Antiwar.com Blog

Zbigniew Brzezinski points to two Bush administration “blunders” which have “precipitate[d] the increasingly intense hatred for the US, not only in the Middle East but in the Islamic world at large.” In both instances, it “adopted a stance that was not only unilateral and lacking international support but was perceived by the Muslims of the region as violently repressive, lacking in fairness and justified mainly by stretching or distorting the truth.”

The first of these “Bush” blunders was the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003; the second was the “unqualified support” for Israel’s “violent dismantling of the Palestinian Authority” a year earlier.

Yes, Bush referred to “Sharon as ‘a man of peace,'” but it was an almost unanimous Congress that took the lead in endorsing “Operation Defensive Shield.” As Mary McGrory put it, Republican Whip Tom Delay “cleaned up the floor with his unaccustomed allies, the liberals.” In the senate, “Democratic leader Tom Daschle announced the restiveness among his horses, who were hot to trot for Israel.”

Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions considers that congressional vote one of the “good reasons” the Sharon government has for “believ[ing] it has defeated the Palestinians once and for all.”

Russ Feingold and the late Paul Wellstone, liberal darlings here in the Midwest, were among the “hot to trot.” So were John Edwards and of course John Kerry, who recently expressed his pride in having “co-sponsored a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel” when it had just “dismantle[d] the Palestinian infrastructure.”

While Brzezinski’s piece is welcome, he undercuts his credibility by glossing over the fact that the whole political establishment is a blunderer and in particular that Anyone But Bush is proud to be a blunderer.

In related matters, I’m proud I haven’t seen “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Here’s a chance to “Urge Michael Moore to make his next film about the US and Israel.” And here’s one to support the Presbyterian divestment initiative.”

Juan Cole asks, Did the Bush Administration Burn a Key al-Qaeda Double Agent? It appears that they did: ““Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff of Reuters reveal the explosive information that the Bush administration blew the cover Monday of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.” Cole also speculates on Ayatollah Sistani’s “heart trouble”:

One problem with an all-out attack on the Mahdi Army was that it might endanger the life of, or meet opposition from, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He was therefore spirited out of Najaf on the pretext that he had heart problems. But Al-Zaman reports today that Sistani stopped off in Beirut on his way to London, where he met with moderate Shiite leader Nabih Berri of the AMAL party, who serves as Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament. Sistani then went on to London, but is not in hospital and won’t be for at least a week. This story just does not square with him being so ill that he had to be airlifted to London for emergency heart treatment. It would not have been easy for al-Zurufi and the Americans to convince Sistani to leave, but they could have simply shared with him their plans to have an all-out war in Najaf, and told him they could not protect him. That would have left him no choice but to leave. If you think about it, he could not possibly have been gotten out of Najaf to Beirut and London without US military assistance, though he flew a private plane from Baghdad airport.

I think this analysis is likely true, as I insinuated here yesterday.

Riverbend checks in for the first time in over a month:

Is there sympathy with all these abductees? There is. We hate seeing them looking frightened on television. We hate thinking of the fact that they have families and friends who worry about them in distant countries and wonder how in the world they managed to end up in the hell that is now Iraq… but for every foreigner abducted, there are probably 10 Iraqis being abducted and while we have to be here because it is home, truck drivers, security personnel for foreign companies and contractors do not. Sympathy has its limits in the Iraqi summer heat. Dozens of Iraqis are dying on a daily basis in places like Falloojeh and Najaf and everyone is mysteriously silent- one Brit, American or Pakistani dies and the world is in an uproar- it is getting tiresome.

As for The New Iraqi Police State, where US installed Dictator Allawi has just shut down Al Jazeera’s offices in Iraq, Riverbend says, “Word on the street has it that email, internet access, and telephone calls are being monitored closely. We actually heard a couple of reports of people being detained due to the contents of their email. It’s a daunting thought and speaks volumes about our current ‘liberated’ status- and please don’t bother sending me a copy of the “Patriot Act”… this last year it has felt like everyone is under suspicion for something.”

Stuart Hughes is blogging from Athens where he’s covering the Olympics for the BBC.

About 900 hacks, me included, are being put up at the Selete complex, a javelin throw away from the main Olympic Stadium.

The check in procedure resembles that of a prison – x-ray scanners, searches, and all sharp implements confiscated. The security guards let me keep my shoelaces but I couldn’t be trusted with my Swiss Army Knife. It was taken away for safe keeping by one of the ubiquitous jolly volunteers, all of whom are dressed in shorts and brightly coloured polo shirts. The fear of sharp instruments continued when I got to the restaurant – all knifes and forks are made from wood or plastic.

The rooms are comfortable, if spartan. One single bed. One wardrobe. One desk. One chair. One TV. Little else. I was surprised to find that they weren’t screwed to the floor, although this may have just been an oversight by the architects.

If Guantanamo Bay was taken over by Walt Disney it’d be a lot like Selete. All that’s missing are the orange jumpsuits.

General J.C. Christian reviews Michelle Malkin’s new book. For an interesting debate on just how bad Malkin’s research for this book was, see Eric Muller’s blog, starting here and continuing up. Muller and Greg Robinson convince me, though I know little about the history of the Japanese internment and I thought Malkin was a lightweight warmongering neocon twit already. I must be right, because the Libertarian Jackass agrees.

Libertarian Jackass asks, “WHAT HAPPENED TO Anthony Gancarski? Abducted by aliens? Under contract with the Feds? Midlife crisis?” See Garcanski’s latest incoherent (and dishonestly unlinked) word salad to see why these are good questions.

Via Arthur Silber, I found Claire Wolfe’s review of James Bovard’s new book, The Bush Betrayal, which I had missed. Arthur is doing some commentary on the book as well (see here) and has found that James Bovard has a blog.

Tim Swanson is posting pictures from the Mises University. Start here and follow the links. What a suck-up!

So that’s what happened. Ridge Raises Terror Level After Watching Cujo.

InstaHack posts pictures of a smoldering cathedral and desecrated Jewish graves in New Zealand and insinuates Helen Clark instigated the vandalism:

Did Helen Clark establish the climate that makes this sort of thing more likely?

And this story suggests that Helen Clark’s behavior may have encouraged this sort of thing.

Above links are Reynolds’. How, you may wonder, did Helen Clark instigate the desecration of Kiwi Jewish graves? Let’s look at Insty’s links.

The first article blasts Clark:

IT makes you wonder about Helen Clark’s priorities. In two separate sting operations in March and April, Thai police seized 23 bogus New Zealand passports that were being sold on the Bangkok black market. And, if that isn’t bad enough, security officials in Thailand expressed the belief al-Qa’ida terrorists have been using the products of these forgery rings for quite some time.

But the prospect of Osama bin Laden flashing a visa-free Kiwi passport as he sauntered through customs at Heathrow didn’t seem to bother the New Zealand Prime Minister. In fact, her Government’s reaction to these passport forgeries was exceedingly low key. Thus, a Foreign Affairs spokesman responded dismissively to this story, declaring that he “had absolutely no confirmation” of “claims by Thai police that New Zealand passports may have been used by al-Qa’ida-linked terrorists in Europe”.

The writer goes on to try to show that Helen Clark is meaner to the Israelis caught red-handed in a sting operation than to whoever is behind the Thai passport frauds. Interestingly, Justin Raimondo’s most recent article on AntiWar.com includes this information:

It turns out that the ringleader, Ze’ev William Barkan, who fled before New Zealand security could nab him, was and presumably still is a member of the Israeli diplomatic corps, having served at embassies in Vienna and Brussels. He was last seen in North Korea, traveling with a Canadian passport as “Kevin Hunter,” where he turned up in Pyongyang as a “consultant” brought on to help the North Korean government build a “security fence” in order to keep their people in. Now that the East Germans have wound up in history’s dustbin, the Israelis are the current experts in the field.

Barkan is a man of many skills, and one of them, according to an aid worker cited by the Sydney Morning Herald, is this:

“‘He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports,’ the aid worker said. ‘Barkan is mostly interested in passports and there have been a number of Australian passports.’ Intelligence analysts in New Zealand believe Barkan, a former navy diver in the Israeli Defence Force, was trying to secure a ‘clean’ passport for use in a sensitive Israeli undercover operation in the region, less risky than a forged passport.”

So, from where did those bogus passports in Bangkok come? Maybe we’ll find out that information after Barkan is found and questioned. Meanwhile, all the fulminating against Helen Clark’s severing of diplomatic ties with Israel and jailing of the Mossad operatives running the NZ passport farm and efforts to paint her as an instigator of antisemitic vandalism are just predictable MOs for neocons, armageddonists, Likudniks and others for whom Israelis can do no wrong.

As Justin points out:

As the U.S. seeks to plug up the holes in its security, the recent activity in New Zealand ought to be of immediate concern. The Israeli government has refused to either disavow or claim “credit” for the activities of its agents in Kiwi-land, let alone apologize. In this age of terror, however, an Israeli covert operation that systematically and illegally collects Western passports is bound to raise all sorts of suspicions – and rightly so.

If they did it to the Kiwis, and the Canadians, then why not screw us, too? A similar scam aimed at procuring U.S. passports on American soil can’t be dismissed altogether.

The danger of that, alone, ought to motivate U.S. government officials to do everything possible to assist New Zealand and Canada in tracking down Barkan and bringing him to justice, and yet, so far, we have heard not a peep out of them about this matter. The possibility that Barkan is indeed an American may eventually force the Washington spin team into performing the requisite verbal gymnastics, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Stymied by tighter U.S. security procedures, Al Qaeda is apparently seeking to outflank us on our porous southern border. But surely such a strategy is a bit risky. Ms. Ahmed was caught without a visa, and the pages torn out of her South African passport aroused suspicion. Maybe next time, the terror masters should seek out Ze’ev Barkan: I’m sure he can give them a real deal on a New Zealand passport – or perhaps even a Canadian one, in which case they’ll have no trouble coming in from our equally porous northern border. (See Justin’s article for relevant links.)

Of course, Justin’s take is that of a person who elevates the interests of his own country above a foreign country, while InstaHack and his fellow travelers are busy calling the New Zealand embassy and whining about the arrest of Israeli Mossad operatives engaged in fraud in another country. Quite a difference.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is headed for London via Beirut.

The Al-Khoei foundation, a Shiite institution based in London with which Sistani has close links, said that the cleric was expected to arrive at London’s main Heathrow airport at 2:00 pm.

“I’ve heard three of his arteries are blocked,” said Al-Khoei spokesman Eagle Abdlemalik. “I can’t say how long he is going to stay.”

“He was persuaded to leave Najaf obviously because of his critical state of health,” the spokesman said, adding that Sistani would be residing at his offices in north London during his stay in Britain.
[…]
Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie said that Sistani’s trip to London had been planned for weeks.

Sistani, who is not suffering from a terminal illness, was accompanied by his son, doctor and an assistant, he added.

The senior cleric is expected to stay in London for up to a week.

“I can tell you that I was intimately and personally involved in this trip. It has been organised for several weeks. I took him from Najaf and sat him inside the plane… I took him from door to door”.

al-Rubaie denied that al-Sistani had been removed from Najaf in order to facilitate the crushing of Moqtada al-Sadr by the American occupying forces.

On weekdays (at about 10am EST), the Department of Defense releases a pdf file with updated casualty information from Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the url changes on a daily basis, so linking to it is difficult. No longer. Check out “Daily DoD Casualty Release” on the Casualties in Iraq page or bookmark this link. Unless the DoD changes how they name the pdf file, this link should work from now on.

“With this legislation America’s military will know that their country stands behind them as they fight for our freedom and as they spread the peace,” Bush said.

UPDATE:From Pro-War.com, another brain cramper:

“They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”