A day or two ago, Iraq's Prime Minister Allawi was widely quoted as being deeply disturbed, or some such phrase, by the dispatching of a wounded terrorist by a Marine in Fallujah. Today he made a more complete statement in Arabic. Haider Ajina translated this quote from tomorrow's Al Nahrein newspaper:

Iraqi Prime Minister Dr. Allawi said that he would reserve all comments on the death of the injured Iraqi in Felujah at the hands of a U.S. Marine, until the U.S. reports the finding of the investigation. He also said, "The fighting that the Iraqi & U.S. forces (in Felujah) have contributed greatly to the improvement of security in Iraq. These forces protect the Iraqi civilians from the terrorists and armed thugs, which used Felujah as a base of operations. These Terrorists are murderers, criminals and need to be dealt with accordingly."

That is, I suspect, the majority view in Iraq.  Thursday, November 18, 2004

www.powerlineblog.com

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MAINSTREAM MEDIA BACKS UP  (IF ONLY FOR A MOMENT)

The story of the shooting in Fallujah received very little in follow-up in today's papers. Yesterday's breathless Los Angeles Times write-up ordinarily would have cued many similar follow-ups as a reflexively anti-military newsroom gang went after the Marine in question. Instead there are some pieces aimed at presenting the context for the incident.

Perhaps MSM realized the cliff it was approaching. Powerful posts at Powerline, Instapundit, and LGF, and questions like those I raised yesterday, may have been just the first warnings of a massive anti-media backlash against sensational war reporting that has the effect of inflaming our enemies and endangering American troops.  There is widespread disgust with MSM in the land, and leading a lynch mob against a Marine which also has the effect of instigating more violence could only add more fuel to the anti-MSM fire. At this point, media would be well-served to wait for investigations to follow their course and to institute policies for the review of war zone video prior to its display to the world.  Would-be Oliver Stones can get troops killed, and the American public will demand that broadcast stations not acting "in the public interest" be penalized, perhaps with the loss of their licenses.

Speaking of disdain for MSM, there is a howler at USA Today, which suggests that the problem with the exit data was with the people interpreting it.  Think on this for a moment:  The data was garbage, but the misimpression of Kerry momentum that it created was the fault of people who didn't know it was garbage. Riiiiiight.  Here's the best couple of lines:

"Sheldon Gawiser, chairman of the polling consortium's steering committee and NBC's director of elections, said Wednesday that in future elections, no data will be sent to the networks and AP until at least 4 p.m. ET. The “first wave” of data that bloggers posted this year, he said, was too raw to be valuable to 'people who don't know what they're dealing with.'

The data were supposed to be kept confidential and used only to help the networks plan their election night broadcasts."

How, exactly, is garbage data supposed to "help the networks plan their election night broadcasts?"  And speaking as a blogger who immediately recognized that the imbalance in women v. men being polled and posted on it while network talking heads kept hinting at a Kerry surprise, who exactly gets marked down for failure to see garbage as garbage?

Gawiser's nonsense is just the latest example of Rather's Disease --the inability to admit wild mistakes that everyone else sees clearly.  The exit polling was a bust, a disaster, of absolutely no use in "planning election night coverage" and an almost-repeat of the Florida fiasco of 2000 which took an easy Bush win in that year and turned it into the recount from Hell by erroneously calling Florida for Gore before the Panhandle's polls had closed.  Over and over again the media's "experts" have been revealed as self-important blowhards with no track record to back up their claims to expertise.  And every time the MSM does a pratfall, they get up, dust themselves off, blame the bloggers and move one.  As though nobody noticed.  How clueless can one profession be?  Thursday, November 18, 2004

www.hughhewitt.com

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OSAMA IMPOTENT: CENTRAL COMMAND

The deputy commander at Central Command told a press conference today that the Pakistani Army has cut off Osama bin Laden from his organization to such an extent that bin Laden can no longer direct terror operations (via Drudge):

Pakistan's military has been so effective in pressuring al-Qaida leaders hiding in the tribal region of western Pakistan that Osama bin Laden and his top deputies no longer are able to direct terrorist operations, a senior American commander said Thursday.

"They are living in the remotest areas of the world without any communications — other than courier — with the outside world or their people and unable to orchestrate or provide command and control over a terrorist network," said Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of Central Command.

"They are basically on the run and unable to really conduct operations except, in the very long term, provide vision and guidance as Osama bin Laden does when he provides one of those tapes," he added, alluding to a bin Laden video tape released three weeks ago.

Obviously, I'd prefer to see Osama perp-walked back to the US to stand trial for the cowardly murder of 3,000 American civilians, but that seems to be getting closer. It's important not to underestimate what can be done with couriers, but when one cannot guarantee the reliability of the communication, it is limiting in the extreme.

Winter gets quite harsh in that region, so it is somewhat surprising that Pakistan has made the commitment to keep the pressure on all through the season. It's the right thing to do, of course, but it's still nice to see Pakistan playing along. With any luck, we'll bag them when they get desperate.

MORE PROGRESS IN IRAQ

Two breaking stories demonstrate the level of success that the combined Iraqi-American forces have achieved in their pacification mission throughout the Sunni Triangle. First, US troops in Fallujah have found the base of operations used by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda group:

U.S. troops sweeping through Fallujah on Thursday said they believe they have found the main headquarters of the insurgent group headed by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In video shot by an embedded CNN cameraman, soldiers walked through an imposing building with concrete columns and with a large sign in Arabic on the wall reading "Al Qaida Organization" and "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger."

Inside the building, U.S. soldiers found documents, old computers, notebooks, photographs and copies of the Quran.

The terrorists apparently left so quickly that they had to leave their documentation behind, which may allow the Coalition forces many opportunities to identify and neutralize other AQ assets in the region. Normally, intelligence is destroyed prior to abandoning a position, and the fact that this didn't happen at AQ-HQ in Fallujah either means that the onslaught came much more quickly than the terrorists' preparations, or they simply don't know any better. Either way, the oversight in leaving that information behind will likely haunt the Islamist lunatics fleeing Fallujah.

In fact, it could have led to this:

U.S. and Iraqi forces swept Thursday through an insurgent neighborhood in central Baghdad, arresting 104 suspected guerrillas, the Interior Ministry spokesman said. Nine of those arrested were believed to have fled from Fallujah, where U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major offensive against rebels on Nov. 8.

Most of the arrested were Iraqis, but some came from Syria and Arabs of other nations. The capture of so many at one time also indicates a level of surprise -- which demonstrates that the Americans and the Iraqi government have the momentum and a fair bit of very recent intelligence. Underground insurgencies rarely put that many of their members together at a single point, and it almost sounds like Coalition command received a tip about a meeting.

I would not be surprised if the material found in AQ-HQ leads to more such captures in the next few days.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that the military doesn't think this was Zarqawi's hideout, but also says that several such bases have been discovered:

Several command and control centers operated by insurgents have been discovered in Falluja, a top Marine officer said today, but he denied reports that one of them was the headquarters of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

A great amount of intelligence material was recovered at the centers, including computers and ledgers listing fighters, the officer, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said at a briefing outside Falluja, west of Baghdad.

As I said, expect to see that intelligence used in the next few days to gather up a number of terrorists throughout the Sunni Triangle. These dicoveries have a habit of cascading outwards exponentially.

GUARDIAN INSULTS AMERICAN SOLDIERS

The British daily The Guardian covers the news from the liberal point of view in the grand British tradition of partisan reporting; its counterpart, the Telegraph, does the same for Conservatives. I normally enjoy reading both papers as they unapologetically highlight the news from their own honest perspectives, unlike our own newspapers that fake objectivity while slanting their product. Also, I find that the Guardian usually features better writing than many of their American cousins.

One of my least favorite parts of the Guardian are their in-house editorial cartoons, drawn crudely by Steve Bell. They're mostly dull, unimaginative, knee-jerk leftist hack jobs. (In fact, editorial cartooning is the one journalistic area in which I feel Americans far excel.) Today's Bell cartoon seems especially egregious to me, as you'll see:

I have no beef about the image of George Bush, although I think the hairy knuckles around the turkey's neck lacks a certain amount of subtlety. President Bush is a big boy and a legitimate target for ridicule by editorialists, no matter how puerile they or their criticisms might be. However, the assignment of the turkey to our armed services that operate under deadly circumstances to the best of their ability goes too far. No one can doubt that Bell intended to disparage the troops, first by picturing them as one of the dumbest animals on the farm, and second by insinuating that as a whole they commit crimes which require presidential pardoning. It's a cheap shot by a talentless hack.

I'd expect something like this from Ted Rall, and perhaps I should have expected it from the Guardian, but I find it insulting, childish, and terribly disappointing. If Bell wants to insult George Bush and Americans as a whole, that's one thing. Insulting the troops in this manner demonstrates nothing but cowardice and a lack of moral fiber that ill befits a newspaper that aspires to international influence.

HOW EUROPEANS RESEMBLE RADICAL MUSLIMS

Irshad Manji writes a brilliant op-ed piece in today's New York Times giving her impressions of the difference between Europe and North America in how liberal Muslims are treated. She also includes her thoughts on the role of religion in Western life, one of the best rational answers I've yet seen.

Manji, who has traveled extensively between North America and Europe, and writes about the difference between the two in how they react to Muslims. For North Americans, she writes, the issues revolve around radicals who use Islam to justify terrorism. In Europe, they're much more concerned about headscarves than terrorists:

To get there, allow me to observe key differences between the debate over Islam in Western Europe and North America. In Western Europe, the entry point for this debate is the hijab - the headscarf that many Muslim women wear as a signal of modesty. By contrast, the entry point in North America is terrorism.

Some might say that difference is understandable. After all, Sept. 11 happened on American soil. But March 11 happened on European ground, yet the hijab remains the starting point for Europeans. Meanwhile, it makes barely a ripple in North America.

Why so? Manji writes that Europe is in the throes of a full-blown identity crisis, and that even the most liberal of Europeans -- actually, especially the most liberal Europeans -- see daily reminders of faith as threatening to their cherished secular humanism. In their own way, Europeans are every bit as paranoid about their identity as radical Muslims. This translates into policy decisions such as shutting Turkey out of the EU, even though it might slow up some Muslim immigration to Europe and even though Turkey has adopted all of the hallmarks of Western nations.

Manji also defends religion against the secular humanists of Europe who question her reliance on the belief in God:

Religion supplies a set of values, including discipline, that serve as a counterweight to the materialism of life in the West. I could have become a runaway materialist, a robotic mall rat who resorts to retail therapy in pursuit of fulfillment. I didn't. That's because religion introduces competing claims. It injects a tension that compels me to think and allows me to avoid fundamentalisms of my own.

Be sure to read Manji's essay in full.  Thursday, November 18, 2004

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NORWEGIAN JEWS NOT WELCOME AT KRISTALLNACHT ANNIVERSARY

This has been discussed quite a bit in our comment threads for the past couple of days, but it deserves its own thread: Paris, Oslo, Helsinki. (Hat tips to all who emailed this one.)

The Norwegian diplomat Terje Roed-Larsen, who serves as the United Nation’s Middle East envoy, heaped praise on Arafat yesterday with an enthusiasm that would make a Gaullist blush. “He was like a surrealistic painting, full of contradictions, full of mystery, full of inconsistencies,” Mr. Roed-Larsen told Norwegian state radio NRK. “He was complex, deep, superficial, rational, irrational, cold, warm. He may be the most fascinating person I have ever met, and without comparison the most fascinating leader I have ever met.”

This came at the end of a week in which Norway managed to forbid Jews from marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a step the French haven’t yet taken. The local TV2 News reported that no Norwegian Jews participated in Oslo’s commemoration of Kristallnacht. “TV2 also reported that the authorities, saying they didn’t want trouble, forbade any Jewish symbols, including Stars of David and Israeli flags,” according to Israel’s Arutz-7 radio station. “On the TV2 evening news, a group of Jews and their friends who wanted to take part in the commemoration were shown being firmly told by a policeman to ‘please leave the area,’” according to a dispatch from an American journalist living in Norway, Bruce Bawer, on AndrewSullivan.com. “This in a city where Muslim demonstrations take place on a regular basis, and include signs and banners bearing hateful, barbaric slogans.” The ban prompted a protest from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the government of Norway.  November 12, 2004

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog

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A NORTH KOREAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT?

Hopeful signs have apparently surfaced.

It's Thursday in Japan and I have received email from Kyoto from Mongai Kome, frequent commenter on this blog. His morning paper (Sankei Shinbun) is reporting anti-regime flyers being posted in over fifty places in North Korea. This public display of disobedience in that benighted country is unprecedented and has been going on for the last month. Here is Mongai:

The most prevalent flyer is called the "sixteen lies" of tyrant Kim and his tyrant father and it takes apart the fundamental myths and propaganda regarding the cult of the Kims and outlines the failings of the regime. Another flyer is based on the thesis that Kim Jong-il killed his father (perhaps some propaganda in and of itself but a brilliant move given the traditions of the Korean culture.)

Here is hoping things happen in twos and in Iran and North Korea justice will be done, and done soon, and done of, by, and for the people there with a little help from friends.

From earlier in his email, Mongai means Bush and Rice who he is happy are in office, considering the circumstances. But I think if Kim Jong-il is finally going to be gotten rid of, we already know who is going to do it.  Wednesday, November 17, 2004

www.rogerlsimon.com

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...has been located among the corpses of the enemy in Iraq: "French insurgents killed in Iraq."

Though many American liberals continue to regard Europe as a model of sophistication and humanism, and thus a great potential check on rampant U.S. "cowboyism," Europe actually is a bit of a fever swamp. There's nothing new about this -- think of pre-World War II Europe. The re-emergence of European anti-semitism, though under-reported, is no secret either. In truth, though, Europe was essentially racist even during the golden age of the former Western Europe. And I'm talking about anti-black racism, not just anti-Semitism. In fact, the appointment of Condi Rice to replace Colin Powell made me recall a remark that a friend of mine who lived in Europe made more than 30 years ago. He said that it would be decades before the U.S. could appoint a black Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense because the Europeans wouldn't take one seriously. Come to think of it, where is England's Rice or France's Powell?

Anyone who follows European soccer knows about European racism. By the mid-1960s viciously racist crowd behavior was basically a thing of the past in the U.S sporting scene. But it was just getting started in Europe. Black players were routinely abused by English fans for at least two more decades. Unfortunately, Everton fans were considered among the worst, although at least they could be won over by good play. In the famous 1966 World Cup match between North Korea and a Portuguese team full of African players, the Everton crowd cheered the players off the field.

Overt racism finally has mostly been vanquished from the English game. However, blacks on the English national team often are the targets of terrible abuse when England plays on the continent. Yesterday, England played in Spain, a nation that surely is in the upper echelon of Euro-taste and sophistication. The blacks who played for England -- Ashley Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips, and sub Jermaine Jenas -- faced a torrent of abuse throughout the match from the Madrid crowd, including chants of "monkey" and imitation monkey noises The same thing happened the day before when the England under 21 team played in Spain. One victim, Carlton Cole, complained that even little kids were joining in. Previously, the Spanish coach had made a racial slur about Thierry Henry, the French super-star who plays in England. And speaking of France, fans of the club St. Etienne physcially attacked opponent Bastia's black players after a match this weekend. Accounts of these disgraceful events can be found here, here, here, and here.  Thursday, November 18, 2004

www.powerlineblog.com

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www.michellemalkin.com

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IRAN SAID TO BE DEVELOPING WEAPONS-DELIVERY SYSTEMS

Now wait a minute: I thought they had given all this up! From the Washington Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

PARIS — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday the United States has seen signs that Iran is developing technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

He spoke just hours after an Iranian opposition group charged that Tehran has a secret, military-run uranium-enrichment plant and has bought the blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

Mr. Powell made his remarks while traveling with reporters to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Chile.

"I have seen some information that would suggest they have been actively working on delivery systems. ... You don't have a weapon until you can put it in something that can deliver a weapon," he said, according to Reuters news agency.

"I'm talking about what one does with a warhead," Mr. Powell said. "We are talking about information that says they not only have [the] missiles, but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together."

http://jihadwatch.org

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PRO AND CONTRA

Two different visions of the future of the world were separately articulated over the last few days. The first was delivered by Jacques Chirac, the President of France at a gathering sponsored by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He said the West could not impose its values on the world and confuse democratisation and Westernisation. "Granted, it is still possible to organise the world based on a logic of power yet experience has taught us that this type of organisation is, by its very definition, unstable and sooner or later leads to crisis or conflict. ... It is by recognising the new reality of a multi-polar and interdependent world that we will succeed in building a sounder and fairer international order. This is why we must work together to revive multilateralism, a multilateralism based on a reformed and strengthened United Nations."

In Chirac's view the United States had tried to impose this "logic of power" on the world and stood condemned. The New York Times reported on remarks the French President had delivered earlier.

Most prominently, Mr. Chirac reiterated his view that the war in Iraq had led to an "expansion" of terrorism in the world. Though he said that France was willing to put its differences with Britain and the United States aside and look to the future by helping to rebuild a stable, democratic and sovereign Iraq, Mr. Chirac indicated that he thought the judgment of history would go against the Iraq war and vindicate those who opposed it. ...

"We have another choice," Mr. Chirac told an audience at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (remarks delivered later). "That of an order based on respect for international law and the empowerment of the world's new poles by fully and wholly involving them in the decision-making mechanisms. "Only this path," he added, "is likely to establish a stable, legitimate and accepted order in the long run." The new "poles" he spoke of are the emerging regional powers of the new century, including Europe, China, India and Brazil.

A fortnight earlier, an American Undersecretary of Defense gave a quiet interview to Radek Sikorski, at one time a deputy minister of defense himself in Poland, on the future as he saw it. Paul Wolfowitz. The full article is in the Prospect Magazine.

Export of democracy isn't really a good phrase. We're trying to remove the shackles on democracy. What you would hope is that governments can be encouraged on a path of gradual reform because that's the best way to avoid the sort of cataclysm that will come otherwise.  ... We're not trying to graft our system of government on to people who are different from us. We're trying to remove shackles that keep them from having what they want. And it's astonishing how many of them want something that's similar to what we in the west have.

Sikorski put a rhetorical question to Wolfowitz: "The US president used to be seen as the leader of the free world rather than just president of one country and America used to be seen as a benign global empire. Now, after 9/11, understandably, this is a more patriotic, perhaps even a more nationalistic country. But won't the price of running a nationalistic American empire be much higher than managing a co-operative one?" Wolfowitz responded with the most astonishing assertion of the interview, the idea that a cooperative "empire" -- if empire it could be called -- could only consist of free nations.

The premise of your question is that we're out to run an empire, but there is no American empire. Look at Japan and Korea. They were part of this so-called empire in the cold war. After the second world war and the Korean war, we invested heavily in the defence and economic systems of countries like Japan and Korea - hardly an imperial undertaking. I would submit that we have benefited enormously from their strength and their ability to stand on their own feet. They're now contributing to the rest of the world. We're so much better off with a Japan as a strong trading partner than a Japan as a basket case. If people want to redefine the word "empire" to mean this as an empire, then it's just semantics. We are not trying to control these countries so we can exploit their resources. We're trying to enable these countries to stand on their own feet and our experience says that when they do so, we're better off. It's back to the absurdity of saying we're trying to impose our ideas on other people when we want to help them become democracies. There's more legitimacy to the question of whether we are really prepared to live with what they produce when they become democratic. There's an uncertainty about the democratic process and there's always a danger that bad people will get elected. But it's a funny empire that relies on releasing basic human desires to be free and prosperous and live in peace. One of the things about this moment in history is that nobody really thinks they can produce an army, a navy or an air force that can take on the US. That should channel human competitiveness into more productive and peaceful pursuits.

History may remember Jacques Chirac as one of the most prolific institution builders of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The European Union and the United Nations are but some of the multilateral projects he sought to strengthen in the belief they would serve as a prototype for the future ordering of the world. Wolfowitz's vision seems altogether more complex. He seems unwilling to speak of institutions outside the context of empowerment, as if to speak of instruments of governance without freedoms was tantamount to prescribing tyranny. Their difference of opinion may be rooted, not so much in an argument over bureaucratic arrangements, but in their view of the nature of man himself.  Friday, November 19, 2004

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http://news.bostonherald.com/holbert

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