Leader Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Ernie Eves. The widow of a Canadian killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center was also scheduled to make remarks.
Eves said there were likely those who do support the war in attendance – himself included.
”Canadians, friends of America – that is who we as Canadians are,” Eves told the crowd.
”Our American neighbours, our friends, our colleagues, our Allies have always supported us, they’ve protected us, they’ve helped us and they’ve stood by us and now we should be standing by them.”
Thanks, guys.
UPDATE: Reader John MacDonald emails:
There were more like 6000 at the Toronto Friends of America rally.There would have been a lot more except the weather was terrible,freezing rain,sleet, icy roads.People stayed home from work ,let alone showed up for a rally.The weather didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for the U.S.A.
Several other Canadian readers have sent similar comments. I hope to have some photos up later.
SO IS THE NEW SADDAM VIDEO REAL OR NOT? I’m skeptical. But I hope it’s real, and he’s alive. I want him to be lynched by Iraqis, a la Mussolini, and I want it to be broadcast on Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile H.D. Miller explains how we’ll know for sure that Saddam is dead.
UPDATE: Shaun Kenney emails: “Keep your eye on Saddam’s left arm during the video. It barely moves.”
I haven’t seen the walking-around video. But the still from it on the front page of the Washington Post doesn’t look much like the guy who was giving the speech earlier.
Meanwhile Chris Crofoot sends:
The recent ‘live’ appearance of Saddam Hussein and the reference to the Apache downed by a peasant has a simple explanation, I think. Looking at the Pictures of the downed Apache makes it look like the chopper went down due to mechanical difficulties (it sure didn’t appear to have been damaged much). A pre-arranged story about a heroic peasant downing an Apache is released after the Iraqis get their hands on Apache wreckage (in this case it was nearly intact). A pre-recorded video of Hussein is later released referencing the pre-arranged story about the peasant… ta-daa semi-convincing evidence that Hussein is alive because he’s referencing the peasant story. Is he that devious? Who knows…
Who does know?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ann Haker emails this observation:
Some people have pointed to the smoke in the background of Saddam’s walking-around video as proof that it was relatively current. But remember what Salam Pax said on March 2:
A week ago on the way to work I saw a huge column of blackest-black smoke coming from the direction of Dorah refinery which is within Baghdad city limits, thought nothing of it really. A couple of weeks earlier to that a fuel tank near the Rasheed army camp exploded and it looked the same, stuff like that happens. My father was driving thru the area later and he said it looked like they were burning excess or wasted oil. Eh, they were never the environmentalists to start with; if they didn’t burn it they would have dumped it in the river or something. The smoke was there for three days the column could be seen from all over Baghdad being dragged in a line across the sky by the winds. During the same time and on the same road I take to work I see two HUGE trenches being dug, it looked like they were going to put some sort of machinery in it, wide enough for a truck to drive thru and would easily take three big trucks.
So, it could have been filmed at the end of February–which would also jive with the warm coats the people are wearing.
Interesting observation. Warm coats? It’s been pretty hot around Baghdad.
HERE’S AN INTERESTING COMMENTARY on media coverage of the war — from the lefty L.A. Weekly, no less. Excerpt:
This war, with its multichannel, multinational perspectives, is turning out to be a moral relativist’s wet dream. (CNN is just so March 18; the cool people all get their news from Hezbollah TV now.) Which is a pity, really. On one side you have a country ruled by a bunch of totalitarian thugs in a region in which benign dictatorship is as good as it gets; on the other you have the U.K. and the U.S., where, despite the corporate dictatorship, the President Select, the slippery machinations of Halliburton, blah blah blah, the L.A. Times can quote the Iraqi Ministry of Information approvingly on its front page while Peter Arnett goes on Iraqi television to tell Chemical Ali, Mrs. Anthrax and the rest of the noble Mesopotamian leadership what a bunch of heroes its “resistance” fighters are. . . .
For some people, the only appropriate response to the pathological hatred emanating from the Middle East is self-flagellation. On BBC America, the anchors almost visibly salivate when word of an errant marketplace bombing flashes across the wires. (Finally! Proof that we’re evil! That we’re just as bad as they are!)
Read the whole thing, as they say.
THIS SATELLITE IMAGE is interesting. A contrail from Iraq to Iran. I wonder what’s up?
UPDATE: #$%! Blogger! Go here — it’s currently still at the top.
MICHAEL KELLY WAS KILLED IN IRAQ while traveling with the 3rd Infantry. Here’s a link to his last column, from yesterday. I’m devastated.
The Indymedia folks, though, are happy, writing “WP Nazi columnist bites the Iraqi dust.”
So typical. So pathetic. This, by Jonah Golberg, is much better.
UPDATE: Ana Marie Cox emails:
I am writing to beg that you point out, somewhere, that plenty of lefties are mad about Indymedia’s smear on Michael Kelly. I am one of them — I blogged a bit about it, I posted on their comment board.
I’m on a one-woman campaign to not let Indymedia off the hook — if they think criticism of their malice is coming mainly from pro-war people, I just don’t think they’ll listen.
I’m not sure they’ll listen in any event, Ana, but I’m listening, and I’m glad to hear it. (There’s more on Ana’s blog.) Unfortunately, it’s not just IndyMedia — check out the posts here on DemocraticUnderground, a site that’s not affiliated with the actual Democratic Party, to the undoubted relief of the latter. And these guys wonder why they’re the butt of cartoons like this one?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a statement from The Atlantic Monthly.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: This Dan Kennedy obit is well worth reading.
STILL MORE: John Hawkins has been wading through the Democratic Underground posts, and has some highlights.
LAST UPDATE: David Levy sends this more heartening story:
didn’t hear it this morning, but there is a rebroadcast of the local NPR “DC Politics Hour” in the evening. DC politics are fun to talk about … scandal and vouchers. The discussion was broken by a call telling the news from Iraq.
The reaction was so different than what’s been going around the fever swamps of the left. I think one of the participants started to cry. Said she not only knew him but she knows his mom and dad. Someone — I was driving and didn’t take notes — said that war losses are now personal. This is the first “home town boy” who had been lost.
These are folks on DC NPR. If you called them liberal, they might correct you and ask to be called leftist. Nothing was said about his politics, as if that would matter at a time like this to people of character. I thought you would like to know, given the ghastly reaction of those who have perhaps not reflected upon the possibility that reciprocity is deeper than tolerance.
Yes, I’m happy to hear this.
THE QUAGMIRE CLUB is discussed by William Powers at the National Journal:
There’s a ritual, a kind of quagmire Kabuki that never varies. Someone employs the word in a war-news report or one of those deeply important “analysis” pieces that are just opinion columns in front-page drag. The most famous quagmirist, R.W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times, doesn’t even have to use the word anymore. He just does an interpretive fan-dance around it and everyone knows what he means.
Heh. Though the image of Johnny Apple doing a fan dance is, well, disturbing. Sally Rand he ain’t. Meanwhile non-quagmirist Tom Holsinger writes that Baghdad may be more like Manila, 1945 than Grozny, 1995.
Interesting.
As the engineers strapped explosives to the legs of the horse that Mr. Hussein sat astride, Army tanks blocked entry to the boulevard. Hundreds of men and boys crowded on nearby street corners.
The blast, when it came, was met with rousing cheers.
The horse and its rider were sent hurtling off the pedestal, crashing to the base. Then the Iraqi colonel and his men began speaking over a loudspeaker, proclaiming an uprising against Mr. Hussein’s government. When they were finished, residents snapped pictures of friends on top of the pile of ruins of the statue, or posed with the soldiers. Then came questions for the nearest available Americans.
“When Saddam Hussein goes?” Ali Salah asked. “Not in Najaf. Saddam in Baghdad.”
I think he’s already gone, claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
DAVID CARR NOTES CASTRO’S CRACKDOWN ON DISSIDENTS and suggests that it’s evidence that the Castro regime is worried:
When governments start incarcerating their political opponents for life, it is because they are frightened and deeply worried and usually with good reason. I suspect the game is nearly up.
I hope he’s right. He also adds:
And, just as an aside, doesn’t this show up the juvenile, publicity-seeking, egocentrism of the ‘Bush is Hitler’ mob in sharp relief? While genuine freedom fighters risk their very lives by taking on ‘Il Presidente’, the likes of Michael Moore can pose as ‘oppressed heroic victims’ while being chauffeured around to their various awards ceremonies and public speaking engagements.
And saying nice things about Castro, more often than not.
THIS ESSAY by the Dissident Frogman is worth reading. Be sure you read the whole thing.
MELISSA SCHWARTZ’S father has been killed in an auto accident. Please join me in holding her in your thoughts.
EVAN COYNE MALONEY has a new video on antisemitism in the “peace” movement.
JOHN KEEGAN WONDERS where all the dead people went. The live ones, too.
UPDATE: Well, this accounts for some of the Republican Guard, anyway.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing has found the rest. It seems Keegan’s column was overtaken by events, a hazard for any writer outside the blogosphere.
PROFESSIONAL PRIDE: Jessica Lynch’s rescue was made possible by a heroic Iraqi lawyer. No, really.
UPDATE: Here’s another story on this. And here’s yet another.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing, who’s on a roll, says the Iraqi should get a medal. And there’s one for this purpose.
THERE’S BIG EXCITEMENT AROUND HERE: The InstaWife’s documentary is out, and the first review is good. She’s talking with HBO folks, etc., but if you happen to own a large television network, please get in touch. It’s about murderous lesbian teenagers — a distinct change from the war coverage. . . .
April 3, 2003
FUTUREPUNDIT has an interesting post on SARS and the possibility of silent carriers. (Via Dawn Olsen). Futurepundit has lots of posts on SARS.
NICK DENTON ASKS: “Is there any way to delay the capture of Baghdad just long enough to first draw in every seething Islamist across the Middle East?” Nick’s mixture of sophistication and practical bloody-mindedness is just what is missing from Europe today. It’s no wonder he lives in the States now.
And, I must say, that has been my reaction to the breathless reports that terrorists were flocking to Saddam’s banner. The more that do so, the more we can conveniently kill wholesale, instead of having to hunt them down in small numbers later. As it is, the “Saddam Fedayeen” with its suicidal yet largely futile attacks has ended the careers of many people we’re better off without. I don’t suppose that was part of the war plan, but it might have been.
BREAKING WINDOWS: A clever and thoughtful anti-war protest.
This harassment of lawful protest, on the other hand, is just nasty:
On Sunday morning, a man called the home of Wayne Hogg’s uncle and said “we need to let you know Wayne died two days ago.”
The report was false, but it turned into a nightmare for Hogg’s family. His uncle, Danny Hogg, says it took the family a full day to get confirmation that Wayne was still alive in Iraq.
Danny Hogg had participated Saturday in a Flagstaff rally to support U.S. troops in Iraq.
Sunday morning, a photo of him taken at the rally appeared in the Flagstaff newspaper. And it was a short time after the paper hit the streets that the call was made to Danny Hogg’s home.
Taking names of protesters, and then harassing them on the phone. It’s like what the FBI did under Hoover.
DE GENOVA UPDATE: Congressman J.D. Hayworth wants him fired. But that’s silly. Instead of engaging in clumsy bill-of-attainderesque high-handedness, Hayworth would be better advised to craft legislation that would force schools like Columbia and Harvard to offer ROTC. That would do far more to make his point than legislative assaults on a pathetic anonymity like De Genova.
Meanwhile, Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down weighs in:
“There were literally a thousand or more Somalis killed in that battle to 18 American soldiers, and that small band of American troops accomplished their mission in Mogadishu that day,” Bowden said.
(Via — where else? — The Filibuster).
UPDATE: Daniel Drezner isn’t so sure I’m right that De Genova shouldn’t be fired.
GOOD GRIEF: Over 200,000 pageviews already today.
JAMES WOOLSEY IS PULLING NO PUNCHES:
He said the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the “fascists” of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.
Woolsey told the audience of about 300, most of whom are students at the University of California at Los Angeles, that all three enemies have waged war against the United States for several years but the United States has just “finally noticed.”
“As we move toward a new Middle East,” Woolsey said, “over the years and, I think, over the decades to come … we will make a lot of people very nervous.”
It will be America’s backing of democratic movements throughout the Middle East that will bring about this sense of unease, he said.
“Our response should be, ‘good!'” Woolsey said.
Singling out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, he said, “We want you nervous. We want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you — the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family — most fear: We’re on the side of your own people.”
Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, was taking part in a “teach-in” at UCLA, a series of such forums at universities across the nation.
Hey, if I knew that they were saying that kind of stuff at “teach-ins” I’d have been a lot more enthusiastic about ’em.
MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT IN AMERICA:
YPSILANTI — WEMU-FM host Terry Hughes, known on the air as “Thayrone,” was fired from the Eastern Michigan University public radio station Wednesday for repeatedly expressing his views about the war in Iraq, and refusing to run NPR news during his Sunday night music program “The Bone Conduction Show.”
Hughes was fired by station manager Art Timko.
“Art said he was ‘tired of the fight,’ trying to get me to run news on the show and not have an opinion,” Hughes said. In between the vintage Detroit R&B and soul music he plays, Hughes has been talking up the war in Iraq, expressing his support for the troops and for President Bush, and denigrating National Public Radio.
The WEMU station manager admitted: “Thayrone has always been opinionated. But most of what he had opinions about was not controversial. This time, it was.”
But I thought dissent was, you know, patriotic.