Month: July 2004

Not Yet, At Any Rate, We Think

After reports came out yesterday that captured US Marine Wassef Hassoun had been beheaded by the Islamofascist terrorists holding him, the group taking responsibility for his kidnapping now says those reports were false:

An Islamic extremist group denied in a statement posted on its Web site Sunday that it had killed a U.S. Marine taken hostage last month. The Ansar al-Sunna Army issued the statement in response to reports by the Lebanese Foreign Ministry that the group killed Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, an American of Lebanese descent. …
“The media have published, quoting the Lebanese foreign ministry, that the Ansar al-Sunna Army has killed the American hostage, from Lebanese origin, who was kidnapped in Iraq (news – web sites),” the statement said.
“In order to maintain our credibility in all issues we declare that this statement that was attributed to us has no basis of truth,” the statement said. It added that any statement in its name “that any statement that is not issued through our site doesn’t represent us.”

All of this points out the difficulty in reporting on these shadow groups, of course; the media had no choice but to report the earlier story, but until someone can confirm statements like these, we should be careful to consider them preliminary.
On our Independence Day, we can pray that this latest message is correct and that Hassoun is still alive. However, even if he is, he likely will still be slaughtered by the butchers holding him, unless the Iraqis can find their miserable hiding place and free him first.

Al Qaeda targets nursery schools

In yet another reminder of the true nature of our enemy, the Telegraph news reports that the Spanish Al Qaeda cell planned to target an Anglo-Spanish nursery school. Apparently, this was the work of the same terrorist cell that Spanish voters surrendered to after the Madrid train bombings.

Militants behead Marine

The militants who captured Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun have posted news of his murder by beheading, according to the AP.
The group’s leader Abu Abdullah al-Hassan bin Mahmoud declared, “We would like to inform you that the Marine of Lebanese origin, Hassoun, has been slaughtered. You are going to see the video with your very eyes soon.”
The group also claims it hold another “infidel hostage” but offers no details except that we will soon see a video of “the beheading of rotten heads.”

Democrats Walk The Fantasy Plank With Platform

The Democrats have put together their platform for the 2004 election and have submitted it to the full platform committee for final approval next weekend in Miami. The Washington Post’s Dan Balz was granted a look at the proposal, and in his report notes that the Democrats seem prepared to continue their assault on the truth right up to November 2nd:

The 16,000-word document skirts some potentially divisive issues within the party, particularly with regard to Iraq. A strong majority of Democrats believes it was a mistake for the president to launch the war in Iraq, but the platform says only, “People of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq.”
With polls showing many Democrats want to bring U.S. forces home as quickly as possible, the draft platform declares, “We cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.”
While the platform calls for increasing the size of the U.S. military by 40,000 troops, it takes no position on whether more U.S. forces are needed in Iraq. Instead, the document says the United States must find support from other countries. “We must truly internationalize both politically and military; we cannot depend on a U.S.-only presence” in Iraq.

This breathtakingly stupid and erroneous statement fully represents the extent to which the fantasists have overtaken the Democrats in this election cycle. The Democrats apparently still refuse to recognize the contributions of the British, who have 10,000 troops still in Iraq; the Poles, who continue to maintain thousands of troops, some of whom found more evidence of WMD earlier this week; the Italians, who have suffered several battle casualties; and the South Koreans, which agreed to send 3,000 more troops for support roles despite the brutal beheading of one of its citizens.
As usual, the Me Party continues its America-First policies and trivializes our allies as “fraudulent,” and then turns around and claims that they can conduct diplomacy better than the Bush administration. It’s hard to see how that could possibly happen when they fail to recognize our friends and their sacrifice on behalf of the free world. Their official statement of policy is an offense to the dozens of nations who stand shoulder to shoulder with the US against Islamofascism, on the ground in Iraq in this phase of the war.

There’s No One Here To Take Your Call Right Now

Kathryn Jean Lopez at the Corner links to an article on the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute that seems to be an object lesson in pointlessness. The Friday Fax reports that “radical feminists” in the pro-abortion group Catholics for Free Choice prayed to the Virgin Mary for legalized abortion:

Many participants at the meeting now taking place in Puerto Rico, called the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Ad Hoc Committee on Population and Development, were stunned on Monday when “Catholics” for a Free Choice (CFFC) and its Latin American counterpart, “Catolicas” por el Derecho a Decidir, released a prayer card of the Virgin Mary, with the words “The love of God and of Mary of Guadalupe is greater..For women’s lives, safe and legal abortion” superimposed over the image of the Virgin Mary. The back of the card says, “Dear Mary of Guadalupe, we thank you because your love is greater, because you listen to us without judging, because you know our heart and you respect the intimacy of our decisions.”
One observer told the Friday Fax “how insulting it is that CFFC, a rich American pro-abortion group, would attempt to use the Latin American people’s strong devotion to the Virgin Mary to impose their abortion agenda here.”
At the same press conference, CFFC released polling data that purports to show that Latin American Catholics overwhelmingly accept a broad reproductive rights agenda.

Using polling data underscores the hypocrisy of the CFFC, and truly demonstrates the sort of apostasy in which their members engaged. For those who aren’t Catholic, what “pray to Mary” means to Catholics is the equivalent of asking your friends or family to pray for you, as we believe that in Christ, there is no death. What the CFFC did was to ask Mary to pray to God to provide legalized abortion, and then put that prayer on a card associating the Virgin Mother with baby-killing. On top of that, to justify themselves, they use polls to argue for the legitimacy of their policy on abortion, as if Jesus founded a democracy.
Let’s take this from the top. Mary of Nazareth was a poor, young, single pregnant girl in a society where that status didn’t just bring scorn, it could bring the death penalty for adultery; stoning women who engaged in sex outside of marriage (as would have been the natural conclusion of the elders in this case) was not uncommon, as later Scripture shows. Instead of running away or aborting the child, she gave birth to the Messiah, in our faith tradition.
How, exactly, does the CFFC (which professes belief in the above) expect Mary to somehow be sympathetic to women aborting their babies for the sake of convenience and/or economics? They don’t answer that, except to say that Mary will “respect the intimacy of our decisions,” a meaningless statement that could cover any range of human activity. They instead point to the (supposed) popularity of abortion among Latin American Catholics.
However, nothing in the Bible, in either Testament, shows God, Jesus, or anyone taking polls to determine laws and rules. God did not say unto Moses, “Go forth from this place and question 5% of the tribes of Israel to determine the level of support for honoring thy mother and thy father.” Jesus didn’t hold a plebescite in order to decide whether to eject the moneychangers from the temple. The Holy Spirit did not descend upon the Apostles at Pentecost in order to send them out into the world to conduct focus-group testing. Core matters of faith do not depend on popularity, and the Catholic Church has been solidly consistent for 2,000 years on the question of abortion: it considers abortion to be the equivalent of murder. If the CFFC thinks that the Catholic Church so badly misrepresents the experience of the Virgin Mary, why aren’t they looking for a church that agrees with their viewpoint instead?
Catholicism, it should be remembered, is a voluntary association, just like any other religion. No one is forcing the people in the CFFC to remain Catholic, and for that matter, no one is forcing them out, either. But it continues to strike me as extremely odd that people who value abortion more than their church remain Catholic at all. Faith calls for sacrifice, and if the CFFC is so preoccupied with convenience and popularity, it seems that they have lost the message a long time ago.

Post’s Pincus Spinning Like A Top

Walter Pincus keeps spinning the news for the Washington Post any way possible to make sure that the liberal meme stays afloat, and today provides a clear example of his efforts. Under the headline “Chemicals Not Found in Iraq Warheads,” readers find out this in the third paragraph that Pincus negates his own lede:

Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but U.S. and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them.
The Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad said in a statement yesterday that the 122-milimeter rocket rounds, which initially showed traces of sarin, “were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals.” The statement came just hours after two senior Polish defense officials told reporters in Warsaw, based on preliminary reports, that the rocket rounds contained deadly sarin and that actions by the Polish unit in Iraq kept them from being purchased by militants fighting coalition forces.
Yesterday’s coalition release also said that two other 122-milimeter rounds, found by the Poles on June 16 with help from an Iraqi informer, tested positive for small quantities of sarin but were “so deteriorated” that they would have had “limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces.”

So after leading his article with the lack of chemical weapons in 16 shells, it takes Pincus and the Post two more paragraphs to inform readers that two shells did contain WMD. Although the chemicals had deteriorated, their discovery again demonstrates that Saddam did not destroy his chemical weapons stocks after the first Gulf War.
In fact, most of the rest of the article goes into detail about the fears of the Coalition that terrorists will either find more chemical weapons or the scientists that produced them, although without the proper facilities for manufacture, their expertise may just wind up being theoretical. The article spends so much time on this that it begs the question of why Pincus led with the unremarkable information that the Poles found sixteen conventional rockets instead, and why the Post’s editors wrote such a misleading headline.

So Much For Sadr’s Political Power

Moqtada al-Sadr tossed the dice again yesterday, apparently eschewing his previously-stated desire to enter Iraqi politics and calling again for armed resistance to the “occupation.” The Washington Post reports that Sadr and his organization appears less coherent than ever:

Moqtada Sadr, the rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric, insisted Friday that the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq had not ended with the recent handover of limited political powers to an interim government, and called on his followers to continue resisting the large presence of foreign troops in the country.
“I want to draw your attention to the fact there was no transferring of authority,” said Jabir Khafaji, a top Sadr lieutenant, reading from a letter from the cleric during Friday prayers at a mosque in the southern city of Kufa where Sadr commonly preaches. “What has changed is the name only.”
Khafaji also demanded that the new Iraqi government defer to the Shiite religious leadership based in the neighboring holy city of Najaf. He asserted that the Mahdi Army, Sadr’s black-clad militia group that was recently decimated in two months of battle with U.S. forces, was “the army of Iraq.”

The Iraqis better hope that the Mahdi Army doesn’t become the new armed service of Iraq, for two reasons. One, the leadership of the Mahdi insist on strict Shari’a law and have executed people without trial on several occasions — which is one of the reasons the CPA felt it necessary to take on the Mahdis last March. The second, as reporter Scott Wilson alludes, is their sheer incompetence. The US had very effectively rolled up a lot of their organization, including several key lieutenants of Sadr, and the Mahdis lost big in every engagement they initiated with the Americans. The only reason they survived is that they hid in the mosques, which Americans were understandably reluctant to attack. However, if the Mahdis used that tactic against the Iranians or the Syrians, they would soon find the holy shrines to be nothing but a distant memory, along with the Mahdis themselves.
Iraqis want to move on and get their country back on their feet. The last thing they need right now is renewed fighting on the streets of Najaf and Baghdad. Sadr only offers a return to the past, while Iraqis look to the future. If Sadr wanted to turn his organization into a political party, he must be getting advice from the neo-Stalinist folks at International ANSWER, and I expect him now to be just as successful.

Every Little Bit Helps

Coalition forces discovered a car-bomb manufacturing center and captured a number of people connected to the operation during two raids in south Baghdad, the BBC reports:

A large cache of weapons and cash was also found at the unidentified site, a US military statement said. Bomb-making equipment, weapons and ammunition were found in raids at other locations – and 51 people have been taken in for questioning. …
The US said the Baghdad raid uncovered vehicles loaded with explosives for use as car bombs. … On another raid, US soldiers found “partially assembled improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, eight RPG [rocket propelled grenade] rounds, approximately 50 pounds of C-4 explosives, TNT, five blasting caps, one detonator and other various munitions”.

Coalition forces think they captured most of the key people involved in this ring, including the financier, the bombmaker, and the triggerman. No one thinks that this is the only gang building and setting off carbombs in Baghdad, of course, but capturing one is good progress. It also comes coincidentally close to the handover of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government, which suggests that Coalition forces may be getting better intelligence from Iraqi civilians now that they feel in charge of their own nation again.

Kerry: The VP Is In The (E-)Mail

I guess if a politician puts people to sleep with the natural force of his personality, he’ll try any gimmick to spice up his campaign. That’s the only explanation that makes sense for John Kerry’s latest folly:

Democrat John Kerry plans to announce his vice presidential running mate in an e-mail to the 1 million subscribers to his campaign Web site. But he didn’t say when …
Typically, a presidential candidate announces a running mate at a carefully crafted campaign event. But Kerry told KSTP, an ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, that his Web site would be the first vehicle.
“The folks who are going to learn first about my choice are going to be the people on JohnKerry.com,” Kerry said. “They’re the people who’ve helped carry this campaign. They’re the folks who’ve been part of our effort across the nation. And they’ll be the first to know what my decision is.”

So let me (quit laughing and) get this straight … In order to make the most momentous decision of his campaign, the one that is widely heralded as the first “presidential” decision of a nominee, the one that candidates expect to generate enormous publicity and goodwill —
— he’ll land it like a flaccid catfish in a million inboxes, right along with the penis-enlargement spam? No cameras. No sound bites. No endlessly repeating videos on cable news shows, and no cheering crowds. Just a blip on your Hotmail account, between the porn ads and the Nigerian who wants to give you lots of money for just borrowing your bank account for a few hours.
Oh, Lord, does Karl Rove get around or what?