From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Sexed Up and No Place to Go
On May 29 the British Broadcasting Corp. "reported" that Tony Blair's
government had "sexed up" a dossier on Saddam Hussein's pursuit of
nuclear weapons. It now seems increasingly likely that, as we suggested
Friday, it was the BBC that was engaging in up-sexing. The Beeb now confirms
that David Kelly, the British scientist whose death by suicide was confirmed
over the weekend, "was the principal source for its controversial report,"
in the words of a BBC report.
BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan denies that he "misquoted or misrepresented" what Kelly said, but the Guardian reports that Tom Mangold, a former BBC correspondent who was a close friend of Kelly, has accused Gilligan "of 'taking the apple Kelly gave him and mixing it with an orange from another source,' and revealed that his final report 'appalled' the respected weapons expert."
The British press is piling on the Beeb. "The BBC's credibility is in question," declares the Daily Telegraph. The Sun tabloid is shrill as usual, headlining a commentary by political editor Trevor Kavanagh "You Rat": "BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan last night tried to save his job by branding suicide victim Dr David Kelly a LIAR," opines Kavanagh (the capitals are the Sun's). In another Sun piece Kavanagh scores a serious point: "Gilligan revealed he had based his bombshell story on a lunch with a contact--and had only one source. . . . This tragedy underlines the value of the BBC rule that journalists must have more than one source for bombshell stories."
A report in the Guardian has echoes of the recent turmoil at the New York Times:
Senior BBC executives seemed isolated from their own staff last night when the corporation implicitly accused David Kelly of failing to be entirely open when he appeared before MPs last week. . . .
Journalists, editors and presenters contacted by the Guardian yesterday questioned--on condition of anonymity--the credibility of this stance. They expressed doubt about the positions of Gilligan and Richard Sambrook, the director of news, who has given unswerving support to the reporter since he learned that Dr Kelly was his source. A few even talk darkly of revolt. Support for Gilligan, outside the increasingly fraught confines of the Today programme where he is defence and diplomatic correspondent, is slipping away.
"It's one thing if the top brass choose to go to the wall for Gilligan. It's quite another if they expect us to do it too," one insider said.
An editorial in Canada's National Post makes the analogy even more explicit, calling Gilligan "the BBC's Jayson Blair." Back across the Atlantic, the Independent adds that members of Parliament "have already called for Gavyn Davies, the BBC chairman, to resign":
Ministers believe he rejected the advice of senior colleagues who wanted to stage a partial retreat at an earlier stage because he was determined to show he would not bow to government pressure despite his close links to the Labour Party. BBC sources denied any internal rift and dismissed speculation that "heads will roll."
Back on July 7, the Guardian quoted John Humphrys, "the veteran Today programme presenter" (presenter is British for "host") as taking a my-story-right-or-wrong approach in defense of his colleague: "Even if Andrew Gilligan's source were suddenly to pop up and say 'I made it all up,' the fact is we reported a legitimate news story based on a sound source in good faith and that's what journalism is about."
Which suggests a defense U.S. and British officials could use if it were to turn out that they presented faulty information in making the case for Iraq's liberation: Hey, we were just doing journalism!
The
Left's Tortured Logic
"The White House defense of President Bush's now-disavowed claim that Iraq
was seeking uranium in Africa has evolved over the last two weeks: blame others,
stonewall, bury questions in irrelevant information and, above all, hope it
will go away. So far, none has worked."
It reads like a press release from the Democratic National Committee, but it's actually the lead paragraph from an Associated Press dispatch. What liberal media? Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports from Baghdad on something far more important than the Niger kerfuffle:
She was walking hurriedly, as if in a trance, oblivious to the weakness in her legs, not seeing the bewildered looks of the American troops trailing her, not hearing her own cries of anguish. Jumana Michael Hanna, tears streaming down her face, had slipped into the darkest recesses of memory.
Hanna, a 41-year-old Assyrian Christian from a formerly rich and prominent Iraqi family, returned last week to the well of her nightmares: the police academy in Baghdad, a sprawling complex of offices, classrooms, soccer, polo and parade grounds--and prison cells, some of them converted dog kennels, according to American officials who now control the campus.
This is the place where in the 1990s Hanna was hung from a rod and beaten with a special stick when she called out for Jesus or the Virgin Mary. This is where she and other female prisoners were dragged outside and tied to a dead tree trunk, nicknamed "Walid" by the guards, and raped in the shadow of palm trees. This is the place where electric shock was applied to Hanna's vagina. And this is where in February 2001 someone put a bullet in her husband's head and handed his corpse through the steel gate like a piece of butcher's meat.
As Adam Wolfson points out in National Review Online, liberal Democrats have to torture logic in order to justify their indifference to the torture of Iraqis like Jumana Hanna:
In the 1990s, liberal Democrats joined the international Left in support of the idea of "humanitarian war." Having watched international organizations and the liberal democracies stand idly by as genocide was wrought in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, liberals rallied behind the notion of using the armed forces of nation-states not to further the national interests of particular states--the classical understanding of the uses of state power--but for humanitarian, altruistic ends.
Now those same Democrats are complaining that the national-security justifications for liberating Iraq were phony. They're wrong, of course, but if they actually believe what they're saying, they should be all the more supportive of the war. "By their own political principles, the less threat Iraq posed to the United States, the more reason there was to wage humanitarian war," notes Wolfson. "So, just who is deceiving whom?"
The
Cut-and-Run Crowd
The Nation--a far-left magazine edited by a woman who doesn't
even know her congressman's name--thinks America should declare defeat and
get out of Iraq:
The test of a great nation is whether it has the capacity to own up to its mistakes and change course for the sake of the country and the world. The Johnson and Nixon administrations failed this test in Vietnam, prolonging an unwinnable war that cost millions of lives while weakening America at home and abroad. The Bush Administration likewise shows no sign of facing up to its errors in Iraq. . . .
It is time for the White House to acknowledge that it made a profound strategic mistake in waging war in Iraq without the support of the international community, and that the United States and its small band of allies do not have the resources, expertise or legitimacy to stabilize Iraq, let alone establish the conditions for an Iraqi democracy. It is also time for the White House to request that the United Nations take over primary responsibility in Iraq as the only way of accomplishing this goal.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press thinks it's found a trend of Americans cutting and running from their own country:
For all they share economically and culturally, Canada and the United States are increasingly at odds on basic social policies--to the point that at least a few discontented Americans are planning to move north and try their neighbors' way of life.
Make that at most a few. Way down in the article, the AP notes that although Canada once was a frequent destination for draft dodgers, "every year since 1977, more Canadians have emigrated to the United States than vice versa--the 2001 figures were 5,894 Americans moving north, 30,203 Canadians moving south."
Our Friends
the Saudis
Newsweek has a preview of a congressional report on the events leading to the
Sept. 11 attack, which is set for release this week:
The long-delayed 900-page report . . . contains potentially explosive new evidence suggesting that Omar al-Bayoumi, a key associate of two of the hijackers, may have been a Saudi-government agent, sources tell Newsweek. The report documents extensive ties between al-Bayoumi and the hijackers. But the [FBI] never kept tabs on al-Bayoumi--despite receiving prior information he was a secret Saudi agent, the report says. In January 2000, al-Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles--and then went directly to a restaurant where he met future hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, whom he took back with him to San Diego. (Al-Bayoumi later arranged for the men to get an apartment next to his and fronted them their first two months rent.)
Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, the Arab News has returned to form, publishing a vicious anti-Semitic rant by one Mark Glenn, "an American and former high school teacher turned writer/commentator." Glenn spotted a bumper sticker with an Israeli flag and a quote from Genesis 12:3: "I will bless those who bless thee." Here's Glenn:
For your role in the September 11 attacks in this country, and for blackmailing and bribing the US government into deporting back to Israel the 100 or more intelligence agents that were arrested after the attacks, we bless thee.
For supressing [sic] the information from the American people of your involvement in the September 11 attacks and sending us in the wrong direction in search of answers, we bless thee.
The Jerusalem Post reports that 80-year-old Idi Amin, the murderous, terror-supporting erstwhile dictator of Uganda, is in a coma and near death. Amin has been a guest of Saudi Arabia since his ouster in 1979.
The Arab News also reports that "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Syrian President Bashar Assad expressed the hope yesterday that a legitimate government in Baghdad, acceptable to the Iraqi people, would be formed soon." Well, we hope so too. Now if only we could get legitimate governments in Saudi Arabia and Syria.
Beyond
Parody
Last week we noted that Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has been promoting
a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Although Kristof
represents this group as consisting of nonpartisan, disinterested "intelligence
professionals," it is actually a far-left outfit, associated with Counterpunch.org,
which, as blogger William
Sjostrom points out, is "an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing
Bush to Hitler."
Dave Lindorff, the guy who wrote the original Bush-Hitler piece, has now weighed in with a defense of sorts:
James Taranto . . . offered up an offhand dismissal of Counterpunch as "an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler," which seems to suggest he thinks the very notion is beyond the pale of civil discourse.
But stay. As one of the first to notice some similarities between Bush II and the early Hitler, I didn't actually say that George and Adolf were joined at the hip. Indeed, I suggested in my Counterpunch article back on Feb. 1, during the high-pressure White House drive to war in Iraq, that our unelected president was surely no Hitler, since "Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was." More importantly, I didn't equate Bush with Hitler because there are some other big differences between the two.
He adds: "While he has rounded up some Arab and Muslim men purely because of their ethnicity or religion, Bush has not started gassing them--at least not yet."
Yeah, OK, big deal, another left-wing nutjob, who cares? But it's rather stunning to contemplate that this is the kind of thing these people say when they're trying to sound reasonable.
The
Palestinian Civil War
"Palestinian militants beat and detained the Palestinian governor of a
West Bank town Saturday, accusing him of being an Israeli collaborator,"
the Associated Press reports. Yasser Arafat's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades kidnapped
Haider Irsheid, mayor of Jenin, put him on "trial" and brutalized
him before releasing him five hours later.
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
There's no question that Iraq's liberation has improved the prospects for eventual peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, but it may be unrealistic to expect Israel to make peace with the Palestinians when the latter aren't even at peace with themselves.
The
World's Dumbest Protest
This report from the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz defies comment:
Vicki Knafo and the leaders of the single mothers' protest movement wrote to U.S. President George Bush on Sunday, pleading with him to help annul the cuts in their state benefits introduced by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government.
"The struggle of the single mothers, both Jewish and Arab, is no less critical or existential than the hudna [cease-fire] and the security condition," they wrote in the letter to Bush.
Knafo said Monday morning that the mothers want Bush to persuade Sharon to drop the budget cuts that affect single-mother families. She told Army Radio that it's appropriate to involve Bush because he should monitor "where the money that he sends here is going," saying, "It could be that some of it is supposed to go to sinlge-parent families."
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
- "Come on, come over here and make me, I dare you. . . . You little fruitcake. You little fruitcake. I said you are a fruitcake."--attributed to Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (D., Calif.)
Pro-Life
Lesbians Need Not Apply
National Review Online's Jay Nordlinger spots a quote that sums up the state
of America's political opposition
My boy Dennis Kucinich--go, Dennis!--made what might be the remark of the campaign. Discussing possible Supreme Court picks in a Kucinich presidency, he said he "absolutely would appoint a homosexual judge," including "any lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person--just as long as they'd be willing to uphold Roe v. Wade." That is simply the perfect Democratic statement, blowing away all others. Even the ungrammatical "they," instead of "he," is sublime.
You
Don't Say--I
"Recall Would Place Davis in Defensive Role"--headline, San Diego
Union-Tribune, July 20
Meanwhile, a San Jose Mercury News report on the California governor's travails notes that "Davis and his supporter are feverishly trying to thwart a recall election that could be certified as early as Wednesday when counties are required to verify signatures gathered by the recall committee." No wonder they're feverish; that's a big job for two people, especially when one of them has a state to run.
Congress
for Sale?
The Associated Press headline seemed like a candidate for "You Don't Say"
treatment: "Campaign Donations Sway Lawmakers' Vote." But wait. Let's
take a closer look at what the AP is claiming:
The Associated Press looked at six measures in the House--medical malpractice, class action lawsuits, overhauling bankruptcy laws, the energy bill, gun manufacturer lawsuits and overtime pay--and compared lawmakers' votes with the financial backing they received from interest groups supporting or opposing the legislation. . . .
In the vast majority of cases, the biggest recipients of interest group money voted the way their donors wanted, according to the AP's computer-assisted analysis of campaign finance data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
The AP and the center have established a correlation between campaign donations and votes, but they have not proved, or even provided any evidence for, a cause-and-effect relationship. Indeed, common sense leads us to think the influence of campaign money on lawmakers' votes is minimal. Would even a pol as mercenary as Sen. Hillary Clinton (to take an example at random) change her position on, say, gun rights if the National Rifle Association decided to give her beaucoup bucks? It seems unlikely.
It's much more plausible to think that interest-group money follows the votes--as the groups try to keep lawmakers who agree with them in office--rather than the other way around.
Nice
Explosions You've Got There
"Police Investigate Nice Explosions"--headline, CNN.com, July 20
Not
Too Brite--C
"A British judge on Thursday demanded an inquiry into how a convicted murderer
was allowed to work as a solicitor, later firebombing his estranged wife's house
and trying to stab her to death," Reuters reports from London.
Oddly Enough!
You
Don't Say--II
"Suits Against Fast Food May Mean Fat Payouts for Lawyers"--subheadline,
ABCNews.com, July 18
What's
a Probe Gun?
"Police Probe Gun Found Near Missing Athlete's Apartment"--headline,
FoxNews.com, July 18
Medical
Science Marches On
"Italian scientists believe that eating pizza once a week can protect against
some cancers," reports PizzaMarketplace.com. Researchers in Milan studied
8,000 Italians and "found that those consuming pizza one or more times
a week were several times less likely to get cancers of the mouth, esophagus
and colon than those who chose other meals." Researcher Silvano Gallus
tells the La Repubblica newspaper: "We knew that tomato sauce could offer
protection against certain tumors, but we did not expect pizza as a complete
meal also to offer such protective powers."
This comes the week after a report that young men who indulge in what the New Scientist delicately calls "frequent self-pleasuring" are at lower risk of prostate cancer.
Eureka! Finally, science has explained why so few teenagers get cancer.
You
Are What You Eat
A 23-year-old employee of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has legally
changed her name to GoVeg.com,
after a PETA Web site, reports NCBuy.com. "To be named after the No. 1
Web site for vegetarian information--what could be better?" asks GoVeg.com,
née Karin Robertson.
We can think of a few things that would be better, like some delicious veal chops and a heapin' helping of foie gras for dessert.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to S.E. Brenner, Rosslyn Smith, Paul Stewart, Natalie Cohen, Robert LeChevalier, Steven Wallach, Michael Segal, Raghu Desikan, Jerome Marcus, Pinchas Avruch, Jennifer Ray, Renee Morris, Barak Moore, Kevin Hicks, Hershel Ginsburg, Dan Friedman, Daniel Sweeney, Grant Carter, Diane Ravitch, Brian Crouch, Tracy Schultz, Dan Tracy, Monty Krieger, Judie Amsel, Peter Salomon, David Gerstman, Nathan Wirtschafter, C.E. Dobkin, Joel Goldberg, Yehuda Hilewitz, Chris Salogub, Aaron Gross, Nathaniel Evanhoe, Adam Ginesky, Rosanne Klass, Justin Taylor, Josh Barro, Anthony Baratta, Tad Smith, Patrick Baker, John Sutter, Brian Azman, Daniel Sterman, Ben Filippini, Brian Ballard, Pieter Mul, Kathy Nichols, Joshua Brook, Darren Gold, David Puett and Aviva Ross. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Paul Gigot: In 1991 America betrayed Iraq's Marsh Arabs. Now they're free at last.
- Robert Bartley: Anti-Bush caterwauling risks undermining America's achievement in Iraq.
- Pete du Pont: Bush's next challenge is to get spending under control.
