October 30, 2004

SECOND BIN LADEN CAMPAIGN VIDEO

9-30-2004
Alljazz era

BIN LADEN STEPS UP LAST MINUTE CAMPAIGNING. CRITICIZES BUSH DOMESTIC POLICIES

        In a second video released 24 hours after his hard hitting critique of Bush administration foreign policy blunders, Osama bin Laden turned to American domestic issues. Exuding a stong masculine sense of command, the carefully coiffed, elegantly tailored leader, offered a far ranging critique of Bush administration domestic policy. Unlike the verbally challenged President, he used graceful poetic language, with frequent references to classical Islamic poetry, to extend a hand of conciliation to the non-Jewish population of the United States. Mr. Laden said “I understand your pain. Like so many of you, I have been forced into homelessness and deprived of health care by the heartless policies of the Bush administration. I too lost my retirement plan and have to live in an airless cave lacking even Tivo. I am therefore very grateful to my American artist and musician friends, especially in Hollywood and among rock musicians for their support, as well as their kindness in supplying me with DVD’s to help pass the lonely nights. I hope, in a future Kerry administration I can be present when Michael Moore receives his well deserved Oscar. Lonely as I am, here in Upyerwazooistan, I don’t feel alone knowing how many fair minded Americans share my scorn and contempt for George W. Bush".
        Mr. Laden went on to explain "I am speaking out as forcefully as possible against his cruel plans to privatize social security for millions of elderly Americans, most of them not Jews. Similarly, his secret plan to reinstate the draft will affect non-Jews disproportionately because the wily sons of monkeys and pigs will use their ill gotten gains to bribe their way to deferments. Furthermore the Zionist crusader Bush wants to extend tax breaks to wealthy Jews, while increasing the tax burden on the rapidly growing American Muslim population. This will simply transfer money away from poor and oppressed Muslims to Jewish corporate interests like Halliburton."
        Speaking without notes while conveying an exceptionally thorough understanding of the issues, Mr. Laden turned to the health care crisis in America, saying: "Bush’s plan to reform medical malpractice will disproportionately benefit Jewish doctors. It will be almost impossible for parents to bring lawsuits against physicians who drain the blood of their children to make matzo; and who benefits most from his deficit increasing, drug cost reduction scheme? Jewish retirees in Miami whose vote he seeks."
        Turning to Bush's education plans and displaying a masterful grasp of the issue of vouchers vs. higher pay for teachers, bin Laden pointed out that Bush’s education plans, have been formulated by Zionists. He argued their real aim was to help Jewish children get into schools like Yale and Harvard, though, he added,eyes twinkling, "Islam has the last laugh, my friends, since those elite liberal arts faculties are controlled by our multi-cultural allies, the Post-Modernists."
        Mr. Laden's characteristically mournful sadness frequently gave way to a wry, at times animated, often bemused expression, as he concluded by saying, "I understand that for campaign reasons, John Kerry has felt obliged to make occasional critical comments about me, but I know that we are united in our loathing and contempt for George Bush, tool of Ariel Sharon. I'm certain we will be able to work together to make America a more secure, Islam friendly country, where the umbrella of Sharia law will bring peace to all."
        As he was about to leave Mr. Laden looked up at the camera and made a spontaneous heartfelt offer to appear with Tim Russert on Meet The Press this Sunday to answer any question from the hard hitting pundit, and to discuss with Russert's panel, plans for the post election, pre-inaugural period. He had but one modest request-that William Safire be replaced by the fair minded Lawrence O'Donnell, explaining that it wasn't personal, but Safire is known to be a Jew and a friend of Ariel Sharon.

October 28, 2004

TWO CHEERS FOR THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Since the 2000 election there has been continuing bitterness among the losers of that election. They have felt and loudly proclaimed “We wuz robbed,” and insisted that George W. Bush “stole the election.” In fact, among those who are endowed with more passion than sense or understanding, this myth is believed to be the literal truth.

Among those who should know better—our lawmakers and the press—the complexities of the 2000 election are understood, but ignored, and some irresponsible leaders of the Democratic Party have, for the past four years encouraged the myth of the stolen election among their constituents, and have themselves fought presidential prerogatives tooth and nail on the grounds that they are justified in depriving the President of his rightful powers because of this myth of illegitimacy.

Democracy is sometimes a messy business. And American democracy is no exception. But of all the democracies of history American democracy is the most successful and has stood the test of time. And our electoral process and the rule of law has contributed much to its success and duration.

The 2000 election was not the first mess which left bitterness and grievance in its wake, and it won’t be the last. Anomalous elections have occurred from time to time in the course of our history because the growth and development of the country has “resulted in profound political divisions within the country which the designers of the Electoral College system seem to have anticipated as needing resolution at a higher level,” according to William C. Kimberling, deputy director of the Federal Election Commission’s Office of Election Administration.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson was not elected by popular vote, nor even by vote of the Electoral College. That election was settled in the House of Representatives voting by state, not individually—one state, one vote.

In the election of 1824 the electoral votes were so divided between Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and William Crawford, that no one received the necessary majority. The election went again to the House of Representatives and this time it narrowly chose Quincy Adams despite the fact that Andrew Jackson had obtained the greater number of electoral votes. In this case Jackson and his constituents claimed they wuz robbed twice. This claim was a weak one according to Mr. Kimberling, “since six of the twenty-four States at the time still chose their Electors in the State legislature.Some of these (such as sizable New York) would likely have returned large
majorities for Adams had they conducted a popular election.”

1876 was one of the most turbulent elections in our history. There were deep divisions at work in the population centering on the controversial issues of Reconstruction, political party realignments, and economic issues. “After a vast economic expansion, the country had fallen into a deep depression. Monetary and tariff issues were eroding the Union Republican coalition of East and West while a solid Republican black vote eroded the traditional Democratic hold on the South. The incumbent Republican administration of Grant had suffered a seemingly endless series of scandals involving graft and corruption on a scale hitherto unknown. And the South was eager to put an end to Radical Reconstruction which was, after all, a kind of vast political mugging.”

In that centenary year, the Democratic Party nominated the popular governor of New York, Samuel J. Tilden, and the Republicans the Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes. The electorate was further split by a significant number of voters for third parties. On election night “it looked as though Tilden had pulled off the first Democratic presidential victory since the Civil War --although the decisive electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained in balance. Yet these States were as divided internally as was the nation at large.”

Each of those three states finally delivered to Congress two sets of electoral votes—one for Tilden and one for Hayes. Congress had to establish a special 15-member commission to decide the issue in each of the three states. “After much partisan intrigue, the special commission decided (by one vote in each case) on Hayes' Electors from all three States. Thus, Hayes was elected president despite the fact that Tilden, by everyone's count, had obtained a slight majority of popular votes….”

Benjamin Harrison's election in 1888 is really the only clear cut instance in which the Electoral College vote went contrary to the popular vote. “This happened because the incumbent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several of the 18 States which supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison, won only slender majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him (most notably in Cleveland's home State of New York).” Even so, the difference between them was less than 1% of the total. And since there were no great or burning issues that separated the two candidates it appears that the outcome was settled because of superior party organization and getting out the vote on Harrison’s part.

It is important to note that for over a hundred years there has been no electoral conflict despite the fact that many elections were won without majorities—Lincoln only had 39% of the popular vote in 1860, but a large majority in 1864. Such stability, Mr. Kimberling suggests, should not be lightly dismissed. And all of the anomalous elections mentioned above, he says “…were resolved in a peaceable and orderly fashion without any public uprising and without endangering the legitimacy of the sitting president. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a direct election of the president could have resolved events as agreeably.”

The Electoral College system requires two benchmarks that the founding fathers wisely built into the process as a safeguard against chaotic popular partisanship. The winner of the presidential election must win a sufficient number of popular votes to enable him (or her) to govern (though this may not be an absolute majority) AND that such a popular vote be distributed across the country to enable him to govern. Such an arrangement ensures that states with large populations and urban centers do not dominate every election. In this way the nation’s diversity is protected.

The most powerful argument that is leveled against the Electoral College system is that it may fail to accurately reflect the popular will because it tends to overrepresent people in rural states, and that it tends to discourage third-party or independent candidates. There is some truth to both complaints. But the criticism that it favors rural states can be leveled against the U.S. Senate as well and no one has suggested disestablishing that institution. As far as the criticism that it discourages third parties, Horsefeathers sees this as a virtue.

The most powerful arguments for the continuation of the EC system are that it contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president; it helps to maintain a federal system of government and representation; and finally it contributes to the political stability of the nation.

Mr. Kimberling says that “In addition to protecting the presidency from impassioned but transitory third party movements, the practical effect of the Electoral College… is to virtually force third party movements into one of the two major political parties…. In this process of assimilation, third party movements are obliged to compromise their more radical views if they hope to attain any of their more generally acceptable objectives. Thus we end up with two large, pragmatic political parties which tend to the center of public opinion rather than dozens of smaller political parties catering to divergent and sometimes extremist views. In other words, such a system forces political coalitions to occur within the political parties rather than within the government.”

To abolish the Electoral College in favor of a nationwide popular election for president would be like dismembering the federal system, and would probably lead to the nationalization of our central government, and thus a radical shift of power away from the states and the people.

The fact is that the Founding Fathers wisely debated the design of our federal system and decided that the views of each state are more important than the views of political minorities. And that the opinions of individual states are more important than the opinion of the nation as a whole. The tampering with such balance of power between the states and national government would fundamentally change the nature of our government and bring changes that we might all regret.

Ours may not be a perfect electoral system but it has worked for over two hundred years so let’s hear two cheers for the Electoral College.

October 27, 2004

JOHN KERRY: POST-MODERN FABULIST

        Horsefeathers is not especially troubled by the dissembling of politicians. President Bush insists "Islam means peace"--and we all nod politely, understanding the requirements of diplomacy. As long as he keeps pursuing the Jihadists we can live with this tribute that vice pays to virtue. When John Kerry asserts that he is not really a tax and spend liberal, we nod and understand the requirements of a national campaign. More interesting, because revealing of the character of the man, are the compulsive, repetitive lies, some quite small, designed to create a public persona. Horsefeathers is grateful that the lengthy campaign has given us an opportunity to assess the character of the man who would replace President Bush as Commander in Chief.
        It is not the ordinary political stretchers that are especially revealing. Nor is it the mock certitude about one or another tactical position. It is personal lies, sometimes small ones, that allow us a glimpse below the suface of the self-created persona. Thus John Kerry's post-modern narrative of his magical mystery tour in Vietnam and Cambodia is a heroic self creation fantasy. Meet John Kerry, bold defender of America, collector of more medals in far less combat time than Audie Murphy. Yet we sense this is a fraud because no real heros boast about their military exploits. But then all-American John was also Hanoi John. When he betrayed his fellow veterans, condemning their "Jen-Jus Khan" tactics he reinvented himself as the putative President, heroic battler for truth, peace and justice, against an evil war waged by a criminal government.
        Then the Massachussetts fabulist punctuated his upward political rise with small fables worthy of a barroom braggart. This is Kerry as Baron Munchausen by way of Forrest Gump. There he is, in countless photo-ops- windsurfing, ice skating, hunting, tossing a football or a baseball, reminiscing about Boston marathons, for which no records exist of his having competed and for which he doesn't recall his finishing time or his qualifying time. (Horsefeathers ran the Boston Marathon several times in the late '70's and, like every fellow runner, remembers his finishing time to the second, as well as his qualifying time.)See the bold sportsman, John Kerry, the man's man. And if his hair is just a touch too coiffed and his face overly botox-ed, well don’t mistake him for a metrosexual fop; after all, didn’t he hunt down the VC in ‘Nam? Over the years John Kerry has deployed so many sports related self inventions that a website, Football Fans for Truth, is devoted to just those fables. His recent self-parodic emergence from the brush in his costly L.L Bean camouflage outfit, proclaiming his prowess at goose hunting, was more of the same. The one athletic skill he surely possesses and practices regularly is Monday morning quarterbacking. Whatever George Bush does, he, John Kerry, would have done it differently, better or not at all.
        In the sporting realm, Horsefeathers' partiality to baseball alerted us to John Kerry's oft proclaimed devotion to the Boston Red Sox. His favorite Red Sox player? Eddie Yost. Unfortunately Yost was a Washington Senator. Oh well, John Kerry was never in Cambodia either, but it's "seared" into his memory? Such a devoted fan, Kerry has repeatedly insisted that he was there at the tragic moment in 1986: "I was 30 yards away from Billy Buckner in that famous Shea Stadium game in '86." (Cite: ESPN Page 2)
"Talking baseball on the plane, he reminisced, "I was at Shea Stadium, 30 yards from Bill Buckner," recalling the error that many consider cost the Sox the 1986 World Series." (Cite: "Sox Detour for Kerry", New York Daily News, 7/26/2004)
"The Bay State senator says he....watched in anguish as the ball rolled through Bill Buckner's legs in the 1986 Series against the Mets." (Cite: "Bogus Bosox Fan", New York Post, 9/19/2004)
"I was about 30 yards away from Billy Buckner when that ball wiggled away" (Cite: Kerry tries to rejuvenate his campaign, USA Today 11/24/2003)
        Game 6 of the 1986 World Series was held in New York City, on the evening of October 25, 1986. Only one problem-the Boston Globe reports, John Kerry was at a banquet in Boston on the evening of October 25, 1986.
        Now we have new evidence of the true character of the man, as revealed by his self inventions. Here is a letter to the Wall Street Journal written by John Kerry’s Yale classmate, David Schlossberg, M.D.

The Editor
The Wall Street journal

Dear Sir/Madame:

As a graduate of the Yale class of 1966, I resent the self-serving lies and misrepresentations advanced by my classmate John Kerry. Herewith, a few corrections:

John Kerry has been using the Pershing name to dramatize his Vietnam experience, claiming to have been a close friend of Richard Pershing, the grandson of General (Black Jack) Pershing. Richard Pershing was a member of the Yale class of 1966, and he was killed in Vietnam shortly after we graduated. However, Kerry’s constant references to his ‘dearest’ friend are exaggerated and exploitative. In fact, Dick Pershing and I roomed together for all 4 years at Yale. I don’t remember John Kerry ever being in our room or even being a particular favorite of Dick’s. In this regard, it is particularly revealing that a recent biography of General Pershing, Until The Last Trumpet Sounds (by Gene Smith), includes an entire chapter on Dick, primarily on his years at Yale; the name John Kerry does not appear.
The Pershing Family did know Kerry, but they disliked him intensely. This antipathy stemmed primarily from an incident at the Pershing home on Park Avenue not long after Dick’s death: at a gathering of friends and family, Kerry worked the room with his anti-Vietnam message, incurring the undying enmity of Mr. and Mrs. Pershing and Dick’s older brother Jack, a Green Beret. The family was shocked and insulted by Kerry’s insensitivity.
Kerry has implied – as recently as the first Presidential debate – that he became disillusioned about Vietnam by his military experience. However, as early as 1965, in his Junior year at Yale, he was giving anti-war speeches; and his Class Day Oration in 1966 – prior to graduation – criticized American involvement in Vietnam. These sentiments clearly antedated his Vietnam experience. So why did he join the Navy? He told some classmates that it would help his career.
The above pattern suggests a callous and opportunistic personality – hardly what I would call Presidential.

David Schlossberg, MD
Yale ‘66

October 23, 2004

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN'S GHOST

        Neville Chamberlain betrayed Czechoslovakia in pursuit of a fantasy of 'peace'. We now consciously shun Chamberlain's well meaning efforts as "appeasement", but that doesn't mean the impulse to placate foes, to hold meetings, sign treaties and congratulate oneself on being sensitive has vanished forever.
        John F. Kerry's fantasy foreign policy is based on a utopian wishful view of the UN and our European allies. How might a President Kerry seek universal peace and harmony with these countries and institutions? The UN and our European 'allies' are linked by a shared pathological hatred of Israel. If only Israel would vanish, all those aggrieved young Jihadis would become happy, productive citizens. Dr. Charles Krauthammer makes the case that a President Kerry will pursue an appeasement policy in which Israel becomes our contemporary version of the Czech republic in 1939. As this awareness slowly seeps into consciousness, American Jews seem to be stirring from their Democratic Party slumbers and considering the realistic dangers posed to our country and its sole Middle Eastern ally, Israel.
        Krauthammer writes: "...Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? What (outside of Iraq) is the area of most friction with U.S. policy? What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations?

The answer is obvious: Israel.

In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places such as Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel..."
Read the entire article here.

October 22, 2004

STOLEN HONOR: THE REAL JOHN KERRY, THE REAL VIETNAM WAR

        Horsefeathers is grateful to John Kerry for his compulsive, self-defeating urge to revisit Vietnam. The longstanding "culture wars" in this country are actually continuations of the struggle to impose meaning on the Vietnam period of our history. Lieutenant Kerry, Navy officer, was instrumental in creating the dominant liberal narrative version of the Vietnam war. For the post-modern liberal, reality is "constructed" and that construction is narratological. Thus, if the story is compelling it must be real. In the Kerry narrative version of history, his four month, three scratches time in Vietnam, demonstrated the war was a criminal Amerikan colonial enterprise. Kerry described his 'band of brothers' as war criminals who behaved like "Jen-Jis Khan", despoiling the noble dreams of the Ho Chi Minh loving and kind native peasants. Those who viewed the war as part of the historic struggle between Communist totalitarianism and the free world were marginalized. It was they who felt guilty over bugging out on millions of Vietnamese who were condemned to the tender mercies of the gulag. No guilt was felt or acknowledged by the Kerry followers who demanded we leave Vietnam immediately. Guilt might have interfered with the good times: sex, drugs and rock 'n roll were much more fun. Janis Joplin and a bottle of Southern Comfort were all anyone could ask for. The notion that we had enemies who were savage and barbaric, who hated our freedom and democracy, was dismissed as overheated rhetoric. Yet what followed our defeat in the Cold War struggle for Vietnam but savagery and barbarism?
        Over the years, the faculties of our elite universities and the mainstream media have become havens of Vietnam era protesters seeking to relive their past glorious triumphs. Despite this, and thanks to Kerry's revisiting of Vietnam, the marginalized voices, are now clamoring to be heard. These are the voices of those who fought for our country--the men who believed in America and the cause of freedom. Is anyone surprised that the mainstream media, as well as John Kerry are trying to do everything they can to silence them? We hope many of those tempted to vote for John Kerry will view this. Here are the voices John Kerry still wishes to silence: Stolen Honor.

October 19, 2004

COMPASSION OF THE WINDSURFER

        Horsefeathers maintains that John Kerry is Bill Clinton minus the intelligence and especially the charm. Charm is an extraordinarily valuable character trait in a politician. Even those who regarded him as a psychopathic liar who demeaned the Presidency were not immune to the seductiveness of Clinton's charm. The cloying treacliness of his "feel your pain" empathy was tempered by his ability to seduce its recipients into believing him. Charm is undermined by any hint of haughtiness, superiority or condescension; it has to make its recipient feel, not just equal to, but personally and uniquely important to the charmer. Like anti-matter to matter, John Kerry is the anti-charmer. He feels for the generic category, "people". His efforts at empathy are infantilizing, barf inducing exercises like the following:
        "Teresa and I were talking about that the other night--about the hopes that people have," Kerry, referring to his wife, said in an interview with the Tribune. "People are crying at some of these rope lines. They're hurting so much. They want a change. "You feel that. The transfer of hope, of `Get it done for me, help me, I need help, I need health care, I don't have a job,"' he said. "And I want to come through, not so much for me. I don't want to let them down."
        Horsefeathers suspects the election has not been in doubt since John Kerry's limpwristed salute at the Democratic convention. His "win" in the debates, confirmed the impression of him as a wordsmith fraud, thus helping to insure his defeat in November.
        "The secret of acting" said George Burns, "is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." On November 3 John Kerry should have ample time to fill out his application to the Bill Clinton school of political acting.

October 16, 2004

THE TRUTH IS THAT SADDAM NEVER INTENDED TO GIVE UP HIS WMD

Sooner or later Saddam Hussein would have acquired chemical weapons, the ballistic missiles to deliver them to his enemies, and eventually even nuclear weapons. But it was the chemical weapons that he was determined to develop. They had worked against Iran and had even deterred the US in 1991 from invading Baghdad, he believed.

“Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judges that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam’s belief in the value of WMD. In Saddam’s view, WMD helped to save the Regime multiple times. He believed that during the Iran-Iraq war chemical weapons had halted Iranian ground offensives and that ballistic missile attacks on Tehran had broken its political will. Similarly, during Desert Storm, Saddam believed WMD had deterred Coalition Forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait.” These are the judgments of the Duelfer Report (officially known as the Iraq Survey Group Report), recently provided to Congress.

There are some psychopaths who are incorrigible. They remain criminals their entire lives no matter what treatments are tried on them. Their thinking is so distorted and rationalized that nothing can change them. So it is with Saddam, if we are to believe Charles Duelfer’s report to Congress delivered on September 30, 2004. The report is based on multiple interviews with Saddam Hussein and all of the officers of his regime in custody.

The press and media have focused on one aspect of this 1000 page report—that no WMD were actually found in Iraq—to undermine the President’s candidacy for another term. WMD, the President’s critics assert correctly, was the casus belli for Operation Iraqi Freedom. And indeed, during the months leading up to the war, there were no responsible disbelievers of that view. And that the prudent thing to do, post 9/11, was to remove the possibility of having an unstable dictator or one of his unstable sons use or license his WMD to other terrorists.

Were these assumptions wrong? Yes and no. No historical problem can be understood in a simplex way except during election years. The closest that we have been able to come to the complex truth so far is Duelfer’s new report. It will have to suffice for the time being.

His most important finding—the finding that he puts above all others is:

“Saddam Husayn… wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

“Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime….”

It is important to see that, like some incorrigible psychopaths, Saddam didn’t get it. Whatever the UN said to him, whatever the world thought about his weapons programs didn’t matter to him. The one overriding consideration was getting back his chemical weapons and the means to deliver them—ballistic missiles. It didn’t matter what agreement he made, or what understanding he had reached with the UN, he was, by hook or by crook, going to get what he wanted, sooner or later. And the means by which he would accomplish this goal was to play along with the monitors and temporarily get rid of the weapons—but not the people who could start to build them again when the western intruders were gone. He played along until 1998 and then he kicked the inspectors out of the country. Why?

“The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.”

He managed to wheedle out of a compassionate world and the UN the Oil for Food program in 1996 presumably to feed his starving people who, he proclaimed, had been suffering under the UN sanctions, and by 1998 he began a period of testing, starting with the expulsion of the inspectors to see how far he could go and not bring the wrath of the UN down. And sure enough, the Clinton administration, preoccupied with sex and impeachment, allowed it’s policy toward Saddam to lie dormant.

“By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.”

The report makes unambiguously clear that Saddam’s goal, first, last, and always, was the reacquisition of WMD. So that the games he played with the world, temporarily getting rid of them, was a meaningless gesture. Sooner or later we would have to confront him and remove him. There was no other alternative. And to wait until he had already begun to reacquire them would have been the height of liberal-pacifist folly.

“Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.”

By 2000 the growth of Iraq’s illicit revenue had virtually succeeded in diminishing the power of the sanctions to near zero. By the time of the war in 2003 Iraq had amassed 11 billion dollars, most of which went into the procurements of conventional weaponry and materials for WMD.

“To implement its procurement efforts, Iraq under Saddam, created a network of Iraqi front companies, some with close relationships to high-ranking foreign government officials. These foreign government officials, in turn, worked through their respective ministries, state-run companies and ministry-sponsored front companies, to procure illicit goods, services, and technologies for Iraq’s WMD-related, conventional arms, and/or dual-use goods programs.

“The MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) played a critical role in facilitating Iraq’s procurement of military goods, dual-use goods pertaining to WMD, transporting cash and other valuable goods earned by illicit oil revenue, and forming and implementing a diplomatic strategy to end UN sanctions and the subsequent UN OFF program by nefarious means.”

And because Saddam cared about the sanctions being lifted, he half-heartedly allowed his WMD programs to be physically dismantled, retaining the intellectual resources that would allow the programs to be restarted as soon as the sanctions were lifted. But Saddam made it a part of his policy to obfuscate the issue of WMD in order to make his enemies, especially Iran, believe that he continued to possess them. And this is exactly the message the world got.

The most disturbing set of findings in the Duelfer Report center around the fact that Saddam felt that the source of his greatest power was to be found in his chemical warfare capabilities and the missile systems to deliver them.

There is no doubt that he also valued nuclear weapons, but realized that such weaponry was beyond present Iraqi technology, and that such weapons would have to be developed slowly over time. But he had used chemical weapons effectively and successfully against his Kurdish, Shia, and Iranian enemies and the world did not object.

“Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a CW effort when sanctions were lifted and conditions were judged favorable:

“Saddam and many Iraqis regarded CW as a proven weapon against an enemy’s superior numerical strength, a weapon that had saved the nation at least once already—during the Iran-Iraq war—and contributed to deterring the Coalition in 1991 from advancing to Baghdad.”

“The way Iraq organized its chemical industry after the mid-1990s allowed it to conserve the knowledge-base needed to restart a CW program, conduct a modest amount of dual-use research, and partially recover from the decline of its production capability caused by the effects of the Gulf war and UN-sponsored destruction and sanctions.

“The Regime employed a cadre of trained and experienced researchers, production managers, and weaponization experts from the former CW program.

“ISG [analysts believe] based on available chemicals, infrastructure, and scientist debriefings, that Iraq at [the beginning of the Iraq war] probably had a capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard within three to six months.
Chemical
“ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations. The network of laboratories could have provided an ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue CW agent R&D or small-scale production efforts….the existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN….The IIS program included the use of human subjects for testing purposes.”

Anyone who is seriously interested in defeating terrorism and understanding whether the war in Iraq was necessary must be informed of the facts in the Duelfer Report. It makes it crystal clear that there was no alternative to removing Saddam and his two sons from their regime. He was gaming the UN and had no other political aim than to become the dominant figure in the Middle East through the acquisition of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. And no amount of UN blather and John Kerry diplomacy would have made any difference. Saddam would have compelled a war. Better that we fight it at a time of our choice than his.

October 15, 2004

JOHN KERRY'S ELECTION EVE SPEECH

My fellow Americans,
        I'm John Kerry and I want to thank America, Europe, Asia and Africa, the entire world and the solar system for the great opportunity you have given me. Tomorrow, my running mate and I will bring us all together in a hand holding, sing-a-long of We Are The World, to which we will invite so-called enemies, like the Hamas, as well as friends we've alienated, like the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai. Ms. Maathai has been so wronged by President Bush's murderous policies that she believes AIDS is an artificially created biological agent designed to kill black Africans. She and her fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, Yasser Arafat, will be among the first I will apologize to and invite to the White House to repair the damage done by George W. Bush.
        When John Edwards and I are elected we have a comprehensive plan we will bring to the Congress in the first 90 days of our administration. This is a time for boldness, and we will therefore start by attacking the root cause of so much unhappiness in George Bush’s America: the difference between the sexes. Never have these differences been so unfair. Why should we need to distinguish between gays and straights at all? It just produces sexism and unhappiness. Our legislation will eliminate the causes of same sex as well as heterosexual behavior by removing inner conflict and eliminating all sources of frustration. Then, in the spirit of the late, great Jacques Derrida, we will submit legislation that assigns to every newborn a post-modern “narrative” that does away with gender identity, thereby providing the true freedom we all yearn for—freedom from gender roles. No more patriarchy. No more sexism. Everyone can grow up to be a metrosexual, not just those born to, or marrying into wealth.
        We know many of you are concerned that the real world is full of dangers—terrorism and disease being prominent among them. Our plan, not only reduces terrorism to the level of prostitution, but also eliminates prostitution since no one will feel the need for sexual gratification. Our fully funded NIH will provide drugs to remove the cause of so much suffering—sexual desire. If our great reservoir of scientific talent can produce Viagra, why not a drug that permanently suppresses desire? As an immediate benefit of such efforts AIDS will be eliminated. Abortions will be unnecessary. As long as there is even one person driven by longing for the opposite sex, our job will not be done.
        John Edwards and I promise to work tirelessly for you, the overstressed average American. We know that most of you are losers making less than $200,000 a year. We will appear regularly on Oprah to provide empathic psycho-therapeutic support to each of you. Once we have eliminated sexual differences, our comprehensive plan goes on to deal with troublesome racial and ethnic differences. We will fund gene therapy research to provide everyone with indeterminable--though attractive-- ethnic characteristics.
        Furthermore it will be our task to go beyond affirmative action, to build a truly egalitarian nation. Why shouldn’t everyone be good enough to play centerfield for the Yankees? In George Bush’s America, most men who might otherwise be playing are forced to purchase seats in George Steinbrenner’s stadium where all they can do is chant “Who’s your daddy” at ballplayers who were unfairly blessed with superior talent. Is that the kind of America you want? And what about an America where things like hurricanes unfairly afflict Florida, and Californians have to suffer through earthquakes? Is it right that Mount St. Helen’s should erupt amidst the good people of Washington? Our plan will fund geological research to eliminate such outrageous natural events. Nature should be our constant friend, not an uncaring realm of cruelty and death. Finally, as a centerpiece of our plan, we will eliminate death. “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him” wrote E.M. Forster. Saves him from what, we ask? Why should we have to be destroyed? It's an affront to the millions of hard working people of our great land. Such unfairness cannot stand.
        Our first step, as John Edwards so compassionately suggested, will be to cure the disabled, to make the paralyzed walk, and the blind see. Is it right that disabled people have to compete in “special” Olympics? We will make sure there are no more victims like Christopher Reeve, confined to wheel chairs simply because they were bucked off a horse. Under our plan these noble sufferers will compete in the real Olympics. And that raises the question that we’re certain troubles our fellow citizens; why shouldn’t each of us be superb at anything we choose? Henny Youngman once joked that when his doctor set his broken arm he inquired “Doc, will I be able to play the violin when it heals?” When the doctor replied, “Sure”, Henny said “that’s great, because I don’t know how to play now.” To John Edwards and to me, this is not a joking matter. We want everyone to get to Carnegie Hall and we will set to work from day one of our administration creating equality for all at the highest level. That is true affirmative action. Any boy who grows up as I did in the lap of luxury will be guaranteed a starting forward’s job on the Boston Celtics, or as a Professor of Post-Modern Hermeneutics.
        Finally, let me close by mentioning how much John Edwards and I stand for strong families. Strong families can comfortably discuss, as we do, the sexual orientation of our opponents' children. Strong family men like me who by the way served in Vietnam, can express admiration for his opponent’s parents. They have been able to love him despite his avoidance of service in Vietnam, his drunk driving, his detachment from reality, his record of failure, his lying, stubbornness and inability to windsurf. The list could go on and on, but you get the point, my fellow Americans. Thank you and I ask for your vote in the spirit of ecumenism; may God or Allah, or the Sand Sprite bless America and bless you. Good night.

October 14, 2004

THIS IS WHAT BUSH MUST SAY TO KERRY

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Mr. Kerry is a little taller than I am and his voice is a little deeper, and he likes to talk as though he was God. But he’s not God and John Edwards is not Jesus Christ. He cannot make the lame and the halt walk and he cannot make the blind see and he cannot bring clarity to a mind destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease. Kerry and Edwards can’t perform miracles, although they like to talk as though they could.

Mr. Kerry tells you “I have a plan.” He has a plan for everything—you name it, he has a plan for it. He has a plan for Iraq, he has a plan for terrorism, he has a plan for social security, he has a plan for health care, he has a plan for every social ill this country suffers from. He wants you to think that he can perform miracles and cure everything.

The trouble is, Ladies and Gentlemen, he’s only a man, and he’s not all-knowing and all-wise. He’s fallible.

Plans are cheap. I can pick up the phone tomorrow morning and say I need a plan to solve some problem, and by noon I’ll have a dozen plans on my desk. And they’ll be good plans written by brilliant men. But they’re only plans. You’ve got to make plans work and in our democracy there are many conflicting interests at work. And everyone has a right to fight for their interests. And when they do that’s what we call political discourse—something we cherish in America.

And by the time a brilliant plan gets hashed out by the interested parties there is no brilliant plan anymore, only a network of compromises that satisfies nobody completely and satisfies everybody just a little bit. That’s why Mr. Kerry can’t perform miracles, a miracle comes about instantaneously—Mr. Kerry is always telling you he’s going to speed things up—well, in a democracy you can’t speed things up. You can only make things happen in small increments.

So don’t fall for the magical promises my opponent is making just because he has a deep voice, and talks a smooth line, and likes to make you think he has miraculous powers.

October 12, 2004

JOHN KERRY: RESOLVED TO BE IRRESOLUTE

        Why do utopian fantasies like Communism and Socialism persist, even after they have been calamitous failures in the real world? Why should organizations like the UN be looked to admiringly by the John Kerrys of the world, long after they've been shown to be vast criminal enterprises? Why does the New York Times regularly run glowing obits for dying members of the Communist Internationale? Why did so many cheer Neville Chamberlain's return from Munich with "Peace in our time"? The answer lies in the liberal mind's inability to face and deal with the dark side of human nature, the murderous aggression whose gratification suffuses the faces of Muslim beheaders of infidels. "Appeasement" was in fact a policy Chamberlain proudly boasted of; it showed him to be a caring concerned man who preferred summit meetings and dialogue with Hitler to the use of force. Above all, Chamberlain thought of himself as a reasonable man and so too, he assumed, was Hitler. How horrifying to think that anyone could actually want war and enjoy mass murder. So Chamberlain simply called it unthinkable. People are good, they love their families and countries, they want 'peace in our time'. As he said to parliament: "..I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul. Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me...As long as war has not begun, there is always hope that it may be prevented, and you know that I am going to work for peace to the last moment. Good night. . . ." And work he did, betraying Czechoslovakia in pursuit of 'peace'. When disaster followed, like our very own contemporary liberals, Chamberlain praised himself for his noble aims! "...When we were convinced, as we became convinced, that nothing any longer would keep the Sudetenland within the Czechoslovakian State, we urged the Czech Government as strongly as we could to agree to the cession of territory, and to agree promptly. The Czech Government, through the wisdom and courage of President Benes, accepted the advice of the French Government and ourselves. It was a hard decision for anyone who loved his country to take, but to accuse us of having by that advice betrayed the Czechoslovakian State is simply preposterous. What we did was to save her from annihilation and give her a chance of new life as a new State, which involves the loss of territory and fortifications, but may perhaps enable her to enjoy in the future and develop a national existence under a neutrality and security comparable to that which we see in Switzerland to-day. Therefore, I think the Government deserve the approval of this House for their conduct of affairs in this recent crisis which has saved Czechoslovakia from destruction and Europe from Armageddon..."

        Of course, the word 'appeasement' eventually took on pejorative meaing, but the impulse remains strong as ever. Why would a candidate for President of the United States, 3 years after the most costly attack ever on our soil by an enemy sworn to killing us all in the name of Allah, assert that we should try hard to go back to the time when dangers gathered and our nation slept? It's about human nature. It is hard enough to bear the everyday injuries to our self regard, imposed by reality. We all long for escape into a perfect world where we are beautiful, powerful, graceful and brilliant. Every time I turn for help with my computer I'm brought up against the painful fact that almost any 11 year old knows more than I do about this technology. Even in moments of physical triumph, as when completing a marathon, it has been painful to see how many were faster, younger, more determined. Add to any of the countless narcissistic injuries of daily life, the hard, immutable fact of human envy and hatred and it's no wonder that denial is not just a river in Egypt. It's very difficult to accept that people want us dead so that Allah's perfect world can come into existence. Essentially this Presidential campaign has boiled down to a choice: do we go back to sleep, a benign liberal sleep, in which our wishful fantasies prevail, a dreamworld wherein we have no enemies- only friends whom we've mistreated and towards whom we must show more empathy.
        Horsefeathers has referred to the sandbox candidacy of John Kerry. Unlike more mature war time leaders like Wendell Wilkie and Tom Dewey, Kerry is mad as hell at W. for waking us from the happy, stock market fed sleep of the 1990's. He's angry--not so much at Islamist terrorists--they're a "nuisance", but at W. who is to blame for everything that did, could and might go wrong in the world. Does anyone doubt that if Bush mentioned the weather Kerry would lambast him for causing the recent increase in hurricane activity? Basically Kerry wants to return to his nap and Bush wants him and the rest of us to stay awake. This is an eternal, recurring struggle rooted in human nature. Our utopian enemies are enraged at us for reminding them of their own primitive inadequacies and centuries of failure. They are even more dangerous than were Hitler and Stalin because of their billion plus Muslim co-religionists and the easy availability of WMD's. They want a perfect sharia world where nothing ever changes and bliss resides in Allah's perfect presence. These utopian fanatics find allies in our own utopian liberals who, like the 1930's pacifists, seek to transcend human nature, to live in a world free of human aggression, and thereby become "objective" allies of radical Islamists. So this election, once again brings a clash between the sleep seeking utopians and the modern day Churchillians telling us we are at war. The clarity of the choice was made evident in the now famous Kerry profile by an admiring NYTimes reporter. Everyone should read it to learn how the forceful debater turns into an irresolute, unprincipled politician who can't even decide what bottled water he prefers. William Tucker, reading the profile nails it perfectly when he writes: "...Kerry is our Neville Chamberlain, assuring us that we are not really at war, that the seeming conflict is all a misunderstanding that can be cleared up with a little clever diplomacy, and that he will bring us "peace in our time..."See the rest here.

October 10, 2004

JOHN KERRY: IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO

        Horsefeathers assumes we are electing a Commander in Chief, not a President of the high school debate club. We believe the presidential debates are therefore unlikely to prove significant in the election. In fact, we would suspect that Mr. Kerry's debate skills, so admired by the wordsmiths of the media punditocracy, are regarded by many as evidence that he'd be an ideal used car salesman, too clever by half to be President. Despite all this, and beyond matters of style, occasionally these debates have been useful. For one viewer the most revealing epiphany occurred near the end of the second debate. "The truth of that matter," said President Bush, "is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he [Kerry] were the President of the United States." Kerry replied: "Not necessarily."
        There it is- Mr. Not Necessarily, a PoMo leader for our multiculturally nuanced times.

October 08, 2004

BOOKS HORSEFEATHERS WON’T BE READING ANYTIME SOON

“Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.”
Joseph Conrad—Under Western Eyes

        Horsefeathers believes the English novel has been in decline for many years. Nineteenth and early twentieth century novelists painted rich portraits of human nature through the exploration of character. Those wordsmiths have been succeeded, for the most part, by superficial post-Freudian, psychobabblers who look down on their own creations from the heights of cant pseudo-knowledge. They prefer thinly disguised memoir, wherein they can display directly, with hardly any imaginative transformation, their childhood grievances, the myriad rejections by cruel parents and the sexual abuse that left them in various states of aggrieved victimhood. How modern to let it all hang out. And then, of course, there is the sophisticatedly superior Post-Modern ironic stance. “Look at me”, it says, “how clever I am to be writing this; I’m aware it’s just a novel” The great novelists of the past, felt no need to “explain” what they were up to. They allowed their fiction to do the talking. For the PoMo novelist, however, it is necessary to make sure the audience knows, in your own voice exactly what you are doing. Sort of like sausage makers finding it important to describe how, when, and where the sausage was created. The taste is secondary.
        For those who prefer detailed description of the machinery, Phillip Roth wrote a long, grandiosely pompous and self-absorbed piece about his latest novel, The Plot Against America, in the New York Times. It is filled with trite observations about what he tried to accomplish in the novel: bringing his dead parents back to life, re-imagining American history if Charles Lindbergh won the Presidency in 1940, the humiliating effects of discrimination on minority group members. This latter is presented with a bow to multicultural sensibilities. Thus anti-semitism, the ostensible topic of the novel, is just one version of the discrimination all minorities face. This revelation is conveyed as if Roth has arrived at a profound and original observation: “ ...humiliation is crippling -- it does terrible injury to people, it twists them, it deforms them, as every American minority can attest and as the best American minority writers make clear in their work…”(our bolding) As we used to say in the Jewish neighborhoods of the Bronx--and I suspect on the playgrounds of Weequahic High School: "No shit, Sherlock." The whole article, written in a tone of world weary wisdom is full of pseudo profundities, such as: “…History claims everybody, whether they know it or not and whether they like it or not…” Roth hastens to tell us that this imagined history of America falling under the spell of a fascist anti-semite has nothing, absolutely nothing to say about our present situation. He protests too much and at great length, saying: “…Some readers are going to want to take this book as a roman clef to the present moment in America…” Why pray tell would a reader possibly think such a thought? Well perhaps because Roth makes it impossible not to. He argues that he can understand why some would read it that way because, after all, “..Kafka's books played a strong role in the imagination of the Czech writers who were opposing the Russians' puppet government in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960's and 1970's, a phenomenon that alarmed the government and caused it to prohibit the sale and discussion of his books and to remove them from the library shelves. Obviously, it wasn't to inspire those future writers or to intimidate their future rulers that Kafka wrote ''The Trial'' and ''The Castle'' in the early years of the 20th century…” So the parallel is what exactly? Apparently Roth thinks the Bush administration is the analogue to the totalitarian Czech regime and he expects his own writing just might be used similarly by its literary opponents to help bring it down. Roth then lets the cat out of the bag while undoing his own argument. Somewhere from deep right field he uncorks a throw that lands twenty rows up in the stands and beans a spectator expecting it to go to the catcher; he writes: “…And now Aristophanes, who surely must be God, has given us George W. Bush, a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one, and who has merely reaffirmed for me the maxim that informed the writing of all these books and that makes our lives as Americans as precarious as anyone else's: all the assurances are provisional, even here in a 200-year-old democracy…” What a perfect encapsulation of the wordsmith intellectuals’ contempt—not just for the President but for the lower breeds who run hardware stores—so much easier and less worthy than writing books. This should be printed on parchment and sent to the Smithsonian for a permanent exhibiton on the contemporary Liberal Mind. How fitting that this man who has profited beyond a hardware store owner’s wildest dreams mocking his fellow Jews, now extends his scorn to George Bush.
        Instead of reading The Plot Against America, Horsefeathers will save money by returning to his well worn copy of Joseph Conrad’s great study of the mind of a terrorist and his revolutionary intellectual co-conspirators, Under Western Eyes. As we began with a quote from that novel we’ll end with one: “A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

October 05, 2004

JOHN KERRY, EXTRATERRESTRIAL ALLIANCE BUILDER

"...But I can do a better job of protecting America's security because the test that I was talking about was a test of legitimacy, not just in the globe, but elsewhere..."
See the rest here.

October 04, 2004

POST MODERNISM: THE DISEASE THAT MAY DESTROY US

Victor Hanson makes the diagnosis: "...We all know also that various manifestations of postmodernism are now embedded within the larger culture—everything from situational ethics, moral equivalence, utopian pacifism, and multiculturalism that share a common belief that absolute standards of judgment are a myth. But whereas in the past, arguments might have been waged over the validity of standardized tests, affirmative action, or the Western literary and artistic canon, they now have been superimposed onto critical issues of national security, if not our very survival in a time of war. And we are seeing the terrible results in the furious invective of an Al Gore, the mainstream acceptance of a Michael Moore, or the pass given to those who talk of killing the President..."See the rest here.

October 02, 2004

BUSH IS NO DEBATER--BUT KERRY STILL HAS THE WRONG IDEAS

When the good fairy came to bless Georgie W. Bush at his birth, she did not give him the gift of gab. But she did leave him with an abundance of the common virtues—the common touch and common sense, neither easily found within the Beltway.

It’s true, John Kerry ran rings around George W. Bush in the first debate, centering on foreign policy, the area of discourse in which Bush was supposed to shine. Kerry rattled off facts, factoids, half-truths, errors, and lies with a smoothness and éclat that is the product of a native gift for speechifying honed by twenty years of senatorial argumentation. It didn’t really seem to matter to him whether it was the truth he was uttering or not, so long as he sounded and looked good. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true that the New York Subways stopped during the Republican Convention. It didn’t matter that the name of the KGB prison was Lubyanka not Treblinka. It didn’t really matter that he lied about whether he said that George W. Bush lied. So long as it all came off the tongue trippingly, it didn’t matter.

But if you’re looking for a smooth operator—the best in the business was Bill Clinton. And Clinton was smart to boot. But, unfortunately, Bill didn’t make a very good president. And neither will John Kerry.

What America needs these days—since 9/11—is a man who can lead in a war against Islamic terror. There is no other country with the means to stand up to the unleashed forces of terrorism but the United States. There is no such thing as collective security anymore—the dithering nations of old Europe don’t have the stomach for any kind of confrontation more challenging than their morning croissants. We cannot depend on support from abroad or the good opinion of the United Nations as Kerry wants to do. It is America that is the main target of this war and other nations like the townsfolk in “High Noon” want nothing more than to distance themselves from the fight.

John Kerry knows how to talk the talk all right, but can he walk the walk? His words say yes but his life says something different. It is no accident that he can only find women to marry who are extremely rich and who can provide him with the finest clothes and wines. It is no accident that he has his skin burnished and his nails manicured for his confrontation with George W. Bush, while Bush visited with and consoled victims of the Florida hurricanes. It is no accident that John Kerry has six houses and rides an $8000 bicycle. It is no accident that he enjoys $300 haircuts. It is no accident that he never had to meet a payroll and never had a job in the real world. It is no accident that John Kerry never cared to hold a job in which he had to take ultimate responsibility. He never sought an executive position—mayor or governor—a leadership position, not even in the Senate. He enjoys the polite discourse and refined life of a senator. And he was happy to remain in that position for twenty years. This is not the profile of a leader.

At a time when America must have all options available in its fight against terrorism and nuclear proliferation, John Kerry—the moralist, the man who would do anything before going to war—would get rid of our programs to develop nuclear bunker-buster bombs, bombs that would have the capacity to destroy enemy states’ nuclear facilities hidden deep within bombproof bunkers. He would get rid of such a weapons program on the principle that America should be a model and set an example for rogue states.

There are some men who are born senators and love refined discourse and polite debate, like John Kerry—and some who enjoy taking on challenges and responsibility, men who like to comfort people in stressful situations and to get their hands dirty doing a job that has to be done, like George W. Bush. Which do we want to finish a tough, dirty job—a talker or a doer?

<< Back to Horsefeathers