Best of the Web Today - May 14, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
something is deeply wrong with Americans who oppose the president of the United States more strongly than they oppose the enemies of the United States.
Al Qaeda Hackers
Authorities insist it's nothing more than an eerie coincidence, but boy, it is eerie. CNN reports that Zacarias Moussaoui, who is awaiting trial on charges related to his role as the "20th hijacker," once used a purloined e-mail account belonging to Nick Berg, the American civilian murdered in Iraq by al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. On a bus in Oklahoma a few years ago, he "allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer," according to his father, Michael Berg:
At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.
"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," [Michael] Berg said.
Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.
The sources said the man who used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui, now awaiting trial on federal charges that could bring a death sentence.
Adding to the high weirdness of the whole Berg saga are the strange and confused political views of the elder Berg, who is apparently some sort of far-left antiwar activist. (Reports such as one in the Philadelphia Daily News suggest he and his son did not see eye to eye on Iraq's liberation.) Agence France-Presse reports on Michael Berg's sickening moral inversion:
"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld," Michael Berg, visibly upset, told ABC television.
"The al-Qaeda people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this," he said.
Distraught people sometimes say crazy things, but this quote, from another CNN report, bespeaks a genuine and astonishing ignorance:
Berg's father said Thursday his son was someone who simply wanted to "help people, not to hurt anyone." "He was not disrespectful of danger, he just didn't recognize danger in people," Michael Berg said. "The al Qaeda that killed my son didn't know what they were doing. They killed their best friend. Nick was there to build Iraq, not to tear it down."
Does Michael Berg really not understand that al Qaeda is in Iraq to tear it down, not to build it?
Zarqawi: Not Our Enemy?
"Many U.S. officials believe that Zarqawi is in many ways more dangerous than Osama bin Laden," ABC News reports. With bin Laden on the run and Zarqawi actively terrorizing Americans in Iraq, that seems a reasonable surmise. Among those officials is Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a liberal Republican, who tells the network: "The capture of Zarqawi should now have a higher priority than even that of Osama bin Laden."
To judge by a handful of e-mails we've received in the past 24 hours, not everyone agrees. Yesterday we criticized the Boston Globe for characterizing Nick Berg's murder as merely a part of a "cycle of violence." We wrote:
This is maddeningly idiotic. What the Globe calls a "cycle of violence" is actually a war--a war that America joined only after the enemy murdered 3,000 people on our soil. "On the ground in Iraq," the Globe opines, "the primary goal must now be the most difficult: to reverse, somehow, the deadly cycle of violence." It doesn't seem to dawn on the Globies that the way to do that is to win the war.
Reader Jackson Williams was among those responding:
A patently false statement. It is untrue to say that the "enemy" that we now find ourselves at war with--the now-ousted regime of Saddam Hussein?--"murdered 3,000 people on our soil." His regime did no such thing and you darn well know it.
The refusal to acknowledge that our enemies in Iraq--including the remnants of Saddam's regime--are in fact enemies is bad enough. But what can one say about a mentality that leads people to think that even al Qaeda terrorists are not our enemies if they are operating in Iraq?
What Would We Do Without Analysts?
"Al-Qaida Beheading Makes Prison Abuses Pale in Comparison, Analysts Say"--headline, Knight Ridder Tribune News Service, May 14
What Would We Do Without Ney?
"Difference Between Prison Abuse and Beheading Citizen, According to Ney"--headline, New Philadelphia (Ohio) Times Reporter, May 13
The Hate-America Left
New on the Web: AmericasDumbestSoldiers.com. No, it's not a backhanded tribute to Abu Ghraib's pinheaded prisoner-abusing perverts but a gallery of American servicemen who've died in action. The site's whois entry suggests it is based in Mexico City, but it doesn't tell us who's behind it.
Meanwhile, DemocraticUnderground.com--not an official Democratic Party site--has an online poll asking who killed Nick Berg. As we write, "People working for Al Qaeda" gets only 33 votes, or 27%. "People working for U.S. Government" gets 91 votes, or 73%.
These people can be dismissed as fringe sickos, but the same can't be said of the antagonist in a story told by British journalist Toby Harnden in The Spectator:
The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool [in Baghdad], fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.
She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now--there was no choice about this--going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I'll spare you most of the details because you know the script--no WMD, no "imminent threat" (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.
But then she came to the point. Not only had she 'known' the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the "evil" George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. "Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out." Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.
She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry's poll numbers. "Well, that's different--that would be Americans," she said, haltingly. "I guess I'm a bit of an isolationist." That's one way of putting it.
In our opinion, some politicians--most notably Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd--have conveyed similar sentiments in their inflammatory remarks about the Iraq war. We realize this is a controversial position, and some favor a more benign interpretation of their comments. And of course it's entirely legitimate to disagree with the current administration's strategy in the war on terror. But something is deeply wrong with Americans who oppose the president of the United States more strongly than they oppose the enemies of the United States.
One Down, One to Go
London's Daily Mirror has fired editor Piers Morgan for publishing phony photos that purportedly showed British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners. But Christine Chinlund, the Boston Globe's ombudsman, says no such thing will happen at her paper, which published a photo depicting pornographic images falsely described as depicting soldiers gang-raping Iraqi women:
Some readers called for the firing of various Globe editors. "We are not firing anybody," responds [editor Martin] Baron. What will happen, he says, is conversations with staffers about following proper procedure.
Who'd have thought a sensationalistic British tabloid would do a better job holding itself accountable than a respectable New York Times-owned broadsheet?
Kerry: This Time, I'll Back the Troops
The executive branch is seeking an additional $25 billion appropriation to support the military's antiterror efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Sen. John Kerry--who voted "no" on the last bill to fund the troops--says he'll support it, the New York Post reports. "The situation in Iraq has deteriorated far beyond what the administration anticipated," Kerry says in a statement. "This money is urgently needed and it is completely focused on the needs of our troops."
Let's just hope he doesn't vote against the $25 billion after he votes for it.
Settling for 'Stumpy'
The Boston Globe reports from Hanover, N.H., that Nader backers at Dartmouth College plan not to vote for their man in November:
In their cloth sandals, worn jeans, and "Support Fair Trade" sweatshirts, 15 members of the Dartmouth Greens gathered here Monday night for their weekly discussion of social justice and politics. The conversation veered from the economic abuse of sweatshop laborers to the physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners and whether a protest action of papering the campus with photos of abused Iraqis--with the caption, "Is this the occupation you wanted?"--would exploit the victims further.
While none of the 15 particularly like Kerry--"wavering," "craggy," "passable," and "tree-stumpy" were among their descriptions of him--this intensely antiwar group has almost unanimously decided to forsake Nader, a man they see as an idol, to help Kerry win New Hampshire, a key battleground state.
"There's nothing exciting about him," one of the students, Amber Kelsie, tells the paper. "He's almost as tree-stumpy as Gore is. He feels like he wavers on issues or he won't take an actual stance."
Obviously it's good news for the Democrats if Naderites are anti-Bush enough to vote for Kerry instead. But it seems unlikely that the "anybody but Bush" vote will be sufficient to send Kerry to the White House if he proves unable to generate some enthusiasm from someone, somewhere.
Sex Test for Dem Delegates
"Democratic parties in 15 states and Puerto Rico have set numerical goals for gays and lesbian delegates at the party's national convention this summer," the Associated Press reports. A sidebar lists the states and their goals. Example:
CALIFORNIA: 440 total delegates, including 22 gay men and 22 lesbians.
Do the Democrats really intend to quiz would-be delegates about their sexual orientation? Whatever happened to the right of privacy?
Don't Know Much About History
Reuters, the British-based "news" service, looks more amateurish all the time. An article on the prosecution of the extremist environmental group Greenpeace for "sailor mongering," in connection with a 2002 act of "civil disobedience" in which the group boarded a freighter "that was carrying illegally felled Amazon mahogany to Miami," contains this whopper:
Not once since the Boston Tea Party have U.S. authorities criminally prosecuted a group for political expression.
The Boston Tea Party was held on Dec. 16, 1773--2 1/2 years before the U.S. existed.
NOW Defends Marriage?
From a Fox News article on single-sex schools:
The National Organization for Women . . . said separate classrooms are a dangerous step backwards--reinforcing stereotypes and breeding sexism.
"I think it's very difficult to make separate equal, even if you were to have the same teachers and the same curriculum, you don't have the same lively exchange and debate that you have if you leave out an entire gender," said Kim Gandy, NOW's president.
Isn't Gandy inadvertently making the case for the traditional two-parent family and against single motherhood?
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"Rare Beauties Seen in Camel Pageant"--headline, Arab News (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia), May 14
Not Too Brite--CXLIV
A Catholic priest shot to death the mayor of a town in western Mexico early on Wednesday after the pair got drunk and began punching each other during a religious festival," Reuters reports from Mexico City.
Oddly Enough!
(For an explanation of the "Not Too Brite" series, click here.)
What Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts: Get Car Ready Before Vacation"--headline, WTEV-TV Web site (Jacksonville, Fla.), May 13
Neither the Time nor the Place
"Jane Fonda, who recently came out of her 14-year retirement from acting, says shooting a movie is a lot like sex," the Associated Press reports from Atlanta:
"How to do it just comes right back," she said Thursday at a party for patrons of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.
Is this really the most appropriate analogy for this particular venue? |
