Best of the Web Today - July 22, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Bye-Ku for Dennis Kucinich
He asked of Kerry
Only to let him head the
Department of Peace
(Earlier bye-kus: Al Sharpton, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Carol Moseley Braun, Yasuhiro Nakasone and Bob Graham.)
The Beheading Conundrum?
We're tempted just to file this under "What Would We Do Without Experts?" and knock off early, but somehow it seems to call out for further comment. The CNN.com headline from last night reads "Experts: Beheadings Pervert Legitimate Law." Reader Dimitri Raitzin has this reaction:
This headline says it all to me about the cultural war that is going on in America today. There are those who see beheadings as inherently evil--to them those who commit such heinous acts are evildoers. The only way to deal with such people is to put them either in jail or in the cemetery.
On the other side are the moral relativists. Hmm, beheadings--let's see what the experts have to say. Oh, wow! It's against international law, and religious law too! Well, it must be bad! I'm against that one, too.
Indeed, the article's lead sentence reflects just this absurd evenhandedness: "Muslim captors who behead their hostages call it execution, but many more call it murder." You say tomato, I say tomahto, let's call the whole thing off.
The article does, on balance, come down against beheading the innocent, but really, do we need "experts" to tell us this? By their own actions, Western elites have shown their revulsion at the practice of beheading; as CNN notes: "Although once allowed in France, Britain, other European countries and the state of Utah in the United States, decapitation as a punishment no longer exists in the Western world." In fact, it exists in practice nowhere but in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, though the "option remains a part of the criminal legal code" in Iran, Qatar and Yemen as well.
Mention the death penalty to just about any European, or for that matter to many liberal Americans, and you'll get an earful about how "barbaric" the U.S. is for continuing to practice capital punishment at all, notwithstanding the more humane methods used here and the extensive due-process protections for criminals sentenced to die.
The al Qaeda beheadings have less in common with legitimate executions than with lynchings, politically motivated murders that served both to terrorize the victims' communities and to entertain the perpetrators and their sympathizers. Someone who felt the need to consult "experts" to decide if a lynch mob's actions are really a bad thing would be a moral idiot. Somehow we're supposed to think that similarly seeking "understanding" of the al Qaeda equivalent is a sign of intellectual sophistication.
Wayne al-Newton
Clinton Taylor, a doctoral candidate and campus radio journalist at Stanford, seems to have solved the mystery of the 14 Syrians on Annie Jacobsen's flight (we noted Jacobsen's story Friday). The Federal Air Marshals service had told Jacobsen that the men were "hired as musicians to play at a casino in the desert":
New York Times reporter Joe Sharkey confirmed some of the details of the story [Wednesday] but admitted he, too, was unable to identify the band.
Well, I am nominally the "news director" for Stanford University's student radio station, KZSU, and I figured I'd help the Times out. There aren't that many casinos in southern California, so I had my research assistant, Mr. Google, take a look at some. An hour later I was talking to the nice folks at Sycuan Casino & Resort, near San Diego. . . .
"Oh, do you mean Arab music?" inquired Angie, who answered Sycuan's phone. Yes, they had had an Arab act perform on July 1, an artist named Nour Mehana. Terry, Angie's supervisor at Sycuan, confirmed that he was there and that there was probably a backup band brought in, since there's no house band at Sycuan. In fractions of a second, Mr. Google found a website for Sycuan's event promoters, Anthem Artists, whose archive confirms Nour Mehana performed at Sycuan on 7/01/04.
Nour Mehana, according to OrientalTunes.com, "was a reciter of the Holy Koran before he chose to become a singer." According to Taylor, the musician "comes across not as an angry jihadi, but rather more like the Syrian Wayne Newton."
But although Jacobsen's fears appear to have been unwarranted, Taylor is critical of the response of the flight crew and law enforcement:
June 29 was no ordinary day in the skies. That day, Department of Homeland Security officials issued an "unusually specific internal warning," urging customs officials to watch out for Pakistanis with physical signs of rough training in the al Qaeda training camps. The warning specifically mentioned Detroit and Los Angeles's LAX airports, the origin and terminus of [Northwest] flight 327.
That means that our air-traffic system was expecting trouble. But rather than land the plane in Las Vegas or Omaha, it was allowed to continue on to Los Angeles without interruption, as if everything were hunky-dory on board. It certainly wasn't. If this had been the real thing, and the musicians had instead been terrorists, nothing was stopping them from taking control of the plane or assembling a bomb in the restroom. Given the information they were working with at the time, almost everyone should have reacted differently than they did.
Concludes Taylor: "Jacobsen's fear was quite natural under these circumstances, and she has done us a service by pointing out some egregious shortfalls in our airline security."
Ayatollah Innahola
"A military strike on Iranian atomic facilities would delay but not destroy the development of any nuclear weapons program, diplomats and analysts said," Reuters reports:
"Military action is not the answer," said a senior international diplomat involved in the investigation of Iran's nuclear plans.
"It would only push them underground, like in Iraq," said the diplomat, who declined to be named.
Are we alone in finding the idea of Ayatollah Ali Khameini in a Saddam-like spider hole tremendously appealing?
Suspicious Sandy
When then-Kerry adviser Sandy Berger visited the National Archives last October to review national-security documents for the 9/11 Commission, "the same Archives employees who were solicitously retrieving documents for him were also watching their important visitor with a suspicious eye," reports the Washington Post:
After Berger's previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some disappeared, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case. . . .
The government source said the Archives employees were deferential toward Berger, given his prominence, but were worried when he returned to view more documents on Oct. 2. They devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully. They knew he was interested in all the versions of the millennium review, some of which bore handwritten notes from Clinton-era officials who had reviewed them. At one point an Archives employee even handed Berger a coded draft and asked whether he was sure he had seen it.
At the end of the day, Archives employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files, this source said.
Although Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, denies this account of what happened in September, Berger "has acknowledged taking . . . different drafts of a January 2000 'after-action review' of how the government responded to terrorism plots at the turn of the millennium."
New York's Daily News, meanwhile, reports that "Berger repeatedly persuaded monitors assigned to watch him review top secret documents to break the rules and leave him alone, sources said yesterday":
Berger, accused of smuggling some of the secret files out of the National Archives, got the monitors out of the high-security room by telling them he had to make sensitive phone calls. . . . Berger also took "lots of bathroom breaks" that apparently aroused some suspicion, the source added.
But Blogger Gregory Djerejian notes that the Kerry campaign and the New York Times are trying to spin this as a Bush scandal. Today's Times piece quotes a Kerry campaign statement: "The timing of this leak suggests that the White House is more concerned about protecting its political hide than hearing what the commission has to say about strengthening our security."
The post-Watergate dictum was that a coverup can be worse than the crime. Now Democrats are using the absence of a coverup as an excuse to divert attention from a possible crime.
Redemption for Kos
The American Press Institute has a list of bloggers who've been accredited to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston next month. One name caught our attention: Markos Moulitsas Zuniga from the Daily Kos.
As we noted in April, this is the same Zuniga whose reaction to the lynching of four American contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, was: "Screw them." At the time, the Kerry campaign had this response: "In light of the unacceptable statement about the death of Americans made by Daily Kos, we have removed the link to this blog from our website."
A Tie With Whom?
"Poll Finds Kerry Locked in Tie in Race"--headline, Associated Press, July 21
Mr. No-No
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is talking tough on Sudan, where a conflict involving regime-backed "marauding militias" known as Janjaweed has "killed at least 30,000 people, forced villagers into concentration-camp type compounds and left 2 million people without enough food and medicine."
Quoth Kofi: "It is a 'no-no' for [the Khartoum regime] to induct Janjaweed into the police force."
The Bright Side of Communist Tyranny
Agence France-Presse has a rather silly article about tourism to North Korea, probably the most repressive state in the world. "Those who do venture to the Stalinist state are under close scrutiny and must be accompanied by a driver and two guides, and wandering around without them or their permission is strictly forbidden. Even a casual stroll in one's hotel is impossible."
But that doesn't mean they aren't impressed:
Ian Mote, a 31-year-old banker who went to the country for a [metric] football tournament, enjoyed the rare interaction with local people.
"The trip changed my pre-conceptions about Koreans. They were really friendly and keen to talk to us. They wanted to learn about what we thought about them.
"We went to a country that hardly anyone has been. It gave us a chance to see a very different way of life they live in.
"It was nice to see no Starbucks there, no advertising, no branding. . . . They were completely shut out and were self-reliant, and I have certain respect of their determination of their ideology."
Well, it may be a nice place to visit, but note that even Mote doesn't say he'd want to live there.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports on a rare visit to Capitol Hill by Pyongyang's U.N. ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, which was "sanctioned by the Bush administration":
Yesterday, . . . Pak and [aide] Han [Song Ryol] spent hours on Capitol Hill, attending an all-day seminar in the Dirksen Senate Office Building with congressional officials, South Korean parliamentarians and Korean experts and holding a news conference. He said he would not speculate on why the administration finally permitted him to visit Washington and said Pyongyang--which has broadcast pro-Kerry statements--has no favorite in the presidential race. "It's entirely a U.S. internal affair," he told reporters.
What does it tell us about Kerry's prospects that even the North Koreans are distancing themselves from him?
Ronstadt Stays in Vegas?
After this week's kerfuffle, the Associated Press reports, "one of the partners buying the Aladdin hotel-casino says singer Linda Ronstadt would be welcomed back to the property when he takes over." Concertgoers raised a ruckus when Ronstadt praised anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore, but Planet Hollywood CEO Robert Earl wants not only to bring back Ronstadt but also "to take Moore up on his offer to join Ronstadt and sing 'America the Beautiful.' " Boy, talk about punitive liberalism!
Think about it, though--would you ever consider a trip to Las Vegas if there was a chance you'd have to hear Michael Moore sing? This certainly lends credibility to the theory that Moore is an agent provocateur working on behalf of the Atlantic City Regional Tourism Council.
Homer Nods
The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina is Rep. Richard Burr. In yesterday's item (since corrected) we had mixed him up with Ron Burr, a former publisher of The American Spectator.
His Fee Is $50
"Grant Will Help Teach Kids About Money"--headline, WTOP radio Web site (Washington), July 21
Quick, Form a Committee Before We All Drown!
"Indian PM Sets Up Panel to Combat Raging Floods, Toll Nears 240"--headline, Agence France-Presse, July 21
News for the Bipolar
"Study Backs Antidepressant-Suicide Link"--headline, Associated Press, July 21
"No Increased Suicide Risk Seen With SSRIs: Study"--headline, Agence France-Presse, July 21
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He Belongs in One, All Right
"Chess Great Fischer Seeks Asylum"--headline, Associated Press, July 21
How Do the Other 4 Do It?
"Survey: 1 in 5 Germans Drink to Get Drunk"--headline, Associated Press, July 21
An Army of Two
"Bigger Breasts for Free: Join the Army"--headline, Reuters, July 22
If It Ain't Broke, Don't Affix It
Fifty-nine-year-old Joyce Stewart of Martinsburg, W.Va., had a little mishap when she "used 3M's liquid bandage to treat a crack on her heel," the Associated Press reports. She didn't notice that some of the stuff had dripped onto the ball of her foot. "Within minutes her foot was glued to the floor. It took three paramedics over an hour and a bottle of baby oil to free her."
Stewart complains that 3M failed to warn her:
Though the package states that the product runs easily and sets quickly while warning against getting the product on furniture, counters or clothes, it says nothing about warning against the gluing of body parts.
"They should have that on there," Stewart said.
Which suggests a variation on an old joke:
"Mommy, mommy, why do you keep going in circles?"
"Shut up or I'll glue my other foot to the floor!"
Weapons of Mass Absorption
Everyone agrees that black holes suck, but "after 29 years of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was wrong" about them, the Associated Press reports from Dublin. "The renowned Cambridge University physicist formally presented a paper Wednesday arguing that black holes, the celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of objects swallowed up and eventually could spit bits out 'in a mangled form.' "
Can we conclude that HAWKING LIED!!!!, or is this just an intelligence failure on a cosmic scale? One thing we're sure of: The U.N. should have sent more inspectors to black holes. |
