Oil for news

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Eric Stakelbeck at the Weekly Standard have an interesting article that tells about Uday Hussein (Saddam's son) using the oil-for-food program to manipulate the press. If you want to dignify Al Jazeera with that label (or vice versa, I suppose). The piece begins:

On January 6, 2005, the U.S.-funded Arabic satellite network Al Hurra broadcast an explosive exposé detailing the financial links between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Arab press. Al Hurra's documentary--so far overlooked in the West--aired previously unseen video footage, recorded by Saddam Hussein's regime during its murderous heyday, of Saddam's son Uday meeting with several Arab media figures and referring to the bribes they had received.

Recipients of this Baathist largesse appeared to include a former managing director of the influential Qatar-based government-subsidized satellite network Al Jazeera, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali. The videotaped meeting between Uday and al-Ali occurred on March 13, 2000, when al-Ali still worked as Al Jazeera's managing director. Their conversation makes clear that this was not their first meeting, but that they had met on prior occasions--and that Al Jazeera had put into effect the directives that Uday had proffered in those previous meetings.

Referring to how his advice had affected changes in Al Jazeera's personnel, Uday states, "During your last visit here along with your colleagues we talked about a number of issues, and it does appear that you indeed were listening to what I was saying since changes took place and new faces came on board such as that lad, Mansour."

This "lad" is Ahmed Mansour, an Al Jazeera journalist who has been criticized for his pro-insurgency reporting. In particular, Mansour came under fire in early 2004 for his coverage of the U.S. attack on Falluja, which pointedly emphasized civilian casualties.

Read the whole thing.

Fun with words

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot his whole life, which created an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him frail, and with his odd diet, he suffered from very bad breath. This made him a super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Tip o' the hat to Jim M.

Boots on the ground

His latest photo blog is at right, and below is an excerpt (the conclusion) to his latest post:

While the medic tried to stop the bleeding, SFC Robert Bowman began questioning the man through a translator. "You are going to die," Bowman said, "I want you to answer some questions."

The man brought his hand to his head, and touched his forehead with his index finger, pointing right between his eyes. "Shoot me, shoot me," he said, "I want to die."

LTC Kurilla ordered the medic to try to save him. So they took him to same hospital where Sgt Davis died last week; the same one that little Farah never made it to, and there he is, still alive, his bombing days are over.

The entire blog is excellent (though short!), and worth visiting regularly...

More mass graves

But the American liberal left somehow has managed to keep their blinders on with respect to the ongoing discoveries and investigations of Saddam's seemingly innumerable mass graves. The MSM pays far more attention, of course, to the current events — especially any that make Americans look bad.

The last credible reckoning of Saddam's mass graves that I saw gave the running total of his victims as over 800,000 — while estimating that only one quarter of the grave sites had yet been discovered. Iraqi authorities believe that very large undiscovered mass grave sites remain in (especially) the southern marshlands and in the Kurdish areas. Undisputedly there are many hundreds of thousands of people who simply disappeared during Saddam's reign and whose remains have never been discovered.

Where is the American left's outrage about these deaths? How can they miss the fact that the human cost of Saddam's reign was enormously higher than the human cost of taking Saddam out? What philosophical or moral calculus are they using that enables them to weigh these facts and condemn America?

Meanwhile, Free Iraqi has his own comments on the mass graves. Read the whole thing, but here's his conclusion:

Still, the mass graves are now the most striking evidence of Saddam's regime brutality and they show in a way the size of death and destruction this regime was bringing to Iraq on a daily basis. I say they show, and I mean to the rest of the world, as we don't need any evidence to tell us we were living in Hell.

Niebuhrian?

Chrenkoff cites this familiar poem by theologian Dr. Rheinhold Niebuhr as a way to understand President Bush's foreign policy:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I can't help but agree with Mr. Chrenkoff on this one, though at first blush it seemed ludicrous to me to reduce an apparently complex foreign policy to something so simple. If I were making such an attempt (which never occured to me!), I'd probably have started with the premise of fostering liberty. But this little poem does a much better job of summarizing the strategy (even to a non-believer), as opposed to the objective of spreading freedom.

Georgians for Bush

According to press reports, President Bush's short visit could hardly have been more friendly (if you'll discount the alleged "attack" with a dud grenade). Huge crowds (especially considering Georgia's small size) of 100,000+ people waited hours in the rain to see and hear him (and Laura, of course). A group of traditional Georgian dancers got Mr. Bush so enthused that he jumped onto the stage and did a little gyrating of his own. Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili said, “You stood with us during our revolution and you stand with us today. On behalf of my nation I would like to say, `Thank you,’”. And we're told that he also persuaded President Bush to make an unplanned stop in a local Georgian restaurant — after which President Bush, obviously pleased, highly recommended a stop there by any visitor.

Publius Pundit has a nice writeup, with some photos. An excerpt:

Arms are raised in the air, everyone cheers and chants, and Freedom Square turns into a sea of Georgian and American flags.

At first glance you may think you’re witnessing the Republican National Convention all over again. But if you saw President Bush speak just now, you would know that he was winning the hearts and ears of a crowd of jubilant Georgians. When recalling all of the October pre-election polls reflecting how much the world hates the United States and especially President Bush, it would seem odd to the outside observer that over 100,000 people would wait in the heat, for hours on end, before impatiently breaking through police barriers just to hear Bush speak. In reality, however, it isn’t so far-fetched. Due to American support for freedom and democracy in the region during and after the fall of the Soviet Union, countries from the Baltics to the South Caucasus hold the United States in the highest of regards.

Quote for the day

Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

   George Orwell