Tag: Antiwar movement

In response to Brad Biggers’ letter, Sandra writes:

In fact, the Al-Jazeera transcript of the entire (18 minute) speech is incorrect and wrongly omits the word “not” from the following
sentence:

“This is due to many factors, chief amongst them that we have
(not) found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of
the resemblance it bears to regimes in our countries…”

CNN correctly includes the word “not”.

Why is this sentence correctly translated by CNN? A couple of reasons:-

1. All other translations published, including those done by The Guardian,
The Independent, etc., all include the word, “not” in the sentence, thereby
making the Al-Jazeera transcript the odd one out; but more importantly, it is clear from Osama’s speech that he is stating that the Bush administration is easy to deal with, viz:-

a) He states that his war/attack on America has been successful, “As for its
results, they have been, by the grace of Allah, positive and enormous, and
have by all standards exceeded expectations. This is due to many factors,
chief among them, that we have (not) found the Bush administration difficult
to deal with….” One can hardly leave out the word “not” and still see
sense in that sentence as the chief factor for success could hardly have
been the difficulty of the US administration;

b) OBL goes on to state a familiarity with the Middle East regimes, which
resemble the first Bush administration, so again the implication is that
the US administration was familiar to Al-Qaeda and thus was not found
difficult to deal with;

c) Further, OBL states, “All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us
to provoke and bait this administration”.

Seems like he is clearly stating that Al-Qaeda can read the Bush
Administration well and do NOT find it difficult to deal with. Most
probably the Al-Jazeera transcript was simply a misprint at that point.

find a kernel of corn every now and again. William F. Buckley on our War President:

What exactly will President Bush do about the Iraqi mess? He has said over and over that a president must be prepared to make decisions, however difficult, and stick to them. But surely one decision he can have arrived at during the political purgation is that things are not going well in Iraq. It is one thing to reiterate during a political campaign that a president must make hard choices and stick to them, quite another to say that a president cannot draw back and recalculate at very basic levels.

Too bad the jubilant young “conservatives” over at Natty Review don’t listen to their elders.

In other news, Matt “Don’t Sweat the Dead Babies” Welch pretty accurately pegs what libertarians and everyone else should expect of Bush 2.0:

1) There is zero reason to believe Bush will ever listen to libertarians, about anything. …

2) Energized Republican majorities in Congress will seek to re-write rules at the expense of the “obstructionist minority.” I heard Republican congressmen use that exact phrase twice during Election Night.

And look for the congressmen to continue spending money like drunken sailors. Pork works, especially if there is no veto to scale it back, and now that this approach has been given a handsome popular-vote mandate, why change now? …

3) Bush will even feel less constrained in conducting an aggressive, occasionally go-it-alone foreign policy. In the words of Bush voter Stephen Green, “On the plus side, we’ll stop jerking around with the insurgents in Fallujah. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and CENTCOM won’t have to worry any longer about delicate domestic sensibilities. Finally, they’ll be free to do the killing—and there’s no nicer word for it—that needs to be done there.” …

I’ll resist the temptation to say “I told you so” and just link two of my own essays – one from February, the other from last Saturday. For posterity’s sake, of course.

THREE mutilated bodies have been found under a suspension bridge in central Baghdad, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman said yesterday.

The river patrol police found the unidentified corpses on Tuesday beneath a bridge that leads across the Tigris river into the Green Zone, home to the Iraqi interim government and the United States and British embassies, the spokesman said.

Well, at least there won’t be any gay people getting married legally in the US. Nobody can say Americans don’t have their priorities straight.

Brad Biggers writes:

I wanted to point out the tremendous discrepancy between CNN’s “transcript of [bin Laden’s] remarks” and al-Jazeera’s “full English transcript” of bin Laden’s videotaped speech released last week, as reported on those networks’ Web sites.

The al-Jazeera version is 2,299 words long, and states that it was translated from the subtitles that appeared at the foot of the screen in Arabic.

CNN’s purported “transcript” is only 699 words long, and says it was translated by an editor.

Numerous other differences can be found between the two transcripts. These differences are mostly omissions on CNN’s behalf; however, at one point the two transcripts were in polar opposition to one another:

(from al-Jazeera) We have found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents.

(from CNN) We found no difficulties in dealing with the Bush administration, because of the similarities of that administration and the regimes in our countries, half of which are run by the military and half of which are run by monarchs.

Perhaps CNN is unaware of the meaning of the word transcript?

Today is that most holy day in the American statist pantheon, when millions of believers gather at makeshift temples and wait in lines to worship the State. (What, you didn’t know I hated Democracy? After this? Come on!) Even though this election is being pitched as “crucial” and “fateful” – which one isn’t? – regardless of which New England patrician gets to be the new Emperor, nothing will fundamentally change in the way the Empire works. Continue reading “Elections for Emperor & the Balkans”