Old Europe's EU: A house diseased by itself cannot stand.
Steven Den Best has written another terrific piece on why the bankrupt ideology upon which the EU is based contain the seeds of its own destruction:The guiding philosphy behind the EU.
In commenting on that piece, Trent Telenko has added to the argument that the EU will implode due to its internal problems with his analysis of the EU's pension problems which he's entitled Kicking the Can: What Den Beste Missed.
I would also add to that an op ed piece by Bat Yeor at Front Page Magazine on the Muslim problem in Old Europe which is called European Fears of the Gathering Jihad--a very sobering piece that explains why the EU diplo snobs like Chirac, Schroeder and DeVillepin act the way they do and it's not because of their "deep concern for world peace," either.
Liberating Iraq may be America's easiest task ahead.
Dealing with the deluded wannabe emperors and future tyrants of Old Europe and the social problems their ambitions create--as ever, it seems--threatens to occupy us for decades.
Stop the Insanity! Sign this petition!
If you're like me, you're sick to death of seeing "Love Boat" cast rejects taking it upon themselves to tell you on TV and in public "peace" protests how much they hate President Bush and his "blood for oil" war on Iraq.
Thanks to Merde in France, I discovered the opportunity to sign this wonderful petition:Citizens Against Celebrity "Pundits" which may nip some of this in the bud before these Hollyweird idiotarians hurt themselves...and worse and more seriously, before they put all of us in danger by imperiling our national security!
Saddam thinks they actually speak for us!
February 21, 2003
Could the head of the IAEA please not be a Muslim?!
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, and a team of UN inspectors are in Iran to assess its nuclear programme.
The move follows concern from the United States regarding Iran's recent announcement that it plans to widen the scope of its nuclear activities.
Call me a "rascist" if you have to, but I'd rather be an alive Islamophobe than one who's glowing nuclear ash...
Having a Muslim named Mohammed as head of the IAEA makes me nervous!, especially when it comes to performing inspections on other Muslim countries like Iran and Iraq.
These guys have a different vision of "world peace", called Dar al-Islam than most of the rest of us and ElBaradei comes from Egypt and grew up when Nasser was the Egyptian president.
Nasser's favorite dream was of an "Arab bomb" and this is a dream which has been revived by Islamists like Saddam and the Ayatollah.
What's to say that ElBaradei doesn't share it?
I'm sure that the chairmanship of the IAEA is rotated, like everything else in the U.-fricking-N., but could we limit the officers of this nuclear regulatory board to those from "nuclear" and more stable democratic countries, please?
And to men or women who don't hold allegiances to a "higher power" or faith like Islam that prizes the murder of "infidels?"
I don't think it's asking too much.
While this ElBaradei guy looks like an idiot, I know that looks can be deceiving.
I don't want to stake America's future on what this clueless Muslim says about other Islamists' nukes!
According to Dr. Hamir Hamza, Saddam's former bombmaker, the IAEA was the principal force in preventing Iraq from developing nuclear weapons back in the 1980's, but that was then and this is now!
It seems that the Islamists spent all of the 1990's both radicalizing and putting their people in positions like ElBaradei's so that they could have the most control of implementing their global jihad.
Get rid of Mohammed ElBaradei now.
And put a non-Muslim in his place--no French or Germans need apply!
Islamist terrorists in our midst: why Al-Arian's arrest is a big, good thing
Federal prosecutors brought racketeering charges today against a Florida professor and seven other people, accusing them of financing and helping support suicide bombings in Israel.
In one of the Justice Department's longest-running and most controversial terrorism investigations, a 50-count grand jury indictment unsealed in Tampa relies heavily on expanded prosecutorial powers granted to the department after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The indictment charges that Palestinian Islamic Jihad, linked to more than 100 killings in Israel, has been deeply rooted within the United States since the 1980's, using American academic and fund-raising groups as fronts.
Prosecutors charged that Sami Al-Arian, a suspended professor at the University of South Florida whose case has become a cause célèbre for Arab-Americans and free-speech advocates, was the group's North American leader and conducted a wide-ranging conspiracy to funnel money, support and logistical advice to terrorists operating out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
But Arab-American leaders quickly rallied to Mr. Al-Arian's defense, and his lawyer declared him a political prisoner.
Law enforcement officials and terrorism specialists said the indictment represented one of the most important prosecutions to emerge from the Justice Department's stepped-up efforts to apprehend people in the United States believed to have provided support for terrorists abroad. It will also provide an important first test of the government's expanded powers to use intelligence gathered in foreign surveillance operations in a domestic criminal investigation, experts said.
Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert who has complained about Mr. Al-Arian's activities in the United States for nearly a decade, said today that he was gratified that the government had finally taken action.
"The indictment shows an elaborate, sophisticated, comprehensive campaign, going back to 1984, and explicitly how Al-Arian and others were serving as actual leaders of a militant Islamic group within the U.S.," he said.
While suspicions of terrorist ties have swirled around Mr. Al-Arian for years because of his outspoken advocacy for Palestinian causes, the authorities said they were stymied in bringing charges against him because of restrictions that, before the passage of the 2001 Patriot Act, limited the use of foreign intelligence information in criminal cases.
[...]Mr. Al-Arian, according to the 121-page indictment, was the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or P.I.J. American authorities first designated the group as a terrorist organization in 1995 and blame it for the killings of more than 100 people in the West Bank and Gaza, including two young American women. Among the most recent attacks linked to the group was a suicide bombing in Haifa, Israel, on June 5, 2002, that killed 20 people and injured 50.
The indictment maintains that the University of South Florida, where Mr. Al-Arian taught computer engineering and where one other defendant also worked as an instructor, provided a place where Palestinian jihad members "could receive cover as teachers or students."
[...]
Mr. Al-Arian's defense lawyer, Nicholas M. Matassini, asked that the defendants be given copies of the Koran in their cells and told the judge that his client would begin a hunger strike in jail.
[...] Arab-American groups portrayed Mr. Al-Arian as the victim of a witch-hunt and challenged the credibility of the evidence against him.
[...]
The F.B.I. has been investigating Mr. Al-Arian and his possible links to terrorism since at least the early 1990's, just a few years after he became a permanent resident of the United States. He was born in Kuwait and first came to the United States in 1978 to attend North Carolina State University, becoming a permanent resident in 1989.
Around that time, the authorities said, he began attending organizing meetings around the United States for fellow pro-Palestinian advocates who wanted to raise money and recruit members to their cause.
[...]
In a 1991 meeting in Cleveland of pro-Palestinians ? one of dozens of detailed conversations, phone calls and meetings cited by prosecutors ? Mr. Al-Arian is said to have urged his followers to "damn the allies of America and Israel unto death" and to go to the Holy Land for Muslims in order to commit jihad, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said Mr. Al-Arian and the other defendants were also actively involved in helping P.I.J. to organize overseas. And the indictment listed numerous payments, some totaling $100,000 or more, that Mr. Al-Arian and his followers are said to have made in the 1990's to support terrorism operations and to provide money to the families of suicide "martyrs" killed in terrorist attacks.
In 1994, the indictment said, Mr. Al-Arian received a three-page fax "listing people killed and names and account numbers of people receiving money on their behalf."
The indictment also says there are close ties between the group and Syria, which long served as host to its leader, and Iran, which provided it with money. It also says P.I.J. members tried to disguise Iran's contributions by speaking in code, referring to Iran as "the north."
Rita Katz, a terrorism analyst, called the indictments a breakthrough by targeting a group other than Al Qaeda. "Al Qaeda is not our only enemy in the war on terror," Ms. Katz said.
Make that the War on IslamoFascist Terror, Ms. Katz.
Note that Judith Miller helped with that piece and what she knows about the world of Islam could fill volumes.
They quote terror expert Steve Emerson, but now here's Emerson's own take on the arrest in the NYPost: A 19-year Deceit
THE indictment yesterday of the Islamic Jihad terrorist leadership operating out of the United States since 1984 was unprecedented in scope and magnitude. With 50 counts (166 pages), it revealed in fascinating detail the internal conversations, discussions, planning and covert financing of one of the most murderous terrorist enterprises in the world. It uncovered a world we never get to see: how a terrorist enterprise was created, maintained, financed, and coordinated from the safety of the United States.
From issuing communiques on behalf of suicide operations to arguing how their monies were being spent by factions in the Islamic Jihad, the indictment - spanning 19 years - shows a key to Islamic terrorists' success in planting themselves in the heart of the West: the ability to deceive the public, media and government in portraying themselves as part of America's pluralist ethnic mosaic.
Islamic Jihad has been officially headquartered in Damascus, Syria, but the indictment makes clear that its CEO was a professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Sami Al-Arian - who ran the terror apparatus under the guise of externally operating three seemingly innocent entities: a Muslim academic institute, a Palestinian humanitarian-aid group and an Islamic religious center. As yesterday's evidence makes staggeringly clear, Al-Arian & Co. used these entities as a perfect cover to operate a violent terrorist group that has killed more than 100 civilians, including two Americans.
The indictment contains conversation after conversation of Al-Arian conspiring with Islamic Jihad leaders outside the United States to coordinate and finance the Islamic Jihad group. Count 42 states: "The enterprise members, while concealing their association with PIJ [Palestine Islamic Jihad], would and did seek to obtain support from influential individuals in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights. The enterprise members would and did make false statements and misrepresent facts to representatives of the media to promote the goals of PIJ."
Back in 1994, I produced and reported "Jihad in America," a PBS documentary that exposed the secret Islamic Jihad cell that Al-Arian ran from Tampa. I interviewed Al-Arian - who, of course, denied any terrorist affiliation. But the documentary also revealed statements by Al-Arian championing terrorism, the existence of Islamic Jihad publications distributed from his office, the use of his academic institute as a cover for Islamic Jihad and actual videos of Islamic Jihad terrorist conferences he organized in the United States.
Virtually every national Islamic "civil rights" group - created with the same guile that fostered the success of Al-Arian's organization - responded by claiming that we were "attacking Islam" and that we were stereotyping all Muslims. That pattern of obeisance to terrorism was repeated yesterday following issuance of the indictment.
Hiding under the patina of promoting Arab and Muslim rights, these groups gathered impressive supporters in the media, Congress and intelligentsia who jumped on to the "Al-Arian is the victim" refrain, further emboldening him to literally get away with murder.
The list of scoundrels who assiduously and systematically protected Al-Arian's terrorist enterprise included then-Rep. David Bonior[One of our "Americans who travel to Baghdad to support Saddam"--Jen], Martin Merzer of the Miami Herald, The St. Petersburg Times' Sue Aschoff and countless others.
Al-Arian was so successful in his deception that he was invited to the White House four times, meeting with both President Clinton and President Bush.[If this is true about Bush, Ouch!--J.T.]
In the end, Al-Arian succeeded in his deception via the same exact formula that constrained the FBI - deterred by the fear of being accused of "racial profiling" - from investigating Islamic militants training in U.S. flight academies in the months before 9/11. This formula lies at the heart of Western vulnerability to terrorist groups implanted in our midst.Al Qaeda and Hamas used it in setting up Islamic "civil rights" groups and charities throughout the '90s- designed to tar with the broad epithet of "racism" anyone who would have exposed their secret terrorist connection.
Yesterday, the Justice Department demonstrated that the United States was not going to sit quietly and allow this murderous deception to continue. Democracies only act, a British politician once said, when there is blood in the streets. For the last 10 years, rivers of blood have flooded Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York and Washington. Unfortunately, the terrorist facade, while damaged by the indictment yesterday and the series of post-9/11 effective one-two counter-terrorist punches by the Bush administration, is still vibrant in the United States.
The terrorists had a good 10 years on us. Whether we are able to truly dissipate their infrastructure in the future will depend on the response that is forthcoming.
Wow. Pretty sobering stuff.
One gets lots of realizations out of this the first one being that the Patriot Act of 2001, so derided by the Dimocrat Liberals, actually is effective at doing what it was designed to do--catch terrorists and NOT as an excuse for the government to spy on you and me.
Secondly, there is Emerson's implied warning that there are more of these Islamist murderers out there.
My personal theory is that Al-Arian was the head (or at least one of the top guys) in a Florida cell: remember, this is where Mohammed Atta and a couple of his friends took flying lessons.
Actually, they went to Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida, but it's not that far from Tampa.
Remember also that the first anthrax attacks were in Florida: to wit, at the American Media Corporation in Miami.
I'm thinking that there's at least one and probably many mosques in western Florida that are gathering places for these IslamoFascist killers.
Lastly, and the biggest outrage of all to me, is not only the murders that were brought about these evildoers.
That is the worst. (BTW, I think that the indictment only lists 100 killed because those are the ones they can prove.
I'd be willing to bet that Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their "friends" have killed a lot more people than that.
What makes me the angriest at this moment is that they are pervetedly using the freedoms and civil liberties of my wonderful country against us and our friends, the Israelis.
Yes, we have Freedom of Religion here, but not if it's a religion that preaches the murder of non-believers.
And yes, citizens have a right to their political affiliations, if it doesn't involve the overthrow of this country, as setting up an Islamic government and law by shar'ia would.
Islamism is wrong and NO, it's not "rascist" to say so.
Believers in Allah, Mohammed and the Koran do not constitute a race.
Believe it, friend.
Good work, John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller and the FBI!
Let's make sure we get a conviction on these bad guys and that they don't "walk" because the ACLU finds some loophole and gets them off as "political prisoners."
February 20, 2003
Turks may follow France, but Jordan and now SA are with us, as well as Qatar and Kuwait
The United States has quietly received almost complete military and intelligence co-operation from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other key Middle East nations in preparation for a possible war against Iraq, according to senior officials at the US Defence and State departments.
The co-operation included the use of a critical command centre at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia that can co-ordinate information from US special forces on the ground with fighter aircraft and armed spy aircraft, defence officials said.
In a key change of policy, the Saudis had also given permission for the US Air Force to fly combat missions from Prince Sultan air base after a war began, the officials said.
Until now the Saudis have publicly said they would only allow US military aircraft at the base to monitor the southern flight-exclusion zone in Iraq.
In recent days Turkey has denied the US permission to use its bases, in an effort to get a larger aid package than the $A10billion in grants and up to $17billion in loans so far offered.
[Outrageous!--J.T.]
US officials have said that while they want use of the Turkish bases, they can wage war without Turkey, warning it will lose out on all kinds of US help later if it does not go along with the US request.
Most of the countries in the region did not want to be left out of a US plan, a US official said. "They know that if they work with us they will reap benefits in the end."
US officials said one of their best partners had been King Abdullah of Jordan, who has quietly allowed US special forces to to set up bases in the country.
[...]Despite earlier sensitivities in US-Saudi relations, Pentagon and State Department officials said they had received assurances that the US Central Command could use the Combined Air Operations Centre at Prince Sultan for a war with Iraq.
That centre served as the technical command centre for the war in Afghanistan. But because of uncertainties over its availability for a war with Iraq the US to build an alternative centre at al-Udeid air base in Qatar.
Now the Saudi base was available, Central Command is likely to shift from Qatar, Pentagon officials said.
Ya know, screw Turkey!
We've offered them enough aid!
And if I'm not mistaken, I think this extra "war" aid is over and above the usual massive aid we've always given them.
(I think we've always paid them handsomely to keep bases like Incirlik, for one thing.)
And we went to bat for them in NATO and almost caused the thing to implode doing so (with the help of the French, of course), although I believe that NATO is now stronger than ever after this contretemps and the assertion of power by the New Europe 8 and the Vilnius Group 10.
One of the things Turkey wants from us is a containment of the Kurds in Iraq.
Well, letting the Kurds have their own state sounds more American and free to me, so why shouldn't we facilitate that, hmmm?
Meanwhile, that Islamist Erdogan, who's not even allowed to assume the presidency in Turkey, wants to completely ruin the secular state that Attaturk worked so hard to build by changing it back to an Islamic one complete with head scarves, shari'a and the stultification of ideas, a vibrant society and just plain fun.
If the Turks think they have economic problems now, just you wait!
They'd better get our their worry beads...BIG TIME.
A Florida professor and seven other men were charged Thursday with operating a global terrorist organization that the federal government says is responsible for the deaths of 100 people in and around Israel.
University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian is the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in announcing the federal indictment.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a U.S. government-designated foreign terrorist organization committed to homicide bombings and violent jihad activities, Ashcroft said at an afternoon press conference.
"Palestinian Islamic Jihad is one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world," he said.
[...]Al-Arian and seven other men are charged in a 50-count indictment with operating a criminal racketeering enterprise since 1984 that supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They are also charged with conspiracy to kill and maim people abroad; conspiracy to provide material support to the group; extortion; perjury; mail and wire fraud; obstruction of justice; and attempt to procure citizenship or naturalization unlawfully.
[...]The group's purpose is to destroy Israel and end all U.S. and Western influence in the region, prosecutors say. The indictment says the group rejected peaceful solutions to the Palestinian quest for a homeland in the Middle East and with embracing "the Jihad solution and the martyrdom style as the only choice for liberation."
The group's manifesto calls the United States "the Great Satan America."
[...]Al-Arian and his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, founded the World and Islam Studies Enterprises, a now-defunct Islamic think tank at USF that was raided by the FBI in 1995. Al-Arian also founded the Islamic Concern Project Inc. in 1988.
Al-Najjar spent more than 3 1/2 years in jail on secret evidence linking him to terrorists. He was released in 2000 but arrested again in November 2001 and deported last August.
If I were Queen, this guy would already be dead!
I'd give him a fair trial and then have him shot.
Ha-ha!
Lucky for him we have the plodding FBI and our system of rule of law which requires bothersome stuff like "proof," warrants and trial by jury.
Darnit!
If he's as guilty as terror expert Steven Emerson said in his book American Jihad, then even with our judicial safeguards, he should still be convicted and then either deported or put away for a long, long time.
Good work, FBI and "jack-booted Nazi" John Ashcroft's Department of Justice!
Interfaith memorial services will be held in major cities around the globe over the next few days to mark the anniversary of the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
I'm still sick about the horrible murder of this fine man.
How I wish he were still alive to see his son and to enjoy his life with his baby and his lovely wife....
God bless and rest your soul.
President Saddam Hussein's government, apparently emboldened by antiwar sentiment at the U.N. Security Council and in worldwide street protests, has not followed through on its promises of increased cooperation with U.N. arms inspectors, according to inspectors in Iraq.
[...]One U.N. official here said that since Friday's Security Council meeting, "we have not seen any positive moves on the part of Iraq." Another charged, "They are not fulfilling their promises."
[...]In news conferences and interviews, Iraqi officials have glossed over warnings from Blix -- and from governments of Security Council members opposed to war -- that Iraq must take additional steps to satisfy a disarmament resolution the council passed unanimously on Nov. 8. The overriding analysis among officials here is that Iraq has complied and that everyone, save the U.S. and British governments, now views Iraq as the aggrieved party.
[...]The U.N. official here said he expects Iraq eventually to relent on the interviews and perhaps the missiles only if demands from Blix and Security Council members are aggressive enough. "What we've seen is that without pressure[and by this he mean nothing less than military "pressure"--Jen], Iraq is not going to cooperate with the inspectors," he said.
Well, I hope that idiot de Villepin and those "peace" marchers are happy!
All they've done is to give the Stalinist murderer Saddam positive feedback for playing the "victim," a strategy used by Arafat to defend the terrorism of the "Palestinians" and now of late by North Korea to excuse their nuclear proliferation.
Good work, you Leftist appeasement-pushers!
Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon yesterday began redeploying, for the third time in two years. Several thousand troops that had been deployed in the Tripoli region in northern Lebanon returned to Syria. Others that had been there - their exact number is not clear - were apparently transferred to different bases in Lebanon.
The troop movements followed a surprise agreement reached Tuesday between Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq el-Hariri and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Acording to sources in Lebanon, the new deployment is a reflection of the Syrian desire to show good will toward opponents of the Syrian presence in Lebanon, notably the Christian camp, which, over the past few months, has considerably reduced its demonstrations against the Syrian presence and its demands that the Syrian troops withdraw from Lebanese soil.
The Syrian troops were posted in Lebanon in 1976 at the invitation of then president Suleiman Franjieh. Until two years ago, the Syrians had some 35,000 troops in Lebanon and it is believed the number will now drop to 18,000-20,000.
It is thought unlikely the partial troop withdrawal will affect the Syrian hegemony in Lebanon, particularly in the local political field. According to Lebanon's defense minister, the current Syrian redeployment is "100 percent technical" and did not come as a surprise to the government in Beirut.
If you ask me, "100 percent technical" means "Move them to Iraq to help my pal Saddam."
Or perhaps they're moving closer to their favorite nation to hate: Israel.
You can't tell me this rush of goodwill towards the Christian forces in Lebanon doesn't have anything to do with our upcoming attack on Iraq!
As for those demonstrations by Lebanese Christian groups with their demand to pull out Syrian troops, first I've heard of anyone protesting against Assad's will and living to tell about it.
I think he wiped out an entire city in Syria for daring to "demonstrate" against him!
The plot in the Middle East thickens, if such is possible!
Rescue teams searched on Thursday for clues to the cause of Iran's worst air disaster, in which 302 Revolutionary Guards died when their Russian-built troop carrier crashed into a mountainside in southeast Iran.
[...]A senior source close to the government told Reuters scores of high-ranking military officials were among the dead. It was not clear why so many personnel were traveling together.
Formed shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, the Revolutionary Guards force is independent of the regular army and played a key role in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
Today it numbers about 120,000 personnel and answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- the head of Iran's Shi'ite Muslim establishment.
[...]The death toll exceeded that of a 1988 disaster, when an Iran Air A-300 Airbus was shot down over the Gulf by the U.S. warship Vincennes which wrongly identified it as an attacking fighter. All 290 people on board were killed in that incident.
I remember this "disaster:" and there was that rumor that said that Iran had filled the plane with corpses so that they could accuse us of this "act of war."
We were having problems with that Islamist Khaddafy in Libya, at the time, if memory serves, which would explain why the U.S.S. Vincennes was patrolling there.
So where were all these Iranian soldiers going?
I don't suppose it was any part of Iraq, do you?
And good old Reuters!
They manage to work in another "blame the US" indirectly for this one, too: because of US sanctions on trade with Iran, they were forced to fly the crappier, crash-prone Russian-made planes!
And then there was this crash in Pakistan: Pakistan Air Force Chief, 16 Others Die in Crash
The commander of Pakistan's air force, Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, his wife and 15 other people were killed in a plane crash on Thursday, the air force said.
Authorities said it was an accident but did not give details. State-run Pakistan Television said the crash was caused by "technical reasons," but did not elaborate.hose killed included two air vice marshals, two air force commodores and Mir's wife Bilqees.
[...]
A senior air force office said Mir's wife had been traveling in her official role as chairwoman of the Pakistan Air Force Women's Welfare Association. All the other dead were air force personnel, including eight crew, state television said.
[...]In 1988, Pakistan's then-president, General Mohammad Zia- ul-Haq, died in a mysterious crash of a military plane in the Punjab province. The cause of the crash has never been established.
OK, this one was probably caused by bad weather, but these things, which for better or worse provide the opportunity for their regimes to "clean house," seem to happen with frightening regularity over there.
Anyway, my condolences go out to the families of the victims who were somebody's friends, loved ones and relatives.
French President Jacques Chirac has been called "a worm" by one of the UK's most popular tabloid newspapers in a withering front page attack - written entirely in French.
The Sun's editorial assault - which can only be seen on copies distributed in the French capital - is accompanied by a picture of their target superimposed on the body of an earthworm next to the headline: "Chirac est un ver."
The newspaper tells Parisians their leader has become the "shame of Europe" because of his "constant threat" to veto "any military action intended to apply the will of the UN in Iraq".
"This attitude is all the more hypocritical as everyone says President Chirac will give his support to the UN, the US and the UK in the end," the Sun proclaims.
[...]
In Nato, France joined forces with Belgium and Germany to oppose bolstering the defences of alliance partner Turkey with US military equipment.
[...]
But The Sun, which strongly supports the need for military action against Iraq, says in its front page editorial: "The citizens of the UK believe Mr Chirac's display of arrogance on the international stage is just meant to make his country seem more important than it really is.
It goes on: "We Britons also think you French have forgotten what you owe to other nations, and in particular to the US and to the UK, who came to your aid in two world wars.
"You were only too happy to welcome the Americans when France was crushed under Hitler's boot.
"But today you look down on the American people and their president, and you forget how many American and British soldiers, sailors and pilots gave their lives, as can be seen in the military cemeteries of France, for the freedom of this country.
"Today, the Americans, supported by the other European nations braver than France, prepare to rid the world of another tyrant.
"In the name of our 10 million readers we ask you today: 'Aren't you ashamed of your president?'"
Isn't this great stuff?
God bless The Sun!
I'm so sick and tired of seeing good men and real leaders like George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard vilified by the masses, based on complete ignorance and cowardice dressed up as pacifism that it's absolutely marvelous to see a true fraud like Chirac get made into paté!
Let's hope for the best: that the French electorate will rise up and throw Jacques out and soon.
As a poignant reminder to underscore this story, I'll repost these pictures from only last summer:
"President Bush visits the American cemetery near Omaha Beach at Normandy, France, May 27. "All who come to a place like this feel the enormity of the loss. Yet, for so many, there is a marker that seems to sit alone -- they come looking for that one cross, that one Star of David, that one name," said the President in his remarks. "Behind every grave of a fallen soldier is a story of the grief that came to a wife, a mother, a child, a family, or a town."
President Bush salutes a veteran during a Memorial Day service at the Saint Marie Eglise Church in Saint Marie Eglise, near Normandy, France, May 27.
[This veteran could have been my dad or my boyfriend's dad as they both proudly served in the U.S. Army in Europe in WWII.
I think it goes without saying that they faced "even odds" of ending up under one of those crosses, too, in which case there would have been no me and no boyfriend, but thank the Lord they didn't. But they took that risk--by being American, being over there and for France's folly, among other things.]
February 19, 2003
Kelly: Marchers say "Give peace tyranny a chance."
Michael Kelly has written a terrific piece for the WaPo today informing those "peace" marchers of last weekend that they definitely did NOT march for morally justified pacifism as a response to war, but something far worse.
The penultimate and final graphs say it all for me, but do read the whole thing:
To march against the war is not to give peace a chance. It is to give tyranny a chance. It is to give the Iraqi nuke a chance. It is to give the next terrorist mass murder a chance. It is to march for the furtherance of evil instead of the vanquishing of evil.
Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources.
The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country.
[...]
The ships were chartered by a shipping agent based in Egypt and are flying under the flags of three different countries. The continued radio silence since they left port, in addition to the captains' failure to provide information on their cargoes or their destinations, is a clear breach of international maritime laws.
The vessels are thought to have spent much of their time in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean, berthing at sea when they need to collect supplies of fuel and food. They have berthed in a handful of Arab countries, including Yemen.
American and British military forces are believed to be reluctant to stop and search the vessels for fear that any intervention might result in them being scuttled. If they were carrying chemical and biological weapons, or fissile nuclear material, and they were to be sunk at sea, the environmental damage could be catastrophic.
A shipping industry source told The Independent: "If Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction, then a very large part of its capability could be afloat on the high seas right now. These ships have maintained radio silence for long periods and, for a considerable time, they have been steaming around in ever-decreasing circles."
The ships are thought to have set sail from a country other than Iraq to avoid running the gauntlet of Western naval vessels patrolling the Gulf. Defence experts believe that, if they are carrying weapons of mass destruction, these could have been smuggled out through Syria or Jordan.
Scary stuff!
Let's hope the mystery of these ships is solved soon.
I guess pirates and ships that should fly the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger aren't ancient history after all.
Zimbabwe's President, Robert Mugabe has arrived in Paris despite a ban on him travelling to the European Union.
France was given an exemption from the ban to allow Mr Mugabe to attend a summit of French and African leaders.
In return, Paris gave its backing to the renewal of EU sanctions against Mr Mugabe, his wife and other government officials.
A small group of protesters called for Mr Mugabe's arrest for alleged human rights abuses.
France's stance has provoked the fury of several other European countries, including the UK.
More, "L'Europe, c'est moi."* behavior on the part of Chirac.
And meanwhile, no mention of the French military intervention debacle in Ivory Coast.
While Jacques still endures the opprobium of the rest of the EU over his truculent backing of Saddam over the U.S, he goes to bat for another murderous tyrant.
How long can Chirac continue to bully and taunt his neighbors, friends and allies as the Bad Boy of the Western World?
*The phrase "L'Europe, c'est moi." was first used by Steven den Beste and is an appropos redux of
Louis Quatorze grandiloquent statement, "L'etat, c'est moi." or literally, "I am the state."
Prime Minister John Howard challenged the Australian people to throw him out of office if they did not like his policy on Iraq.
"If the public at the next election doesn't like the job I've done, they'll throw me out," he told the Nine Network after a Newspoll showed his personal standing had slumped as he supported US action against Iraq.
Labor, which insists on a new United Nations mandate for military action, was equally defiant in the face of the poll, which showed a further slide in Opposition Leader Simon Crean's popularity.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said Labor's national security policy was non-negotiable, adding: "And frankly, we don't give a damn what opinion polls have to say."
Newspoll showed the Coalition led Labor by 51 to 49 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis.
Mr Howard's approval rating dropped to an eight month low of 48 per cent, down from 65 per cent following the Bali bombings last October.
However, Mr Crean rated only 31 per cent and Mr Howard led him in the preferred prime minister stakes 56 to 21 per cent.
Mr Howard, who ruled out a plebiscite or conscience vote over war with Iraq, said he did not think public opinion had settled on the issue.
But in the end he would do what was in Australia's best interests and the people would have their say at the next election.
"My job is to do what I believe is right and I think it is right to take a stand against the spread of chemical and biological weapons because I'm worried they'll get into the hands of international terrorists," Mr Howard said.
God bless you, Mr. Howard and God bless Australia!
They have a good man in you who are wise and courageous enough to stick to your convictions!
(I wish President Bush would say something exactly like this to the Dimocrats,too!)
If I ever get Down Under, I wanna buy John Howard a Foster's!
Saddam Hussein is reported to have placed his defence minister and close relative under house arrest in an apparent attempt to prevent a coup.
Iraqi opposition newspapers, citing sources in Baghdad, claimed on Monday that the head of the Iraqi military, Lieutenant-General Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Jabburi Tai, was now effectively a prisoner in his home in the capital.
The minister's apparent detention, also reported by Cairo-based al-Ahram newspaper, is surprising. He is not only a member of President Saddam's inner circle, but also a close relative by marriage.His daughter is married to Qusay Hussein, the dictator's 36-year-old younger son - considered by many as his heir apparent.
Reports of the general's arrest came amid signs of growing apprehension in Baghdad that the Iraqi army, including the elite Republican Guard, might desert in the event of an attack on Iraq.
An independent source in Baghdad confirmed that General Sultan was in custody. "He continues to attend cabinet meetings and appear on Iraqi TV, so that everything seems normal," said the source, a high-ranking official with connections to Iraq's ruling Baath party. "But in reality his house and family are surrounded by Saddam's personal guards. They are there so he can't flee."
The source also claimed that several other high-ranking military and government officials had been arrested in the past few days.
The Saudi regime has been taking the lead in attempting to foment unrest within Baghdad. Under a proposal put forward by the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, all but President Saddam's innermost circle would be granted immunity from war crimes prosecution - in the hope that such a guarantee would encourage senior members of the Government to stage a coup.
General Sultan has been one of President Saddam's most trusted colleagues. In the humiliating aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, it was he who signed a ceasefire deal between the Iraqi army and US-led coalition forces.
The fear that Iraq's regular army of 700,000 might refuse to fight invading American troops has prompted President Saddam to take drastic measures. Last week he reportedly deployed a ruthless militia of Iranian fighters to several key cities to crush any popular uprisings. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq - a violent Iranian opposition group based in Iraq - was sent to defend urban areas, including Baghdad, Kurdish newspapers reported.
Hmmm. I'm not so sure that the Saudis have the power to grant anybody anything like immunity from war crimes prosecution and I thought they wanted Saddam to go into exile, but a coup against him will do just as well.
Looks like Saddam's good feelings weren't as buoyed by all those pro-him "peace" demonstrations this weekend as we all thought!
Saddam, this is terrible for morale among the troops to do this to your top commander!
And it doesn't like too hopeful for your son's future as ruler of Iraq and that of his wife or her father, either...which I think is marvelous!
This is a very good sign that we've won already and we haven't even attacked yet.
When last seen, Chirac was being pursued by a mob of angry Vilnius villagers...
French President Jacques Chirac sparked outrage on Tuesday after a tirade against east European candidates who took a pro-American stance on Iraq marred an EU summit which united to send a final warning to Baghdad.
In a tougher than expected final statement the 15 EU leaders declared for the first time that war could be used as a last resort and warned Iraq that U.N. arms inspections could not go on indefinitely.
The 13 aspiring members were not admitted to Monday's emergency European Union summit on the Iraq crisis but they were invited to Brussels on Tuesday for a briefing from Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, holder of the rotating EU presidency.
Many were seething at Chirac's charges at a closing news conference on Monday night that their joint statements siding with Washington were "childish and irresponsible" and could damage their prospects of joining the bloc.
The French leader, who has led diplomatic resistance to what he sees as a U.S.-British rush to war, said the candidates had "missed a great opportunity to shut up."
He said they should have consulted the EU before issuing statements in support of the United States.
European Parliament leaders condemned the outburst when Simitis reported to deputies on the summit's outcome on Tuesday.
Liberal Democrat leader Graham Watson called it "gratuitous and condescending." Hans-Georg Poettering, leader of the center-right European People's Party, the largest grouping, warned against pitting eastern against western Europe, or the EU against the United States.
[...]Simitis, who faced much skepticism when he called the summit at short notice, hailed the EU's refound unity after weeks of squabbling over Iraq which cast grave doubt on its aspiration to build a common foreign and security policy.
[...]Chirac said: "The European mini-crisis has been overcome." [Sounds bitter, doesn't he? What a loser!--Jen]
But apart from igniting a new feud with the candidate countries, Chirac continued to bicker with British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the need for and timing of a second U.N. resolution that would declare Iraq had failed to cooperate with the inspectors and faced serious consequences.
[...]Blair said the issue was not a second resolution but the disarmament of Iraq.
[...]The EU statement also included an appeal to reinvigorate the peace process in the Middle East, demanding an end to violence and to the building of Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas.
Who are these guys kidding?
There's not going to be an end to violence in the Middle East until Arafat is dead and Saddam, too.
In fact, they just don't "get it:" it seems to escape the EU's notice that Iraq and "Palestine" are connected by Islamist terrorists, the same Islamist terrorists.
And the "peace process" as we know it, i.e. Oslo, is dead and has been dead at least since the Intifada began.
The Israeli people are not going to give up their lives (disguised as land claims) in exchange for "peace," which translates into getting closer into range for the Islamists.
The EU had best stick to that investigation of what Arafat did with the millions in "aid" they gave to the "Palestininan cause."
They need look no farther than Paris or Switzerland either.
Regarding this morning's session, Good work, Tony and New Europe.
Chirac, do what you know how to do best: Wave a white flag and surrender.
You're done here.
And you've got other fires to put out, as well:Anti-French protests in Ivory Coast
Both government loyalists and rebels in Ivory Coast are turning on French mediators in the five-month crisis
Way to go, Jacques!
You've got *both* sides mad at you in a dispute you had no business getting into!
North Korea has threatened to pull out of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War, accusing the United States of breaking its terms.
A statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), accused the United States of bolstering its forces in the region and mounting a naval blockade.
Earlier on Monday, the United States and South Korea announced they would stage joint military exercises in South Korea next month, in a move which was thought likely to heighten tensions with the North.
Tensions on the peninsula have risen dramatically since North Korea revived its nuclear programme and pulled out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) late last year.
The Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953 - not a peace treaty. This means that the peninsula is still technically at war. The border between the north and the south is one of the world's most heavily armed.[...]
The UN Security Council is due to discuss the crisis soon - a move the Koreans have fiercely condemned.
Pyongyang has said the imposing of sanctions would be seen as an act of war.
These people give new meaning to the words bellicose, intransigent and desperate.
Every day it's a new threat and more saber-rattling.
I'm afraid this is due to 2 things:
1. The fact that so far nothing has happened to Saddam Hussein when he flaunts UN resolutions and doesn't cooperate with IAEA inspectors.
So the NorKs are not worried about "consequences" in the least if they continue with nuclear proliferation.
2. They're learning to play the Saddam PR game and have had their "cause" espoused by the media and the "Western street."
Undeniably, the power behind the ANSWER protests are openly Marxist and among the bloody Communist regimes they support are Kim Jung-Il's in North Korea.
If you think that the NorKs didn't notice the "anti-America" protests--which they've been having for 50 years in NorK--you're sorely mistaken.
So, two conclusions can be drawn from this:
A. Take care of Saddam by force decisively and quickly with or without another UN resolution (preferable without, in my book).
B. Pray that the dupes and useful idiots that have participated in these "peace protests" get some clues right quick about who and what it is they're "supporting" with their "voices."
Cypriot President-elect Tassos Papadopoulos has said he will start talks on reunification of the divided island in a positive spirit despite calling for changes to the plan.
[...]
However, correspondents say the UN is concerned that Mr Papadopoulos's nationalist, anti-Turkish past may further hinder attempts at a diplomatic settlement.
UN negotiators have set 28 February as the last possible date for agreement between the Greek and Turkish communities if Cyprus is to join the European Union as a united country next year.
[...]Earlier, Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash expressed regret over the defeat of incumbent Glafcos Clerides, saying the poll had damaged chances for reunification of the island.
Mr Denktash called on Mr Papadopoulos to draw up a "realistic" plan, otherwise - he said - it would be pointless to continue talks.
[...]Mr Denktash, who has himself been strongly critical of the plan, attacked Mr Papadopoulos' pledge to be "president of all Cypriots".
"As long as Papadopoulos does not draw himself a realistic plan and abandon his imaginary solutions, there is no reason to continue with this dead-end process," he said.
"It is the intransigent stance of the Greek Cypriot people which won," he added.
[...]
Mr Papadopoulos' wish to give Greek Cypriot refugees the right to return to the Turkish northern sector is not endorsed by the UN proposals.
[...]
Mr Papadopoulos - who will become the fifth Greek Cypriot president - benefited from the support of the influential communist party[Note the BBC uses a lower case "c" here...--J.T.], Akel, one of the largest political groups in Cyprus.
He also picked up votes from Greek Cypriots who believe that Mr Clerides has given away too much in UN-sponsored talks with Mr Denktash.
[...]Cyprus has been partitioned since Turkey invaded in 1974 in response to an abortive Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.
Lordie, these Mediterranean types can be hot-headed!
What a mess.
Would it be merely rhetorical and irritating to ask what the h*ll business is it of the UN to butt into this "conflict?"
Only 18% of the Cypriot population is of Turkish inclinations...
And they grabbed the northern part of the island almost 30 years ago (yes, another Islamist-rooted land grab) and yet the UN and the EU seem to be in such a hurry for them to "correct the problem" of unification NOW.
The Turkish leader, Dentkash, was "sick" for the last planned round of negotiations and didn't show.
Meanwhile, Turkey itself has a de facto leader, Gul, and an elected leader, Erdogan, who's not allowed to rule by Turkish law...yet.
And Turkey is trying to squeeze more money out of us and promises that we will contain the Kurds in the north of Iraq (and in Turkey) in exchange for letting us use our own bases there in the Iraq attack...
Obviously, Turkey--like it's more arrogant pal the French--is trying to see how much above its weight it can punch on the international scene.
I really think they're overreaching (as is France.)
They're not that fabulous...to anyone.
The number one law of international diplomacy should be "Be aware of how much real power you possess, particularly when you are becoming a pain."
The number two law should be "If you want to go your own way, what can other countries do to stop you?"
In Turkey's case the answer to the first is "not much" and the response to the second is "plenty:" Turkey is no match militarily for the U.S., in case they're thinking of siding with Saddam and their country's economic problems are becoming legion.
Notice also how it takes UN intervention to royally screw up a situation and to promise benefits to all the wrong parties! (with the EU lurking somewhere close by, ready to fill in the breach and muck things up even more!).
I think Turkey thinks it can sneak in the "back door" of the EU, using a "Turkish Cyprus" (A reunified Cyprus is poised to be accepted for EU membership) as a lever.
The EU professes claims, of course, that it's "not quite ready" and won't be for years, if ever, to formally accept Turkey itself for membership. What a shame.
While Greece did come to Turkey's aid in the recent NATO to-do over the defense of Turkey, this was a reversal of Greek-Turkish enmity which has existed for over 5,000 years and I'd be willing to bet that they'd fight to the death over tiny little Cyprus on the "principle" of the thing.
Good luck, Cyprus. Sounds like you're going to need it!
EUROPE united last night to send a strong message to Saddam Hussein, warning him that he faced a last chance to disarm peacefully and affirming solidarity with the United States.
It was a personal triumph for Tony Blair, who scored a major diplomatic coup by turning the tide of European opinion towards a much tougher stance on Iraq.
"Baghdad should have no illusions . . . The Iraqi regime alone will be responsible for the consequences if it continues to flout the will of the international community," the 15 European Union leaders said in a joint declaration after an emergency summit in Brussels.
[...] The differing stance between Britain and France had suggested the summit was heading for a rupture that could undermine EU unity and its ability to speak with a single voice.
[...]In views that showed the mood was moving away from France towards Britain, a number of leaders echoed Mr Blair's hawkish line.
Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, said: "A lot of people now see the authority of the UN at stake. The inspections can't continue forever."
JACQUES CHIRAC’S outburst at his parting press conference in Brussels last night confirmed that not all had gone well at the summit hailed as the showdown between old and new Europe.
The French President, still smarting over letters and articles from existing and future EU members backing the United States and Britain, suddenly turned on the new boys.
In a reference to Bulgaria and Romania, still negotiating their EU membership terms, M Chirac said: “If anyone had wanted to damage their chances of joining the EU, they could not have done it in a better way.”
It was an explosive end to one of the tensest nights in the EU’s recent history. It was one that was resolved, as so often before, by a classic fudge. But it was an outcome that had more for Mr Blair than M Chirac.
The text finalised over a tense working dinner in the Council of Ministers’ headquarters in Brussels was tougher than the bland statement agreed by foreign ministers just three weeks earlier.
[...]
As they supped Greek wine, in deference to Greece, which chaired the emergency meeting, the key advance for Mr Blair and the hawks was the recognition in the communiqué that inspections “cannot continue indefinitely”. They were the words Mr Blair needed to stop the UN process being dragged out interminably.
To avoid domestic strife, the British Prime Minister badly needs to keep the United Nations involved. Delays beyond next month would see the Americans going it alone.
However, there was a victory for M Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and the other doves when the resolution was amended to say that the inspectors should be given “the time and resources that the Security Council believes they need”.
But even there, there was a tiny victory for Mr Blair. Herr Schröder tried to say that there should be “more time”, but the hawks succeeded in removing the word “more”.
It also recognises that the military build-up that has resulted in some 200,000 American and 42,000 British troops being sent to the region has “been essential” in ensuring that Saddam has allowed the UN inspectors to return.
[...]M Chirac appeared to have had the roughest time. He was taken on by Silvio Berlusconi, and the Dutch and Irish Prime Ministers also sent verbal volleys in his direction.
M Chirac may be “grandstanding” as many diplomats in Brussels believe.
Yeah, I think he's grandstanding, too, but does he have to threaten Bulgaria and Romania?
And why should they want to join the EU if Paris/Brussels will try to dominate them in the same way that Moscow used to?
Again, though, Advantage Blair and New Europe.
Disadvantage Chirac.
The European Union yesterday issued a "last chance" warning to Saddam Hussein - and French President Jacques Chirac promptly threw a temper tantrum, threatening to blackball nations that back President Bush.
The EU - which has been divided over Iraq - came together on a compromise statement calling on Iraq to disarm peacefully or else. It set no timetable and didn't say "time is running out," as urged by Britain, although it did praise the U.S. role.
Soon afterward, Chirac - who had signed off on the EU statement - unleashed a crude "shut up" order to the 18 European nations that sided with Bush.
Chirac's extraordinary outburst appeared to reflect the fact that the compromise EU communiqué took a more hawkish tone on Iraq and left the door open to war - while France has taken a dovish stance.
"These countries have not been very well-behaved and rather reckless of the danger of aligning themselves too rapidly with the American position," raged "Axis of Weasel" leader Chirac.
"They missed a great opportunity to shut up," fumed Chirac, who claimed nations backing Bush are taking a position that's "infantile" and "dangerous."
Chirac all but threatened to blackball Bulgaria - a U.N. Security Council member - and Romania from joining the EU.
[...]Many analysts say France's opposition to Bush reflects a broader goal of turning the EU into a counterweight to America, rather than a partner.
But U.S. officials contend it is actually France and Germany that risk being marginalized, because most European leaders have signed statements backing Bush's stance.
OK, Orin makes Chirac sound like a fool and an idiot!
Definite advantage New Europe and Blair!
But then read the WaPo's version: it sounds like they were at a different dinner and meeting! EU Leaders Agree: Inspectors Should Get More Time
Acknowledging antiwar protests across the continent, the 15 European Union leaders agreed tonight that U.N. weapons inspectors should be given more time to find and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and declared that a war against President Saddam Hussein "should be used only as a last resort."
I hate to keep pointing out the Liberal bias of papers like the WaPo (heh-heh!), but it's so glaring the way they slant stories, isn't it?
Here they provide cover for not only the Marxist/Islamist-sponsored "anti-America" rallies, but try to provide major cover for Chirac,too and his goal of turning the EU into the new USSR!
This EU agreement on Iraq policy is really "no biggie," because they're not going to provide anything consequential like an "EU army" are they?
They seem to be going through the motions of getting along (as I'm sure many of them do) and of having an EU "common foreign policy" which France, with help from Germany, Belgium and Austria, have put the lie to with their actions "outside" of EU auspices, acting as independent nation-states.
All in all, I'd say Chirac made a complete fool of himself in front of his peers--Stalin must have been applauding him somewhere in the infernal regions-- and if the EU is to survive in future, it won't be with France or Chirac calling the shots!
It was probably that Greek retsina they were drinking that put Jacques in the bad mood...that and not getting his way!
I imagine that countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Ireland and Holland will be rethinking the whole EU "thing."
Betcha they know that they can look forward to many more occasions when that pompous ass Chirac tries to lord it over the rest of them and the prospect of that is anything but promising!
Go Chirac! Keep Europe free--the EU's gotta go and so does the U-fricking-N!
France's only aircraft carrier, the nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle, will return to its home port next week "as planned", after a tour of the east Mediterranean that included exercises with a US carrier, the French navy said Monday.
"There is no question at all about us going to the Gulf," a spokesman for the Charles de Gaulle's battle group, Lieutenant Commander Bertrand Bonneau, told AFP by telephone.
This is way better news than it sounds: apparently this French vessel has trouble getting anywhere under its own power and thus is more of a handicap than an asset.
A waggish Lucianne poster named "amereagle" summed up our esteem for Charles de Gaulle in just this way:
"Francois, do you think zee aircraft carrier's propeller eees feexed yet?"
French President Jacques Chirac said Monday his country would oppose any effort to draft a new U.N. resolution to explicitly authorize war against Iraq at this time.
"There is no need for a second resolution today, which France would have no choice but to oppose," Chirac said as he arrived for a European Union summit.
Come on, President Bush! "Let's roll."
We have a terrific coalition of "the willing."
Don't let's bother with that "second resolution" in the U.N.--we know what we know about Saddam and what we need to do about it.
All we need to know is when.
As for France, lead, follow or get out of the way!
And I'd say it's #3. Adieu, you back-stabbing, perfidious, greedy idiots!
Rummy rocks...again!
Thanks to John over at Blogs of War we have this divine "Civil Defense" poster:
BWAHAHAHAHA! I LOVE IT!
What's so great is that, even at age 70, he could do it, too!
Where's that global warming when you need it?
Caption: Picture of a snow plow in front of the White House taken yesterday, February 16.
I'd like to send out *warm* greetings to my friends on the East Coast who are snowed under today!
May you stay warm inside (unless you go outside to build a snowman), have internet connections and no power outages!
I'm jealous. Really!
Make hot chocolate, warm up some chili, put some wood on the fire and enjoy the transformed landscape and heavenly quiet that comes with snow.
Two more words: ski underwear. And socks and gloves and a hat, if you go out.
As usual, the weather's mild here in Dallas today and I even have the AC on as I'm typing this... so send some of that white stuff down our way--you've got plenty!
I learned my cold weather tips from my trip to Russia in the month of January (in '76). Very Dr. Zhivago!
Merci to the TheDissidentFrogman for this and for being so wise!
He and MerdeInFrance, at least, are 2 Frenchmen we know that have sense, taste and brains!
NATO: The Cheese (eating surrender monkey) stands alone
The Nato alliance has resolved its internal disagreement over American planning for a war against Iraq.
Nato Secretary General George Robertson said the 18 members of the organisation's defence planning committee had agreed on the deployment of military defences in Turkey.
France, Germany and Belgium had been blocking the move, saying it would imply that war with Iraq is inevitable. [WTF? God, those Old Europeans think in convoluted ways!--Jen]
The announcement came a few hours before the start of an emergency summit of European Union leaders - also aimed at resolving differences over Iraq.
During Sunday's Nato meeting, Germany and Belgium dropped their objections to extending immediate assistance to Turkey.
France, which is not represented on the committee, did not take part in the discussions.
The French pulled out of Nato's military structures in 1966, and participate only in political consultation.
[...]"Alliance solidarity has prevailed," Lord Robertson said on Sunday. "We have been able collectively to overcome the impasse."
[...] Differences between Western powers over Iraq are also expected to be the focus of Monday's EU summit in Brussels.
Britain, Spain and Italy have expressed support for the US, while others are counselling caution.
After the announcement of Sunday's breakthrough at Nato, France, Germany, and Belgium said in a statement that the agreement did not "in any way prejudge ongoing efforts" to resolve the crisis through the UN.
[...]
At some point, our correspondent adds, EU countries will have to decide whether and how they can salvage the broken dream of a common European foreign policy.
The Netherlands has already agreed to ship Patriot anti-missile batteries.
The US is hoping that Ankara will allow at least one army division to be stationed there in the run-up to possible military action.
But Turkey says the US should not expect immediate permission to deploy tens of thousands of troops on its soil.
Yes, we're going to have to reconfigure or re-do NATO in the future perhaps by stressing first of all that France does keep her contribution to "political
consultation" with NO VOTE in this body on military matters.
In fact, a NATO country that cannot vote for the defense of another should be either expelled or put on "probation."
We shall deal with France's perfidy,too.
And perhaps Belgium's and Germany's.
And then there's Austria, which refused to allow our troops to have access so that they could be transported across their borders on their way to the Iraqi theatre from Germany....
I hate finding out so horribly who our *real* friends and allies are in the crunch, but now that we know "who's with us and who's [virtually] with the terrorists," we need to take action starting with boycotts of their products, tourism there, etc.
Iran said yesterday it has arrested and deported more than 500 infiltrators suspected of links to the al Qaeda terrorist group - but couldn't confirm reports Osama bin Laden's eldest son was among them.
In announcing the deportations, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said the suspects were sent back to their countries of origin. He did not say when or over what period the arrests took place.
"This is our policy, to crack down on any person suspected of links to al Qaeda," Kharrazi said.
Let's hope they're not lying and are really doing this...
You don't think they could be worried that we'd accuse them of maintaining ties to Al Queda and other Islamist terrorist groups, amassing WMD and invade them next after Iraq?
And we haven't even fired a shot in Iraq yet!
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! And Viva Bush, too!
Tony Blair refused to blink last night in the face of the biggest anti-war demonstrations ever held in Britain and worldwide.
Ministers and officials insisted the protests - which saw more than 1 million people march in London on Saturday - would not delay military preparations for war next month.
One well-placed source said: "It changes nothing at all. The quicker it is done, the better. To back down now would be the worst result possible. We would have no credibility if Saddam Hussein was still in place."
[...]Mr Blair will face calls to give the inspectors more time when he meets the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and the French president, Jacques Chirac, at an EU summit on Iraq in Brussels tonight. The summit was called by Greece, which holds the EU presidency, to try to secure common ground but there was little optimism in London that it would achieve much more than a reiteration of support for existing UN resolutions.
[...]Mr Blair, speaking at the annual conference of the Labour party in Scotland, said that while he understood the moral concerns of the marchers, the balance of morality lay with ending a barbaric regime.
While refusing to be dismayed by the scale of the protests, Downing Street aides took quiet satisfaction yesterday as cabinet members defended what the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, called Mr Blair's "courage, integrity and honesty" in the crisis.
John Reid, the Labour party chairman, took the marchers head on, saying they recommended doing nothing, and that such a moral choice meant sustaining a status quo "under which there are people being murdered, tortured and dying and starving".
Tony and Cabinet, thanks ever so much!
Your leadership, along with your great moral courage, is definitely reaching Churchillian proportions now.
Hold steady and firm for Britain.
We're right and the Islamist terrorists and their appeasement-loving "peacenik" supporters are wrong.
A journo from the former evil empire explains why the U.S.-U.K led war on Iraq is " most righteous of them all"
The Soviet Politburo hoped that some day the Franco-German axis, initiated by French President Charles de Gaulle some 40 years ago, would break up NATO and deliver Western Europe into Soviet hands.
In the 1960s, the West did not disintegrate. Gaullist France itself became isolated -- neither Germany nor anyone else in Western Europe was ready to seriously undermine solidarity with the United States in the face of tens of thousands of Soviet tanks in Central Europe.
Today, with the old Soviet Union in ruins, France and Germany (supported by Belgium) are ready to undermine Western military cohesion to save the totalitarian dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and his Baath party from being overthrown.
Of course, today Russia is too weak to seriously exploit the new rift in the West. But many in Moscow are happy to see it happen: The dream of a "multipolar" world seems to be materializing. France, Germany, China, Russia, the Vatican -- i.e. all, or almost all, world centers of power with the exception of Washington are joining forces to prevent the U.S. war machine from rolling Hussein out of office.
It would seem strange that so diverse a collection of forces would unite to defend a bloody Nazi-style dictatorship in Iraq. But actually this de facto alliance has existed for decades.
In the 1930s, West European pacifists were the prime political force that supported appeasement of Adolf Hitler. In the 1940s, the Vatican wholeheartedly cooperated with the Nazis and after the demise of Hitler helped war criminals to escape justice. In turn, the Nazis used environmentalist and antiglobalist slogans to fight what they believed was the Jewish-dominated "world plutocracy."
I lived for almost 40 years under a totalitarian regime, and I know from first-hand experience what life without freedom means.Anti-war protesters in Western Europe and America do not know and could not care less.
Only by military means can millions of Iraqis be released from total servitude, and Hussein destroyed along with his Baath party that has ruled Iraq since 1958. If there ever existed such a thing as a "just war" then the coming U.S.-led invasion of Iraq could be the most righteous of them all.
In 1991, after a military victory and the liberation of Kuwait, allied forces stopped short of Baghdad. A ceasefire was signed that left Hussein in power.
It's easy to envisage a similar scenario in 1944: After the liberation of France and Belgium, the war could have stopped at the borders of Hitler's Reich. A ceasefire could have been signed (the Germans were at the time actively trying to start negotiations to organize such a ceasefire). A UN inspection team could have been deployed to destroy Hitler's ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction. Hitler and his party would have continued to rule in Berlin and would surely have played games with UN arms inspectors, using underground factories and so on.
Western pacifists, the Vatican and all those that today adamantly oppose the liberation of Iraq by force would surely have liked an outcome that would have left Hitler in power and saved many German lives and German cities. The Germans were in fact liberated against their own will -- the majority continued to support Hitler to the bloody end.
In April 1975, Hussein visited Moscow to ask for Soviet help to build a full reactor to make nuclear weapons. Although Russia agreed to supply Iraq with staggering amounts of conventional weapons, it balked at helping Baghdad go nuclear. In September 1975, Hussein went to Paris to meet politicians with far fewer scruples than Soviet Communists. The French prime minister at the time, Jacques Chirac, signed an agreement to sell Hussein a reactor and arms-grade uranium.
If Chirac and other French politicians had had their way, Hussein could have made tens of nuclear bombs by 1990. The war to liberate Kuwait would never have taken place or would have turned into an all-out nuclear confrontation between Iraq, Israel and the United States. The tragedy was avoided when in 1979 Israeli agents near Toulon destroyed two French-built reactors en route to Iraq. In 1981, the Israelis bombed to debris the French replacement reactor in Iraq before it could be made operational.
Maybe France and Germany are so loyally trying to save Hussein because they want to cover up their long-time cooperation in helping to build weapons of mass destruction? Is the treachery of the past feeding more treachery today?
Wow. I found this article like a slap in the face with a wet towel, but it was a good slap!
Only someone like this author, who has spent most of his life under Soviet Communism, could write about realpolitik like this!
If even he, writing for the Moscow Times, finds this war "the most righteous of all" and is able to say that with the perspective of the long view of History, then you know it's true!
Baghad delenda est!
(and I pray all the time that France hasn't sold nukes already to Iraq!)
Here's a big thank you to Alex over at the Diffident Spectator, which I found thanks to the ever watchful, terrific and justifiably outraged at idiotarians Dissident Frogman, who also has created a powerful Flash movie called "Saddam's peace."
See it above or check it out at his fine website (there are other wonderful things there, also!).
February 16, 2003
Sage British commentary on yesterday's "peace" marches
The most revealing aspect of the anti-war march in London was what you did not see. You did not see any messages to Saddam Hussein or criticism of Iraqi policy.
These earnest seekers of peace, with so many signs denouncing George W Bush and Tony Blair, had nothing to say to Saddam Hussein; no request to please co-operate with the UN inspectors. Not one small poster asking Saddam to disarm or destroy his weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps somewhere in that million people there were some bravely asking him to "Leave Iraq and prevent war", but I could not find them.
If this were a genuine anti-war demonstration, why, along with demands on the British and Americans, would there be no demands of the other party to the conflict - Iraq? Commentators on the march were taken by the good order of it. I was taken by the sheer wickedness or naivete.
All those nice middle-aged people from middle England with their children bundled up against the cold, marching for peace; did they have nothing to say to the party that had ignored 17 UN resolutions? A similar silence existed in all the anti-war marches in Europe. One either has to question the good faith of the marchers - or their brains.
Television gave us brief interviews with "ordinary" people marching. ITV's Mrs Noon on the peace train from Stockport had never marched before, but she had work experience dealing with "challenging" children and adults, which she compared with dealing with Saddam. "The first rule," she said, "is to be non-confrontational." The TV cameras cut to the "----ing Bush" and "Stuff Your Imperialism" signs stacked in the train compartment.
A colleague I met at the march said he had counted only two or three anti-Israeli signs. "Torture, Murder, Ethnic Cleansing!!! Welcome to Israel" was the wording of a large banner from the Muslim Association of Great Britain, but that was to be expected. The MAB, co-organiser of the London march, has a number of ideological and personal links with the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist organisation, four of whose members assassinated Anwar Sadat and whose offshoot is Hamas.
In fact, there were hundreds of anti-Israeli signs. What disguised this was the activities of the Jewish establishment. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, well-meaning but dreadfully inept, had worried about all the hate signs against Israel in the last "peace" march. Not understanding that it is best not to help your enemy disguise itself, they had written to the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament asking it about its relationship with anti-Israel groups.
The Deputies were reassured to receive a letter promising them that CND was "working hard to ensure that this march would be free from inappropriate slogans and chants". The result was that apart from a few "Boycott Israel/Boycott Murder" banners, the MAB restrained itself to hundreds of posters with the coded anti-Israel message: "Freedom for Palestine".
Freedom for Palestine, of course, could come the day the Arab world accepts the existence of a Jewish state.There could have been an independent Palestinian state as early as the Peel Commission in 1937 or the UN partition plan in 1948, if only the Arabs had said yes to co-existence with Israel. But anyone who has read the literature of the MAB knows that now, as then, "Palestinian freedom" for the MAB is achieved only at the expense of eliminating a Jewish state in the Middle East. All that the complaints of the British Board of Deputies had done was to make the MAB respectable to the ignorant.
In the end, under the guise of peace, this march was essentially an anti-America, anti-free enterprise, anti-Israel display. A similar approach appeared to have taken hold in the various other "peace" marches in Tokyo, Athens, Paris, Berlin and Madrid.
Looking at the news clips of jubilant Europeans marching behind banners saying "Death to Uncle Sam" shows how much the zeitgeist towards America has changed. I can remember the good-natured humour of the film The Mouse That Roared. America was seen then as the generous saviour of Europe and the welcomed guarantor of freedom. In that 1959 film, a Ruritanian prime minister, played by Peter Sellers, declared war on the United States in order to get American aid. These days the mouse roars to scare or blackmail America.
The spirit towards Israel was different in those times too. After defeating the Arabs in the 1967 six-day war, Israel was seen as an incredible success story by virtually all observers - intellectually, morally and practically. The country was the recreation of a lost state, made all the more credible by its unique parentage - a democratic decision of the world through a UN vote.
One didn't have to be a Zionist in 1967 to list Israel's achievements. That small nation had revived a dead language for the first time in history, absorbed a million and a half people from both Europe and the Orient in 19 years and had made the desert fertile. It had no oil, its waters were insufficient and vulnerable to Arab diversion, and it had never had one day of peace.
Within five hours of its birth, it faced declarations of war by all its Arab neighbours. With no military background or weaponry to speak of, and facing the British-trained Jordanian army among others, it had defeated its enemies in 1948, 1956 and again in 1967. Israel was a classic success story.
Up to 1967, the Jews gave the impression of being the underdog against impossible odds, and the winner. Both those components are attractive to people and to nations. But the sheer weight of size and demographics on the Arab side and the willingness of Arabs to employ terrorism in the West began to eat away at this perception. Gradually, the tables turned. The sense that in the long run the Arabs would prevail gathered steam. It became the Arabs' turn to be carried on the double wings of underdog and winner status.
Israel is now seen as a surrogate for the United States and so destroying it has the added thrill of throwing sand in America's face. For centuries, the Arab world has faced the humiliation of punching below its weight. Given the value in its culture of the romantic masculine virtues of martial prowess and dominance, this realisation that its culture is regarded as backward and insignificant has created much resentment.
The Islamists have come along with the message that, if Islam's large population and wealth could be fused with its mystical fundamentalism, they would create the same fanatical strength that made rising empires from Christendom to Japan pre-eminent. In this climate, America and Israel are viewed as obstacles to an Arab renaissance.
Laying out the world's changing attitudes to Israel and America so barely, makes it sound like a conscious decision - which is absurd. But changes in the spirit of the times are as difficult to explain as those immense flocks of birds you see sitting on some great African lake, hundreds of thousands of them at a time, till all of a sudden, successively, they fly up and turn in a specific direction. One can never analyse which bird started it and how it became this incredible rush. All you see is the result.
One senses that the Islamists, with a billion Muslims in the world, and access to great riches (with some partial success in Iran and Afghanistan, where they defeated the Soviets, albeit with American help), now feel that they may be able to reassert themselves - and the Caliphate.
The world waits, unsure what to do as Muslims hesitate, poised on vast lakes of oil, ready to fly in some direction. The world hedges its bets by backing the Palestinians, who may benefit by any resurgence of Islam.
And one of the reasons many people sense how important it is for America and her allies to be successful against the regime of Saddam Hussein - quite apart from all other valid reasons - is that a perception that the side with the momentum, the winning side, is the Islamist-terrorist side, must be broken.
It is a dangerous and self-fulfilling prophecy that can cause untold bloodshed and tyranny in the world. There are infinitely better, more tolerant, less bloody ways forward for the Arab people. But the West is not yet a paper tiger, even if nearly one million of its inhabitants meekly followed behind those meretricious paper slogans held high in Hyde Park on Saturday afternoon.
Thank you for this superb piece, Barbara!
I have been so upset by the spectacle of those "hate America" marches that I have been reduced to spluttering fits...
Pardon me for quoting this op ed in full, but Ms. Amiel does a splendid job of summing up the whole weekend for me.
And the Lord moved in mysterious ways: my Internet access was zapped out for most of yesterday.
Not only are these marchers not asking anything of Saddam, but they're not thinking (at all, it's obvious) and they're not taking their own "beliefs" to their logical conclusions.
The Islamists have enough numbers in Western Europe now to start implementing majority rule by shari'a:
do all these lady marchers look forward to giving up their jobs, staying home to bear children and sexually service their husbands, and wearing burqas and the hijjab whenever they go out in public?
Can they not envision the day that life in London or Berlin or Paris could someday look like that of the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Saturday they gathered for a "peace protest," but in the future will they be summoned by their mullahs to football stadia to watch the public execution of their fellow citizens for "rape" or "adultery?"
As for those marchers in Berlin, you get the feeling that Hitler never died and that they didn't lose WWII, merely put it on hold for a few decades...one can almost imagine the ovens at Auschwitz firing up again, because their hatred for Jews and the nation of Israel doesn't seem to have been abated at all.
A black day for the world, certainly, was yesterday.
I never realized that Saddam had so many friends.
I never knew that America had so many enemies.
And if these idiots can't figure out why their "Blood for Oil" theory is so ludicrous, what other "Big Lies" wouldn't they fall for?
BTW, these rallies have got to be very well funded as well as organized.
While a big force behind them are the Marxists (who traditionally aren't very rich), I'm almost certain that the House of Sa'ud is funding these Muslim groups behind them.
After all, who stand to lose the most from the toppling of Saddam and the establishment of democracy in the Arab Middle East?
And who would spill (other people's) blood for Oil?
Uh-huh. Saudi Arabia--the Kingdom of OPEC.
I'm fairly certain that the Saudi oil billions have been shifted away from funding Wahhabist mosques and madrassas (which are being watched and shut down in the War on Islamist terrorism) and funneled into these "peace" protests.
I'm not so very sure that when President Bush mentioned hydrogen cars--among the least remarked of his proposals-- in his SOTU address, that these weren't the most warlike and threatening words he'd ever uttered to the Islamists and their fossil fuel billions.
And it's clearly never occurred to most of these morons that they owe their freedom to assemble and protest and the democratic systems of their countries largely to the "Anglosphere."
Not to mention the fact that their native language is either German or Russian.
