Thursday, June 19, 2003
Driving to work this morning I heard the host on KDKA bring up the dreaded "quagmire" word for Iraq yet again. I wasn't listening back when we were suffering through the last one, about a week into the three week war. But chances are he used it then. When will the leftists learn? With the increased coverage cable news brings, along with the internet, they can no longer get away with making things up.
As good fortune would have it, Mark Steyn opines on this subject today, nailing Will Day of Care International for an embarrassing slip:
- "This passage rang a bell with a correspondent of mine, Nicholas Hallam, who sent me the following press release from the self-same Care International:
- Sewage treatment has collapsed, resulting in 500,000 tons of raw sewage being discharged into water sources every day.... Electricity, essential for many services and previously enjoyed by the remotest villages, is now generally available for less than 12 hours per day in many parts of Iraq. This has an obvious impact on water quantity and quality, sewage treatment, health facilities, education and overall quality of life....
That was Care International’s assessment of the situation in Iraq on 31 January this year, at least according to Margaret Hassan, the director of the Baghdad office, in her testimony in New York before a bunch of UN bigshots. Mr Day’s Telegraph column of 16 June cheerfully recycles his colleague’s January press release, differing only in the root cause of the problem: now, instead of UN sanctions being to blame, it’s the American administration. Other than that slight modification, however, far from the headline’s claim that ‘Things Are Getting Worse In Iraq’, things seem to be pretty stable. In January, there were 500,000 tons of raw sewage. By June, there were 500,000 tonnes of raw sewage."
OUCH! That'll leave a, um, "mark".
Hitchens on a Rampage
Since breaking with the left in support of the Bush Administration's policy of pre-emption, columnist Christopher Hitchens has been on a tear. Nobody on the left is good, or bad, enough to avoid the wrath of Hitch. (and somewhere, Mother Theresa and Henry Kissinger are smiling)
Now, it's Bob Woodward's turn. In the June edition of the Atlantic Monthly, Hitchens reviews Woodward's "Bush at War". The opening sentence reads:
- "At Simon & Schuster the preferred excuse for most journalistic prose—that it is "the first draft of history"—has long found its supposed apotheosis in the work of Bob Woodward".
And then he gets nasty. Well worth the read.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Guard Chris Thomas has decided to remove his name from the NBA draft and is planning to return for his junior season at Notre Dame. Thomas will be an integral part of the returning nucleus of a sweet-sixteen team that should be a top ten preseason pick. Coupled with the news that running back Julius Jones has been readmitted to the University after failing out last year, it's looking like a good year for ND athletics.
Monday, June 16, 2003
That's the way Michael Ledeen sees it. Those familiar with Mr. Ledeen know that he has been a lone voice in the wilderness these past few months on the situation in Iran. He has meticulously documented the rising tide of anti-government protesters and hasn't been shy about predicting the demise of the theocrats.
There can be no doubt that the changes in Iraq, along with favorable words coming out of the White House are giving a much needed boost to the pro-democracy forces. Regime change in Iran will undoubtedly put tremendous pressure on the remaining terrorist-supporting governments in that region.
About the only chance for the Democrat's presidential hopes is "it's the economy stupid" redux. However, it continues to look like the economy is rebounding.
On a stronger than expected report on manufacturing activity in New York State, stocks rose to their highest level in almost a year.
With their complaints about WMDs going nowhere with the public, the Dems last best hope is fading away.
Things continue to simmer in Iran. The AP is currently reporting that "250 university lecturers and writers in Iran signed a statement calling on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (search) to abandon the idea that he is God's representative on Earth."
A campaign to revoke the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty of the New York Times in 1932 is gaining monentum. The campaign is being spearheaded by members of the international Ukranian community to commemorate the Great Famine of 1932-1933. Pressure is also being applied to the beleaguered Times to give back the award.
An interesting sidelight has emerged as a result of the discussions of Duranty and the Holodomor, as the famine is know to Ukranians. Gareth Jones was a reporter in Moscow at the same time Duranty was regurgitating Stalin's propaganda, only he ignored the pressure that Moscow put on reporters and transmittted the horrors of Stalinist Russia and collectivization. He was ignored by the media and eventually banned from the Soviet Union. Jones died a few years later investigating the Japanese atrocities in Asia. If you have a chance, read up on him.
Mark Steyn celebrates his return from vacation to Iraq and other garden spots in the Middle East with a truly dangerous assignment, a review of "A Living History". He writes:
- "Presumably if you looked hard enough you could find someone somewhere on the planet who's been scouring the bookstores in search of 500 pages of woozy platitudes on foreign dignitaries he's barely heard of. But that demographic would hardly cover the 8 million bucks Simon & Schuster shelled out to Mrs C. Hey, it wouldn't even cover the cost of that five-word description of the prime minister of Canada's wife, for which, by my calculations, her publishers paid Hillary $200."
Let's face it, there are many people in this country with more money than brains (read: NY Times believing liberals) who would treat buying boxes of her book as a campaign contribution. I'm sure they can probably work than into a tax deduction if they donate the books. If you recall, the former Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, ran into a bit of trouble doing this. He essentially published a collection of his speeches, and had potential large donors buy boxes of them in order to get around campaign donation laws.
I'm wondering if there is a way to distinguish these kind of sales?
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
-Teddy Roosevelt (both)
The times they are a-changin'. It would be hard to call yourself a freedom-loving person and not agree that the changes happening in the Middle East are for the better. A student in Baghdad writes that her "university (is) so beautiful after Saddam":
Hence, now I am free to say whatever is on my mind, without fearing anything, and I can also buy all the things I like and choose the man I wish to spend the rest of my life with, and who would hopefully not be affected by Saddam's concepts. Iraq is so beautiful without Saddam, and my university is so beautiful without the party's stupid slogans, which are now replaced with slogans about freedom and democracy.
Not to be outdone, students in Tehran have been protesting for the past six days. These protests have seen an increase in violence in the past few nights, and there have been some reports of gunfire overnight.
Pray for the students and for their chance at change.
