On The Third Hand

UN's 'shameful silence' over the evils of Saddam

During his years at the United Nations, monitoring sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf war, critics called Michael Soussan a baby killer. One said the oil-for-food programme administered by the UN amounted to "overseeing genocide".

To Mr Soussan's dismay, the most vocal critics worked alongside him at the UN. The genocide charge was levelled by an assistant secretary general in charge of humanitarian work in Iraq.

His colleagues blamed the Security Council - especially the United States and Britain - for the suffering of Iraqis, ignoring evidence that Saddam was stealing food from his own people's mouths.

They could hardly ignore the wickedness of Saddam's regime. Foreign UN staff could sense the terror in Iraqis they met, and saw for themselves the gilded excesses of the Ba'athist elite.

But somehow that wickedness was taken as a given, then promptly smothered in a warm soup of moral relativism.

"We have a notion of sovereignty at the UN that doesn't distinguish between governments that deserve sovereignty and those that do not. And that really skews our moral compass," Mr Soussan told The Telegraph.

Indeed. Recommended reading.

Scrap metal could be link to WMD

Twenty engines from banned Iraqi missiles were found in a Jordanian scrap yard along with other equipment that could be used for weapons of mass destruction, a U.N. official said, raising new security questions about Iraq’s scrap metal sales since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Acting chief United Nations inspector Demetrius Perricos revealed the discoveries to the U.N. Security Council in a closed-door briefing Wednesday. A text of his briefing was obtained by The Associated Press.

The U.N. team that found the 20 engines was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrap yard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check in Turkey, which has also received scrap metal from Iraq.

Perricos suggested that the interim Iraqi government, which will assume sovereignty when the U.S. and British occupation of the country ends on June 30, may want to reconsider policies for exporting scrap metal that apparently began in mid-2003. The sales are regulated by the U.S.-led coalition.

“The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks ... thereby also rendering the task of the disarmament of Iraq and its eventual confirmation, more difficult,” Perricos said.

...

In its quarterly report to the council on Monday, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which Perricos heads, said a number of sites in Iraq known to have contained equipment and material that could be used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been cleaned out or destroyed.

So the sites were known to have all this stuff but there was no danger of Iraq producing WMDs? Or what?

My present front page has been suffering from the IE6 peekaboo bug. I've set up a different design (totally different) in test, on my writings site. If anyone using IE6, on any system (XP, Win2000, ME, 98... whatever) could go to this link, click around a bit on permalinks and popups, and let me know in that test post or e-mail to 3rdhand at this site (site-essential.com) if anything blows up, disappears or otherwise acts weird, I'd greatly appreciate it.

You are also welcome to harass me about the colors, design, etc.

FBI Warns of Eco-Terrorism Threat

The FBI warned law enforcement agencies of the potential for criminal activity in response to a call for action in support of a convicted eco-terrorist, according to the weekly bulletin issued by the agency and obtained by Fox News.

"Supporters of anarchist and convicted arsonist Jeff Luers (search) have designated Saturday, June 12, 2004 an 'International Day of Action and Solidarity with Jeff 'Free' Luers,' alternatively entitled 'J12,'" the FBI said in the bulletin.

"J12 events are planned in Eugene, Oregon; Olympia, Washington; San Francisco and Modesto, California; Lawrence, Kansas; Morgantown, West Virginia; Worcester, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; and Lake Worth, Florida."

It's too bad I don't live closer to Lake Worth. I'd go hunting.

State Dept.: Terror Report Incorrect

The State Department (search) acknowledged Thursday it was wrong in reporting terrorism declined worldwide last year.

Instead, both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements by senior administration officials claiming success were based "on the facts as we had them at the time. The facts that we had were wrong," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The April report said attacks had declined last year to 190, down from 198 in 2002 and 346 in 2001. The 2003 figure would have been the lowest level in 34 years and a 45 percent drop since 2001, Bush's first year as president. The department is now working to determine the correct figures.

I really can't understand how they could get it that wrong as a simple mistake.

A Scowl From The Den........

Two different angles by the same Reuters reporter about the latest closed-door meeting over Iran's continued intransigence against giving all the truth to the IAEA about their nuclear arms program show just how badly the Iranians are hustling to cover up their very dirty tracks. Regardless of how hard they try, little bits of more and more information are discovered, putting the lie to their protestations of innocence.

We all know they are lying; now it's only a matter of how much !!

Via Iran va Jahan

Rant.. Let's put it this way. If you think you are a liberal, and think Bush is a Nazi, you should go read someone who is a liberal. If you are a conservative who believes "liberals" are the root of all evil, you should go find out what a real liberal sounds like. And if you are one of my kind, who find the extremes of both sides equally annoying, read it because it's the best rant I've seen in a month of Sundays.

My thanks to Dean for the link.

Nor am I being sarcastic with that title.

A Weblog Festival in Iran.

Link via Jeff Jarvis, who proclaims: "I love that they don't have weblog conferences. They celebrate in a weblog festival."

I think that's why I so like Iranians. They celebrate things that we consider commonplace. In doing so, they remind us that these things are not commonplace. I hope someday to see them celebrate their equivalent of the American 'Independence Day'.

Quote of the day:

Yes, Senator Kerry's statement following President Reagan's death wasn't really congruent with what Kerry had been saying about Reagan prior to that. Perhaps that's because Kerry understands that on the occasion of a man's death the proper thing to do is speak kindly of the deceased, not use the occasion to try and refight old battles. History will have plenty of time to determine what President Reagan did well and what he didn't do well; for the week following his death, though, decent folk will either focus on his strong points or at least keep their mouths shut. It's just common courtesy.
Senator Kerry seems to understand that this week shouldn't be about politics. It's unfortunate that so many people on both sides of the aisle can't figure that out.

Agreed.

John Cole of Ballon Juice has a wonderful post on the origins of the traditions in military funerals. If you want to know the origins of the ceremonies you are seeing surrounding the death of our fortieth president, and will be seeing through Friday — go read. If you don't, go read anyway, it's fascinating cultural information.

Military Blindness in the Media - And Beyond

Joe Katzman has a good, if frightening, roundup on people who don't seem to understand how the military works. Frightening because some of those people are in our government.

A Sneer From The Den........

That too-tightly-twisted-turban-crowd™ has a most perverted version of morality, if it can be called by that term, for, under most circumstances, 'morality' connotes decency, kindness, and other like attributes. This report featured at ActivistChat says that the mullahs and ayatollahs are using their stolen powers over the citizens of Iran to profit from what in most civilized places is considered highly immoral. Their version of fundamentalist islamic belief-structure follows the stereotypical format of denigrating females to the point of chattel and sex-stock.

How Charming !!

They have GOT to go; the sooner the better for their people and the rest of the world.

The Road Map for A Sovereign Iraq By Paul Wolfowitz

After a suicide car bombing killed Iraqi Interim Governing Council President Izzedine Salim and eight others on May 17, one Iraqi put that act of terror into a larger perspective for those who wonder if democracy can work in Iraq. His name is Omar, one of the new Iraqi "bloggers," and he wrote on his Web log: "We cannot . . . protect every single person, including our leaders and the higher officials who make favorite targets for the terrorists--but we can make their attempts go in vain by making our leadership 'replaceable.' "
Exercising his newfound freedom of speech via the Internet, Omar addressed what he sees as the terrorists' fundamental misunderstanding about where Iraq is going. Terrorists--whether Saddamists or foreigners--"think in the same way their dictator-masters do," failing to grasp that the idea of leadership by an indispensable strongman applies to totalitarian regimes--not democracies.
That understanding of the stability of representative government was confirmed when council member Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar assumed the Governing Council presidency. This orderly transfer of leadership showed that the rudiments of a democratic process are already at work in Iraq. The hope for a new Iraq, in which freedom is protected by democracy and the rule of law, rests in such processes.
This hopeful vision is what the enemies of a new Iraq fear the most. Fighting on even after the capture of Saddam Hussein last December, the murderers and torturers of his regime and their terrorist allies, with their perverse ideology of evil, have been seeking with death and destruction to prevent the emergence of a new and free Iraq. In a letter that coalition forces intercepted in January, one of the most notorious of these terrorists, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, wrote to his al Qaeda associates in Afghanistan that democracy in Iraq brings the prospect of "suffocation" for the terrorists, the prospect of Iraqis fighting in their own defense. When the army and police are "linked to the inhabitants of this area by kinship, blood and honor," Zarqawi asks, "how can we fight their cousins and their sons and under what pretext after the Americans pull back? . . . Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse thereafter."

I'm very glad to find out that people are paying attention to the Iraqi bloggers! Link via Dean's World. Dean says: "Citizen journalism is here to stay, folks." I think he's right. (This one is a 'feature' at Opinion Journal and requires free registration, but it will be readable tomorrow for those who don't register.)

The article in 'Iraq the Model' that he refers to is this one..

A Growl From The Den........

The too-tightly-twisted-turban-crowd™ is doing an even faster tapdance and shuffle now that it appears the 4 leading members of the IAEA, France, Germany, Britain, and the US are in agreement that Iran has become even more evasive about their nuclear ambitions and projects. The inspectors have encountered so many difficulties and diversions that they cannot present the board with any other conclusion than that Iran has NOT been totally forthcoming or truthfull. Although not verifiable, there are persistent rumors that Iran has moved more than a few sites that were previously inspected and found to be highly suspicious, now trying to claim that those sites never existed, even in the face of proof that the inspectors already have.

It is well past time that Iran was removed from the list of those possessing nuclear armament knowledge by whatever means it takes!!

Via Iran va Jahan

Dear John Kerry,

On your official blog (http://blog.johnkerry.com/), which is a part of your official John Kerry for President website, you link to many political websites. One of them in particular, the Democratic Underground, has expressed some very radical views. They have posted comments about overthrowing the government. They have posted comments about killing President Bush. And most recently they have been posting absolute glee at the death of former President Ronald Reagan.

Here are some examples about what they are saying:

wtracy (217 posts) Sat Jun-05-04 07:53 PM 75. Good riddance Good riddance. One less a**hole on the planet.

TankLV (1000+ posts) Sun Jun-06-04 12:54 PM Response to Original message: 176. Nancy deserves NO credit for her sudden found compassion for Az patients.

Liberal_Guerilla (1000+ posts) Sat Jun-05-04 08:24 PM Response to Original message 89. May he rot in hell. I have no empathy for this cruel fool. 9/11 lies at his and dim sons feet.

The Zanti Regent (1000+ posts) Sun Jun-06-04 11:36 AM Response to Reply #156 162. I'll believe it when I see the wooden stake driven through his cold heart. Pruneface was the ultimate vampire.
Now he is gonna roast in hell for all eternity!

Do you share those same views?

By linking to the Democratic Underground, you are associating yourself with radicals. I am spreading the word that you are not a candidate that is worthy of the Democratic Party nomination, let alone the Presidency.

If President Bush linked to a neo-Nazi website, would you find that objectionable? I think you would, and I think you would make sure it led the news that day.

Clean up your act Mr. Kerry. You’re on the big stage now.

Sincerely,

Michael T. Preedin
Gig Harbor, WA