You’re a bloody dictator finally deposed and in the dock for your horrific crimes. So what do you do? Why, you naturally go for the insanity defense: You retain Ramsey Clark as one of your attorneys, you rant and rave in court at every opportunity, and make claims like you won’t show up in court because you think the trial is unfair.”
Yes its a circus, but at the end of it we have the certainty that Saddam will hang, unlike the circus that surrounds Milosevic.
Nov 14
So, President Bush has finally decided to go after those Democrats who are smearing him by claming he lied or mislead about the intellegence on Iraq in order to drum up support for the war. It will be an uphill battle because not only will he have to contend with the Democrats, but the news media as well. The Democrats aren’t that formidable a foe, but the news media is much, much smoother at lies and misrepresentations. Good luck Mr. President, you’ll need it.
Nov 11
Last night when my wife and I were watching the news, Larry Connors reported the story I highlighted yesterday of the bombmaker killed in Indonesia. Thankfully he left out the speculation about maybe he was planning more attacks, but Larry did call Bin Husen “the mastermind” of the Bali nightclub attacks. My wife had a similar reaction to Jason’s: “Mastermind? What kind of mastermind does it take to put some bombs in a nightclub and blow the place up and kill a bunch of people?”
Speaking of policy disputes versus morality plays, Brent Scowcroft criticized Bush administration policy and the Bush administration responded. If you believe Joe Klein, and I don’t, the Bush administration responded by sending out “talking points about how to attack Brent Scowcroft” based on a claim by a source who deleted the email before he read it. Well, as Jim Taranto points out: “He [Klein] “reports” that the White House is trying to “destroy” Scowcroft, based on an anonymous source’s description of an e-mail that not only Klein but the source himself hasn’t read! It’s such a hilariously inept bit of journalism…” The sad thing is that as we’ve seen, this is isn’t inept journalism, this is SOP for journalism, and the main reason I don’t get excited over claims of malfeasance reported by the media until I can see the primary documents with my own two eyes.
Like a lot of people who have read the talking points, I find them both civil and cogent, and frankly the right way to approach a policy dispute. I reprint them here from Elephants in Academia:
1. Bernard Lewis is perhaps our greatest living historian on the Middle East.2. Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire” was accurate, courageous, and important, as we learned from (among others) Soviet dissidents.
3. The assertion that we have had “fifty years of peace” in the Middle East is an odd one, if you consider (a) America’s 1991 war against Iraq (which General Scowcroft favored); (b) the Iraq-Iran war (in which there were a million casualties; (c) the conflict in the early 1970s between Jordan and the Palestinians; (d) the civil war in Lebanon; (e) the four wars between Israel and Arab nations; and (f) the attacks of September 11, 2001 (which was carried out by Islamic radicals who emerged from the broader Middle East).
In some ways this point underscores the enormous difference between the worldview of Mr. Scowcroft and those in the Bush Administration. Mr. Scowcroft seems to believe that the status quo in the Middle East is tolerable, maybe even preferable; we do not. The President believes that if the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and anger and violence for export. In the words of President Bush, “In the past, [we] have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.”
4. The “bad guys” — the most ruthless among us — do not “always” rise to the top. In fact in many elections – in Spain and Portugal, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the Czech Republic and Romania, South Africa and the Philippines, Indonesia and Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iraq, and many more – we have seen enormous strides toward freedom. For example, the Western Hemisphere has transformed itself over the last two decades from a region dominated by repressive, authoritarian regimes to one in which the overwhelming number of countries there have democratically-elected governments and growing civil societies.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that some pretty bad guys (like Saddam Hussein) “win elections” in authoritarian and totalitarian societies. Indeed, non-democracies make it far easier for the “bad guys” to prevail than is the case with democracies. Is it the supposition of Mr. Scowcroft that from a historical point of view dictatorships have a better record than democracies? Or that because democratic elections don’t always turn out well they can never turn out well? Or that because democratic elections don’t always turn out well we should prefer authoritarian and totalitarian regimes? The habit of mind that sees all the weaknesses in democracy and all the “strengths” in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes is, well, curious.
5. Mr. Scowcroft insists we will not “democratize” Iraq and that “in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratizing the Middle East can be successful.” Except that in the last two-and-a-half years Iraq has moved from tyranny, to liberation, to national elections, to the writing of a constitution, to the passage of a constitution. By any standard or precedent of history, Iraq has made incredible political progress. Iraq still faces challenges, including a ruthless insurgency — but there is no question that the people of Iraq long for democracy and for victory over the insurgency.
The charge that the way we have sought to bring democracy to Iraq is “you invade, you threaten and pressure, you evangelize” is itself deeply misleading. Mr. Scowcroft’s invasion was in fact a liberation — and overthrowing one of the worst tyrannies in modern times and replacing it with free elections is a good start on the pathway to liberty. And of course this year we have also seen political progress — not perfection, but progress — in Kuwait, Egypt, and among the Palestinians.
6. The notion that democratic progress in Lebanon is “unrelated” to the war in Iraq is undermined by what the Lebanese themselves have told us. To take just one example, here are the words of Walid Jumblatt, who was once a harsh critic of American policy: “‘It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”
7. Mr. Scowcroft seems to wish that Syria were still ruling Lebanon with an iron fist. Brutal repression may be;wicked — but (Scowcroft seems to believe) it does keep a lid on “sectarian emotions.”
8. Sometimes when given a chance, we humans don’t screw up. Sometimes ;human beings reach for, and (even if imperfectly) attain, nobility and the advancement of freedom and human dignity.Which seems to me to be an argument against cynicism and despair — to say nothing of repression and tyranny. Let the debate proceed.
I suppose too many people don’t know who to have a civil debate, so they have to resort to name calling and lying.
There are two things I find very offensive about the claim that the Bush administration lied about WMD just so that we could go to war – it insults my intellegence as it is so obviously wrong to anyone who has the slightest ability to remember, or absent that, to anyone who takes the slightest time to investigate; and it takes a straightforward policy dispute (whether or not to to to war) and turns it into a morality play (Bush lied and people died!).
And in this fantasy, it’s Joe Wilson who exposed the administration. Let’s examine the circumstances around Joe Wilson’s trip and the claim that, for instance, the administration either made stuff up out of whole cloth or at least leaned on intellegence agencies to provide intel like the White House wanted. The VP and his staff (i.e. Scooter Libby) took a strong interest in intellegence and even visited CIA headquarters a few times. Thus the claims that the VP pressured the CIA to tell him stories he wanted to hear.
Wilson’s trip starts, according to the CIA, when Vice President Cheney indicated an interest during his daily CIA brief in more information about a report that Saddam tried to buy Uranium from Niger. So the CIA sends former Ambassador Wilson at the recommendation of his wife to check the story out. He spends some time in Niger talking to old friends, briefs our Ambassador there about his findings, returns home and briefs the CIA about his findings. What did he find in Niger? He found that indeed, the Iraqi’s in 1999 had gone to Niger and made overtures that the Nigerians interpreted as a desire to buy uranium, but that the Nigerians didn’t sell any, and couldn’t anyway because of monitoring. Did the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, immediately alert the Vice President that in fact they had confirmed the Iraqi’s tried to buy uranium from Niger? No, the CIA concluded that the report was inconclusive because all Wilson did was talk to contacts who knew he was reporting to the US government (which they knew he did before he left) and handled the report routinely without informing the White House of it’s contents. Later on Ambassador Wilson would go on to lie or mislead about almost every aspect of his trip, his findings especially, in a successful attempt to make people believe that the White House lied about WMD, when the only liar was Joe Wilson.
So what does the uncontested part of Wilson’s trip tell us? If the CIA felt any pressure to say what the White House wanted, they sure as hell didn’t act like it. Here we have the Vice President show an interest in a report about WMD, and the CIA went out of their way to investigate in such a way as to generate a report they could ignore while telling the White House if asked that they had indeed investigated but the results were inconclusive even if, as it happened, they turned up evidence that Iraq did try to obtain uranium from Africa.
Nov 8
Imagine my surprise to read this article in my paper on Sunday which completely bebunks the stories told by an OIF veteran named Jimmy Massey.
Among his claims:Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.
Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.
A tractor-trailer was filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.
…
Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated – according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.
Gateway Pundit is all over this and thinks Mr Massey should be behind bars; I think he should be in a mental institution getting the help he obviously needs (along with his partner in madness, Cindy Sheehan.)
And not content with that, Mr. Ron Harris then goes on to ask “Why did the press swallow Massey’s stories?” The quotes Mr. Harris presents do not paint a pretty picture of the press:
Media outlets throughout the world have reported Jimmy Massey’s claims of war crimes, frequently without ever seeking to verify them.For instance, no one ever called any of the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s battalion to ask him or her about his claims.
The Associated Press, which serves more than 8,500 newspaper, radio and television stations worldwide, wrote three stories about Massey, including an interview with him in October about his new book.
But none of the AP reporters ever called Ravi Nessman, an Associated Press reporter who was embedded with Massey’s unit. Nessman wrote more than 30 stories about the unit from the beginning of the war until April 15, after Baghdad had fallen.
Jack Stokes, a spokesman for the AP, said he didn’t know why the reporters didn’t talk to Nessman, nor could he explain why the AP ran stories without seeking a response from the Marine Corps. The organization also refused to allow Nessman to be interviewed for this story.
How typical — stonewall when called on shoddy journalism.
While the story never comes to a conclusion about why didn’t the press checkout his stories, I’ll give you my answer – in some cases they wanted to believe them, and in other cases they just never bother. I don’t know which is worse, but check out more quotes from the story:
David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.
“I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today,” he said.
Mr. Holwerk, please don’t pee on my leg and tell me its raining. What steps have you specifically taken so this doesn’t happen again? Yes, no doubt today, after having been alerted, you wouldn’t run Mr. Massey’s ravings without the slightest scrutiny like you did the last time, but what about other stories?
Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper’s story about Massey could have “benefited from some additional reporting.” But he didn’t necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.The paper printed a story in which Massey reportedly told an audience how he and other Marines killed peaceful demonstrators. There was no response from the Marine Corps or any other evidence to back Massey’s claims.
Smith said that, unfortunately, that is the nature of the newspaper business.
“You could take any day’s newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test,” he said.
“Yes, it would have been much better if we had the other side. But all I’m saying is that this is unfortunately something that happens every day in our newspapers and with practically every story on television.”
Mr Smith, I have to credit you with telling it like it is, and in the immortal words of Latigo Smith, “the Truth hurts”, but how do you look at yourself in the mirror every morning while willingly and knowingly participating in a gigantic fraud on the American people. Yes, fraud. We pay newspapars to tell us the facts and provide all sides to a story, and here you are telling us that what we get for our money is a collection of fairy tales that on a good day might concievably have some ever so slight basis in fact, but you don’t really have any idea.
Michael Parks sees it differently. He is the director of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism and formerly the editor of the Los Angeles Times. Parks also reviewed stories written about Massey.”A reporter’s obligation is to check the allegation, to seek comment from the organization that’s accused,” said Parks, a Pulitzer Prize winner who covered the Vietnam War as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. “They can’t let allegations lie on the table, unchecked or unchallenged. When they don’t do that, it’s a clear disservice to the reader.”
Dear Mr. Parks, it isn’t a disservice to the reader, its fraud. When the press claims one to fact check but doesn’t, it’s fraud. And this happens over, and over, and over.
“We’re not stenographers, we’re journalists,” Dixon [former managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and currently chairman of the Howard University Department of Journalism] said. “What separates journalism from other forms of writing is that we practice the craft of verification. By not doing that, that’s saying they’re abdicating any responsibility from exercising news judgment. … As a journalist, you want to put accurate information before the public so they can make opinions and decisions based on accurate information. When something like this happens, harm is done, the truth suffers.”
Amen Brother Dixon, Amen. Now if you can make that teaching stick with your students, I’ll be much obliged to you.
My own theory on why Mr. Harris wrote two such take-no-prisoners articles: His sense of truth was offended by what happened. He was one of the imbedded reporters with the marine unit that Mr. Massey was maligning and as such he was a witness to the truth. And so he wrote two articles, one that looked at the liar, and the other that looked at those who uncritically spread the lies, and he discharged his duty to the truth.
Mr Harris and the Post delivered real journalism, powerfully delivered in two short articles. And Mr. Arnie Robbins, new editor in chief of the Post, that’s something that I, and plenty others who also want real journalism, are willing to pay for, whatever the format.
Oct 20
There are times when I read the papers and I think I must be insane. It seems that a lot of people are worried about the fairness of Saddam’s trial. Fairness? Is there really some question of his guilt? This is a guy who started out as a leg breaker for the Baathists, graduated to assassin, took over by killing his rivals and associates, and never hesitated to kill, torture, or maim anyone. He stayed in power not through the ballot box, but throught the overwhelming application of terror and death. He’s ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands people, enough I suppose that for some it’s no longer a crime but a statistic. Having a trial at all is all the fairness this guy deserves. I guess I’ve come to expect delusional arabs quoted in the papers, but when Saddam’s fellow dictators publish self-serving editorials indistinguishable from an editorial run by what was once considered the top newspaper in the US, you have to wonder about your sanity.
Some people haven’t lost it though, as this commentary in al-Adalah shows:
Imagine if justice tried Saddam with the same laws he enacted, such as executing him and asking his family to pay for the bullets, burying him alive in a single or mass grave with a number of his henchmen, cutting off his ear or tongue, throwing him in an acid bath or poisoning him with thallium or poisonous gas. The main lesson of this trial is not a brief show that will end up with the most severe punishment meted out to Saddam. Rather, it will be a trial of a whole black era revealing all the tragedies and disasters perpetrated by the dictatorship.
Exactly, the point of this isn’t Saddam’s long awaited and richly deserved death, but the exposure, exposition, and condemnation of his and his minions evil.
Some of our elite media, like Ted Koppel, have showed their concern for our fighting men by reading the names of the fallen or showing their flag draped coffins. I wish these same organizations, which were mute when Saddam was fertilizing the soil with Iraqi bodies, would starting reading the names of all the Iraqi’s killed by Saddam, and showing their mass graves.
Oct 17
I have a ballcap I love for two reasons: (1) even though it only cost me five bucks it’s a very nice cap — bought it at Kohls BTW, and (2) the logo is a flag with “established 1776” underneath. The whole “established 1776” works as the simple story, but America (OK, the United States for my international readers) didn’t spring fully formed from Washington’s head in 1776.
1776 is the date of the Declaration of Independence, which after a stirring introduction is a laundry list of grievances and concludes by declaring that each state is independent and a nation in its own right. And 1776 was a couple of years after the First Continental Congress. So was 1776 the birth of nation? The Articles of Confederation were approved by Congress in 1777, ratified by the states in 1781 and are the original constitution of the United States. Dissatisfaction set in almost immediately however, and so the current US Constitution was created in 1787 over period of almost four months. It wasn’t until 1789 that it was ratified by enough states and took effect (with Rhode Island and North Carolina ratifiing after it took effect).
The Bill of Rights, or the first 10 amendments, was the result of the complaints about the Constitution during the ratification process, and were proposed in 1789 almost immediate after it took effect were ratified by 1791. It has been amended 17 more times since, with the 27th amendment originally proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in, yes, 1789, and ratified in 1992. Some people dislike the messy amendment process, where they have to persuade a majority of the American public across the land, so instead now we have the Supreme Court simply amend the constitution on their own say so.
All this is a long preamble to noting that two years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq voted on and may have ratified a new constitution this past weekend. If so, the next rendezvous with history will be the parliamentary elections to be held December 15 this year. The path has not without winding and stones, since a lot of Iraqi’s have not had a chance to read the document for themselves, and some issues were kicked down the road to be settled at a later date. Kind of like slavery in the US constitution, but hopefully more like the Bill of Rights, which was added as a result of pressure and politics following the ratification of the constitution. Even if this Iraq constitution was voted down, they are still way ahead of the US, which took 13 years from the Declaration of Independence to ratify our Constitution.
Part of the dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq is historical amnesia – we who live in a time tested democracy under the rule of law simply have forgotten the time required and difficulty in forging a new nation when there wasn’t even the need to create a political culture of law and democracy as well as since it was already bequeathed to us by Great Britain. We forget that the early trials and tribulations strengthed our political institutions, not weakened them. And so we Americans demand perfection when we have no right ot expect it nor should we want it.
We can only do so much in Iraq; the rest is up to the Iraqi’s. And so far, they are taking ahold of their own future. Congratulations, Iraq, and good luck.
Oct 13
It’s a big day in Iraq today, with the people voting on a new constitution. Pass or fail, it’s democracy in action, and I’m hoping that the Iraqi people vote and the terorrists don’t disrupt the vote. As has been observed, democracy is a process, not a one time event.
Sep 11
Today is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. I cannot think of anything witty, wise, touching, or insightful, in part because as I type one child is practicing the viola and the other is practicing the piano. But I suppose that is a good sign — instead of apocalypse, there is normalcy at home. When the news came that New Orleans was flooded, I knew it was a natural, not al-Qaida disaster. I don’t worry when I watch a ball game that the stadium will go up in a gout of fire; I don’t worry during large, symbolic events that disaster lurks in the shadows. The fighting is distant, and the struggle now is chiefly fought by means other than death and destruction. Our hand is reaching out to help far more than it is clenched to strike. Yes, an enemy strikes at our allies, and our soldiers in far off lands, but at home there is a measure of safety for us but denied to our enemies. And we are winning the war by every measure – Islamic fascism is less strong, less popular, is losing ground world wide. The war is not over, and likely to be a generational struggle, but this war is the rarest of wars as it now looks to leave the world better off than when it started. The greatest danger to us is complacently, of stopping or turning our attention away too soon, because our enemy certainly hasn’t given up, and could unleash far worse than 4 airplanes.
Arclite theme by digitalnature | powered by WordPress