Arab News Editorial: Voice of the People

Editorial: Voice of the People

No one should pretend, of course, that the violence will now end rapidly. But the display of determination by all Iraqis to participate in the democratic process must have made a deep impression on all but the most hardened terrorists. The fact that so many Sunnis trooped to the polling stations for the first time, having boycotted the previous two national votes, sends the clear message that the community which most of the insurgents pretend to represent wants peace, not violence. Nor are they prepared to be intimidated by the killers in their midst. They want to become part of the political process.

….

Beginning today, this is democracy’s chance in Iraq. Massive hopes are riding on the success of the political process. Nevertheless, providing men of moderation can hold the center ground and bring more extreme politicians at least to its edge, the new Parliament can work. A muscular broad-based administration will only emerge if politicians are prepared to work together for the greater good. Now is not the time for individual political aspirations to come to the fore. Future Iraqis will honor all those who today focus on stability rather than their own ambitions.

(Updated to remove the evidence of a horrible cutting-and-pasting accident. Lesson: don't post while half-asleep.)

Who won today's election?

Iraq did.

Polls Close After Iraqi Voters Turn Out in Droves

Aliens invaders take over Los Angeles Times


"A GOOD DAY IN AL ANBAR PROVINCE"

MSNBC's Bagdadblog: "These results are still unofficial - coming from State Department figures and not from the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq (IECI) - but the headline is that it was a good day in terms of voter turnout, not only in Fallujah, but throughout al Anbar province.

Preliminary figures have 21,000 people voting in Ramadi, 19,000 in Hit/Haditha, and 42,000 in the far west – where the cities of Qaim and Rutbah are located.

That would be over 80,000 votes, not including around 200,000 in the greater Fallujah area.

By comparison, about 14,000 voted through out the province in January of this year."

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter: "BIG LOSERS of the day so far: Howard Dean, Jack Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the rest of the reactionary, fuddy-duddy leadership of the Democratic Party. (To call them 'liberals' is absurd because they have no ideology whatsoever.) How will they spin this? Of course the second big loser is the Mainstream Media - again without ideology, really."


W. Thomas Smith Jr. on Iraq on National Review Online

W. Thomas Smith Jr. on Iraq on National Review Online: "As Iraqis queue up at polling stations, some of the scenes look more like a series of regional block parties than what most Westerners would associate with an election day. Children can be seen waving flags or playing soccer. Adults are cheering, clapping hands, beating drums, singing, dancing, and waving at passing U.S. and Iraqi military vehicles. There simply seems to have been more energy in the run-up to this election than in previous ones. And why not?"

Gateway Pundit: Surprise Guest at Iraqi Elections

Gateway Pundit: Surprise Guest at Iraqi Elections: "Senator Joseph 'We're doomed in Iraq' Biden joined the party today in Hillah.

Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., accompanied US Iraqi Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to the city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad."

Hammorabi

Hammorabi: "In few hours time Iraq will be the Model in Democracy and freedom for the Middle East and the Arab region.

Iraq will lead the changes.

Finally the totalitarian and the one dogma dominated region will end.

God make people free and no one should impose his thoughts to control the others."

ThreatsWatch.Org: InBrief: Voting in Barwana

ThreatsWatch.Org: InBrief: Voting in Barwana: "Barwana, once part of Zarqawi self declared “Islamic Republic of Iraq”, is now the scene of al-Qaeda’s greatest nightmare: Muslims exercising their constitutional right to chose their destiny."

BBC NEWS World Middle East 'This is stability, at last'

Read the whole thing.

(Graphic: © Buddy Larson 2005.)

So sad

It's sad, so sad
It's a sad, sad situation.
And it's getting more and more absurd.
It's sad, so sad
Why can't we talk it over?
Oh it seems to me
That sorry seems to be the hardest word.

I happened upon this while scanning Best of the Web Today. As the title says, I find it sad - disturbing even. Read it and weep, as the saying goes. It is, in my opinion, a very thought provoking article. I'll never know if the thoughts it provokes are even remotely anticipated by the author but that never matters.

Odd as it may be I have only two complaints about this piece. First is the title, The New Underground Railroad, which is so over the top in its pretensiousness that it is preposterous. Perhaps even insulting. The other petty complaint I have is that for some reason that is beyond my comprehension either the author or the publisher, or both, were compelled to put in, or fail to remove, the following - stupid! - line:

"This is about somebody else’s body. It’s not President Bush’s body, but it’s not mine, either,” she says.

President Bush has nothing to do with the article. Nothing. But some way, some how, it apparently must have a gratuitous slap at President Bush.

A preposterously pretensious title and a preposterously gratuitous slap at the president. Otherwise it is a dark and disturbing article. I nearly regret providing the link but it seems vaguely important to me.

What if...

Israeli Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon has indicated that Saddam moved chemical weapons to Syria several weeks for the start of the war. General Yaalon's position in the IDF was roughly the equivalent to the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whether his assertion can be proven in the near future is unlikely. If strong evidence could be presented and Syria called to account for it, there would be a tremendous swing in US public sentiment. Half the fun would be watching the boomerang of some of our senators, among others. Some of them would suddenly remember what they said in 1998.(hat tap K-Lo at NRO)

Election Day In Iraq

Pajamas Media will be providing periodic updates from Iraqi correspondents in Iraq as the day progresses.

The stories posted by the Pajamas Correspondents are very compelling.

Iraq The Model - Wednesday evening

Hammorabi greets the new day.

Legacy Media

Reuters

Washington Post

New York Times

"Everything I thought I knew was wrong."

Think about everything you’ve heard about the conditions in Iraq, the role of U.S. forces, the multi-layered complexities of the war.

Then think again.

I’m a journalist. I read the news everyday, from several sources. I have the luxury of reading stuff newspapers don’t always have room to print. I read every tidbit I could on Iraq and the war before coming.

Everything I thought I knew was wrong.

….

But then I realize it’s not a conflict of interest. If I am truly unbiased, then I need to get used to this one simple fact; that the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one. It takes a minute to wrap my mind around it, as a news junkie that became a news writer. The great, career-making, breaking news stories usually don’t have happy endings; they usually revolve around disturbing news, deceit and downfall. Nasty political doings. Gruesome crimes and murders. Revealing secrets.

Read the whole thing.
(From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner blog.)

Is the US under (cyber-) Attack?

Terranet:

A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, the head of a leading security institute said.

The attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military, said Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an education and research organization focusing on cybersecurity.

Bruce Schneier says:

There seems to be a well-organized Chinese military hacking effort against the U.S. military. The U.S. code name for the effort is "Titan Rain." The news reports are spotty, and more than a little sensationalist, but I know people involved in this investigation -- the attackers are very well-organized.

I don't know anything in particular about this, and tend to take press reports about "cyberwar" and "hackers" with a good bit of salt, but Schneier knows everyone and is not notable for having his hair catch fire without good reason.

Congressional Omerta Update

The penultimate paragraph of the original Congressional Omerta article made this prognostication concerning the Barrett Report:

The American public will hear of the published-but-restricted contents of Section V via anonymous leak and innuendo, and the redacted portions will be subject to surmise based upon political advantage. The order by the Court of Appeals is a compromise that will satisfy no one.

The current Evans-Novak Political Report gives a very clear example of what we can expect to see dribble out over the coming months:

The report contains shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department under Clinton, which Barrett found as Clinton aides monitored his investigation and sought to derail it in order to cover up the Cisneros matter. A regional IRS official had formulated a new rule enabling him to transfer an investigation of Cisneros to Washington to be buried by the Justice Department. Barrett's investigators found Lee Radek, head of Justice's public integrity division, determined to protect President Bill Clinton.

The article Information Of The People explores the rationale of the importance of the citizens of the United States having the best available information at their disposal at all times. Actions by members of either party which seek to circumvent statutory authority either through clever manipulation of a seemingly compliant court system or through the legislative chicanery elucidated by Evans-Novak are worthy of the politburo of the former USSR. They have no place in American politics and the limp compliance of the Republican members of the oversight committee give rise to suspicions that their future political opponents may well voice. The quid is very visible and of some value, what was the quo?

Clarice Feldman explained the costs of this type of political tactic very well in A Culture of Strife. The damaging leak from an "anonymous" source is nothing new - we can be reasonably certain that the Roman Senate was at least as careful as the American Senate in its use of quid pro quo for the untidy burial of unseemly conduct. The powerful have always found ways to try and sweep their abusive "indiscretions" under the carpet. There was a time when America had a press that delighted in uncovering those indiscretions but that was before reporters became journalists. Today it falls to the citizenry to demand that statutes be followed by those who presumed to pass them.

The Independent Counsel Statute calls for each counsel to send his report to the National Archives - presumably for perusal by the citizenry of the United States. It is incumbent upon that citizenry to demand that the statute be followed. The Barrett Report must published in full - IC Barrett has discharged his duties in an admirable manner under constant partisan sniping and the American public should see to it that the fruit of his and his team's effort is delivered into the hands of those for which it was intended.

The elected officials who have not abdicated their responsibility in this matter need encouragement to continue, their contact information follows:

Sen. Chuck Grassley
135 Hart Senate Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510-1501
202.224.3744

Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.
2449 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4905
Telephone: (202) 225-5101

Go vote

Time has some wonderful pictures to choose from, but this my favorite.

Extremes Meet

I just read back over some old threads and noticed something.

Early defeats in the South Pacific in WW2 were the fault of isolationist Republicans who did not properly man the Phillipines.

And modern day Republicans are not isolationist enough.

Cunning.

Is it possible to even decide on the facts anymore? I am not talking about opinions, but facts.

And is everything about money and partisan politics? Is this all that human history is?

It seems to me there is strain of extremist in the world today who is not satisfied unless everyone else is unsatisfied.

They assume that human history and all that compels it, can be boiled down to a D or an R behind the name.

These people are dangerous. Extremes meet in an ugly little circle of hate and mutual distrust.

So I think it might be a good idea when looking at history and subjects like WW2 to remember the enemies were: Tojo, Hitler and Mussolini...not the Republicans or the Democrats.

And considering the fact that there are people in the world today who would gladly wipe us off the face of the earth, if they could, no matter which party won the White House would it not be wise to remember who the enemy really is today?

Islamic fascism and the suicidal terrorism it glorifies is the enemy. And no I am not saying all Muslims are fascists. In fact I would say Muslims are targets themselves.

BTW, Adolph Hitler could not make it across the English Channel much less the Atlantic Ocean. FDR responded to his declaration of war because he felt that sooner or later the Nazis would have to be confronted.

In the 90's Saddam Hussein tried to kill an American president, broke a cease fire and gave refuge to one of the attackers in the first World Trade Center attack. Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1997.

What is the difference?

Oh, the irony!

Apparently, Ramadi is better equipped for democracy than at least one US city:
Blanco: NO elections

Another Clinton cover up.

Bill is the gift that just keeps giving.

My friends here at Flares have made mention of a little known scandal involving the use of the IRS by certain Clinton administration officials. It seems this information came to light during the Cisneros investigation.

Over at powerline there is another story about the scandal and the attempts of high level Democrats to cover up.

But I am proud to say I read about it here first.


Updated by flenser;

Since some people may not bother to follow a series of links, I'm linking directly to the final article by Tony Snow, which is well worth your time.

We Report - You Pull Your Hair Out

On Dec.2 Knucklehead linked this seemingly dispositive piece which convincingly asserted Corps of Engineers design flaws (or contractor chicanery) as the cause for the failure of the flood walls in NO. There was even a clever bit about the LSU investigative team: The corps has long claimed the sheet piling was driven to 17.5 feet deep, but Team Louisiana recently used sophisticated ground sonar to prove it was only 10 feet deep.

Today another piece appears (HT Skookumchuk) which refutes through actual physical evidence the core of the previous piece. Maybe.

Sadder (but in all probability no wiser) I believe that I will withold further speculative comment until a definitive report is published. There are too many axes being ground by both sides at the moment to have much confidence in the reporting.

Another One for the MSM Case History File

From Chaotic Synaptic Activity, a short report on a talk given by two newpaper folk who served in WWII, How Did WWII Affect Newspaper Editors?. Just another data point, but they both seem to have been activist, and they would have come to positions of influence in the 60's. I think we tend to overlook just how much the 60's were a product of the WWII/Depression generation. We were, after all, our parents' children and I think some of the trends associated with boomers, such as divorce, began with them.

I'm feeling inadequate today

So I'll just let Jeff Goldstein say it:

On the cusp of nationwide elections in Iraq—as insurgent Sunni Arabs eager to join the political process “actively support the voting, reportedly promising to provide security at polling places, and informing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorist elements that they oppose any effort to disrupt the elections”—it strikes me that those left arguing that the insurgency is really but a manifestation of Iraqi nationalism have placed themselves in the strange position of having to maintain that, well, the real Iraqis aren’t Iraqi at all, but are rather those non-Iraqi fighters who continue the insurgency, or at the very least, that these foreign fighters (and those who provide them with aid and support) are the only ones left who are really acting in the best interests of Iraq. Which puts a whole new spin on identity politics, I should think.

Just thought I’d mention it.

The levee's gonna break

The extent to which Governor Kathleen Blanco played politics with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is slowly coming out into the open. Her administration in Louisiana recently, and finally, released documentation covering the communication the Governor had with her own staff, with the White House, and with Democratic spinmeisters in the week following the storm.

Robert Travis Scott, writing for The Times-Picayune, has the most informative account I have yet seen on what these documents revealed. It's a story which, predictably, is being ignored by the press on the whole.

The extent to which the press was complicit in covering for Blanco, and the extraordinary effort it made to smear the Bush administration, becomes clear in these passages;

.. an ABC News reporter wrote Blanco's press secretary, "2 senior GOP aides have called me to suggest we should be focusing more blame on Governor Blanco." A New York Times reporter wrote an e-mail message saying, "Several officials in Washington are asserting that the Federal Government should have assumed control of the overall operation . . . As it would have meant, they suggested, better coordination of the response."

In other words, when it was suggested to members of the press that perhaps they should do their jobs and expose Blanco's incompetence, they did not do so. Instead they contacted Blanco’s staff to feed them (dis)information about the White House. You have to wonder; how often do the members of the press, when contacted by Democrat officials, call or email Republicans to notify them of the Democrat position? All right, you don't really need to wonder; it never happens.

This is odd.

On the morning of Aug. 31, Blanco was awaiting a television interview when she whispered a comment to Bottcher, saying she should have requested troops earlier. The comment was picked up off-air and cited as an admission by Blanco that she was tardy in her request for ground troops.

It was cited as an admission? It appears to any reasonable observer as an explicit admission. Further documents hint at the insanity that gripped Blanco and her staff.

"What have we done to counter Bush claim that gov delayed relief because she needed 24 hrs to make some decision?" reads an internal e-mail message by a Blanco administration official.

Documents and interviews show that Blanco wanted to avoid conceding her authority, and during the week she argued that a federalization of all military units would compromise her ability to keep law and order.

The impression given by these documents is certainly that Blanco and her people were far more concerned with conducting a PR war against the White House than they were in the safety and wellbeing of the people of New Orleans. And "compromise her ability to keep law and order"? The entire reason she was asking for federal troops was that she was quite unable to maintain law and order.

"By the weekend, the Bush administration will have a full-blown PR disaster/scandal on their hands because of the late response to needs in New Orleans," according to a Sept. 1 e-mail message sent by Blanco communications director Bob Mann. He attributed the observation to former President Clinton's press secretary Mike McCurry.
Kopplin advised the Blanco staff by e-mail that "we need to keep working to get our national surrogates to explain the facts."

Their "national surrogates", of course, were the journalists and reporters of the MSM. As the Democrats expected, they proved quite willing to overlook homicidal incompetence on the part of Louisiana officials in pursuit of their petty vendetta against the Bush administration. Among their number must be counted Mr. Robert Travis Scott, who, in presenting this evidence of political gamesmanship on the part of Democratic politicians, still manages to conclude that Bush (surprise!!) was at fault. For example, although the Guard units from other states could only enter Louisiana under DoD orders, Scott gives the clear impression that this activity was something the States coordinated among themselves, with no Federal involvement.

Other facts which their surrogates did a poor job of explaining to the world were that the city of New Orleans was lawless for several days, and that the only way Federal troops could have restored order was for the President to invoke the Insurrection Act and essentially oust Blanco from her post. If this report is any indication, the dam which the Democratic parties "surrogates" have built to protect Governor Blanco is finally showing a few small cracks.

Discuss

It is surely no exaggeration to say that a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.

— Alexis de Tocqueville

At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?)

I do think this regime's removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. . . . This is all terrible and rather fantastic to contemplate. But what assurances have we that it is not all quite plausible? Having discarded the principles that Jefferson & Co. espoused, the current regime seems capable of anything. I know that my imagination is a feverish instrument. But are we not living in feverish times, in times of the unthinkable?

— Cary Tennis in Salon

The "Opinionated Bastard"…

… puts the recent BBC/ABC poll into graphical form.

1. 77 percent of Iraqis say their lives are good.
   



2. 52 percent says their lives are better. Only around 30 percent say their lives are worse.
   

   (And is it just me, or does that not sound like about the percentage of Sunni?)
   
   

3. 65 percent expect life next year to be better.
   



4. While 53 percent say things in Iraq today are "quite bad" or "very bad", 48 percent say it's better than it was under Saddam.
   



5. 69 percent expect Iraq as a whole to be better a year from today.
   



6. 71 percent want a unified government in Bagdad. 74 percent want the government to be a democracy (versus 25 percent who want an Islamic government of religious leaders.)
   



7. 76 percent think the December elections will create a stable government.
   

Judith Apter Klinghoffer makes two interesting points as well:

When asked what would be the worst thing that could happen to Iraq in the next 12 months, only 8.9% chose "occupation not leaving Iraq."

When asked what would be the best thing that could happen to Iraq in the next 12 months, only 5.7% chose American forces leaving Iraq.

Perspective

Someone had to have some.

Superbowl Sunday. All other world controversies are temporarily knocked off stage by Janet Jackson's nipple. So great is the nipple's disruptive field, scientists wonder if it might have power to slow the spin of hurricanes or stop the mutation of deadly viruses.

An oppressive colonizer is forced to withdraw from occupied Arab land. This is initially met with dancing in the streets of Cairo, Paris, and Turtle Bay. Then everyone realizes it is Syria pulling out of Lebanon. You must understand that the Cedar Revolution, after years of Syrian domination, has nothing to do with the American presence in Iraq, you jingoist. It's just one of those international coincidences like the moon being where it was when Apollo 11 flew past. A few months later, Israel voluntarily withdraws from Gaza, earning approximately 17 seconds of goodwill from the international community. Personal best!

The Iraqi constitution, a Middle East milestone, is approved. But hey! Over there! It's Britney and her new baby! Everybody grab your cameras and run after her! Dang: false alarm. Anyway, what was that about Iraq? Right: They chose their own rules of governance. Yet statistics show voter participation is down significantly from 99.99 percent in Saddam's day, to 60 percent.

That is by no means all.

Whatever Happened to Objective Journalism?

Seneca the Younger raised this question in an earlier post. After some memory and web searching, I managed to find this old post by Callimachus, What's Wrong With Journalism, that I think lays out some of the events in the moral decline of journalism. Callimachus, himself a journalist, speaks of the environment at a small newspaper when he began:

A good newspaper editor spent time in the back shop every day. The people who set up the copy for the presses read it as they did so -- in this picture they literally typed it in by hand. In my day, they read it on the proofs. And they would tell you what they thought about it. Same with the guys who ran the printing press, in their blue overall suits and ink-blacked hands. If an editor wanted to know what the world outside his office walls thought about the news, and his presentation of it, this was a great place to start.

But the nature of printing technology changes and class segregation, the infamous bubble, creeps in:

Now, where I work, there still is a back shop. It consists of about 5 people who oversee the computer systems. Unless we meet them by chance at the coffee machine, we newsroom denizens rarely speak to them. Most of them have computer backgrounds; they don't have ink or wax or lead splattered on their clothes. The process of making a newspaper is now computer to computer to printing press.

And he concludes

And somewhere, along the way, the American media comes unmoored from the American people. Perhaps it would have happened anyhow.

I think this same process has taken place in many other American institutions. The universities come to mind. A leisured upper class elite, isolated from the necessities and realities of life, has come to power. They don't really concern themselves with the safety and wellbeing of ordinary people because, well, they themselves are doing just fine, thank you.

In closing I will link to a post where Callimachus describes the social atmosphere in a modern newsroom: My Left Behind III. I don't think anyone here will be surprised at what he has to say, as it is much as we might imagine.