Aljazeera reports that Saddam Hussein has added an additional member to his defense team:
Ziad Khasawna said on Wednesday that Clark, who held the office of attorney-general under US president Lyndon Johnson, had “honoured and inspired” the legal team by agreeing to help defend Saddam.
Ramsey Clark will probably coordinate all the other anti-American efforts in what is sure to be a trial focusing on US gangsterism.
Sarah always seems to locate interesting tidbits around the net. This morning she found a feel-good story about the US in MSM–well, Washington Times, no shill for the left.
Lorne Craner, president of the International Republican Institute, served as the State Department’s human rights chief for most of President Bush’s first term.
“I was obviously concerned that issues like Abu Ghraib could hurt our standing and our ability to support our values abroad,” says Mr. Craner, whose tenure was marked by international criticism of U.S. actions on everything from the Kyoto global-warming pact to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq.
“But I found that the American experience and American ideals still were very powerful almost everywhere I went,” Mr. Craner says. “People realized we are not perfect, but it did not undermine our credibility.”
The article continues to compare our strengths, both hard and soft power. But I think that quote above hits on something that is misperceived by many: “People realized we are not perfect, but it did not undermine our credibility.” The issue in mind mind is Why?
Because we are far more open than any other society on Earth? Perhaps the fact that we have a First Amendment, one that prevents the government from restricting our ability to criticize it, keeps us honest. Today, Thomas Paine would have a blog. We can see, daily, that we as a nation are not perfect, but we do what we can to try and achieve perfection. Yet we know that isn’t possible–well, most of us. There are still some on the far left who dream of Utopia. It reminds me of my flight line job. Every day I went to work with the desire to have every flight launch on time and every aircraft to be fully mission capable. Perfection. Yet I knew that would happen on only the rarest of occasions. But that was the goal.
Our credibility lies in the fact that we don’t pretend to be perfect. Think for a minute about those who cause the most problems in today’s world. Islamicists come first to mind. They view their culture as the one perfect way. We understand our weaknesses, far better than we sometimes realize. We’ve grown accustomed to them even as we strive to overcome them. When we look at something like Abu Ghraib, we are appalled. Nobody else in the world is, although many feigned disgust.
We are accused of imposing our own values on Iraq. Okay, what values do you mean? We have many, only one of which is a representative government. We certainly want the government in Iraq to be friendly, or at least not antagonistic. That is in our interest. Beyond that, however, we have only the expectation that Iraq will have a representative government in some form. And that is for the benefit of the Iraqi people who will, for the first time, govern themselves.
It reminds me of Churchill’s comment: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.”
For anyone who still believes the UN is a valuable organization, I offer you this from the Washington Times:
But U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being “stingy” with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised.
$15 million just isn’t enough.
Besides the United States, the largest single national donor was neighboring Australia, which offered $10 million and transportation aid.
And what are other nations donating?
Offers of aid have poured in from around the world in the past two days, with the European Union’s executive arm releasing $4 million in emergency aid and pledging an additional $27 million. Canada and several European nations — including Spain, Germany, Ireland and Belgium — each pledged about $1 million yesterday.
That means the EU says they might possibly send as much as $31 million… will we ever know if they did?
The interim Prime Minister points out
In just over one month’s time, the citizens of Iraq will be presented with a unique opportunity to close a chapter of decades of tyrannical rule and take their first steps to shape their own future by participating in the first free and fair elections in generations. On Jan. 30, Iraqis will vote for the Iraqi National Assembly to enable the drafting of a permanent constitution, in preparation for full elections for a government one year later.
Think about that for a minute. An entirely new National Assembly is to be selected at the end of next month. Has MSM done any coverage of the election campaign? I’ve not seen any. The Iraqis must be far better at this election stuff than we are. They have apparently not even begun the campaign which will be complete in six weeks.
I waited all day. Nobody else seems to have seen it. MSNBC’s Carl Roschelle could do no better than to ponder how a suicide bomber made it into a military facility.
My conclusion? The insurgents are finished.
Yesterday I mentioned Tet 1968. It was the last gasp of the Viet Cong and NVA. In the US, the media and activists acclaimed it as a resounding defeat for US forces, and proof we needed to pull out.
The suicide bomber and havoc he created will be reported in much the same way. The politicos on the left are already doing it.
But consider for just a second the weapon used. Where else is it used? Why?
The jihadists are on their last legs in Iraq. They have been reduced to the point they must use the same weapon used by Hamas to take on our forces. They can do little else.
Ed Driscoll writes about the release of a “Live Aid” DVD, and the philosophy of help put forth–endlessly–by the left.
The Who performed their ’70s anthem, “We Won’t Get Fooled Again.” The Boomer and MTV generations frequently forget how often they get fooled again.
While Live Aid was spectacular television, it was just another in a series of Big Events from people who believed that throwing money at a problem eventually solves it. Eerily, it forecast how the left would interact with Iraq: Substitute Mengistu for Saddam Hussein and it’s amazing how all the rest of the players stay the same–the BBC, the United Nations, and celebrities who believe that despots can be reasoned with to do the right thing. We won’t get fooled again? Of course you will.
I spent some time in Mengitsu’s Ethiopia. The famine was simply a weapon of mass destruction, the oldest and most often used. Money and food sent to Ethiopia had to go through his hands, and he wasn’t going to let his enemies receive any of it.
Kinda like Oil for Food.
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