THE STRAIGHT STUFF ON LEBANON AND SYRIA

Here is another thought provoking analysis of the Hariri assasination/Syria connection. - Sailor

Kerry Spot [ jim geraghty reporting ][ kerry spot home archives email ]

THE STRAIGHT STUFF ON LEBANON AND SYRIA

Last night I spoke to a very smart guy who follows Lebanon-Syria issues closely about the Rafik Hariri assassination and various Middle Eastern issues.

First, a couple of details about the bomb that killed him. It used something in the neighborhood of 650 pounds of TNT – not the kind of bomb that a bunch of amateurs can easily assemble in a basement.

The crater was centered in the middle of the road, indicating the bomb was likely placed under the street and not in a parked car.

The bomb was placed at curve, where the motorcade would have had to slow down. The assassins obviously had to know Hariri’s schedule and the route he would be traveling. The Syrian-backed Lebanese government security forces were ‘responsible’ for Hariri’s safetly, and would have that information.

Hariri’s motorcade included jammers designed to disrupt signals that could detonate a bomb, gadgets that usually interfered with cellular phone reception in the surrounding area. Somehow, the bombers either used a wire-triggered bomb or had gotten their hands on a counter-device placed in a nearby vehicle.

Another interesting observation – look at the photos of the bomb site here, here and here. The surrounding buildings look devastated, correct? And a 650 pound bomb that can destroy a bulletproof limo, goes off on a downtown street in a major city… and the death toll is only 18 people?

It turns out the buildings on either side of the bombing were under construction. The location was the perfect spot for someone who wanted to make a spectacularly high-profile assassination of Hariri and his security forces, without killing hundreds of other Lebanese and/or Syrians walking down the street. (The bombing did injure hundreds, but considering all the other points along the motorcade’s route it could have gone off, this spot appears to be one to result in minimal ‘collateral damage.’)

Add up all of these signs of professional training, and we can pretty much conclude this was state-sponsored, and dismiss Juan Cole’s suggestion that this was a business deal gone bad.

This leaves three potential states that could have been responsible: Syria, Israel, and Iran.

The Iranians, conceivably, could have done this to put the west’s attention and heat on Syria. But my guy is skeptical of this kind of bank-shot skullduggery. The risk doesn’t seem to be worth the reward.

Israel could have pulled it off, but it’s not clear that they would really want to kill Hariri. He was leading an increasingly-impatient Lebanese people who were chafing under de facto Syrian rule. If an independent Lebanon would be more likely to reach a détente with Israel (the Lebanese may not like the Israelis, but they aren’t chomping at the bit for a conflict with them, either), why knock off a guy who could be acting in your long-term interests?

And then there are the Syrians. The strongest argument against Damascus ordering the hit is that they’re too obvious a suspect. On the other hand, Syria clearly feels as if Lebanon is its backyard or colony, and that they can act with impunity there. In fact, they’ve killed more than a few Lebanese political leaders before. Seeing an anti-Syrian Lebanese voice get killed via terrorism is kind of like hearing O.J. Simpson’s latest love interest has been found stabbed to death. Even if you can’t prove it 100 percent, you start to notice a pattern.

Hariri’s assassination came as a shock to my smart guy, not just because he was perhaps the most heavily-protected man in Lebanon, but because of his serious accomplishments in developing Lebanon’s economy. He said that while the Syrians didn’t like Hariri, he was surprised that they were willing to kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs. And the economic importance of Lebanon to Syria can’t be understated. About 1 million Syrians work in Lebanon, earning cash and sending it back home. Sending money transactions through Beirut is an easy way for foreign companies to avoid the notoriety of working with the Syrian regime.

What’s coming next? Well, the Syrians clearly completely misjudged the Lebanese reaction. A people who were previously terrified of even mentioning Hafiz Assad’s name, (instead they would curse the town he was born in) are now protesting in the streets.

Sadly, my guy fears that Walid Jumblatt, the patriarch of the Druze Muslim community and the man quoted in yesterday’s Post as comparing the Iraqi elections to the fall of the Berlin Wall, has to watch his back. There’s no reason that the Syrians couldn’t double their mistakes and make another high-profile assassination to send the signal that they’re still in control.

But it appears that so far, the U.S. and its European allies are on the right track, isolating Baby Assad’s regime and seeking ways to tighten the economic squeeze on the regime. Al-Jazeera is covering Assad’s regime and the assassination critically, so the Syrians really don’t have too many friends right now.

Taking military action would probably be a mistake, turning an “can you believe how evil and dangerous the Assad regime is” discussion into a “there the Americans go again, bombing Arabs again” discussion. Of course, with a lot of U.S. troops patrolling the Iraqi-Syrian border and Iraqi terrorists claiming the Syrians trained them, there are a lot of ways for the U.S. to make its presence known.

With Syria pledging to pull out of Lebanon, the U.S. and its allies have a golden opportunity to hold them to their word and help establish an independent, pluralist, parliamentary democracy in the Middle East.

[Posted 02/24 10:54 AM]

Terrorist claims Syrian training

This could end up being a block buster if true. We alreadyjnow that Assad jr., a Ba'athist, is harboring some of those from saddam's regime. Syria also has a track record of supporting terrorist organizations such as Hezballoh and Hamas. So this report is not out of the Realm of possibility.

Now, the Sailor has a comment on the Marine that did his duty to protect his fellow Marines, by killing that terrorist that was faking being dead. This is NOT law enforcement, this is combat. When there is movement from a hostile, you re-act, just as this Marines did. This Sailor would have done exactly the same thing. - Sailor

Terrorist claims Syrian training

Washington Times
By Maggie Michael
ASSOCIATED PRESS


BAGHDAD — Iraqi state television aired a video yesterday showing what the U.S.-funded channel said was the confession of a captured Syrian officer, who said he trained Iraqi terrorists to behead people and build car bombs to attack American and Iraqi troops.

He also said the terrorists practiced beheading animals to train for decapitating hostages.

Later, Al Iraqiya aired another round of interviews with men it said were Sudanese and Egyptians who also trained in Syria to carry out attacks in Iraq.

Syrian officials could not be reached for comment on the claims.
The videos come as the Bush administration is stepping up pressure on Syria to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs by allowing rebels to cross into the country to fight coalition troops and by harboring former Iraqi regime members. Syria has denied the charges.

In the first video, the man, identified as Lt. Anas Ahmed al-Essa of the Syrian intelligence service, said his group had been recruited to "cause chaos in Iraq ... to bar America from reaching Syria."

"We received all the instructions from Syrian intelligence," Lt. al-Essa, 30, said on a video broadcast by state-run Al Iraqiya, which can be seen nationwide.
The first tape apparently was made in the northern city of Mosul, but no date was provided. It was not possible to authenticate the claims.

The State Department said they were looking into the report, but as of late yesterday, they could neither confirm nor deny the veracity of the broadcast or that a Syrian intelligence officer had been captured.

The Al Iraqiya channel is thought to be widely watched by Iraqis — mainly those who cannot afford satellite dishes offering the Gulf-based Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya stations.

But the station, which went on the air in May 2003 with help from the Pentagon, is viewed by many Iraqis as an American propaganda tool.

Top officials in Iraq's interim government have called on Syria to hand over former Iraqi Ba'athists who fled there after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, which Syria opposed.

In the video, the bearded Lt. al-Essa, dressed in a gray jacket and shirt, claimed to be leader of the al-Fateh Army, which has not been heard of before.
He was one of 11 men on camera who said they were recruited by Syrian intelligence officers. The other 10 were identified as Iraqis.

Lt. al-Essa said his need for money was the motive for accepting an offer by a Syrian intelligence colonel whom he identified as Fady Abdullah to carry out attacks inside Iraq.

"I was trained on explosives, killing, spying, kidnapping ... and after one year, I went to Iraq with Fady Abdullah," Lt. al-Essa said.

He said he infiltrated Iraq in 2001, about two years before the U.S. invasion, because Syrian intelligence was convinced American military action loomed.
Another man, Shawan al-Sabaawi, was identified as a former lieutenant colonel in Saddam Hussein's army. He said he received training from Syrian intelligence on how to behead hostages.

Lt. al-Essa said the group used animals for training in beheadings. He said it required "at least 10 beheadings" for a member to be promoted to a group leader.

"I had to send a report to Syria about how the operations are going," he said.

Weapons, explosives and equipment were all provided by Syrian intelligence, Lt. al-Essa said. He added that the group members received $1,500 a month.

International pressure on Syria has grown since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who died along with 16 others in a massive explosion in Beirut.

The Lebanese opposition blames the killing on the Damascus government and its Syrian backers. Syria has 15,000 soldiers in Lebanon and is under growing international pressure to withdraw.

In Iraq yesterday, terrorists continued attacking civilians.

A car bomb killed two persons and wounded 14 in the northern city of Mosul. Its target was not clear. Witnesses said no U.S. or Iraqi forces were in the area.

A soldier from the U.S. Task Force Liberty was killed when assailants set off the bomb near Tuz, 105 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.

Near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, two Iraqi civilians were killed and another seriously wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the car in which they were traveling, police said.

Back in Mosul, U.S. soldiers fatally shot a civilian in a pickup truck who approached their convoy too closely to pass it, policeman Ahmed Rashid said.

Separately, CBS News reported last night that investigators have decided not to charge a U.S. Marine who was filmed killing a wounded Iraqi during the November assault on Fallujah, citing a lack of evidence.

But a Marine spokesman last night said the case "is still very much open."

The shooting occurred during a search of a mosque and was condemned by human rights groups, but investigators said the Marines thought the wounded Iraqi might have been reaching for a weapon.

Bush on tape / The president survives a secret recording

Looks like, much to the chagrin of the left, the President comes through these "secret" recordings as the same as the public man. I would suspect that the NY Times is not all that happy with what they purchased. - Sailor

Editorial: Bush on tape / The president survives a secret recording
Thursday, February 24, 2005

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

With friends like these, who needs enemies? That old adage has lost a bit of its sting thanks to Doug Wead, who traded on his friendship with George W. Bush in order to make secret tape recordings of his musings before he ran for president.

But this betrayal is more a squib than a blockbuster. In its report on the tapes on Sunday, The New York Times observed that the "private Mr. Bush sounds remarkably similar in many ways to the public President Bush."

Indeed, he does. As reported by the Times, the tapes -- the authenticity of which has not challenged by the White House -- provide few surprises. To be sure, political calculations never look good in the harsh light of day, but the picture of George Bush that emerges is only mildly unflattering.

That may be because Mr. Wead has released only some of the tapes, and the American people can go on only what has been released. The message the tapes convey about Mr. Bush is that what you see is what you get.

The most interesting aspect may be the discussion of what he calls "just, you know, wild behavior" -- behavior that has long been thought by critics to include drug use. At one point, Mr. Bush seems to say that he used marijuana in the past, although it is also possible he was speaking hypothetically.

This excerpt may shock some of his religious supporters while being completely unsurprising to most other Americans. But even here, Mr. Bush's reluctance to talk about his past actually comes off in a sympathetic light. "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," he said. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

Mr. Bush's sincere religious faith comes through clearly in the tapes, even as he positions himself to win the favor of Christian evangelicals. He is also commendably decent in his attitude to gays, saying, "I am not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

In his years as president, Mr. Bush has tried not to condemn individual people for being gay, but his good intentions have been confused by his position against gay marriage -- an excuse for many of his religious supporters to treat gays as the enemy, the very thing he shied away from on the tapes.

Indeed, it is possible to interpret these tapes as portraying a shallow politician of poor judgment -- of then Sen. John Ashcroft, later to be his bull-in-a-china-shop attorney general, Mr. Bush said: "I like Ashcroft a lot." He thought he would be a good Supreme Court pick, attorney general or vice president.

But at least Mr. Bush comes off as a sincere man and no hypocrite. For us, the real villain of these tapes is Doug Wead, the author who acted odiously for the sake of telling the American people very little.

BILL KELLER: Drunk on Power?

DiscovertheNetwork gives us all some information on Bill Keller, the executive editor of the NY Times. After reading this article, it is no wonder that the Times is biased to the left and of course, losing more and more credibility each day. - Sailor

BILL KELLER

Individual Profile:

Executive Editor of The New York Times
Former Times reporter and bureau chief in Moscow
Describes himself as a “collapsed Catholic” who is “well beyond lapsed”
Described three Republican Senators as having “harnessed their collective century of seniority to the Taliban wing of the American right."

“Traditionally, because our origins are urban, urban cultural liberals tend to come across [in Times coverage] as more three-dimensional than conservatives or suburban Republicans.” -- Bill Keller, Nov. 2004 USA TODAY interview

“This is not a time when editors swear off alcohol,” said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller last Friday night at a Columbia University fundraiser. Part of the new competitive media driving him to drink, said Keller, is blogging, which he called “a view of the world through a pinhole,” adding that in some cases it is as debased and self-serving as a “one man circle jerk.” But this left ideologue editor who controls The New York Times has his own narrow pinhole, power-intoxicated world view.

Bill Keller was promoted to the position of Executive Editor of the Times in September 2003 and succeeded Howell Raines, who had been fired because of the Jayson Blair scandal.

Keller was born in June 1949. His father George was an MIT-educated chemical engineer who in 1985 negotiated the $13.3 billion merger of Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil, and emerged as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the resulting oil company Chevron Corporation.

Keller considered going to “progressive” Reed College in Oregon. His father persuaded him instead to attend Pomona College in California, where Keller co-founded The Collage, a counter-culture newspaper that Keller says “existed mainly to indulge our young political leanings.” “Ostensibly, I majored in English literature,” Keller told an interviewer. “Actually, I guess I majored in eclectic studies with a minor in serendipity.”

He graduated in 1970, then worked as a reporter at the Portland Oregonian, the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report and the Dallas Times Herald. Following this apprenticeship, Keller took jobs as a reporter in the Washington, D.C. bureau of The New York Times (1984-86), then in its Moscow bureau as reporter (1986-88) and bureau chief (1988-91). He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his reporting about the Soviet Union.

Keller moved to the Republic of South Africa as the Times bureau chief in Johannesburg (1992-95). He returned to the United States in 1995, working as the Times foreign editor (1995-97) and Managing Editor (1997-2001).

He was passed over for Executive Editor in 2001 when Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. instead chose Editorial Page Editor Howell Raines to head the newspaper. Keller remained with the newspaper as an Op-Ed columnist and senior writer.

Keller’s opinion columns revealed political views that as an editor he says he strove to keep muted. “[Republican] Senators Helms, Gramm and Thurmond,” he wrote on January 12, 2002, “have in common the fact that they harnessed their collective century of seniority to the Taliban wing of the American right.”

“We’ve got a [Bush] administration,” Keller wrote on August 10, 2002, “characterized by blind faith in crony capitalism, a drunken spendthrift’s version of supply-side economics, and a secretive, country-club executive style….on the merits wasn’t Mr. Gore right?”

In that same column, Keller wrote that 2000 Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore “ran a bone-headed campaign. A bone-headed campaign he WON, don’t forget. He got 537,179 more popular votes, and only lost the Electoral College thanks to a lot of well-documented funny business. The best estimate of the various investigative post-mortems was that an honest statewide recount would have awarded Florida to Mr. Gore and denied [Supreme Court Justice] Antonin Scalia the role of American kingmaker.”

Keller’s easy conviction that ‘Gore won,’” wrote Clay Waters of TimesWatch.org, a project of the Media Research Center, “is contradicted by his paper’s own reporting.” Continued Waters: “On November 12, 2001 Times reporters Ford Fessenden and John Broder reported on a review of the Florida vote conducted for a consortium of news organizations: ‘A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.’”

In 2003, following Raines’ resignation, Keller was chosen to be Executive Editor by Sulzberger over contender Frank Rich, the Times Arts & Leisure columnist who had been promoted by Raines to the position of Associate Editor. “While Raines was indeed a liberal activist,” wrote Clay Waters, “Keller may have even less love for conservatives.”

As one of his first acts as Executive Editor, Keller joined his boss Sulzberger in opposing the return of a Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1932 to the Times Soviet Union correspondent Walter Duranty. Duranty’s reporting covered up Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s systematic starvation of millions of Ukrainian kulak farmers. The leftwing Duranty took favors from the Communist government, including a mistress, in exchange for concocting this pro-Soviet propaganda.

The Times’ hired expert on this matter, Columbia University History Professor Mark von Hagen, an expert on 20th Century Soviet history, wrote: “For the sake of The New York Times’ honor, they should take the prize away.”

“But rather than apologize for publishing pro-Stalinist propaganda and take steps to discredit and disown it,” wrote an investigative reporter for FrontPageMagazine.com, “Sulzberger and Keller have made the surrealistic argument that to exorcise this bloody ghost haunting their house and tainting the honor of the Pulitzer Prize would itself be a Stalinistic act of historical revisionism. To correct a lie with the truth would itself be a lie. To right a wrong is to commit a wrong. This sick Leftist mindset able to see up as down, white as black, peace as war and freedom as slavery, is what George Orwell in 1984 called ‘DoubleThink.’ Nowadays no knowledgeable person doubts that the New York Times is a very Orwellian newspaper.”

Keller acknowledged that Duranty’s reporting was “dreadful, a parroting of propaganda.” But, he told one interviewer, “As someone who spent time in the Soviet Union while it still existed, the notion of airbrushing history kind of gives me the creeps.”

Following the resignation of the scandal-engulfed Howell Raines, the Times created a new temporary position of Public Editor to help restore its credibility and named Daniel Okrent to the position as ombudsman for reader complaints and open critic of Times policies.

But when Okrent criticized the Times for reporting its own polls as front-page news while not reporting different or contrary poll results from other news organizations, Keller dismissed his criticism as “an ill-informed swipe” and told his reporters that they did not have to listen to Okrent. Keller thereby undermining the newspaper’s own watch-dog.

Keller has described himself as a “collapsed Catholic” who is “well beyond lapsed.” He has criticized President Bush’s “public piety” and described Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum as a “Catholic theocrat.”

Keller wrote that Roman Catholic Pope John-Paul II “shaped a hierarchy that is intolerant of dissent, unaccountable to its members, secretive in the extreme and willfully clueless about how people live.” (Accuracy in Media reported that Catholic League President William Donahue said Keller’s statement “Sounds like the [New York Times] newsroom commenting on Keller’s predecessor, Howell Raines.”)

Keller wrote that the Catholic Church, like the Soviet Communist Party, “exists first and foremost to preserve its power.” Keller also wrote: “This is, after all, the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition.”

“My stumblebum’s great luck has brought me into contact with some very large people,” said Keller in a 2002 college commencement speech. “Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, Andrei Sakharov, who designed the Soviet nuclear bomb and then became one of Russia’s bravest defenders of human rights, and Nelson Mandela. I keep pictures of all of them in my office.”

Contrary to the conclusion drawn by Public Editor Daniel Okrent, Keller echoes Sulzberger in denying that The New York Times has a liberal bias. It just has an “urban” perspective in its values and political views: “Traditionally, because our origins are urban, urban cultural liberals tend to come across [in coverage] as more three-dimensional than conservatives or suburban Republicans,” said Keller in a November 2004 interview with USA TODAY. “But we have made a concrete effort, for a while, to make sure we are doing the America stories as well as the urban stories.”

Lebanon's Liberation Approaches

Daniel Pipes delves into why Syria's strongman is inept and why this will lead to Lebanon's liberation. - Sailor

From www.danielpipes.org Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2422

Lebanon's Liberation Approaches
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
February 22, 2005

The fate of Syria was in good measure determined on January 21, 1994. That's when, driving at a too-high speed to the Damascus airport for a skiing trip abroad, Basil Al-Assad crashed the Mercedes he was driving, killing himself and his passengers.

The accident had great consequence because Basil, then 31, was being groomed to succeed his father, Hafez Al-Assad, as dictator of Syria. All indications pointed to the equestrian, martial, and charismatic Basil making for a formidable ruler.

After the car crash, his younger brother Bashar got yanked back from his ophthalmologic studies in London and enrolled in a rapid course to prepare as Syria's next strongman. He perfunctorily ascended the military ranks and on his father's demise in June 2000 he, sure enough, succeeded to the presidential throne.

(This made Bashar the second dynastic dictator, with Kim Jong Il of North Korea having been the first in 1994. The third one, being Faure Gnassingbé of Togo, emerged earlier this month. Other sons waiting in the wings include Gamal Mubarak of Egypt, Saifuddin Gadhafi of Libya, and Ahmed Salih of Yemen. Saddam Hussein's pair never made it.) [later addition: a reader notes that Ilham Aliev succeeded his father Heidar as prime minister of Azerbaijan in August 2003.]

The possibility existed that Bashar, due to his brief Western sojourn and scientific orientation, would dismantle his father's totalitarian contraption; Bashar's early steps suggested he might do just that, but then he quickly reverted to his father's autocratic methods - either because of his own inclinations or because he remained under the sway of his father's grandees.
His father's methods, yes, but not his skills. The elder Assad was a tactical genius, even if his rule ultimately failed (he never regained the Golan Heights, never came close to destroying Israel, and rode Syria's economy and culture into the ground). The younger Assad combines strategic blindness with tactical ineptitude.

Within months of Bashar's accession, questions arouse about his ability to retain control over Lebanon; not long after, his ability to hold on to power in Syria itself came under doubt. The Syrian government's rush to the side of Saddam Hussein just as he was ousted made eyebrows rise with wonder. Bashar's pattern of promising one thing to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, then instantly breaking his word caused general bafflement.
These mistakes prompted passage of two landmark anti-regime measures. In December 2003, the American government passed the Syrian Accountability Act which punished Damascus for its malfeasance. In September 2004, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1559 which called on all "foreign forces" to withdraw their troops from Lebanon, a clear reference to the Syrian troops that arrived in 1976.

These steps encouraged leading Lebanese politicians to demand the withdrawal of Syrian forces. Most notably, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Sunni leader Rafik Hariri took this fateful step, thereby threatening to deprive Damascus of both its sense of territorial achievement and its golden Lebanese economic goose.

There can be little doubt that Mr. Assad was behind the massive (probably underground) blast on February 14 that gouged a 20-yard-wide crater, killing Hariri and 16 others. With his flair for incompetence, Mr. Assad presumably decided that the former prime minister had to die for this betrayal. But, quite contrary to Mr. Assad's presumed expectations, far from reducing pressures on Syria to leave Lebanon, the atrocity magnified and intensified them.

Mr. Assad's response – pretending to denounce the murder, putting a relative in charge of the intelligence services, purchasing SA-18 anti-aircraft missiles from Russia, and announcing a mutual defense pact with Tehran – points to his cluelessness about the trouble he has stirred up for himself. For the first time in three decades, Lebanon now seems within reach of regaining its independence. "I don't see how Syria can stay now," observes Lebanon's former president, Amin Gemayel.

The reassertion of Lebanon's independence will fittingly reward an unsung steadfastness. The Lebanese may have once squandered their sovereignty, starting with the Syrian invasion of 1976 and culminating in the nearly complete occupation of 1990, but they showed dignity and bravery under occupation. Against the odds, they asserted a civil society, kept alive the hope of freedom, and retained a sense of patriotism.
Lebanon's independence will also serve as a large nail in the coffin of the brutal, failed, and unloved Assad dynasty. If things go right, Syria's liberation should follow on Lebanon's.
Thus can a mere traffic accident influence history.

From www.danielpipes.org Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2422

Two War Stories

Doc Farmer has two stories in his article this week. The Sailor will be posting more on the Brooklyn fiasco later today. - Sailor

Two War Stories
Written by Doc Farmer
Wednesday, February 23, 2005


In the last week, I came across two stories involving the War on Terror. One angered me beyond words; the other uplifted my belief in the honor and humanity of our troops. You probably won't hear about either one in the mainstream media, but I figured they were worth sharing.

The first story came out on Monday, via the New York Post. Apparently, one of our troops based in South Korea, only ten miles from the North
Korean border, received a package from school children. Pfc. Rob Jacobs, whose home is in New Jersey, had received a bunch of letters from the William Alexander School (JHS 51) in Brooklyn, New York. As any soldier will tell you, letters from home, even those from strangers, are a blessing to receive. They break up the boredom of the lonely off-duty hours. They make you feel just a little less isolated when you're thousands of miles from home.

Or at least, they should have that effect. Sadly, however, this was not the case for some of the letters in this particular batch. The teacher of this particular social studies class, one Alex Kunhardt, apparently instructed his class to write the letters, but didn't seem to give much direction as to how those letters should be tailored. Out of 21 letters, nine of the students decided to go into an anti-war, anti-Iraq, anti-Bush diatribe. I am guessing that they may have been coached. They berated this lone soldier for his involvement
in the destruction of mosques, the murder of civilians and the usual lib/dem/soc/commie diatribe we've come to expect from the MSM and the NEA.

Perhaps someone should have informed Mr. Kunhardt that American soldiers are not destroying mosques, nor are they murdering civilians. Further, he should buy a map. The war his students were decrying is going on in Iraq. Pfc. Jacobs is based in South Korea. Despite the same last name, there is a significant geographic difference between the Middle East and the Far East. Lastly, for middle school students, their spelling and grammar is atrocious. It's even worse than mine!

Now, think about this for a minute. You're a Private in the United States Army. You're farther away from home than you've ever dreamed you'd be in your entire life. You're less than a 20-minute drive from a country run by an incompetent whack-job despot with nukes, missiles, and not a whole hell of a lot to lose. If Kim Jong (mentally) Il decides to make a
first strike, chances are you'll either be overrun by about a hundred thousand starving, well armed, and seriously honked off North Korean soldiers, or you'll end up as a shadow on the concrete wall behind you. Throw homespun hate mail into the mix, and chances are this is not going to do much for your morale.

Pfc. Jacobs, indeed all of our US military, deserve a major apology from this sorry excuse for an educator and those seriously deluded students who decided to attack a man whose job is to keep them safe. Jacobs deserves better, as does the rest of our military.

However, as angry as this situation makes me (and, I hope, you as well) another story gave me hope. It was in the form of a letter, but not from students to a soldier. It was, instead, a soldier's letter about students. Iraqi students.

A fair number of the posters on the ChronWatch Forum are fans of a certain talk radio personality. No, this time it's not El Rushbo. In Atlanta, there's a talk show host by the name of Neal Boortz. I've never heard his show, but from what many of our posters say, Mr. Boortz is the bee's knees. I've read his website (http://boortz.com) and it's very informative, funny, witty and infuriating in its accuracy of displaying the worst of lib/dem/soc/commie ''culture'' (and I use that term culture such a growth or colony of bacteria). I sincerely wish that his show were broadcast where I live. Well, maybe someday.

Anyway, Mr. Boortz does a daily update on his website called ''Nealz Newz'' - ah, another bad speller like myself - and he had a letter that he included from a soldier in Iraq:

Dear Mr. Boortz,

My name is Sgt. Lamar Price I am currently with the 278th. Regemental Combat Team at Camp Caldwell Iraq. I am writting to ask you for help with a project I am trying to start here. A few weeks ago the 278th. opened a school in the area near here. I became aware that a lot of the children did not have shoes and were going to school barefoot in 50 degree weather. I am asking people to mail one pair of children's shoes to my address in Iraq. They can be any size boys or girls. They do not have to be new just servicable. I will then collect them and give to our patrols and convoys to pass out. My address is Sgt. Lamar Price RHHT278RCT PLT7 Camp Caldwell Iraq APO AEO 09374 As you know the United States does more good for the people of Iraq than ever gets reported in the media. Mr. Boortz, any advice or help you can give to get the word out will be deeply appreciated.

Thank you

Sgt. Lamar Price

For those of you about to jump on Sgt. Price's spelling, I'd remind you that 1) he's in a war zone, 2) not all e-Mail systems include spell-checking software, and 3) he doesn't have a teacher from Brooklyn looking over his shoulder telling him how things should be spelled. Also, please note that when the sergeant talks about 50-degree weather, he's not talking Fahrenheit. He's referring to the Celsius scale. I know from personal experience that you don't want to be walking barefoot on anything when it's 122 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

Here's a soldier smack-dab in the middle of a war zone. He's just one of over 140,000 men and women dedicated to protecting America and ensuring the freedom of 25 million people. Is he asking for sympathy? Is he asking for support? Is he asking for armor for
his Humm-V? Is he asking for Fig Newtons? No. He's asking for shoes. Shoes for Iraqi school children. Boys or girls, new or used, fancy or plain, doesn't matter. He puts his life on the line every single day, like every one of his compatriots over there, and his thoughts aren't for himself. They're for the kids he helped free, to make sure they don't burn their feet when they go to the schools that US soldiers have either rebuilt, or started from scratch.

I'm planning to write to both Mr. Kunhardt and Sgt. Price this week. For Mr. Kunhardt, I'll be filing a complaint to his principal and his district supervisor, asking how they could allow an educator to use a social studies project to spit vitriol at a brave American soldier. For Sgt. Price, I'll be heading over to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of pairs of kids shoes, and a great big Thank You card.

Two men who represent the worst America has to offer, and the best.

~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~

If you'd like to
complain to the school and the district about Mr. Kunhardt's heartless class project, here are the addresses -

Mr. Alex Kunhardt &
Mr. Xavier Castelli, Principal
William Alexander School
Junior High School 51 (Park Slope)
350 Fifth Avenue
BROOKLYN, NY 11215-2813
Phone: (718) 369-7603
Fax: (718) 499-4948


Joel I. Klein, Chancellor
NYC Department of Education
52 Chambers Street, Room # 320B4
New York NY 10007
Phone: (212) 374-0200
e-Mail: JKlein@nycboe.net
http://www.nycenet.edu/webforms/chancellormessage.aspx

You can also send a complain to the independent InsideSchools organization at:
http://www.insideschools.org/so/complaints_form.php?id=434&name=M.S.%2051%20William%20Alexander%20School

~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~

That address again for sending children's school shoes (boys or girls, new or nearly new):

Sgt. Lamar Price
RHHT278RCT
PLT7
Camp Caldwell
Iraq
APO AEO 09374

About the Writer: Doc Farmer is a writer and humorist who is also a moderator on ChronWatch's Forum. He formerly lived in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but now resides in the Midwest. Doc receives e-mail at docfarmer9999@yahoo.co.uk.

This Article Was First Published In ChronWatch At: http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=13231

Does the MSM Salivate?

Another look at the MSM and their obsession with the blogosphere. Perhaps the MSM doth protest too much? - Sailor

Does the MSM Salivate?
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Published 02/23/2005
Tech Central Station

It took the Eason Jordan scandal to finally get the mainstream media up in arms about the phenomenon of blogging. And now Big Media appears resolved to take bloggers down a notch by any means necessary. Those means include trying to portray bloggers as some kind of vicious collective dedicated more to "collecting scalps" than contributing to the national discourse.

Thus we have Steve Lovelady of the Columbia Journalism Review stating that bloggers are "salivating morons" who are part of a "lynch mob." (Lovelady claims that his remarks were "taken out of context" and not meant to apply to all bloggers.) We have Los Angeles Times writer David Shaw claiming that bloggers have "almost mythical power these days," and that "when these bloggers rise up in arms, grown men weep -- and news executives cave in. That's much more alarming than anything Jordan said." Even some bloggers are concerned that blogs are in danger of becoming the latest instrument in "the politics of personal destruction."

All of this concern is unwarranted and some of it is quite overblown. Here is why:

First of all, the overwhelming majority of bloggers simply wanted to see the transcript of Jordan's comments at Davos, or better yet, a tape of his comments so that not only all of Jordan's statements could be considered in context, but his tone and body language could be viewed as well. Neither Jordan nor CNN made any serious moves to provide the public with either a transcript or a tape. If CNN was the primary decision-maker in this non-decision and then compounded its refusal to provide a tape or a transcript with a decision to push Jordan out the door -- the appearance of a voluntary resignation by Jordan notwithstanding -- then it is CNN that should be blamed for any injustice doled out to Jordan and his career. This is especially the case if Jordan pleaded in good faith and in vain for CNN to release the video or a transcript where his comments could be considered in context. Regardless, either Jordan or CNN had it in their power to prevent Jordan's parting from CNN -- and failed.

Secondly, it wasn't just bloggers who publicized the Eason Jordan scandal. The very mainstream media concerned about the "mythical power" of bloggers was only too happy to add fuel to the fire of EasonGate. Blogger Ed Morrissey details the evolution and resolution of EasonGate and notes that there were more than a few mainstream journalists actively and avidly involved in covering the fallout resulting from Jordan's comments. This includes mainstream journalists like Howard Kurtz, the Boston Globe and the New York Sun -- among others mentioned in Morrissey's piece. Politicians like Representative Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd got involved as well and even helped initiate the interest and curiosity surrounding Jordan's comments.

Furthermore, EasonGate does not represent the first time that Jordan made comments that were both inflammatory and unverifiable. As Morrissey points out, Jordan had made a habit of claiming that journalists were under fire from military forces. Additionally, Jordan had compromised CNN's integrity in the past by making the network appear to be a propaganda arm of the former regime of Saddam Hussein. Many of Jordan's defenders have claimed that Jordan should never have lost his job solely because of the EasonGate affair. But Jordan's past reveals that his leaving CNN -- or being fired from it -- was not the result of a "one strike and you are out" situation. Rather, EasonGate may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

Finally, when it comes to the nature of the Blogosphere, Eugene Volokh does a better job in describing the blogger mentality than do the (perhaps truncated) comments of Steve Lovelady:

". . . What's wrong with lynch mobs? It's that the mob itself has the power to kill. They could be completely wrong, and entirely unpersuasive to reasonable people or to the rest of the public. Yet by their physical power, they can impose their will without regard to the law.
"But bloggers, or critics generally, have power only to the extent that they are persuasive. Jordan's resignation didn't come because he was afraid that bloggers will fire him. They can't fire him. I assume that to the extent the bloggers' speech led him to resign, it did so by persuading the public that he wasn't trustworthy.

[. . .]

"Maybe if a persuasion bunch tries to persuade people by using factual falsehoods, they could be faulted on those grounds (though that too has little to do with lynch mobs). But I've seen no evidence that their criticisms were factually unfounded, or that Jordan quit because of any factual errors in the criticisms. (Plus presumably releasing the video of the panel would have been the best way to fight the factual errors.)

"We should love persuasion bunches, who operate through peaceful persuasion, while hating lynch mobs, who operate through violence and coercion. What's more, journalists -- to the extent that they love the First Amendment's premise that broad public debate helps discover the truth, and improve society -- ought to love persuasion bunches, too. When the only power you wield is the power to speak, and persuade others through the force of your arguments (and not through the force of your guns, clubs, or fists), that's just fine. Come to think of it, isn't that the power that opinion journalists themselves wield?"

Bloggers neither "lynched" Jordan nor prevented him from a fair hearing in which he could have cleared his name and cleared up the situation surrounding him. It is certainly possible for any individual or group of individuals to abuse whatever power they have access to, and the Blogosphere is not immune from this danger. But there is scant evidence at best to suggest that bloggers abused their power when it came to EasonGate. Bloggers did not cause the downfall of Eason Jordan. Eason Jordan did that all by himself.

The Coming Ice Age?

This is a very interesting article on what might just be occurring with the global environment. Instead of global warming, we may be headed for another Ice Age. The rise in CO2 may actually have nothing to do with man, but more likely with undersea volcanic activity. The rise in CO2, according to this article, has always been the precursor to an ice age, not a warming period. Tgere is some hard scientific evidence to back this up. This is a definite must read,. - Sailor

The Myth of Greenhouse Gases
Phil BrennanWednesday, Feb 23, 2005
NewsMax.com

Listen up. This is very important.

The global warming fanatics have fingered rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), a so-called greenhouse gas alleged to be in the process of shoving the planet into a global microwave and raising sea levels to the point where the world's coastal regions will be submerged.

They blame the rise of CO2, now about 370 parts per million and rapidly climbing, on us evil humans for using fossil fuels, driving SUVs and barbecuing frankfurters on our backyard grills. They ignore the proven fact that over millions of years, every time CO2 levels have risen above 200 parts per million, an ice age has occurred.
And in past ice ages, we weren't around to cause the levels to rise. Mother Nature did it all on her own, and she doesn't drive an SUV.

Some 19,000 of the world's scientists and experts on climatology have signed declarations saying that blaming rising CO2 levels on mankind is garbage – junk science at its worst – and they insist that all the available evidence proves their contention.

In fact, the global warmiacs couldn't be further from the truth. As I argued in my January 13 column, Let Eyes See and Ears Hear, and in my 1997 investigative report, "Global Warming or Globaloney," high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are indeed a dire warning that something very unpleasant is about to befall our planet and those of us who reside here, but it has nothing to do with global warming.

Precisely the opposite: It is both the harbinger and the cause of a coming new ice age.

Now comes Robert W. Felix, who in his book "Not by Fire but by Ice" argues persuasively that it is not global warming but ocean warming that is pushing CO2 levels through the roof. Moreover, those skyrocketing levels of CO2 are bringing on a new ice age, which is sitting at our front door right now.

Here's how he puts it: "If today's rising carbon dioxide levels are caused by humans, then what caused the dramatic rise in CO2 levels at the dinosaur extinction?

"Research shows that there was 'a sudden and dramatic rise' in carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere at the dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago. ... [T]oday's rise in CO2 levels can be attributed to our warming oceans. After all, the oceans are known as a carbon dioxide 'sink,' especially when the water is cold.

"But as the water warms up, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere. This happens in much the same way that a warm bottle of home-brewed root beer will release CO2. And if you give that CO2 no way to escape, the bottle will explode. We've got it backwards. We've got cause and effect in reverse. The CO2 is not causing global warming. Instead, our warming oceans are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. It's not global warming, it's ocean warming, and it's leading us into an ice age."

According to Felix, the oceans are warming as the result of widespread underwater volcanic activity, which he thoroughly documents. He adds that "We've forgotten that this isn't the first time our seas have warmed. Sea temperatures also shot upward 10º to 18ºF just prior to the last ice age. As the oceans warmed, evaporation increased. The excess moisture then fell to the ground as giant blizzards, giant storms and floods (Noah's Deluge type floods), and a new ice age began."

And he warns, "The same thing is happening today. Underwater volcanic activity in the Arctic Ocean far stronger than anyone ever imagined!

"German-American researchers have discovered more hydrothermal activity at the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean than anyone ever imagined.

"The Gakkel Ridge is a gigantic volcanic mountain chain stretching beneath the Arctic Ocean. With its deep valleys 5,500 meters beneath the sea surface and its 5,000-meter-high summits, Gakkel Ridge is far mightier than the Alps.

"Two research icebreakers, the USCGC Healy from USA and the German PFS Polarstern, recently joined forces in the international expedition AMORE (Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition). In attendance were scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and other international institutions.

"The scientists had expected that the Gakkel Ridge would exhibit 'anemic' magnetism. Instead, they found 'surprisingly strong magmatic activity in the West and the East of the ridge and one of the strongest hydrothermal activities ever seen at mid-ocean ridges.'

"The Gakkel Ridge extends about 1,800 kilometers beneath the Arctic Ocean from north of Greenland to Siberia, and is the northernmost portion of the mid-ocean ridge system.

"To their surprise, the researchers found high levels of volcanic activity. Indeed, magmatism [blazing hot magma flowing from eruptions] was 'dramatically' higher than expected.

"Hydrothermal hot springs on the seafloor were also far more abundant than predicted. 'We expected this to be a hydrothermally dead ridge, and almost every time our water measurement instrument came up, they showed evidence of hydrothermal activity, and once we even "saw" an active hot spring on the sea floor,' said Dr. Jonathan Snow, the leader of the research group from Munich's Max Planck Institute in a 2003 press release.
Researchers found that "Naturally occurring bubbles of liquid carbon dioxide were observed rising from the ocean floor," according to the Associated Press. "For the first time ever, scientists using a camera-equipped submarine have been able to witness an undersea volcano during an eruptive episode.

"Exploring the ocean floor in an area known as the Mariana Trench, last year researchers found bubbles of liquid carbon dioxide being released into the sea, enlarging up to a thousand times and turning to gas as they drifted upward."

El Niño Related to Ocean Warming

"Ice ages looked like El Niño," Felix wrote, citing an article in the July 12, 2002 issue of Nature. "During past ice ages," he continued, "the tropical Pacific Ocean behaved rather as it does today in an El Niño event. ... Shifts between warm and cool global average temperatures look like super El Niños.

"Our seas, heated by underwater volcanism, are leading us directly into the next ice age ... and we don't even know it.

"That's what El Niño is all about," Felix explained. "Warmer seas send excess moisture into the sky, leading to increased precipitation.

"Worldwide flood activity is the worst since before Christopher Columbus. In Poland, it's the worst in several thousand years. In the U.S., precipitation has increased by more than 20 percent just since 1970. This is no coincidence.

"When that precipitation begins falling in the winter, you have the makings of an ice age."

The book is an easy read, even though it is crammed full of technical detail that Felix manages to explain even to scientific dunderheads like me. He goes into great detail, for example, in explaining why a reversal of the earth's magnetic field helps cause ice ages, as it has in all past ice ages, and points out that all previous magnetic reversals were preceded by declining geomagnetic field intensity, which is falling.

"During the past 2,000 years geomagnetic field intensity has plummeted more than 50 percent. Five percent of that decrease occurred in the past 100 years" – a sign, he writes, "experts warn may be a precursor to a new reversal attempt."

Felix emphasizes that the record proves that we are on on the verge of the onset of a new ice age. "Ice ages begin and end abruptly every 11,500 years. First comes an enormous flood, a Noah's Deluge type of flood, which ends the previous ice age. Then comes a period of warmth similar to today's ... which lasts about 11,500 years. Then the next ice age begins – catastrophically.

"That 11,500-year cycle of warmth followed by an ice age has returned like clockwork for millions of years. To hope it won't happen again just because humans now inhabit this planet would be wishful thinking."

On his Web site, www.iceagenow.com, Felix tracks the number of incidents building up to the onset of an ice age, including charting current underwater volcanic eruptions heating the oceans, and rainfall (think California), temperature and earthquake records now being broken.

He emphasizes over and over again that the onset of an ice age is both sudden and violent, lasting about 20 years, and anyone paying attention to what is happening to our planet will understand that we are probably somewhere in that 20-year period now. When it ends, huge numbers of us will go extinct, just as did the dinosaurs, and just as rapidly and as violently.

Let me recap: Felix has demonstrated convincingly that rising levels of CO2 are the result of ocean warming, not because of human activities, and that high levels of CO2 cause vastly increased precipitation, which results in vastly increased snowfall in moderate temperature zones and in the polar regions, which in turn brings on ice ages.

In short, he has told us the reason why CO2 levels have gone through the roof, what caused those levels to increase and what the result will be.

Anyone who reads this blockbuster of a book and pays attention to his regularly updated Web site will understand just what we face, and will come away with a feeling of absolute contempt for those politically inspired global-warming advocates who are lulling many of our fellow human beings into dangerous complacency.

The threat is here; the threat is now.

Let me close with something I wrote last month:

"If the current geological holocaust now under way is the result of a natural cycle – in this case, as I argue in my study, another needed regeneration of the planet – it's not an act of God but an act of nature. Sure, God – the author of nature – could put a stop to it, but it could well be that He wants us to sit up and take notice – to use the disasters to warn us to straighten up and fly right while there's still time – bad times are a-comin' and we had better be ready spiritually.

"We're on notice. Christ told us that those with eyes better see, and those with ears better hear. We had better keep our eyes and ears open. Time's a-wastin'."

Deus exaudi nos

* * * * * *

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com

DUBYA'S BETRAYER?

So a supposed friend of the President's went off and secretly recorded some of their conversasions. Then he sold them to the NY Times. And what did they reveal? That the President has been open and honest with the American people. That what he believes now, he believed then. Eric Fettmann explains. - Sailor

DUBYA'S BETRAYER?
Eric Fettmann
New York Post

February 23, 2005 -- ONETIME George W. Bush friend Doug Wead has leaked from his secretly taped private conversations with the then-governor of Texas as he was preparing to run for president. But somehow Wead hasn't been getting the Linda Tripp treatment from the national news media

To put it mildly.

Tripp secretly taped phone conversations in which Monica Lewinsky discussed her sexual exploits with Bill Clinton — and was widely derided as the lowest form of traitor. Back in 1998, ABC News' Web site asked readers who should win the "Ig-Noble Peace Prize": Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic — or Tripp.

So widely demonized was Tripp that she was held up as the touchstone of back-stabbing: When George Stephanopoulos published his insider's look at the Clinton White House, Katie Couric confronted him on-camera: "A lot of people, George, think this is just kinda creepy that you've done this. They see you as a turncoat, a Linda Tripp."

A lot of people no doubt think that what Wead did to Bush was even creepier — and find his convoluted explanation of why he made the taped, and then was "forced" to make them public against his will, downright laughable.

(For the record: Wead says The New York Times learned of the tapes from Simon & Schuster, the publisher of his new book. At which point, he says, "It was a slippery slope; once we let them listen to the tape of a quote in the book, they wanted context to prove it wasn't taken out of context." He doesn't seem ever to have considered simply saying "no" to demands he play the tapes.)

But Wead isn't held up as Bush's betrayer. Instead, the Times initial story credits him for "creating a rare record of the future president as a politician and a personality" and providing "insights into his thinking."

Much of the coverage focused on how Bush handled questions about whether he'd ever used drugs, with his answers seemingly suggesting that he'd at least tried marijuana.

But another common thread ran through the media coverage — one that Bush bashers hardly enjoy.

Indeed, one can almost see their eyebrows arching in astonishment once they realize, as the Times wrote, that the George W. Bush on tape "sounds remarkably similar in many ways to the public President Bush."

Or, as presidential historian Robert Dallek put it, "What I found most interesting in the tapes is how consistent the personality is with the man we've seen in the White House."

Talk about the triumph of cynicism. Or maybe it's just the dubious legacy of eight years of Bill Clinton. But the fact that Bush says the same things in private as in public should be considered remarkable actually is kind of sad.

The fact is, however, that the tapes explode the Bush-bashing myth of a secret and sinister pre-election plot to invade Iraq and turn the government over to fundamentalist Christian leaders.

In fact, it is on the latter point that the tapes are most revealing. The soon-to-be president vows that, despite his opposition to same-sex marriage, he refuses to bow to demands from evangelicals that he publicly condemn homosexuality.

"I'm not going to kick gays," he says, complaining that "this crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality."

Yes, he worried about the political consequences of such a stand — but he made clear he wasn't about to compromise his principles. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays," he said.

Compassionate conservatism, anyone?

OK, so that still won't win Bush honorary membership in ACT-UP. But it's pretty far removed from typical mainstream GOP rhetoric — especially for a Republican said to be in thrall to the Christian right.

Little wonder, then, that Slate's Mickey Kaus suggests — tongue only partly in cheek — that "another round of explosive front-page relevations from secretly recorded phone conversations . . . and Bush's approval will hit 70 percent."

Because the Wead tapes underscore the secret to George W. Bush's success: He's always been honest with the American people. He may gloss over certain issues, but he doesn't lie. And he doesn't tailor his convictions to political self-interest.

Which is a pretty refreshing change from what we'd gotten used to in a president.

Welcoming Home our Young warriors

The Sailor's BlogMom was busy welcoming home Marines and Sailors returning to Camp LeJeune on Monday. Pop over to her sight for the details.

Indigo Insights

Thanks Mom!

Dean, Dems frozen in time warp

Star Parker takes Dr, Demento Dean and the Dems to task, over Deans recent racist comments about Blacks and the GOP. - Sailor

Dean, Dems frozen in time warp
Star Parker
February 22, 2005
townhall.com

It didn't take long for Howard Dean, the new Democratic National Committee chairman, to show his credentials as a graduate of the Trent Lott school of racial sensitivity training.

His remarks, at a meeting with the uniformly Democratic Congressional Black Caucus, that Republicans would need the "hotel staff" if they wanted to fill a room with blacks, tell us a lot about the man. They also tell us a lot about the Democratic Party that has chosen him to lead it out of its abyss.

Dean and his party are frozen in a time warp. Their sense of the social realities of our country and the challenges confronting us haven't changed since 1965.

Surely Chairman Dean knows that our secretary of state is an African-American woman from Alabama. Or that there are now three black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

I wonder if he appreciates that the percentage of black households earning over $75,000 a year has more than quadrupled over the last 40 years. Or that there are now over 1 million blacks in this country with advanced degrees.

Perhaps Dean didn't take notice that 1.5 million blacks voted for George W. Bush in 2004 _ double the black vote that he got in 2000. I think that's enough to fill a room. And, Mr. Dean, most of those 1.5 million black folks who voted for Bush are not hotel staff.

Blacks have moved on and moving on requires open eyes and open minds. If Dean's eyes were open he'd be aware that his 40-year-old stereotypes have little to do with black reality today. He'd also be aware that prescriptions that blacks need and seek today are far different from the conventional wisdom of 40 years ago that more government is the answer for every social problem.

If Dean were paying attention, he'd be watching the reaction that Bill Cosby is getting in his inner-city tour around the nation with a message far different from what blacks are hearing from their Democratic representatives.
Inner-city black parents are getting Cosby's message that taking control of their future starts by looking in the mirror and not by looking to Washington.

Cosby wants blacks to believe in themselves. Dean wants blacks to believe in government.

Dean thinks that if you want to find a black in a hotel you go to the bell stand. There are blacks today who own hotels.

Last month this same black caucus met with President Bush to share its agenda with him. Every issue on the agenda -- whether jobs, crime, education, health care -- was defined by a government spending program.
The president's sop to them was a new inner-city government spending program he announced in the State of the Union address.

However, the president's core message of ownership, responsibility, faith and freedom is far more in sync with what blacks need and want.

Dean and his Democrats should start watching the Cosby show and return their "Amos 'n' Andy" tapes to Blockbuster.

A few years ago I spoke in a hotel in the South. The event was sponsored by a conservative foundation and the audience was white. Here's an excerpt from a letter I got after the event that might help Dean understand what many blacks who are still working in hotels are thinking:

Serving in the Banquet Department of the hotel at a function sponsored by the John Locke Foundation allowed me to stay in the hall and listen to your presentation about your adversities, including the issues of 'living on the edge.' I knew at that instant the correct turn at the crossroad before me. My experience of meeting you kept a lamp of hope lit in my heart. I am now off drugs and back in college after 32 years, with a 4.0 GPA and pressing toward the mark every day. A healing in my life was initiated that day.

Imagine if this woman who heard me speak that day heard Dean's joke about blacks instead.

The Democrats' selection of Dean as their chairman tells me that they are getting more rather than less deaf.

Democrats need to wake up.

Star Parker is president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education and author of the newly released book 'Uncle Sam's Plantation.'

In Denial: The Left Reacts to DiscoverTheNetwork

Looks like the left is all in a dither over "DiscovertheNetwork". You can see what all their fussing ang whining is all about in this article and by going to the site from the Sailor's BlogRoll. - Sailor

In Denial: The Left Reacts to DiscoverTheNetwork
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com
February 22, 2005

It is now nearly a week since we launched our new website, DiscoverThe Network: A Guide to the Political Left. This is the first web attempt to define the left and to map its networks of funders, organizations and individuals along with their agendas (both overt and covert). We are gratified by the initial comments we have received in some quarters for this effort in the taxonomy of political movements. We wish to stress that it is still a work in progress, and that we expect to make it better and better.

As we expected, the left has not taken the news presented on our site well. A pro-Islamic jihad writer for Alex Cockburn’s CounterPunch regards it naturally as “David Horowitz’s Smear Portal” and objects to our linking noble champions of social justice like himself with the “resisters” in the Sunni triangle he supports. But other, less politically deranged exponents of the leftist persuasion have also weighed in with objections to these inclusions. This article is by way of answering their complaints.

In the first place it should be pointed out that even though DiscoverTheNetwork consists of thousands of files, and is the product of years of work and decades of experience, these critics have launched their attacks within hours of its appearance on the web and before any serious person could have digested a fraction of its contents. It is difficult not to regard such attacks as politically motivated attempts to stigmatize, tarnish and yes, smear, the new website, and thus bury the enterprise in a way that would preclude having to deal with the information it displays.

Thus, instead of parsing and analyzing the actual contents of the site – the detailed profiles of individuals and organizations and their links to networks defined in the site -- these critics have seized on a quirk in the format, an entirely innocent feature of the site, as an opening for their attacks. This is the “Individuals” search page, which functions as a table of contents for one section of the site. Actually it is even less than that. What they have attacked is a picture grid on the Individuals search page which was intended as a kind of visual enticement to enter the actual profiles of the site. Thus if one were to click on the picture of Barbra Streisand or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Michael Moore on this page one would be immediately directed to their individual profile pages.

The mere listing of these figures in the database was not intended to suggest that there are organizational links or common agendas or coinciding agendas between these individuals. On the other hand, Michael Moore has called the “resisters” in Fallujah “patriots” and “revolutionaries,” while denying that they are terrorists. Do Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Michael Moore have a common agenda? Evidently Michael Moore thinks so. Let’s name it: defeating the Great Satan -- the imperialistic, invading and occupying war machine of the United States. It should be obvious that even the otherwise innocent Barbra Streisand shares negative views of the Bush Administration and its mission of liberating Iraq with anti-American jihadists like the aforementioned Zarqawi, even though we are sure that she deplores some of his methods. She also is a fan of Moore's anti-American propaganda piece, Farenheit 9/11 and is not on record so far as we know condemning Moore's film or his sympathies for the terrorists. If one were to read the profile of Ms. Streisand in the database, however, one would never make the mistake of regarding her as a Muslim fanatic bent on exterminating infidels. Our critics so far have not bothered to take this step or check what DiscoverTheNetwork actually says.

Here is a typical reaction from the blogger Rox Populi: “Listed along with Bill Moyers, Barbra Streisand and Cornel West, you’ll find the Ayatollah Khomeni, John Walker Lindh and enemy-of-the-state Pete Seeger on the “Individuals” page. Read it for a good laugh. I must admit I haven’t had this much fun since I was handed a Lyndon LaRouche tract that tied the Hapsburgs to the Challenger explosion.”

Of course there’s nothing to “read” in the picture grid on the “Individuals” page which is the only page about which Rox Populi cares to comment. The laugh, in other words, is self-reflecting. The picture grid is not a list of anything, except a small fraction of the raw contents of the site. It is an enticement not a thesis. It does not suggest any connections between these individuals, except in the sense that they all belong in a database about the left. Would Trotsky and Stalin belong in a database on Communism? Yet Stalin denounced Trotsky as an “enemy of the people” and put an ice pick in his head. Within the political left – as in the right -- there can be differences that are both deep and that final. To exclude either Trotsky or Stalin from a database of Communists let alone leftists, would preclude creating a comprehensive database of Communism or the left and ultimately reduce it to the description of one faction. To include anything else, in the minds of these critics, would be "guilt by association."

Is it conceivable, for example, that a leftist would attempt a comprehensive portrait of the right, and include such media conservatives as George Will, Pat Boone and Bob Hope but leave out David Duke or (inevitably) Mussolini or Hitler? (Conservatives, of course, regard both Hitler and Mussolini who were socialists as properly belonging to the political left.)

At this point in time, no critic from the left has bothered to look at any of the actual individual profiles on the DiscoverTheNetwork site. None has argued that a single profile is inaccurate or makes invidious or unreasonable connections between the individual in question and other individuals or organizations or ideas. If the profiles of Bill Moyers, Cornel West and Barbra Streisand are fair and accurate, then what is the problem?

In our introduction to the site we made a specific pledge not to do what we are now being accused of – smearing individuals through guilty association (something the left does instinctively, relentlessly and all too well): “We are aware that this base may raise legitimate concerns about the effect of the categorizing and labeling that such an enterprise entails and the possibility of inaccuracies creeping into the data. We share these concerns and have provided a contact link on the homepage of this site (Contribute Information) where corrections can be submitted. We want to assure both the public at large and those individuals and organizations whose names appear in this base that we will take immediate steps to correct any and all factual inaccuracies that are brought to our attention. The integrity and accuracy of this database is as important to us as it is to anyone.” (emphasis added)

Although the site is less than a week old, we have been true to our pledge. A blogger friend of Nation editor Katrina Van Den Heuvel, sent her the bullet points which appear at the head of each profile in the site and asked her for her reaction to hers. These are the points:

· Editor and co-owner of the left-wing magazine The Nation

· Limousine leftwing daughter of William J. vanden Heuvel, who worked for the founder of the CIA and for Robert F. Kennedy, and Jean Stein, whose father founded MCA-Universal.

· Married to New York University Russian scholar and Gorbachev enthusiast Stephen F. Cohen

· Fluent in Russian. Worked as reporter for state-run Moscow Times in U.S.S.R.

Van Den Heuvel objected to the statement that she was fluent in Russian and a reporter for the Moscow Times (it was the Moscow News) and – far more importantly – pointed out that she was a reporter only for a few weeks to cover Russia’s first democratic elections. In other words the bullet point (and related text) insinuated that she worked for the press of a Communist police state and she hadn’t. When apprised of this mistake. We removed the inaccurate point.

When ABC’s Jake Tapper called us directly to complain about a passage referring to him in our profile of the American Broadcasting Company, we immediately altered it and made it accurate to his satisfaction.

In our introduction, “What This Site Is About,” we pointed out that there are several already existing leftwing sites whose clear purpose is to smear conservatives by mislabeling them “homophobic” or “racist” on the basis of policy differences (e.g., support of the Clinton military policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” or opposition to racial preferences). These sites include People for the American Way’s “Rightwing Watch,” the report on conservatives compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and David Brock’s MediaMatters. In contrast to DiscoverTheNetwork, it is the intention of these sites to misrepresent and smear conservatives. That is why they refuse to correct the defamations when they are pointed out by their conservative targets. (Exchanges exemplifying this problem between MediaMatters and myself and also the Southern Poverty Law Center and myself are available at FrontPageMag.com. (For the Center's reply see this and for mine see this.)

In constructing DiscoverTheNetwork.com, we resolved that we would make it an informational site useful for all, regardless of political persuasion. It is for this reason that we have adopted a policy of not using labels to misrepresent and stigmatize individuals or organizations and that we are ready to correct any misrepresentations that have crept into our profiles. We are determined that this will be a resource useful to all journalists and researchers, conservative and liberal alike. We will make it as accurate and as independent of the viewpoint of the editors of the site as possible.

If you thought the confusions behind Rox Populi’s attack on DiscoverTheNetwork were confined to the blogosphere fringe, however, you would be mistaken. Her canard against DiscoverTheNetwork is actually lifted (with a “hat tip”) from the blog of a well-known English professor at Penn State, Michael Berube. (The “humor” that follows, as you will see, is so clumpy, however, that you would hardly suspect his expertise was literary): “The latest product of the fertile mind of David Horowitz is finally available for public use! It’s Discover the Network and no, it’s not a cable channel that shows mammals doing the nasty. It’s “A Guide to the Political Left”-- that’s right, a comprehensive introduction to some of the world’s leading traitors, terrorists, and useful idiots!! And be sure to check out the ‘Individuals’ page, kids! Because before today, you could plausibly say that you just weren’t aware of the connections between: Bruce Springsteen and Mohammed Atta; Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and Roger Ebert; Martin Sheen and Ramzi Yousef;…and, of course, Barbra Streisand and the Ayatollah Khomeini -- but now you can’t use that excuse any longer! So, kids, join the global war against the American entertainment industry and its alliance with Islamist religious fundamentalists whose beliefs about women, sexuality, and secularists only appear to be similar to those of Christian religious fundamentalists but are really allied with the decadent Fifth Columnists who introduced soul-sucking concepts like 'the weekend' and 'the minimum wage' into American life! Remember, everyone can fight in this war-- even Sean Hannity and Jonah Goldberg! Enlist today!”

Funny maybe not, but this is a pretty good rendering of the paranoid fantasies of the left.

Even my good and talented friend Sherman Alexie emailed me this stinging rebuke (no sense of humor in this letter):

DavidYour DiscoverThenetwork site is disgusting. Placing the photo of Ayatollah Khomeini beside Barack Obama, Castro beside Kucinich, Mohammed Atta beside Mike Farrell? It’s propaganda of the crudest sort. And it’s lazy. Where are the right wing billionaires connected to Saudi oil money? Where are the right wing independent arms dealers who sell to any buyer?

I’m betting that most independent arms dealers are driven by mercenary rather than ideological motives and sell their wares to all comers. But those that are, in fact, “right-wing” aren’t in this database because it is a database of the left. The same goes for right-wing billionaires connected to Saudi oil money. Sherman knows this. This is not an appeal to logic but a cry of the wounded. My friend Sherman is an honest man and understands that this database reflects links that are not merely caricatures by political enemies but are legitimate indices of a political reality that affects at least parts of the left and thus that DiscoverTheNetwork has already found its mark.

I have described the link between major elements of the left – but not all elements of the left -- and radical Islamicists as an “unholy alliance.” I have written a book about it with that title:Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the Radical Left). Another way of viewing this database is to see it, in part, as a sequel to Unholy Alliance, an Internet version of a text I would have written about the left if it could be written by one man and pressed between the covers of a printable book.

The “alliance” between radical Islam and the left is generally not formal (though anyone imagining that there are no such alliances is naïve), but it can be easily identified in the profiles of individuals in the base, like Michael Moore or Ward Churchill, for that matter. Both regard the Islamic terrorists fighting America in Iraq as the resistance to an illegitimate occupation, and both believe the terrorists deserve to prevail. Organizations that share this view and are represented in this database include CounterPunch.org, Alex Cockburn’s webzine, the National Lawyers Guild, and leading “peace” organizations like International ANSWER and Code Pink. And this is just the tip of an ugly iceberg.

Michael Moore has certainly been celebrated and supported by leading figures of the Hollywood left and of course by leaders of the Democratic Party. They may not share his more radical views, but they are certainly willing to stand politically closer to him than they are to President Bush and the conservatives who are leading the war against the terrorists. Thus the inclusion of various Democrats in this base along with Michael Moore and Islamic radicals is appropriate, even if their connections are the not caricatures suggested by critics. The Ayatollah Khomeini, whose revolution launched the Islamic jihad, to cite another example, was supported at the time by broad sections of the American left, including many who opposed the wars against terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.

My friend Sherman's complaint, therefore, is misguided. As is his complaint that the database slights the humanity of its subjects (if you read the actual profiles it does not):

I know many of the lefties on your site, and find them to be, by and large, fragile and finite and compassionate and intelligent and misguided and honest and hopeful and hateful and loving, just like most of the righty folks I’ve met and know.

I know several of the lefties on my site as well. Moreover, I was part of this left for 25 years and thought of myself and my comrades as “by and large, fragile and finite and compassionate and intelligent… etc.” too. But that is just the beginning of understanding the left. The agendas and – yes relationships – described in this site must be taken into account in any assessment as well.


David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation,” and which chronicles his odyssey from radical activism to the current positions he holds. Among his other books are The Politics of Bad Faith and The Art of Political War. The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.” Horowitz’s latest book, Uncivil Wars, was published in January this year, and chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses last spring. Click here to read more about David.

Lawyer: Annan Covered Up for Old Friend

Corruption at the UN continues to filter out, despite the UNs best efforts to keep it all secret. One has to wonder what else Annan and company are keeping "secret". - Sailor

Lawyer: Annan Covered Up for Old Friend
Monday, February 21, 2005
FoxNews

UNITED NATIONS — The lawyer for a woman who accused a senior United Nations official of sexual harassment said he believes that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan covered up for an old friend by letting him keep his job despite the harassment charges.

The accusation follows Sunday's resignation by Ruud Lubber (search), the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister, has insisted he's innocent of charges that he sexually harassed female staffers and has said he felt insulted, accusing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (search) of giving in to "media pressure."

The sexual harassment allegations were made against Lubbers in April 2004. In May of that year, an investigation into those claims was launched by the United Nations and the investigators backed the woman's claims.

But in July, Annan ruled that no further action be taken. He also kept the report secret.

The report was then leaked to FOX News last Friday, the same day Annan was holding a long-scheduled meeting with Lubbers. U.N. diplomats told The Associated Press that the secretary-general offered Lubbers two choices — resign or face suspension and charges of breaking U.N. rules.

Two days later, Lubbers resigned.

Annan's decision has left those familiar with the case, both inside and outside the United Nations, bemused. "This resignation should have happened a long time ago," one high-ranking U.N. official told FOX News.
The alleged victim's lawyer said Annan was simply trying to give a friend a break.

"Yes, in my opinion, absolutely," Annan was involved in a cover-up, said lawyer Ed Flaherty. "Again, there being no new facts between what Mr. Annan had in July of 2004 and yesterday, that in my mind was the only explanation."

Further evidence of Annan's determination to keep the report secret appears to come in a series of letter exchanged between the United Nations and the alleged victim in this case, which has been obtained by FOX News.

The letters show that the alleged victim, an American woman who was a 24-year veteran of the United Nations, repeatedly appealed to Annan to allow her to see the report into the allegations she made. Her request was consistently turned down, as shown by the letter.

A U.N. official told FOX News keeping these kinds of reports from an alleged victim is "standard procedure."

FOX News' Jonathan Hunt contributed to this report.

Intelligence dream team

John Roberts gives some insight into Jon Negroponte and Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden, who the President has tapped to run America's intelligence agencies. - Sailor

Intelligence dream team


By John B. Roberts II
Washington Times


The combination of Ambassador John Negroponte and Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden as the top overseers of America's security services under the new intelligence-reform bill is as close to ideal as we are likely to achieve. They are uniquely qualified for the demanding task of establishing the authority of the newly created post of National Intelligence Director and Deputy Director and the equally difficult job of coordinating the budgets and operations of our fifteen disparate intelligence agencies.
This duo makes an intelligence dream team at a time when America's intelligence services need the very best leadership available. Both men come to the job with different but complementary backgrounds. Both have current security clearances at the highest levels, and both are already read-in to some of the country's most sensitive intelligence sources, methods and ongoing covert operations.

Mr. Negroponte's recent tour as presidential envoy to Iraq means he has been in charge of the embassy that hosts the largest CIA station in the world. Having spent the last year face to face with CIA field operators in the country that President Bush had made his central front in the war on terror, Mr. Negroponte has intimate knowledge of the current successes and limitations on CIA and military-intelligence operations. This experience makes Mr. Negroponte better equipped than any other senior policymaker in Washington, bar none, to judge the efficacy of American intelligence.
As the current head of the National Security Agency, Lt. Gen. Mike Hayden brings equally current expertise to the task of transitioning America's security services from a director of central intelligence-dominated intelligence community to a national director of intelligence-directed community. Gen. Hayden, who is respected at the Pentagon, will make a superb deputy for Mr. Negroponte. Like Mr. Negroponte, Gen. Hayden is read-into ongoing operations, has an intimate knowledge of the intelligence community and is an advocate of reform.
Gen. Hayden is a technologist who understands that the United States faces tremendous challenges in maintaining its edge in electronic eavesdropping, code-breaking, reconnaissance and the use of satellites for spying and intelligence operations. In early 2001, Gen. Hayden was alone among the spymasters in warning publicly that Osama bin Laden was a step ahead of us because he possessed superior communications technology. Gen. Hayden knows we face an adaptive foe with good knowledge of the limitations of our methods.
Ironically, Mr. Negroponte's strength in clandestine operations may also be his achilles' heel. Senate Democrats will be tempted to oppose his nomination, as they did when he was previously nominated as ambassador to the United Nations, because of his involvement with the covert Contra war in the 1980s.
Mr. Negroponte served as ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration supported a covert war against the Marxist government of Nicaragua. The CIA station in Tegucigalpa handled most of the covert war's daily operations, with the station chief, Don Winters, reporting to Mr. Negroponte.
Honduras was no easy post in the eighties. When I visited our embassy in Tegucigalpa in 1982, the facade bore fresh scars from a recent explosion. Leftist insurgents, backed by the Sandinistas and the Soviet Union, carried out urban terrorist campaigns, kidnappings and assassinations across the region. Messrs. Negroponte and Winters collaborated magnificently in carrying out President Reagan's policy to roll back Communism in Nicaragua. Mr. Negroponte gained hands-on experience from the policymaker's perspective during an ongoing covert action. This gives him a unique perspective on the intelligence consumer's requirements when it comes to covert operations. This experience will serve him well as national intelligence director.
Covert action is fraught with risk, especially to those who are entrusted to execute it. There are operational and political risks. Failure at either can prematurely end a promising career. I have always considered it a testament to the skill of Messrs. Negroponte and Winters that both men survived the Iran-Contra affair relatively unscathed, while their counterparts to the south in Costa Rica became the targets of prosecutors. This is in spite of the fact that the operations run from Honduras were of far greater tactical significance than those handled in Costa Rica.
Not least, the nominations of Mr. Negroponte and Gen. Hayden are in keeping with our post-World War II tradition of shared military and civilian leadership in the country's premier intelligence posts. Since its creation, the CIA has had both civilian and military leaders in its top two positions. This serves to integrate the views of civilians and the military at the top echelons of our national intelligence agencies. The combination of Mr. Negroponte in the post of national intelligence director and Gen. Hayden as his second in command sets an important precedent for the new directorate that bodes well for integrating civilian and military intelligence services in a unified effort.

John B. Roberts II served in the Reagan White House. He writes frequently on national-security affairs.