From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
- "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew
Jackson
- "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin
Roosevelt
- "The buck stops here."--Harry
Truman
- "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country."--John
Kennedy
- "We deserve leaders who are going to have the courage to stand up and
present real choices to Americans, not these fudgy ones that take us down
a very wobbly road, to a very dangerous place."--John
Kerry
- "All those countries the president insulted on his way into Iraq--they all have health insurance."--Howard Dean
Who's
Distracted?
Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who says he's met Osama bin Laden,
"pleaded guilty yesterday to felony terrorism charges and admitted plots
against trains and the Brooklyn Bridge," the Associated Press reports:
According to a government statement that Faris signed, an al-Qaida leader instructed Faris to obtain "gas cutters," probably acetylene torches, that would enable him to sever the cables on "a bridge in New York City" that officials said was the Brooklyn Bridge.
To avoid government detection, Faris was told to refer to the cutters as "gas stations."
Mohammed also told Faris that he should obtain heavy torque tools--code-named "mechanics shops"--that could be used to derail trains in the United States, the affidavit says. The court papers refer to New York and Washington but provide no further detail about time or location of an attack.
U.S. officials say Faris "is cooperating in the investigation of al-Qaida."
The
Severest Form of Flattery
New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a glass-half-full type of guy. "I guess
in a perverse way should be pleased," the Hartford Courant quotes New York's
moneybags mayor as saying in response to the Brooklyn Bridge plot. "We are the
target because it is the world's second home. We are the target because it's
the place where everybody wants to come. Because we give opportunities other
people find threatening. . . . That's the good news in a bad news
scenario."
Another
Democratic Milestone
CBS News reports Iraq has had its first public-opinion poll: "Sixty-five
percent of Iraqis polled in Baghdad claimed they want the U.S. military to stay
until Iraq is stable and secure; only 17 percent want American soldiers out
now."
Take these results with a grain of salt; it's hard to imagine the pollsters were able to come up with a scientific sample in a newly liberated country under military occupation. Still, it's doubtless more reliable an indicator of Iraqi public opinion that Reuters' survey, which begins with the assumption that 2 + 3 = many.
The
Plan to Kill Jessica Lynch
The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof has been in Nasiriyah, Iraq, investigating
the Jessica Lynch story. Kristof is obnoxiously cynical about the military's
account of her captivity: "We were misled," he says. "As a citizen,
I deeply resent my government trying to spin me like a Ping-Pong ball."
From the Washington
Post's account of earlier this week, however, it appears that the faulty
information the military put out was a product of the fog of war, not a deliberate
effort to deceive Nick Kristof.
Kristof does unearth a chilling account of Lynch's captivity, however:
The hospital staff also said that on the night of March 27, military officials prepared to kill Ms. Lynch by putting her in an ambulance and blowing it up with its occupants--blaming the atrocity on the Americans. The ambulance drivers balked at that idea. Eventually, the plan was changed so that a military officer would shoot Ms. Lynch and burn the ambulance. So Sabah Khazal, an ambulance driver, loaded her in the vehicle and drove off with a military officer assigned to execute her.
"I asked him not to shoot Jessica," Mr. Khazal said, "and he was afraid of God and didn't kill her." Instead, the executioner ran away and deserted the army, and Mr. Khazal said that he then thought about delivering Ms. Lynch to an American checkpoint. But there were firefights on the streets, so he returned to the hospital. (Ms. Lynch apparently never knew how close she had come to execution.)
Meanwhile, Cara DeGette--you may remember her as the Colorado commentator who described the Sept. 11 hijackers as "ballsy"--tries to tie in the media's embarrassing frenzy to woo Lynch for an interview to the FCC's recent decision to relax restrictions on media ownership. This seems a stretch, to say the least:
If you'll recall, it's been just two weeks since the Federal Communication Corporation voted to further relax the rules on media consolidation, embracing further monopoly corporate ownership of the media outlets that Americans depend on for their news. The new rules have not even gone into effect, and so CBS News' Lynch affair is merely an example of life before more media monopoly consolidation.
This simply makes no sense. If there really were a media monopoly, getting an interview with a sought-after source would be simply a two-way negotiation between the media outlet and the interviewee. The flurry of different offers for Lynch interviews are a product of media competition, not consolidation.
Off
the Hook?
The Christian Science Monitor is backing away from an April report (which we
noted) that far-left pro-Saddam British parliamentarian George Galloway
had taken payments amounting to $10 million to promote Baathist interests in
the West. The Monitor now says the six documents on which it relied "are,
in fact, almost certainly forgeries":
The Arabic text of the papers is inconsistent with known examples of Baghdad bureaucratic writing, and is replete with problematic language, says a leading US-based expert on Iraqi government documents. Signature lines and other format elements differ from genuine procedure.
The two "oldest" documents--dated 1992 and 1993--were actually written within the past few months, according to a chemical analysis of their ink. The newest document--dated 2003--appears to have been written at approximately the same time.
London's Telegraph, which published similar allegations based on other documents, has not backed down. On Wednesday it reported that Galloway has acknowledged being in Iraq on the day when, according to the Telegraph's documents, "he met an Iraqi intelligence officer there to discuss 'continuous financial support.' " Galloway says those documents are forgeries too, and he denies taking money from the Iraqis.
The
Road to Damascus
"Senior Pentagon officials say it is possible the United States could use
force against Syria," Ha'aretz reports. "The military option was raised
after intelligence reports that recent attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq
were carried out by militants based in Syria." Ha'aretz says there's a
difference of opinion in the Pentagon over how to handle Syria: "One group
believes the United States should not avoid forceful action against Syria, while
another holds that some 'saber rattling' and warning Damascus of military consequences
is enough."
It's hard to think of an argument against saber rattling--just so long as we're prepared to use the saber should rattling not do the trick
Oh
Please!
How wacky are the Wahhabis? The Middle East Media Research Institute quotes
from an article by an Egyptian critic of the Saudi-based Islamic sect:
A Wahhabi Saudi sheikh warned young people not to speak English and not to try to study it. He swallowed his saliva, wet his lips, and screamed: "This is the language of the infidels, to the point where it has the word 'blease' ['please'], which is derived from iblis [Satan]. This is the language of the devil . . ."
Imagine if we applied this reasoning to the French. Lord have merci!
Jordan's
Florida
Islamists in Jordan are unhappy with the results of recent parliamentary elections,
in which candidates close to the royal family won a majority of seats, Al Bawaba
reports, quoting an Islamist candidate called Ali Abu al Sukkar:
The very prominent opposition leader who rejects normalization with Israel said "many factors have contributed to these results, including the one vote law, decision not to publish the voter list and the banning of veiled women from voting unless they remove their veils in front of a committee comprised of men (for identification purposes). Additionally, many employees in the education sector were also banned from voting due to their assigned duties in the electoral committees and election centers." It is noteworthy to mention that ballot boxes were placed at all schools within the Kingdom.
Jesse Jackson, get on a plane to Amman this instant. This sounds like another Selma!
Sauce
for the Gander
The latest target of Belgium's wacky war-crimes statute is the foreign minister
of . . . Belgium. "A small opposition party said it had
filed a suit against Foreign Minister Louis Michel for authorizing a Belgian
company to sell arms to Nepal," whose armed forces, the party says, violate
human rights.
Perhaps now Belgium will join the U.S. in seeking to move the headquarters of NATO out of Brussels, lest Belgian officials be harassed by Belgian courts while in Belgium on NATO business.
What
Would We Do Without Experts?
"Expert Warns U.S. Faces Risk in Korean Crisis"--Providence Journal,
June 19
Checking the Polls--IV
So many readers were confused by yesterday's
item on the Bendixen & Associates poll of Hispanics on their attitudes toward
Miguel Estrada's nomination that we thought we'd better reprise the results
and explain them:
Are you aware of President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C.?
Yes No Don't know / no answer (Asked of those who said "yes" in the above question) Do you support or oppose President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals? (Responses combined with "no" or "don't know/no answer" responses in the above question)
Support Oppose Not aware / no opinion
The parenthetical note we've put in boldface explains what's going on here: The results given after the second question were results from the entire sample. The 61% listed as "Not aware/no opinion" includes the 56% who didn't answer "yes" to the first question. Thus if we disaggregate the results, we come up with the following:
Support Oppose Aware, no opinion Not aware Don't know / didn't answer if aware
Only the 44% of the sample in the first three categories above were asked the second question. Thus, to measure opinion within that subsample, we divide the percentages by 44% (or multiply them by 2.27):
Support Oppose Not aware / no opinion
Man
vs. Machines--III
Wired reports that Sen. Orrin Hatch, scourge of intellectual property thieves,
has begun the process of registering his copy of DHTML Menu, which, as we
noted yesterday, he's been running without complying with owner Milonic
Solutions' licensing requirements:
On Wednesday, the senator's site met none of Milonic's licensing terms. The site's source code (which can be seen by selecting Source under the View menu in Internet Explorer) had neither a link to Milonic's site nor a registration code.
However, by Thursday afternoon Hatch's site had been updated to contain some of the requisite copyright information. An old version of the page can be seen by viewing Google's cache of the site.
"They're using our code," Woolley said Wednesday. "We've had no contact with them. They are in breach of our licensing terms."
When contacted Thursday, Woolley said the company that maintains the senator's site had e-mailed Milonic to begin the registration process. Woolley said the code added to Hatch's site after the issue came to light met some--but not all--of Milonic's licensing requirements.
Before the site was updated, the source code on Hatch's site contained the line: "* i am the license for the menu (duh) *"
Woolley said he had no idea where the line came from--it has nothing to do with him, and he hadn't seen it on other websites that use his menu system.
"It looks like it's trying to cover something up, as though they got a license," he said.
Meanwhile, posts on Slashdot.org and RightWingNews.com, report that Hatch's site contained a link to a pornographic Web page--though this appears not to have been the senator's fault. Apparently Hatch was linking to a site whose domain name was later taken over by a purveyor of porn.
Hot
Air on West 43rd Street
A New York Times editorial denounces the Bush administraiton for engaging in
"heavy-handed censorship" of an Environmental Protection Agency report
on "global warming":
Gone is any mention that the 1990's are likely to have been the warmest decade in the last thousand years in the Northern Hemisphere. Gone, also, is a judgment by the National Research Council about the likely human contributions to global warming, though the evidence falls short of conclusive proof. Gone, too, is an introductory statement that "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment." All that is left in the report is some pablum about the complexities of the issue and the research that is needed to resolve the uncertainties.
And pablum it is: "Experts on all sides of the debate acknowledge that the climate models are imperfect, and even proponents of their use say their results should be interpreted cautiously."
Oh wait, sorry, that isn't from the EPA report. It's from a Feb. 29, 2000, article in the New York Times science section.
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
Blogger Howard Bashman reports that the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
has ruled in favor of the Sayreville, N.J., school district, which suspended
a kindergartner "for uttering the statement 'I'm going to shoot you' to
his friends while they were playing at recess in the school yard." The
decision, in PDF form, is here;
we noted
the story in May 2002.
What
Would Investors Do Without Experts?
"Investors Should Be More Aggressive, Yet Careful, Say Experts"--subheadline,
ABCNews.com, June 19
What
Would Black Bears Do Without Experts?
"Experts Advise: People Should Leave Black Bear Alone"--headline,
Roxboro (N.C.) Courier-Times, June 18
What
Would Twice-Hit Lightning Victims Do Without Experts?
"Expert: Twice-Hit Lightning Victim Broke 'No. 1 Rule' "--headline,
Denver Post, June 20
What
Was Their First Clue?
The New York Times reports (last item): "A young woman who was found dead
of multiple stab wounds in her studio apartment Wednesday on the Upper East
Side was the victim of a homicide, the city medical examiner's office said yesterday."
You
Need to Go To School for That?
"New Site Urged for Hooker School"--headline, New Haven (Conn.) Register,
June 18
'Healing
Through Creativity'
"Two years apart CBS News and ABC News featured the same elderly woman,
in news stories about the need for a new prescription drug coverage program
in Medicare and the shortcomings of Republican-pushed alternatives, as the poster
victim of high prescription costs," reports the conservative Media Research
Center. On July 1, 2001, the "CBS Evening News" reported that Eva
Baer-Schenkein couldn't afford to buy drugs for her osteoperosis. Then last
Wednesday, ABC's "World News Tonight" repeated the story--only this
time she was suffering from "hypertension and other health problems."
Even more curious, a September 2000 listserv announcement says Baer-Schenkein's poetry was featured in a New York Public Library exhibit that month called "Healing Through Creativity." If she's healing through creativity, what does she need prescriptions for?
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Joel Goldberg, Charlie Gaylord, S.E. Brenner, Michael Segal, Robert LeChevalier, Drew Cooper, Elliot Ganz, C.E. Dobkin, Natalie Cohen, Dan Friedman, Jennifer Ray, Barak Moore, Jerome Marcus, Henry Stern, Mara Gold, Thomas Linehan, Daniel Cornwall, Chuck Smith, Howard Weiser, Judie Amsel, Rosanne Klass, Michael Hopkovitz, Joshua Weiner, Howard Walker, Jim Orheim, Christopher Meinhardt, Steven Platzer, Michael Nunnelley, Pete Schissel, Greg Largen, Gregg Hannan and Hal Crawford. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Paul Bremer: Success in Iraq depends on the birth of a vibrant private sector.
- Daniel Henninger: Jessica Lynch is spinning into semi-reality.
And on the Taste page:
- Review & Outlook: How President Bush found himself hugging a murderer in the White House.
- Tony & Tacky: Family values in Atlantic City and housing for sex offenders.
- Barbara Phillips: Jesus' brother isn't the only thing experts have been wrong about.
- John Miller: Time to restore the beautiful friendship with France? Not at all.
- John Murray: Could God really look like Jim Carey in "Bruce Almighty"?
