Israel's Raid on Saddam's Nuclear Reactor (1981)

Of the Missing Link and other News Stories

Here's this weekend's news and blogs digest:

- Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group: "The Unorganized Cyber Militia of the United States" - "... Some of us did indeed refuse to accept defeat. Some of that was plain old Jacksonian stubborness, and some of it was faith. We kept the faith with our nation’s warriors. We knew deep down that what we were being told was not the whole story. And we believed that our nation was a force for good in this world, and that the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines sent forth to break militant Islamicists of their homocidal habits were the best human beings this Republic had to offer ... We have all been the victims of a massive psychological operation. Even those of us who resisted. Our faith in our armed forces remains unshaken >>>


- In From the Cold: "Behind the Numbers (September Edition)" - "Call it Spook's Inverse Law of Iraq War Reporting: if you don't see a spate of stories on U.S. casualties at the end of the month, then there must be some good news the MSM is ignoring.If you want proof of that, consider the latest numbers from Iraq. With only two days remaining in September, U.S. forces are on pace for the lowest number of monthly fatalities in more than a year. According to ... >>>

- American Thinker: "Another Saddam guy linked to al Qaeda" - "Another member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party has been arrested for links to al Qaeda, this time in Italy for attempting to assist in a terror attack using aircraft, suicide bombers and anti tank weaponry. >>>

- Real Clear Politics: "Ahmadinejad's Overlooked Message" - "The Free World today finds itself embroiled in an ideological war for its very survival. Our enemies - whether Shi'ite or Sunni - are followers of a totalitarian ideology based on Islam which tells them that Allah wishes to rule the world through them. Israel is a central front in this war. Given the weakness of Western support for the Jews, jihadists see attacking Israel as a strategic tool for eroding the West's ideological defenses and shoring up their supporters throughout the world. >>>

- National Geographic: "Violence in Myanmar Exposed By Satellite Images" - "A detailed analysis of images spanning several years pinpoints locations where villages have been burned, settlements have been relocated, and military forces have expanded their camps. >>>

- Catholic World News: "Vatican greets Muslims, asks cooperation for peace" - "As the Islamic observance of Ramadan comes to an end, the president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue has sent a message to the world's Muslims stressing ... that all believers, regardless of their faith, should share in "work in favor of peace, by showing respect for the convictions of individuals and communities everywhere through freedom of religious practice ... doing everything one can to reject, denounce and refuse every recourse to violence which can never be motivated by religion ... >>>

- Jotman.com blogging Burma live from Bangkok: "Vigil at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok" - "There was a organized protest at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok earlier tonight. There were about 100 present for a prayer and meditation vigil. This Embassy is located on a busy street under the skytrain tracks two blocks from Sathorn Station. I'll try to get my video up tomorrow. Bangkok religious groups were well represented, as were expatriots. >>>

- Stop Islamization of Europe: Press Release - "Stop Kuffarphobia and Kalifascism! London demo 26th October 2007 - To coincide with Islamo-fascism Awareness week in which events are being held across the USA highlighting the bullying by Islamists against non-Muslims throughout the world. To protest against Kuffarphobia – the irrational fear and loathing of non-Muslims by Islamists. To protest against the persecution of non-Muslims via Sharia law in Islamic countries. To protest against the under-reporting or even total lack of reporting about such persecution in Western media. >>>

- Flanders Fields: "On Break" - "Please add your vote for a Free Europe at the link on the right. You don't have to be European to vote. >>>

Hopefully back tomorrow with some original work.

Tony's Canard, Bunkers and some darned thing in the Balkans

"I did what I thought was right". The end of an era. Tony Blair today announced he will tender his resignation to the Queen on 27th June after ten years in office. His Labour economic legacy is debatable. I haven't had the pleasure of seeing the U.K. up close for a while, and cannot really judge the fairness of statements like "whole towns are on the state's payroll: we have no one on the dole, we only have civil servants". What I do admire is the man's core decency, his patience and power of persuasion - at least, his efforts in casu the Iraq War, which I still consider to be a Liberation.

I still see him endlessly debating TV studios filled to the brink with hysterical anti war activists.Teenagers, some moved to tears with frustration over their incapacity to understand that removing a murderous tyrant from one of the world's strategic hot spots, is of a higher moral order than letting the bastard sit out his time at the rate of hundreds tortured to death on any given day, only to be succeeded by a dynasty of recreational serial rapists. Tony, you did the right thing!

There's no debating postmodern sentimentality and irrationality, is there? The time of great statesmen is definitely over as baby-boomers hold the reigns of power. Since postmoderns have done away with the concept of objective truth, it is consequently not something they aspire to. So we don't have seekers for truth, we have activists whose opinion is formed by blurting out the very opposite of what they deem to be "the enemy's".

For instance, if U.S. President George W. Bush seeks to disseminate democracy in the Middle East, if only because democracies are on the whole more peaceful nations than Islamic versions of Nazi-Germany - the concept of democracy is vilified and its virtues relativised out of existence: suddenly "so overrated!"

Similarly, if author Melanie Phillips "is a British neoconservative" (no need to ask any less shallow questions: she's a neocon, isn't she?) "who has devoted herself to warning England that Muslims are taking over and destroying its culture" , as stated in her "oh-so-cleverly titled book, Londonistan", this is considered a hype and a gross exaggeration (or something). Let me not fall into the trap of retaliating at the italics at this point with a list of laughable Leftist book titles, their particular fruits of cerebral ravings!

The point is that if someone finally unearths Marshall Tito's Iraqi bunkers, an obvious WMD storage facility and hiding space as there ever was (one that was destroyed is described here), these reports are consigned to the muck-heap as "drooling, deranged, self-evidently moronic conspiracy dribble" ... have you quite finished? Let me ask the reader in all honesty: what age do you suppose the producer of this infantile graffiti is?

This champion linguistic distance urinating is Glenn Greenwald, blogger at Salon.com. His juvenile invective is condensed in an article with the brilliant title "Right-wing blogs discover massive conspiracy to hide WMDs in Iraq", together with updates II, III and IV. Here are links to Melanie Phillips' article "I found Saddam’s WMD bunkers" and to Front Page Magazine's item "The Iraqi WMDs That Slipped Through Our Fingers".

Let's remind ourselves at this point that the WMD as a casus belli was a British canard, initiated by Tony Blair to make his task at home a little easier - and fat lot of good it did him! Factual reason was that Saddam had been violating the terms for ending the 1st Gulf War for twelve long years, an offence the Security Council for economic reasons best known to themselves, failed to enforce.

This item warrants much more in-depth coverage, which I will certainly do, but early awareness - if not hot-blooded activism - is important on this point. Michelle Malkin yesterday in "Jihadists Exploit Our Hospitality and Open Borders ... Again" describes a 'plot' in CNN inverted commas to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix. One of the suspects, "Abdullahu was familiar with the base because it was the first place he landed when arriving in the United States as a refugee from Kosovo ... Abdullahu arrived at Fort Dix as a teenager in 1999 as part of a group of about 4,400 refugees from Kosovo, officials said".

Thanks, says Michelle Malkin. Thanks, says I, after the U.N. and the E.U. with U.S. endorsement - are saying Yes to a potentially Muslim state in Europe's heartland. "As said by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos at a recent Kosovo hearing "Here is yet another example that the United States ... stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe."

Diana West's Townhall article "The 'limited' war for 'hearts and minds'" from which the above is an excerpt, carries an icon at the top: "Take Action"; please hit it!

As Europe, the U.N. and America console themselves with the thought that, since "we're all interconnected now" which seems to warrant "peace at any price", and the Balkan's Muslims moreover are a far cry from the Saudi desert, the signs are there - if suppressed by the MSM - that things are already starting to go very wrong indeed! Try that ... and this, for an appetizer of some darned thing in the Balkans ...

Of Hypocrisy, burqas, Blair and bummers.

While yesterday I had a bit of a breather thanks to Danny Carlton's new CrossPosted initiative, things are now piling up quite heavily and the back-log is becoming apparent all over the house. The relativist treasure trove Signandsight has posted a reply from Professor Stuart Sim (if it isn't relativst, it's fundamentalist!) to Paul Cliteur's Falling Prey to Relativism. (See posts A Failed State on a World-wide Scale and Leviathan.) If that's not enough multiculturalism, our Muslim brothers are also at it, again. Let's take one at a time:

The new Dutch government has officially been installed, and truth be told, it doesn't look good. While I have no intention of getting into matters of taxation and just who is going to pay up - any post 1945 government of whatever colour or description has been equally expert at this form of daylight robbery - it is at once apparent that the Labour Party has returned to power, judging by appointments that basically come down to, on the one hand employing the fox to run the hen-house and on the other, letting the flea circus run itself. While the previous message to immigrants was, assimilate or do - whatever it is you are doing - elsewhere, the new tenure has unearthed the old multiculturalist adagium, by all means celebrate your own culture in your own ghetto. Back to square one. Long live the burqa! Go ahead, draw a bag over your head and call it personal choice and respect for women! Multiculture wins, society looses.

Meanwhile in Iraq it's Hypocrisy Revealed: "Sunni insurgent groups including al-Qaida in Iraq have called for revenge attacks after a second rape allegation against the Shiite-dominated security forces." While it is too sad of words that a chance of civilised government is being squandered in this way, it must be stated that under the old regime nobody ever talked about it, but this was regretfully the norm. And that was just rape in the name of law enforcement. Saddam's boys had made it a habit to commit - how did Ann Coulter describe it? - recreational serial rape! Now the shoe is on the other foot, but at least at present Sunnis are in a position to cry foul!

In the U.S. justice has its course - at least, that is what we must assume (if it doesn't mirror the case of Eric O. in the Netherlands). A soldier of the U.S. army, who has been accused of being part of a group, which raped and murdered an Iraqi girl and killed members of her family, has been given a sentence of 100 years in a military prison.

The Daily Telegraph has Tony Blair on the couch: in an article "The Unspoken Truth Behind Blair Interview" it alleges the U.K. Prime Minister is in denial in his Today interview, insisting that the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq was not an admission of failure but a sign that its fledgling democracy was growing stronger. While this may be the obvious conclusion of the neutral observer, to the anti-war activist it is the umpteenth sign of lies, more lies, giving raise to rage, and more rage! Although my time is scarce and bathroom chores await, I don't mind throwing caution to the wind and fisk this article to shreds for a while. Let's see:

Q: What he did not say: It's not the British but the US forces who are patrolling Baghdad who are much more unpopular.
A. Yes, perhaps ... but what has that got to do with 80-90 percent of the violence being caused by terrorism? Even if it were penguins it wouldn't make a difference. The terrorists don't throw bombs at the troops because of their unpopularity, but because they cannot let go of total power and because their interests are best served under chaotic and hopeless conditions. (Unpopular indeed, as if it were Top of the Pops which is no longer attainable!)

Q: What he did not say: The militias carrying out the killings could not have existed under Saddam.
A. Indeed. In the time of Saddam it was Saddam doing the killing. It has been calculated that the rate of deaths per 24 hours stood at 240, a figure - in spite of all the terrorism and revenge killings going on - not matched till this day.

Q: What he did not say: Estimates of Iraqi casualties range from 150,000 to 650,000 with more than two million people fleeing the country.
A. Yes, my aunt may have 1 million in the bank, but it may actually be six! It so happens that it is not the allied troops that torture people to death each God-given night, dumping their bodies in the streets. Neither do they plant IEDs, nor as a rule do they commit kidnappings and hostage takings. Moreover, as per above.

Q: What he did not say: It took far too long to replace them (the Ba'athist Iraqi police force and army).
Yes, it takes a bit of time to replace the entire police and army of a country going 27 million inhabitants. The quicker you do it, the less you're able to do the proper screening so as to avoid infiltration by general bad hats and re-hire former rapists (see above rape allegation), etcetera.

Q: What he did not say: An opinion poll cited by senior Democrat and Republicans in Washington showed 61 per cent of Iraqis favoured armed attacks on coalition forces.
A: While it is quite an achievement to conduct an opinion poll under the circumstances, armed attacks are not carried out by the respondents, but by different lots. These, we must assume, weren't voluntarily participating in the poll.

Q: What he could not say: It would be political disaster to even countenance it (after withdrawing troops, having to redeploy because of adverse circumstances).
A: No, sunny side up.

Q: What he did not say: His own focus groups show that most voters think suicide bombers have come to Britain because of Iraq.
A: This is a peculiar way of reframing "extremists previously used Kosovo, Palestine and Kashmir as justification for terrorism". And, as we know, opinion shouldn't be confused with fact. Roger Bacon, English philosopher (1214-1292) identified several obstacles to truth, among them uninstructed popular opinion and long-standing but erroneous custom.

Q: What he did not say: How does this (interventions in removing dictatorships from Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq) square with my prediction after one month as Prime Minister: "Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live without going to war or sending our children to war."
A: It doesn't. Ah, live can be a bummer, can't it?

The rest is too much innuendo and drawing on sentiment, to be worthy of my time. Time for the weekly cat litter.

Justice III

Just when I decided I'd write less about the old polderland in the future, I was confronted this evening with a rather unsavoury discussion on a TV program in re of the impending parliamentary elections on 22nd November; this discussion was vis-a-vis problems that have arisen in the labour party (PvdA). This party had just put a great number of candidates of Turkish descent on it's ballot list, when the discussion in France broke loose about the bill which prohibits the denial of the genocide of over one million Armenians in the earlier years of the last century. (I am linking here to the relevant website of Wikipedia which currently cannot be updated due to recent vandalization.)

In Holland meantime it transpired that although these candidates have Dutch passports or are native Dutch, their loyalties still lie for the most part in the old country. Apparently the Turkish government has been leaning hard on them so as to ensure there would be no crimes against Turkishness through acceptance of the term genocide c.q. holocaust.
To cut a long story short, a number of candidates have been forced by the party to withdraw. But the party was also anticipating with great regret the loss of all these Turkish votes. So the leader, Wouter Bos, came up with an ingenious political trick: Monday night he gave a press conference for the Turkish media, in which he stated that the term genocide is being used too loosely, on the whole. His number two, a female politician of Turkish descent clarified that in international law, genocide is only then genocide if it can be proved, which is decidedly not the case here; so no "Ermeni Soykırımi" and satisfaction all round that the matter has been smoothed so cunningly. Which is indeed the case, as apart from a weblog post in Elsevier magazine by Leon de Winter, there isn't a journalist, voter or politician who commented on the matter.

Apart from the shameless opportunism of the statement - it pictures once and for all Wouter Bos as the unscrupulous power politician that he is - this party (see also posts on Jan Pronk) was one of the first to acknowledge genocide when it transpired that three thousand Muslim men might have been massacred in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war. Their prime minister and his government even stepped down over the matter. But this, well let's be fair, is almost a hundred years ago (the passing of time is in Holland always a readily accepted mitigating argument), it costs the votes of the Turkish constituency, it hasn't been proved and it upsets a future EU member state, on which rests the duty to prove to the entire Umma that the EU is not a Christian club (God forbid!).

Everything else apart, this matter once again underlines my conclusion that The Netherlands has become a depraved country. The way this discussion is being conducted is shameful, is immoral (or worse I fear, amoral) and unsavoury; it is a slap in the face of the Armenian survivors and their families (yes, they do exist, even though a century has passed). The saddest aspect of it all is, that nobody even notices the depth and length of cases like this! The same politicians expressed today their full indignation about the death sentence pronounced on Saddam Hussein (as anticipated): a civilized country doesn't do hangings, you see (applause).

Justice II

The reactions to the verdict in Saddam's trial are entirely along predictable lines. (Out of the box thinking is too much creativity to ask and also not quite "best practice"; would possibly even disqualify for DNV certification which is unthinkable in today's civilized, soulless and heartless Europe.)
The Left in the Netherlands have condemned the verdict. Their criticism is mainly directed at the Prime Minister, Jan-Peter Balkenende, who has supported it. Considerering he is facing elections on the 22nd of November this is once again another example of the man's moral courage.
Europe, by way of the Finnish chair, also has condemned the verdict on the grounds they are against the death penalty across the board (surprise!).
Catholic World News reports that the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has issued a statement deploring the death penalty. Renato Raffaele Cardinal Martino said with regret that the sentence determined by an Iraqi court reflected the principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Apparently the Cardinal has a bit of a history along the yesterday's posted lines of Willem Oltmans and George Galloway. The Vatican's Secretary of State, Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, made no public comment on the decision.
In all these prominent statements and posturings for the prize of The Most Civilized, nobody seems to take into account the Iraqi context, the low violence threshold in that part of the world and - most of all - the suffering of Saddam's victims, which according to some estimates may number eight million people. This puts him on par with the Nazi leaders and those other mass murderers who escaped justice and universal moral condemnation, Joseph Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot and Mao.
Those victims' families - some of which have suffered multiple sacrifices - have been given life sentences by Saddam and his criminal henchmen of the Baath Party. How easy it is to take the moral high ground and pronounce sentence on the Court (by proxy, George Bush and his administration, which is the real background of all this indignation!!!) instead of blaming the actual perpetrators of the carnage.
It is however totally in line with the hypocrisy and demagoguery which has typified the Iraq discussion from the outset. It is my modest opinion however that history will not take kindly, once the balance is made up twenty odd years from today.

Justice

For just one of his crimes and subject to appeal Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death by hanging by an Iraqi independent Court of Justice, which is very unpleasant for him and too late for his victims, who didn't get the privilege of a fair trial! But no European p.c. or Christian sensitivities in the verdict. You'd think in the West they'd be happy with this feat of statehood, but considering the lack of enthusiasm for the democratically elected Iraqi government which nobody has said, but is by silent understanding considered a neo-con propped up troupe of puppets unworthy of the label "decent government" (read: Liberal, Enlightened), the independent court and it's verdict will surely be painted from the same ink pot, I'll foretell.

It reminds me of the people who went to Iraq before the war (of liberation) to protect Saddam Hussein by human shield, like the meanwhile deceased enfant terrible of Dutch public opinion Willem Oltmans. Another of those is the former British Labour politician George Galloway. How people can so end up on the wrong side of history by misplaced loyalty to a brutal tyrant, is frankly beyond me.

Monday, 13th June 2005

A usual boring Monday, but with lots of news. Let's start at the home front.
Producers of soap series see no problem in cash for influence: the Dutch Muslim Broadcasting Club (or whatever they call themselves) is going to participate financially in the production, so as to secure influence on the content in an "advisory" role. How ordinary fidels look like in the real world and so on.

The police has made it known they are going to undermine their own authority once again by doning silly hats in demonstrations for a better salary. They haven't had a raise in two years, which amounts to sheer exploitation!

Apparently they're surprised about their lack of authority! The same holds true for other occupations and vocations of a certain standing, like doctors and paramedics: they're being bashed about by the public who by now have no respect left for them whatsover.

Once again a dangerous criminal is on the loose: the psychiatric ward apparently let him visit his elderly mom and at the train station he absconded from his guard (singular). The Ministry of Justice initially refused to inform the public who, as a result, was not on their guard for any danger. This is how serious the Dutch government is taking their number one duty, the protection of its citizens. They prefer to protect dangerous criminals instead. The Lower House is up in arms, not for the first time, as Breaking News, he's murdered an old man on a boat. This is a developing story ...

In another incident in a rural area, a weekend mob have encouraged a would-be suicide to jump off a building. Who'd require any more proof of the depravity of this country, consider yourselves hereby served.

The EU ministers and/or secretaries of Foreign Affairs are debating the new budget. Propped up by a resounding Dutch (and French) NO against the proposed E.U. constitution our minister is playing hard ball. The time is apparently over that it was normal in this country to buy foreign influence and/or positions with development and/or defence money and/or assets (read Srebrenica, U.N., World Bank posts, etc.).

Participation in the Italian referendum on IVF has remained under 50 percent. The Vatican can rest peacefully tonight (bless Pope Benedict and all of his cats!).

The Baghdad Tribunal has released recent pictures of Saddam. The government is pressing the tribunal to get on with it. But they are an independent court (contrary to the Saddam days) and pressure works contraproductive. Last week another mass grave has been opened, but this is of course hardly mentioned in the press, who are only interested in one thing and one thing only: to make the coalition look as bad as possible and blame George B. for everything: apparently he has now even given democracy a bad name (democracy: so overrated!). The Left as always show their ability of distinguishing good from bad, by aligning themselves and defending the worst dictators in human history, rather than to allow George Bush some credit. This, is nothing new in the history of right-wing American presidents and The Left, who are: against fascism (long live dear Uncle Joe!), against Vietnam (long live the VC!), against cruise missiles (long live the Polit Bureau!), against nukes (long live Pol Pot!), against apartheid (long live Mao!), the list is endless ...