The Attack on the Khobar Compound - Unexpurgated Version

On May 29th terrorists attacked the Khobar complex in Saudi Arabia. 22 people were killed. The US media gave us the sanitized version. Those killed were identified by their nationalities; the manner of their death was glossed over. It can't be squeamishness on the part of the American media, as the relentless pictures and descriptions of Abu Ghraib will testify.

MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, has given as a somewhat more graphic insight into what happened that day, in the words of Fawwaz bin Muhammad Al-Nashami, commander of the Al-Quds Brigade that took responsibility for the May 29 attack at Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The following are excerpts from the interview. Note the piety of the practitioners of the “Religion of Peace.”

For those who are interested in the complete interview click Special Dispatch Series - No. 731

"We turned to the third site, which was the most fortified center of all the compounds. Our plan was to remain in the car until we were alongside the American Hummer. When we were next to it, the brothers appeared from the windows [of the car] and began shouting 'Allah Akbar,' and shooting them. And I saw the skull of the soldier standing behind the machine gun explode before my eyes. Allah be praised. I think the driver was also killed.

"It was our [original] plan to enter through the exit gate, and immediately upon entering I would blow up the car amongst them [the guards], while the brothers will go on to charge [into the compound].

"As soon as we arrived, we passed the Hummers and exchanged fire with them. At one of the gates, Allah brought to us a security guard, whom we had seen in the street. We ordered him to open the gate and thus we did not need to blow up the car.

"Brother Nimr swaggered around inside the compound. Then we drove on the main road inside the compound. The compound is very big indeed, and its area spreads out over a number of kilometers, and in it there are a number of compounds.

"We went to one of the buildings. Brother Nimr, may Allah's mercy be upon him, shoved the door until it opened. We entered and in front of us stood many people. We asked them their religion, and for identification documents. We used this time for Da'wa [preaching Islam], and for enlightening the people about our goal. We spoke with many of them.

"At the same time, we found a Swedish infidel. Brother Nimr cut off his head, and put it at the gate [of the building] so that it would be seen by all those entering and exiting.
"We continued in the search for the infidels, and we slit the throats of those we found among them. At the same time, we heard the sound of the patrols and the gathering [of the security personnel] outside. These cowards did not dare to enter. About 45 minutes or an hour had passed since the beginning of the operation.

"We began to comb the site looking for infidels. We found Filipino Christians. We cut their throats and dedicated them to our brothers the Mujahideen in the Philippines. [Likewise], we found Hindu engineers and we cut their throats too, Allah be praised. That same day, we purged Muhammad's land of many Christians and polytheists.

"Afterwards, we turned to the hotel. We entered and found a restaurant, where we ate breakfast and rested a while. Then we went up to the next floor, found several Hindu dogs, and cut their throats. I told the brothers to leave them on the stairs so the troops of the Taghut would see them when they burst in, and be terror-stricken. [3] But it seems I thought too well of these cowards, because they did not enter [the hotel] until after we had left.

"We utilized the time for [teaching] the Koran to the Muslims who remained. We taught them how to read [Surat] Al-Fatiha properly. They were amazed by us, [and said], 'How are you able to do this in such an inflamed atmosphere?' Thanks be to Allah for enabling us to do so.

"The Indian Muslims told us that their manager was a vile Hindu who did not permit them to pray, and that he would arrive shortly. When [the manager] arrived, we verified his religion by means of his identifying documents, and we kept him with us for a short time.
……

"At the same time, brother Hussein was on the stairs and noticed an Italian infidel. He aimed his gun at him and told him to come closer. The infidel came closer. We saw his identifying documents and decided that he should call Al-Jazeera and talk to his people and send them a warning about the war of Islam and its people, and that afterwards we would cut his throat and dedicate him to the Italians who were fighting our brothers in Iraq and to the idiotic Italian president who wants to confront the lions of Islam.

"We called Al-Jazeera and I told the broadcaster to speak with him [i.e. the Italian]. The broadcaster asked me, 'Does he speak English?' I told the broadcaster, 'Do you have Italian translators?' He said, 'Yes,' and I said, 'Let him speak in his own language.'
"He [the Italian] spoke for several minutes. I asked the broadcaster, 'Did you record that?' He said, 'Yes,' and then the hero Nimr cut his throat." [
…..


"As soon as we entered, we encountered the car of a Briton, the investment director of the company, whom Allah had sent to his death. He is the one whose mobile phone on the seat of his car, with the blood on it, they kept showing [on television]. We left him in the street.

"We went out, and drove our car. We had tied the infidel by one leg [behind the car]. We left the company [compound] and met the patrols. The first to arrive was the jeep of a patrol, with one soldier, and we killed him. With the rest we exchanged fire, and we got through.

"Allah be thanked, we had learned more than one route to the second site. When the patrols blocked the way, [we] had no chance of returning by the same route, so we went another way – via the coast, and then via Khobar, that is, the Damam highway – a distance of four kilometers.

"The infidel's clothing was torn to shreds, and he was naked in the street. The street was full of people, as this was during work hours, and everyone watched the infidel being dragged, praise and gratitude be to Allah.

"When we arrived at one of the bridges, we encountered an ambush of jeeps of theTawaghitdogs [i.e. Saudi government troops] and the guards of the Americans, and we exchanged fire with them. [2] When we crossed the bridge, the rope [by which the Briton was tied] snapped and the body of the infidel fell in the middle of the intersection, between the four stop signs, and everyone who was stopped at the stop signs saw the infidel on the day that he fell from the top of the bridge.

"The brothers had exchanged fire with the patrols, all the while shouting, 'Allah Akbar,' and 'There is no God but Allah.'"

A note to my brethren who are professional journalists: doesn’t this make for riveting reading?

Isn’t this at least as interesting as a pile of naked men at Abu Ghraib?

Isn’t there something instructive in this narrative, telling us of a mindset that we must understand?

This has all the hallmarks of a good story. Why do I have to go to the Internet to find it? Please, anyone, what’s the answer?

Pulling Teeth: the education of Dave Addis

Dave Addis is a Virginian Pilot columnist and so, to one one’s surprise, Liberal. It’s part of the job description.

Today’s column is headlined “In Hindsight it seems Reagan had an eye for evil.”

As they lay Ronald Reagan to rest today, it might be a good time to lay to rest the debate over one of the many controversial things he said .

Few of the president’s statements while in office caused more hair-pulling and sputtering, here and around the globe, than his description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”
Critics, aghast at such an undiplomatic utterance, complained that the ol’ Cold Warrior was at it again, tossing gasoline on a fire that the rest of the world – including diplomats from his own country – were hoping to extinguish.

As one encyclopedia describes the reaction to Reagan’s reference, many feared that “by attempting to assume moral superiority in the Cold War, the U.S. was further inflaming East-West tensions and enhancing the risk of nuclear conflict.”

Not a big Reagan fan at the time, I was among them. I thought it was an unnecessarily crude and unhelpful thing to say when, in the early 1980s, tensions already were frightening enough. After all, as wisdom has it, when you poke an angry bear with a stick, you tend only to make it angrier.

A couple of years after Reagan left office, and a couple of months after the Soviet Union fell apart, circumstances placed me in Moscow as an editor/adviser to the new Russia’s first free-market newspaper, Commersant. One day, while discussing our nations’ past differences with a Russian colleague, the “evil empire” remark came up.

My colleague, Sergei Voitishkin, was a young, liberal democrat – small “D” – who couldn’t have been happier at the collapse of the whole communist nightmare. But his view as a Russian liberal contrasted sharply with that of American liberals when it came to Reagan and the “evil empire” flap.

“You know,” Voitishkin told me, “we were quite surprised at the reaction to what he said. We couldn’t understand why so many people were upset.

“Of course it was an evil empire. When Reagan finally said that, we were quite happy. Our reaction was, 'Finally, somebody over there understands what has happened to us.’”
That was quite a revelation. The very people we’d think would have been the most offended – the smart, young, educated, worldly liberals – had been the ones cheering Reagan the loudest.

Let me interrupt Mr. Addis long enough to make one or two points. First, there is a phenomenal amount of hubris in asserting that this article by an obscure columnist for the cut-and-paste job that is the Virginian Pilot will lay anything to rest, let alone the issue of whether the USSR was an “Evil Empire.” And whether President Reagan should have spoken “Truth to Power” as members of the Left like to say.

Second, the article is really about the intellectual journey of Mr. Addis. An intellect so veiled in false liberal certitude that it was able to ignore the truth about historical drama that unfolded itself before us during the 1980s. It took the face-to-face testimony of one of Communism’s freed serfs to remove certain self-imposed blinders.

To continue:

It only goes to show that the definition of a liberal and a conservative can get pretty well twisted around, depending on where you happen to be standing at the moment in question.
President Reagan said a lot of things while in office that remain suspect. He was prone to mish mashing scenes from real life with scenes from Hollywood movies. He once told Israel’s Yitzak Shamir that he’d personally filmed the liberation of a Nazi death camp. In reality, because of his poor eyesight, the Army never sent him past the California state line. He reportedly told a similar tale to Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Reagan is accused by his opponents of living in a dream world where reality and his film roles blend seamlessly into each other. I have attempted to search the Internet for this particular accusation but was not successful. Fact: newspaper reporters now have the credibility of used car salesmen; columnists are not that well regarded. The NY Times has instituted a regular corrections section devoted just to its columnists like Paul Krugman and Maureen “Ellipses” Dowd. I’m afraid I won’t take Mr. Addis’ word for his version of this story.

Maybe the most suspect of all was his argument that trees cause more pollution than automobiles. (If so, why isn’t Yellowstone under a smog alert?)

This was a comment that caused Liberals to roll over on the floor laughing. Trees? Pristine, Holy, Nature? A source of pollution? What a moron! Except, except…

I did find reference to this on the Internet. It seems that during a campaign speech in either 1979 or 1980 (the date varies depending on the source) Candidate Reagan referred to a study by an industry group that asserted that trees gave of more of the stuff that causes smog than cars. Some reports indicate that he took a swipe at the EPA for hiding this report.

Rather than taking the word of a newspaper writer for the validity of this viewpoint, let’s go to some scientific sources:

1. According to a study by the University of Helsinki, coniferous forests--that is to say, those composed of trees such as pines--release nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere that combine with other pollutants to form smog.

2. The Geological Society of London: When Ronald Reagan said trees caused pollution, most people thought he was up a gum tree. Australian researchers have now discovered that, in the case of eucalypts at least, the President was right after all.

Australia's native plants emit chemical compounds that can interact with other air pollutants to exacerbate smog in cities. Scientists from CSIRO Energy Technology and Atmospheric Research have been commissioned by the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to investigate emissions of organic compounds from Australian eucalypt trees and grasses that contribute to the formation of photochemical smog.

"It's not just cars and industry that cause air pollution," says Mr Ian Galbally, from CSIRO Atmospheric Research. "Plants release highly reactive hydrocarbons that can add significantly to photochemical smog problems. That is, smog caused by the reaction of sunlight with chemical compounds like those from industry, car exhausts — and now, as we've discovered, plants," he says.

"The blue haze you often see over the Dandenongs in Victoria and in the Blue Mountains near Sydney is caused in part by the gases released by vegetation. We found that grasses, particularly when cut, are potent emitters of reactive hydrocarbons."

"Plants release these compounds into the atmosphere in large quantities. These volatile compounds add to the photochemical smog in the same way as emissions from human sources — there is no discrimination," says Dr Peter Nelson, senior research scientist with CSIRO Energy Technology.

3. And finally, from the Canadian Globe and Mail:

Ottawa — Coniferous forests around the world may be emitting more smog-causing nitrogen oxides than traffic and industry combined, suggests a report in the prestigious journal Nature.
The report, released Wednesday, flies in the face of the accepted view that forests reduce pollution by absorbing it — a theory Canada relied on in demanding credit for forests as pollution "sinks" under the Kyoto climate change accord.

Scotch pine needles release nitrogen oxides directly into the atmosphere when exposed to ultraviolet light, says a study led by Perrti Hari of the University of Helsinki.
Nitrogen oxides are smog precursors: They combine with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone, a major component of smog.

The emissions from Scotch pines increase in proportion to the amount of ultraviolet radiation they receive, says the study.

"Although this contribution is insignificant on a local scale, our findings suggest that global NOx emissions from boreal coniferous forests may be comparable to those produced by worldwide industrial and traffic sources," says the report.

Actually the scientific community has known these things for a very long time. It doesn’t take advanced degrees to determine what plants produce during growth and decay. There are few scientists, however, who are willing to stick out their necks to be chopped by the yahoos at “Earth First” or the feature writers of the newspapers.

Besides, what good would it do? We are certainly not going to chop down the world’s coniferous forests to end smog. The only activists on this issue are the Luddites who prefer a pre-industrial age. Not the real one, of course, where people died of overwork or common diseases at an early age. They prefer an airbrushed version, or should we say “the movie version.” Preferably, one in which they are in charge, steering the fates of the lumpenproletariat from their desks with the stroke of a pen. You know, the ideal society that was the Soviet Union, only this time – because they are in charge – not an Evil Empire but the Communism “with a human face.”

Back to Addis:

But when it came to recognizing an evil empire, Reagan’s eyesight was 20/ 20. I didn’t understand that at the time he said it. But when I finally got to see it for myself, it was clear that you didn’t need prescription lenses to figure out what you were looking at.

Although I have given Mr. Addis a hard time for his ideological blindness, He has seen the truth. There are many in his camp that still refuse to face the facts he faced. Who blame Reagan for destroying their dream, their Socialist fantasy. But perhaps, unlike Dave Addis, they did not have it rubbed in their faces by those freed from that Evil Empire.

Keep working on it Dave. Who knows, one day we may see you out in the woods cutting down those “killer trees.” At that point, we’ll know you have come away from the Dark Side.

Farewell President Reagan

Ronald Reagan is arguably the most loved and revered modern President. Yet, in intellectual circles on the Left, he is widely dismissed as – in Clark Clifford’s famous phrase – “an amiable dunce.”

Yes, this is the same Clark Clifford, one of the Democrats' "wise men" who acted as a front man for Middle Eastern crooks and after becoming embroiled in the BCC banking scandal, pled old age and senility to escape a jail term.

So why was Reagan viewed by Washington sophisticates as stupid? The reason is actually so simple that it is virtually always overlooked: he disagreed with the conventional Washington wisdom. It is a natural human emotion to assume that people who disagree with us on fundamental issues are wrong. And if they continue to disagree with us after we have explained to them why they are wrong, they must be stupid. The other alternative is that they are evil.

Reagan did not believe that communism was merely another economic choice. He believed that we could prevail over the “evil empire.” He did not believe that high taxes led to economic well-being. He did not subscribe to the notion that every problem called for a governmental solution. Despite protestations to the contrary today, these were widely held beliefs when Reagan became President. In fact they are held by the Kerry/Dean/Gore/Kennedy wing of the Democratic party today and are taught as gospel on America’s campuses.

What is especially galling to his enemies is that he succeeded spectacularly, tearing down the Berlin Wall, ending the Soviet Union, freeing Eastern Europe, defeating communist expansion in Central America and ushering in a decade of spectacular economic growth at home.

The “Reagan was stupid” camp has convinced itself, in a bout of historical revisionism, that the country was united against Communism; that the fall of the Soviet Union was inevitable and Reagan had the dumb luck to be around when the fall occurred. Their message during this period of official mourning is that Reagan was “The Great Communicator;” an actor playing a part who got lucky.

The importance of luck was illustrated by two hillbillies playing poker. Big Joe Bob has a real good hand, so he raises. Li'l Clem has a daisy, too, so he sees and raises. Back and forth it goes. Finally, Joe Bob calls. Clem spreads his cards, grins broadly, and says, "I got me four aces!" He reaches for the pot. "Jest a minute," says Joe Bob. His hand goes to his boot and brings up something long and shiny. "I got me this right sharp knife." The color drains from Clem's face. Then he recovers, shakes his head, and laughs. "Doggone you, Joe Bob," he says. "You're the luckiest feller I ever seen!"

The “Reagan was evil” camp is represented by people like Henry Fairlie, who, in the Washington Post, writing on the Republican convention in 1980:
"The Reaganites on the floor were exactly those who in Germany gave the Nazis their main strength and who in France collaborated with them and sustained Vichy.” Fairlie was just warming up; adding that Reagan’s constituency was “narrow minded, book banning, truth censoring, mean spirited; ungenerous, envious, intolerant, afraid; chicken, bullying; trivially moral, falsely patriotic, family cheapening, flag cheapening, God cheapening; the common man, shallow, small, sanctimonious.”

Of course that was when Reagan was very much alive. Now that he is dead, we have Danny Glover, the actor who adores Fidel Castro and every other communist dictator: "We all know Ronald Reagan's legacy, from the Iran-Contra affair to the funding of the Nicaraguan military in which over 200,000 people died. The groundwork for the move steadily to the right happened with the Reagan administration. People want to elevate him to some mythic level, they have their own reason for doing that."

Many a moral monster has surrounded himself with glittering friends. They can be deceiving. If you want to know about a man’s soul, look at his enemies. If Danny Glover is your enemy, you are my friend.

The American people are blessed to have had Ronald Reagan as its leader at a critical juncture in history. When he came into office communism was on the march, the Ayatollahs held our embassy staff hostage, inflation was rampant and Jimmy Carter could not buy a clue. Commentators were opining that the job of President hat gotten beyond the capacity of any one man. It was certainly beyond the capacity of Mr. Carter.

When Reagan left office, the USSR was on the verge of collapse, the economy was booming and confidence had been restored in the ability, and the essential goodness, of the American experiment. And he did it all with unfailing good humor and by never listening to the advice of the New York Times.

As we remember Ronald Reagan, let us not mourn him. Let us instead celebrate his life. His eternal spirit has been released from his body, his family has been freed from a terrible burden, and we can rejoice in the fact that he has left the world a better place than he found it. Thank you Ronald Reagan.

Village Voice Calls for Extermination of Republicans

The evidence is becoming all too clear that Liberals are becoming a real danger to our country. Click here for the entire article by Michael Fiengold.

Here's how he starts:

No U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren't immediately appointed to it, you'd know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.

This opinion is presumably not shared by Foreman; you can gauge the breadth of his imaginative compassion from his willingness to extend it even toward George W. Bush, idiot scion of a genetically criminal family that should have been sterilized three generations ago.

Mark Steyn: The Tenent CIA

I have been ambivalent about the George Bush's decision to retain George Tenent as well as Tenent's decision to resign. No longer. This analysis nails it as far as I am concerned. For the complete article click here.

Some excerpts:

The good news is that George Tenet has resigned as CIA Director. The bad news is he's two-and-three-quarter years late getting around to it. Tenet is the second longest-serving director, after the 1950s spymaster Allen Dulles, but Dulles's longevity availed him nought after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. By any measure, September 11 was a much bigger fiasco, and Tenet should have gone on Carringtonian grounds: "There has been a British humiliation," said Lord Carrington after the Argies seized the Falklands. "I ought to take responsibility for it." [snip]

When you look at all the recent "setbacks", "scandals", "Bush LIES!!!!!!" and other frippery that has plagued the Administration in recent months, one finds that in almost all of them the same three letters recur. From Iraq's WMD to Saddam buying uranium in Africa, from Ahmad Chalabi to Valerie Plame, at heart they are all about what the CIA said or didn't say, advised or didn't advise, leaked or got leaked on.

Everything that is wrong with the agency was made plain a few weeks ago with the much-anticipated release of a classified CIA "Presidential Daily Brief" from August 6 2001. This was supposed to be the smoking gun which would reveal that Bush knew 9/11 was coming. It turned out to be far more damaging than that. It revealed somewhat carelessly that the CIA - the most sinister acronym in the world, the all-knowing spooks behind the dirty tricks in a thousand Hollywood thrillers - crib most of their info from television shows and foreign intelligence services.

Under the headline "Bin Ladin [sic] Determined To Strike In US", the most lavishly funded intelligence agency in the Western world led off its analysis with its top piece of "classified" "intelligence": "Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America'."

Terrific. Your crack CIA operative knows how to go into deep cover in his living room and pose as an average American couch potato by switching on the television. Then, just when the rest of the country is settling in for the Friends rerun, he surreptiously flips the remote to the Osama interview on CNN.

Next in the briefing came a couple more historical generalities about bin Laden supplied by foreign intelligence agencies in the late 1990s.

Third on the list was the CIA's only self-generated contribution to the assessment - one sentence, three years old: "A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks." This turned out to be wrong. The attacks in New York were perpetrated mainly by Saudi youth, let into America on inadequately-filled paperwork processed through the State Department's Saudi "Visa Express" programme.

The CIA ended the briefing on a reassuring note: "The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related." That was also false. The FBI may have had several dozen "open cases" vaguely bin Laden-related, but it wasn't "conducting" anything like that number of active investigations. So that is the Agency's summation on Osama bin Laden as it stood in August 2001: two old television interviews, two generalities from foreign agencies, one rumour from the late 1990s, and a concluding assertion that demonstrates the CIA doesn't even know what the FBI's doing, never mind anybody else. Hard to see why it was ever "classified", as you could have picked 99 per cent of it from your daily newspaper. This would just about pass muster for an intelligence briefing in a small nation with no role in the world - Luxembourg, say...


Tenet's defenders say, ah, well, easy for you to say, but it's very hard to get a guy and plant him in al-Qaeda's inner circle. True. But no one is asking that. The CIA's critics want to know why its human intelligence is so poor even in nominally friendly states. One reason why Bush has been embroiled in this business about Saddam trying to buy uranium from Niger is because it's obvious that the CIA has no clue about what is going on in that part of Africa. And, when they were invited to check out the claims of British and French intelligence, the agency dispatched not an intelligence specialist but an ex-career diplomat turned "adjunct scholar" at the Saudi-funded Middle East Institute. So, to investigate the case for war with Iraq, the CIA sent an anti-Bush partisan on the House of Saud's payroll who drank mint tea with a couple of Niger bureaucrats and then wrote it up as a third-rate travelogue for The New York Times ("Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger river"). The CIA are tourists in the heart of darkness.

Mark Steyn on the Saudi Problem

There is more than one problem to be solved in fighting the War on Terror. The future of Saudi Arabia is one of them. Mark Steyn is arguably the best stylist in the English speaking world today. He has a great analysis of the Saudi dilemma here

His home page is here.

Good and Evil

Here's Jonah Goldberg's take on how one "angy atheist" deals with the question of good and evil via Buffy the Vampire Slayer. click

The Best Summary of the Bush Administration's Enemies … Ever.

Doyne, you're being unfair. Opponents of the administration and its policies and personnel make very valid points, and this is one of them. Rather than going to war, the US should have tried peaceful diplomatic engagement with the ruler of sovereign Iraq, but without shaking hands [reference to Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in the 1980s]. Remember, Saddam was brutal dictator who we were wrong for supporting, and it was wrong of us to overthrow him. If this diplomacy failed, we should have continued our policy of economic sanctions against Iraq, rather than the brutal policy of economic sanctions against Iraq. And remember, Saudis were the majority of terrorists on 9/11, so rather than attacking an oil-rich terrorist-supporting Arab nation, it would have made more logical sense to attack an oil-rich terrorist-supporting Arab nation, which of course would be wrong. Also, the war on Iraq diverted us from the war in Afghanistan. And the war in Afghanistan is wrong. And we're being distracted from the War on Terror. And the War on Terror is a straw man.

I know this all sounds very contradictory, inconsistent, and incoherent, so I'll simplify it - whatever the administration or the US does is wrong, and if they do the opposite, that will be wrong, too.

For the whole discussion, click
here

If the Disaster Isn’t “Made in the USA,” It Isn’t News

Thanks to InstaPundithere I found out that:

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed for an end to the looting that has forced it to suspend food distribution across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), …
For the whole story click here

WFP has been providing 150,000 people in South Kivu province with 3,500 tonnes of food a month through nutritional centres and hospitals, as well as to food-for-work and other programmes.

Thousands of Congolese attacked UN offices and peacekeeping bases yesterday, angry that fewer than 1,000 UN peacekeepers were unable to prevent 2,000 to 4,000 rebels from seizing Bukavu, South Kivu's provincial capital, on Wednesday. The DRC's military in Bukavu unexpectedly collapsed, the chief of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations said.

Fifteen DRC nationals working for WFP remained in the city, most of them hiding with their families for a second day. The last two WFP international staff members in Bukavu were taken yesterday by a helicopter owned by the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) to the north-eastern city of Goma.

…WFP staff members were told to stay at home for their safety. … a mob burned down the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office and smashed shop windows.
…
More than 2,000 Banyamulenge from the Bukavu area fled into neighbouring Rwanda over the past couple of weeks, …

You can’t make this up. Refugees fleeing TO RWANDA?

And, by the way, this is not found in the “all the news that’s fit to print” press. Guess it doesn’t fit. Sigh.

Virginian Pilot Slams Catholics

Dennis Hartig is the Editorial Page Editor of this vapid collection of outsourced news. Apparently he doesn't think much of the decision of some Catholic Bishops to deny communion to abortion advocates. I mean, just because Catholics condemn abortion as a sin? So today we are treated to an editorial cartoon by Mike Peters who is with the Dayton Daily News. The picture is of a church with one lone parishioner and two clerics in the pulpit. The priest says to the Bishop: "Well first you banned pro-choice politicians, the pro-choice voters, then stem cell advocates, then gays, then gay marriage judges, then..."

Funny, my experience with people in the pews is that if the advocates of abortion, infanticide, and gay marriage were "banned," attendance would increase. The fastest growing church groups in this country are the ones that most closely adhere to traditional Christian teaching. The go-along-to-get-along churches are the ones who are dying.

But that's not the opinion of Mr. Hartig. If he goes to a church on Easter Sunday - and have no idea if he does - I would be willing to place a hefty wager on this choice of denominations.

Howell Raines - Bare

God – or (for the unchurched: Providence) must surely be at work in the US. Exhibit one is Howell Raines. You remember Raines, don’t you? He was the editor of the New York Times until Jason Blair blew up like a car bomb in Baghdad and Raines was the collateral damage.

Since Raines no longer is constrained from disguising his core beliefs, he is beginning reveal himself, like Al Gore before a MoveOn.com audience. And who does Raines hate? Not just George Bush but also Christians, “The Rich,” Republicans, Ronald Reagan, freedom, free enterprise, in fact anything to the right of Vladimir Lenin.

Raines is fully exposed in This blog by John Hinderaker in “Powerline.” A great read.

Virginian Pilot Lacks Reporters, Reprints NY Times

There are more than a few sources for the President's speech to the graduates of the Air Force Academy on Wednesday. You can go to the White House web siteor you could have turned on the TV set and caught it live.

But the Virginian Pilot is apparently short staffed so they decided to run the NY Times version of the speech. I say the "NY Times version" because this "news" story is so loaded with modifiers and qualifiers that it deserves to become part of a case study in some Journalism class on how you editorialize on the front page.

I wish I could do justice to it, but another Blogger got there ahead of me. Unfortunately, when I e-mailed the blog from my office to my home, I lost the blogger who wrote the actual analysis, but I will try to find it for you and give proper credit later. Here goes:
______________________________________________________

That darn New York Times

The New York Times coverage of Bush's speech at the Air Force Academy is a special treat. Like a complete idiot, I hurt my back doing dead lifts in my garage, and so spent a fair part of yesterday on my back in the family room, looking for entertainment on the tube, and caught W's address. It was actually a very good speech, but poorly delivered. The Times puts it this way:

In a grim commencement speech on a sparkling morning at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Mr. Bush outlined in the most detail yet what he sees as the continuing threat of terrorism. Rather than expressing any misgivings about the course of the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush emphatically affirmed his belief in striking enemies before they can strike first to protect Americans against Al Qaeda and other terrorist threats.

Giving a grim speech on a nice day? We can now add meteorological insensitivity to Bush's many other style-crimes. "What he sees" as the continuing threat of terrorism? This is idiosyncratic? Maybe it's not a threat anymore? And only the Times would think it was good journalism to add "[r]ather than expressing any misgivings about the course of the war in Iraq . . ." at the beginning of a sentence describing what the speech was about. I suppose we should be grateful that it did not read, "As car bombs exploded in Iraq, killing American soldiers and Iraqi children, the President . . . "

We do get this choice insight, however:

The president's remarks appeared to try to strike a balance between frightening Americans and offering himself as the only choice to lead the nation out of danger and to shore up his credentials as commander in chief in an election year when polls show support for the Iraq war and his presidency declining.

Either that, or a sincere attempt to inform Americans about real threats facing them, and to do the graduates and their parents the dignity of acknowledging the danger he is responsible for sending them into. I watched the speech, and the Times fails to mention the standing ovation Bush received when he said, referring to the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war against terrorism, that he intended to take the fight to the enemy. The Times describes Bush's speech as "interrupted intermittently by applause, most of it modest" and this is true. The applause was modest, except when it was enthusiastic.

The Times informs us that

Mr. Bush also tried to answer critics who say that his policies and the war in Iraq have simply created more terrorists.

But only tried, of course. The "we better not make the terrorists mad at us" argument is so compelling on its face that attempts to answer it are bound to be futile, but Bush did the best he could with his limited resources.

But the choicest passage is this:

Casting forward to his D-Day speech, Mr. Bush told the cadets that "on this day in 1944, General Eisenhower sat down at his headquarters in the English countryside and wrote out a message to the "Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces" who would soon be invading Normandy. Mr. Bush said Eisenhower wrote that "the eyes of the world are upon you" and "the hopes of prayers or liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."

Mr. Bush omitted the first line of Eisenhower's message, which was, "You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months."

The president used the word "crusade" once soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to describe the campaign against terrorism, and it was criticized in the Arab world for its association with the medieval struggle between Christians and Muslims.

I think we may be seeing the emergence of an exciting new doctrine of political correctness here. Not only may we not use words like Crusade, at least in the positive sense of a noble fight against a crazed ideology that wants to murder us, but, we should not use any language from a paragraph that includes such a verboten word. As to whether D-Day was still a good thing, even though Ike called it a Crusade, I admit I cannot say. Perhaps the Times will clear that up for us some objective reporting at a later date.
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Some time ago I ran into a former Virginian Pilot employee who lamented the personnel cutbacks on the paper. I have no idea if this has led to the paper's current deplorable condition, but reprinting contentious rubbish from the NY Times - as opposed to watching TV or getting the speech from the White House web site strikes me as bizarre. After all, this is not reporting from the wilds of Afghanistan. Any intern can write this story, and go a better job of "reporting." But perhaps not a better job of editorializing on page A6.

The Press, The UN and Terror

Until now, the "Mainstream" Press has be remarkably shy about the UN's Oil-for-Food scam that appears to have diverted literally billions of dollars into bribes to foreign and UN officials. Demonstrating the reticence of Victorian virgins, there has hardly been a whisper in the "official" press about this, with the lone exception of the Wall Street Journal and - of course - the bloggers on the Internet.

Apologists for the press will claim that since there are no graphic pictures, a la Abu Ghraib, the TV networks and the Lords of the Print Press may believe it does not have the grab appeal of pictures of West Virginia sluts holding a naked man on a leash wearing Victoria Secret's latest creation.

Well, how about a video of Arab terrorists making their entrance and exit from the murder of six Israelis in UN Ambulances? It has it all: violence, clear pictures, and wrongdoing. But wait ... it does not fit the media template. Just keep repeating: the UN are the Good Guys, the UN are the Good Guys, the UN sanctifies all things.

For a view of the movie, click on Michelle Malkin's article: Here.

The Virginian Pilot Wants Your Kids in Government Schools

An editorial in the Pilot titled, “The public education of southern Baptists” begins by asserting that “there are plenty of valid reasons why individual parents my choose to educate their children at home or in private schools.” And then never mentions that line of thought again.

The editor is apparently terrified that the second largest denomination in the country (after Catholics) would urge its members to withdraw its children from public schools.

As well he (or she) should. Public schools are notorious for turning out graduates who cannot read their diplomas. Even the “better” public schools graduates are virtually illiterate in history, geography or basic science. Math problems are done on calculators.

On top of this, what bothers Baptists – and many other Christians – is that public schools now teach values that are inimical to Christian values. Historical Christian Holidays like Christmas have been re-named to remove their religious roots. Public schools actively promote sexual practices which most Christians view as sin and many people – Christian or not – consider perversions.

So what reasons does the Virginian Pilot give to ask Baptists to stay? Well, they appeal – wait for it – Baptist’s PATRIOTISM! It’s patriotic to give your children to the government because that makes a commitment to “a pluralistic society.” And our children get an opportunity to “weight their values … against others;” an admission that Christian values and government school values are not compatible.

The writer asks, “Do the Baptists really want to deprive all other children of the opportunity to hear from their sons and daughters?” Apparently the editor has not heard how Christian students who have attempted to share their values with others have fared. One little girl who passed out pencils with “Jesus Loves You” was threatened with expulsion.

After admonishing Baptists parents that withdrawal from government schools will deprive those schools of the benefits of hearing from its children, we get the intellectually opposite concept when the writer says that “the schools are America’s mixing pot.” Well, which is it: are the schools a place for little Baptists to tell others their beliefs, or are the schools a place for little Baptists to learn to be little agnostics?

This, of course, from a newspaper so painfully politically correct that it everywhere and always celebrates multiculturalism; the very antithesis of the Melting Pot that the US was once thought to be.

I applaud the Southern Baptists and hope that this resolution passes in their upcoming convention. After all, isn’t multiculturalism a “Good Thing?” Can’t Baptists become part of the “Grand Mosaic” that the Left is always nattering on about? Why should Baptist children be ground down in to the undifferentiated goo of ill educated, over sexed graduates of government schools? Let’s “…DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN!”

The Pilot's version of Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day and the Pilot celebrates it with the headline: “Goodwill at a Price.” The story is Iraqi reconstruction … No, it is about the US military’s efforts to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis by building schools and digging wells. This is not reconstruction because these wells and schools were never there. We have gone past the point in Iraq where things are back to the ante bellum period. We are now building a country where schools and wells are built, not Presidential Places with marble walls and gold fixtures in the bathrooms.

But the headline reflects the Pilot’s attitude. The headline is trying to tell us that: “US Army Trying to Bribe Iraqis to be Good.” The fallacy in logic is that this is what Americans have always done. We fly aid to the world’s disasters and trouble spots. After WW II, we reconstructed Japan and created the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe. When the Russians were hauling whole factories out of defeated Germany after the war, we were feeding starving Germans and helping them rebuild their nation.

Is our altruism pure and without regard for our own good? Yes and no. The billions we have sent into that bottomless pit known as Haiti was almost wholly altruistic, although we hope that we can improve the situation there so that we won’t see boatloads of Haitians landing in Florida. The Marshall Plan turned Europe into a trading partner – in the long run. But in the short run we did it to kick-start a Europe devastated by a global war. And our aid to Japan was good for both of our countries. Macarthur was supposed to have cabled the President: “Send me food or send me bullets.”

There is another story on page A3 “Mother of Slain Marine feel the loss and sorrow of Memorial Day every day.” This – on Memorial Day – is a reprint of a Denver Post story about a mother. It isn’t about the slain soldier, why he died and the cause in which he died. He is a prop for a maudlin tale of a grieving mom whose son could as well have been killed in an auto accident. It is a tool with the subtext being: see the grief and anguish you are causing … George Bush … you devil. People are dying for nothing, and it’s your fault.

The rest of section A is filled with reports of ambushes, crimes by American soldiers via Jason Blair’s NY Times and advertisements. Have a memorable Memorial Day.

Why do Nazis get all the press?

There were two death cults in Europe during the 20th Century: Nazis and Communists. Of the two, the Communists killed more. So why are the Nazis getting all the attention?The Nazi Seduction

Why the Killers Chose

For an insight into the selection process the killers who slaughtered (some say throats were cut) their victims in Saudi ... Belmont Club

Is the Post Liberal?

From TNR's "Corner"
RELENTLESS POST [Tim Graham]
Remember Friday’s paper whenever anyone tries to tell you that The Washington Post is not a liberal newspaper – that it’s not written by liberals, written for liberals, and if they’re lucky, written to mint new liberals. Every section of the paper today carries some evidence of liberal bias.

On the front page comes the latest attempt to keep the Abu Ghraib bubble inflated: “Warner Bucks GOP Right On Probe of Prison Abuse.” Reporters Helen Dewar and Spencer Hsu describe Sen. John Warner as “a throwback to a forgotten era of congressional comity” with “a penchant for bucking his party, taking heat and surviving.” Readers who go deep enough in the story get a list of all the times Warner has betrayed his party (oh, he’s Comity Central, all right). But senators who buck their own Democratic Party never get a front-page puff piece. Do they, Zell Miller?

At the very bottom of the front page of the Business section (that’s Section E) – the Post buries what should be on the front page of the A section: 4.4 percent economic growth. At the very bottom of the Business section’s front page is the headline: “Growth May Be Slowing.” Reporter Nell Henderson wrote: “The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 4.4 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, but growth appears to have slowed more recently as consumers and businesses deal with rising inflation and interest rates, economists said yesterday.” The front page of Business also carried a chart showing “Help-wanted ads dipped, despite evidence that the labor market is creating jobs.” Nowhere in the story did Henderson report that growth in the last 12 months is the highest 12-month growth rate since 1984.

In the Sports section, Liz Clarke’s notes on the French Open, the major tennis tournament currently under way, include a report on the debut on the scene of the al-Jazeera Sports Channel. For the apparently clueless sports fan, Clarke suggested the notion that al-Jazeera has a bias is debatable: “The al-Jazeera satellite news channel, based in Qatar, has been criticized by some American officials for having what they say is an anti-American slant.”

In the Metro section, Vanessa Williams reports on how openly gay Republican D.C. Council member David Catania left the Grand Old Party yesterday, after a rather unsurprising turn. Since he pledged publicly that he is not supporting President Bush in the fall (and even pledged to campaign against him at one point) over the president’s endorsement of a Federal Marriage Amendment, the D.C. Republican Party decided not to certify him as a delegate to the Republican convention. Much hand-wringing follows about agonizing gay Republicans. That is news in old D.C. , but the Post has not done any reporting this month on the Democratic convention’s delegate selection, where 15 states and Puerto Rico are setting “numerical goals” for the number of openly gay delegates. In California, the target is 22 gay men and 22 lesbians, for example.

In the Weekend section, film critic Michael O’Sullivan’s review of the green disaster flick “The Day After Tomorrow” concludes “the film’s biggest joke comes when the vice president goes on national television to apologize for his advocacy of the rapacious depletion of the earth’s natural resources at the expense of our children’s future. Like that’ll ever happen. Not in my lifetime, pal.”

In the Style section, Mel Gibson/Passion-bashing film critic Ann Hornaday is much cheerier about the weekend’s Christianity-satirizing films, a reissue of Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” and the Jesus-freak-high-school movie “Saved!” She adores the line of the film’s cynical heroes when they see a Christian girl coming out of Planned Parenthood. There’s only one reason for that, one says. The other says: “Planting a pipe bomb?” Hornaday says the film “bears the unmistakeable stamp of authenticity, even at its most outrageous.”

Ann Coulter opines on Tet and "Quagmire"

Ann Coulter is always provocative ... and right.Tit for Tet

Patriotism and the Press

An excellent discussion by Jonah Goldberg
Goldberg