May 20 - Austin Bay is about to ship out with his reserve unit to Iraq. Read his good-bye column Everyone Is Part of the War.

Via Instapundit, who quotes Rudy Guiliani in the same post.

Never overlook a segue; this one is via Ghost of a Flea, on confirmation that the Sept. 11 Commission has jumped the shark.

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May 20 - I had earlier noted Parts I-III of Laughing Wolf's series on Old Media. Part IV is available here.

Belmont Club further explores issues in media coverage in The Wedding Party. Wretchard looks at the conflicting reports over a strike in western Iraq with attention to those tell-tales of the initial reports which would urge the reporter go forward for a better look:

Why was a wedding party in full swing at 02:45 am in the middle of the desert? A glance at the map would show the area in which the wedding took place was 250 kilometers from "Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi," and who "put the death toll at 45." A long way to go for medical treatment or burial when Qusabayah is 50 kilometers away. Under normal circumstances, there are two wounded for every dead. By the normal ratios there should have been at least 90 injured. There was a videotape of "showing a truck containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident. Most of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them children. One of the children was headless." A video of the dead, but where were the wounded?

Nothing to discredit the initial report on the face of it, and Faramarzi was correct in reporting the initial details, but there enough for someone to say 'get in closer for a better look'. Long before we found out about the satcom radios, the weapons and the cash at the "wedding party". In a war where battlefield reality is no longer directly experienced by the majority, the 'closer look' is all the public has to on which to base decisions which may spell national victory or defeat. But sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? If the newspapers have neither tracking cell, nor map, nor ruler, nor calendar to follow events how can the public tell what really happened? At this writing, 24 hours after the initial story, some newspapers are still reporting the incident as an attack on a wedding party while others describe it as a strike against a militant group. Two versions and no closure.

13:32: This is the initial AP report which appeared in today's paper.

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May 20 - Thanks to J.M. Heinrichs, for sending this: Prisedent Yasser Arafat.

I was puzzled, admittedly, until I read the site.

Update: That isn't a typo in the title.

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May 20 - I had to double-check, just in case this was a ScrappleFace or Broken Newz item, but it is true: Right Wing News tells of an official Lynndie England fan site.

This one is for real. Go figure.

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May 19 - Given some recent postings about great literature, this look at the Orwell novel 1984 seemed appropriate.

In Mudville Gazette's post The New Goldstein and Your Two Minutes Hate, Greyhawk quotes the passage describing the Two Minute Hate, and puts it in a context many of us should have but didn't recognize.

I haven't read the book in years, and think maybe I need to dig it out for a re-read.

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May 19 - It's just too depressing to post about the Ontario budget that was presented today. Cigarettes, beer and renewal of driver's licenses are going up, and in a really nasty move, we will be paying out of pocket for eye exams as well as chiropractors and physiotherapy (Liberals see a need for health premium.)

Jack's Newswatch has a Donato cartoon that pretty much sums up my mood. CTV seems to have a pretty comprehensive round-up of today's dismal budget.

We're going to a friend's surprise birthday party, so I'll be back later.

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May 19 - Court OKs 'gag law' or, as Damian Penny puts it, "But for the life of me, I simply cannot comprehend the idea that less speech from anyone other than a political party is essential to safeguard democracy ..."

Bob at Let It Bleed comments on a column on the subject by the Toronto Star's Carol Goar. Needless to say, he isn't gentle.

Welcome back, Bob!

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May 19 - CNN titles this item about Guiliani's testimony before the Sept. 11 Commission "Giuliani: NYC not told about al Qaeda briefing."

Here is the text of the memo (it's in Adobe Acrobat format.)

Mark just yelled out "Akron wasn't told either!" What he said.

May 20 - 18:30: Michelle live-blogged Mayor Guiliani's testimony here. I prefer her coverage to CNN's.

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May 19 - Blog readers are probably aware of some shots exchanged between Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias and some noted bloggers, including Damian Penny, James Lileks and Kathy Shaidle.

Damian led off with his reponse and links to other responses in Welcome Toronto Star readers, Antoniapalooza! and More Zerb Reaction (including links to James Lilek's and Bob Tarantino's reponses.)

Today, the Star published Damian's response in their Letter's to the Editor with an edit; see Damian's The Missing Scare Quotes.

I hesitated to comment on this because on one level - a level that Zerbisias should be ashamed to occupy - the woman has a point: bloggers who support Operation Iraq Freedom are less happy than we could be. The deaths that have happened this spring have hurt us. How fortunate for Zerbisias that she can sidestep that to rejoice in our grief.

We started with optimism as the new Iraq Constitution was presented only to shock when over 178 Shi'ias were killed, 140 killed in the bombing attacks of the Ashura religious processionals in Iraq and 38 in Pakistan.

Iraqi and soldier bloggers have made news of terrorist attacks very personal for us. That is one of the joys of the blogosphere, but one of the drawbacks: someone you know may be among the wounded or dead.

Does she know that there were insurrections in parts of Iran following the rigged elections there? Or that International Women's Day Marches were attacked by security forces in Iran?

Crackdowns in Iran matter to people who know that Iranian bloggers are in constant danger of exposure and arrest. Zerb, of course, doesn't have that kind of worry gnawing at her.

How about the March 11 terrorist attack in Madrid? Not a real happy event. There were also attacks in Kosovo, Israel, the Hotel Lebanon in Baghdad was bombed killing over 20 people, and the Kurds in Syria had an uprising too that was harshly put down.

A wave of anti-Semitic acts swept the Toronto area beginning that month. That didn't make me happy either, nor did the fire-bombing of a Montreal school.

Canadian Andy Bradsell was killed, as was blogger Bob Zangas and the Men of Fallujah. Fallujah was brought under control with persistence and US military deaths. I felt gratitude and humility, but not joy.

The disgraceful conduct of some soldiers at the Abu Graib prison didn't make me happy nor did the murder of Nick Berg.

Maybe we aren't happy, Zerb, because we actually care about what we read. We care about the deaths of innocents. We don't have your capacity to rejoice when innocent people die because we see things differently: you want President Bush to be proven wrong, and we want to see the end of this scourge called terrorism.

You want President Bush to be proven wrong, and we want to see Iraq take its place as a free country that can confidently take its place in the world and be a beacon of hope for Arabs.

Most of all, our focus isn't about being right, it's about trying to get it right. But then history won't judge you at all, because you won't rate a mention.

I'm bringing all this up now because another member of the blogosphere has had a death in her family. Via Wizbang, Gennie of Dizzy Girl lost her nephew in Iraq. He was a Marine who was hit by shrapnel while handing out candy and frisbee to some Iraqi kids. Read that again, and realize that the kids were present.

He was a hero, and he exemplifies everything that is right about US soldiers and our mission in Iraq.

It's so hard to write about this. It's so hard to log onto a soldier's blog, or a blog from Iraq, or a blog from Iran, and note that he or she hasn't posted for a couple of days and not be afraid for them.

The war has a personal face for most of us, and it isn't fun or happy. But for some reason, we manage to keep posting. And we manage to do it with a lot more class, restraint and compassion that anything you churn out.

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May 19 - One of my first daily reads is Belmont Club. (Sometimes I have to hit the refresh button to get the site to load properly, danged blogger, but it's worth it.)

Then I go to the Defend America website and read incredibly important announcements like this one and then back to Belmont Club later after in the day to see if Wretchard analyzes it.

Dod and Wretchard have a lot in common: they are both concise and have to be read more than once to get the full impact.

Look, I'm a product of the 60's. It feels weird to me to trust things coming out of Department of Defense too, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and DoD has been consistently correct.

Should I trust Old Media, who have a poor track record, or DoD, who has a good track record?

So common sense compells me to drop old prejudices.

Back to Belmont, Wretchard is indispensable to anyone who wants to understand what the military is doing in Iraq.

Why? Because of little things like the three posts: "Magnolias by the Euphrates," "Magnolias by the Euphrates II," and the "Last Magnolias by the Euphrates." (Permalinks messed up, so maybe you should just go to the end of the page and scroll up.)

Because Wretchard saw and commented on the containment and constriction strategy in Fallujah.

Because Wretchard saw the partnership with the Iraq political and religious leadership in the isolation of Muqtada al-Sadr.

We are approaching the anniversary of D-Day, which by the way was a Major Military Operation.

Old Media doesn't understand military strategy or war. CNN can parade generals who have too much common sense to reveal what they think is going on or idiots who failed to recognize that OIF was a ground campaign so kept fretting that the air assault hadn't happened.

I have to go to work, but I got some real sleep yesterday and will be able to post and catch up on my correspondence (with many apologies to those to whom I owe letters.)

By the way, other daily reads are Blackfive and Greyhawk.

See this from Blackfive and consider the full implications.

Maybe that post illustrates best why I have so much faith in our mission in Iraq. Remember, it's named "Operation: Iraqi Freedom."

God bless America, and always honour those who serve.

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May 18 - Devastating summary of the connection between UNSCAM, the Desmarais family and PM Paul Martin in the Canada Free Press Cover Story (short-life link) starting with these:

First came the shock that United Nations Secretary General Kofi AnnanÂ’s son, Kojo was connected to the ill-fated program. According to the New York Post On-Line edition, family members of former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali are officers of a Panamanian-registered company in which Benon Sevan, a UN assistant Secretary General, appointed to administer the oil-for-food program, had a connection.

The Post said it got its information about the Boutros-Ghali connection from Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British businessman and advisor to the Iraqi governing council.

Just weeks ago, Boutros-Ghali was awarded the prestigious Order of Canada. Only nine foreigners have been so honoured, and even as the former UN Secretary General was receiving the award, some Canadian officials were calling it "strange" because the Rwandan genocide happened under his watch as UN Secretary General.

It was under Boutros-GhaliÂ’s direction that the UN 420-page Our Global Neighbourhood, which produced the blueprint for global governance, was published.

When Boutros-Ghali left the UN, he went on to head the Francophonie, the organization of French-speaking nations.

It gets worse.

Canadians are also said to have made oil deals with Saddam, and ties with the Canadian Company involved go all the way up to Prime Minister Paul MartinÂ’s office.

In the Canadian connection, itÂ’s a man called Paul Desmaris (sic). Desmaris is the largest shareholder and director of TotalFinaElf, the largest corporation in France, which held tens of billions of dollars in contracts with the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.

Martin replaced Prime Minister Jean Chretien last December. ChretienÂ’s daughter, France is married to Andre Desmaris, son of Paul Desmaris.

Martin maintains powerful UN connections through AnnanÂ’s special UN advisor Maurice Strong. In fact, Strong, who also happens to be the architect of the Kyoto Protocol, hired Martin in the 1960s to work for Paul Desmaris Sr.

According to respected Financial Post columnist Diane Francis, "In 1974, Desmaris made Martin president of Canada Steamship Lines and then in 1981, he made him spectacularly rich by selling the company to him and a partner for $180 million. MartinÂ’s shipping company is estimated to be worth about $424 million, making him the 63rd richest person in Canada."

Shortly after his arrival in the Prime MinisterÂ’s office, Martin gave the company to his three sons.

But imagine these business connections happened in the USA. But of course you don't have to imagine, because we've been subjected to the phrases "Bush's oil buddies" and "Cheney and his former company Halliburton" relentlessly. Why do Canada's prime ministers get a free pass?

I just don't get Canadian politics or the media. Except for the occasional Diane Francis column in the Financial Post, and to echo a National Post column on this theme by Elizabeth Nickson last January (no permalinks to the original source) this is a story that seemingly generates no interest or outrage.

I'm sorry to say this, but this is perhaps the Great Divide between Americans and Canadians. I'm at a loss to explain it, and maybe I'm wrong, but I just can't imagine that these kinds of business relationships would be ignored by either the media or the electorate in the USA.

Americans are not always that well informed either. Here I am getting increasingly concerned about Bremer's obstruction of the IGC invesigation of UNSCAM, an investigation about which few Americans are even aware (unless they read the NY Post, Wall Street Journal or Washington Times. Or are FNC viewers.)

Roger Simon has an explanation for Bremer's obstruction - of sorts.

Via Instapundit, who has an ouch-worthy conclusion.

Friends of Saddam also linked to this item, and has a category for Canadian connections to UNSCAM.

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May 17 - Do they want us to lose?

The Laughing Wolf has a three-part analysis and answer to that question:

Part I,
Part II,
Part III.

Note new meme: Old Media. It's downright Rumsfeldian.

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May 17 - There is a cartoon at trying to grok that is sober. Very, very sober.

I dare you to view it without catching your breath.

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May 17 - M'kay, I suppose it is a free trade issue, but for pizza lovers its also a quality issue, as in Delissio tastes a lot better than McCain's. Pizza Pizza just got my business back. (Canada turns up heat on frozen pizza)

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May 17 - Seems there are 101 books that are recommended reading and people are 'fessing up, as this title suggests: (Well, I think I caught the 1952 movie version on cable around 2am once....)

Many of the books on this list that were assigned reading in high school and university (and often both) back in "my" day, so I don't think numbers give anyone bragging rights but might reveal age maturity ... more...

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May 17 - Now's not the time for Bush to go soft:

The American people, no thanks to their media, still understand what's real and what's just cheesy Beltway dinner-theater. That's why the Abu Ghraib scandal is dead, even if the networks don't yet know it. It was dead before Nick Berg. It died because the Democrats and their media groupies overplayed their hand, as usual, and so turned a real scandal into just another fake scandal for senatorial windbags to huff and puff over.

Luckily, I've abosrbed some Republican of late, so I can keep a check on my feelings and subject them to logic and reason.

... The war on terror will be lost in the talking shops of Washington -- i.e., it will be thanks to the lack of resolve inculcated by excessive exposure to blow-dried pundits and Senate hearings. The war now has two fronts. In Iraq, the glass is half-full. In Washington, it's half-empty, and draining fast.

The administration, in trying to see its way through both the phony crossfire and the real one, has been rattled by the fake war. Someone in the White House needs seriously to stiffen the Bush rhetoric. When the president talks about ''staying the course'' and ''bringing to justice'' the killers, he sounds like Bill Clinton, who pledged to stay the course in Somalia and bring to justice the terrorists, and did neither. Bush has to go back to speaking Rumsfeldian, not Powellite: He has to talk about winning total ivctory, hunting down the enemy and killing them.

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May 17 - Paul's back! He's re-invigorated! He had a vacation! (and I didn't.) I better stop before I get really mad at him ...

He's got two eye-popping posts already:
Syrians and equipment involved in North Korea train wreck, which puts me in mind of the $10 million Saddam spent via Syrian intermediaries for SCUD missiles,

and something we should be hearing a lot more about in Roadside bomb in Iraq contained Sarin (but don't hold your breath - CNN is still leading with prisoner abuse stories.) Here is the DoD press release on the subject.

Paul makes reference to sending a dead crow to Hans Blix, which went right over my head ...

(Cut me some slack - I'm still waking up. There are downsides to working the graveyard shift, but one of them has got to be switching and being at work tomorrow at 6 a.m. I can't help wondering if I'd improve my chances by just staying awake all night - I could do that sort of thing a couple of decades ago ...)

May 18 - 13:40: Ozguru expresses his welcome back and then some!

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1 Thanks for the warm welcome, luv; it's good to be back.

Posted by: Paul Jané at May 17, 2004 03:55 PM (TjysC)

2 It's good to have you back! One reason is because you really must be made to suffer for being away for so long! It was hard to keep the old chin up with both you and Tarantinto away at the same time. We was snark-deprived! You are so in trouble.

Posted by: Debbye at May 17, 2004 11:38 PM (uAsAH)

3 Thanks for the link....

Posted by: Ozguru at May 18, 2004 06:19 PM (BsXVn)

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May 17 -

16:51 CNN is announcing a new president for the Iraqi Governing Council has been sworn in (same link as the earlier one):

A civil engineer from the northern city of Mosul was sworn in Monday to replace the assassinated leader of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

The council selected Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar as president ...

15:32 Burnside has a good round-up of other posts on the assasination here.

04:46: The BBC story is here.

04:27:Car bomb kills Iraqi Governing Council leader:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The current president of the Iraqi Governing Council was among several people killed Monday by a car bomb near Baghdad's Green Zone, a senior coalition military official said.

According to Iraqi Governing Council sources, council President Izzedine Salim was on his way into the Green Zone, which houses coalition headquarters, when he was killed.

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May 17 - No easy victory by Jack Kelly in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette.

Kelly compares the 2004 election with the election of 1864. The Civil War had dragged itself out for 3 years and the North had not won a notable victory until Gettysburg.

Lincoln's re-election chances looked grim. 400,000 soldiers had died (a huge percentage from disease, however, hence the importance of the Sanitary Commission and Dorothea Dix) and there was an element in the opposition party that wanted an immediate end to the war and thus the dissolution of the Union and permitting slavery to continue.

[There will always be arguments as to how important the issue of slavery was in the war. I can only say that the opening shots of the war to end slavery happened in Kansas and that state had the highest number of re-enlistments throughout the Civil War. That isn't necessarily proof, but it is indicative.]

The comparison of the two elections had already manifested when Gen. Wesley Clark announced his candidacy and was hailed as another Gen. George McClellan. (Clark probably hated that not only because McClellan lost - badly - in part because the US Army supported Lincoln in overwhelming numbers, but also because McClellan had been fired because he had been unwilling to commit men to battle - Kosovo air campaign? - while calling repeatedly for more troops. Both men fretted on the sidelines while better, more able generals led the war effort.)

On May 4, about 150 of Iraq's most prominent Shiite religious leaders gathered in Baghdad to demand that Moktada al Sadr withdraw his militia from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop storing weapons in mosques, and turn power back to the U.S.-supported Iraqi police.

The meeting took place after several thousand Iraqis gathered outside the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf to protest against Sadr, and a mysterious group that calls itself the Thulfiqar Army, began murdering members of his militia.

"Several Shiite leaders acknowledged that they had delayed issuing their statement until there were clear signs that public opinion among Shiites had moved strongly against Mr. Sadr," wrote John Burns in The New York Times.

The Shiite clerics also called for "a rapid return to the American-led negotiations on Iraq's political future," Burns wrote.

Their renewed interest in negotiations may have been prompted by the appointment (and swift removal) of a former Republican Guard officer to head the Iraqi forces supporting the Marines in Fallujah. Whether blind luck or a product of a deliberate ploy, this served to remind the Shiites that they don't hold all the cards.

In any event, the U.S. strategy of patience and "talk talk, fight fight" seems to be working better than you'd gather from most of the news stories coming out of Iraq.

Abraham Lincoln made mistakes during the Civil War. But the cause was just, and he had the courage and steadfastness to see it through. Our cause in Iraq is just, and vitally important. President Bush has the courage to see it through. Do we?

(Via Right Wing News)

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May 16 - The U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, spoke out on something that, I suspect, is in many hearts and minds: Arab world should be more outraged about the murder of Nick Berg. During an interview on Meet the Press,

"There's no excuse for silence on this kind of murder," Powell told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"I would like to have seen a much higher level of outrage throughout the world, but especially in the Arab world, to this murder," he said.

"What we saw with this horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible murder should be deplored throughout the Arab world."

Many bloggers have been overwhelmed by what one blogger termed a tsunami - the huge traffic we've encountered as people search for the Nick Berg video. (If you're here looking for the link, I've posted it here.) Sites have been knocked off line; many bloggers suspected they were having denial of service attacks, and others thought there was something totally whacky with site meters and others (ahem) lost service because they had exceeded their quota for the month.

As Ghost of a Flea noted here, there have been a lot of inter-blogger discussions about this, and most of us have sought to understand why so many people want to see this video. Commenters here and at other sites indicate that the people actively looking for the video are people who normally would never contemplate viewing such a thing, but they felt driven to do so almost as a grim duty.

Or mabe I'm projecting too much; that grim necessity certainly drove me to watch it despite my wish to avoid it. It was as though I knew that I needed this lesson - even though I thought I was already implacable in my support of this war.

There are other aspects, as well. When I linked to Wizbang (I'm leaving the url out for reasons that will become apparent) I knew the link would show up on their trackbacks, but I never anticipated the huge amount of traffic that the mere trackback would engender, nor that people would stay and read other posts.

So perhaps it isn't just viewing the video that has driven people, it is a need to understand why they viewed the video.

I constantly see references to "the face of the enemy" (which is highly, and probably intentionally, ironic) and expressions of rage. One thing that makes me proud is that bloggers have been incredibly restrained in our handling of this video: we've been very careful not to incite or spread hate and to restrain our own emotions because we are trying to be responsible.

But I think we bloggers and readers have an advantage: we regularly read Iraqi (not to mention Iranian, Egyptian, Italian, British, etc.) bloggers and we know first hand that terrorists do not speak or act for them but in fact speak and act against them.

That's my way of saying don't waste your time calling for a total nuking of Iraq here. You came here and to other blogs because you wanted truth and on some level, you recognize that Big Media isn't delivering. Read the Iraqi and Soldier blogs on the list to the right of the screen, and learn how much more there is going on than CNN or the NY Times want you to know.

Remember: they withheld information about the torture and murders during Saddam's reign in order, they claim, to maintain their presence in Iraq. What have they done to restore your trust? Shown the same pictures over and over of prisoner abuse, yet shown restraint in their coverage of Nicholas Berg?

Does that mean they trust the Arab street more than the American street?

The biggest media betrayal is this: U.S. forces have fought back attacks launched from Syria and Iran this moth, and they have done so with encouragement and cooperation from Iraqis. You don't have to be a genius to recognize how important that partnership has been, so why has Big Media fretted about being "bogged down" when it was so clear that this the partnership was being formed? Why, when Big Media has constantly urged we not go to Iraq but to continue policies of containment have they bewailed containment policies that have, in fact, borne fruit?

I have to go to work and try to behave normally. I have to try and act as though there isn't a gaping wound in my heart and that this past week hasn't altered my life and world view.

If that seems overly strong, read it as an admission that, despite everything I have written, I really failed to understand what the word "evil" conveys in its entirety. I thought I knew, but I didn't.

Now to some old analysis because I haven't the restraint in me yet to note today's "other" news.

There has also been muted criticism on silence in the USA. As noted in the May 14 Washington Times, American's beheading 'old news' for media elite but the Times also notes that for many Americans, Beheading returns focus to terror war:

"Those who are wringing their hands and shouting so loudly for 'heads to roll' over [the abuse] seem to have conveniently overlooked the fact that someone's head has rolled — that of another innocent American brutally murdered by terrorists," said Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat. "Why is it that there's more indignation over a photo of a prisoner with underwear on his head than over the video of a young American with no head at all?"

It is hard not to believe that the liberal media have played down the Berg story because they don't want to do anything that might inadvertantly help Pres. Bush. Undoubtably the plethora of photos as those in the prisoner abuse investigations may make that story seem more inviting - or easier - but I'm reminded of Def. Sec. Rumsfeld's question as to how many vases there really were in Baghdad, or was the media just showing the same one repeatedly. (As we learned, Rumsfeld was right on that score.)

Although many of us have focused on how this video is affecting Americans, many experts think that it was primarily a recruiting tool for the terrorists promoting the image of Zarqawi as a strong leader who, I might add, is not afraid to get blood on his hands in the literal sense.

The Spectator article Hoping for the Worst by Toby Harnden from which Instapundit quoted concludes with what should the single most daming facet of the partisanship that plagues Americans in this incredibly long election cycle:

Whatever we thought about the war before it was launched, it is imperative that the forces of Arab nationalism and Islamism that now threaten to destroy Iraq are defeated. If America fails in Iraq it will be all of us in the West, not just Bush, who will suffer. But those who would be most in peril, of course, would be the Iraqis, who deserve better than to have their country treated as an electoral playground by the American Left or Right. To wish otherwise is as sick as the grins on the faces of the Abu Ghraib torturers. (Emphasis mine.)

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