No, my fellow countrymen you are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You are as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You’re as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell. After decades of American tyranny and oppression, now it’s your turn to die. Allah willing, the streets of America will run red with blood matching drop for drop the blood of America’s victims. [al Qaeda operative “Azzam the American”, via ABC News]
So it must be Kerry.
…with one story, from The Washington Times:
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein’s weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned….
So much for Russia. So much for Kerry and the Democrat defeat-mongers.
Next.
Regarding the ambush that killed about 50 Iraqi soldiers heading home after graduation from a U.S.-run training course, the AP headline blares “Allawi Blames Ambush on ‘Great Negligence’.” Whose great negligence?
…Allawi told the Iraqi National Council…that coalition forces’ negligent handling of security was responsible for Saturday’s deadly ambush along a remote highway near the Iranian border.
“It was a heinous crime where a group of National Guardsmen were targeted,” Allawi said. “There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces.”
But there’s more to the story:
…However, in an interview with Al-Arabiya television, Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan blamed the recruits, who in their eagerness to get home decided to leave immediately after their graduation and take an unauthorized route.
“They are to blame. They graduated at 12 p.m. and could have delayed their trip,” he said. Shaalan added that neither the Defense Ministry, the Kirkush commanders nor the U.S.-run forces were to blame.
“They are the ones who chose this road that led them to this ugly result,” he said of the victims. “There might have been some people who gave information about them to hostile sides.”…
Aha! Personal responsibility evaded. Treachery abetted. Life in the Middle East.
From an AP story:
Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have returned to terrorism, at times with deadly consequences.
Why waste the paper on “pledges”? We should know by now what they’re worth — especially peace pledges extracted by Jimmy (the Dupe) Carter.
Why do the media — and even the military in Iraq — insist on dignifying terrorism by calling it insurgency. Latest case in point, from the Times:
We’ve Seen the Enemy and They Are … Who, Exactly?
By EDWARD WONG
Published: October 17, 2004
BAGHDAD — To hear the American commanders in Iraq tell it, William Butler Yeats could well be the poet laureate of Iraq’s insurgency. If the guerrillas were to win this war with their suicide car bombs and televised beheadings, what would come next? Nothing, the commanders say, but a widening gyre, and things falling apart, and, finally, mere anarchy being loosed in the cradle of civilization.
“This is a negative insurgency,” Brig. Gen. Erwin Lessel, deputy director of operations for the multinational forces, said in an interview inside the fortified American headquarters here, near where two powerful bombs killed five people on Thursday and left the Americans bracing for more mayhem at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. “Unlike a classical insurgency, these groups don’t offer anything.”
“They’ve got differing goals, competing ideologies,” he continued, “and don’t offer anything positive for the government.”…
That’s because they’re g**d***** terrorists — nothing more. Let’s start calling a hand-held excavating tool a spade.
From Reuters via Yahoo! News:
Arab American Voters Drop Support for Bush
Wed Oct 13,11:02 AM ET
By Michael Ellis
DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) – Hundreds of Arab Americans danced and celebrated in the streets of this Detroit suburb after the fall of Baghdad last year, and enthusiastically shouted thanks to President Bush.
Now, even some of the most vocal supporters of the president blame him for failing to stop the disorder and death in Iraq. One opinion poll shows Bush trailing Democratic Sen. John Kerry among Arab Americans in four key battleground states including Michigan, where every vote could count in a close Nov. 2 election.
“The butcher (Saddam Hussein) is gone, but the bloodshed is still there,” said Imam Husham Al-Husainy, a Shi’ite cleric who in 1979 fled Iraq and moved to Dearborn, home to many of the estimated 235,000 Arab Americans in Michigan.
“President Bush did a good job to remove the cancer,” said Husainy, who led a rally of more than 100 people in support of the invasion when Bush visited Dearborn two years ago. “But he did not do a good job of strengthening Iraq. Iraq is still like an infected patient in an emergency room,” he said….
Let’s see what we have here. Kerry might or might not have removed Hussein; we still don’t know which, and we never will. Bush removed Hussein and since then a bunch of Arab thugs have committed acts of terror against fellow Arabs. This is a reason to vote for Kerry?
I guess the guys in Detroit would be happier if Bush had simply nuked the place. No terrorists, no one to terrorize, “perfect” outcome by Arab logic.
…who needed Saddam? Actually, it’s been evident for decades that the government and elite classes of France are unfriendly (to say the least) toward the United States. It all began with de Gaulle’s resentment of his exclusion from the inner circle during World War II, a resentment upon which he acted in the 1960s by withdrawing France from NATO’s military arm and kicking U.S. forces out of France. It’s been more of the same since then.
Now The Washington Times confirms what we’ve suspected about France’s position vis-a-vis Iraq, namely, that Saddam encouraged and rewarded the anti-Americanism of French officials and elites:
Saddam paid off French leaders
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMESSaddam Hussein used a U.N. humanitarian program to pay $1.78 billion to French government officials, businessmen and journalists in a bid to have sanctions removed and U.S. policies opposed, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.
The cash was part of $10.9 billion secretly skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was used by Iraq to buy military goods, according to a 1,000-page report by the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group.
According to a section of the report on Iraqi weapons procurement, the survey group identified long-standing ties between Saddam and the French government. One 1992 Iraqi intelligence service report revealed that Iraq’s ambassador to France paid $1 million to the French Socialist Party in 1988.
The CIA report stated that the Iraqi ambassador was instructed to “utilize [the $1 million] to remind French Defense Minister Pierre Joxe indirectly about Iraq’s previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular.”
In the late 1990s, Iraq also used an oil-purchasing voucher system through the U.N. oil-for-food program, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003, to influence the French to oppose U.S. initiatives at the United Nations and to work to lift sanctions, the report stated.
The Iraqi Intelligence Service paid off French nationals by dispensing vouchers that allowed the holders to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions by selling them to oil buyers.
The payoffs help explain why the French government, along with Russia and China, opposed U.S. efforts in the United Nations in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, U.S. officials said.
Iraqi intelligence agents also targeted French President Jacques Chirac, by giving gifts to a spokesman, two of his aides and two French businessmen, the report said.
One Iraqi intelligence report stated that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq.
Iraqi intelligence documents recovered in Iraq showed that the French citizens linked to the influence operation were “ministers and politicians, journalists and business people.”
“These influential individuals often had little prior connection to the oil industry and generally engaged European oil companies to lift the oil, but were still in a position to extract a substantial profit for themselves,” the report said.
Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told the Survey Group that he personally awarded several Frenchmen “substantial” oil allotments.
“According to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift U.N. sanctions or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council,” the report said.
The report named former French Interior Minister Charles Pascua as getting a voucher for 11 million barrels of oil, and Patrick Maugein, who received a voucher for 13 million barrels of oil. The report said Mr. Maugein, the chief executive officer of the SOCO oil company, was a “conduit” to Mr. Chirac.
Michel Grimard, the founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, received a voucher for 5.5 million barrels, and the Iraqi-French Friendship Society received vouchers for more than 10 million barrels.
French oil companies Total and SOCAP were granted vouchers for 105 million and 93 million barrels of oil, respectively.
But France wasn’t alone:
The report stated that Iraq covertly purchased missiles and other military goods from Russia, Belarus, China, North Korea and South Korea.
According to the report, illegal goods used in making weapons of mass destruction were sold to Iraq by companies in Jordan, India, France, Italy, Romania and Turkey.
Conventional arms also were sold to Iraq by China, Jordan, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, France, Poland, Syria, Belarus, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Russia, Romania and the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Then there’s the U.N.:
The report said Saddam’s regime obtained $1.5 billion from U.N. humanitarian contract kickbacks and $228.5 million in surcharges on U.N.-approved oil sales.
Other oil smuggling provided the regime with $8 billion in cash outside of U.N.-approved oil sales, the CIA report reveals.
Where did a lot of the money go? One guess:
Charles Duelfer, the director of the CIA survey group, told a congressional hearing yesterday that a “sizable portion” of Saddam’s cash obtained from the oil-for-food program were diverted to the military, specifically the government-run Military Industrial Commission.
“The funding for this organization, which had responsibility for many of the past [weapons of mass destruction] programs, went from approximately $7.8 million in 1998 to $350 million in 2001,” Mr. Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Duelfer said that during the period from 1998 to 2001, “many military programs were carried out — including many involving the willing export to Iraq of military items prohibited by the Security Council.”
Tell me again why we should consult with “allies” like France or defer to the United Nations on any issue.
The American Thinker highlights more moral confusion on the left. First, Thomas Lifson:
…John F. Kerry pledged that he would end America’s program to develop miniature nuclear “bunker-buster” weapons, the type of weapon which would be suitable to remove the threat from underground nuclear weapons facilities belonging to rogue states. Yet in the very same debate, Kerry decried the progress made by North Korea and Iran toward nuclear weapons, weapons which are produced using underground facilities of the type which could only be destroyed by ultra-powerful bunker-busters.
How do we explain Kerry’s position that the United States should not possess weapons capable of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states, a threat he identified as the most important one facing the United States? The answer to that question can be found in the writings of leftist theoreticians, critical of what they call American “dominance.”
They have openly expressed their fears that a world in which the United States is the most powerful actor will be unjust, and is undesirable. Of course, no candidate for president will go so far as to baldly state the thesis that the United States is not to be trusted with power, and that we need to be checked and balanced by the power of foreign states, comparably armed and able to project their power against us. But these intellectual doctrines seem to have been incorporated into the national security thinking of John F. Kerry, the would-be next Commander-in-Chief, because they explain his peculiar views on disabling America’s ability to address the threat of North korean and Iranian nukes….
Then, Justin Hart:
Al Gore’s now infamous MoveOn.org speech in May 2004 highlights a theme that has “dominated” left-leaning scholarship for last three years. Said Gore: “An American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.”…
This “dominance motif” is the bedrock of modern leftist thought, seeding a host of conspiracy theories and birthing a thriving industry of Bush-bashing tomes. Understanding the history, rhetoric and proponents behind these claims illustrates the flawed worldview of the left….
[There is] a vein of leftist scholarship and publications warning of the “imperial grand strategy” that the Bush administration has “embraced.” All of these writers allude to the 2002 policy document, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America….
In [leftists’] minds, there is…something inherently sinister about it. To summarize their fears: The birth of “neocons” during the first Gulf War gave rise to the “Bush Doctrine” of “forward deterrence.” Before the 2001 attacks, “preemption” was a rhetorical device employed by U.S. administrations since WWII, that has now become a declarative policy under Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell and associates. Employing an “Arab façade”, the Bush Administration has struck a “Faustian bargain,” vying for U.S. hegemony while simultaneously “socializing” a military economy, driving huge deficits and creating “powerful pressures” to cut federal spending.
Bush is seen as a “born-again global crusader,” fixated on enriching his oil-rich peers. He advocates a Pax Americana, with a swagger of “open contempt” for international law, and displays an insatiable desire for global dominance. The common premise across these worldview conspiracies is that the Bush Administration has insidious designs to dominate and “run the planet by force to protect their privilege.”
Empire, where’s the empire? Where’s the global dominance? Where’s the international law? (Hint: It’s not to be found in the United Nations.)
Have these people died and gone to some magical kingdom where lions and lambs commingle in peace? Tell me how to find it. I’ll check my weapons at the gate.
…for the sub-species of the lowest form of life responsible for this:
Pair of Car Bombs in Iraq Kill Dozens, Including Many Children
By DEXTER FILKINSPublished: September 30, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 30 — In one of the most horrific attacks here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a pair of car bombs tore through a street celebration today at the opening of a new government-built sewer plant, killing 41 Iraqi civilians, at least 34 of them children, and wounding 139 people.
The bombs exploded seconds apart, creating a chaotic scene of dying children and grieving parents, some of them holding up the blood-soaked clothes of their young, and howling in lament. Arms and legs lay amid pools of blood, with some survivors pointing to the walls of the sewer plant, now spattered with flesh….
Does anyone think there would be less of this if the U.S. were to cut and run from Iraq? Well, there might eventually be less of it if the Ba’athists who are behind it were to retake power. Then the atrocities would go on as before — behind the scenes, where the squeamish of the world could pretend that nothing is amiss.
To paraphrase President Bush: You’re either for decency or you’re against it. And if you’re for it you sometimes have to fight for it. And the fight often is unpleasant. But the alternative is surrender to the forces of evil. And I do mean evil — of the sort that was unleashed against the children of Baghdad today.
From my son:
Escape from the Soviets, by Tatiana Tchernavin, 1934. Just finished it. An account of a woman’s escape with her husband and son across the border into Finland. It’s the kind of book we should have been given to read in school. I seem to recall that the worst thing about the USSR, as we understood it, was that jeans were expensive and people had to stand in long lines. Amazing that with accounts like this people only began to admit to Soviet concentration camps (word author uses in the original, before the German variety became well known) and massive deaths through executions and starvation in the 1980s. If nothing else, it’s an excellent commentary on socialism, which she doesn’t hesitate to excoriate.
I’ve said it before. Dale Franks at QandO says it again:
[T]he enemy is not an inanimate object upon which we impose our will. Instead, the enemy is composed of thinking, reasoning human beings who are doing their best to divine our intentions, and to prevent us from accomplishing them.
It seems that it can’t be said too often.
We learn this from BBC News:
US in shock over hostage deaths
America has woken up in shock to the news that both the US hostages being held by militants in Iraq have been killed by their captors….
Unfortunately, Americans aren’t shocked. Shock is “the feeling of distress and disbelief that you have when something bad happens accidentally.” Americans, by and large, were expecting the hostages to be beheaded. There was nothing sudden or accidental about the beheadings.
“Outraged” is the right word, BBC. Get a dictionary.
Fareed Zakaria — Newsweek columnist and editor of Newsweek International — writes about “Hating America” in Foreign Policy:
On September 12, 2001, Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, famously wrote, “Today we are all Americans.” Three years on, it seems that we are all anti-Americans. Hostility to the United States is deeper and broader than at any point in the last 50 years….
[A]nti-Americanism fills the void left by defunct belief systems. It has become a powerful trend in international politics today -— and perhaps the most dangerous. U.S. hegemony has its problems, but a world that reacts instinctively against the United States will be less peaceful, less cooperative, less prosperous, less open, and less stable.
The wave of anti-Americanism is, of course, partly a product of the current Bush administration’s policies and, as important, its style….
By crudely asserting U.S. power and disregarding international institutions and alliances, the Bush administration has pulled the curtain on decades of diplomacy and revealed that the United States’ constraints are self-imposed: America can, in fact, go it alone. Not surprisingly, the rest of the world resents this imbalance and searches for ways to place obstacles in America’s way….
There is always a market for an ideology of discontent -— it allows those outside the mainstream to relate to the world. These beliefs usually form in reaction to the world’s dominant reality. So the rise of capitalism and democracy over the last 200 years produced ideologies of opposition from the left (communism, socialism) and from the right (hypernationalism, fascism). Today, the dominant reality in the world is the power of the United States, currently being wielded in a particularly aggressive manner. Anti-Americanism is becoming the way people think about the world and position themselves within it….
Much has been written about what the United States can do to help arrest and reverse these trends. But it is worth putting the shoe on the other foot for a moment. Imagine a world without the United States as the global leader. Even short of the imaginative and intelligent scenario of chaos that British historian Niall Ferguson outlined in this magazine (see “A World Without Power,” July/August 2004), it would certainly look grim. There are many issues on which the United States is the crucial organizer of collective goods. Someone has to be concerned about terrorism and nuclear and biological proliferation. Other countries might bristle at certain U.S. policies, but would someone else really be willing to bully, threaten, cajole, and bribe countries such as Libya to renounce terror and dismantle their WMD programs? On terror, trade, AIDs, nuclear proliferation, U.N. reform, and foreign aid, U.S. leadership is indispensable.
The temptation to go its own way will be greatest for Europe, the only other player with the resources and tradition to play a global role. But if Europe defines its role as being different from the United States -— kinder, gentler, whatever —- will that really produce a more stable world? U.S. and European goals on most issues are quite similar. Both want a peaceful world free from terror, with open trade, growing freedom, and civilized codes of conduct. A Europe that charts its own course just to mark its differences from the United States threatens to fracture global efforts—whether on trade, proliferation, or the Middle East. Europe is too disunited to achieve its goals without the United States; it can only ensure that America’s plans don’t succeed. The result will be a world that muddles along, with the constant danger that unattended problems will flare up disastrously. Instead of win-win, it will be lose-lose -— for Europe, for the United States, and for the world.
After firing the obligatory anti-Bush missiles, Zakaria settles down to the task at hand. First, he notes that anti-Americanism has a natural market among the discontented. That’s certainly true in the U.S. as well as overseas. Discontented left-wingers in this country are about as anti-American as they come.
Then he observes two central truths that foreign and domestic anti-Americans ignore at their peril: The world would be a much worse place if America weren’t the hyperpower. And if Europeans, acting out of envious anti-Americanism, succeed in blocking America’s efforts to make the world a better place, the world will become a worse place — and Europe will suffer for it.
Amen to all that.
I love it when esteemed institutions endorse my ideas (even if they don’t know me from nobody). Adam Begley, writing in the latest issue of the New York Observer, reviews In the Shadow of No Towers, by Art Spiegelman:
Mr. Spiegelman’s new book…is…about surviving…9/11 -— but it fails to tell a story: not a whole one, anyway, and certainly not a coherent one. Michiko Kakutani, in her New York Times review, seems ready to forgive the disjunctions and amputations on the grounds that Mr. Spiegelman has at least “suggest[ed] one aesthetic approach for grappling with the enormity of 9/11.” She believes that with “[i]ts frantic, collage like juxtaposition of styles; its repudiation of traditional narrative; its noisy mix of images and words; its trippy combination of reportage, fantasy and paranoia,” In the Shadow of No Towers somehow captures the essence of that terrible morning when the terrorists struck.
I wish I could agree. Mr. Spiegelman dazzles with his artistry: He flashes his wit; he shows off his remarkable flair for design. But he never hooks his reader….He gives us only the very personal and the bitingly political (furious and by now familiar attacks on “the Bush cabal”)….
Mr. Spiegelman becomes some of the comic-strip characters—Happy Hooligan, for instance (with a dangling cigarette, naturally)—but though he morphs a half-dozen times, he’s always center stage, parading his panic, his paranoia, his politics. Self-aware in the extreme, he comes close to acknowledging that the trauma he needs to survive is his own tortured psyche….
If the 10 strips show us a self-absorbed man shocked into a more perfect self-absorption, the preface is just plain irritatingly egocentric….From the first sentence (“I tend to be easily unhinged”) to the last (“I still believe the world is ending, but I concede that it seems to be ending more slowly than I once thought … so I figured I’d make a book”), the preface echoes with the clamor of the first-person singular.
The headline sums it up: “Image of Twin Towers Ablaze Haunts Narcissistic Cartoonist.” Actually, I summed it up in a post way back on August 6, when I wrote this about a NYT interview of Spiegelman at the time of the publication of his atrocity:
He doesn’t talk about the innocents who were slaughtered on September 11, 2001. He doesn’t talk about the cretins who flew the planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, or about Osama bin Laden, or about terrorism in general. It’s all about him. It’s all about his hatred of the war in Iraq. But he’s going to make some money off September 11, by selling copies of his thing to like-minded Manhattan jerks.
Jessica Wilson, guest-blogging at The Leiter Reports, instructs us on how to respond to terrorist acts:
I am not a wise person, though I aspire to be. But I know how a wise person responds to aggression. When a wise person faces aggression, they do not immediately and blindly strike back, thus potentially initiating a cycle of endless violence and retribution. Rather, they consider why they have been struck. Have they, perhaps, done something to offend the aggressor? If so, muses the wise person, perhaps they might avoid future aggression by removing the source of the offense.
She isn’t a wise person — that’s for sure. But, at the risk of being offensive, I will recast the rest of her paragraph in terms that she might understand:
I know how a wise woman responds to attempted rape. When a wise woman faces attempted rape, she does not immediately and blindly pull out her pistol and shoot the would-be rapist. Rather, she considers why she is the target of a would-be rapist. Has she, perhaps, done something to offend the aggressor? If so, muses the wise person, perhaps she might avoid future rape attempts by locking herself in her house and leaving the streets to rapists.
That’s the wisdom of the left. The rest of Wilson’s post is just as fatuous, but I’m not going to waste any more time on her musings.
According to MSNBC.com,
Bonjour paresse (Hello Laziness), a call to middle managers of the world to rise up and throw out their laptops, organigrams and mission statements, is the unexpected publishing sensation of the summer in France.
Sub-titled The Art and the Importance of Doing the Least Possible in the Workplace, the 113-page “ephlet” (part-essay, part-pamphlet) is to France’s managerial class – the cadres – what the Communist Manifesto once was to the lumpen proletariat….
An anarchic antidote to management tomes promising the secrets of ever greater productivity, Bonjour paresse is a slacker’s bible, a manual for those who devote their professional lives to the sole pursuit of idleness…
Herewith, the manual’s “10 commandments for the idle”:
No. 1 You are a modern day slave. There is no scope for personal fulfilment. You work for your pay-check at the end of the month, full stop.
No. 2 It’s pointless to try to change the system. Opposing it simply makes it stronger.
No. 3 What you do is pointless. You can be replaced from one day to the next by any cretin sitting next to you. So work as little as possible and spend time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you’re untouchable when the next restructuring comes around.
No. 4 You’re not judged on merit, but on whether you look and sound the part. Speak lots of leaden jargon: people will suspect you have an inside track.
No. 5 Never accept a position of responsibility for any reason. You’ll only have to work harder for what amounts to peanuts.
No. 6 Make a beeline for the most useless positions, (research, strategy and business development), where it is impossible to assess your ‘contribution to the wealth of the firm’. Avoid ‘on the ground’ operational roles like the plague.
No. 7 Once you’ve found one of these plum jobs, never move. It is only the most exposed who get fired.
No. 8 Learn to identify kindred spirits who, like you, believe the system is absurd through discreet signs (quirks in clothing, peculiar jokes, warm smiles).
No. 9 Be nice to people on short-term contracts. They are the only people who do any real work.
No. 10 Tell yourself that the absurd ideology underpinning this corporate bullshit cannot last for ever. It will go the same way as the dialectical materialism of the communist system. The problem is knowning when…
No wonder France is a socialist dystopia.
The Washington Times has a three-part feature under the heading, “Treachery: How America’s Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies,” by Bill Gertz. The headlines on the three stories tell the tale:
French connection armed Saddam
Looks like some good reading.
Yahoo! News has been playing this as a top story all day:
Bin Laden Deputy: U.S. Losing Afghanistan
By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt – In a videotape made public ahead of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy claimed Thursday the United States was on the brink of defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With an assault rifle leaning on the wall behind him, Ayman al-Zawahri said, “The defeat of America in Iraq and Afghanistan has become a matter of time, with God’s help….The Americans in both countries are between two fires, if they continue they bleed to death and if they withdrew they loose [sic] everything.”
The videotape was broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, which said it received the tape exclusively. It was not immediately clear how Al-Jazeera got the video….
But we can guess can’t we? This is like CBS News doing an impartial story about President Bush. No, it’s like Axis Sally telling American troops that Hitler is winning the war.
Ayman al-Zawahri — isn’t he the guy who’s on the run from U.S. and Pakistani forces? Talk about “loosers”.
Steve Gilbert of The American Thinker has this exclusive report at americanthinker.com:
Kerry, Kansas City, and the FBI files
September 7th, 2004By now you’ve probably heard that John F. Kerry attended a meeting of his Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) group in Kansas City in November 1971, where they considered a proposal to murder top governmental leaders….
Here is a fuller description of subsequent events from [an] FBI file dated November 18, 1971:
VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR (VVAW)
STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
NOVEMBER 12, 13, 14, 1971
INTERNAL SECURITY – NEW LEFTA confidential source, who was furnished reliable information in the past, advised as follows:
On November 12, 1971, a meeting of the Steering Committee of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) was convened in Kansas City, Missouri. The meeting was attended by approximately sixty persons, not more than seventy, which included the Executive Committee, people from the National Office in New York, the Regional Coordinators from around the country and some other representatives from some regions….
The Friday meeting ended at approximately 11:00 p.m.. A party ensued at the home of [redacted], which was attended by many of the delegates.
At the party SCOTT CAMIL, VVAW Regional Coordinator for [redacted] and [redacted] from Gainesville, Florida, bragged that he had a training range in either Florida or Georgia but would not divulge the location. CAMIL proposed the establishment of “readiness groups” of the “Phoenix type”….
When asked if CAMIL meant “Phoenix type” in the same context as understood by military personnel, CAMIL answered in the affirmative and outlined a plan for “political elimination” of the “governmental chain of command”. The “Phoenix type” is a military term given to groups with specific assassination assignments and the delegates knew that CAMIL meant political assassinations rather than political eliminations.
CAMIL said the activities would depend upon the men being devoted enough to carry out their assignments. CAMIL said that even talking and planning such activities was against the law and therefore the “Phoenix type” groups should carry out their assignments.
CAMIL said he had training ranges for rifle, pistol and mortar practice. He claimed he had rifles, pistols and rifle grenades, but no mortars. CAMIL’s proposal for the “readiness squads” and the training was favorably received by many of the persons present and was thereafter quietly disseminated to those at the party. CAMIL indicated he was already conducting his own training program…
The general meeting on Saturday, November 13, 1971, started at 9:00 a.m. and was held in a church, the Institute for Human Studies, near 40th and Main Streets, Kansas City. The first day and part of the second day was spent establishing order. There were numerous interruptions and discussions and very little order during that period.
On Saturday morning MIKE OLIVER, a VVAW national leader from New York, acted as chairman and recognized persons wishing to speak from the floor.
JOHN KERRY, a VVAW national leader from Massachusetts, arrived and spoke to the committee. He resigned from the executive committee of VVAW for “personal reasons” but added he would still be active in VVAW and available to speak for the organization….
The Agenda Committee again held a meeting of approximately one hour and returned to the general meeting prior to noon. SCOTT CAMIL proposed to the Agenda Committee the discussion of the training ranges and “readiness squads”. The Agenda Committee would not allow CAMIL to discuss his proposal at the general meeting, because of the time element and other matters to be discussed but placed CAMIL’s proposal on the agenda for a vote at the spring meeting in February, 1972….
Many of the delegates to the meeting slept in the basement of [redacted] house. A one-pound chunk of marijuana was made available for those delegates wishing to indulge, and many smoked themselves to sleep.
Some of the delegates who were present were: [redacted] Kansas City, Missouri, who was responsible for most of the arrangements; MIKE OLIVER; JOHN KERRY; SCOTT CAMIL from Florida…
It’s not clear to me that Kerry was privy to the discussions about a “Phoenix type” operation aimed at “political elimination” of the “governmental chain of command.” It is clear, from an FBI file marked “urgent” and dated November 12, 1971, that
JOHN KERRY AND AL HUBBARD, MEMBERS OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, VVAW, WERE PLANNING TO TRAVEL TO PARIS, FRANCE, WEEK OF NOV. ONE FIVE – TWENTY NEXT FOR TALKS WITH NORTH VIETNAMESE PEACE DELEGATION.
It seems that John Kerry was prepared to negotiate with the enemy, in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States. That’s bad stuff, but probably not enough to kill Kerry’s candidacy.
However, if other sources confirm that Kerry was privy to discussions of a “Phoenix type” operation, and if the story is picked up by the mainstream media, Kerry might as well resign his candidacy and the Democrats might as well save their campaign funds for 2008.
Which one of you “sophisticated” liberals and antiwar libertarians wants to tell this woman that “evil” is just a word used by simple-minded politicians?
A relative of Madina Tamayeva, 10, killed together with her mother in the school hostage taking, cries as she holds Madina’s portrait during her funeral in Beslan, Monday Sept. 6, 2004. In Beslan, townspeople crowded around the coffins of children, parents, grandparents and teachers ahead of the 120 burials scheduled in the town cemetery and adjoining fields Monday. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Politics and Prosperity 