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Wednesday, March 26, 2003 |
So much for free speech
The Bush regime does not even offer lip-service. Instead it says it would wait to see what the channel reports "after we have defeated this (Iraqi) regime."
Of course it does not come as a surprise – look how they came to power and look how they encourage the worst in people –“protesters are terrorists” – for the narrow partisan end of hiding their own responsibility for mistakes.
Al-Jazeera Calls on U.S. to Ensure Free Press
Wed March 26, 2003 06:40 PM ET
By Merissa Marr, European Media Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - Banned on Wall Street and wiped off the Internet, Arab news channel al-Jazeera defended its controversial coverage of the Iraq war on Wednesday and demanded the United States come to its aid in the name of a free press.
Al-Jazeera, which angered Washington by showing footage of dead and captured American soldiers, voiced concern after two of its reporters were banned from the New York Stock Exchange and its Web sites were hacked.
The stock exchange stopped al-Jazeera broadcasts, saying credentials were only for networks that provided "responsible" coverage. Al-Jazeera was also denied a request to broadcast live from New York's Nasdaq exchange.
"There has to be a national effort to protect the freedom of the press even more," al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. "We appeal to authorities to pay attention to this."
But in Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell criticized al-Jazeera's coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"Al-Jazeera has an editorial line and a way of presenting news that appeals to the Arab public. They watch it and they magnify the minor successes of the (Iraqi) regime. They tend to portray our efforts in a negative light," Powell said in an interview with National Public Radio, broadcast on Wednesday.
Powell did not comment on al-Jazeera's complaints, but said he would wait to see what the channel reports "after we have defeated this (Iraqi) regime."
"I think at that point the Arab public will realize that we came in peace. We came as liberators, not conquerors," he said.
Al-Jazeera has taken the Arab world by storm since its launch in 1996, with its controversial reporting and brash, Western style drawing an audience of more than 35 million.
After making its name in the Afghan war with exclusive footage of Osama bin laden, the Qatar-based satellite channel has also had success in Europe, with viewers doubling since the start of the Iraq war.
But the CNN of the Arab world raised U.S. ire when on Sunday it aired shaken U.S. prisoners of war and dead U.S. soldiers with gaping bullet wounds, prompting the Pentagon to issue an appeal to U.S. networks not to use the footage.
Al-Jazeera on Wednesday showed pictures of what it said were two dead British soldiers and two British prisoners of war.
EUROPEAN VIEWERS DOUBLE
In Europe, al-Jazeera said it had signed up more than four million subscribers in the past week. But in the United States, it has drawn little more than 100,000 subscribers.
"In Europe, we're naturally most popular in countries with big Muslim populations like France. In Britain, we've also seen a pick up in non-Arabic-speaking Muslims," Ballout said.
Viewers, who subscribe through local satellite operators, are glued to the pictures even if they cannot understand the words. There are no English-language subtitles.
Media pundits said the New York Stock Exchange decision smacked of a dangerous opening salvo in a game of media tit-for-tat which could see Western media's access cut off. Iraq last week ordered CNN journalists to leave Baghdad.
"Clearly, it is a violation of press freedom," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a media watchdog group in Washington, D.C.
Al-Jazeera's new English-language Web site (http://english.aljazeera.net), which went live on Monday, and its Arabic-language site (http://www.aljazeera.net) were downed by a hacker attack on Tuesday and Wednesday.
3:59:18 PM 
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This is not good…
…more rumbles from N. Korea… think they’d take advantage of the US military’s momentary preoccupation with Iraq?
Nah… I’m sure the politicos are right on top of this one…suuuuure.
1:42:47 PM
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File this under “no duh”
Gee, the energy market was manipulated? And it only took two years for the feds to figure this out? Meanwhile consumers in CA – and the state, which has had to endure huge budget cuts – have been left holding the bag while Ken Lay lives the good life…
What did Gore say? 2000 was a choice between the people and the powerful?
Yup!
FERC finds widespread power manipulation in California
"Federal energy regulators said Wednesday that their investigation found widespread manipulation of natural gas and electricity prices and supplies in California. Pat Wood, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said that as a result of the manipulation California would receive more than the $1.8 billion in refunds recommended by a FERC judge in December. The exact amount is to be determined in the coming months...."
"'The price gouging abounded,' Commissioner William Massey said. He said he regretted that FERC did not intervene earlier to police the newly deregulated power market in California.... After a 13-month investigation, FERC concluded 'that many trading strategies employed by Enron and other companies violated the anti-gaming provisions' of marketing rules. 'Enron manipulated thinly traded physical markets to profit in financial markets,' FERC said, estimating that Enron made more than $500 million in online trading in 2000 and 2001. FERC investigators recommended that the companies be forced to give up unfairly earned profits." (Mark Sherman, Associated Press, 3/26/03)
Gov. Davis today made the following statement today regarding FERC's ruling: "It took two years for FERC to confirm what we knew all along: there was widespread market manipulation and a massive ripoff of California ratepayers. Now the question is whether the FERC Commissioners will have the grit to order the remedies that are necessary." (Release, 3/26/03)
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Times: Energy Gougers Must Pay
In an editorial today, the Los Angeles Times wrote, "the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can help repair some of the damage done when dramatically inflated energy prices bankrupted the state's largest electric utility, triggered widespread blackouts and forced state government to pay for electricity while Washington turned away. Since then, investigators have shown that energy suppliers apparently colluded to raise prices by, for instance, arbitrarily closing electric plants for "maintenance" and slowing delivery of natural gas....Federal regulators initially laughed off Gov. Gray Davis' description of energy traders as "gougers" and "pirates." Now, with boxes of evidence in hand and billions already paid out by natural gas suppliers in legal settlements, commissioners must right the agency's past failures, under different leadership, to protect consumers.
Much of the evidence of manipulation is public, but thousands of pages of documents that California submitted as proof of chicanery are still sealed. The commission should open them. Truth should be accompanied by dollars. Specifically, the commission should order companies to refund illicit energy overcharges to utility customers. The state's figure of $8.9 billion is reasonable. The companies must also be required to renegotiate or cancel about $20 billion in long-term, high-cost energy contracts signed at the height of the crisis. The commission's final report should describe in detail what Enron and the others did during the crisis. Any less will send the message that what happened in California was business as usual and that the rest of the country remains fair game for an unreformed energy industry. (Editorial, Los Angeles Times, 3/26/03)
1:03:30 PM
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War Info Resource
Tapped recommended this site - Intel Dump - and having just visited it I do too: lots of info from an experienced perspective. Be sure to make this another must visit (along with DailyKos and the Agonist) for your war news.
12:56:30 PM
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Politicos taking heat
Here’s another column detailing the ways in which the non-military calculations of Bush’s political appointees (the “politicos”) have placed our military at risk.
Seems like ideology trumps reality in military as well as economic matters in the Bush regime.
(Thanks to Tapped)
Shock, Awe and Overconfidence
By Ralph Peters
Tuesday, March 25, 2003; Page A09
The allied forces on the march in Iraq have performed impressively. Within weeks, major operations will give way to a few months of mopping up. Iraq will be liberated. This will happen despite serious strategic miscalculations by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Most wars begin under the spell of prevailing theories that are swept away by the realities of combat. World War I began with a belief that elan and the bayonet still ruled the battlefield. Waves of soldiers fell before machine guns. In World War II, blitzkrieg worked against weak states but failed against those with strategic depth.
Now we are trying to prosecute a war according to another military theory, "shock and awe." Again, bold claims have led to disappointments redeemed only by the skill and determination of our military.
Explained as simply as possible, the shock-and-awe theory proposes that America's arsenal of precision weapons has developed so remarkably that aerial bombardment can shatter an opponent's will to resist. The airstrikes are to be so dramatic in sensory effect and so precise in targeting a regime's leadership infrastructure that the enemy's decision-makers see no choice but surrender.
The first waves of airstrikes on Baghdad were indeed dramatic and precise. The problem is that one's enemies don't necessarily respond to theories. Shock and awe, like blitzkrieg before it, would work superbly against Belgium. But its advocates failed to consider the nature of Saddam Hussein's regime.
No matter how shocked and awed the Iraqi leadership may be, surrender is not, never was and never will be an option for Hussein and his inner circle. Because of the nature of their regime and its crimes, the contest is all or nothing for them.
Had the most senior officials surrounding Donald Rumsfeld paused to consider the enemy, instead of rushing to embrace a theory they found especially congenial for political reasons, they would have realized that you cannot convince Hussein, his sons or his inner circle that they have been defeated. You must actually defeat them. And you must do it the old-fashioned way, albeit with improved weapons, by killing them and destroying their instruments of power.
Our attempt to baby-talk Iraq's elite military forces into surrender was humane in purpose and politically attractive, and it might have minimized Iraqi casualties. But it delayed essential attacks on Iraq's military capabilities. This encouraged at least some Iraqis in uniform to believe they had a chance to fight and win. Now our forces advancing on Baghdad face the possibility of more serious combat than would otherwise have been the case.
Some things do not change. The best way to shock and awe an enemy is still to kill him. Those who want to wage antiseptic wars for political purposes should not start wars in the first place.
A student of military history would recognize the ghost of Italian Gen. Giulio Douhet at work in the shock-and-awe theory. In 1921 Douhet published "The Command of the Air," a book predicting that air power would prove so powerful in the next war that land forces would be of marginal relevance. In World War II, air forces did play a critical role -- but the Army still had to fight its way across the Rhine to secure victory, just as our soldiers and Marines have had to fight their way across the Euphrates.
Without question, air power is performing magnificently in Iraq. Weapons technologies truly have improved by an order of magnitude over the past decade. The Air Force and the air arms of our other services are indispensable. But they remain most effective as part of an overall land, sea and air military team. Once again, it has taken ground forces to provide the main thrust of military operations, to take and hold ground, to seize oil fields, airfields and bridges, and to force the war toward a battlefield decision.
Unfortunately, those ground forces are spread very thin. Military planners have argued for months that more and heavier ground forces were needed to ensure rapid and sustained success, as well as to minimize risk. Rumsfeld personally and repeatedly rejected calls for the deployment of additional Army divisions. Now, as our last major units move into the fight in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks does not have on hand a significant armored reserve he can commit to battle, should things go awry.
I do not doubt our ultimate success. But the impressive television images of tanks charging across the desert mask a numerical weakness for which technology may not fully compensate. One senior officer serving in the Persian Gulf complained to me that had we had sufficient forces on hand to deploy security elements along our routes of march -- the usual practice -- those American POWs who appeared on Iraqi television might not have been captured.
The troops at the front of our attack are performing superbly, but they are operating on adrenaline at this point. Four to five days into any conflict, another division should have conducted a "forward passage of lines" with the 3rd Infantry Division before the final push to Baghdad, giving the 3ID a chance to rest, rearm and reequip before returning to battle. But no other heavy division is on hand in the theater of war to relieve or reinforce our tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The closest unit is on ships in the Red Sea, at least 10 days away from any ability to influence the battle.
Why did Rumsfeld and his most trusted subordinates overrule the advice of their military planners? For political, bureaucratic and theoretical reasons. Rumsfeld, who is otherwise an inspiring wartime official, was out to prove a point. In his vision of the future -- one shaped by technocrats and the defense industry -- ground forces can be cut drastically in order to free funding for advanced technologies. To that end, Rumsfeld has moved to frustrate the Army's efforts to field medium-weight brigades that can be deployed swiftly to a crisis, which would have been invaluable in this conflict.
This war was supposed to prove the diminishing relevance of ground forces, while shock-and-awe attacks from the air secured a swift victory. Instead, the plan had to be rearranged so that ground forces could rush into Iraq to prevent economic and ecological catastrophes -- you still cannot seize ground, prevent sabotage, halt genocide and ethnic cleansing, or liberate anybody from the sky.
We are headed for victory, but, as the Duke of Wellington observed of Waterloo, it may be a "near-run thing" on the ground.
Some lessons of this war are already clear: Ferocity, skill and determination, not theories, win wars. And our nation will continue to require balanced, adequately funded forces -- in all of our armed services -- for a very long time to come.
Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author, most recently, of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
12:49:46 PM
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A step in the right direction
This is good news.
The last thing this nation needs it two Fox news channels. CNN may lose the “ratings war” in the short term but if they restore their integrity they’ll be fine, precisely because they will have very enviable demographics. Precisely the same dynamic is what keeps golf coverage on the air (well, that and the fact that the decision-makers are all play golf…;^)
(thanks to Atrios)
Connie Chung show canceled
Veteran anchor to leave CNN
By CAROLINE WILBERT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CNN has canceled "Connie Chung Tonight," which was launched last summer and has been criticized for its tabloid style.
The network offered host Connie Chung the opportunity to stay at the network in another capacity, but she declined, according to CNN spokesman Matt Furman.
This is the second show that new CNN President Jim Walton has canceled as he moves the network toward a more serious, hard-news tone. He also recently canceled "Talk Back Live."
"This is simply an effort to further distinguish ourselves in a crowded market," Furman said.
For now, Chung's 8 p.m. time slot will air Iraq war coverage anchored by Aaron Brown. The network has not named a permanent replacement for the time slot.
Chung pressed CNN's management last Friday to put the program, which had been suspended for war coverage, back on as soon as possible, The New York Times reported. CNN, a unit of AOL Time Warner, responded by telling her that it would decide over the weekend when it would bring the show back. Instead, its management called her in Tuesday to tell her the program will not resume when the war coverage ends.
Walter Isaacson, the former chairman of CNN who hired Chung, resigned in January. Isaacson, during his tenure, focused on hiring well-known personalities to anchor shows. This move frustrated some old-timers. When Ted Turner founded CNN, the motto was: "News is the star." Walton has worked at the network almost since its founding.
Chung, who has interviewed supermodel Nikki Taylor and other guests who don't fit with much of CNN's hard-news lineup, has been the target of particular criticism.
Even Turner called Chung "just awful" in a much-quoted interview earlier this year.
Though Chung attracts more viewers than many of CNN's shows, she has continued to be roundly beaten in the ratings war by Fox News powerhouse Bill O'Reilly.
12:00:04 PM
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One cost of misleading the public…
…is the potential for a quick erosion in support.
Unfortunately it sounds as if the Bush politicos not only mislead the public (and one might add, themselves) but also the military. The intel on this operation has been terrible.
Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs War Costs
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER
Americans say the war in Iraq will last longer and cost more than they had initially expected, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The shift comes as the public absorbs the first reports of allied setbacks on the battlefield.
The percentage of Americans who said they expected a quick and successful effort against Iraq dropped to 43 percent on Monday night from 62 percent on Saturday. And respondents who said the war was going "very well" dropped 12 points, to 32 percent, from Sunday night to Monday night, an erosion that followed an increase in allied casualties and the capture of several Americans.
The poll also found an increase in the respondents who fear an imminent retaliatory terrorist attack on American soil, now that images of the allied assault on Baghdad have been televised around the world, though two-thirds of respondents said the nation was adequately prepared to deal with another terrorist strike.
At the same time, President Bush's campaign to remove Saddam Hussein from power is producing sharp fissures at home.
The poll found that black Americans are far more likely than whites to oppose Mr. Bush's policy in Iraq. They are also much more likely to say that the cost of ousting Mr. Hussein was too high, as measured by the loss of life.
Over all, with the war not even a week old, the nation's opinion about the conflict appears to be in flux, driven by an intensity of coverage that has allowed television viewers seemingly to follow every move from their living rooms, and in an environment where many Americans say they remain unsure of Mr. Bush's rationale for the conflict.
Indeed, the Times/CBS News Poll found that the number of Americans who expected the war to be won quickly dropped 9 points from Saturday to Sunday, and 10 more points from Sunday to Monday. Those shifts coincided with television coverage of prisoners of war and battlefield casualties that seems to have caught at least some Americans — accustomed to the relatively bloodless victory in Afghanistan last year — by surprise.
"I think I was living in a pipe dream thinking no one would get killed," Shirley Johnson, 79, a registered Republican from Davenport, Iowa, said in a follow-up interview. "But all of a sudden people were getting killed, and I was horrified."
Pam Wallman, 60, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said, "I think the American public was duped into believing that our troops could just go in there, clean everything up and come home in 10 days."
Nonetheless, support for both the war and for the president, who has kept a low profile after announcing the invasion last week, remains high; Mr. Bush's job approval rating is now 60 percent. Still, Americans said Mr. Bush had failed to give them enough information about how long the war might last, how much it might cost and how many Americans might die in the effort. They also said Mr. Bush had failed to detail how the administration would manage a postwar Iraq.
The nationwide poll of 2,383 adults was taken from Thursday through Monday. It was designed to take into account of daily changes in opinion. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample was plus or minus two percentage points. The margin of error is larger when measuring smaller groups, like blacks, or when chronicling one- or two-night shifts in opinion.
A Times/CBS News poll last week found evidence of divisions between Democrats and Republicans over the war. This latest poll found even sharper differences on the issue between two other groups: blacks and whites. Blacks Americans are far more likely to oppose the war than both white Americans and white Democrats, and are correspondingly unhappy with Mr. Bush's job performance.
While 82 percent of whites said the United States should take military action to oust Mr. Hussein, just 44 percent of blacks said they supported that approach. In addition, 71 percent of whites said they were proud of what the United States was doing in Iraq, compared with 33 percent of blacks.
The findings reflected directly on Mr. Bush's standing among African-Americans. Thirty-four percent of blacks said they approved of the job he is doing, compared with 75 percent of whites.
The finding comes as a number of black political leaders have been at the forefront of the antiwar movement, arguing that young black men and women would be disproportionately represented on the front lines, and that the war would drain federal money that should be spent on domestic programs.
"I have a sick feeling about all the young lives that are going to be destroyed," said Geraldine Hunter, 75, a black Democrat in Cleveland. "I don't know why Bush was in such a hurry to go to war."
Latifa Palmer, 29, of Chino, Calif., who is also black, said: "If you don't mess with them, they won't mess with us. Bush telling Saddam to leave his country would be like Saddam telling Bush to leave his country."
Support for Mr. Bush and the war remains high. By 70 percent to 24 percent, Americans believe that the United States did not make a mistake getting involved in Iraq. But there has been a measurable decline in the national confidence that was on display last week. On Saturday, 53 percent of respondents said the war would be over within weeks; by Monday, only 34 percent of respondents said it would end that soon.
11:44:06 AM
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War requires tax give-away - Bush
Yet again another cynical exploitation of war hysteria – and given the logic of this regime this latest seemed inevitable - to justify the Bush obsession with tax give-aways to his wealthy contributors.
These tax give-aways are apparently good for whatever ails you: surplus, deficits, inflation, recession, and now war.
These people truly are shameless.
So much for a time of shared sacrifice. Now it is sacrifice for 90-95% and give-aways for the elite. Whoop-eeee!
Bush Administration Using War to Justify Its Tax Cut
Plea Turned on Its Head as Senate Snips Plan in Half
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 26, 2003; Page A04
With the nation at war, the White House has introduced a new justification for President Bush's $726 billion tax cut: Do it for the troops.
Three times in the past week, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer has urged the passage of Bush's tax cut, as he put it Monday, "to make sure that the economy can grow and that jobs can be created, so that when our men and women in the military return home, they'll have jobs to come home to."
Democrats and some moderate Republicans argue just the opposite: that Bush's tax cut is antithetical to the war effort and to a variety of defense and domestic causes in need of government funding. As evidence of this, the Senate voted yesterday to slash Bush's tax cut in half, to about $350 billion. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) attributed the vote to "concern about the cost and the uncertainty" of the Iraq war. "We've never cut taxes in time of war," he said.
The conflict in Iraq has begun to shape domestic policies and politics in varied -- and often unpredictable -- ways. Most everyone agrees the apprehension about the war caused the economy to stagnate in recent months, but, as the stock market swings in the last week indicate, it is not clear when that uncertainty will end, or even whether the economy will rally just because the war ends.
This guessing game, in turn, has affected the debate about Bush's tax cut. Last week, the Senate appeared on pace to join the House in approving the $726 billion tax cut with only small alterations. But this week, after the White House rolled out its six-month, $75 billion budget request for Iraq, lawmakers, confronting a budget deficit approaching $400 billion in the current year, reconsidered.
Last week, the Senate voted 62-38 against halving the tax cut; yesterday, it voted 51-48 in favor of devoting half of the tax cut amount to Social Security.
Democrats are using the war spending request, which Bush sent to the Hill on Tuesday, as ammunition against the tax cut, arguing that it is not affordable because the war spending request proves the funds are needed at home and abroad. For example, the administration, as part of the bidding process related to the funding request, said it wants to "facilitate rapid, universal health service delivery to the Iraqi population." Democrats say that is a fine idea, but it should also be done at home, where millions lack health insurance.
"The president needs to realize that funding homeland security, winning the war, stabilizing Iraq and dealing with the deficit is far more important to America than shoveling huge wads of cash to the wealthiest sliver of the population," said David Sirota, the spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Democrats.
Similarly, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) yesterday linked his support for the war spending to his tax-cut opposition. "I find it disturbing that this request comes as the president continues to dig us further in debt by pushing through a massive tax cut to benefit the most affluent," he said. "That's simply wrong considering our nation is at war and our service men and women are being asked to give the ultimate sacrifice halfway around the world."
The White House has sought to defeat that argument by making a patriotic case for tax cuts. Reading a quote from President John F. Kennedy supporting both tax cuts and defense spending, Fleischer suggested during Monday's briefing that a tax cut, because it would boost the economy, was needed to keep the military strong. "The stronger the economy, the stronger we are as a country," he said. "The stronger we are as a country, the stronger our military." Fleischer argues regularly that the tax cuts are needed so that "when the war is over, our military has jobs to come home to."
The argument has flaws. Those who serve in the military full time need not worry about having jobs when they come home. And under a 1994 law, employers must reinstate reservists in similar positions when they return from service, unless the company can document severe hardship.
Still, the notion of job creation is central to the administration's case for its tax cut. Officials argue that passage by June will result in the creation of 450,000 to 500,000 jobs by the fourth quarter.
Administration officials said yesterday a successful military campaign will remove a significant drag on the economy, principally by helping to lower oil prices that spiked during the winter in anticipation of the conflict. But, a senior administration official said: "Without a jobs and growth bill, I don't think we'll have growth high enough to absorb all the folks looking for work."
The Treasury Department is preparing to release a new study later this week designed to counter criticism of the tax plan as a budget buster. The study, according to a senior official, will conclude that 30 percent to 40 percent of the cost of the package will be returned in the form of tax receipts from higher economic growth.
Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report.
11:25:46 AM
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Iraq and 9/11
Gene Lyons addresses the false impression of any sort of link between Iraq and 9/11 fostered by the Bush regime in order to sell its prepackaged war.
Gene Lyons
March 26, 2003
Underestimating the Enemy
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
Tooling along I-430 for an early morning assignation with a horse, I noticed a woman in the inside lane with a patriotic message in her rear window. In big, carefully-scripted white letters, it read: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS IN IRAQ. Then beneath: REMEMBER 9/11.
Having hoped to avoid this accursed war for a couple of hours, I found myself marveling at the thought processes--if those are the right words--that created this manifestation of patriotic zeal. Support our troops? Absolutely. Now that the fighting has begun and it's clear that the bewildered little man with the cocky swagger and the fear in his eyes has staked his political future upon overthrowing Saddam Hussein--as odious a tyrant as the U.S. has ever armed and supported--one can only pray that American and British soldiers get the job done quickly, with maximum effective force and minimum loss of life.
Alas, it's already beginning to look as if Bush's advisors, serene in their certitude, have badly underestimated the Iraqis' willingness to defend their homeland against foreign invaders. But hold that thought.
What a people we Americans are becoming. War as a "real time" 24 hour cable TV event. "Mediathons," Frank Rich calls them; war as the logical successor to the O.J. Simpson trial, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and the quest to find Chandra Levy. All war, all the time. "Embedded" correspondents in flak jackets live from the front. The ultimate reality TV. And now, a few words from our sponsor.
But "REMEMBER 9/11?" Madam, that was a different Arab, called Osama bin Laden. Not an Iraqi, but an exiled Saudi. Osama denounces Saddam as an "infidel," and would enjoy seeing him dead quite as much as you would. Not one Iraqi among the 9/11 hijackers. Attacking Baghdad in response to 9/11 is the equivalent of attacking China to avenge Pearl Harbor.
Unfortunately, many who support President Junior either don't know or don't care. "Whatever anyone may say about weapons of mass destruction, or about Saddam's savage brutality to his own people," writes the eminent biologist Richard Dawkins in The Guardian "the reason Bush can now get away with his war is that a sufficient number of Americans, including, apparently, Bush himself, see it as revenge for 9/11. This is worse than bizarre. It is pure racism and/or religious prejudice. Nobody has made even a faintly plausible case that Iraq had anything to do with the atrocity. It was Arabs that hit the World Trade Center, right? So let's go and kick Arab ass. Those 9/11 terrorists were Muslims, right? And Eye-raqis are Muslims, right? That does it. We're gonna go in there and show them some hardware. Shock and awe? You bet."
Dawkins points out that al Qaeda can only feel "gleeful." Provoking a worldwide conflict with the Great Satan is precisely what the 9/11 attacks were intended to do.
Junior unashamedly used fear to sell this war. In his ultimatum to Saddam, he claimed that responding to "enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide." Suicide, the man said.
Yet Bush promises to bring democracy to the Middle East. So here's my problem: if millions of Americans, like the lady with the slogan in her rear window, seek vengeance against an enemy they can't identify, what would Arabs vote for if they could?
Writing in the Washington Post, veteran Middle Eastern correspondent Youssef M. Ibrahim summarized a poll taken by Zogby International in six Arab countries from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. And guess what? Huge majorities favor greater political involvement by Islamic clergy than their governments allow. Fewer than 6 percent think the U.S. is attacking Iraq to bring democracy. Instead, "close to 95 percent were convinced that the United States was after control of Arab oil and the subjugation of the Palestinians to Israel's will."
Look at a world map. The U.S. can't fight everybody from Morocco to Pakistan. Shock and awe notwithstanding, there are too many of them, too few of us, and too much territory. There are already signs that ideologues who talked an ignorant, easily manipulated Bush into this global game of "Risk" had no idea of Iraq's determination to fight. The joyous mobs they foresaw greeting U.S. troops haven't materialized. Retired U.S. generals are telling reporters that precisely as they'd warned, American and British forces are in danger of becoming overextended and having their supply lines interrupted. For patently political reasons, the war began before sufficient force was assembled. The outcome's not in doubt, but it's looking like a far longer, bloodier struggle than anybody wanted.
10:33:05 AM
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