Reading a Seymour Hersh article is a bit like panning for gold: You have to dig through a lot of dirt to find any nuggets of possible value. Relying almost exclusively on vaguely described anonymous sources, he makes sweeping claims about top-secret operations that can only be known to a small number of people inside the government with access to the relevant “sensitive compartmented information” and “special access programs,” and they aren’t allowed to comment one way or the other. And his “reporting” is always colored by a sixties-leftist, anti-American, conspiratorial worldview.
To get my full read on Hersh’s latest red alert–this time about supposed U.S. plans to go to war with Iran–click here.
projected winner: hamas
After a balanced film report on the election, a German TV reporter commented that Obama must be pleased that his policy of withdrawing troops was showing signs of success.
Halper has his eye on the ball.
The big thing is that these Iraqi elections are about domestic issues. That in contrast to the Saddam years, and indeed to politics across the Arab world, where there are no issues, where there is simply the regime doing what it thinks best.
New in Iraq, new in the Arab world, are politicians running the govt who must respond to the needs of the people because of opposition politicians anxious to pounce on any failures and replace them. For the first time Arabs have a govt that they can force to serve them, rather than the other way around.
If that catches on the Middle East will be transformed.
If Obama were president, and the idea of the Surge was brought to him, he would have rejected it and gone with the Iraqi Study Group’s surrender strategy — the consequence being, there probably would not have been free elections today.
Sorry, was that divisive?
Although I should not be aghast at the continuing travesty of the NY Times’s coverage of this achievement by George Bush and the USA, I am still speechless at today’s reportage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/world/middleeast/01withdraw.html?hp
“The outlook of Iraqi citizens has changed as well. They are more confident that their problems are their own, and that the Americans cannot fix them and often have only made matters worse.
“’The American military presence brought nothing to our streets but destruction and chaos,’ said Omar al-Dulaimi, 57, a government employee who lives near the Um Al Khoura mosque, one of the largest Sunni places of worship in the capital. ‘We had nothing from them but tension and confusion. It’s much better for us and for them if they stay in their bases now.’”
God bless the US Marine Corps, Army, Navy and Air Force who fought and died to make these free elections happen. And God bless the Iraqi security forces and citizens who are risking their lives for the second time in order to participate in free elections. And God bless George W. Bush.
I’m still shaking my head at vb’s story (#2) several hours later. Even the New York Times doesn’t come up with stuff like that.
#6, CFB:
Amen.
Blessed are the liberators, for they shall live in liberty.
Freedom, like peace, is indivisible.
Just as our Union, as it grew more integrated, could not
“endure permanently half slave and half free”, so cannot the globalizing, rapidly shrinking world of today.
The movement is in one direction.
“Since 1974, the absolute number of democracies in the world
has nearly tripled, while the percentage of the world’s states that are
democratic has doubled. “
The world of Islam is no exception. More than half
of the world’s Muslims are living under democratic regimes: the
Muslim populations of just Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India
and Turkey comprise about 800 mln.
The Arab Middle east, however, was lagging.
Welcome to the club, Iraq!
#8, correction
Middle East