Month: October 2004

If you thought Ron Suskind manufactured that quotation, Pat Robertson erases all doubts:

The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, “We’re not going to have any casualties.”

Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion. He described Bush in the meeting as “the most self-assured man I’ve ever met in my life.”

“You remember Mark Twain said, ‘He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.’ I mean he was just sitting there like, ‘I’m on top of the world,’ ” Robertson said on the CNN show, “Paula Zahn Now.”

“And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, ‘Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.’ ”

Robertson said the president then told him, “Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.”

The most charitable reading of this I can muster is that Bush thinks casualty means fatality. Oh sure, Reverend, the boys might get a few flesh wounds . . .

But for God’s sake, still! This lunatic thought it would be possible to conquer a nation of 25 million, a nation he had endlessly pronounced a threat to world peace, WITHOUT A SINGLE DEATH? Or did he think he could simply decree such an outcome?

Saddam Hussein just moved down a spot on my list of people who shouldn’t have nukes.

Seriously.

The head of Iran’s security council said Tuesday that the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran’s best interests. Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top security decision-making body.

Bush declined the endorsement.

Journalists in Iraq are learning that having their columns online is a lifesaver – especially if they’re not pro-war or pro-occupation. Australian journalist John Martinkus was googled and released:

Iraqi militants who kidnapped a reporter in Baghdad and threatened to kill him Googled his name to investigate his work before releasing him unharmed.

Australian John Martinkus was seized early on Saturday and held for nearly 24 hours before being freed.

His executive producer at an Australian news network, Mike Carey, said that the Internet – often used by Iraqi militants to air grisly images of hostages being beheaded – probably saved Martinkus.

“They Googled him and then went onto a website and saw that he was who he was, and that was instrumental in letting him go, I think, or swinging their decision.”

Carey said the company only heard of Martinkus’s abduction after his release.

“I got a call from John saying, ‘Mate, I’m at my fixer’s house, they’ve dropped us at the fixer’s house. I’ve been kidnapped but I’m free’,” he said.

Fixers are local people employed to help journalists.

Martinkus said his kidnappers initially threatened to kill him, before checking on his background.

He said he was treated well once he had told his kidnappers he was an independent reporter not linked to the United States-led coalition in Iraq.

Canadian journalist Scott Taylor , in this interview with AntiWar.com’s Chris Deliso relates a similar story:

After torturing me, the mujahedin gave me a pen and paper and told me to write down all the Web sites that might help prove my case. Even though they told me I had “failed the test” afterwards, I’m pretty sure from their behavior that they found enough articles there to vindicate me.

A later interrogator who questioned me at length was especially interested in why I hadn’t denounced the “imperialist occupation” of Iraq. He was very clear about this word. Come on – of course I have criticized the occupation on numerous occasions.

Thinking fast, I specifically referred them to one of our earlier interviews, “The Empire Strikes Out,” as well as the other interviews on Antiwar.com and on your site, besides other articles I’ve published.

CD: So, do you think that these interviews helped persuade the mujahedin to release you?

ST: I can’t prove that, but I’ve got to think it was probably a big help. … At very least I think it kept me alive at various points when they easily could have killed me, and would have.

And technically, it was this last group with the “anti-imperialist” leader that released me. So the specific articles I gave them, plus what you get when doing a search for my name and Iraq, yeah, I got to think that it helped swing things in my favor. So … thanks.

Chris Albritton is bailing out of Baghdad, at least. Considering the circumstances surrounding the kidnap and release of Australian journalist John Martinkus, that seems to be a wise move.

Saturday around 2 p.m or so, John was picked up about 500m from our hotel compound. He turned out of the front gate, took the first right — as most of us do — and a car stopped in front of him and a tailing car pulled in behind him. Four men with pistols jumped out and three of them managed to force their way into the car, putting guns to the heads of John, his driver and his translator. They then took him to western Baghdad, held him overnight and interrogated him.

We’re not sure what all happened during his captivity, but he was able to persuade his captors that he was an Australian and a friend to the resistance and not to the Americans. It appears, by the kidnappers’ statements and questions, that they were nationalists and not jihadis, lucky for John. Also, he was lucky for not being American, because the kidnappers said if he had been, they’d have killed him quickly. They had tracked him for three days, they said, and proved it by asking him why he had gone to the Green Zone and to the Palestine on two separate days. This was how they were able to pick him up so easily.
[…]
As frightening as John’s experience was for him, it shows that journalists’ plans for “security through obscurity” has been blown out the window. John’s captors said they received a phone call that he was on the move and that the time for taking him was now. This fits in with our intelligence that there are kidnap teams up and down Jadirya Street looking for us. His captors said they had penetrated the staff at the Hamra Hotel, where many of us live. They have people in the compound watching us. They know who we are and they’re looking for “soft targets” — reporters moving around with little security or few precautions.

Oh, and on the subject of John Martinkus, Alexander Downer is an idiot. Wait…a lying idiot.

If you have paid any attention to the ballot access battles that non-Demopublican candidates have to go through, you know one reason that candidates like Ralph Nader and Libertarian Michael Badnarik have such a hard time getting their campaigns off the ground. Third party candidates must get as much as tens or even hundreds of thousands of signatures per state just to qualify for the ballot. For some candidates, this requires most of their campaign budgets to be spent just to attempt to get on the ballot. And in spite of such massive attempts, Nader, Badnarik, and others fail to achieve ballot status in many states.

Now Putin is learning from the US! The Kremlin has announced a new crackdown on small parties. Currently, parties must get 100 people to sign up as members in each of half of Russia’s 89 regions. Under the new proposal, parties will be required to sign up 250 members in every single region, and 500 members in each of half the regions. In addition, they will be required to sign up 50,000 members nationwide.

This is another of Putin’s new anti-democratic moves, following his moves to make governors and judges appointed instead of elected.

The world has always learned from America’s example. These days we are not setting a very good one.

Er, Chechnya:

Sergei Abramov, who heads Chechnya’s pro-Moscow government, said on Friday that the park would be built next year along with a range of cultural and entertainment facilities, including a new football stadium. …

“[N]ext year, we will launch not only a multifunctional sports centre for the Terek football club, but a Disneyland and a swimming/leisure complex,” he said in remarks broadcast by the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Mr Abramov did not make clear whether he was referring to an official Disneyland, or a generic theme park. …

“I think if we do succeed in achieving this objective next year, the people will, I hope, be pleased with the results,” he said.

But wait: won’t a Disneyland just further inflame all them craaaaazy Muslims? And hey, what are they so pissed about in the first place if Chechnya lacks such Western trappings? I mean, I know they hate us because of our modernity, but what gives with Russia? I really need some coherent explanation from the neocons – who seem to think Moscow is part of the auxiliary axis of evil.