Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said Thursday that if Congress were voting now on its resolution authorizing the president to take military action against Iraq, he would oppose it. . . ."In my adult life, with the exception of Vietnam, this has been the biggest failure of diplomacy we've had," said Harkin. . . .
Harkin, who at the time was in a re-election race against former Rep. Greg Ganske, was one of 29 Senate Democrats who backed the resolution. . . .
Despite efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to limit the damage, the bitter dispute over Iraq has split Europe between countries that support America and those who see it as a global menace.
The division shows Europe's inability to create a united, credible voice in world affairs and threatens the unity of the West and decades of close trans-Atlantic relations, politicians and experts say."If the Americans and the Europeans don't exercise great care in the next few weeks and months we're going to be left with an absolute shambles," said Francois Heilsbourg, an independent defense analyst based in London.
European governments also are worried about the damage the rift is causing to the institutions that have been the foundation of Western unity for decades — NATO, the European alliance with the United States, the United Nations and the European Union. So far, analysts say, nobody is saying how it can be fixed. [...]
If the United States chooses increasingly to go its own way internationally rather than seek Western consensus, trans-Atlantic cooperation, vital to political and economic stability, could be badly damaged, analysts say.
NATO, torn by wrangling over its possible role in a war with Iraq, might never fully recover, analysts say. To have real credibility, members and opponents of a defense alliance must believe it will act if faced with a threat — something that is now in doubt, they say.
Many fear the United Nations also is looking weak with the United States, Britain and other allies determined to act without its approval if necessary.
Disagreement on how to disarm Iraq has torn the EU down the middle, exposing deep divisions over whether it should be primarily a trade bloc or a global power with effective political and military muscle.
"The time has come where we need a confrontation on what are our strategic needs" in Europe, said Ulrike Guerot, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.
MORE:
France and Germany will soon fall out (George Trefgarne, 10/03/2003, Daily Telegraph)
Here is a surprising fact: 100 Germans are losing their jobs every hour. Imagine being Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Like a starlet in a Hollywood disaster movie, he is trapped in a car heading over the cliff.The speedometer just keeps whizzing round as he tries the door and screams for help. He pumps the brake and turns the steering wheel, but to no avail. Last week, the counter hit 4.4 million.
Apart from his own bad driving, who or what can Mr Schroeder blame? His predecessors, the world downturn and the Americans have all come in for criticism. But he may soon find the perfect culprit: the French. For although France and Germany are having a wonderful flirtation over the Iraqi question, they are actually star-crossed lovers.
Their interests are diverging over the economy. Mr Schroeder hardly needs reminding of this. Last month, he was humiliatingly defeated in the lower Saxony and Hesse elections, just three months after winning the federal election. His pronouncements about stopping the Americans invading Iraq were simply embarrassing in the face of the question that was more immediate to many - mass unemployment.
The world economy is on a precipice, but Germany has already fallen over the edge. Germany's crisis is a once-in-a-generation event, such as Britain suffered in the 1970s, and its consequences are far-reaching.
Germany's President, Johannes Rau, gave a warning yesterday that high unemployment could prove a "danger to democracy" if political and business leaders failed to get a grip on the problem crippling the country.
His comments came days after Chancellor Gerhard Schršder allowed an initiative between politicians, unions and business leaders to collapse and vowed to implement reform alone to find work for 4.7 million jobless.Mr Rau appealed for all parties to work together for the changes needed to create more employment.
Although he has previously rejected comparisons between the present situation and that of 1930s Germany, where high unemployment was credited with helping Adolf Hitler come to power, Mr Rau's comment will be interpreted as such a warning.
Some time ago I upset the Prime Minister by suggesting in several articles that his notion of becoming a bridge between the US and the EU is a fantasy, and that Britain would some day, and soon, have to choose between America and a Europe dominated by a Franco-German axis. [...]That was before Iraq, in the balmy days when the Prime Minister and the French agreed to the Nice Treaty, which the French knew was the beginning of the end for Nato, and Blair honestly believed marked the creation of a new European supplement to that pact, one that had kept the peace in Europe for more than 50 years. A united and militarily potent Europe would march hand in hand with America into the future, Europe carrying its own weight, and Great Britain positioned as the balancing force between France and Germany, and as a bridge between a united Europe and the United States. Better still, more and more decisions would be moved to the United Nations, where Britain’s veto on the Security Council confers on it a role more commensurate with its one-time rank as a world power than with its current more humble standing in the international ranking of nations.
In short, in this joined-up view of the world, Britain did not have to choose between its special relationship with America and placing itself at the heart of Europe: it could have both its ice-cream and apple pie, and its brie and chablis.
Now we have Iraq, and Jacques Chirac’s alliance with a Germany wallowing in anti-Americanism. Chirac’s stirring up of “the European street” to derail Anglo-American efforts to strip weapons of mass destruction from one of the cruelest regimes the world has seen since Hitler and then Stalin came crashing down surprised no one.
Well, hardly anyone. The Secretary of State, Colin Powell, took France at its word when Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin promised that, if America would sign up to Resolution 1441, no further resolutions would be required to underwrite the use of force to disarm Saddam. If you want to know why doveish General Powell has grown talons, imagine the session in the White House at which he had to explain to President Bush, who had reluctantly agreed to allow his Secretary of State to enmesh America in the UN process, that the French had reneged, and that the US was now hopelessly sinking into the muck of Security Council processes.
Bush’s reported promise that he would never forget nor forgive France’s perfidy, following on his frosty reaction to Gerhard Schroeder’s anti-American blatherings, brings us back to Tony Blair. What will happen to Britain’s position vis-a-vis Europe and the United States in a post-Saddam world? It seems clear that the bridge that the Prime Minister was so painfully constructing between Europe and America has collapsed. To add to the Prime Minister’s post-Saddam woes, US Administration officials have begun to re-examine America’s historic support for European integration. The thinkers who influence the Bush Administration’s foreign policy no longer see the need to support unification of Europe so that it can be a more formidable ally against the now-gone Soviet Union.
Samizdata.net has posted a letter from The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran on the status of woman in Iran and Islam. I don't think I have read anything as recklessly brave since the death of the USSR. Here's a taste:
Yes, during this hundred year period, only in the years of the rule of the Pahlavi kings has it been that Iranian women were able to possess unprecedented progressive rights in an Islamic country. These rights that mainly due to the backwards religious beliefs of the Iran of the times and the fear of the women from the religionists was mainly implemented from top-down at the request of a great many progressive and educated women, began with the unprecedented order of the "unveiling" by the late Reza Shah. An unprecedented order that for many of the women at the advent of the Constitutionalist era and their descendants meant the arrival of the nullification of "sexual slavery" and prejudice in our country, which led to many interpretations and radical changes and reactions in the years after it, and which continues to stir resistance in the Iran of today following this order, it was on "17th Dey 1314" (January 7, 1936) that suddenly half of the country that was condemned, till then, to covering their entire bodies, masking their faces and staying at home found the opportunity to tend to any education and career. Unprecedented opportunities for the entire region that until 50 years later and with the cancellation of these rights, simultaneous with the fall of the Kingdom of the departed late Mohammad Reza Shah, had continued and which even today do not exist in many countries in the region.
Is it just too cynical for me to suggest that some portion of the peace movement, an ally or two and a certain grey lady are perfectly happy to have the US military remove Saddam while they keep their hands clean?
Foetuses may develop consciousness long before the legal age limit for abortions, one of Britain's leading brain scientists has said.Baroness Greenfield, a professor of neurology at Oxford University and the director of the Royal Institution, said there was evidence to suggest the conscious mind could develop before 24 weeks, the upper age where terminations are permitted.
Although she fell short of calling for changes in the abortion laws, she urged doctors and society to be cautious when assuming unborn babies lacked consciousness. "Is the foetus conscious? The answer is yes, but up to a point," she said.
"Given that we can't prove consciousness or not, we should be very cautious about being too gung ho and assuming something is not conscious. We should err on the side of caution."
Last year, a Daily Telegraph straw poll found many neurologists were concerned that foetuses could feel pain in the womb before 24 weeks after conception.
Many believed foetuses should be given anaesthetics during a late abortion, after 20 weeks. Some also believe pain relief should be given for keyhole surgery in the womb.
The first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations.
He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany.
“You’ve got to reach out to the other person. You’ve got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity,” he said.
The former President’s comments reflect unease among the Bush family and its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold. Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family steeped in multi-lateralist traditions.
France on Saturday reinforced its call for President George W. Bush to attend next week's United Nations vote on war against Iraq, insisting leaders take personal responsibility for a "life or death" decision. [...]"When you decree life or death, it should be done at the highest level of responsibility," a source close to President Jacques Chirac said of a vote on a new resolution expected next Tuesday or soon after.
"Given the importance of the decision, it seems legitimate that it is taken by heads of state and government," the Elysee Palace source said.
Iraq said on Sunday chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix might visit Baghdad on March 17, a deadline proposed by the United States and Britain for Iraq to disarm or face military action.General Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate (NMD), also said Iraq believed it had little hope that it
could avert a U.S.-led invasion no matter what Baghdad did on the disarmament issue.Asked whether Blix would visit soon, Amin told a news conference in Baghdad: ``I don't know really, but he might, he might visit us on the
17th of this month.''
The 19th-century courthouse that houses the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit sits across from a CVS and a Dress Barn on a desultory stretch of Main Street in Richmond, Va. The entrance -- peeling ''Pull'' sign, metal detector, dim lobby -- is not awe-inspiring. But upstairs in the courtrooms, beneath the pendulous chandeliers and the oil portraits of former jurists, a hush prevails. Whether or not the judges are on the bench, people whisper. It is as if they tacitly accept that the atmosphere should continue to be rarefied even as the judicial process becomes increasingly polluted by politics.This 148-year-old building, once the site of the Confederate Treasury, is where you go if you are appealing the decisions of federal judges or juries in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina or South Carolina. It's the last stop before the Supreme Court, which, given how few cases the highest court actually hears, essentially makes it the court of last resort for those seeking justice in this region. Let the plaintiff beware, though; the Fourth Circuit is considered the shrewdest, most aggressively conservative federal appeals court in the nation.
The new federalism defense comes from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson 3d, tipped by Sontag as being on President Bush's Supreme Court short list (and thus almost certain not to be nominated).
Like the "new federalists" whose conservative thinking increasingly influences the legal mainstream, Wilkinson said he believes that the Constitution is more than just the Bill of Rights. He doesn't think that the Bill of Rights has been overemphasized, he is quick to say, but that what he calls "the structural Constitution" has been underemphasized."That body of the document that spells out the relationship between the federal government and the states was neglected for far too long," he said. "The power of Congress was seen as unlimited and that of the states as a virtual nullity." Wilkinson has found it exciting, he said, to be engaged in redressing this imbalance, which sometimes means striking down Congressional acts that seem to usurp state power unconstitutionally.
But he notes, because he is of judicious temperament, that judicial activism is "heady wine" and that restraint is still the greater virtue. Everything in moderation.
That's about it for buried treasure, though. It's hard to know whether Sontag or the editors are to blame (though I'd plump for the editors), but this story is a crazy quilt of false starts and marooned vignettes. The Times says that Judge Wilkinson is fighting with another conservative, Judge Luttig, to lead the Court. There's a brief bio of Judge Wilkinson and then, well, a tangent into a story about Judge Karen Williams, who is apparently a white trash sex traiter. Though Judge Luttig's bio was dropped, we do get the details of the sexual harassment claim Judge William's inexplicably tossed out. The plaintiff objects that when she was hired, her male coworkers didn't stop "harassing" female mannequins, a claim that Judge Luttig -- that conservative idealogue -- takes seriously (on the grounds that men who do not act like gentlemen around a lady must be up to something). All the other common tropes of liberal writing about conservative judges are present. Decisions in which a woman loses are anti-woman; the poor, pitiful murder suspect was railroaded; the plain language of a statute is a flimsy excuse for a conservative decision, etc., etc., etc. To wrap it all up, the two cases Sontag follows are still undecided. Too bad this story had to be rushed into print because, well, um, just because.
There is one little payoff for conservatives. As Sontag notes: "Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously set out to overhaul the federal judiciary ideologically. Confronting courts that were thwarting his New Deal projects, he strove to create liberal ones that would grant the government more power to regulate the economy." Ronald Reagan did the same from the right. Now, despite Bill Clinton's failure to turn back the clock -- Clinton, not really a liberal, didn't care about his nominees' judicial philosophy (I swear I'm not making this up) -- George W. Bush is again engaging in ideological overhauling. As they filibuster the Estrada nomination, the Democrats might want to consider that turn-about is fair play.
In an apparent attempt to secure an involvement in post-war plans for Iraq, Saudi Arabia has conceded to a range of US demands for facilities in the kingdom in the run up to any US attack, according to western and Gulf diplomatic sources.Western diplomatic sources said the US had secured the use of the crucial air command and control centre at the Prince Sultan airbase near Riyadh to co-ordinate the air campaign that will be mostly led out of neighbouring Qatar.
Bush focused special attention on Russian President Vladimir Putin; after speaking by phone last Thursday, the two leaders agreed to "continue to communicate." A White House official told TIME that Putin assured Bush he wouldn't cast a veto. "There were rumors that the Russians were going to veto," says the official. "The President had a conversation and got a different impression--not that Putin was with him, but that he's not going to veto."
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday the United States was "in striking distance'' of winning enough votes to back the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq but he would not be surprised if France blocked it with a veto.
Yesterday, OJ -- seriously misoverestimating me -- gave me the keys to the blog. Today, I awoke to this Doonesbury and this Zippy the Pinhead. I feel a little like the British soldiers in Paul's post below: it's just too early for abject surrender. Let's at least make it look good.
If Mr. de Villepin has a vision, it is to revive the greatness of France — a romantic view he articulated in his book, "The Hundred Days," the first published volume of a biography of Napoleon that tells the story of the emperor's return from exile, his triumphant march across France and his final defeat at Waterloo.Describing Napoleon's philosophy as "Victory or death, but glory whatever happens," Mr. de Villepin added, "There is not a day that goes by without me feeling the imperious need to remember so as not to yield in the face of indifference, laughter or gibes" in order to "advance further in the name of a French ambition." . . .
Indeed, members of Mr. Chirac's political circle who believe in the sanctity of the trans-Atlantic alliance complain bitterly that party operatives, the Defense Ministry and the armed forces have been pushed aside and that no one but the president and Mr. de Villepin are defining French foreign policy.
On the other hand, it is heartening that Mr. de Villepin feels himself the object of laughter and gibes. Ridicule may be America's most effective weapon.
TERRIFIED Iraqi soldiers have crossed the Kuwait border and tried to surrender to British forces - because they thought the war had already started.The motley band of a dozen troops waved the white flag as British paratroopers tested their weapons during a routine exercise.
The stunned Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade were forced to tell the Iraqis they were not firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country telling them it was too early to surrender.
But what kind of men are so sheep-like that they obey soldiers from another country's army? Why not insist upon defecting to Kuwait?
Two months after the White House began rolling out its latest budget, the full dimensions of President Bush's new tax and spending plan are finally coming into view, and they are even more sweeping than originally thought.By linking expenditures forced on the nation by the 2001 terrorist attacks with a blizzard of other measures, Bush has produced a proposal that, if enacted, would result in a governmental about-face as far-reaching as those of Ronald Reagan or Lyndon B. Johnson.
Coupled with his already-approved 2001 cuts, the president's new tax package would make Bush the biggest tax cutter in at least two decades and possibly half a century. He would top even Reagan.
His proposed defense buildup would be bigger in real terms than Johnson's Vietnam buildup, and that's not counting the cost of a war with Iraq and its aftermath.
His plan to revamp Medicaid and other programs Washington runs jointly with the states would be, in the words of a former Nixon administration budget official, "one of the biggest pullbacks in federal responsibility we've ever seen." [...]
Part of the reason that analysts have been so slow to come to grips with the dimensions of the administration's new budget is that Bush and his key aides have chosen not to trumpet the boldness of many of their proposals, especially some of the most controversial. Officials acknowledge as much in comments about their plan.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry on Saturday accused the Bush administration of being unwilling to compromise with key allies to win their support for a potential war with Iraq.But the Democratic presidential candidate from Massachusetts stopped short of saying he had changed his position since last fall when he supported a resolution giving Bush broad authority to order an attack if diplomacy failed.
"What I do regret is that this administration has not lived up to the standards of diplomacy set forth in the resolution," Kerry told the Des Moines Sunday Register. "The president's diplomacy has been completely lacking." [...]
"The greatest position of strength is by exercising the best judgement in the pursuit of diplomacy," he said, "not in some trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted, but in a genuine coalition."
UPDATE ON "THE BOUGHT":
As dry as their their desert camp ... Aussies bring larrikin spirit: Tom Allard in Doha reports on the calm before the storm as experienced by our latest warriors. (Sydney Morning Herald, March 10 2003)
The officer patrolling the living quarters is the "spankmaster". The social club is the Qatar Mountaineering Club. Australian humour, along with its troops, has been transported to Camp As Sayliyah, the massive US military base outside Qatar's capital Doha.The site of central command and the main media centre should war break out against Iraq, the base also acts as a transit centre for US, British and Australian forces in between exercises at various locations around the Middle East.
Thousands of troops are housed in tents inside massive climate-controlled warehouses that rise out of the relentlessly flat Qatari desert, most of them built in the last six months and indistinguishable from those that contain sensitive communications and headquarters for the top brass.
Spread over more than 100 hectares, it's a logistical marvel of sorts. Most of the facilities were constructed in the past six months as the US prepared for an Iraqi invasion. Accommodation is spartan but, in its way, homely. Australians and Americans bunk together, 200 to a tent.
About 20 per cent of the Australian contingent are women and fraternisation between the women and men, of course, is strictly prohibited. The old joke about keeping sexual frustrations "well in hand" gets a workout.
Personnel are restricted from leaving the base - the local government doesn't want troops tramping around the souqs or taking in the sea air along the Doha waterfront - and there's also an issue of force protection. Qatar may practise a more moderate brand of Islam and be a strong Western ally but terrorist attacks are an enduring concern.
The food is good and there's plenty of fresh fruit. There's a bar but, at $US3 ($5) for a can of beer, it's an occasional pleasure. Movies, a gym and pool are other diversions but down time usually involves corresponding with family, using the gym or pool, keeping up with news back in Australia or jogging around the base. There is, as Liz, an Australian Navy leading seaman, puts it: "Not much to do".
"We do bugger all, mate," was how another Australian soldier described his down time. "We've got Foxtel so we can watch the cricket and the footy. We give the Poms plenty of stick over their sporting success."
The good-natured fire is returned. The Australians, with their yellow-tinged desert uniforms with brown and purple splotches, have been dubbed the "bruised bananas".
Hundreds of Zimbabwe's notorious youth militia, nicknamed the "green bombers", are fleeing to South Africa because they say they too are being beaten and starved, and are tired of "killing for nothing".This week The Sunday Independent interviewed 14 green bombers aged from 15 to 28, giving the first insight into the terror organisation.
One youth said he fled Zimbabwe after being forced to take part in the murder of his uncle, a supporter of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Another said he was involved in the murder of an MDC party chairperson and claimed that within hours of that death, Jonathan Moyo, the Zanu-PF minister of information, visited the area, followed by President Robert Mugabe. A large consignment of food was moved in while green bombers exhorted villagers to chant Zanu-PF slogans.Yet another said he fled to South Africa after being instructed to murder his father, an MDC supporter.
Hundreds of youths have fled to South Africa, according to human rights organisations, churches and law offices.
The stories of the youths interviewed - who come from different areas of Zimbabwe and who did not previously know each other - provide chilling details of the green bombers, their training and methods.
They come from the hundreds of youth militia training camps which have sprung up in Zimbabwe, many at secondary schools where pupils are forced to take part in activities or risk death. Most of those interviewed fled in December and January, some swimming the Limpopo and risking crocodiles to get to South Africa.
MORE:
-BUY IT: The Mission by Dana Priest
-Dana Priest | USIP Specialist (United States Institute of Peace)
-BOOK SITE: The Mission (Norton)
-Q&A with Dana Priest (Washington Post)
-THREE PART SERIES: Kosovo Land Threat May Have Won War (Dana Priest, September 19, 1999, Washington Post)
-ARTICLE: U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations; 'Stress and Duress' Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas Facilities (Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, 26 December 2002, Washington Post)
-ARTICLE: Iran's Emerging Nuclear Plant Poses Test for U.S. (Dana Priest, July 29, 2002, Washington Post)
-AUDIO INTERVIEW: with Dana Priest (Diane Rehm Show, February 24, 2003)
-DISCUSSION: A New Tape: Arab television network al-Jazeera broadcast a taped message today of what is believed to be the voice of Osama bin Laden. Gwen Ifill discusses the tape with a Washington Post reporter and the former senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council in the Clinton Administration. (Online Newshour, 2/11/03)
-REVIEW: of The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military By Dana Priest (John T. Finn, SF Chrionicle)
-REVIEW: of The Mission (Max Boot, Washington Post)
-REVIEW: of The Mission (Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs)
Here in Britain it is a pity that Stalin's most devoted admirer, Christopher Hill, the Marxist historian and former master of Balliol college, Oxford, should have died nine days earlier. For he would surely have given us a second epitaph to rival his ringing words on Stalin's death in 1953: "He was a very great and penetrating thinker. Humanity not only in Russia but in all countries will always be deeply in his debt."Only this week it has emerged that Stalin might have had some reason to return Dr Hill's gratitude. For the historian Anthony Glees of Brunel University has unearthed some interesting material about Hill's wartime service in charge of the Russian desk in the Foreign Office.
Hill, it seems, had not declared his membership of the Communist party when being recruited. Did the FO think to ask? Please, Hill was a Balliol man - and had been recommended by another former master of Balliol.
While in this key post Hill used his formidable energies to the full. He urged the government to sack all White Russian emigres working in British schools and universities and replace them with Soviet-approved staff. He set up a Committee for Russian Studies including other Communists, notably the Soviet agent Peter Smollett (alias Smolka), to make it easier for Soviet citizens to come to Britain and to exchange intelligence with the USSR. Meanwhile Smollett at the Ministry of Information was busy persuading British publishers not to print George Orwell's Animal Farm. And in face of all the evidence to the contrary, the Foreign Office remained strangely convinced that Stalin's intentions towards eastern Europe were strictly benign.
I would scarcely dignify Hill by the name of mole, that charming and resourceful mammal. After all, his activities were scarcely subterranean. Anyone who had read a line of his would know which way his political proclivities lay. Similarly, anyone who had dipped into the pre-war art criticism of Anthony Blunt would get a strong whiff of vulgar Marxism. But then, from my brief experience, vetting officers do not tend to be very literary types (I was cleared by a man named Carruthers with a walrus moustache).
Still, even if all this had been known when Hill popped off at the ripe age of 91, I doubt that it would have altered the dignified and elegiac tone of his obituaries. After all, we do know most of what Blunt, Burgess, Maclean and Philby got up to. This has not inhibited the BBC from commissioning a new drama called Cambridge Spies, which a BBC apparatchik sought to puff by saying that: "This is the first time they can be seen as heroic."
On the contrary, from the moment Blunt was unmasked he was treated with the most exquisite sympathy. His former pupils at the Courtauld Institute wrote to the newspapers standing by him and pooh-poohing the notion that a little light spying might outweigh Blunt's magisterial catalogue raisonne of Poussin. And the editor of The Times had him to lunch at Printing House Square - truite aux amandes they had, I seem to remember. And why not? It had, after all, been thought quite proper that Blunt should carry on as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures for years after they knew he was a Soviet agent.
Blunt's claim that "I did not betray my conscience" and that helping the Russians was the only way to fight fascism was treated with undeserved respect. Oddly enough, both Blunt and Hill were afflicted by Bell's palsy when threatened with exposure, suggesting that their equanimity was not quite as untroubled as they pretended.
No such indulgence would have been extended if Blunt had turned out to be a Nazi agent. Similarly, Hill would not have had a hope of being elected master of Balliol if he had recently resigned from the National Front (he only packed in his party card when Khrushchev sent the tanks into Hungary). Yet surely someone who could stomach Stalin's purges, his terror famines and his subjugation of half a continent was no more suited to guide young minds than a recently convicted paedophile.
This double standard remains troubling. The most obvious explanation for not treating Stalin's horrific crimes with anything like the same intense loathing as Hitler's is that we never fought a war against the Russians. All the same, the eagerness of the West to minimise, excuse and even forget the gulag has had pernicious effects right up to the fall of communism and beyond.
Canada's political leaders have failed to remedy the "No. 1 crisis" facing medicare -- a major shortage of doctors and nurses -- says the head of the country's medical profession.The warning has come from Dr. Dana Hanson, president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), which challenged federal and provincial governments last fall to come up with a plan to rescue medicare within 100 days.
That deadline expired yesterday. Although the CMA said the Feb. 5 first ministers' accord and the recent federal budget provide a good start, they are limited by lack of action on the shortage of health-care providers.
"There just aren't enough hands on deck," said Hanson, adding that the problem will get worse as baby boomers who provide medical care retire.
The federal-provincial accord focuses on improving home care, expanding public coverage for a patient's "catastrophic" drug costs, reforming primary care, and buying more diagnostic equipment such as magnetic resonance imaging machines (MRIs).
But the doctors say such changes are pointless if there's no one to provide patient care.
This morning, shortly after he got up, President Bush considered how to get away from "pettiness and paltriness of mind". What did his spiritual guide advise? "Ask God to keep the eyes of your spirit open to the Risen Christ, and it will be impossible for drudgery to damp you." Thus fortified, Bush resumed hostilities against Iraq.
That the president is a devout, born-'again leader of a crusading administration is well known. An article in Newsweek goes into much more detail about his religious practices, evoking the scene "ahead of the dawn", when "even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone". Bush's chosen text, Newsweek discloses, is My Utmost for his Highest, a book of devotional readings by Oswald Chambers, an evangelical bible teacher who died in 1917. It provides a biblical text, along with Chambers' commentary, for every day of the year.
Assuming Newsweek is correct, we can all of us, each day, accompany Bush on his spiritual journey. Tomorrow, for example, he is due to contemplate a passage headed Undaunted Radiance, in which Chambers reminds the sinner that "the experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God..."
The calendar format allows us to look back at key moments in this conflict and identify the spiritual text which might have informed the president's day. On January 20, when he announced that he was "sick and tired of games and deception", Bush would have begun with a pre-dawn reflection on Isaiah's response to God's call, "Here am I; send me". On February 20, the day Bush agreed, with Blair, on a "final ultimatum" he would have considered Cha[mbers]' exhortation to action, "always beware of giving over to mere dreaming once God has spoken". And if, as was reported then, concerted military attack is still fixed for March 14, then that morning Bush will have his mind on higher things: "There is no release in human power at all, but only in the Redemption".
Transcribed by Chambers' wife, Gertrude, after his death from appendicitis, My Utmost for His Highest is less concerned with tips on appropriate conduct, than with the forging of an intimate relationship with God: "If the crisis has come to you on any line, surrender your will to Him absolutely and irrevocably."
Social life in London has become a dangerous business. You are at an apparently relaxed dinner party, and someone suddenly launches into an anti-American diatribe-as often as not, to general
applause. You are having a friendly conversation, when out of the blue there is a crack about the utter impossibility of Dubya or the evil ways of the Washington junta-and the assumption is you'll agree.The occasion for these outbursts is usually, of course, Iraq. But when the subject comes up it is striking how little time is spent talking about Saddam Hussein and what should be done about him. There is a ritual
acknowledgment that he is not a nice man, and then the real denunciations can begin. America is a rogue state; don't let them fool you, it's all about oil (or alternatively all about Dad); George W. Bush is a cowboy, a simpleton, a recovering alcoholic, a madman, a usurper... . But readers of The New Criterion hardly need to be taken through the whole litany.According to Günter Grass, "the president of the United States embodies the danger that faces us all." Grass speaks, alas, for a large slice of European opinion. And if you have read the recent effusions of John Le
Carré ("the United States of America has gone mad") or Harold Pinter, you will know that British calumniators of America can be every bit as shrill as their Continental counterparts.No one who is exposed to current British anti-Americanism as it is exhibited on the BBC, for instance, will want to underestimate it. (The night before writing this I tuned into a BBC program about Iraq and found the narrator happily harking back to the days of American "hysteria about Commies": par for the course.) Still, there is one consolation. For the moment, at least, the disease is probably less virulent and widespread in Britain than it is in France, Germany, or most other parts of the world.
British anti-war sentiment also concentrates much of its fire on a local target-the obvious one, Tony Blair. He is scorned as a poodle and excoriated as a jackal. A tabloid switches to red ink so that it can devote its
front page to portraying him with blood on his hands. "Obscene," if it still means anything, is the only word for some of the hideous cartoons about him in The Guardian and The Independent.Above all, there is disaffection in his own party. At present, it is fairly muted. Most of his critics still cling to the hope that he can persuade Washington to hold back. But if war comes, open rebellion seems inescapable. [...]
Given the contradictions, it is tempting to draw a distinction between Blair himself and the Blair government-and there are times, indeed, when he seems strangely isolated. But no, he is prime minister, and he can't be absolved from responsibility. His office is where the buck stops and where the big initiatives begin.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat on Saturday described al-Makadme's assassination as a "mafia-style" operation conducted by Israeli security forces. His statement reflected Palestinian leaders' concern that the assassination could aid Hamas spokesmen in mounting a major media campaign against the PA, which is busy attempting find to pave a way back to political negotiations with Israel. "While you sit at the negotiating table with the Zionists, they are massacring us," say Hamas activists, just as the Palestinian Liberation Organization central council and the Palestinian Legislative Council are convening in Ramallah.There is no Hamas representation in either of the two Palestinian national bodies - which are discussing the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as Palestinian prime minister - even though Hamas is the second largest Palestinian movement (and some say that it already has more followers in the Gaza Strip than Arafat's Fatah party). Indeed, the political positions of the new Palestinian prime minister directly contradict those of Hamas.
Abu Mazen helped forge the Oslo agreements, which Hamas considered one of the most treacherous acts in the history of the Palestinian nation. He is also one of the few Palestinian senior leaders who doesn't hesitate to publicly voice his opposition to the use of violence in the intifada. In negotiations held between Palestinian organizations in Cairo over the last few weeks, Abu Mazen, representing Fatah, argued vociferously with Hamas delegation representative, Haled Mashal, regarding the Egyptian proposalt to halt terror attacks.
Hamas could interpret Abu Mazen's appointment as an open provocation. As of now, with the assassination of al-Makadme, it's almost certain that Hamas leaders will go back to hinting that PA security forces are cooperating with Israeli security forces in an effort to eliminate Hamas altogether.
Wrapping up a Saturday night of laughs on a somber note, President Bush toasted American armed forces surrounding Iraq and declared them ready for war if needed.''Because they serve, our freedom will be secure and our peace will be safe,'' he told the annual Gridiron Club dinner of journalists and their high-powered guests.
With 250,000 troops poised to disarm Saddam Hussein if ordered to action, Bush said, ''They are prepared if necessary to remove a gathering danger.''
His remarks were a contrast to an evening of songs and satirical skits by journalists who lampooned Republicans and Democrats alike.
Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), a wealthy trial lawyer who hopes to oust Bush from the White House in next year's election, poked fun at his own background in giving the Democratic ''response.''
''President Bush says frivolous lawsuits have never helped anyone,'' he said. ''Yeah, tell that to my new house in Georgetown.''
Bush's closing remarks underscored a feeling among Gridiron members that current topics do not easily lend themselves to levity.
"Holy, Holy/Are You Lord God Almighty," a Christian rock band sings, as the crowd sways, palms in the air. The music stops, and a preacher with a microphone speaks. "God, you are bigger than any addiction! You are bigger than any crack cocaine, you are bigger than any beer, than any pornography!"It is Friday night at Healing Place Church, and Tonja Myles is presiding over one of the most controversial church services in America. It is a meeting of a "Christ centered" addiction-treatment program, led by the woman who has become the face of the Bush administration's campaign to send tax dollars to faith-based social service providers. Ms. Myles was President Bush's special guest at the State of the Union address in January, when he asked Congress for $600 million over three years to finance vouchers for addiction programs, including religious ones.
Faith-based social services are the latest missile the Bush administration has fired at the wall between church and state. Earlier this year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to allow tax dollars to be used to build churches, as long as part of the building is used for social services. I decided to head to Baton Rouge to see Ms. Myles's program firsthand. For airplane reading, I brought Thomas Jefferson's writings on religion, including his famous reply to the Danbury Baptist Association, which introduced the now-classic formulation of a "wall of separation" between church and state. [...]
Backers of faith-based initiatives say that rules against state support for religion are a recent invention of activist judges. But when the Supreme Court handed down a landmark church-state case in 1947, it was careful to ground its decision in the words of our third president.
Jefferson was hardly hostile to religion. In his first Inaugural Address, he called God "an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter." But when the Danbury Baptist Association, a Connecticut religious group, asked him to declare a national fast day, he refused, citing his conviction that "religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God," and his view of the First Amendment as "building a wall of separation between church and state."
Jefferson saw freedom of conscience as paramount. "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful," he wrote in "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom." He also feared that if the churches were united with government, the result would be tyranny. The power of organized religion, Jefferson once wrote, "has been severely felt by mankind, and has filled the history of ten or twelve centuries with too many atrocities not to merit a proscription from meddling with government." [...]
Supporters of faith-based initiatives accuse opponents of being anti-religion. But it is the Bush administration that denigrates religion by presenting it as simply another "option," no different from secular choices like Alcoholics Anonymous or Weight Watchers. Jefferson insisted on the need for a wall between church and state not because he failed to appreciate religion, but because he understood its power all too well.
By contrast, here's George Washington's first Inaugural Address--it too is extra-constitutional, but he at least presided over the Constitutional Convention:
[I]t would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence.
As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards. This is an almost universal conviction of religious leaders, with the most notable exception of a few spokesmen of the Southern Baptist Convention who are greatly influenced by their commitment to Israel based on eschatological, or final days, theology.For a war to be just, it must meet several clearly defined criteria.
The war can be waged only as a last resort, with all nonviolent options exhausted. In the case of Iraq, it is obvious that clear alternatives to war exist. [...]
The attackers must have legitimate authority sanctioned by the society they profess to represent. The unanimous vote of approval in the Security Council to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction can still be honored, but our announced goals are now to achieve regime change and to establish a Pax Americana in the region, perhaps occupying the ethnically divided country for as long as a decade. For these objectives, we do not have international authority. [...]
The peace it establishes must be a clear improvement over what exists. Although there are visions of peace and democracy in Iraq, it is quite possible that the aftermath of a military invasion will destabilize the region and prompt terrorists to further jeopardize our security at home.
George W. Bush is the President of the United States of America and has the authority of his nation to pursue the war. The United Nations, as is being proved this week, has no authority, temporal or moral.
Saddam Hussein's regime is one of the two or three worst in the world today: anything will be an improvement, including a period of instability and the breakup of the country.
That democracy is problematic is proven by the inexplicable fact that this flaming idiot is a former President of the United States. That this is a great nation is amply proven by the fact that we survived that presidency.
The case for war has been incoherent due to overlapping reasons conservatives want to get Saddam.The president wants to avenge his father, and please his base by changing the historical ellipsis on the Persian Gulf war to a period. Donald Rumsfeld wants to exorcise the post-Vietnam focus on American imperfections and limitations. Dick Cheney wants to establish America's primacy as the sole superpower. Richard Perle wants to liberate Iraq and remove a mortal threat to Israel. After Desert Storm, Paul Wolfowitz posited that containment is a relic, and that America must aggressively pre-empt nuclear threats.
And in 1997, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Fox News, and other conservatives, published a "statement of principles," signed by Jeb Bush and future Bush officials - Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Elliott Abrams. Rejecting 41's realpolitik and shaping what would become 43's pre-emption strategy, they exhorted a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity," with America extending its domain by challenging "regimes hostile to our interests and values."
Saddam would be the squealing guinea pig proving America could impose its will on the world.
With W., conservatives got a Bush who wanted to be Reagan. With 9/11, they found a new tragedy to breathe life into their old dreams.
Which of these things does she oppose:
(1) Punishing Saddam for trying to assassinate a U.S. president?(2) Ending the Gulf War?
(3) Exorcising whatever few ghosts of Vietnam remain?
(4) America as the world's sole Superpower
(5) Liberating Iraq?
(6) Removing a mortal threat to Israel?
(7) Driving a wooden stake into containment?
(8) Pre-empting nuclear threats?
(9) Moral clarity?
(10) Challenging "regimes hostile to our interests and values"?
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE -- A new conventional bomb whose blast releases shock waves that can be felt miles away is scheduled to be tested at a range here, possibly within a week, officials said Saturday.The 21,000-pound bomb is known as a MOAB, or "massive ordnance air burst."
A bomb known as a "daisy cutter," the 15,000-pound BLU-82, is currently billed as the world's most powerful non-nuclear explosive.
A golf magazine speculates, using sources, that Sandra Day O'Connor will be Augusta National's first female member.The club will announce this, Golfweek says, the day before next month's Masters. And if true, that means the Supreme Court justice could walk through the club gates wearing her robe, directly past the Imperial Wizard wearing his.
It's the perfect ending to a Mel Brooks movie. And the perfect conclusion to this saga of the South.
Hootie Johnson and Augusta already were losing a defensible privacy-issue argument. Hootie is to blame for that, but so are the inherent images of rich white men smoking cigars on a Georgia plantation.
Then came the end game, when an ally joined Augusta National's cause last week and slipped a green straitjacket on Hootie.
And to think. No one thought the Ku Klux Klan had power anymore.
SADDAM Hussein and his family are to be given 72 hours on Tuesday to accept an offer of exile, while 50 of Iraq's top military brass will be offered an amnesty in return for full co-operation with the United Nations in a secret plan to be tabled at its New York headquarters.The highly sensitive proposal was tabled by Pakistan during a closed-door meeting of the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council on Friday and was brokered by Saudi Arabia, the Vatican and moderate Arab states. Failure by Saddam to agree to the plan would clear the way for war.
If the proposal, understood to be in the form of a short paragraph, becomes part of a second resolution and is adopted by the Security Council, the UN would oversee the establishment of a post-Saddam government and the UN, not the US, would take stewardship of Iraq's oilfields.
The Iraqi generals and top ranking officers would have to co-operate fully with UN inspectors to oversee the total elimination of any weapons of mass destruction.
Pope John Paul II has dispatched his emissaries to meet all the key parties during the past two weeks. His special envoy and per manent observer at the UN, Archbishop Renato Rafaele Martino, has been discussing the proposal with all the Security Council members.
MORE:
Saddam's Thai gem spree hints at getaway plan (Jon Swain, March 9, 2003, The Sunday Times)
SADDAM HUSSEIN has sent his personal jeweller to Thailand on a secret mission to buy millions of dollars worth of diamonds, prompting speculation that he is preparing to flee or send his family into hiding, writes Jon Swain.Sources with knowledge of the trip revealed that the jeweller travelled from Baghdad to Bangkok via Jordan. They said he bought the gems in the Thai capital in a prearranged deal. "He purchased millions of dollars worth," said one.
This was the jeweller's second recent visit to Bangkok. Three months ago the sources said that Saddam's son Uday had sent him to buy a diamond ring from an American dealer for $750,000. [...]
In a defiant address last week Saddam said he would never desert Iraq or its people in the event of war. He has not left the country since the invasion of Kuwait more than 12 years ago. In an interview with American television last month, he said: "We will die here. We will die in this country and we will maintain our honour - the honour that is required - in front of our people."
The purchase of diamonds suggests he may now be having second thoughts, at least for his family. Saddam may have opted to convert part of his wealth into diamonds because they are easier to hide and transport than banknotes.
Tamara, who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Adriana, who hails from Valley Stream, discovered through sheer chance just days after they turned 20 that they are twin sisters who were separated at birth. And for three years, they have been attending college on Long Island just a few miles from each other."I feel like I have known her my whole life," Tamara said Monday before a half-dozen TV cameras and reporters from local and national media who had descended on Hofstra University to hear the twins' amazing story.
It begins back in November. A friend of Adriana's ended up at Tamara's 20th-birthday celebration and talked and talked about how much Tamara looked like this friend of his. This friend told her how this girl she resembled so much was born in Mexico, as Tamara knew she had been, and also had celebrated a birthday recently.
"I was curious," Tamara said. That led to an e-mail communication between the two students, and it was then that Adriana e-mailed her picture to Tamara. "I was shocked. She has my face," Tamara said.
Henry Heimlich's name is known across the globe. Every time he travels, the 83-year-old is greeted by someone with a tale to tell about how the Heimlich Manoeuvre saved their choking mother, father or child.He has books filled with grateful letters from people who have saved their loved ones.
Since the technique was introduced in 1974 it has saved more than 100,000 US lives, including those of Cher, former President Ronald Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Carrie Fisher and Jack Lemmon.
But despite being the inventor of one of the most significant medical techniques, Dr Heimlich told BBC News Online that he has only been called upon once to carry it out himself - and that was just three years ago.
"I was in this club restaurant eating when I heard someone calling Dr Heimlich. I turned around and saw a man choking so I did the Heimlich Manoeuvre and got it out and then went on and had my lunch."
