30 June 2004 @ 5:11PM >> I owe a bit of thanks to Hillary Clinton for summing up liberalism in a single sentence:

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

For years, I’ve tried (and failed) to come up with a description of liberal economic policy that’s as concise and accurate as the statement above. Thanks, Hillary, for doing my work for me.

29 June 2004 @ 9:11PM >> AP has an interesting article on a fledgling talk radio network:

Iraqi voices filled the airwaves of the nation’s first independent talk radio station Monday, applauding a surprise move by the U.S.-led coalition to return sovereignty to Iraq two days early.

The callers clogged Radio Dijla’s telephone lines to congratulate interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, urging him to be strong, while warning insurgents against continued violence.

“I send my congratulations to all Iraqis and every Iraqi home,” a woman who identified herself as Um Yassin gushed, her voice choked with emotion. “I want to tell Dr. Allawi to be bold, to be strong. We need him to build up the army because we need them at a time like this.”

Her message was echoed by dozens on the day Prime Minister Allawi was given a letter transferring sovereignty back to the citizens of Iraq after about 14 months of coalition administration.

[...]

“I send all the Iraqi people my blessings,” said Ali, a caller from Baghdad. “But I warn these terrorists, all the Iraqis will rise up and strike them with steel.”

This could be a reason for hope, or it could be that Iraqi talk radio callers—like their American counterparts—support the liberation of Iraq disproportionately. Either way, hearing these sorts of statements from everyday Iraqis won’t exactly be music to the ears of those who wanted to leave Saddam Hussein in power.

29 June 2004 >> Bill Clinton’s latest attempt to define his legacy is a 957-page book called My Life. Though panned by the New York Times as “sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull,” thousands of people still stood on line for eight hours or more to have the former president sign their copies. As the line snaked around the corner of Broadway and Wall Street in lower Manhattan, I asked the autograph-seekers for their thoughts on Bill, his book, and his legacy. More >>

26 June 2004 @ 1:59AM >> Could it be that conservatives are finally trying to assert themselves in the film business? The Hollywood Reporter thinks so:

Just as his “Fahrenheit 9/11” opens nationwide, several filmmakers are readying documentaries aimed at debunking Michael Moore, and a new film festival is being planned that will feature such works as well as other movies well to the right of Moore’s films.

Scheduled Sept. 9-11 in Dallas, the American Film Renaissance, as the festival will be known, has just been announced by co-founder Jim Hubbard, who said it is bankrolled primarily by some “big-time conservative donors.”

In the article, Hubbard says that boycott movements—such as those that would try to prevent people from seeing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11—”are for the weak.”

I agree. The way to win an argument isn’t to stop your opponent from being heard, it’s by formulating a better argument and articulating it. Filmmakers such as Michael Wilson have been trying to do just that. Although I think the title of his film (Michael Moore Hates America) is a poor choice, the trailer for the film looks interesting and makes me want to see more.

Jim Hubbard adds:

“We want everyone to see Michael Moore’s film,” he said. “We also want everyone to see ‘Michael Moore Hates America.’ Conservatives complain about institutional bias in Hollywood. They need to stop whining and get out there and produce.”

Absolutely. I’ve been saying that for a while, and have been doing my small part to contribute. It’s heartening to see that folks like Hubbard are out there doing the same thing. I wish him the best of luck.

24 June 2004 @ 2:19PM >> A reader recently forwarded me the following:

A Harvard undergrad returns home on break. The conversation at the welcome home dinner inevitably turns to her schooling.

“I’ve become an enlightened liberal,” the English lit student declares proudly. The conversation then turns to her study habits, free time and the like.

Daughter: “Free time? What free time? I barely have time to eat. I’m working like a dog —- but I’m making dean’s list!”

Father: “And how is your best friend Michelle doing?”

Daughter: “She works, but has different parties, I, uh mean, priorities. Her GPA is hitting rock bottom. She’s pretty smart, but she was warned that if she doesn’t clean up her act, then she’ll be booted.”

Father: “Now, you wouldn’t want that. Why don’t you go to the dean’s office and offer to transfer some of your GPA to Michelle so you both can be equal?”

Daughter: “Why in the world would I do that!? I work hard. I push myself. I do what I must without any excuses. Michelle is capable. If she wanted to succeed like me, she would.”

Father: “Are you sure that your English lit courses don’t include a class in poli-sci? You’ve managed to succinctly articulate the differences between conservatives and liberals.”

The source cited is Jewish World Report and is credited to by Chaim Gantz of Brooklyn, New York.

20 June 2004 @ 4:59PM >> First, his autobiography gets panned by The New York Times:

As his celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ demonstrated, former President Bill Clinton is capable of soaring eloquence and visionary thinking. But as those who heard his deadening speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta well know, he is also capable of numbing, self-conscious garrulity.

Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Clinton’s much awaited new autobiography “My Life” more closely resembles the Atlanta speech, which was so long-winded and tedious that the crowd cheered when he finally reached the words “In closing...”

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull—the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

Yikes. One would certainly expect a New York Times reviewer to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt, especially one who finds much to praise about Clinton and his presidency—so maybe the book really is this bad. (Of course, that may depend on the precise meaning of “is.”)

It gets worse for poor Bubba. Apparently, he lost his cool during a yet-to-be-aired BBC interview:

The former American president, famed for his amiable disposition, becomes visibly angry and rattled, particularly when Dimbleby asks him whether his publicly declared contrition over the [Monica Lewinsky] affair is genuine.

“As outbursts go, it is not just some flash that is over in an instant. It is something substantial and sustained,” said one BBC executive who viewed the interview footage. “It is memorable television which will give the public a different insight into the President’s character.”

18 June 2004 @ 9:22PM >> Somehow, I think the folks complaining about this would also be complaining if the roles were reversed:

The Edward Byrne Center does not yet bear the fallen officer’s name, though the dedication ceremony took place a month ago. And if a group of community leaders and residents have their way, it never will.

The reason? Edward Byrne was white.

“The center is in the middle of an African-American community,” said the Rev. Charles Norris of the Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church. “It should be named for a slain African-American law enforcement officer.”

18 June 2004 @ 7:42PM >> It used to be, if you needed to pad your vote totals, you’d ask your supporters to vote early and often, even if they were deceased. But Democrats in upstate New York have an innovative new plan:

Monroe County Democrats have teamed up with High Falls Brewery to offer two free 2-ounce beers to those who register to vote at the festival. Then the new voter can go into a real voting booth and pick the brew they liked the most.

Of course, the plan has some flaws. Because they’re not handing out beer on election day, the Democrats won’t be picking up more than the usual number of accidental votes from an inebriated electorate. Plus, four ounces of beer won’t exactly get you lit up like the Mets bullpen anyway, so what’s the point? Maybe they’re just trying to condition voters to strap on a buzz before heading to the polls. As I can personally attest, the Democratic platform does seem a little more reasonable when viewed through the haze of stupefying drunkenness.

Now, if only they combined this with the butterfly ballot, then they might be on to something...

17 June 2004 @ 11:43PM >> Michael Moore is getting positive feedback on his film Fahrenheit 9/11 from some unfortunate allies: friends of the Islamic terrorist group Hizbollah.

According to London’s The Guardian, one of the film’s distributors in the Middle East “has been contacted by organisations related to the Hezbollah in Lebanon with offers of help.”

I wonder what it says about Michael Moore’s agenda that a terrorist organization and self-proclaimed enemy of the United States wants his film Fahrenheit 9/11 reach a bigger audience.

If everybody who saw the film discovered this little fact after they left the theaters, the film would have virtually no political impact...which is why you’ll probably never hear anything about this from the network news reporters who—like Hizbollah—have been trying to help Moore promote his film.

17 June 2004 @ 2:40PM >> In The New York Post, Deborah Orin tells of a chilling Iraqi torture-and-murder video that was recently shown to a gathering of Washington reporters:

The video only lasts four minutes or so [...] I couldn’t bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.

Some who stayed wished they hadn’t. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain [...]

The video has been available to reporters for a while, but you won’t see anything about it on the news. Why? Because it was Saddam Hussein’s henchmen committing the act. Orin continues:

No surprise, since no newscast would air the videos of Nick Berg and Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl getting decapitated, or of U.S. contractors in Fallujah getting torn limb from limb by al Qaeda operatives.

Why?

“Because most [journalists] want Bush to lose,” says AEI scholar Michael Ledeen, who helped host the screening of the Saddam video.

[...]

So the world sees photos of U.S. interrogators using dogs to scare prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But not the footage of Saddam’s prisoners getting fed — alive — to Doberman pinschers on Saddam’s watch.

Orin continues, making a point similar to one in my recent article on Abu Ghraib & Nick Berg:

AEI spokeswoman Veronique Rodman, puzzled by the minimal interest in the Saddam torture video, is sure that if it was a video of equally horrific torture committed by U.S. troops, the press would find ways to show or report it.

Reporters have to face up to the fact that right now, if we highlight the wrongs that Americans commit but not — out of squeamishness — the far worse horrors committed by others, we become propaganda tools for the other side.

The article concludes with a damning indictment of The New York Times:

Saddam’s torture videos may be too awful to show, but it’s hard to explain the low media interest in the story of seven Iraqi men who had their right hands chopped off by Saddam’s thugs — and then got new prosthetic arms and new hope in America.

They’re eloquent, they’re available, they’re grateful for the U.S. liberation of Iraq. No one can better talk about Saddam’s tortures — and no one is more eager to do so. Yet, as of yesterday, the New York Times had written 177 stories on Abu Ghraib — with over 40 on the front page. The self-proclaimed “paper of record” hadn’t written a single story about those seven Iraqi men.

Apparently, the only news that’s fit to print is news that reflects negatively on the United States. It isn’t treasonous to report our mistakes and setbacks, but when those become the only thing reported, then our media becomes a propaganda tool used by our enemies.

15 June 2004 @ 7:13PM >> Cinnamon Stillwell reports what happened at a San Francisco peace protest when word came of Ronald Reagan’s death:

[...] late in the afternoon one of the A.N.S.W.E.R. speakers informed the crowd that he had ‘’good news'’ to share. His gleeful announcement that Ronald Reagan had died brought a round of cheers from the crowd.

Peace indeed.

15 June 2004 @ 7:07PM >> Despite the fact that the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal has received relatively little media attention, the story continues to roll on...slowly. This report in The New York Post might explain why we don’t yet know more:

Many U.N. employees fear reprisals from their bosses if they step forward with information on the Iraq oil-for-food scandal or report other allegations of corruption, according to a shocking internal survey released yesterday.

Strange...whenever private-sector scandals hit, they receive a full airing in the media. And when they do, the media’s party line is that businesses need more governmental oversight. Of course, the media itself—for all its distortions, biases, fabrications and outright lies—deserves no such oversight. Nor does the United Nations, an entity that is essentially accountable to nobody.

What can one make of this? Fraud is acceptable as long as it’s committed by the media or any organization favored by the media.

By failing to cover the biggest financial scam in the history of mankind with even one-tenth the vigor that it used to cover Enron, the media tells us volumes about its biases.

14 June 2004 @ 7:33PM >> David Gelernter has a fascinating piece in The Weekly Standard on Ronald Reagan and his courage in facing down the Soviets and the Western pacifists. Gelernter draws a parallel between that fight and today’s war, and notes that Western pacifism has been on the wrong side of history since World War I:

Nowadays Swedish demonstrators wave signs reading “USA-murderers” and “War is terrorism.” In 1982, Italian demonstrators brandished signs reading “Reagan brings war to Italy” and “Reagan executioner.” During the First World War, the British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote, “I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal”; in the mid-1930s, British prime minister Stanley Baldwin was reported to be “for peace at any price,” and in 1938, the politician Thomas Jones (Baldwin’s close friend) wrote that “we have to convince the world that for peace we are prepared to go to absurd lengths.” Same theme from World War I through this afternoon: The United States (and Britain) are guilty; war is evil no matter what; peace must be preserved whatever the cost.

Peace must be preserved at any cost: that is the worldview of the left today. Unfortunately, what they fail to recognize is that, by definition, peace can’t be unilateral. When an enemy wants war, no amount of hope and yearning will bring peace. Considering we now face an enemy whose stated goal is the complete destruction of Western society, today’s peace movement, if successful, will do little more than postpone the inevitable conflict until our opponents have a stronger hand. We may credit the left with “good intentions,” but what if those good intentions lead to our ultimate destruction?

13 June 2004 @ 1:25PM >> Dan Rather is upset about the amount of media coverage that Ronald Reagan’s death has been receiving:

“Even though everybody is respectful and wants to pay homage to the president, life does go on,” Mr. Rather told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“There is other news, like the reality of Iraq,” said the “CBS Evening News” anchor. “It got very short shrift this weekend.”

Perhaps Rather thinks that the week of Reagan coverage has distracted the media from its real job: undermining President Bush in Iraq with months of wall-to-wall Abu Ghraib coverage.

The public, though, seems to disagree with Rather:

At Yahoo! searches for Reagan spiked 5,314% Saturday, the day he died, compared with the daily average. Since then, the portal has seen huge numbers of searches for information about Reagan’s funeral, scheduled for Friday, and his presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif. Lycos said that Reagan-related searches between Monday and Wednesday were 12 times what they were in the seven days before his death.

[...]

At America Online, more than 70% of 258,995 people — six times more than usual for an AOL political poll — who voted over the course of just 21 hours determined that Reagan was “one of the best” presidents ever.

11 June 2004 @ 1:07PM >> In political reporting, when the media gets its facts wrong, the inaccuracies always seem to have a specific ideological impact. Case in point is the second sentence of Adam Geller’s AP report that recently appeared in The Washington Post:

[President Reagan] had almost no schooling in economics but confidently marshaled sweeping reforms, motivated partly by a decades-old grudge over the whopping tax bills he incurred as a World War II-era film star.

Aside from the fact that Geller’s personal judgment is obvious in characterizing Reagan’s principles as resulting from a mere “grudge,” his statement that Reagan “had almost no schooling in economics” is dead wrong. As the AP itself noted two days later:

In a June 7 story on the impact of Ronald Reagan’s presidency on U.S. business, The Associated Press erroneously reported that he had little schooling in economics. Reagan earned a bachelor’s degree in social science and economics from Eureka College in 1932.

Wouldn’t you think that someone writing an article on “Reagan’s Economic Legacy”—as the title claims—would at least try to be accurate about reporting the economics background of the person whose economic legacy is being discussed? This information could have been found in the most basic biographical search on Reagan. Why is it that this error has the obvious effect of casting a bad light on Reagan and his policies? Could it have anything to do with the personal bias of the reporter? Maybe. He does go on to claim:

History has not proven that Reagan’s ideas were right or necessary, but their import is demonstrated just by the fact that the discussion is nowhere near over [...]

Actually, Adam, in this case, the people who claim “the discussion is nowhere near over” just want the argument to continue because they won’t admit they’ve already lost it.

10 June 2004 @ 7:35PM >> Who says conservatives can’t be sexy?

Certainly not Gabrielle Reilly or the folks at JerseyGOP.com, a website whose motto is “Putting the Party back in the Grand Old Party.”

Gabrielle, who was “raised amidst the rugged beauty of the Outback, Australia” made her way to the U.S.A. six years ago. Though she’s made a career of being a fitness and swimsuit model, she’s also not shy about using her assets “as a vehicle to get [her] message out,” noting:

Pictures of women break down national borders, race, religion and creed and draw the largest amount of traffic on the world wide web. Even the fundamental Islamic Bali Bomber had pictures of Western women on his computer. My message is heard around the world by many.

And what is her message? Here’s a sample:

It has been capitalism that brought liberty and freedom to the masses, to the poor, to the unequal class systems. Human greed has given capitalism a very bad reputation when in fact greed is the problem and greed unfortunately is part of human nature. Greed is prevalent in any model of society whether it is communism or capitalism.

JerseyGOP has a profile of Gabrielle along with a few pictures. While you’re there, check out the other people profiled in the Republican Babe of the Week section.

Apologies in advance to anyone offended by this decidedly un-P.C. appreciation of the female form. I am but a man.

9 June 2004 @ 9:56PM >> Now that this has happened, is there any chance that the rhetoric of the Democrats (“We’re going it alone”, “We’re thumbing our noses at the U.N.”, etc.) will be toned down at all?

The U.N. Security Council gave resounding approval Tuesday to a resolution endorsing the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq’s new government by the end of June. President Bush said the measure will set the stage for democracy in Iraq and be a “catalyst for change” in the Middle East.

Somehow, I suspect not.

8 June 2004 @ 3:45PM >> A little historical perspective in an e-mail from an uncle:

Isn’t it interesting that the same cabal of nay saying, hand wringing liberals, who ridiculed, vilified and opposed the policies of Ronald Reagan, policies that liberated millions of people from the tyranny of communism, are now doing the same thing to George W. Bush, who, like Reagan, has also liberated millions from the grasp of tyranny. Let us hope that the passing of Ronald Reagan will remind the citizens of our country it was the Democratic Party that was on the wrong side of history. Just as it is again today.

8 June 2004 @ 2:19AM >> This is good news:

Iraq’s new prime minister announced an agreement Monday by nine political parties to dissolve their militias, integrating some of the estimated 102,000 fighters into the army and police and pensioning off the rest to firm up government control ahead of the transfer of sovereignty.

Although the days leading up to Iraqi sovereignty may witness greater violence as terrorists try to dislodge the transitional government, things are looking a lot better than they did just two months ago when Fallujah erupted and Moqtada al-Sadr still looked relevant.

Brendan Miniter of The Wall Street Journal describes how the U.S. Marines are pacifying Fallujah:

As they were battling through the city two months ago, the Marines realized they could easily crush the insurgency in Fallujah but in the process would “rubble the city.” That would leave thousands of Marines patrolling the city, repairing infrastructure and trying to build working relationships with the inhabitants who remained. “That doesn’t work us out of a job,” Col. Coleman told me. Nor would it leave the Marines free to conduct other operations.

What they needed to do was drive wedges into the enemy ranks—divide and conquer.

Miniter then discusses exactly how, with local help, the Marines succeeded.

These are the stories that the broadcast media tends to ignore, but they show that far from being another Vietnam, Iraq might actually be closer to Germany after World War II. If you think that sounds naively optimistic, it’s probably because you don’t know how the media covered post-war Europe. In 1946, Life Magazine reported:

A tour of the beaten-up cities of Europe six months after victory is a mighty sobering experience for anyone. Europeans, friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. They cite the evolution of the word “liberation.” Before the Normandy landings it meant to be freed from the tyranny of the Nazis. Now it stands in the minds of the civilians for one thing, looting.

You try to explain to these Europeans that they expected too much. They answer that they had a right to, that after the last war America was the hope of the world. They talk about the Hoover relief, the work of the Quakers, the speeches of Woodrow Wilson. They don’t blame us for the fading of that hope. But they blame us now.

Never has American prestige in Europe been lower.

The media’s version of history is often wrong the first time they try to write it. Just look at how Ronald Reagan was covered when he left office compared to now. His greatness, denied then, seems self-evident more than a decade beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the short run, the truth can be denied, but it never stays suppressed forever.

8 June 2004 >> In the late 1970s, before the Age of Reagan, I remember my mother waiting in lines that snaked around the block just to fill up a tank of gas. I have vague memories of a trip to Toronto with my grandparents when President Carter delivered a major speech. We watched from our hotel room, but I was too young to understand or remember the topic; maybe it was the infamous “malaise speech,” perhaps it was about Iran. From my father’s office, I could see the hostage calendar in Times Square. It counted up to 444, the number of days that 52 American citizens were held captive in Iran. They were freed the day President Reagan was sworn in, the day the 1970s were pronounced dead. More >>

4 June 2004 @ 3:19PM >> Perhaps you’ve heard that John Kerry served in Vietnam. You may also have heard that Kerry later opposed the war. It’s classic John Kerry: he simultaneously wants credit for going to war and for opposing the war. Well, Kerry’s contribution to that chapter in our nation’s history has not gone unnoticed by the Vietnamese communists:

A Ho Chi Minh City museum that honors Vietnam war protesters features a photograph of Sen. John Kerry being greeted by the general secretary of the Communist Party, Comrade Do Muoi.

Maybe this is one of the foreign leaders from whom Kerry claims support.

“The Vietnamese communists clearly recognize John Kerry’s contributions to their victory,” said Jeffrey M. Epstein of Vietnam Vets for the Truth, a group opposing Kerry’s campaign for the presidency. “This find can be compared to the discovery of a painting of Neville Chamberlain hanging in a place of honor in Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in 1945.”

4 June 2004 @ 6:11AM >> This is what happens when one ideology dominates an entire industry:

Despite the miserable propaganda failure the movie will be, Bush-hating liberals will still love it — there are plenty of partisan potshots to keep them happy (I’d recommend conservatives sit this one out).

The most obvious (liberals have never been ones for subtlety) is the valiant, prescient hero’s nemesis, who just happens to be a Dick Cheney look-alike VP who tells the president what to do and who has this bizarre concern for the actual economic effect of the “Kyoto Accord” (those money-grubbing conservatives...).

The filmmakers also let us feast on criticism of U.S. immigration policy, repentance for arrogance toward the Third World, the end of western civilization as we know it, and a presidential mea culpa. All in all, an arrogant America humbled.

No, the author isn’t writing about Fahrenheit 9/11, he’s reviewing The Day After Tomorrow. Perhaps the most interesting quote in the article has nothing to do with the film itself; it’s from a 1989 Discover Magazine interview with atmospheric scientist Stephen Schneider:

On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but... On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place... To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Considering that liberals from Al Gore on down have seized upon this film to promote their political message, they’re doing exactly what Schneider advocated.

The key quote in Schneider’s statement is, “we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”

Isn’t that what Gore and his ilk have been accusing President Bush of doing with Iraq?

4 June 2004 @ 3:57AM >> Michelle Malkin writes that U.N. ambulances are being used by Palestinian terrorists for safe passage:

Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked “U.N.” with the agency’s blue flag flying from the roof, which then speeds away from the scene.

Malkin notes that AccessMiddleEast.org has posted the video [Windows Media file; 2.3MB] shot by a Reuters cameraman, but that “not a single U.S. television news station has expressed interest in showing the footage to American viewers.”

Perhaps the media is silent because the incident points to yet another full-blown U.N. scandal:

The UNRWA has long been suspected of providing aid and comfort to terrorists. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, recently documented how “buildings and warehouses under UNRWA supervision are allegedly being used as storage areas for Palestinian ammunition and counterfeit currency factories.” Cantor’s 2002 report also noted that UNRWA hosts summer camps in martyrdom for young terrorists-in-training. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., has also lobbied for increased scrutiny of UNRWA funding, which has been used to publish anti-Semitic textbooks and posters in schools that “glorify homicide bombers and the slaughter of innocents.”

So, why is the media carrying water for the U.N.? Well, if the U.N. looks like a corrupt organization that sides with Palestinian terrorists, then the argument that the U.N. must pre-approve America’s foreign policy looks a hell of a lot less convincing. But the media has a lot vested in that argument: for over a year, it’s been one of the main weapons used to bash President Bush. And it is now a key plank in John Kerry’s foreign policy platform.

In the calculus of the election, bad for U.N. equals good for Bush. So, the media downplays the U.N.’s various scandals and instead focuses on controversies that will have the political impact that the media desires.

2 June 2004 @ 4:10AM >> For analyses of military intelligence—and even the occasional scoop—the hard-core info-junkie will find satisfaction at The DEBKA File and Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor). DEBKA’s main page contains a number of fascinating peeks behind the headlines in the War on Terror, while Strafor is primarily a pay service that offers a few interesting samples for free.

If you’re new to DEBKA, a good place to start is this article looking into recent terror attacks within Saudi Arabia and a succession split within the Saudi royal family.

For an introduction to Strafor, check out this analysis of recent terror attacks around the Middle East and intelligence improvements among the nations battling terrorism.