Best of the Web Today - October 24, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Deleting a Dictator
Bashar al-Assad may become the first dictator to fall from power because U.N. functionaries are incompetent with computers, suggests a report in the Times of London:
The United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged [Friday].
The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.
The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.
The original Microsoft Word document is here, and MidEastWeb.org has rendered it in HTML form. Here's the key passage, rendered to look like redlined Microsoft Word text (note that this will not appear properly if you're reading this column as a text e-mail):
One witness of Syrian origin but resident in Lebanon, who claims to have worked for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, has stated that approximately two weeks after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1559, Maher Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamil Al-Sayyed senior Lebanese and Syrian officials decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri. He claimed that Sayyed a senior Lebanese security official went several times to Syria to plan the crime, meeting once at the Meridian Hotel in Damascus and several times at the Presidential Place and the office of Shawkat a senior Syrian security official. The last meeting was held in the house of Shawkat the same senior Syrian security official approximately seven to 10 days before the assassination and included Mustapha Hamdan another senior Lebanese security official. The witness had close contact with high ranked Syrian officers posted in Lebanon.
According to the Times, "Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor":
But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday--a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended.
Last week we noted an Associated Press report that Secretary-General Kofi Annan had said that "he is determined to keep an upcoming report into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri from fanning tensions between Syria and Lebanon." Thanks to Bill Gates, now we know how far Annan was willing to go to protect the Syrian dictatorship.
One Last Mission
Here's a great story from the Associated Press, dateline Tuskegee, Ala.:
Lt. Col. Herbert Carter is 86 years old and ready for deployment. More than 60 years after his World War II tour with the pioneering black pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, Carter's new mission will be shorter, though no less courageous.
Carter is one of seven aging Tuskegee Airmen traveling this weekend to Balad, Iraq--a city ravaged by roadside bombs and insurgent activity--to inspire a younger generation of airmen who carry on the traditions of the storied 332nd Fighter Group. . . .
Current members of the 332nd, redesignated as the 332nd Air Expeditionary Group in 1998, include men and women of different backgrounds and races.
But the black retirees said they are thrilled that a group still fights within their 332nd lineage, regardless of skin color.
"I'm proud they're in a unit carrying our name," said Charles McGee, 82, a retired colonel whose 409 combat missions is an Air Force record. "That's very meaningful from the heritage point of view."
The original Tuskegee Airmen were recruited in an Army Air Corps program created to train blacks to fly and maintain combat aircraft during World War II--though some of the retired Airmen say it was really designed to try to prove that blacks were incapable of flying and fighting. . . .
"My status as a Negro bordered on second-class citizenship and the military simply reflected the culture of the time," Carter recalled in a recent interview. "If you were a Negro, you were a Negro in either setting."
Eventually, the black airmen flew escort for bombers. They were credited with shooting down more than 100 enemy aircraft and never losing an American bomber under escort to enemy fighters. In all, 992 pilots were trained in Tuskegee from 1940 to 1946. About 450 deployed overseas and 150 lost their lives in training or combat. . . .
"I think everything should be done to pass their story to future generation of Americans," said Ted Johnson, 80, who graduated from the Advanced Flight School in 1945 and is considered one of the youngest Tuskegee Airmen.
"It was the Tuskegee Airmen who made America come to its senses," he said, "that individuals should be judged on their accomplishments, rather than their ethnicity and color."
That last comment is one of the wisest things we've heard anyone say in a while about race in America. What's so inspiring about the Tuskegee Airmen is that they served their country, and had faith in it, at a time when the country had not yet earned it.
Miers Nomination Death Watch
"The White House has begun making contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers as President Bush's choice to fill a seat on the Supreme Court," the Washington Times reported on Saturday, citing "conservative sources":
"White House senior staff are starting to ask outside people, saying, 'We're not discussing pulling out her nomination, but if we were to, do you have any advice as to how we should do it?' " a conservative Republican with ties to the White House told The Washington Times.
The White House denied making such calls.
"Absolutely not true," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said.
But the conservative political consultant said that he had received such a query from Sara Taylor, director of the Office of White House Political Affairs.
Miss Taylor denied making any such calls.
This is all a bit hard to pin down, a classic Washington he-said-she-said/she-said-she-didn't-say story. But there are lots of other indications of trouble for the nomination:
o The Los Angeles Times reports "many constitutional experts" are "shaking their heads" over a written answer Miers gave the Senate Judiciary Committee: "Miers described her service on the Dallas City Council in 1989. When the city was sued on allegations that it violated the Voting Rights Act, she said, 'the council had to be sure to comply with the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause.' " Even Andrew Sullivan knows there is no such thing.
o The Washington Post reports that under Miers's leadership, the Texas Bar Association "embraced racial and gender set-asides and set numerical targets to achieve that goal." This may raise the hackles of people who believe in equality--though in fairness we should note that this sort of discrimination is so commonplace in the private sector that it may be unfair to infer anything about Miers's personal or legal beliefs here.
o Today's Washington Post reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to subpoena Focus on the Family's James Dobson "to explain the private assurances he says he received from the White House about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers," and specifically her views on abortion and Roe v. Wade. For background, see John Fund's column from last Monday.
o The New York Times reported yesterday that Sen. Sam Brownback, a conservative Kansas Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, is calling on the Bush administration to waive executive privilege and release documents from Miers's tenure at the White House. On Friday Charles Krauthammer suggested that a dispute over such documents would be the perfect "exit strategy"--i.e., pretext to withdraw the nomination.
On the Oct. 7 episode of PBS's "The Journal Editorial Report," this columnist went "out on a limb" and predicted Miers would not be confirmed. Seventeen days later, the limb feels stronger than ever.
The Road Less Graveled
Several readers wrote us to note a curious locution New York's other senator used yesterday. Here's how the Associated Press reported Chuck Schumer's† comment:
"The hearings will be make or break for Harriet Miers in a way they haven't been for any other nominee," Schumer said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "She'll have to do very well there. She has a tough road to hoe."
At first we weren't going to mention this, since we figured it might have been a transcription error by the AP or NBC. But it turns out this isn't the first time Schumer has used this expression, and he has used it in writing:
o "[William] Pryor has been nominated to the Fifth Circuit [actually the 11th]--already one of the most conservative courts in the country. And he may be more conservative than the most conservative judges already serving on this imbalanced [sic] court. Mr. Pryor has a tough road to hoe here."--press release, June 11, 2003
o "There's a lot in your record that troubles me. And I think you have got a rough road to hoe, at least on this side of the aisle."--addressing Janice Rogers Brown, a nominee for the D.C. Circuit, apparently in 2003, in a clip aired on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," April 28, 2005
o "The tough thing for them is that the Republican primary is pretty far over to the right, just as the Democratic primary is further over to the left than the average voter in each party. That's how it works. The more active people tend to vote. And they have never, at a presidential level nominated, or in a very long time, people who are moderate, people who have the views that I mentioned before. So I think it's a rough road to hoe for any moderate."--on George Pataki and Rudy Giulian's presidential prospects, "News Forum," WNBC-TV, Nov. 14, 2004
How does one "hoe" a road? We thought about asking Alaska's former senator Mike Gravel, but his name rhymes with "nouvelle," not "travel." A "road to hoe" is a city slicker's mixed-up farm metaphor, like saying "the horse is out of the garage" or "the chickens have come to the apartment to roost." The actual expression is "row to hoe"--as in a row of crops.
Curiously, at another point in that WNBC interview, Schumer gets the metaphor right--though perhaps this is the transcription error:
There has never, ever been, under [Yasser] Arafat[††], under [Mahmound] Abbas, under any of the others, a real effort to curb the violence among the Palestinian people, and that may well be because most of the Palestinian people, not all, really approve of it. And if that's the case, we still got a long row to hoe.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting little twist on Schumer's compulsive use of the "dagger" metaphor we noted last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. In a November 2003 Washington Times op-ed, the conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein referred to Schumer as "a towering and vocal liberal obelisk." Merriam-Webster's defines obelisk as, among other things, "DAGGER 2b." Definition 2b of dagger is "a character died used as a reference mark or to indicate a death date"--that is, the character that appears three times at the end of this sentence after a completely gratuitous mention of Yasser Arafat†††.
Homer nods: It was Italy's declaration of war on France that prompted FDR to use the "dagger" metaphor in 1940, not Germany's as our Friday item, since corrected, originally said.
† A dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.
†† Arafat, who is in stable condition after dying in a Paris hospital, won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
††† Drop cit.
We're Glad He Landed on His Feet
"Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the president's father, was fired by his think tank this week because he is publishing a book titled 'Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.' "--Washington Post, Oct. 20
"Parker was not likely to face charges because he did not appear to know what happened or where he was, said Bruce Bartlett, chief assistant in the Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney's Office."--Associated Press, Oct. 21
Talk About Your Meager Rations!
"Straw and Rice Meet Katrina Victims"--headline, Scotsman, Oct. 24
Standing Up for Starving Students
"Edwards Takes Anti-Poverty Movement to Dartmouth"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 21
Finally, Noah Faces the Music
"Ark. Animal Rescuers Charged With Cruelty"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 23
'He's, Ah, Probably Pining for the Fjords'
"Dead Parrot in British Quarantine Had Bird Flu"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 21
Break Out the Viagra
"2 Men to Woo 300,000 British Tories"--headline, New York Times, Oct. 21
What Would We Do Without Deputy Speakers?
"Killing, Maiming Not Solution--Deputy Speaker"--headline, the Tide (Nigeria), Oct. 15
Butterfield in Reuterville
From a Reuters dispatch on U.S. crime statistics:
The U.S. prison population continued to grow last year even though reports of violent crime during 2004 were at the lowest level since the government began compiling statistics 32 years ago, according to a government report released in September.
The other night, we realized that our degree of drunkenness was continuing to grow even though the liquor in the bottle was at the lowest level since we opened it. Life is full of paradoxes, isn't it? |
