by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, February 5, 2003 1:59 P.M. EST

Our Friends the Saudis
While Riyadh claims to be an ally in America's war against terrorists, a Washington Post report this morning suggests that the Saudis are obstructing justice here in America. "The Saudi embassy quietly provided the wife of a terror suspect a passport and transit out of the United States in November, after she was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in New York investigating her husband's possible links to the al Qaeda terrorist network," the Post reports.

"Federal law enforcement officials were outraged by the Saudi action," the Post reports, while State Department officials expressed surprise (they must've been shocked, shocked). Nonetheless, Adel al-Jubeir, the well-groomed Saudi spokesman, insists "the idea that someone would say we are not cooperating is simply not true. There is full cooperation."

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal (link for WSJ.com subscribers) has a chilling report on Warith Deen Umar, a New York-based Wahhabi imam who until his retirement in 2000 "helped run New York's growing Islamic prison program, recruiting and training dozens of chaplains, and ministering to thousands of inmates himself." Here are Umar's views on the Sept. 11 massacre:

The hijackers should be honored as martyrs, he said. The U.S. risks further terrorism attacks because it oppresses Muslims around the world. "Without justice, there will be warfare, and it can come to this country, too," he said. The natural candidates to help press such an attack, in his view: African-Americans who embraced Islam in prison.

And who's behind this? Read on:

Imam Umar--born Wallace Gene Marks and later known as Wallace 10X--twice has traveled to Saudi Arabia for worship and study at the expense of the Saudi government and its affiliated charities, part of an extensive program aimed at spreading Islam in U.S. prisons. . . .

Prison dawa, or the spreading of the faith, has become a priority for many Muslim groups in the U.S. and the Saudi Arabian government, which runs what spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir calls a "prison outreach" program. The Islamic Affairs Department of its Washington embassy ships out hundreds of copies of the Quran each month, as well as religious pamphlets and videos, to prison chaplains and Islamic groups who then pass them along to inmates.

The Saudi government also pays for prison chaplains, along with many other American Muslims, to travel to Saudi Arabia for worship and study during the hajj, the traditional winter pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are supposed to make at least once in their lives. The trips typically cost $3,000 a person and last several weeks, says Mr. Al-Jubeir, the Saudi spokesman.

This of course is the same Saudi government that has hosted U.S. troops for 12 years to protect it from Saddam Hussein. This is yet another reason why it's urgent to eliminate the Iraqi threat. With friends like the Saudis, who needs--indeed, who can afford to have--enemies?

Powell to France: Put Up or Shut Up
As a legal matter, Hans Blix's report to the U.N. last week was sufficient to justify military action to liberate Iraq. As a political matter, Colin Powell's powerful presentation today should clinch the case.

Powell painstakingly explained the evidence of noncompliance--including satellite photos showing truck convoys lining up at known weapons factories to transport forbidden material out ahead of the inspectors' arrival, and intercepted phone conversations in which Iraqi military men discuss their efforts to deceive the inspectors. Here's Powell quoting a conversation between two Iraqi officers anticipating a visit from Hans Blix's men:

"Remove. Remove."

The expression, the expression, "I got it."

"Nerve agents. Nerve agents. Wherever it comes up."

"Got it."

"Wherever it comes up."

"In the wireless instructions, in the instructions."

"Correction. No. In the wireless instructions."

"Wireless. I got it."

Powell pointed out that "Saddam Hussein has directly participated in the effort to prevent interviews" with Iraqi scientists, and he enumerated what America knows about the Iraqi regime's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs, its ties with al Qaeda and its record of atrocities within its borders. (The BBC has a summary of Powell's key points.)

What will Powell's speech end up accomplishing? There's a domestic political benefit to the administration making its case, but for the most part Americans are already persuaded. As the Christian Science Monitor notes, "A majority of Americans already support the basic premise of a war--and that, in the history of modern conflicts, is highly unusual." (The New York Times' often-sensible Thomas Friedman, descends into near-solipsism by declaring: "I've had a chance to travel all across the country since September, and I can say without hesitation there was not a single audience I spoke to where I felt there was a majority in favor of war in Iraq. . . . I don't care what the polls say, this is the real mood.")

Powell's primary audience was an international one. The U.S. will liberate Iraq with or without U.N. approval, but a Security Council resolution specifically authorizing such action would be helpful politically. This means Powell was really speaking to Jacques Chirac, president of France, the council's only veto-wielding weasel.

London's Guardian reports that "diplomats and analysts are convinced that Paris, having unwittingly painted its way into a corner, has already started looking for the way out." As well it might want to. France may prefer to see Saddam remain in power, but if it comes down to a choice between toppling him with U.N. approval or without, the former would be vastly preferable by Paris's lights. If Saddam loses power over French objections, it means the end of any Paris pretension to being a world power.

Thus, the big question after Powell's appearance is this: Did he make a strong enough case, and a novel enough one, that the French can say their inevitable volte-face was based on the merits?

America may be subjecting France to something of a good-cop-bad-cop routine, with Powell as the good cop and Richard Perle, who heads the Pentagon's Policy Advisory Board playing the role of bad cop. United Press International reports that Perle, at a conference in Washington yesterday, declared that "France is no longer the ally it once was," and accused Chirac of believing "deep in his soul that Saddam Hussein is preferable to any likely successor."

Unlike Powell, Perle doesn't actually speak for the U.S. government. But you can bet the views he expressed will carry some weight if the French fail to take the face-saving opportunity the secretary of state handed them this morning.

The Vilnius 10
"Up to 10 east European countries are preparing a declaration of support for President Bush's drive to disarm Iraq," Reuters reports from Bucharest. Unlike last week's statement from eight NATO members, which came in the form of a Wall Street Journal editorial-page piece, the Vilnius 10--Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia--are working with American officials on the statement.

Saddam to Hippies: I'm Behind You!
We occasionally get complaints when we refer to self-styled "antiwar" activists as "pro-Saddam." Well, sorry, guys, but your beef isn't with us; it's with Saddam. Tony Benn, a pro-Saddam pol from Britain's Labour Party, traveled to Baghdad to interview the dictator, and their chat includes this revealing exchange:

BENN: There are tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people in Britain and America, in Europe and worldwide, who want to see a peaceful outcome to this problem, and they are the real Americans in my opinion, the real British, the real French, the real Germans, because they think of the world in terms of their children.

I have ten grandchildren and in my family there is English, Scottish, American, French, Irish, Jewish and Indian blood, and for me politics is about their future, their survival. And I wonder whether you could say something yourself directly through this interview to the peace movement of the world that might help to advance the cause they have in mind?

SADDAM: First of all we admire the development of the peace movement around the world in the last few years. We pray to God to empower all those working against war and for the cause of peace and security based on just peace for all.

The Case for a Cakewalk
The headline is a you-don't-say: "Technology Strengthens U.S. Military." By the piece, from Knight Ridder, is a nice summary of how far America's war-fighting capabilities have come even since we rolled over Iraq in the Gulf War:

Laptop computers, satellite phones and global-positioning devices have become the tools of soldiers, along with rifles and mortars.

Precision-guided bombs, which made up only a small percentage of the munitions dropped in the Gulf War, accounted for more than 60 percent in Afghanistan.

Air-tasking orders--defining which forces will take part in air operations and what their targets will be--had to be flown out to carriers by helicopter. Now they can be sent in an instant by satellite.

The Navy's Tomahawk cruise missiles, introduced to the Iraqis with powerful impact during the Gulf War, can now be retargeted in midflight by satellite signals.

The list goes on. And on.

Saddam's forces, by contrast, are stuck in the 1980s, at best, technologically. If the American military could be described as a DVD playing "Spiderman," the Iraqi military would be an analog cassette spooling out the Bee Gees.

You Don't Say--I
"Experts May Have Erred, NASA Says"--headline, Oakland (Mich.) Press, Feb. 4

God Hates Who?
Readers sent us more information on Fred Phelps, the lunatic antigay pastor from Topeka, Kan., whose press releases celebrated the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia. (Our item yesterday got Phelps's first name wrong, but we've corrected it.) The Topeka Capital-Journal has an extensive series of investigative reports under the heading "Loving God's Hate: An in-depth look at Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church."

Phelps's Godhatesfags.com site seems to have gone down since we posted yesterday's column, but another WBC site, GodhatesAmerica.com, is still available, with a rant about the Columbia right at the top. Another Web site, Godhatesfundies.com ("fundies" being a derisive nickname for fundamentalists), features a nine-chapter "exposé" on Phelps.

And here's another San Francisco connection. One Capital-Journal story, from November 2000, reports that Phelps was once a supporter of Al Gore. "He was strong pro-life, and he said he wasn't going to accept any money from homosexual groups, and things of that nature," Phelps tells the paper. Gore later moved left on social issues and lost Phelps's support, but he did carry San Francisco by a margin of 59.44% of the vote.

Blue Law?
Britain's House of Commons has installed an e-mail filtering system after members "complained about getting inundated with pornographic and rude e-mails," the BBC reports. Sounds reasonable enough, but now the parliamentarians complain that legit e-mails are being blocked too. "Lib Dem spokesman Paul Tyler says the system is now blocking parts of the Sexual Offences Bill being sent to parliamentary e-mail addresses. It also blocked a Liberal Democrat consultation paper on Censorship."

You Don't Say--II
"Few Seek Castration"--headline, San Antonio Express-News, Feb. 5

You Don't Say--III
"Physicians, Attorneys Divided on Way to Cure Medical Malpractice Crisis"--headline, Business First of Louisville (Ky.), Jan. 31

You Don't Say--IV
Those without high school diplomas often paid less, jailed more"--subheadline, Detroit News, Feb. 5

You Don't Say--V
"To Murder Victims' Families, Executing Killers Is Justice"--headline, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 5

It's the Eponymy, Stupid--I
"Steeler's Foote Hurts Thumb During Fight"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 4

It's the Eponymy, Stupid--II
Yugoslavia is no more. Lawmakers in Belgrade have renamed their nation Serbia and Montenegro, "a compromise between the aspiration among many Montenegrins for independence and an edict from international officials that there can be no further redrawing of borders," reports the New York Times. "It buys us some time," a European diplomat tells the paper. "The last thing this region needs is further Balkanization."

Hey, c'mon--if you can't balkanize the Balkans, who can you balkanize?

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Norbert Vollertsen: Why North Koreans cheered Bush's "axis of evil" designation.
• Claudia Rosett: Syrian occupation suffocates Lebanon, and the world shrugs.
• Roger Kimball: A self-absorbed "antiwar" poet ruins a White House symposium.