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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (71273)	2/4/2003 12:47:15 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Iraqi diplomat thanks the New York Times! from Best of the Web on opinionjournal.com: Mohammad Aldouri, Iraq's ambassador to the U.N., appeared on "Fox News Sunday" with Tony Snow yesterday, and "he thanked the New York Times for defending Iraq," blogger Will Veers reports. We went to the transcript (not available on FoxNews.com, but we found it on Factiva) and our TiVo to find out what Aldouri said, and it turns out he was referring to an op-ed piece, which we noted Friday, in which one Stephen Pelletiere pronounces Saddam Hussein innocent of human-rights violations and urges America to stop--this is an actual quote--"picking on" the poor Iraqi dictator. Says Aldouri: This is a part of the American and the British propaganda against my country. . . . Your president, President Bush, mentioned that several times that Iraq, the president of Iraq, poisoned its own people. Pelletiere in the article in New York Times last Friday, and I'm thankful for the New York Times for that, saying that it is not true, Iraq is not poisoning its own people. The Friday piece for which Aldouri is thanking the Times claimed, despite ample documentation from Human Rights Watch and others, that Saddam Hussein did not commit genocide against the Kurds in northern Iraq. It's almost as if a humble Holocaust denier had won public praise from Adolf Eichmann himself. Howell Raines must be beaming with pride.

To: LindyBill who wrote (71273)	2/4/2003 12:19:56 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

Your point about Palestinian anger at Israeli settlements before 1967, Bill, assumes that motivations don't change. A great deal has changed in the years since so that Klein's notion that a deal in which the Israelis give up settlements and the Palestinians give up the right of return, something that would not have been considered in 67, is the outline of a negotiated agreement. One also has to deal with security issues on the Israeli side and conditions for a viable state on the Palestinian side. As for comparisons with Algeria, no use of some previous historical moment to capture portions of a present moment will cover everything. What it covers for me is Judt's point (he was well aware of precisely the issues you raise) which is that the terms of a deal were on the table and apparent to all the relevant actors but they turned it down, continued killing one another for some length of time and finally, after far too many now unncecessary deaths, the same deal became the terms of settlement. Judt's point is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict carries that same scenario. Very hard to quarrel with that conclusion. But, if you can, terrific. I find it dispiriting to say the least.