Highway 99
Saturday, September 06, 2003
STILL MORE ON THE EVER-ADMIRABLE ANDREW GILLIGAN
A friend of Dr David Kelly has told the Hutton inquiry the weapons expert was shocked by the way BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan tried to get information out of him. . . .Read the whole thing.
Fellow Iraq arms inspector Olivia Bosch, who spoke to Dr Kelly daily during the Iraq war, said he had told her Gilligan had wanted to play a "name game" over who was responsible for transforming last September's dossier. . . .
Another of Dr Kelly's friends, journalist Tom Mangold, told the inquiry the scientist had thought the claim Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was "risible". . . .
Ms Bosch said when she heard Gilligan's broadcast, she did not think Dr Kelly could be the source because it sounded like it came from a "whistleblower". . . .
Bosch said she had not met Dr Kelly when they were both weapons inspectors, but had spoken frequently by telephone and met at conferences over the past year to discuss Iraq.
She said they agreed the dossier was a "very necessary document because the public and the media and politicians really were not aware of what was going on inside of Iraq".
They thought the dossier would be a "reader friendly" document to inform the public.
Bosch said Dr Kelly's view on the war was that while it was unfortunate, the use of military force seemed to be the only way to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime of weapons of mass destruction as Iraq was not complying with UN obligations.
The overall effect of this testimony is to back up what we've been hearing consistently in other testimony over the past few weeks: that Dr. Kelly did not believe the 45-minute claim (though others in the intelligence community did believe it); but that he did strongly believe in the veracity and usefulness of the overall dossier, in the existence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and in the necessity of war to disarm Saddam and so head off a catastrophic attack by Saddam or his agents.
Why is this information not front-page headline news in every newspaper in the world? Why isn't every evening news broadcast leading with this story?
The part that makes me angriest is that we all know the reason why.
SCARE QUOTES VS. THE TRUTH
The Reuters "news" service strikes again.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Iraqis in an interview taped on Friday that attacks on "coalition" forces would not drive them out and that Saddam Hussein would never return to power.No comment needed here.
Countering all the negative bullshit that's been pouring from the establishment media outlets are the voices of returning soldiers and a few independent observers, as well as administration people (finally! -- what the hell took them so long?). Glenn Reynolds features several of them on his blog today and you can read them here, here, and here.
And in a rare anti-U.N. story (which less surprisingly manages to be anti-Bush at the same time), MSNBC admits that, as the headline puts it, "U.N. troops may hurt more than help".
I was almost a bit startled to read that the U.N. is actually capable of taking responsibility for a familiar-sounding failing, even if it's only in a report, as opposed to genuinely altering its behavior:
The problem in Bosnia in 1995 was not gear but "error, misjudgment and an inability to recognize the scope of evil confronting us," according to an internal U.N. investigation of the slaughter of Muslims huddling in the enclave of Srebrenica, which the United Nations had sworn to protect. . . .Golly, d'ya suppose?
In its most damning conclusion, however, the U.N. report on its operations in Bosnia said it relied too much on negotiations and failed to recognize when brute force was required.
Deja vu all over again.
I wanted to post earlier today but was prevented by a power outage, which ended just a few minutes ago. What is it with this summer and blackouts?
What I was thinking about was a possible way to fund the war effort that would be more politically viable than either a tax increase or a further increase in the deficit.
War bonds.
I know that one denomination of U.S. Savings Bonds was designated as the Patriot Bond, but I haven't heard anything about Patriot Bonds in at least a year and I'm not sure that the money from those bonds goes strictly to paying the expenses of the war.
I have not done special research to find the facts on bonds -- I'd like to, but haven't had the time -- but the impression I have is that special bonds were issued during most wars in this country's history and that they worked out pretty well. In particular I have images of Hollywood stars promoting the sale of war bonds during World War II. (Yes, Virginia, there was once a time when those artists who benefitted mightily from having been born in America were actually on America's side during wartime, rather than on the side of the fascists.)
The cost would be borne mainly by people who voluntarily bought the bonds and who presumably are in favor of the war effort. The main expense to the government would be the interest that would have to be paid to the bondholders -- but that could be paid out in several years, when I hope and assume the economy will be less sluggish and tax receipts will be flowing in more freely.
I'm no economist, but war bonds look to me like a win-win proposition.
They helped us defeat the Euro-fascists; why not let them help us defeat the Islamo-fascists?
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
'FAMILY WAS PERSUADED OF THE NEED TO FIGHT WAR AGAINST IRAQ'
Yet another story about Dr. David Kelly's belief that the Iraq war was a necessity, this time coming from the scientist's family:
The family of the dead weapons inspector David Kelly told yesterday of how he had gradually persuaded them of the justice of going to war against Iraq.That's the entire article, but if you'd like to look at the original, you can find it here.
His sister, Sarah Pape, said he had convinced the sceptics in the family. She herself had approached him thinking he would agree with her that there was nothing new to justify war.
But she said: "I knew that he felt that the sanctions had hurt the Iraqi people very hard but had not made that much difference to Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.
"I was very surprised when he was absolutely convinced that there was almost certainly no solution, other than a regime change, which was unlikely to happen peacefully, and regrettably would require military action to enforce it."
She added: "I know my husband said that he had said to my brother 'Oh, but surely if they just relax a bit and give Saddam Hussein enough rope, he will hang himself.'
"My brother said: 'That is absolutely what we cannot do because if you had any idea of the consequence of what he might do if we take our eye off the situation, it would affect many, many people, civilians quite likely, and it would just be unacceptable to allow that to happen'."
Earlier, she had said that, though approaching 60, her brother had been reluctant to retire because his feeling was that there was "an awful lot of work to be done in Iraq in uncovering the weapons of mass destruction that he was absolutely convinced were buried in the sand in the desert in some way or concealed in some way.
"He very much had the feeling he had not completed the job that he went out to do as a UN weapons inspector."
It makes me wonder, with more than a little sadness for several different reasons: Why couldn't David Kelly have been the chief weapons inspector giving reports to the U.N. in the run-up to the war, instead of that appeasement addict Hans Blix? How much different might the situation be today, if the inspectors had been represented by a person who cared about disarming Saddam more passionately than he cared about cutting America down to size?
'THERE ARE DEFINITELY NO MARTIANS HERE,' SAID ANDREW GILLIGAN
For weeks now I've been increasingly exasperated at the media's coverage of the Hutton inquiry -- most newspapers and TV networks seem to have adopted the line that "no one is coming out of this looking good," whereas it's screamingly obvious to me that it's the BBC's case that's being demolished as witness after witness gives testimony. Apparently most of the world's media identify so closely with the BBC that they feel a need to bend over backwards to ameliorate the PR damage being done to its image.
The true state of affairs comes blaring forth not in a regular news article but in a column by Mark Steyn that you can and definitely should read here.
One of those instances when fiction tells the truth more unflinchingly than non-fiction.
Monday, September 01, 2003
DISINVITE EVITE
Good grief. You might want to think twice before you use a service called Evite to send invitations to your upcoming religious holiday gatherings.
As of today, ThankYouTony.com reports that 10,779 people -- presumably mostly Americans -- have used their service to write a message of gratitude to Tony Blair for his strong stand in the War on Terrorism.
BEEBWATCH
Recently discovered another site devoted to keeping an eye on the nefarious doings of the Biased Broadcasting Corporation. Found a lot of BBC antics I'd never heard about before -- and this site keeps track of BBC entertainment programs, too, not just its "news" programs. You owe it to yourself to read all of BeebWatch 2003 and BeebWatch 2002.
George Dvorsky at BetterHumans.com has a column describing the history of the ill-fated terrorism futures market idea.
Here's hoping the futures market returns soon under private-sector auspices. Problematic though it may be, it deserved a chance to prove itself -- whether or not the idea makes some people squeamish.
ANGLOSPHERE BASICS
Something I've been meaning to do for some time now -- I've added James Bennett's Anglosphere Primer to my blogroll. I first found it courtesy of Iain Murray's The Edge of England's Sword, a lead for which I'm quite grateful. If you have any interest in this subject at all, you should take the time to read the Primer.
Iain's an excellent writer with an an interesting background, though more socially conservative than I am; I try to check out his blog daily because he is one of the most articulate exponents of Bennett's ideas and England's Sword provides an outlet for, as its blog subtitle puts it, Voices from the Anglosphere.
In case you're curious about dirty pictures of Arnold but haven't come across any yet, Stephen Pollard links to one.
When a dossier of information on Iraq was put on the British government's web site this past winter, there was a record of people who worked on various drafts buried in the code. As you've probably read by now somewhere in the blogosphere, the drafters' names were uncovered and released, thus becoming part of the controversy.
In case you would like to examine the original document, which has since been removed from the 10 Downing Street site, you can find it here.
If you would like to read Glen Rangwala's original analysis of the document's sources (such as the American grad student whose work was taken off the web), you can read it here.
If you would like to read the revision log from the document, as uncovered by Richard Smith, you can read it here.
The problem is, of course, that none of this uncovered material indicts the main point of the dossier, except in the minds of those who were entirely unconvinced of the case for war to begin with (and, from what I can gather, wouldn't be convinced of the case for war if Saddam personally showed up at their house with WMD and explained to them exactly how he intended to commit mass murder).
ORWELL ON APPEASEMENT
George Orwell watched at close range as totalitarian rulers were allowed to rise and rampage untrammeled. Wonder what the America-hating leftists would make of this passage from the socialist Orwell, written in his essay on the author James Burnham in 1947 when Russian Communism was moving as aggressively as Islamofascism is today:
He (Burnham) is certain to be denounced as a war-monger for writing this book. Yet if the danger is as acute as he believes, the course he suggests would probably be the right one: and more than this, he avoids the usual hypocritical attitude of "condemning" Russian policy while denying that it could be right in any circumstances to go to war. In international politics, as he realises, you must either be willing to practice appeasement indefinitely, or at some point you must be ready to fight. He also sees that appeasement is an unreal policy, since a great nation, conscious of its own strength, never really carries it through. All that happens is that sooner or later some demand is felt to be intolerable, and one flounders into a war that might have been avoided by taking a firm attitude earlier. It is not fashionable to say such things nowadays, and Burnham deserves credit for saying them.Think we could have that passage carved on a wall at the U.N.?
Interesting story in (among other places) The Independent -- hardly a pro-war publication -- indicating that Dr. David Kelly believed war was the only way to stop Saddam's WMD programs.
