30 June 2004

One brick at a time

[source]

France has blocked a U.S. bid to deploy NATO’s new strike force to safeguard Afghanistan’s elections, stoking tension between the two allies that fell out over the Iraq war, diplomats said Tuesday.

Although one wonders what it will take to just admit that France is a hostile state, not an ally, perhaps this kind of thing is the only thing that (realistically) can be done. It may simply take endless demonstrations of this kind of obstinancy to gradually convince the American citizenry that NATO and France are no longer useful entities to the USA and should be disbanded or ignored.

P.S. Wretchard has a good and longer write up on the situtation.

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Phoning it in from Baghdad

[source]

So, did Paul Bremer deliver a farewell speech to Iraq or not? Here’s Ali at Iraq the Model:

Suddenly Mr. Bremer appeared on TV reading his last speech before he left Iraq. I approached the TV to listen carefully to the speech, as I expected it to be difficult in the midst of all that noise. To my surprise everyone stopped what they were doing and started watching as attentively as I was.

The speech was impressive and you could hear the sound of a needle if one had dropped it at that time. The most sensational moment was the end of the speech when Mr. Bremer used a famous Arab emotional poem. The poem was for a famous Arab poet who said it while leaving Baghdad. Al-Jazeera had put an interpreter who tried to translate even the Arabic poem which Mr. Bremer was telling in a fair Arabic! “Let this damned interpreter shut up. We want to hear what the man is saying” One of my colloquies shouted. The scene was very touching that the guy sitting next to me (who used to sympathize with Muqtada) said “He’s going to make me cry!”

Then he finished his speech by saying in Arabic,”A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq, A’ash Al-Iraq”! (Long live Iraq, Long live Iraq, long live Iraq).

And here’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Washington Post:

When [Bremer] left Iraq on Monday after surrendering authority to an interim government, it was with a somber air of exhaustion. There was no farewell address to the Iraqi people, no celebratory airport sendoff. [emphasis added]

Ali says there was a speech; the Washington Post says there wasn’t. Who to believe? A professional journalist, with access to every information stream on the planet and supported by a massive number of editors and researchers — or Ali, watching TV at a Baghdad hospital?

My money’s on Ali.

UPDATE. Ali wins! The Washington Post loses! Lebanon’s Daily Star reports “a televised speech by former occupation administrator Paul Bremer” and the SF Chronicle’s Robert Collier mentions the former administrator’s “short speech”.

Chandrasekaran has been having some reality dysfunction troubles for a while.

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THIS JUST IN: Major news anchor acts like an arrogant jerk

[source, source]

When Brokaw asked the new Iraqi leader if he could “understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?” Dr. Allawi responded:

“We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And the war [has] been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.”

Plainly miffed that Dr. Allawi hadn’t accepted the U.S. media’s attempt to cover-up links between Saddam, al Qaida and 9/11, Brokaw reprimanded him as cameras rolled:

“Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.”

And they say that conservatives are parochail!

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All this for only $2B a year

[source, source, source]

Studies in Theology: Tradition and Morals, Grade 11, (2001) pp. 291-92 …This noble [Qur’anic] Surah [Surat Muhammad]… deals with questions of which the most important are as follows: ‘Encouraging the faithful to perform jihad in God’s cause, to behead the infidels, take them prisoner, break their power, and make their souls humble - all that in a style which contains the highest examples of urging to fight. You see that in His words: “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. Then grant them their freedom or take a ransom from them, until war shall lay down its burdens.”’

Commentary on the Surahs of Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf, Grade 11, (2002) p. 9 …When you meet them in order to fight [them], do not be seized by compassion [towards them] but strike the[ir] necks powerfully.… Striking the neck means fighting, because killing a person is often done by striking off his head. Thus, it has become an expression for killing even if the fighter strikes him elsewhere. This expression contains a harshness and emphasis that are not found in the word “kill”, because it describes killing in the ugliest manner, i.e., cutting the neck and making the organ - the head of the body - fly off [the body].

Descriptions of sections from Egyptian textbooks in state run schools. Really puts the claim that the beheadings of infidels in the Saudi Entity and Iraq are “non-Islamic” in perspective, doesn’t it?

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I guess when you eat snails you get used to turning over rocks and kissing what you find

[source]

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier has urged Israel to end the isolation of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

After meeting Mr Arafat in Ramallah, Mr Barnier said the living conditions were “not dignifying” for the elected Palestinian leader.

“We consider that this situation cannot last,” Mr Barnier added.

If it cannot last then what’s the problem? You won’t be able to suck up to a murderous dictator soon enough?

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