Saturday, October 16, 2004
By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com
HOUSTON -- There are pitchers. There are great pitchers. There are big-game pitchers. And then there's Roger Clemens.
"He's a superhero, man," said his teammate, Jeff Bagwell. "He's the Rocket. You can't tell me everyone on the field doesn't know about him, doesn't know who he is. The Legend of Rocket always grows."
Roger Clemens allowed just four hits in Game 3.
Well, friends, it's safe to say the Legend of Rocket added another floor to the old skyscraper Saturday.
He was all that stood between the Houston Astros and a certifiable postseason disaster. His team needed him. His town needed him.
Was there any doubt what would happen next?
Late on a memorable October afternoon, Clemens stomped to the mound and spun off seven four-hit innings in a ballpark so loud, "I thought the roof would blow off," said closer Brad Lidge. And three hours later, the NLCS was a whole different series.
Three hours later, that Minute Maid Park scoreboard read: Astros 5, Cardinals 2. And all of a sudden, this NLCS doesn't look like a Cardinals runaway anymore.
True, the Cardinals still lead it, 2 games to 1. And true, the last 14 teams to do what they did -- kick off a best-of-seven series by taking a 2-games-to-0 lead at home -- have all gone on to win the series. So the odds are still with them.
"But eventually," said Bagwell, "there's going to be someone that comes along and breaks all those odds. And hopefully, people will say some day it was the 2004 Houston Astros."
Uh, not out of the question -- because if ever there was a team to which those odds didn't apply, these Astros would be that team.
Before they came along, 61 other teams had lost the first two games of a best-of-seven postseason series. And 49 of them lost.
But how many of those other 61 teams were coming home to play in a park where they'd just gone 19-1 in their last 20 games?
And how many of them were about to throw their two best pitchers (Clemens and Roy Oswalt) in Games 3 and 4? It's a good bet that most of those teams (like the Red Sox) had already used their 1-2 starters in losing those first two games.
"So it was a funny thing," said Lidge. "I know we were down, 0-2. But coming back home, with Roy and Roger pitching, it didn't really feel like we were down, 0-2."
And if it didn't, this team had more than psychological reasons to feel that way. The last eight times Clemens and Oswalt had started back-to-back games, the Astros' record was 15-1. The last 23 games those two started in any order, the Astros were 19-4.
Now that Clemens has held up his half of that omnipotent equation, Sunday is Oswalt's turn, in a game just as monumental.
"Of all the games that are called must-win games, I bet only about 10 percent of them are really must-wins," said Lance Berkman. "But tomorrow is one of those. ... And today was an absolute must-win. Their club is too talented to spot them a three-game lead."
So in other words, there are must-win games, absolute must-win games -- and even, Berkman said, a third category -- desperation must-wins.
Well, the Astros weren't into the desperation must-win stage. But if you're going to play a game that ascends into absolute must-winnery, it sure helps the psyche to be able to do something no other team in history has ever done when trailing a series, 2 games to zip:
"I know we were down, 0-2. But coming back home, with Roy and Roger pitching, it didn't really feel like we were down, 0-2. ”
— Brad Lidge
Hand the baseball to a 328-game winner.
"When Roger has the ball," said catcher Brad Ausmus, "he has a certain energy unlike anyone I've ever seen. His focus and intensity out there are unsurpassed by anyone I've ever caught, with the possible exception of Randy Johnson. You watch him move out there. You watch his facial expressions. He's got a purpose. And he's been doing it every single pitch, in his case, for two decades."
Clemens has started and won a game like this before, with his team trailing, 2 games to 0 -- for the Yankees, in Game 3 of the 2001 World Series. But this, even he admitted, was different. This, he said, "is my hometown."
His kids were in the stands. His wife was in the stands. His friends were in the stands. Even his mother -- 73-yeard-old Bess Clemens -- was in the stands.
"I hope mom's not too tired over there," Clemens said afterward. "She pitches every pitch with me. She's still breathing. That's the good thing."
"Need to wrap my arm," quipped Mrs. Clemens.
"Need to ice down tonight, mom," laughed her son.
If it weren't for moments like that one, you understand, Roger Clemens never even would have been in uniform Saturday. If it weren't for this opportunity to pitch in this town in front of all these people he loves -- and millions more who love him back -- he would have still been retired. He would have spent this day kicking back watching the Texas Longhorns play a different kind of sport.
But watching his ferocity grow -- and his slim one-run lead stick -- as this day wore on, you asked yourself one more time: Why did this guy ever retire -- even for five minutes?
He wasn't very Rocket-like early on. Worrying about his sore push-off leg. Pushing his fabled splitter. Leaving a first-pitch fastball in the middle of the plate in the first inning, that Larry Walker practically pounded off the 2004 Wild Card Champions banner, way out in Home Run Land in deep left-center field.
But then, in the bottom of the first, Jeff Kent fought back from an 0-2 hole himself to launch a two-run homer off Jeff Suppan, supplying Clemens with a 3-1 lead. And at that point, you could see the fire in Clemens' eyes from here to San Antonio.
"Give him a lead," said his pal, Andy Pettitte, "and he's as good as any pitcher I've ever seen."
He did give up one more run, on a second-inning Jim Edmonds homer. But after that, he got downright ridiculous -- allowing precisely one hit (a bloop single by Scott Rolen) over his final five innings.
Then -- in a fourth-inning duel with Edgar Renteria, as Rolen literally lurched and boogied off second -- Clemens finally located his killer splitter. From that point on, he struck out seven of the final 13 hitters he faced. And the best lineup in the National League was reduced mostly to trying to run up his pitch count to get him out of there.
Lidge delivered the two-inning save.
That finally happened, seven innings and 116 pitches into his day. But even that didn't help the Cardinals' cause a whole lot, because that just meant it was Brad Lidge Time.
Eventually, the Cardinals would make Lidge sweat, too -- for 42 grueling pitches. But in the end, Lidge's final line would read: 2 innings, 5 strikeouts. So after too many days of too many innings from too many Chad Harvilles, this was a textbook example of how the Houston Astros won 36 of those last 46 games down the stretch.
"Before the game," said Ausmus, "I thought, 'If Roger can go seven innings and Lidge can go two, that would be the perfect game.' "
And he was, obviously, the perfect man to pitch it. Even at age 42, the same age as that franchise he now pitches for. Only one 42-year-old pitcher in history ever won a postseason game. And that, of course, was him.
Only one pitcher has ever won more than one postseason start after passing the age of 40. And that, of course, was also him.
But it has taken more than talent for him to do what he has done this year, for this particular team. It has taken presence, leadership and a mammoth sense of responsibility.
"You have to remember, this is a totally different club than the club we took into the season," Bagwell said. "Roger and Roy (Oswalt) have been the only constants."
They were just supposed to represent half of a four-aces starting rotation. But Pettitte went down. And Wade Miller went down. And after that, it was all the Astros could do to find four guys to pitch at all, let alone pitch like aces.
"So what I saw today -- this was nothing different than what I've seen every time he took the mound," Bagwell said. "This guy is one of the greatest pitchers ever to take the mound. And he's like that all the time."
His record for the year, at age 42, is now 20-4, counting the playoffs. His team is now 26-11 when he starts. Without him, they wouldn't still be alive in this series -- and not just because of what happened Saturday. Without him, they wouldn't still be playing. Period.
But this was just one afternoon for the Houston Astros to be grateful merely to have him around -- because they were only hours away from the latest and greatest in their never-ending series of must-win games.
"It's only one game," said Roger Clemens. "Now we need to come out here, same time, same place, and do it again (Sunday), with another huge, loud crowd."
They will do it Sunday with a 20-game winner (Oswalt), and another legitimate ace. But there are aces. There are stoppers. And there are horses. And then there is Roger Clemens. There's only one of him on the face of the planet.
Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Michelle Malkin: al-Qaeda And Our Lax Student Visa Policies
STUDENT TERRORISTS
By Michelle Malkin · October 15, 2004 03:54 PM
http://michellemalkin.com
More disturbing evidence of al Qaeda operatives exploiting lax student visa policies (via AP):
TRENTON, N.J. -- A senior al-Qaida operative accused of conducting surveillance on U.S. financial buildings as possible terrorist targets got into the United States on a student visa, according to the FBI.
FBI spokesman John Conway said Thursday the agency is trying to retrace the movements of Dhiren Barot and determine whether any of his associates are still here. Barot posed as a student while conducting surveillance of several sites, according to the FBI.
Barot, 32, entered the United States on a student visa, agent Joseph Billy Jr. told law enforcement officials Wednesday.
Barot attended several institutions of higher learning in New Jersey in 2000 and 2001 while carrying out the reconnaissance operation, Billy said.
Authorities believe Barot was dispatched by Osama bin Laden to conduct the scouting mission in New Jersey, The Record of Bergen County reported in Thursday's editions. Barot was arrested by British authorities in August and is in custody there.
He and seven others are charged with conspiring to commit murder and use radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals or explosives to cause "fear or injury."
The British say Barot had reconnaissance reports for the Prudential building in Newark, the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup building in Manhattan and the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington.
Discovery of those surveys led Homeland Security officials to declare an orange alert in early August and prompted heightened security measures at the buildings.
The documents were discovered on computers and disks and in e-mail messages during a raid in Pakistan in July.
Related: How Khalid Learned his ABCs
Meanwhile, some college students are whining that increased efforts to screen and monitor foreign students is "not comforting." Boo-hoo.
TrackBack <0>
By Michelle Malkin · October 15, 2004 03:54 PM
http://michellemalkin.com
More disturbing evidence of al Qaeda operatives exploiting lax student visa policies (via AP):
TRENTON, N.J. -- A senior al-Qaida operative accused of conducting surveillance on U.S. financial buildings as possible terrorist targets got into the United States on a student visa, according to the FBI.
FBI spokesman John Conway said Thursday the agency is trying to retrace the movements of Dhiren Barot and determine whether any of his associates are still here. Barot posed as a student while conducting surveillance of several sites, according to the FBI.
Barot, 32, entered the United States on a student visa, agent Joseph Billy Jr. told law enforcement officials Wednesday.
Barot attended several institutions of higher learning in New Jersey in 2000 and 2001 while carrying out the reconnaissance operation, Billy said.
Authorities believe Barot was dispatched by Osama bin Laden to conduct the scouting mission in New Jersey, The Record of Bergen County reported in Thursday's editions. Barot was arrested by British authorities in August and is in custody there.
He and seven others are charged with conspiring to commit murder and use radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals or explosives to cause "fear or injury."
The British say Barot had reconnaissance reports for the Prudential building in Newark, the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup building in Manhattan and the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington.
Discovery of those surveys led Homeland Security officials to declare an orange alert in early August and prompted heightened security measures at the buildings.
The documents were discovered on computers and disks and in e-mail messages during a raid in Pakistan in July.
Related: How Khalid Learned his ABCs
Meanwhile, some college students are whining that increased efforts to screen and monitor foreign students is "not comforting." Boo-hoo.
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Captain's Quarters: Hussein's Lawyer Met With bin Laden in 1998
From the blog: http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
Saddam's Lawyer Met With Osama In Baghdad: MEMRI
The Arab news translation service MEMRI reports in a breaking-news crawl that Osama bin Laden met with Saddam's Italian attorney in the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in 1998:
Saddam's Italian attorney Giovanni de Stafano told a London-based daily that a meeting was held between himself and Osama bin Laden at the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in 1998. (al-Sharq al-Awsat)
Big hat tip to Kevin McCullough. I have yet to find an English-language link to al-Sharq, even though it's based in London, nor have I seen this break anywhere else in the English-language media. Needless to say, if this report pans out, it puts a completely new light on our efforts to depose Saddam -- not so much for those of us who understand the strategic necessity of removing Saddam, but for those who can only think tactically.
More to come ...
Posted by Captain Ed at 09:12 AM Comments (2) TrackBack (2)
Saddam's Lawyer Met With Osama In Baghdad: MEMRI
The Arab news translation service MEMRI reports in a breaking-news crawl that Osama bin Laden met with Saddam's Italian attorney in the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in 1998:
Saddam's Italian attorney Giovanni de Stafano told a London-based daily that a meeting was held between himself and Osama bin Laden at the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad in 1998. (al-Sharq al-Awsat)
Big hat tip to Kevin McCullough. I have yet to find an English-language link to al-Sharq, even though it's based in London, nor have I seen this break anywhere else in the English-language media. Needless to say, if this report pans out, it puts a completely new light on our efforts to depose Saddam -- not so much for those of us who understand the strategic necessity of removing Saddam, but for those who can only think tactically.
More to come ...
Posted by Captain Ed at 09:12 AM Comments (2) TrackBack (2)
Friday, October 15, 2004
Lee Kaplan: Duke University's Weekend Hatefest
By Lee Kaplan FrontPageMagazine.com October 15, 2004
http://www.frontpagemag.com
Below is Lee Kaplan's report for FrontPage on Duke's hate-fest this weekend. It is followed by Mr. Kaplan's follow-up report on Daniel Pipes' speech delivered at Duke yesterday, October 14, 2004 -- The Editors
Duke University, under the leadership of its president, Richard Brodhead, and most notably its Vice President for Governmental Affairs, John Burness, continues to whitewash the anti-Semitic and anti-American event still scheduled for this weekend on the Durham campus despite misrepresentation by the organizers over the event’s real purpose. The Palestine Solidarity’s conference, far from being an academic exercise in freedom of speech and academic freedom, will be a training session for anti-Semites and those seeking to support the Insurgents in Iraq who kill U.S. soldiers. It will be an event where attendees will learn how to conduct civil disobedience that can include the destruction of campus property and to support terrorists overseas while the organizers train others to recruit more of their same ilk on campuses all over the United States and Canada.
What is amazing is that Duke’s administrators seem so intent the event go forward they are practically telling outright lies to the public. On the Duke University official website and advertising for the event, whatever the organizers want the public to believe is posted or whitewashed to look good, courtesy of the University.
For example, Duke ran a statement that “Kill the Jews!” was not shouted at one of the previous conferences at the University of Michigan. After Front Page furnished John Burness with a signed legal affidavit, plus one eyewitness account by a Michigan attendee and proof that two newspapers had verified such epithets occurred, Burness altered Duke’s website to say only that “some other people have claimed such statements were made in Arabic ” and only after citing some unnamed faculty sources at Michigan who allegedly said it never happened. The fact those faculty sources may have had a part in bringing the event to the Wolverines’ campus was completely ignored.
Even worse, Burness cites an alleged endorsement by the American Jewish Committee that the Michigan event was an example of educational discourse and civility. This tale was no doubt given to Burness by Fayyad Sbaihat, the current head organizer of the Duke Hate Fest who I exposed in my article on last year’s Conference. Despite the American Jewish Committee sending a letter to Burness stating that such an endorsement by their organization never occurred, Burness at this writing has failed to correct the lie on the Duke website that whitewashes the event.
Scuttlebutt has it that Duke is spending upwards of $50,000 in added security costs to make sure the event happens on campus, including metal detectors to keep out recorders and cameras at this “open dialog” event. When I queried Burness by email if Saudi money was helping Duke to foot the bill, he wrote back saying he was unaware of ANY Saudi funding at all going to Duke University. Sending him proof of Saudi donations and funding for Duke in the past elicited no response at all. Such donations are too numerous to all be cited in this article.
Originally Front Page Magazine did not ask that Duke cancel this event, just merely allow tape recorders and cameras inside. Censorship is de rigueur for the organizers at all their events because they hold sessions where lawbreaking methods -- to be used to support terrorism overseas -- are discussed.
Burness left the banning of recorders and cameras open to the organizers as he insisted this event was open to all points of view. However, a recent Duke University Chronicle article reports that the press will also not be allowed to record quotes inside the workshops at all, even without cameras and recorders. What is the excuse given by the organizers? “To ensure free speech,” according to one leader, who fails to explain how reporting to the public hinders free speech.
Duke’s administrators, like a broken record, continue to cite the event as a model of open dialog and freedom of speech. The question is, “Open dialog and free speech for whom?” Duke states the event has no speech codes as long as things remain civil. But the organizers openly talk of ejecting people who do not talk in “consensus building” speech, no matter how civilly. How can one build “consensus” when the event’s Guiding Principles are full of doublespeak endorsements of terrorism and the destruction of Israel, they refusal to condemn terrorism, and call for civil disobedience?
In short, there will be no real dialog or discussion at this event and Duke’s administrators, in the most Orwellian fashion of doublespeak, are working hard to keep things that way.
The event's list of workshop speakers scheduled on the Palestine Solidarity organizers’ website reveals a collection of anti-Semites and non-academic “experts,” who are given academic credibility by Duke’s previous reputation (something this event should diminish for years to come). Duke’s conduct should make it the laughing stock of universities.
For example, one workshop is led by Abe Greenhouse, a former student at Rutgers University, whose greatest academic achievement there was to smash a pie in the face of Israeli Minister of the Diaspora Natan Sharansky during a campus visit. Greenhouse is a felon. He will be conducting and lecturing at a workshop titled “Anatomy of the Organized Zionist Community in the United States.” Greenhouse is no expert on Zionism. He has never written any scholarly books subject to academic scrutiny on the subject. Sharansky spent many years in a Soviet Union gulag as part of the Soviet Jewry movement and endured daily torture to finally earn the right to emigrate to Israel. Want to become famous and a speaker at Duke? Just commit a felony assault on campus against a champion of democracy and freedom.
But Greenhouse isn’t just an isolated example from the Conference.
Fadi Kiblawi, at the Michigan conference, spoke of his desire to strap on a belt and become a suicide bomber in an article titled “A Perspective on Palestine while High on Vicodin." (Muslim journal Al-Risalah, University of Michigan, Spring Edition II, June 24, 2001). He also lectured at the Ohio State conference on how to take over campus newspapers across the country. Kiblawi will also be speaking and running a workshop. A law student now at George Washington University, Kiblawi’s articles in the campus newspaper at GWU are monitored by pro-Israel groups on that campus who frequently have to write in to correct his false statements. He was arrested in Israel for trying to bring down the Security Fence, and Kiblawi also condemned the shut down of the Global Relief Foundation and the arrest of its head manager, Rabih Haddad, for funding al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas.
Howie Machtinger will lead a workshop on “An American-Jewish Anti-Occupation Perspective.” Like Greenhouse, Machtinger uses his Jewish ancestry solely as a weapon to advance his radical agenda to destroy American capitalism (while living here) along with Israel. Machtinger is a stereotype come to life; a comedy writer’s image of the aging activist. If he wasn’t real, his career would be too amazing to believe. Machtinger was on the barricades at Columbia University in 1968 and was one of the founders of the Weather Underground. He co-authored a tome that stated, “At the right moment, revolutionaries within the United States were to wage a ‘people’s war’ and attack from within. The government would fall and ‘world Communism’ would eventually be instituted.” He also spoke about “how the black liberation movement is so far advanced at this point that the only thing left for white revolutionaries is to support blacks by fighting cops as a diversionary tactic.” Machtinger has been a radical for so long he appears at radical retrospectives and he claims that H. Rap Brown is innocent of killing a black policeman during a traffic stop. Calling for the destruction of Israel is the cause of the millennium. This is another speaker Duke is hosting at this “educational conference.”
But the most telling speaker at this event who shows it is an anti-Semitic hate fest is Charles E. Carlson, whose hatred for Jews borders on psychosis. Carlson is an overt supporter of suicide bombers. He has written articles glorifying suicide bombers:
“Imagine taking the risk of being caught and beaten to death while trying to sneak out of Gaza, a fenced prison; then to travel alone overland to some populated area carrying a homemade pipe bomb that you know can only be detonated within a few feet of an enemy if it is not to be wasted. Imagine knowing that if you detonate the bomb too soon or in the wrong place you will kill only yourself and your friends....”
Carlson goes on to argue that the fact that so many Israeli soldiers are killed by suicide bombers “proves” that the bombers are targeting soldiers, not civilians. Soldiers are killed when they apprehend suicide bombers at check points. The bombers are, of course, en route to civilian targets.
Carlson is a hardcore anti-Semite, repeating long-discredited conspiracy theories claiming Jews run the money supply and are not, in fact, Jewish. For example:
“Are There any Zionist Judeo ‘Christians’ in your Town? Do they Act in Good Faith? Does the Truth have a place in their ‘Religion/Beliefs’? Or do they Serve the ‘Alleged Authorities’? The Rulers of Romans 13. You Know the Ashkenazim/Khazar Edomite ‘Jews.’ The Class A Stockholders of the Federal Reserve: [http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm] - Share the Light of the Truth with the neo-conned ‘Judeo-Christians’ and lead them into the paths of righteousness.”
Carlson is also a publisher of al-Jazeera and will be joined by other virulent anti-Semites like Alison Weir from Sausalito, California. Weir has called the Hebron Massacre of 1929 an “Arab Uprising” and pushes the propaganda that the Nazis and Jews worked hand-in-hand during the Holocaust, among other ludicrous accusations.
The PLO, the Saudis and the Arab League have targeted American universities as the next outlet to spread the anti-Israeli, anti-American propaganda they already teach in their own schools. It’s a pity that Duke’s administration is so willing to aid them.
Duke President Richard Brodhead was inaugurated only weeks ago and has lowered Duke’s reputation by making Duke a training base to spread pro-terrorist hatred.
President Brodhead has told Duke’s trustees, “[T]he next few weeks promise to test our university in many ways. I am confident this current controversy will eventually be seen as a moment when Duke demonstrated leadership and preserved a principle at the core of what universities must be about.”
“Demonstrated leadership” is precisely what Duke is lacking. The purpose of a university should be to enable a free society to remain free through the exercise of scholarship, research and real dialogue. Brodhead and Burness are perfectly willing to let the organizers ban the press from strategy-and-training sessions. That has nothing to do with education.
Want to know more about what goes on inside the Palestine Solidarity Conference at Duke? Write President Brodhead and demand the press be allowed inside ALL workshops and events during the event.The American public has a right to know. You can e-mail President Richard Brodhead at: president@duke.edu. While you're at it, write the trustees of Duke University, as well.
*
DANIEL PIPES SPEAKS AT DUKE
By Lee Kaplan
Durham, North Carolina- Daniel Pipes, the head of the Middle East Forum and an advisor to President Bush in the War On Terror, spoke tonight at Duke University prior to the Palestine Solidarity divestment conference that is taking place here this weekend.
The subject of his lecture was “The Palestinian-Israeli War: Where Did It Come From and How to End It.” As a preface to the actual speech, Dr. Pipes expressed his umbrage about the upcoming Hate Fest by stating, “ I am appalled that the administration at Duke University allowed the Palestine Solidarity Movement to hold this event.”
He continued by thanking the Duke Conservative Union for the great research they did in two open letters sent to Duke President Richard Brodhead condemning the event, and by illustrating how at past conferences the speakers and organizers, as well as two current speakers at this weekend’s event, Charles Colson and Fadi Kiblawi, have both openly encouraged suicide bombings and terrorist attacks against Israelis. He also pointed out that six people actively involved in the organization of the event are members of both the International Solidarity Movement that aids PLO terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza. Campus Vice President for Governmental Affairs at Duke, John Burness, has consistently tried to maintain that the ISM was not a part of this conference, even though some of the organizers openly admit their membership and affiliations.
Pipes briefly commented on the history of the conflict, and pointed out that when Israel began in 1948 it was based on a socialist past akin to political attitudes so prevalent on campuses today. The Soviet Union had actually supported the creation of Israel at that time along with many leftist groups. He told how the kibbutzim, farm movements and labor party actually dominated Israeli politics for the first 30 years of the Jewish state. He mentioned how numerous American liberals supported the nascent country, such as Harry Truman and others from the Democratic Party. He then pointed out how conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower were ambivalent about Israel.
He continued by explaining that from 1970 to about 1990 support for Israel by both political parties in the U.S. was virtually indistinguishable, but that during the 1990’s there was a new distancing by liberals from Israel. This coincided with a warming of relations with conservatives that has been a counterweight to the coldness and opposition Israel is now facing more often in the U.S. and other countries. He discussed the Durbin Conference where Israel was unfairly condemned as a racist state and violator of human rights by many of the most oppressive regimes in the world and how since then the Left is condemning Israel more and more. As an example, he cited the situation on U.S. campuses where Israel is routinely attacked, clearly a reference in part to the Palestine Solidarity Hate Fest scheduled this weekend. He called for a reclamation of our universities to bring them back to mainstream education rather than to a biased emphasis on left wing views.
Dr. Pipes then launched his lecture by explaining the war between the Palestinians and Israelis is “not a cycle of violence, not random violence, not an age-old feud like between the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
“It’s war. Violence is a symptom of the conflict that has many meanings and goals,” he said. He emphasized that such goals are very important and that most plans currently used for arriving at peace will not work.
He called for a change in U.S. policy.
Describing the eleven years since the Oslo Accords in 1993 to when the Intifada began in 2000, Pipes made an analogy between two handshakes. In September, 1993 on the White House lawn, Yasser Arafat had shaken hands with Yitzhak Rabin which led some national leaders to declare that “the impossible is within reach.” He explained that Oslo was perceived as a brilliant solution and a way to bring dignity and economic revival to the Palestinian people. Instead, he pointed out, after seven years the Palestinians faced more poverty, radicalism and corruption—including suicide bombings—than ever before.
On the Israeli side he told of 1,500 dead and over 6,000 maimed. In addition, Israel has suffered diplomatic and economic decline aside from all the terrorism.
“Oslo was supposed to mean a new epoch but it simply didn’t work,” he explained.
Dr. Pipes then explained why: “There was no real intent on the Palestinian side to live up to or fulfill the agreements.” First, he stated that in September 1993, at the height of the Oslo agreement, the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist on paper only. Whereas Israel and the West took the agreement to mean an end of 45 years of war and a recognition of Israel’s right to exist, Arafat had no intention to doing so. If acceptance of Israel’s right to exist was actually achieved, then the next step would have been the settling of lesser issues such as borders, water, natural resources among normal issues between states.
Reminding the audience that the 1990’s were the period of the dot.com boom, of economic expansion, he explained that Israel had thought Oslo would mean an end to a tribal conflict and said Israel was flexible, restrained and generous in its offer to the Palestinians. He explained how a curious idea percolated about solving the ongoing war based on the notion “to enrich your enemy.” With the encouragement and aid of the U.S., the EU and Japan, an effort was launched to enrich the Palestinian economy and provide jobs, schools, homes and many other services.
However, all of the above was received as demoralization by the Palestinians who regarded these things not as goodwill but instead encouraged the ambition to destroy Israel. Money for peace was used to prepare for war as the Palestine Authority purchased weapons and set up a military and intelligence infrastructure for war. This only served to make Israel even more vulnerable.
He explained how a nascent Israel defeated five Arab armies in 1948 only to have the Arabs prepare for another round. In 1967, Israel overcame three Arab armies to win a decisive victory yet again. Over the following decades, the Arab world began to see they could not destroy Israel. This was further reinforced when Saddam Hussein was defeated in 1991.
During the seven years after Oslo, Israel continued to make one concession after another, but by 2000 the drive to destroy Israel only grew worse and worse as evidenced by Arab rhetoric, political statements and terror attacks. Arafat could barely deliver his own government.
“What was needed was not signatures…Arafat’s signature was worthless.” He explained. Dr. Pipes then cited the lynching of two IDF reservists seven years later in Ramallah as the example of the contrast with the handshake at Oslo in 1993: one of the killers held up both of his hands drenched in his victim’s blood and shaking them for the world to see.
“We need to learn from these mistakes,” Dr. Pipes said. “First, the presumption a paper agreement would create a real change. Second, that the Palestinians were ready to give up their goal to destroy Israel.” Going back to the notion of war, he told the audience how Germany in the First World War, after a defeat, came back a second time to try again.
He cited numerous wars in the past where enemies that were not completely vanquished once and for all rose again to continue protracted wars. He pointed out how the U.S. had to go into Iraq again after the war in 1991 and how that had also worked against the Taliban.
“What is needed in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not more negotiations, but rather to get one side to give up.” He continued, “We must draw a conclusion: Do we want Israel to exist and be accepted as a flourishing democratic state or destroyed.” The Arab goal is to destroy Israel, but Israel wants to be secure.
He urged no financial aid, diplomacy, no state and no recognition for the Palestinians until they are fully defeated as America’s enemies were defeated in past wars. He said that eliminating Arafat was not the answer because another leader might make war even more successful, and described the Security Fence as just a wall that cannot stop a real war that is going on nor lead to long term peace. Unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza would only be perceived as weakness by the Palestinians. He cited the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon that was done as a goodwill gesture in the early 1980’s but was declared a victory by the other side as an example. Transfer of populations, international troops, even a Marshall Plan for the Middle East were all ruled out as only temporary solutions that would not end the war. Only the absolute defeat of the Palestinians could bring an end to bloodshed.
“Once they give up, only then can they build an economy. As long as they are brainwashed, or give up their children for suicide bombings, only when they realize they are defeated can they make progress.” Palestinians must accept their defeat and the outcome would be good for all parties in the conflict, not just for Israel.
Later he explained the hypocrisy of American policy that condemns the Israelis for using targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders or fighting terrorists in ways that might lead to civilian casualties.
He explained the difference as being that the U.S. is at war but the Israelis are in a diplomatic process. Although, he left it up to individual attendees to decide for themselves if they felt supporting a democratic Israel was more viable than aiding the Palestinians to destroy it, Dr. Pipes’ speech emphasized that the way to end the conflict is to pressure our own government to consider the conflict a war between a democratic ally, Israel, and the Palestinians and to conduct our foreign policy to that end in order to stop terrorism and bring peace to the Middle East.
Lee Kaplan is a contributing editor to Frontpagemag.com.
http://www.frontpagemag.com
Below is Lee Kaplan's report for FrontPage on Duke's hate-fest this weekend. It is followed by Mr. Kaplan's follow-up report on Daniel Pipes' speech delivered at Duke yesterday, October 14, 2004 -- The Editors
Duke University, under the leadership of its president, Richard Brodhead, and most notably its Vice President for Governmental Affairs, John Burness, continues to whitewash the anti-Semitic and anti-American event still scheduled for this weekend on the Durham campus despite misrepresentation by the organizers over the event’s real purpose. The Palestine Solidarity’s conference, far from being an academic exercise in freedom of speech and academic freedom, will be a training session for anti-Semites and those seeking to support the Insurgents in Iraq who kill U.S. soldiers. It will be an event where attendees will learn how to conduct civil disobedience that can include the destruction of campus property and to support terrorists overseas while the organizers train others to recruit more of their same ilk on campuses all over the United States and Canada.
What is amazing is that Duke’s administrators seem so intent the event go forward they are practically telling outright lies to the public. On the Duke University official website and advertising for the event, whatever the organizers want the public to believe is posted or whitewashed to look good, courtesy of the University.
For example, Duke ran a statement that “Kill the Jews!” was not shouted at one of the previous conferences at the University of Michigan. After Front Page furnished John Burness with a signed legal affidavit, plus one eyewitness account by a Michigan attendee and proof that two newspapers had verified such epithets occurred, Burness altered Duke’s website to say only that “some other people have claimed such statements were made in Arabic ” and only after citing some unnamed faculty sources at Michigan who allegedly said it never happened. The fact those faculty sources may have had a part in bringing the event to the Wolverines’ campus was completely ignored.
Even worse, Burness cites an alleged endorsement by the American Jewish Committee that the Michigan event was an example of educational discourse and civility. This tale was no doubt given to Burness by Fayyad Sbaihat, the current head organizer of the Duke Hate Fest who I exposed in my article on last year’s Conference. Despite the American Jewish Committee sending a letter to Burness stating that such an endorsement by their organization never occurred, Burness at this writing has failed to correct the lie on the Duke website that whitewashes the event.
Scuttlebutt has it that Duke is spending upwards of $50,000 in added security costs to make sure the event happens on campus, including metal detectors to keep out recorders and cameras at this “open dialog” event. When I queried Burness by email if Saudi money was helping Duke to foot the bill, he wrote back saying he was unaware of ANY Saudi funding at all going to Duke University. Sending him proof of Saudi donations and funding for Duke in the past elicited no response at all. Such donations are too numerous to all be cited in this article.
Originally Front Page Magazine did not ask that Duke cancel this event, just merely allow tape recorders and cameras inside. Censorship is de rigueur for the organizers at all their events because they hold sessions where lawbreaking methods -- to be used to support terrorism overseas -- are discussed.
Burness left the banning of recorders and cameras open to the organizers as he insisted this event was open to all points of view. However, a recent Duke University Chronicle article reports that the press will also not be allowed to record quotes inside the workshops at all, even without cameras and recorders. What is the excuse given by the organizers? “To ensure free speech,” according to one leader, who fails to explain how reporting to the public hinders free speech.
Duke’s administrators, like a broken record, continue to cite the event as a model of open dialog and freedom of speech. The question is, “Open dialog and free speech for whom?” Duke states the event has no speech codes as long as things remain civil. But the organizers openly talk of ejecting people who do not talk in “consensus building” speech, no matter how civilly. How can one build “consensus” when the event’s Guiding Principles are full of doublespeak endorsements of terrorism and the destruction of Israel, they refusal to condemn terrorism, and call for civil disobedience?
In short, there will be no real dialog or discussion at this event and Duke’s administrators, in the most Orwellian fashion of doublespeak, are working hard to keep things that way.
The event's list of workshop speakers scheduled on the Palestine Solidarity organizers’ website reveals a collection of anti-Semites and non-academic “experts,” who are given academic credibility by Duke’s previous reputation (something this event should diminish for years to come). Duke’s conduct should make it the laughing stock of universities.
For example, one workshop is led by Abe Greenhouse, a former student at Rutgers University, whose greatest academic achievement there was to smash a pie in the face of Israeli Minister of the Diaspora Natan Sharansky during a campus visit. Greenhouse is a felon. He will be conducting and lecturing at a workshop titled “Anatomy of the Organized Zionist Community in the United States.” Greenhouse is no expert on Zionism. He has never written any scholarly books subject to academic scrutiny on the subject. Sharansky spent many years in a Soviet Union gulag as part of the Soviet Jewry movement and endured daily torture to finally earn the right to emigrate to Israel. Want to become famous and a speaker at Duke? Just commit a felony assault on campus against a champion of democracy and freedom.
But Greenhouse isn’t just an isolated example from the Conference.
Fadi Kiblawi, at the Michigan conference, spoke of his desire to strap on a belt and become a suicide bomber in an article titled “A Perspective on Palestine while High on Vicodin." (Muslim journal Al-Risalah, University of Michigan, Spring Edition II, June 24, 2001). He also lectured at the Ohio State conference on how to take over campus newspapers across the country. Kiblawi will also be speaking and running a workshop. A law student now at George Washington University, Kiblawi’s articles in the campus newspaper at GWU are monitored by pro-Israel groups on that campus who frequently have to write in to correct his false statements. He was arrested in Israel for trying to bring down the Security Fence, and Kiblawi also condemned the shut down of the Global Relief Foundation and the arrest of its head manager, Rabih Haddad, for funding al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas.
Howie Machtinger will lead a workshop on “An American-Jewish Anti-Occupation Perspective.” Like Greenhouse, Machtinger uses his Jewish ancestry solely as a weapon to advance his radical agenda to destroy American capitalism (while living here) along with Israel. Machtinger is a stereotype come to life; a comedy writer’s image of the aging activist. If he wasn’t real, his career would be too amazing to believe. Machtinger was on the barricades at Columbia University in 1968 and was one of the founders of the Weather Underground. He co-authored a tome that stated, “At the right moment, revolutionaries within the United States were to wage a ‘people’s war’ and attack from within. The government would fall and ‘world Communism’ would eventually be instituted.” He also spoke about “how the black liberation movement is so far advanced at this point that the only thing left for white revolutionaries is to support blacks by fighting cops as a diversionary tactic.” Machtinger has been a radical for so long he appears at radical retrospectives and he claims that H. Rap Brown is innocent of killing a black policeman during a traffic stop. Calling for the destruction of Israel is the cause of the millennium. This is another speaker Duke is hosting at this “educational conference.”
But the most telling speaker at this event who shows it is an anti-Semitic hate fest is Charles E. Carlson, whose hatred for Jews borders on psychosis. Carlson is an overt supporter of suicide bombers. He has written articles glorifying suicide bombers:
“Imagine taking the risk of being caught and beaten to death while trying to sneak out of Gaza, a fenced prison; then to travel alone overland to some populated area carrying a homemade pipe bomb that you know can only be detonated within a few feet of an enemy if it is not to be wasted. Imagine knowing that if you detonate the bomb too soon or in the wrong place you will kill only yourself and your friends....”
Carlson goes on to argue that the fact that so many Israeli soldiers are killed by suicide bombers “proves” that the bombers are targeting soldiers, not civilians. Soldiers are killed when they apprehend suicide bombers at check points. The bombers are, of course, en route to civilian targets.
Carlson is a hardcore anti-Semite, repeating long-discredited conspiracy theories claiming Jews run the money supply and are not, in fact, Jewish. For example:
“Are There any Zionist Judeo ‘Christians’ in your Town? Do they Act in Good Faith? Does the Truth have a place in their ‘Religion/Beliefs’? Or do they Serve the ‘Alleged Authorities’? The Rulers of Romans 13. You Know the Ashkenazim/Khazar Edomite ‘Jews.’ The Class A Stockholders of the Federal Reserve: [http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm] - Share the Light of the Truth with the neo-conned ‘Judeo-Christians’ and lead them into the paths of righteousness.”
Carlson is also a publisher of al-Jazeera and will be joined by other virulent anti-Semites like Alison Weir from Sausalito, California. Weir has called the Hebron Massacre of 1929 an “Arab Uprising” and pushes the propaganda that the Nazis and Jews worked hand-in-hand during the Holocaust, among other ludicrous accusations.
The PLO, the Saudis and the Arab League have targeted American universities as the next outlet to spread the anti-Israeli, anti-American propaganda they already teach in their own schools. It’s a pity that Duke’s administration is so willing to aid them.
Duke President Richard Brodhead was inaugurated only weeks ago and has lowered Duke’s reputation by making Duke a training base to spread pro-terrorist hatred.
President Brodhead has told Duke’s trustees, “[T]he next few weeks promise to test our university in many ways. I am confident this current controversy will eventually be seen as a moment when Duke demonstrated leadership and preserved a principle at the core of what universities must be about.”
“Demonstrated leadership” is precisely what Duke is lacking. The purpose of a university should be to enable a free society to remain free through the exercise of scholarship, research and real dialogue. Brodhead and Burness are perfectly willing to let the organizers ban the press from strategy-and-training sessions. That has nothing to do with education.
Want to know more about what goes on inside the Palestine Solidarity Conference at Duke? Write President Brodhead and demand the press be allowed inside ALL workshops and events during the event.The American public has a right to know. You can e-mail President Richard Brodhead at: president@duke.edu. While you're at it, write the trustees of Duke University, as well.
*
DANIEL PIPES SPEAKS AT DUKE
By Lee Kaplan
Durham, North Carolina- Daniel Pipes, the head of the Middle East Forum and an advisor to President Bush in the War On Terror, spoke tonight at Duke University prior to the Palestine Solidarity divestment conference that is taking place here this weekend.
The subject of his lecture was “The Palestinian-Israeli War: Where Did It Come From and How to End It.” As a preface to the actual speech, Dr. Pipes expressed his umbrage about the upcoming Hate Fest by stating, “ I am appalled that the administration at Duke University allowed the Palestine Solidarity Movement to hold this event.”
He continued by thanking the Duke Conservative Union for the great research they did in two open letters sent to Duke President Richard Brodhead condemning the event, and by illustrating how at past conferences the speakers and organizers, as well as two current speakers at this weekend’s event, Charles Colson and Fadi Kiblawi, have both openly encouraged suicide bombings and terrorist attacks against Israelis. He also pointed out that six people actively involved in the organization of the event are members of both the International Solidarity Movement that aids PLO terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza. Campus Vice President for Governmental Affairs at Duke, John Burness, has consistently tried to maintain that the ISM was not a part of this conference, even though some of the organizers openly admit their membership and affiliations.
Pipes briefly commented on the history of the conflict, and pointed out that when Israel began in 1948 it was based on a socialist past akin to political attitudes so prevalent on campuses today. The Soviet Union had actually supported the creation of Israel at that time along with many leftist groups. He told how the kibbutzim, farm movements and labor party actually dominated Israeli politics for the first 30 years of the Jewish state. He mentioned how numerous American liberals supported the nascent country, such as Harry Truman and others from the Democratic Party. He then pointed out how conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower were ambivalent about Israel.
He continued by explaining that from 1970 to about 1990 support for Israel by both political parties in the U.S. was virtually indistinguishable, but that during the 1990’s there was a new distancing by liberals from Israel. This coincided with a warming of relations with conservatives that has been a counterweight to the coldness and opposition Israel is now facing more often in the U.S. and other countries. He discussed the Durbin Conference where Israel was unfairly condemned as a racist state and violator of human rights by many of the most oppressive regimes in the world and how since then the Left is condemning Israel more and more. As an example, he cited the situation on U.S. campuses where Israel is routinely attacked, clearly a reference in part to the Palestine Solidarity Hate Fest scheduled this weekend. He called for a reclamation of our universities to bring them back to mainstream education rather than to a biased emphasis on left wing views.
Dr. Pipes then launched his lecture by explaining the war between the Palestinians and Israelis is “not a cycle of violence, not random violence, not an age-old feud like between the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
“It’s war. Violence is a symptom of the conflict that has many meanings and goals,” he said. He emphasized that such goals are very important and that most plans currently used for arriving at peace will not work.
He called for a change in U.S. policy.
Describing the eleven years since the Oslo Accords in 1993 to when the Intifada began in 2000, Pipes made an analogy between two handshakes. In September, 1993 on the White House lawn, Yasser Arafat had shaken hands with Yitzhak Rabin which led some national leaders to declare that “the impossible is within reach.” He explained that Oslo was perceived as a brilliant solution and a way to bring dignity and economic revival to the Palestinian people. Instead, he pointed out, after seven years the Palestinians faced more poverty, radicalism and corruption—including suicide bombings—than ever before.
On the Israeli side he told of 1,500 dead and over 6,000 maimed. In addition, Israel has suffered diplomatic and economic decline aside from all the terrorism.
“Oslo was supposed to mean a new epoch but it simply didn’t work,” he explained.
Dr. Pipes then explained why: “There was no real intent on the Palestinian side to live up to or fulfill the agreements.” First, he stated that in September 1993, at the height of the Oslo agreement, the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist on paper only. Whereas Israel and the West took the agreement to mean an end of 45 years of war and a recognition of Israel’s right to exist, Arafat had no intention to doing so. If acceptance of Israel’s right to exist was actually achieved, then the next step would have been the settling of lesser issues such as borders, water, natural resources among normal issues between states.
Reminding the audience that the 1990’s were the period of the dot.com boom, of economic expansion, he explained that Israel had thought Oslo would mean an end to a tribal conflict and said Israel was flexible, restrained and generous in its offer to the Palestinians. He explained how a curious idea percolated about solving the ongoing war based on the notion “to enrich your enemy.” With the encouragement and aid of the U.S., the EU and Japan, an effort was launched to enrich the Palestinian economy and provide jobs, schools, homes and many other services.
However, all of the above was received as demoralization by the Palestinians who regarded these things not as goodwill but instead encouraged the ambition to destroy Israel. Money for peace was used to prepare for war as the Palestine Authority purchased weapons and set up a military and intelligence infrastructure for war. This only served to make Israel even more vulnerable.
He explained how a nascent Israel defeated five Arab armies in 1948 only to have the Arabs prepare for another round. In 1967, Israel overcame three Arab armies to win a decisive victory yet again. Over the following decades, the Arab world began to see they could not destroy Israel. This was further reinforced when Saddam Hussein was defeated in 1991.
During the seven years after Oslo, Israel continued to make one concession after another, but by 2000 the drive to destroy Israel only grew worse and worse as evidenced by Arab rhetoric, political statements and terror attacks. Arafat could barely deliver his own government.
“What was needed was not signatures…Arafat’s signature was worthless.” He explained. Dr. Pipes then cited the lynching of two IDF reservists seven years later in Ramallah as the example of the contrast with the handshake at Oslo in 1993: one of the killers held up both of his hands drenched in his victim’s blood and shaking them for the world to see.
“We need to learn from these mistakes,” Dr. Pipes said. “First, the presumption a paper agreement would create a real change. Second, that the Palestinians were ready to give up their goal to destroy Israel.” Going back to the notion of war, he told the audience how Germany in the First World War, after a defeat, came back a second time to try again.
He cited numerous wars in the past where enemies that were not completely vanquished once and for all rose again to continue protracted wars. He pointed out how the U.S. had to go into Iraq again after the war in 1991 and how that had also worked against the Taliban.
“What is needed in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not more negotiations, but rather to get one side to give up.” He continued, “We must draw a conclusion: Do we want Israel to exist and be accepted as a flourishing democratic state or destroyed.” The Arab goal is to destroy Israel, but Israel wants to be secure.
He urged no financial aid, diplomacy, no state and no recognition for the Palestinians until they are fully defeated as America’s enemies were defeated in past wars. He said that eliminating Arafat was not the answer because another leader might make war even more successful, and described the Security Fence as just a wall that cannot stop a real war that is going on nor lead to long term peace. Unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza would only be perceived as weakness by the Palestinians. He cited the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon that was done as a goodwill gesture in the early 1980’s but was declared a victory by the other side as an example. Transfer of populations, international troops, even a Marshall Plan for the Middle East were all ruled out as only temporary solutions that would not end the war. Only the absolute defeat of the Palestinians could bring an end to bloodshed.
“Once they give up, only then can they build an economy. As long as they are brainwashed, or give up their children for suicide bombings, only when they realize they are defeated can they make progress.” Palestinians must accept their defeat and the outcome would be good for all parties in the conflict, not just for Israel.
Later he explained the hypocrisy of American policy that condemns the Israelis for using targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders or fighting terrorists in ways that might lead to civilian casualties.
He explained the difference as being that the U.S. is at war but the Israelis are in a diplomatic process. Although, he left it up to individual attendees to decide for themselves if they felt supporting a democratic Israel was more viable than aiding the Palestinians to destroy it, Dr. Pipes’ speech emphasized that the way to end the conflict is to pressure our own government to consider the conflict a war between a democratic ally, Israel, and the Palestinians and to conduct our foreign policy to that end in order to stop terrorism and bring peace to the Middle East.
Lee Kaplan is a contributing editor to Frontpagemag.com.
Charles Krauthammer: An Edwards Outrage
[Ugh...how did this boring, transparent, self-aggrandizing empty suit get this far?...John Edwards...a man with nothing to say who will say it all day long when given the slightest opportunity. - jtf]
Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A23
The Washington Post
After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.
This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?
First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.
Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.
As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.
Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.
George Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research. There are 22 lines of stem cells now available, up from one just two years ago. As Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, has written, there are 3,500 shipments of stem cells waiting for anybody who wants them.
Edwards and Kerry constantly talk of a Bush "ban" on stem cell research. This is false. There is no ban. You want to study stem cells? You get them from the companies that have the cells and apply to the National Institutes of Health for the federal funding.
In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the "ban" on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's.
So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.
This is an outright lie. The President's Council on Bioethics, on which I sit, had one of the world's foremost experts on Alzheimer's, Dennis Selkoe from Harvard, give us a lecture on the newest and most promising approaches to solving the Alzheimer's mystery. Selkoe reported remarkable progress in using biochemicals to clear the "plaque" deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase "stem cells" having passed his lips.
So much for the miracle cure. Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at NIH, has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer's cure are a fiction, but that "people need a fairy tale." Kerry and Edwards certainly do. They are shamelessly exploiting this fairy tale, having no doubt been told by their pollsters that stem cells play well politically for them.
Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.
There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A23
The Washington Post
After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.
This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?
First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.
Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.
As a doctor by training, I've known better than to believe the hype -- and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them.
Third, the implication that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty.
George Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research. There are 22 lines of stem cells now available, up from one just two years ago. As Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, has written, there are 3,500 shipments of stem cells waiting for anybody who wants them.
Edwards and Kerry constantly talk of a Bush "ban" on stem cell research. This is false. There is no ban. You want to study stem cells? You get them from the companies that have the cells and apply to the National Institutes of Health for the federal funding.
In his Aug. 7 radio address to the nation, Kerry referred not once but four times to the "ban" on stem cell research instituted by Bush. At the time, Reeve was alive, so not available for posthumous exploitation. But Ronald Reagan was available, having recently died of Alzheimer's.
So what does Kerry do? He begins his radio address with the disgraceful claim that the stem cell "ban" is standing in the way of an Alzheimer's cure.
This is an outright lie. The President's Council on Bioethics, on which I sit, had one of the world's foremost experts on Alzheimer's, Dennis Selkoe from Harvard, give us a lecture on the newest and most promising approaches to solving the Alzheimer's mystery. Selkoe reported remarkable progress in using biochemicals to clear the "plaque" deposits in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's. He ended his presentation without the phrase "stem cells" having passed his lips.
So much for the miracle cure. Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at NIH, has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer's cure are a fiction, but that "people need a fairy tale." Kerry and Edwards certainly do. They are shamelessly exploiting this fairy tale, having no doubt been told by their pollsters that stem cells play well politically for them.
Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.
There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Michelle Malkin On Cheney's Daughter & Illegal Immigration
ABUSING DICK CHENEY'S DAUGHTER
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 11:05 PM
http://michellemalkin.com
John Kerry stooped to the lowest of the low with the shameless, invasive line that will be played over and over again on the news in the next 24 hours:
And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
Um, has John Kerry talked to Dick Cheney's daughter? Has John Edwards? Has Mary Beth Cahill, who called Mary Cheney "fair game" on Fox News Channel after tonight's debate? If they haven't talked to her, they should shut up, leave her alone, and defend their incoherent position on gay marriage without hiding behind the vice president's daughter.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, UNLEASHED
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 10:11 PM
9:45ish: Finally, finally! Bob Schieffer asks about illegal immigration...but both candidates bomb.
Bush's perfunctory reference to how he has sprinkled a few more Border Patrol agents across the southern border glosses over the horrendous policies instituted under his Department of Homeland Security that have resulted in undermining those agents. As I noted recently:
When a mobile unit of border agents in Southern California made a series of high-profile mass arrests of illegal aliens in June, prompting the ire of ethnic activists and Hispanic Democrats, Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson iced the agents' efforts and publicly criticized the arrests. Instead of backing his own men and women, Hutchinson assured the open borders lobby that his department would bow to the "sensitivities" surrounding interior enforcement.
The retreat has had a devastating effect on border agents' morale -- and our safety. A new survey of border security personnel released this week by the National Border Patrol Council revealed that almost two-thirds of the workforce are demoralized, and nearly half of these employees have considered leaving their job within the past two years. The council noted: "Almost three years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars and endless rhetoric from the top about how anti-terrorism is our foremost priority, only about half of these officers believe that our nation is any safer from terrorist threats."
Meanwhile, John Kerry delivers another empty promise--pledging to "toughen the borders" without giving a single specific example of how he would do so. Like Bush, he ignores the disastrous and deliberate lack of interior enforcement in this country. Has not a word to say about the dismal shortage of detention space for illegal aliens, the continued perilous policies of catch and release, and the deportation abyss created by the likes of Teddy Kennedy and his immigration lawyer friends. (More here.)As for the economics of illegal immigration, someone in both campaigns ought to be reading Robert Samuelson.
As for amnesty, forget what their lips say. They both support mass pardons of millions of immigration law-breakers and their employers.
More. Of. The. Same.
***By the way, the hottest issue in Arizona right now is Proposition 200, which would in part require secure identification to vote in elections and to receive public benefits. President Bush could have strengthened his grass-roots conservative base--and scored with conservative Democrats--by endorsing the measure as good for national security, good for election integrity, and good for fiscal responsibility. Last month, an Arizona Republic poll in Phoenix showed that 66 percent of registered Arizona voters support the measure. The poll showed that Republicans favor the initiative by an 8-1 margin, while Democrats approve by a 3-1 margin.
So, why didn't Bush utter a word about it? Because someone at the highest levels of the national GOP elite opposes the vast majority of Americans on this most important issue.
DEMOCRATS GONE WILD
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 02:40 PM
My new column gives an overview of the campaign epidemic of anti-GOP hate spreading across the country. Here's the intro:
How many hate crime anecdotes does it take before the mainstream media spot a trend? If the victims are politically correct, all it takes is one or two.
One alleged name-calling. A few alleged acts of vandalism. A suspicious arson here or there. In an instant, an unsubstantiated attack against the right kind of ethnic, racial, religious or sexual minority becomes undisputed evidence of an epidemic of violence. A symbol of rising hate. A national crisis.
But what happens when the targets are the wrong kind of victim? What happens when conservatives and Republicans are on the receiving end of discriminatory threats or harassment or worse?
Hello, reporters? Is anybody home? Is it my imagination, or do I hear pins dropping in the grievance corners of America's otherwise victim-friendly newsrooms?
On a related note, see below for updates to last night's blog entry on the disgusting anti-Bush Special Olympics poster, which has now been picked up by Drudge. I spoke with both the editor of the local newspaper in rural West Tennessee, where the poster is being distributed, and with a woman who obtained a copy of it.
Update: Add this to the list.
YES, VIRGINIA, THE SOUTHERN BORDER IS A PROBLEM
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 05:31 AM
Another scoop from Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. He cites an intelligence report indicating that 25 Chechen terrorists entered the United States illegally via our southern border with Mexico:
The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.
Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.
Yeah, maybe they're a group of musicians with a gig in northern Mexico.
For more on the vulnerability of our southern border to terrorism, see here and here.
For a good example of head-in-the-sand thinking about the need to secure our southern border, see this Virginia Postrel post.
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 11:05 PM
http://michellemalkin.com
John Kerry stooped to the lowest of the low with the shameless, invasive line that will be played over and over again on the news in the next 24 hours:
And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
Um, has John Kerry talked to Dick Cheney's daughter? Has John Edwards? Has Mary Beth Cahill, who called Mary Cheney "fair game" on Fox News Channel after tonight's debate? If they haven't talked to her, they should shut up, leave her alone, and defend their incoherent position on gay marriage without hiding behind the vice president's daughter.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, UNLEASHED
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 10:11 PM
9:45ish: Finally, finally! Bob Schieffer asks about illegal immigration...but both candidates bomb.
Bush's perfunctory reference to how he has sprinkled a few more Border Patrol agents across the southern border glosses over the horrendous policies instituted under his Department of Homeland Security that have resulted in undermining those agents. As I noted recently:
When a mobile unit of border agents in Southern California made a series of high-profile mass arrests of illegal aliens in June, prompting the ire of ethnic activists and Hispanic Democrats, Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson iced the agents' efforts and publicly criticized the arrests. Instead of backing his own men and women, Hutchinson assured the open borders lobby that his department would bow to the "sensitivities" surrounding interior enforcement.
The retreat has had a devastating effect on border agents' morale -- and our safety. A new survey of border security personnel released this week by the National Border Patrol Council revealed that almost two-thirds of the workforce are demoralized, and nearly half of these employees have considered leaving their job within the past two years. The council noted: "Almost three years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars and endless rhetoric from the top about how anti-terrorism is our foremost priority, only about half of these officers believe that our nation is any safer from terrorist threats."
Meanwhile, John Kerry delivers another empty promise--pledging to "toughen the borders" without giving a single specific example of how he would do so. Like Bush, he ignores the disastrous and deliberate lack of interior enforcement in this country. Has not a word to say about the dismal shortage of detention space for illegal aliens, the continued perilous policies of catch and release, and the deportation abyss created by the likes of Teddy Kennedy and his immigration lawyer friends. (More here.)As for the economics of illegal immigration, someone in both campaigns ought to be reading Robert Samuelson.
As for amnesty, forget what their lips say. They both support mass pardons of millions of immigration law-breakers and their employers.
More. Of. The. Same.
***By the way, the hottest issue in Arizona right now is Proposition 200, which would in part require secure identification to vote in elections and to receive public benefits. President Bush could have strengthened his grass-roots conservative base--and scored with conservative Democrats--by endorsing the measure as good for national security, good for election integrity, and good for fiscal responsibility. Last month, an Arizona Republic poll in Phoenix showed that 66 percent of registered Arizona voters support the measure. The poll showed that Republicans favor the initiative by an 8-1 margin, while Democrats approve by a 3-1 margin.
So, why didn't Bush utter a word about it? Because someone at the highest levels of the national GOP elite opposes the vast majority of Americans on this most important issue.
DEMOCRATS GONE WILD
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 02:40 PM
My new column gives an overview of the campaign epidemic of anti-GOP hate spreading across the country. Here's the intro:
How many hate crime anecdotes does it take before the mainstream media spot a trend? If the victims are politically correct, all it takes is one or two.
One alleged name-calling. A few alleged acts of vandalism. A suspicious arson here or there. In an instant, an unsubstantiated attack against the right kind of ethnic, racial, religious or sexual minority becomes undisputed evidence of an epidemic of violence. A symbol of rising hate. A national crisis.
But what happens when the targets are the wrong kind of victim? What happens when conservatives and Republicans are on the receiving end of discriminatory threats or harassment or worse?
Hello, reporters? Is anybody home? Is it my imagination, or do I hear pins dropping in the grievance corners of America's otherwise victim-friendly newsrooms?
On a related note, see below for updates to last night's blog entry on the disgusting anti-Bush Special Olympics poster, which has now been picked up by Drudge. I spoke with both the editor of the local newspaper in rural West Tennessee, where the poster is being distributed, and with a woman who obtained a copy of it.
Update: Add this to the list.
YES, VIRGINIA, THE SOUTHERN BORDER IS A PROBLEM
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 05:31 AM
Another scoop from Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. He cites an intelligence report indicating that 25 Chechen terrorists entered the United States illegally via our southern border with Mexico:
The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.
Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.
Yeah, maybe they're a group of musicians with a gig in northern Mexico.
For more on the vulnerability of our southern border to terrorism, see here and here.
For a good example of head-in-the-sand thinking about the need to secure our southern border, see this Virginia Postrel post.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Sean Daly: Hail To The Boss
Hail to The Boss: Springsteen Plays Politics
By Sean Daly, Washington Post Staff Writer- Tuesday, October 12, 2004; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com
How's this for a sign of the times? None other than Bruce Springsteen, the gruff-voiced bard of the working class, stormed a sold-out MCI Center last night in the hopes of sending one man straight to the unemployment line.
Yep, and the Boss wasn't alone in voicing his displeasure with our country's other notable boss, either: Thirteen of the New Jersey star's fellow pop-music heavy hitters showed up in the nation's capital to try to help rock George W. Bush right on out of the White House.
At the start of the raucous finale of the Vote for Change tour, Springsteen, Dave Matthews, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Dixie Chick Emily Robison walked onstage together to the sound of loud boos -- oh, wait, sorry, the crowd actually was screaming "Bruuuce!" (Talk about a guy who was born to run for office.)
"We're here to raise our voices loud and clear," said Springsteen. "We want to change our government."
"We want government that's open, rational, responsible for the citizenry, and humane," added Vedder.
There was no mention of Bush in the opening statements. No mention of John Kerry, either. Instead, the musicians went on to unload (and unload and unload) their arsenal of hits and keep their political views to gritty little sound bites and pleas to vote.
Perhaps the most rousing set of the night was the first one: John Mellencamp gave his roots-rock a bluesy, acoustic grit. "This next song is about what the Devil can do if you don't keep your eye on him," said the midwestern icon before launching into the fiddle-fueled "Walk Tall." Backed by a four-piece band, Mellencamp stayed seated on a stool for "Paper in Fire" and "The Authority Song" but jumped to his feet to put extra oomph into the blue-collar anthem "Pink Houses."
The tour, a much-publicized 38-show road trip that since Oct. 1 has covered 33 cities in 11 swing states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio, was presented by MoveOn, a liberal political action committee. All proceeds ("millions and millions" is all organizers will say) will go to America Coming Together, an independent group created by Democratic Party supporters.
Tickets for last night's show, which sold out in 30 minutes, ran as high as $175. Most of the previous Vote for Change shows -- aimed at undecided voters but drooled over by music geeks -- also were reported as sellouts. People who were shut out could watch the show live on the Sundance Channel or hear the broadcast on more than 60 radio stations.
Last night's five-hour-plus exhaust-athon was more a call to guitars than a call to arms -- and it proved sensational for donkeys and elephants alike. In fact, things were a lot more divisive across the street from the arena.
The D.C. chapter of the pro-Bush organization Free Republic, led by Kristinn Taylor, waved signs that read "Saddam-Aid 2004," "Tunes for Terrorists" and "Shut Up and Sing."
"I've been a Springsteen fan since '78," said Taylor, 42, of Washington, "but I'm boycotting the Boss until after the election. . . . The problem I have with these artists is that they have been on the wrong side of freedom."
Next to the Free Republicans was David Lytel, 46, also of Washington. A staunch Democrat, he's the founder of the Committee to ReDefeat the President. But it wasn't just his protesting neighbors who were mad at him. "When I invited the ReDefeat the President team today, I misspelled Springsteen," Lytel said with a grimace. "There was outrage."
Considering the number of acts that had to be shoehorned in -- and all-star evenings can be clunky affairs -- last night's show zipped along. R&B smoothie Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds strummed out the sweet melody to his big hit "Change the World," then gave way to SoCal folk-rocker Jackson Browne, slide-guitar queen Bonnie Raitt and neo-bluesman Keb' Mo', all of whom teamed for a sexy, sinister cover of Buffalo Springfield's Vietnam War-era rallying cry "For What It's Worth." Adding hip-hop swagger to the night, rap outfit Jurassic Five rattled the rafters with the bass-tastic "Freedom."
Dressed in a blinding white suit and jittering around as if he had fire ants in his pants, smooth-pated oddball Stipe led R.E.M. through an all-together-now version of "The One I Love," his pleading howls of "Fire!" echoed by the equally writhing masses. Pearl Jam's Vedder then hopped onstage to help out on "Begin the Begin," the two singers bouncing and throwing playful punches. The biggest singalong of the night -- and proof that perhaps no one has merged art and pop better than R.E.M. -- was "Losing My Religion," which also garnered the biggest ovation.
No, scratch that. Before Stipe could even get out the words "Please welcome to the stage . . . Bruce Springsteen," the fans erupted (and erupted and erupted) and flashbulbs popped. The night's main man helped out on R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon," punctuating the chorus of "Are we losing touch?" with one of those silly little leg kicks that Springsteen -- a great talent, a horrendous dancer -- busts out when he's feeling giddy.
The superstars -- and, uh, actor Tim Robbins -- just kept on coming. Robbins, who makes Springsteen look like Tommy Tune, joined Vedder and his grunge progenitors Pearl Jam for some really bad dancing but rather rousing punk-rock, including the howler "Grievance."
"We got the message out, and almost everyone here is going to vote," said Vedder, who quizzed the crowd about when Election Day is -- and everyone held up the peace sign. It was a nice moment that turned appropriately chilly when Vedder spat out the words to Bob Dylan's caustic antiwar critique "Masters of War."
James Taylor took the stage next. "I hate it when they say, 'You shouldn't changes horses midstream.' I hate it 'cause if your horse can't swim . . ." he said. He opened with the bittersweet ballad "Never Die Young" and invited the Dixie Chicks to assist him with sob-inducing takes on his "Sweet Baby James" and "Shower the People," Taylor and Natalie Maines delicately trading off on vocals.
Speaking of that troublemaking Chick, Maines -- who became a public relations nightmare last year when she said she was ashamed of fellow Texan George W. Bush -- received a prolonged standing ovation.
"Gosh, I hope y'all show up to our next tour," she said during her band's short but playful set. "After the incident, people asked me if I wanted to take back what I said. Well, no, 'cause after that Bush would just call me a flip-flopper."
After a hoedown take on Dylan's "Mississippi" -- a typical Bob puzzler that doesn't seem to be about politics at all -- the Chicks gave way to the Dave Matthews Band. The trippy jazz-pop jammers wailed away on "Don't Drink the Water," an incendiary number that built to a messy but creepy finish, and the hippie stomps "Ants Marching" and "What Would You Say?"
"Bruuuce!" they cried.
And after four hours of going bonkers, Bruuuce they finally received. After opening with a gooseflesh-rippling steel-string rendition of the national anthem, Springsteen led his venerable E Street Band straight into the bittersweet belly of a raging "Born in the U.S.A.," a hard indictment of the powers-that-be that is often misinterpreted as a pure patriotic stomp.
The Boss then did what the Boss does best: sing for the working stiff in all of us. He played "Badlands" and "No Surrender," each anthem a chance for crowd members to throw jubilant fists in the air -- no matter where they sat on the political spectrum.
Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty came on to sing with Springsteen on a blistering "Fortunate Son." (Who didn't see that coming?) Stipe serenaded the Boss on "Because the Night," the song miraculously tight for being essentially unrehearsed. Springsteen, in hellzapoppin' preacher mode, urged everyone watching at home to take off their clothes and celebrate. "A change is coming!" he cried. And then, of course, he did "Born to Run" -- with the house lights on, no less.
]
With the concert past the midnight mark, all the Vote for Change acts headed back to the stage for a sloppy but energetic cover of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?" It's a bipartisan song and a really nice thought.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
By Sean Daly, Washington Post Staff Writer- Tuesday, October 12, 2004; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com
How's this for a sign of the times? None other than Bruce Springsteen, the gruff-voiced bard of the working class, stormed a sold-out MCI Center last night in the hopes of sending one man straight to the unemployment line.
Yep, and the Boss wasn't alone in voicing his displeasure with our country's other notable boss, either: Thirteen of the New Jersey star's fellow pop-music heavy hitters showed up in the nation's capital to try to help rock George W. Bush right on out of the White House.
At the start of the raucous finale of the Vote for Change tour, Springsteen, Dave Matthews, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Dixie Chick Emily Robison walked onstage together to the sound of loud boos -- oh, wait, sorry, the crowd actually was screaming "Bruuuce!" (Talk about a guy who was born to run for office.)
"We're here to raise our voices loud and clear," said Springsteen. "We want to change our government."
"We want government that's open, rational, responsible for the citizenry, and humane," added Vedder.
There was no mention of Bush in the opening statements. No mention of John Kerry, either. Instead, the musicians went on to unload (and unload and unload) their arsenal of hits and keep their political views to gritty little sound bites and pleas to vote.
Perhaps the most rousing set of the night was the first one: John Mellencamp gave his roots-rock a bluesy, acoustic grit. "This next song is about what the Devil can do if you don't keep your eye on him," said the midwestern icon before launching into the fiddle-fueled "Walk Tall." Backed by a four-piece band, Mellencamp stayed seated on a stool for "Paper in Fire" and "The Authority Song" but jumped to his feet to put extra oomph into the blue-collar anthem "Pink Houses."
The tour, a much-publicized 38-show road trip that since Oct. 1 has covered 33 cities in 11 swing states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio, was presented by MoveOn, a liberal political action committee. All proceeds ("millions and millions" is all organizers will say) will go to America Coming Together, an independent group created by Democratic Party supporters.
Tickets for last night's show, which sold out in 30 minutes, ran as high as $175. Most of the previous Vote for Change shows -- aimed at undecided voters but drooled over by music geeks -- also were reported as sellouts. People who were shut out could watch the show live on the Sundance Channel or hear the broadcast on more than 60 radio stations.
Last night's five-hour-plus exhaust-athon was more a call to guitars than a call to arms -- and it proved sensational for donkeys and elephants alike. In fact, things were a lot more divisive across the street from the arena.
The D.C. chapter of the pro-Bush organization Free Republic, led by Kristinn Taylor, waved signs that read "Saddam-Aid 2004," "Tunes for Terrorists" and "Shut Up and Sing."
"I've been a Springsteen fan since '78," said Taylor, 42, of Washington, "but I'm boycotting the Boss until after the election. . . . The problem I have with these artists is that they have been on the wrong side of freedom."
Next to the Free Republicans was David Lytel, 46, also of Washington. A staunch Democrat, he's the founder of the Committee to ReDefeat the President. But it wasn't just his protesting neighbors who were mad at him. "When I invited the ReDefeat the President team today, I misspelled Springsteen," Lytel said with a grimace. "There was outrage."
Considering the number of acts that had to be shoehorned in -- and all-star evenings can be clunky affairs -- last night's show zipped along. R&B smoothie Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds strummed out the sweet melody to his big hit "Change the World," then gave way to SoCal folk-rocker Jackson Browne, slide-guitar queen Bonnie Raitt and neo-bluesman Keb' Mo', all of whom teamed for a sexy, sinister cover of Buffalo Springfield's Vietnam War-era rallying cry "For What It's Worth." Adding hip-hop swagger to the night, rap outfit Jurassic Five rattled the rafters with the bass-tastic "Freedom."
Dressed in a blinding white suit and jittering around as if he had fire ants in his pants, smooth-pated oddball Stipe led R.E.M. through an all-together-now version of "The One I Love," his pleading howls of "Fire!" echoed by the equally writhing masses. Pearl Jam's Vedder then hopped onstage to help out on "Begin the Begin," the two singers bouncing and throwing playful punches. The biggest singalong of the night -- and proof that perhaps no one has merged art and pop better than R.E.M. -- was "Losing My Religion," which also garnered the biggest ovation.
No, scratch that. Before Stipe could even get out the words "Please welcome to the stage . . . Bruce Springsteen," the fans erupted (and erupted and erupted) and flashbulbs popped. The night's main man helped out on R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon," punctuating the chorus of "Are we losing touch?" with one of those silly little leg kicks that Springsteen -- a great talent, a horrendous dancer -- busts out when he's feeling giddy.
The superstars -- and, uh, actor Tim Robbins -- just kept on coming. Robbins, who makes Springsteen look like Tommy Tune, joined Vedder and his grunge progenitors Pearl Jam for some really bad dancing but rather rousing punk-rock, including the howler "Grievance."
"We got the message out, and almost everyone here is going to vote," said Vedder, who quizzed the crowd about when Election Day is -- and everyone held up the peace sign. It was a nice moment that turned appropriately chilly when Vedder spat out the words to Bob Dylan's caustic antiwar critique "Masters of War."
James Taylor took the stage next. "I hate it when they say, 'You shouldn't changes horses midstream.' I hate it 'cause if your horse can't swim . . ." he said. He opened with the bittersweet ballad "Never Die Young" and invited the Dixie Chicks to assist him with sob-inducing takes on his "Sweet Baby James" and "Shower the People," Taylor and Natalie Maines delicately trading off on vocals.
Speaking of that troublemaking Chick, Maines -- who became a public relations nightmare last year when she said she was ashamed of fellow Texan George W. Bush -- received a prolonged standing ovation.
"Gosh, I hope y'all show up to our next tour," she said during her band's short but playful set. "After the incident, people asked me if I wanted to take back what I said. Well, no, 'cause after that Bush would just call me a flip-flopper."
After a hoedown take on Dylan's "Mississippi" -- a typical Bob puzzler that doesn't seem to be about politics at all -- the Chicks gave way to the Dave Matthews Band. The trippy jazz-pop jammers wailed away on "Don't Drink the Water," an incendiary number that built to a messy but creepy finish, and the hippie stomps "Ants Marching" and "What Would You Say?"
"Bruuuce!" they cried.
And after four hours of going bonkers, Bruuuce they finally received. After opening with a gooseflesh-rippling steel-string rendition of the national anthem, Springsteen led his venerable E Street Band straight into the bittersweet belly of a raging "Born in the U.S.A.," a hard indictment of the powers-that-be that is often misinterpreted as a pure patriotic stomp.
The Boss then did what the Boss does best: sing for the working stiff in all of us. He played "Badlands" and "No Surrender," each anthem a chance for crowd members to throw jubilant fists in the air -- no matter where they sat on the political spectrum.
Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty came on to sing with Springsteen on a blistering "Fortunate Son." (Who didn't see that coming?) Stipe serenaded the Boss on "Because the Night," the song miraculously tight for being essentially unrehearsed. Springsteen, in hellzapoppin' preacher mode, urged everyone watching at home to take off their clothes and celebrate. "A change is coming!" he cried. And then, of course, he did "Born to Run" -- with the house lights on, no less.
]
With the concert past the midnight mark, all the Vote for Change acts headed back to the stage for a sloppy but energetic cover of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?" It's a bipartisan song and a really nice thought.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Harvey Araton: Emotional Toll That Stretches All Way to the Off-season
SPORTS OF THE TIMES
Published: October 13, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com
Just when the Red Sox believed they were secure in the saddle with an ace named Schilling, here came the Yankees' Murderers' Duo of Mussina and Matsui.
Just when the Yankees thought were breathing easy in the Bronx, here came the Red Sox, then a desperate call for their main man, Mariano, accompanied onto the mound last night by an invisible teammate named Mystique.
It was as if a lightning bolt had struck, at the moment when the public-address announcer Bob Sheppard, upon introducing the Yankees' pitchers, added, "And en route to Yankee Stadium, No. 42. ..." Who could possibly know how desperately the Yankees would need him?
By the time Mariano Rivera returned from his sad trip home to Panama and came through the players' gate at 8:53 p.m., the Yankees had two runs on the board. By the time he appeared for hugs in the bullpen and a roar from the crowd, Hideki Matsui had driven in four of his five runs and the Yankees had chased Curt Schilling for a 6-0 lead. By the time Rivera was on in the eighth with the tying run at third to save a 10-7 victory, he was, against all odds, the coolest man in a stadium that was an emotional wreck.
This wasn't the way it figured to be, not against Schilling and not after the Yankees' lead had grown to 8-0, with Mike Mussina pitching six and two-thirds perfect innings. "It was like it was too good to be true," Joe Torre said, after the Red Sox rallied with five runs in the seventh, two more in the eighth. Rivera's longest day - beginning with a funeral for two relatives who died last weekend in a swimming pool accident - became another late night at the office.
"I'm tired," he said, "but my mind kept going."
After a Florida exhibition for which tickets were scalped at wallet-emptying prices and after 19 regular-season confrontations that were hyped to head-spinning proportions, the Yankees and the Red Sox got down to the business of a postseason conflagration to prove once and for all which of these bitter rivals had the better off-season. Yankees-Red Sox is a year-round blood sport now that doesn't even pause for holiday reflection. Last October's epic Game 7 gave way to the dueling bartering and bank accounts that commenced with the Red Sox' Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Arizona to land Schilling. It concluded in February, with the Yankees' lifting of Alex Rodriguez off the baseball hot stove just after Boston believed it had acquired his rich services for dessert.
The Red Sox armed Schilling with a lucrative contract extension, and he was every bit the ace they needed to survive as a wild card. A-Rod and his buddy, Derek Jeter, formed a potent left side of the infield worth more than $400 million. As Schilling took the ball for Game 1 and as Rodriguez trotted out to his adopted third-base position and symbol of sacrifice, the series had already been stamped as a referendum on those two headline transactions.
The timeline of the trades, unfortunately, doesn't support the hypothesis that the Yankees set up themselves up for their ultimate humiliation, losing to the Red Sox for the first time in a postseason, by pursuing the more glamorous A-Rod instead of the rotation anchor they lacked - at least until Mussina made Moose-meat out of the Red Sox with a performance that until the seventh inning could only be described as Cowboy Up, Cowboy Down.
The Yankees, meanwhile, were on Schilling from the outset, chasing him after 3 innings and 58 unconvincing pitches. He said the ankle he tweaked recently kept him from driving off it, and now the Red Sox need a commanding effort tonight from Pedro MartÃnez in front of 55,000 people who believe they're his daddy.
Schilling had one-hit the Yankees over seven innings last month. Around New York, you almost could smell the fear of him as the Red Sox rolled into town after sweeping the Angels. You could almost hear George Steinbrenner sharpening his tongue and his ax for his general manager, Brian Cashman, in the event Schilling dominated his $180 million masterpiece.
Had the Yankees been willing to surrender Alfonso Soriano, Schilling might very well have been a Yankee. Had the players' union signed off on a restructuring of A-Rod's deal, he would have been with the Red Sox. Thanks to modern economics, Jerry Seinfeld likes to say that we're all rooting for laundry. True enough, these teams have turned over enough players the last two years to field a 40-man roster, but some things never change, and Rivera in October is one of them, even under the most dire of personal circumstances.
"I had 24 players that were waiting for me," he said after a hellish day and a five-hour journey. "I had a job to do." He retired Kevin Millar with two out and the tying run at third in the eighth. He faced the tying run with two on and one out in the ninth. As if scripted by Yankee-Red Sox lore, there stood Bill Mueller, whose game-winning homer off Rivera in Boston last July may have saved the Red Sox' season. Mueller bounced back to Rivera, into a double play.
The Red Sox made it fun, crazy, scary. But in the end, there was Rivera, punctuating a defeat that began with Schilling, Boston's supposed sure thing. There was Yankee mystique, stamped all over another postseason night to remember. All said and done, it's still not clear if a stain dating back to 1918 comes out in this wash.
Published: October 13, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com
Just when the Red Sox believed they were secure in the saddle with an ace named Schilling, here came the Yankees' Murderers' Duo of Mussina and Matsui.
Just when the Yankees thought were breathing easy in the Bronx, here came the Red Sox, then a desperate call for their main man, Mariano, accompanied onto the mound last night by an invisible teammate named Mystique.
It was as if a lightning bolt had struck, at the moment when the public-address announcer Bob Sheppard, upon introducing the Yankees' pitchers, added, "And en route to Yankee Stadium, No. 42. ..." Who could possibly know how desperately the Yankees would need him?
By the time Mariano Rivera returned from his sad trip home to Panama and came through the players' gate at 8:53 p.m., the Yankees had two runs on the board. By the time he appeared for hugs in the bullpen and a roar from the crowd, Hideki Matsui had driven in four of his five runs and the Yankees had chased Curt Schilling for a 6-0 lead. By the time Rivera was on in the eighth with the tying run at third to save a 10-7 victory, he was, against all odds, the coolest man in a stadium that was an emotional wreck.
This wasn't the way it figured to be, not against Schilling and not after the Yankees' lead had grown to 8-0, with Mike Mussina pitching six and two-thirds perfect innings. "It was like it was too good to be true," Joe Torre said, after the Red Sox rallied with five runs in the seventh, two more in the eighth. Rivera's longest day - beginning with a funeral for two relatives who died last weekend in a swimming pool accident - became another late night at the office.
"I'm tired," he said, "but my mind kept going."
After a Florida exhibition for which tickets were scalped at wallet-emptying prices and after 19 regular-season confrontations that were hyped to head-spinning proportions, the Yankees and the Red Sox got down to the business of a postseason conflagration to prove once and for all which of these bitter rivals had the better off-season. Yankees-Red Sox is a year-round blood sport now that doesn't even pause for holiday reflection. Last October's epic Game 7 gave way to the dueling bartering and bank accounts that commenced with the Red Sox' Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Arizona to land Schilling. It concluded in February, with the Yankees' lifting of Alex Rodriguez off the baseball hot stove just after Boston believed it had acquired his rich services for dessert.
The Red Sox armed Schilling with a lucrative contract extension, and he was every bit the ace they needed to survive as a wild card. A-Rod and his buddy, Derek Jeter, formed a potent left side of the infield worth more than $400 million. As Schilling took the ball for Game 1 and as Rodriguez trotted out to his adopted third-base position and symbol of sacrifice, the series had already been stamped as a referendum on those two headline transactions.
The timeline of the trades, unfortunately, doesn't support the hypothesis that the Yankees set up themselves up for their ultimate humiliation, losing to the Red Sox for the first time in a postseason, by pursuing the more glamorous A-Rod instead of the rotation anchor they lacked - at least until Mussina made Moose-meat out of the Red Sox with a performance that until the seventh inning could only be described as Cowboy Up, Cowboy Down.
The Yankees, meanwhile, were on Schilling from the outset, chasing him after 3 innings and 58 unconvincing pitches. He said the ankle he tweaked recently kept him from driving off it, and now the Red Sox need a commanding effort tonight from Pedro MartÃnez in front of 55,000 people who believe they're his daddy.
Schilling had one-hit the Yankees over seven innings last month. Around New York, you almost could smell the fear of him as the Red Sox rolled into town after sweeping the Angels. You could almost hear George Steinbrenner sharpening his tongue and his ax for his general manager, Brian Cashman, in the event Schilling dominated his $180 million masterpiece.
Had the Yankees been willing to surrender Alfonso Soriano, Schilling might very well have been a Yankee. Had the players' union signed off on a restructuring of A-Rod's deal, he would have been with the Red Sox. Thanks to modern economics, Jerry Seinfeld likes to say that we're all rooting for laundry. True enough, these teams have turned over enough players the last two years to field a 40-man roster, but some things never change, and Rivera in October is one of them, even under the most dire of personal circumstances.
"I had 24 players that were waiting for me," he said after a hellish day and a five-hour journey. "I had a job to do." He retired Kevin Millar with two out and the tying run at third in the eighth. He faced the tying run with two on and one out in the ninth. As if scripted by Yankee-Red Sox lore, there stood Bill Mueller, whose game-winning homer off Rivera in Boston last July may have saved the Red Sox' season. Mueller bounced back to Rivera, into a double play.
The Red Sox made it fun, crazy, scary. But in the end, there was Rivera, punctuating a defeat that began with Schilling, Boston's supposed sure thing. There was Yankee mystique, stamped all over another postseason night to remember. All said and done, it's still not clear if a stain dating back to 1918 comes out in this wash.
Jon Pareles: Guitars and Amps: Campaign Tools
October 13, 2004 CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Guitars and Amps: Campaign Tools By JON PARELES
http://www.nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Energize the base or court the undecided? There was no question which strategy prevailed at the all-star Vote for Change concert on Monday night at the MCI Center here.
After a week of six simultaneous tours through battleground states to benefit the Democratic voter-mobilization group America Coming Together, Bruce Springsteen and 12 other headliners converged for a sold-out arena concert that was telecast live on the Sundance cable channel. While Senator John Kerry was mentioned exactly once during the five-and-a-half-hour event, by Mr. Springsteen, and Michael Stipe of R.E.M. wore a Kerry T-shirt, the musicians pitched their songs and comments to spur committed anti-Bush voters to the polls. It was also a show of solidarity as bands traded guest singers and fused onstage.
Songs can do double duty at benefit concerts: as musical events and as statements for the cause. Often performers simply trot out hits to keep donors entertained. But at the Vote for Change concert, hits were incidental. Only one band, Pearl Jam, played a specifically anti-Bush song, "Bushleaguer"; John Mellencamp and R.E.M. skipped songs they wrote to protest the war in Iraq. But all of them had searched their repertories for songs about war and peace, freedom, populism, principle and the meaning of America. Sometimes all that mattered was a song's title, as when Kenneth Edmonds, or Babyface, sang "Change the World," actually a love song.
The musicians didn't cede faith, patriotism or righteousness to Republicans. Mr. Mellencamp started the concert singing about Jesus, while Mr. Springsteen began his set with a solo 12-string-guitar version of "The Star-Spangled Banner." It wasn't a demolition of the anthem like Jimi Hendrix's version; it was an affirmation and a meditation, resonating as sound and symbol.
Some musicians looked back to 1960's protests. Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Keb' Mo' revived Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," changing "a thousand" to "a million people in the street." For the finale of a Pearl Jam set full of power-chorded wrath, Eddie Vedder sang Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" with a bitter voice and a baleful, unwavering gaze. (Mr. Vedder also sparked R.E.M.'s set when he joined that band for "Begin the Begin.") John Fogerty, backed by the E Street Band, paired his new song comparing Iraq to Vietnam, "Déjà Vu (All Over Again)," with a furious Creedence Clearwater Revival song from the Vietnam era, "Fortunate Son."
But there was more to this show than earnestness. The Dave Matthews Band turned the dire musings of songs like "Don't Drink the Water" into funk that had the audience dancing, and the hip-hop group Jurassic 5 had the overwhelmingly white audience shouting old-school hip-hop responses. James Taylor sang the kindly aphorisms of "Secret o' Life," then cheerfully contradicted his song's advice about not trying too hard, at least during the campaign. The Dixie Chicks, who have faced country-radio boycotts for their political statements, were by turns wry and vehement: "We must put an end to mad cowboy disease," said the singer Natalie Maines before the group charged into "Truth No. 2."
Mr. Springsteen's set summed up the concert. With his E Street Band chiming through the songs like a chrome-plated battering ram, he sang about ordinary people who were bruised but not beaten: "Born in the U.S.A.," "Badlands" and the song adopted by the Kerry campaign, "No Surrender." Then, in "Mary's Place," he turned himself into a television preacher, exhorting viewers to turn up the volume, take off their clothes, touch the screen and chant "Halliburton" to be healed.
Musicians, even the million-selling ones on the Vote for Change bill, play their best when they feel like underdogs with a sense of mission. The Vote for Change concert gave them just that, and spurred performances that were even better as music than as propaganda.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Guitars and Amps: Campaign Tools By JON PARELES
http://www.nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Energize the base or court the undecided? There was no question which strategy prevailed at the all-star Vote for Change concert on Monday night at the MCI Center here.
After a week of six simultaneous tours through battleground states to benefit the Democratic voter-mobilization group America Coming Together, Bruce Springsteen and 12 other headliners converged for a sold-out arena concert that was telecast live on the Sundance cable channel. While Senator John Kerry was mentioned exactly once during the five-and-a-half-hour event, by Mr. Springsteen, and Michael Stipe of R.E.M. wore a Kerry T-shirt, the musicians pitched their songs and comments to spur committed anti-Bush voters to the polls. It was also a show of solidarity as bands traded guest singers and fused onstage.
Songs can do double duty at benefit concerts: as musical events and as statements for the cause. Often performers simply trot out hits to keep donors entertained. But at the Vote for Change concert, hits were incidental. Only one band, Pearl Jam, played a specifically anti-Bush song, "Bushleaguer"; John Mellencamp and R.E.M. skipped songs they wrote to protest the war in Iraq. But all of them had searched their repertories for songs about war and peace, freedom, populism, principle and the meaning of America. Sometimes all that mattered was a song's title, as when Kenneth Edmonds, or Babyface, sang "Change the World," actually a love song.
The musicians didn't cede faith, patriotism or righteousness to Republicans. Mr. Mellencamp started the concert singing about Jesus, while Mr. Springsteen began his set with a solo 12-string-guitar version of "The Star-Spangled Banner." It wasn't a demolition of the anthem like Jimi Hendrix's version; it was an affirmation and a meditation, resonating as sound and symbol.
Some musicians looked back to 1960's protests. Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Keb' Mo' revived Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," changing "a thousand" to "a million people in the street." For the finale of a Pearl Jam set full of power-chorded wrath, Eddie Vedder sang Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" with a bitter voice and a baleful, unwavering gaze. (Mr. Vedder also sparked R.E.M.'s set when he joined that band for "Begin the Begin.") John Fogerty, backed by the E Street Band, paired his new song comparing Iraq to Vietnam, "Déjà Vu (All Over Again)," with a furious Creedence Clearwater Revival song from the Vietnam era, "Fortunate Son."
But there was more to this show than earnestness. The Dave Matthews Band turned the dire musings of songs like "Don't Drink the Water" into funk that had the audience dancing, and the hip-hop group Jurassic 5 had the overwhelmingly white audience shouting old-school hip-hop responses. James Taylor sang the kindly aphorisms of "Secret o' Life," then cheerfully contradicted his song's advice about not trying too hard, at least during the campaign. The Dixie Chicks, who have faced country-radio boycotts for their political statements, were by turns wry and vehement: "We must put an end to mad cowboy disease," said the singer Natalie Maines before the group charged into "Truth No. 2."
Mr. Springsteen's set summed up the concert. With his E Street Band chiming through the songs like a chrome-plated battering ram, he sang about ordinary people who were bruised but not beaten: "Born in the U.S.A.," "Badlands" and the song adopted by the Kerry campaign, "No Surrender." Then, in "Mary's Place," he turned himself into a television preacher, exhorting viewers to turn up the volume, take off their clothes, touch the screen and chant "Halliburton" to be healed.
Musicians, even the million-selling ones on the Vote for Change bill, play their best when they feel like underdogs with a sense of mission. The Vote for Change concert gave them just that, and spurred performances that were even better as music than as propaganda.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
David Skinner: Political Boss
Political Boss Springsteen, REM, Bonnie Raitt, and other Democrats. by David Skinner 10/18/2004, Volume 010, Issue 06
http://www.weeklystandard.com
Detroit- THERE'S A REASON no one has marketed what I call the rock'n'roll diet. You go to a concert, crash at the hotel, doze through breakfast, drive all day in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, grab a bag of black licorice at some gas station, and skip dinner to make it on time to another concert. The next day, your stomach already seems a little flatter.
But the rest of your body feels like a dirty pair of jeans that has been balled up in an overnight bag. Trust me, this is how it feels even if you skip the illegal drug part.
It was only because of my failure to properly manage my schedule that last weekend found me on the rock'n'roll diet. I was on the road to catch a pair of "Vote for Change" concerts--Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne in Cincinnati and REM and Bruce Springsteen in Detroit--organized by MoveOn. That notorious and well-funded 527 has enlisted these and other rock'n'roll acts to encourage voters in swing states to pull the lever for John Kerry. Such direct advocacy used to be illegal; now it's cool. Anyway, between concerts I kept getting lost and seemed to have no time to eat.
My only solid meal all weekend was at Arnold's (est. 1861) in Cincinnati, which is, appropriately, the kind of place where both NPR listeners and construction workers can feel at home. As the former marvel at its cozy, unmodernized décor, the latter can feast on its unpretentious kitchen fare. I try Swedish meatballs and the pasta special.
Then I join the crowd outside the Taft Theater, where most everyone walking through the doors accepts a Kerry-Edwards sticker for their shirt.
It's a boomer crowd. Everyone wears jeans and khakis, differentiated only by the messages on their T-shirts, and then only in the play on the word "Bush." They're clean-cut, though I notice a handful of mullets, suggesting at least a few Republicans.
The opening act, Keb' Mo', is good for a few laughs. He sings to those liberals who learned everything they needed to know in kindergarten. "Let's think about our behavior," he warbles, meaning: as opposed to our enemies' behavior. "And ask for a resolution," he continues, perhaps thinking of the U.N., before he returns to a chorus of "Why don't we talk to each other?"
Bonnie Raitt typifies the trend that's made it politically correct to celebrate the libidinal urges of middle-aged women. Thanks to the Lifetime Channel, Mrs. Robinson is now Mrs. Main Street. But Raitt has the chops to pull it off (thanks to the rock'n'roll diet, my guess is). From my seat in the fifth row, I would swear she has the body of a college girl.
She even talks like a college girl, one with a case of pottymouth. "I'm only giving it up for guys on the Vote for Change Tour," she says after a little riff on working with men she's been involved with romantically. Or not so romantically. She says that on her first national tour in 1974, with Jackson Browne, "there were 13 guys on the bus . . ."--she holds for a full beat--"and me."
During intermission, looking for swing voters, I avoid anyone wearing stylish eyewear or handmade garments. I fall into conversation with Jim, who's 24 and lives in Cincinnati. "Oil is the only reason we're in Iraq," Jim tells me. You don't think Saddam Hussein was dangerous, I ask? Of course he was dangerous, says Jim. "We knows he's got the weapons because we sold them to him." Weapons of mass destruction, I ask, seeking to clarify. "Yeah."
"I'd rather vote for Joe Walsh," jokes his buddy, Bill, more of the swinging type, also in his 20s, who complains that he doesn't really know who to believe in this election. He came tonight for the music, he says, a sentiment I will hear several times this weekend.
Jackson Browne, cigarette thin with straight hair and vacant eyes, is a low-intensity performer, cool in the Marshall McLuhan sense. For their part, the audience laps up his quiet songs and self-condemning lyrics.
Browne comments on the "change" in presidents he'd like to see. "This is about changing from a hedonist to a hedonist with a conscience."
The audience loves it, but they save their biggest hurrahs for Browne's riposte to a fan who calls out the title of an old favorite.
"Yeah," quips the almost motionless singer, "I could play 'Running on Empty' . . . for George Bush." Howls, applause, even some whoops.
As I exit, the guy on the corner selling anti-Bush stickers is doing the kind of business usually seen in the milk aisle before a hurricane.
IN DETROIT, where I arrive lean and grubby, the opening act, Bright Eyes, is playing to many empty seats. Their music is sad--no, devastated. Singer Conor Oberst sounds like he thinks breathing is not worth the effort. The microphone falls to the stage at one point, and Oberst, all 90 or so pounds of him, goes down too, not missing a note as he continues to howl with his face on the floor.
Oberst tells the good people of Michigan, "I'm scared of what the world will look like after four more years of Bush." Being as young as he is, he's worried "they'll bring back the draft." And if you're female, he thinks you should also be afraid, because eventually Bush is going to do away with your right to an abortion.
Michael Stipe of REM is probably not on the rock'n'roll diet. The man is simply vanishing into thin air. If there's an Ethiopian version of the rock'n'roll diet, maybe he's on that, but there's no way he's even touched his licorice.
What becomes apparent as REM, possibly the best American rock band of the late '80s, plays one classic hit after another is that few people are here to see REM. Only when Bruce Springsteen comes on stage to sing a verse of "Man on the Moon" does any portion of the audience rise to its feet.
During intermission, I look for swing voters. At first, Megan Bond of Spring Green, Wisconsin, sounds a lot like one. She's voting for Kerry, she tells me, but not with enthusiasm. Rudy Giuliani was recently in Spring Green, she mentions, and she likes him.
I ask a couple more questions, and she comes clean. "Now I have to tell you I was lying when I told you I was going to vote for Kerry."
A diehard Bruce fan, she didn't want to be overheard saying she was voting for the president. And, boy, she doesn't like Kerry. When the senator recently visited a school in Spring Green, he "only allowed 50 children to attend." Bond is still steamed about the kids who didn't get to see him. "If you want to win friends and influence people," she says, "you make sure you see those people."
Springsteen finally takes the stage, and empty seats fill up. Few are actually in use, though, as the audience finally comes to life during the Boss's solo guitar rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner," which is not quite as ridiculous as the Jimi Hendrix version.
Springsteen and the full E Street Band then launch into a set of nine songs, mostly classics, without pause. They play with heart and energy and precision. Even the two tracks off Bruce's wimpy post-9/11 album The Rising have been souped up for the roadshow and sound good. By the third song (they'll play about 20 in all) Springsteen's shirt is soaked. Later on, he even does a running knee-slide.
John Fogerty then materializes on stage to play a few songs with Springsteen, including "Fortunate Son." Michael Stipe too returns to the stage, for a duet rendition with Springsteen of "Because the Night (belongs to lovers)," strictly speaking, one of the less heterosexual moments of the evening.
After about 16 songs, the Boss wants to talk politics. "We're here with a purpose. We're on a mission." He adopts the hammy manner of a revival-tent preacher. "Is there anybody in the house that needs to be saved from the burdens of Republicanism?" Before I can raise my hand or point out that nice woman from Wisconsin, I notice there's already a Republican on stage, a comic figure in pinstripes, bow tie, and nerd glasses. Bruce lays his hand on the unfortunate soul, who staggers backwards as the Holy Spirit of the Democratic party enters him. Then the guy holds up a sign saying "Bush Must Go."
After another song, Springsteen delivers a "public service announcement" in which he says "we remain the America of great promise," but now is the time to fulfill that promise. In short, as Springsteen says later, "Vote for John Kerry."
Some of the Boss's shtick is eloquent. "America's not always right," Springsteen says, "but America's always true." For his closer, Springsteen returns to the theme of America's promise: "The country that's in our hearts is out there waiting."
Seeing me take notes, the guy in the row behind me asks if he can photograph the page where I wrote down Springsteen's speech. I feel myself carried along by the tide of good feeling. Or maybe it's my low blood sugar. All I've consumed since my licorice lunch is a Rice Krispy treat I grabbed at the hotel.
But then Michael Stipe begins a song called "People have the Power." The Dixie Chicks appear on stage to sing along. Everyone's there, all the regular folk who happen to be rock stars, and Michael Stipe removes his jacket to reveal a Vote for Change T-shirt with John Kerry's name on the logo. Wait a minute, I think, I'm not a people-power person, and I don't like John Kerry. The spell is broken.
If Bruce Springsteen could perform for every American who hasn't made up his mind, this could be a significantly different race. Thank God he's only preaching to the choir--and to fans of his music who don't really care what he says between songs.
David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
http://www.weeklystandard.com
Detroit- THERE'S A REASON no one has marketed what I call the rock'n'roll diet. You go to a concert, crash at the hotel, doze through breakfast, drive all day in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, grab a bag of black licorice at some gas station, and skip dinner to make it on time to another concert. The next day, your stomach already seems a little flatter.
But the rest of your body feels like a dirty pair of jeans that has been balled up in an overnight bag. Trust me, this is how it feels even if you skip the illegal drug part.
It was only because of my failure to properly manage my schedule that last weekend found me on the rock'n'roll diet. I was on the road to catch a pair of "Vote for Change" concerts--Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne in Cincinnati and REM and Bruce Springsteen in Detroit--organized by MoveOn. That notorious and well-funded 527 has enlisted these and other rock'n'roll acts to encourage voters in swing states to pull the lever for John Kerry. Such direct advocacy used to be illegal; now it's cool. Anyway, between concerts I kept getting lost and seemed to have no time to eat.
My only solid meal all weekend was at Arnold's (est. 1861) in Cincinnati, which is, appropriately, the kind of place where both NPR listeners and construction workers can feel at home. As the former marvel at its cozy, unmodernized décor, the latter can feast on its unpretentious kitchen fare. I try Swedish meatballs and the pasta special.
Then I join the crowd outside the Taft Theater, where most everyone walking through the doors accepts a Kerry-Edwards sticker for their shirt.
It's a boomer crowd. Everyone wears jeans and khakis, differentiated only by the messages on their T-shirts, and then only in the play on the word "Bush." They're clean-cut, though I notice a handful of mullets, suggesting at least a few Republicans.
The opening act, Keb' Mo', is good for a few laughs. He sings to those liberals who learned everything they needed to know in kindergarten. "Let's think about our behavior," he warbles, meaning: as opposed to our enemies' behavior. "And ask for a resolution," he continues, perhaps thinking of the U.N., before he returns to a chorus of "Why don't we talk to each other?"
Bonnie Raitt typifies the trend that's made it politically correct to celebrate the libidinal urges of middle-aged women. Thanks to the Lifetime Channel, Mrs. Robinson is now Mrs. Main Street. But Raitt has the chops to pull it off (thanks to the rock'n'roll diet, my guess is). From my seat in the fifth row, I would swear she has the body of a college girl.
She even talks like a college girl, one with a case of pottymouth. "I'm only giving it up for guys on the Vote for Change Tour," she says after a little riff on working with men she's been involved with romantically. Or not so romantically. She says that on her first national tour in 1974, with Jackson Browne, "there were 13 guys on the bus . . ."--she holds for a full beat--"and me."
During intermission, looking for swing voters, I avoid anyone wearing stylish eyewear or handmade garments. I fall into conversation with Jim, who's 24 and lives in Cincinnati. "Oil is the only reason we're in Iraq," Jim tells me. You don't think Saddam Hussein was dangerous, I ask? Of course he was dangerous, says Jim. "We knows he's got the weapons because we sold them to him." Weapons of mass destruction, I ask, seeking to clarify. "Yeah."
"I'd rather vote for Joe Walsh," jokes his buddy, Bill, more of the swinging type, also in his 20s, who complains that he doesn't really know who to believe in this election. He came tonight for the music, he says, a sentiment I will hear several times this weekend.
Jackson Browne, cigarette thin with straight hair and vacant eyes, is a low-intensity performer, cool in the Marshall McLuhan sense. For their part, the audience laps up his quiet songs and self-condemning lyrics.
Browne comments on the "change" in presidents he'd like to see. "This is about changing from a hedonist to a hedonist with a conscience."
The audience loves it, but they save their biggest hurrahs for Browne's riposte to a fan who calls out the title of an old favorite.
"Yeah," quips the almost motionless singer, "I could play 'Running on Empty' . . . for George Bush." Howls, applause, even some whoops.
As I exit, the guy on the corner selling anti-Bush stickers is doing the kind of business usually seen in the milk aisle before a hurricane.
IN DETROIT, where I arrive lean and grubby, the opening act, Bright Eyes, is playing to many empty seats. Their music is sad--no, devastated. Singer Conor Oberst sounds like he thinks breathing is not worth the effort. The microphone falls to the stage at one point, and Oberst, all 90 or so pounds of him, goes down too, not missing a note as he continues to howl with his face on the floor.
Oberst tells the good people of Michigan, "I'm scared of what the world will look like after four more years of Bush." Being as young as he is, he's worried "they'll bring back the draft." And if you're female, he thinks you should also be afraid, because eventually Bush is going to do away with your right to an abortion.
Michael Stipe of REM is probably not on the rock'n'roll diet. The man is simply vanishing into thin air. If there's an Ethiopian version of the rock'n'roll diet, maybe he's on that, but there's no way he's even touched his licorice.
What becomes apparent as REM, possibly the best American rock band of the late '80s, plays one classic hit after another is that few people are here to see REM. Only when Bruce Springsteen comes on stage to sing a verse of "Man on the Moon" does any portion of the audience rise to its feet.
During intermission, I look for swing voters. At first, Megan Bond of Spring Green, Wisconsin, sounds a lot like one. She's voting for Kerry, she tells me, but not with enthusiasm. Rudy Giuliani was recently in Spring Green, she mentions, and she likes him.
I ask a couple more questions, and she comes clean. "Now I have to tell you I was lying when I told you I was going to vote for Kerry."
A diehard Bruce fan, she didn't want to be overheard saying she was voting for the president. And, boy, she doesn't like Kerry. When the senator recently visited a school in Spring Green, he "only allowed 50 children to attend." Bond is still steamed about the kids who didn't get to see him. "If you want to win friends and influence people," she says, "you make sure you see those people."
Springsteen finally takes the stage, and empty seats fill up. Few are actually in use, though, as the audience finally comes to life during the Boss's solo guitar rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner," which is not quite as ridiculous as the Jimi Hendrix version.
Springsteen and the full E Street Band then launch into a set of nine songs, mostly classics, without pause. They play with heart and energy and precision. Even the two tracks off Bruce's wimpy post-9/11 album The Rising have been souped up for the roadshow and sound good. By the third song (they'll play about 20 in all) Springsteen's shirt is soaked. Later on, he even does a running knee-slide.
John Fogerty then materializes on stage to play a few songs with Springsteen, including "Fortunate Son." Michael Stipe too returns to the stage, for a duet rendition with Springsteen of "Because the Night (belongs to lovers)," strictly speaking, one of the less heterosexual moments of the evening.
After about 16 songs, the Boss wants to talk politics. "We're here with a purpose. We're on a mission." He adopts the hammy manner of a revival-tent preacher. "Is there anybody in the house that needs to be saved from the burdens of Republicanism?" Before I can raise my hand or point out that nice woman from Wisconsin, I notice there's already a Republican on stage, a comic figure in pinstripes, bow tie, and nerd glasses. Bruce lays his hand on the unfortunate soul, who staggers backwards as the Holy Spirit of the Democratic party enters him. Then the guy holds up a sign saying "Bush Must Go."
After another song, Springsteen delivers a "public service announcement" in which he says "we remain the America of great promise," but now is the time to fulfill that promise. In short, as Springsteen says later, "Vote for John Kerry."
Some of the Boss's shtick is eloquent. "America's not always right," Springsteen says, "but America's always true." For his closer, Springsteen returns to the theme of America's promise: "The country that's in our hearts is out there waiting."
Seeing me take notes, the guy in the row behind me asks if he can photograph the page where I wrote down Springsteen's speech. I feel myself carried along by the tide of good feeling. Or maybe it's my low blood sugar. All I've consumed since my licorice lunch is a Rice Krispy treat I grabbed at the hotel.
But then Michael Stipe begins a song called "People have the Power." The Dixie Chicks appear on stage to sing along. Everyone's there, all the regular folk who happen to be rock stars, and Michael Stipe removes his jacket to reveal a Vote for Change T-shirt with John Kerry's name on the logo. Wait a minute, I think, I'm not a people-power person, and I don't like John Kerry. The spell is broken.
If Bruce Springsteen could perform for every American who hasn't made up his mind, this could be a significantly different race. Thank God he's only preaching to the choir--and to fans of his music who don't really care what he says between songs.
David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Laura Ingraham: What Dems Still Don't Get
[One of my two favorite smart-a$$ blonde pundits weighs in...I won't apologize for her invective any more than I'll apologize for that of Ann Coulter.]
http://www.jewishworldreview.com
Top Democrats advising the Kerry campaign are scratching their heads raw this week, trying to figure out why John Kerry — even with one good debate performance under his belt and continuing violence in Iraq — still is still having such a hard time convincing voters he would be a more effective commander-in-chief than George Bush. But the answer is actually fairly simple. Kerry — like all doves — is unpersuasive on national security issues because he doesn't realize certain basic truths that have guided American policy for decades. These are:
1. The world is a dangerous place, filled with deadly people. Not just people who are misunderstood. Not just people who are poor. Not just people who have different "values." Deadly people who want us killed. President Bush knows this. The American people know it. American liberals don't.
2. Most nations in the world look out for themselves. We cringe at the idea of a 'global test' because we know who's going to be grading the test. We know the anti-Americanism that exists around the world. We know the incompetence and corruption that dominates the UN. We know that leaders like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder are determined to take any opportunity to hinder the United States. We know that international media organizations, from the BBC to Al-Jazeera, are doing everything they can to whip up even more hostility toward this country. In short, we know that you would have a better chance at a fair hearing in an Olympic figure-skating competition than you would of getting a fair grade on a 'global test.'" George Bush knows this. The American people know this. American liberals don't.
3. America is not the world's problem — America is the world's solution. Tying down the United States — through international treaties like Kyoto or the International Criminal Court, or through imposing a "global test" on our ability to respond to problems-will not make the world safer. It will make the world less safe. Limiting U.S. power will not make the world better. It will lead to more pain, more death, more suffering. The United States is the only great nation in the world whose people are willing to make real sacrifices of blood and treasure for world peace. If we don't do it, no one will. President Bush knows this. The American people know it. American liberals don't.
American liberals are making the same mistake in the war on terror that they made during the Cold War. They trust anti-American voices around the world more than they trust the American people. They believe that our responsibilities can be shoved onto the backs of other countries that will not help us. (Although even Kerry has had to admit this week that France and Germany will not send troops in Iraq even if he wins on November 2.) They believe in a moral equivalence between the United States and its adversaries. They were wrong in the 1980's, and they are wrong today. That is why Kerry cannot articulate a credible plan to win the war on terrorism.
That is why Edwards looked and sounded so vague Tuesday night. Until American liberals overcome this fear of the American people — until they learn to trust us more than they trust their friends in Europe — they will flip, flop and flounder in their effort to take back the White House.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Laura Ingrahamis the host of a nationally syndicated radio show and the author of the just released "Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America". Comment by clicking here.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com
Top Democrats advising the Kerry campaign are scratching their heads raw this week, trying to figure out why John Kerry — even with one good debate performance under his belt and continuing violence in Iraq — still is still having such a hard time convincing voters he would be a more effective commander-in-chief than George Bush. But the answer is actually fairly simple. Kerry — like all doves — is unpersuasive on national security issues because he doesn't realize certain basic truths that have guided American policy for decades. These are:
1. The world is a dangerous place, filled with deadly people. Not just people who are misunderstood. Not just people who are poor. Not just people who have different "values." Deadly people who want us killed. President Bush knows this. The American people know it. American liberals don't.
2. Most nations in the world look out for themselves. We cringe at the idea of a 'global test' because we know who's going to be grading the test. We know the anti-Americanism that exists around the world. We know the incompetence and corruption that dominates the UN. We know that leaders like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder are determined to take any opportunity to hinder the United States. We know that international media organizations, from the BBC to Al-Jazeera, are doing everything they can to whip up even more hostility toward this country. In short, we know that you would have a better chance at a fair hearing in an Olympic figure-skating competition than you would of getting a fair grade on a 'global test.'" George Bush knows this. The American people know this. American liberals don't.
3. America is not the world's problem — America is the world's solution. Tying down the United States — through international treaties like Kyoto or the International Criminal Court, or through imposing a "global test" on our ability to respond to problems-will not make the world safer. It will make the world less safe. Limiting U.S. power will not make the world better. It will lead to more pain, more death, more suffering. The United States is the only great nation in the world whose people are willing to make real sacrifices of blood and treasure for world peace. If we don't do it, no one will. President Bush knows this. The American people know it. American liberals don't.
American liberals are making the same mistake in the war on terror that they made during the Cold War. They trust anti-American voices around the world more than they trust the American people. They believe that our responsibilities can be shoved onto the backs of other countries that will not help us. (Although even Kerry has had to admit this week that France and Germany will not send troops in Iraq even if he wins on November 2.) They believe in a moral equivalence between the United States and its adversaries. They were wrong in the 1980's, and they are wrong today. That is why Kerry cannot articulate a credible plan to win the war on terrorism.
That is why Edwards looked and sounded so vague Tuesday night. Until American liberals overcome this fear of the American people — until they learn to trust us more than they trust their friends in Europe — they will flip, flop and flounder in their effort to take back the White House.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Laura Ingrahamis the host of a nationally syndicated radio show and the author of the just released "Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America". Comment by clicking here.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
CNS News Publishes Iraq Intelligence Documents
CNSNews.com Publishes Iraqi Intelligence Docs
By David Thibault, CNSNews.com Managing Editor. October 11, 2004 (CNSNews.com) - When CNSNews.com published an article Monday, Oct. 4, entitled, "Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties," we decided against publishing all 42 pages of the Iraqi intelligence documents in our possession and on which the article was based. We published only the first page, fearing that if more were made widely available on the Internet, they might end up being altered or otherwise manipulated. We offered credentialed news organizations and counter-terrorism experts the opportunity to view and receive copies of the documents so that they might check for themselves on the authenticity of the documents and judge their importance in the debate over whether Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and/or had ties to international terrorist organizations. Several news organizations did just that.
But in light of other assertions on Wednesday, widely reported by the mainstream media, that Saddam did not pose any significant threat prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we felt it was time to publish as many of the Iraqi intelligence documents as possible. What follows are copies of 24 of the 42 pages that are in our possession. Pages 21 through 26 were not published because they contain a list of terrorists trained at a camp belonging to the Iraqi Intelligence Directorate.
CNSNews.com hopes to glean more information about the individuals on this list and provide updates in the future on their activities and whereabouts. Pages 29 through 40 were excluded because they replicate, though in a different person's handwriting, earlier documents. Upon clicking on the individual pages of Arabic documents, readers will have an opportunity to click on the unedited English translation of those documents. We hope this serves to further illuminate a very important element of the ongoing debate.
Page 1: Jan. 18, 1993 memo from Saddam Hussein, through his secretary, to the Iraqi Intelligence Service, urging that missions be undertaken to "hunt down Americans," especially in Somalia.Pages 2-12: Jan. 25, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service to Saddam Hussein, outlining the existing or developing relationships between Iraq and terrorist organizations. Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12
Page 13: Feb. 8, 1993 response from Saddam Hussein to the Jan. 25, 1993 memo.Pages 14, 15: March 11, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service detailing plans for a meeting with "one of the leaders from the Egyptian Al-Jehad" terrorist organization.
Page 14 Page 15
Page 16: March 16, 1993 response from Saddam's secretary to the March 11, 1993 memo.Pages 17, 18: March 18, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service detailing plans to "move against the Egyptian regime" of Hosni Mubarak. Page 17 Page 18
Pages 19-20: Iraqi Intelligence Service internal memos regarding the information of individuals who participated at "the martyr act camp" belonging to the Iraqi intelligence directorate.Page 19 Page 20
Pages 21-26: They comprise a list of terrorists trained at a camp belonging to the Iraqi Intelligence Directorate.Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26
Pages 27, 28: Notes from the Iraqi Intelligence Service outlining strategies. Included is the assessment that terrorist "efforts should be concentrated on Egypt." The notes also advise against targeting the U.S. military, but recommend targeting "Americans as general" as well as "US agents inside the (Egyptian) regime."Page 27 Page 28
Page 29-40: Duplicative of pages 2-12, except in a different person's handwriting.
Page 41: Table indicating Sept. 6, 2000 acquisition of malignant pustule (anthrax) as well as sterilization/decontamination equipment.
Page 42: Table indicating Aug. 21, 2000 acquisition of mustard gas as well as protective equipment.
By David Thibault, CNSNews.com Managing Editor. October 11, 2004 (CNSNews.com) - When CNSNews.com published an article Monday, Oct. 4, entitled, "Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties," we decided against publishing all 42 pages of the Iraqi intelligence documents in our possession and on which the article was based. We published only the first page, fearing that if more were made widely available on the Internet, they might end up being altered or otherwise manipulated. We offered credentialed news organizations and counter-terrorism experts the opportunity to view and receive copies of the documents so that they might check for themselves on the authenticity of the documents and judge their importance in the debate over whether Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and/or had ties to international terrorist organizations. Several news organizations did just that.
But in light of other assertions on Wednesday, widely reported by the mainstream media, that Saddam did not pose any significant threat prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we felt it was time to publish as many of the Iraqi intelligence documents as possible. What follows are copies of 24 of the 42 pages that are in our possession. Pages 21 through 26 were not published because they contain a list of terrorists trained at a camp belonging to the Iraqi Intelligence Directorate.
CNSNews.com hopes to glean more information about the individuals on this list and provide updates in the future on their activities and whereabouts. Pages 29 through 40 were excluded because they replicate, though in a different person's handwriting, earlier documents. Upon clicking on the individual pages of Arabic documents, readers will have an opportunity to click on the unedited English translation of those documents. We hope this serves to further illuminate a very important element of the ongoing debate.
Page 1: Jan. 18, 1993 memo from Saddam Hussein, through his secretary, to the Iraqi Intelligence Service, urging that missions be undertaken to "hunt down Americans," especially in Somalia.Pages 2-12: Jan. 25, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service to Saddam Hussein, outlining the existing or developing relationships between Iraq and terrorist organizations. Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12
Page 13: Feb. 8, 1993 response from Saddam Hussein to the Jan. 25, 1993 memo.Pages 14, 15: March 11, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service detailing plans for a meeting with "one of the leaders from the Egyptian Al-Jehad" terrorist organization.
Page 14 Page 15
Page 16: March 16, 1993 response from Saddam's secretary to the March 11, 1993 memo.Pages 17, 18: March 18, 1993 memo from the Iraqi Intelligence Service detailing plans to "move against the Egyptian regime" of Hosni Mubarak. Page 17 Page 18
Pages 19-20: Iraqi Intelligence Service internal memos regarding the information of individuals who participated at "the martyr act camp" belonging to the Iraqi intelligence directorate.Page 19 Page 20
Pages 21-26: They comprise a list of terrorists trained at a camp belonging to the Iraqi Intelligence Directorate.Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26
Pages 27, 28: Notes from the Iraqi Intelligence Service outlining strategies. Included is the assessment that terrorist "efforts should be concentrated on Egypt." The notes also advise against targeting the U.S. military, but recommend targeting "Americans as general" as well as "US agents inside the (Egyptian) regime."Page 27 Page 28
Page 29-40: Duplicative of pages 2-12, except in a different person's handwriting.
Page 41: Table indicating Sept. 6, 2000 acquisition of malignant pustule (anthrax) as well as sterilization/decontamination equipment.
Page 42: Table indicating Aug. 21, 2000 acquisition of mustard gas as well as protective equipment.
World Magazine: Documents Verify Hussein/al-Qaeda Connection
Unmasked Men
By Mindy Belz, World October 12, 2004
Walid Phares thumbed a sheaf of documents, all in Arabic and nearly all bearing the spherical slogan of Iraq's intelligence service, or Mukhabarat. The Middle East scholar, a Lebanese-American Christian who speaks four languages and is a recognized expert on Islamic militants and terrorism, has interrupted a sick day (prior engagement with a root canal) in order to evaluate 42 just-leaked intelligence documents confiscated by U.S. forces in Iraq.
Moistening his finger and translating out loud, Mr. Phares read from the pages in his third-floor office in downtown Washington, where he is taking a year off from teaching at Florida Atlantic University to serve as senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He didn't notice as his narrating voice rose with incredulity. Finishing, he rapped the papers with his fingers and concluded: "This is a watershed. This is big."
Mr. Phares is one of at least four eminent Middle East experts to agree that the documents—published for the first time last week—demonstrate that Saddam Hussein collaborated with and supported Islamic terrorist groups, including the current terror nemesis in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The papers, obtained by Cybercast News Service (CNS) and released Oct. 4, "establish irreversible evidence that there were strategic relations between the Baathist regime and Islamist groups that became al-Qaeda," Mr. Phares said after reviewing them at WORLD's request on Oct. 6. In addition, the documents link al-Zarqawi-associated groups throughout the Middle East, including al-Qaeda, on Saddam's payroll and acting under his direct authority.
Evidence and the word of experts, however, is having little effect on the John Kerry campaign, which has staked its bid for the White House on what it calls a flawed rationale for war in Iraq. Only hours after the CNS website absorbed so many hits over the revelations that its server crashed, vice-presidential candidate John Edwards blasted the president's war strategy in a televised debate with Vice President Dick Cheney. "There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th—period," Mr. Edwards said. "In fact, any connection with al-Qaeda is tenuous at best."
Sen. John Kerry, too, insists on the stump that the president's "two main rationales—weapons of mass destruction and the al-Qaeda/Sept. 11 connection—have been proved false."
But the documents suggest otherwise. They include an 11-page memo, dated Jan. 25, 1993, listing "parties related to our system . . . expert in executing the required missions." The memo cites Palestinian, Sudanese, and Asian terror groups, and shows a developing relationship with groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, including Mr. al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—figures who are now on the U.S. most-wanted list for ongoing assaults in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Jan. 25, 1993, memo also describes an intelligence service meeting with a splinter group led by Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman. Mr. Abdel-Rahman is a son of the blind Egyptian, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, accused of inspiring the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and arrested in 1994 for targeting New York landmarks. Pakistani officials caught the younger Abdel-Rahman last year, and say he helped lead authorities to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the 9/11 attack planners.
A separate memo, dated March 18, 1993, asks intelligence officers to provide "details of Arab martyrs who got trained" in conjunction with post–Gulf War "committees of martyrs act." In reply another office supplied 92 names with nationalities, all "trained inside the ‘martyr act camp' that belonged to our directorate." In all, 40 are linked to Palestinian groups, 21 are Sudanese, and others range from Eritrea, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Egypt. Most of the trainees completed a government-sponsored course on Nov. 24, 1990, and were sent on missions throughout the Arabian Peninsula.
Accompanying the memos are separate notations signed by Saddam Hussein's secretary, suggesting the president himself had reviewed and endorsed each action.
"Saddam was personally overseeing the details" of training terrorists and assigning their missions, Mr. Phares said. "From 1993 on, Saddam Hussein connected with Sunni fundamentalists in the Arab world. He was in touch with the founding members of al-Qaeda."
CNS enlisted its own cast of experts—a former weapons inspector with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), a retired CIA counterterrorism official with experience in Iraq, and a former Clinton advisor on Iraq—to review the documents prior to publication. CNS reporter Scott Wheeler received the data from an unnamed "senior government official" who is not a political appointee. The source said the documents have not been made public because Bush administration officials have "thousands and thousands" of similar documents waiting to be translated and "it is unlikely they even know this exists."
Former Clinton advisor Laurie Mylroie, who taught at Harvard and the U.S. Naval College and authored two books on Iraq under Saddam Hussein, told CNS the find represents "the most complete set of documents relating Iraq to terrorism, including Islamic terrorism."
Bruce Tefft, the retired CIA official, described the documents as "accurate." He cited as particularly significant the Iraq link to al-Jihad al Tajdeed. Tajdeed is allied with Mr. al-Zarqawi. Its website currently posts Mr. al-Zarqawi's speeches, messages, and videos—including images portraying the Jordanian terrorist actively participating in the beheading of American Nicholas Berg and, just last month, the beheading of U.S. engineer Eugene Armstrong. At 37, Mr. al-Zarqawi is considered the main instigator behind suicide bombings, assassination attempts, and beheadings in Iraq. The connections "are too close to be accidental," Mr. Tefft told CNS, suggesting "one of the first operational contacts between an al-Qaeda group and Iraq."
Mr. al-Zarqawi is often portrayed as a lone ranger, a cult figure running a nascent uprising in response to so-called U.S. imperialism. Yet these latest documents, along with other emerging reports, reveal Mr. al-Zarqawi's "authority stemmed from specific instructions and guidance" received from Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. According to terror expert Yossef Bodansky in his new book, The Secret History of the Iraq War, intelligence data shows Mr. al-Zarqawi entered northern Iraq from Iran shortly before the war to oversee a sophisticated guerrilla-war plan crafted in conjunction with Iraqi intelligence agents and Saddam himself.
In addition to the terror-group connections, several pages of the leaked documents also demonstrate that Saddam possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction. They describe Iraq's purchase of five kilograms of mustard gas in August 2000 and three vials of malignant pustule, a term for anthrax, the following month—all at a time when Saddam prohibited UN weapons inspectors from working in Iraq. The purchase orders include gas masks, filters, sterilization, and decontamination equipment.
With this latest release of Iraqi documents, and the assembly of nonpartisan experts standing by them, the Kerry campaign will have to work harder to dismiss Bush administration actions as "a rush to war."
"What you see reading through these documents is that the [Persian Gulf] war did not end. This is a continuation of that war," Ms. Mylroie told WORLD. Saddam's aim, she said, was to "pick off the [1991] coalition" with terror attacks as a means of turning Middle East allies against the United States. That tactic emboldened the kind of transnational terror network described in the documents, continuing through 2001 and beyond. "What is interesting is that Iraq was working with Islamic militants of all stripes. Saddam did not make a distinction between Baathists or Sunnis or Shiites or anyone else," Ms. Mylroie said.
Such conclusions, she said, may prompt critics to call her paranoid and to denigrate the importance of this recent find as outdated and fanciful. But Ms. Mylroie has been called a conspiracy theorist before. Ignoring the evidence of state-sponsored terrorism and its ongoing threat is a zero-sum game for Bush opponents. Focusing only on the role of individual terror fanatics like Mr. al-Zarqawi, says Ms. Mylroie, does "make the terrorist threat appear as terrifying as possible. But authorities can do virtually nothing about terrorism when it is depicted this way."
Despite "missteps" in prosecuting the war, "the war was necessary because Saddam was involved in 9/11," Ms. Mylroie said. "There is no question that Saddam is part of a terror war."
For the Kerry campaign the revelations have come late enough in the election season to inflict lasting damage on his foreign-policy credibility. For U.S. and Iraqi forces fighting terror in Iraq, they have come not a moment too soon. —with reporting by Priya Abraham —•
By Mindy Belz, World October 12, 2004
Walid Phares thumbed a sheaf of documents, all in Arabic and nearly all bearing the spherical slogan of Iraq's intelligence service, or Mukhabarat. The Middle East scholar, a Lebanese-American Christian who speaks four languages and is a recognized expert on Islamic militants and terrorism, has interrupted a sick day (prior engagement with a root canal) in order to evaluate 42 just-leaked intelligence documents confiscated by U.S. forces in Iraq.
Moistening his finger and translating out loud, Mr. Phares read from the pages in his third-floor office in downtown Washington, where he is taking a year off from teaching at Florida Atlantic University to serve as senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He didn't notice as his narrating voice rose with incredulity. Finishing, he rapped the papers with his fingers and concluded: "This is a watershed. This is big."
Mr. Phares is one of at least four eminent Middle East experts to agree that the documents—published for the first time last week—demonstrate that Saddam Hussein collaborated with and supported Islamic terrorist groups, including the current terror nemesis in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The papers, obtained by Cybercast News Service (CNS) and released Oct. 4, "establish irreversible evidence that there were strategic relations between the Baathist regime and Islamist groups that became al-Qaeda," Mr. Phares said after reviewing them at WORLD's request on Oct. 6. In addition, the documents link al-Zarqawi-associated groups throughout the Middle East, including al-Qaeda, on Saddam's payroll and acting under his direct authority.
Evidence and the word of experts, however, is having little effect on the John Kerry campaign, which has staked its bid for the White House on what it calls a flawed rationale for war in Iraq. Only hours after the CNS website absorbed so many hits over the revelations that its server crashed, vice-presidential candidate John Edwards blasted the president's war strategy in a televised debate with Vice President Dick Cheney. "There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th—period," Mr. Edwards said. "In fact, any connection with al-Qaeda is tenuous at best."
Sen. John Kerry, too, insists on the stump that the president's "two main rationales—weapons of mass destruction and the al-Qaeda/Sept. 11 connection—have been proved false."
But the documents suggest otherwise. They include an 11-page memo, dated Jan. 25, 1993, listing "parties related to our system . . . expert in executing the required missions." The memo cites Palestinian, Sudanese, and Asian terror groups, and shows a developing relationship with groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, including Mr. al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—figures who are now on the U.S. most-wanted list for ongoing assaults in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Jan. 25, 1993, memo also describes an intelligence service meeting with a splinter group led by Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman. Mr. Abdel-Rahman is a son of the blind Egyptian, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, accused of inspiring the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and arrested in 1994 for targeting New York landmarks. Pakistani officials caught the younger Abdel-Rahman last year, and say he helped lead authorities to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the 9/11 attack planners.
A separate memo, dated March 18, 1993, asks intelligence officers to provide "details of Arab martyrs who got trained" in conjunction with post–Gulf War "committees of martyrs act." In reply another office supplied 92 names with nationalities, all "trained inside the ‘martyr act camp' that belonged to our directorate." In all, 40 are linked to Palestinian groups, 21 are Sudanese, and others range from Eritrea, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Egypt. Most of the trainees completed a government-sponsored course on Nov. 24, 1990, and were sent on missions throughout the Arabian Peninsula.
Accompanying the memos are separate notations signed by Saddam Hussein's secretary, suggesting the president himself had reviewed and endorsed each action.
"Saddam was personally overseeing the details" of training terrorists and assigning their missions, Mr. Phares said. "From 1993 on, Saddam Hussein connected with Sunni fundamentalists in the Arab world. He was in touch with the founding members of al-Qaeda."
CNS enlisted its own cast of experts—a former weapons inspector with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), a retired CIA counterterrorism official with experience in Iraq, and a former Clinton advisor on Iraq—to review the documents prior to publication. CNS reporter Scott Wheeler received the data from an unnamed "senior government official" who is not a political appointee. The source said the documents have not been made public because Bush administration officials have "thousands and thousands" of similar documents waiting to be translated and "it is unlikely they even know this exists."
Former Clinton advisor Laurie Mylroie, who taught at Harvard and the U.S. Naval College and authored two books on Iraq under Saddam Hussein, told CNS the find represents "the most complete set of documents relating Iraq to terrorism, including Islamic terrorism."
Bruce Tefft, the retired CIA official, described the documents as "accurate." He cited as particularly significant the Iraq link to al-Jihad al Tajdeed. Tajdeed is allied with Mr. al-Zarqawi. Its website currently posts Mr. al-Zarqawi's speeches, messages, and videos—including images portraying the Jordanian terrorist actively participating in the beheading of American Nicholas Berg and, just last month, the beheading of U.S. engineer Eugene Armstrong. At 37, Mr. al-Zarqawi is considered the main instigator behind suicide bombings, assassination attempts, and beheadings in Iraq. The connections "are too close to be accidental," Mr. Tefft told CNS, suggesting "one of the first operational contacts between an al-Qaeda group and Iraq."
Mr. al-Zarqawi is often portrayed as a lone ranger, a cult figure running a nascent uprising in response to so-called U.S. imperialism. Yet these latest documents, along with other emerging reports, reveal Mr. al-Zarqawi's "authority stemmed from specific instructions and guidance" received from Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. According to terror expert Yossef Bodansky in his new book, The Secret History of the Iraq War, intelligence data shows Mr. al-Zarqawi entered northern Iraq from Iran shortly before the war to oversee a sophisticated guerrilla-war plan crafted in conjunction with Iraqi intelligence agents and Saddam himself.
In addition to the terror-group connections, several pages of the leaked documents also demonstrate that Saddam possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction. They describe Iraq's purchase of five kilograms of mustard gas in August 2000 and three vials of malignant pustule, a term for anthrax, the following month—all at a time when Saddam prohibited UN weapons inspectors from working in Iraq. The purchase orders include gas masks, filters, sterilization, and decontamination equipment.
With this latest release of Iraqi documents, and the assembly of nonpartisan experts standing by them, the Kerry campaign will have to work harder to dismiss Bush administration actions as "a rush to war."
"What you see reading through these documents is that the [Persian Gulf] war did not end. This is a continuation of that war," Ms. Mylroie told WORLD. Saddam's aim, she said, was to "pick off the [1991] coalition" with terror attacks as a means of turning Middle East allies against the United States. That tactic emboldened the kind of transnational terror network described in the documents, continuing through 2001 and beyond. "What is interesting is that Iraq was working with Islamic militants of all stripes. Saddam did not make a distinction between Baathists or Sunnis or Shiites or anyone else," Ms. Mylroie said.
Such conclusions, she said, may prompt critics to call her paranoid and to denigrate the importance of this recent find as outdated and fanciful. But Ms. Mylroie has been called a conspiracy theorist before. Ignoring the evidence of state-sponsored terrorism and its ongoing threat is a zero-sum game for Bush opponents. Focusing only on the role of individual terror fanatics like Mr. al-Zarqawi, says Ms. Mylroie, does "make the terrorist threat appear as terrifying as possible. But authorities can do virtually nothing about terrorism when it is depicted this way."
Despite "missteps" in prosecuting the war, "the war was necessary because Saddam was involved in 9/11," Ms. Mylroie said. "There is no question that Saddam is part of a terror war."
For the Kerry campaign the revelations have come late enough in the election season to inflict lasting damage on his foreign-policy credibility. For U.S. and Iraqi forces fighting terror in Iraq, they have come not a moment too soon. —with reporting by Priya Abraham —•
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