If people are too dense to grasp that there can be alternative ways of thinking, and that not everyone is interested in Compromise, and in Diversity, and in Openness, and in Peace In Our Time, and in Equality, and in Human Rights, and in the Personal Freedom to kill ourselves with overeating and overconsuming overthinking and overbeing, and that mankind is perhaps not yet ripe to be just one happy family, then maybe they should be conquered by people with less benevolent and less idyllic ways of thinking, and be forced to forfeit their values and happiness and security and satiety, if not their lives.

I hoped George Bush could be the one to wake everyone up... John Kerry would prefer to lull more of us to sleep... Will we wake up in time?

I’ve had three experiences as a nameless man being reported on by the national networks. They have all involved the Middle East.

My first time on the national news I was interviewed at a gas station, somewhere on the New York State Thruway, during the oil embargo in 1973. I was waiting in a long line to buy gas for my father’s car at the only place open on the west Side of Syracuse. Dad didn't have the time, so he sent me to get whatever gas I could. I had driven over 20 minutes for a chance to buy a partial tank of gas…. $3 worth was the limit, if memory serves me right (would have been about 6 gallons). The news man asked me 4 or 5 questions while I was sitting in my car, having the gas pumped... Yes attendants used to pump gas all of the time. I wound up on CBS at 6 on Dan Rather’s evening News. I was a star, and was pretty proud of that performance.

My next appearance was a few years later during the Iran-Iraq War. I was a helicopter pilot based in Bahrain, one of four pilots of the 'Desert Duck.' The Duck was assigned as the transportation for the Admiral in residence as the Commander of Middle East Forces. We also hauled all of the mail and air freight between the ships in the Persian Arabian Gulf and the airfield in Manama, Bahrain. The Duck was well regarded by everyone who knew of it.

As a hauler of people, mail and cargo, we were unarmed. None of the air crew, even, flew with side arms and the aircraft had no armament. We ferried cookies from home and American coffee along with spare parts, we didn't carry bullets. We also flew the Admiral around from ship to ship and between his ashore Headquarters and his Flagship. Often, we would fly him out to the flagship in the morning and back home in the evening after a long days work with his afloat staff.

The ships in the the Arabian Sea (Persian Gulf to the Iranians), were monitoring the War. The Tanker War was about at its peak 20 years ago... You may remember our friends, the Iraqis, shooting at oil tankers in the gulf and even hitting the USS Stark“friends”... right...

Anyway, Merchant ship traffic in the gulf was pretty heavy, despite the war. Sheep Ships from New Zealand, (the crews of which would toss the dead sheep over the side on their way into port, leaving a trail of bloated, floating sheep for us to follow back to Bahrain) were frequent visitors, as were RO-RO’s of Mercedes and Toyotas, and countless container ships full of Japanese electronics were plying their trade. Except for the occasional oil slick and burning tanker, or by listening to the news and reading the papers you’d never know there was a war on if you were ashore anyplace in the Gulf. There was, though, a small group of vultures who were very much interested.

Always monitoring the VHF shipping radio frequencies was a small group of ocean going tugs and fire-fighting vessels, what we called salvage vultures. When a ship was attacked and then called for help, these tugs would race to the area to be the first to offer help and get a line to the distressed vessel. The first tug in assistance had salvage rights claims which could mean millions of dollars to the captain and owners. Imagine 8 or 9 ocean going tugs steaming in slow circles monitoring the radios for signs of distress, and then racing to the area for a chance at a sizeable prize... You understand the vulture reference. Although they were helpful, their motives were far from selfless.

Meanwhile, the journalists, covering the war while drinking it up in the bars of Bahrain or in ex-Pat neighborhoods in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, monitored the same frequencies as the vultures and the US Navy.

Did you know that a bored sailor can set the news in motion with a bogus radio transmission or two?? But I digress. I’m supposed to be telling you about my second exposure on the National Evening News.

On April 25, 1984 a Panamanian flagged vessel with a Swedish [I think] captain, a Philipino crew, owned by a Saudi Oil company left Al Kharg Island in Iran loaded with crude oil. A couple of hours later the Safina-al Arab was hit on the starboard side at the water line, just below the bridge, by an Iraqi Exocet Missile. The missile tore a basketball court sized hole in the side of the ship and barrels of crude were burned or leaked into the sea. The Captain called for help for his burning and damaged vessel... and the salvage vultures responded.

On the flagship, and in the Admirals ashore HQ, they monitored the situation through the night and into the next morning. Ships in the vicinity were sent in close to the scene with orders to stand by to offer any emergency assistance. Meanhwile, early in the morning, I was briefing my crew for our morning logistics flights and our task of ferrying the Admiral out to the Flagship.

On his way out to the ship, the Admiral decided he wanted to fly over the Safina al Arab, to see for himself what was going on and so we could photograph the damage and try to piece together the picture that was emerging over the VHF radio.

While briefing, we were told the ship was still smoking. It was unclear whether the fire was under control or not, although a salvage tug had been fighting the fire. There were no reports of injuries, at least none which required medevac so the US Navy did not get directly involved. A Danish tug/salvage/firefighting vessel was on scene.

Radio reports from the Danish tug captain were that he had been threatened by an Iranian "gunboat" which was still hindering his rescue effort. The Safina Al Arab’s Captain also complained about the harassment and he wanted his crew to be rescued. A couple of US warships were ordered closer in case any humanitarian assistance would be needed, but it was not the US Navy’s mission to get involved in Admiralty disputes on the high seas and we had witnessed more than one of these competitions between the salvage vessels. But this was a little different because an Iranian "gunboat" was involved. So, Oceanguy and his crew manned the Desert Duck, with the boss aboard, and flew to the scene.

The Iranian "gunboat" turned out to be a competing salvage tug that was not equipped to fight a fire. So even though they were probably the first on the scene, they were not the first to render assistance. It also appeared that the Swedish Captain had refused their assistance, because he did not want to be towed back to Kharg Island. Regardless.. no salvage booty for the Iranians. They were justifiably unhappy.

Apparently one of the crew of about 20 Iranians had brandished some sort of pistol or something that looked like a weapon, while arguing with the Dane from the second-on-the-scene tug saying that he was there first and deserved the rights to salvage. The second-on-the-scene was a much nicer vessel AND had the fire-fighting equipment to put the fire out, so the dispute was really about who would tow the ship and to where it was going to be towed... Who would get the treasure?

The issue was dead as far as we were concerned, and we dropped the Admiral on his Flagship and picked up his Chief of Staff for the return trip to shore. Of course, the COS wanted to see the scene too, so back we went.

Once again we flew to the Safina Al Arab. Neither salvage tug had a line across yet to tow the tanker. Both were sailing very close to the damaged vessel and were apparently still arguing. The Chief of Staff made a couple of Jokes about the “Dirty Iranians” on the deck of the Iranian vessel needing a bath, [it was really a motley crew]. We flew around the ship a couple of times slowing to a hover to examine the damage and take photos, before finally disappearing over the horizon, following the dead sheep back to Bahrain.

So... How did all of this play on the evening news? Well, I can only report how it aired on Peter Jennings’s broadcast, for that is the tape we received about 2 weeks later. Before the days of satellite TV there were kind souls who taped American TV shows and mailed them to ships overseas. The news arrived regularly. When dining on the flagship, we had the treat of watching the ABC Evening News just before dinner, almost like home... even if it was two weeks behind. This time, my second appearance on the national news, I got to hear about my heroism... but this time, I almost didn’t recognize me.

The “truth,” as reported by ABC, went something like this:

"Today in the Persian Gulf, the Safina Al-Arab was hit by an Iraqi Missile. An Iranian gunboat threatened the survivors and attacked the rescue ship. The tense confrontation was eased when the Iranians were chased away by two US Navy Helicopter gunships.”

I suppose I should have been honored to be so feared that my single, unarmed, mail carrying helo was perceived as a fearsome pair of gunships. I should also be proud of the heroic way we fought off that gunboat….. Except I knew the real story. Now you do too.

Some reporter, with his ass on a barstool ashore, looking at the tanker war through his gin and tonic straw at the Sherlock Holmes Pub in the Gulf Hotel in Manama Bahrain, filed an exciting if embellished story. That event made me ever skeptical of all “world news” reporting. It has made me always look for the untold story. I wish Blogs had existed back then. Even over 20 years later it feels good to fact check Peter Jennings' ass.

Yesterday, as a result of the Google hit, I found this site written by the Captain of the Danish tug in the story...[original link here]. It was funny to see his point of view... I guess he thought the US Navy really did save the day... I still don't trust the media.

By the way:
1984 I was involved in the war between Iran and Irak. I was captain on a fire-fighting tug and after we had extinguished the fire of big tanker-ship "Safina Al Arab" we were attacted by Iranians, who tried to get back the ship from International Waters. So we sent SOS and within a short time we had the American war- ships "Boone", "Loose" and "Lasalle" around us who sent the buccaneers back home and we could proceed with our work.
Until today I am thankful that the American friends were on stage, because I don´t know what would have happened ....

Some other time I’ll tell you about my third time in Prime Time.

The failure of Islamists to take over Arab countries in the quarter-century following Iran's Islamist revolution convinced some radicals in each country that a new strategy was needed.

They thus went from the idea of trying to seize power in one state at a time to the global Jihadist movement. Rather than fight Arab nationalist ideology they would steal its program, concluding that murdering Jews and Christians would be more popular than killing fellow Muslims. The regimes collaborated in this process by going easy on the movement – and even reinforcing the ideology – as long as the violence was being perpetrated on someone else.

For a late 20th century New York Jew to arrive in Europe at this point in history is a shocking, unnerving experience. There is even a science fiction element to it, hinting of time travel into the horrible recent past.

Here, I am amazed to hear people state their opinion that Jews have too much power, that they inspire anti-Semitism by insisting upon being different, that they are behind the war in Iraq, that they had foreknowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

In America, one's Jewishness is a pedigree, envied and respected. In Europe, it is a liability, a defensive posture. Here, "looking Jewish" makes one an instant target for assault. Here, Jewish institutions are as heavily-guarded as Buckingham Palace. Here, there is a widespread belief that the ongoing murder of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian terrorists is morally and politically justified.

JEWISH LIFE kept improving in Thessaloniki right up to the year 1900, when the local Jewish population numbered 80,000, according to Iakov Benmayor, who now serves as vice president of the Community Council and wrote the Encyclopedia Judaica's entry on Salonika some 35 years ago. The chief reason Jews left for the United States in the early 20th century was to avoid serving in the Turkish army and Zionism took swift hold in the city, spawning 20 such organizations right up until the eve of World War II.

In 1912, Greek armies overtook Thessaloniki and King George declared Jews and all minorities full citizens of the state. This moment seems to be the apex of modern Jewish history in Thessaloniki. During this era, which seemed a contemporary version of the Jewish community's original 16th-century Golden Age, 35 of the 73 newspapers printed in Salonika were in Judeo-Spanish and there were as many as 28 Jewish schools. Jews formed the infrastructure of Thessaloniki, providing the city's most renowned physicians, astronomers, lawyers, teachers, and stevedores.

I STAND silently alongside my husband in the small room which documents the destruction of Thessaloniki's Jewish presence, fighting the urge to scream. I have stood in other such rooms in other cities and felt overwhelmed by grief but here, a bottomless sorrow engulfs me. All the encounters of the past three months well up inside me and I see my previous existence as a New York Jew akin to a fairy tale, ephemeral, unreal.

While I lived my secure American Jewish life - attending Jewish day schools and Hebrew-speaking summer camps, munching matza sandwiches on Pessah at the Bronx Zoo, dancing joyously with Torah scrolls on West End Avenue during Simhat Torah, snacking on kosher pizza with my children in a sidewalk succa on West 72nd Street, traveling with my family to Israel on vacation, taking part in Israeli dancing in Central Park, joining hundreds of thousands of vocal Jews at demonstrations in front of the UN, in front of the Israeli consulate, in front of the White House - Thessaloniki was busy burying its Jewish past.

The media is often referred to off-handedly as a strategic factor. But we still don't fully appreciate its fatal power. Conditioned by the relative objectivity and ultimate respect for facts of the U.S. media, we fail to understand that, even in Europe, the media has become little more than a tool of propaganda.

That propaganda is increasingly, viciously, mindlessly anti-American. When our forces engage in tactical combat, dishonest media reporting immediately creates drag on the chain of command all the way up to the president. Real atrocities aren't required. Everything American soldiers do is portrayed as an atrocity. World opinion is outraged, no matter how judiciously we fight.

With each passing day — sometimes with each hour — the pressure builds on our government to halt combat operations, to offer the enemy a pause, to negotiate . . . in essence, to give up.

We saw it in Fallujah, where slow-paced tactical success led only to cease-fires that comforted the enemy and gave the global media time to pound us even harder. Those cease-fires were worrisomely reminiscent of the bombing halts during the Vietnam War — except that everything happens faster now.

The best and quickest way to counter the media anti-war frenzy is through strong leadership from the President. Peters is right that this war on Islamofaschists will be a long, long affair. George W Bush will not win it even if he's re-elected. But he can take a huge step with his leadership. He has been largley absent from the public leadership role that he palyed so well in the few months after 9/11. That man, tht leadership must return.

It will take leadership in identifying the enemy... Terror is not the enemy, Islamofaschists are the enemy. The fact that so many see no relationship between the war in Iraq and the "War on Terror" is concrete evidence of a failure in leadership from the President.

The President can exercise the essential leadership by defining and explaining who the enemy are and what their threat to us is. By itself it's a huge task, and it's been made even more difficult because of the President has failed to give it any attention.

All we ask is to know who we're fighting, and why. Bush's arrogant assumption that everyone recognizes the evil we are fighting is wrong. Too many don't know, too many are confused. More importantly, too many think the President is one of the confused. Only his leadership will right the ship.

The PLO Arabs sit atop a corrupt, violent, sick, barbaric, broken society. Their culture is all but irredeemable.

Sovereignty? Scary.
Sympathy? Sorry, not from me.

Daily Working Hours: Colleagues of Mr. President say that he finds utter pleasure in pursuing all his people's issues all day long and part of the night, in normal days. Hardly can he find time for his family and comfort.

Political Aspect:
The President watches daily and directly over the crucial Palestinian people's issues. HE has a special priority for the peace process and its developments and follow up the concluded agreements. HE. is assisted with team of advisers in all life domains. His Excellency President Arafat persists to convene the council of ministers weekly and regularly to discuss all political and economical issues and draft laws.

Mr. President keeps track of work development in the all the country's departments; in particular, the judicial and legislative authorities as an inception to set a state of institutions and law. Primarily, he cares for following up the constitution of the state of Palestine in collaboration with the Arab League. The president devotes himself to meet rulers and presidents of the Arab and foreign countries to acquaint with the recent developments on the Palestinian arena and the Middle East peace process to gain more support for the Palestinian cause.

Economical Aspect:
Similar to the President's trail of the political aspect he closely pursues the economic status, as for: enacting economical and investment laws, free estates and zones laws; in addition to setting up great projects such as the Gaza International Airport, the Seaport and the infrastructure: roads, power stations, water and telecommunication.

Social Aspect:
The President adheres to be available at all national, religious and social occasions. His Excellency pays a special attention to the handicapped, the prisoners and the martyrs' families, in addition to supervising the setting up of several societies and departments to improve their health and living conditions.

Beowulf

Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart

Agee, James A Death in the Family

Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice

Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain

Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot

Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March

Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre

Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights

Camus, Albert The Stranger

Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop

Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote

Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales

Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard

Chopin, Kate The Awakening

Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness

Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans

Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage

Dante Inferno

Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe

Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment

Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy

Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers

Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss

Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man

Emerson, Ralph Waldo Selected Essays

Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying

Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury

Fielding, Henry Tom Jones

Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby

Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary

Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust

Golding, William Lord of the Flies

Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter

Heller, Joseph Catch 22

Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms

Homer The Iliad

Homer The Odyssey

Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God

Huxley, Aldous Brave New World

Ibsen, Henrik A Doll’s House

James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady

James, Henry The Turn of the Screw

Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis

Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior

Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird

Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt

London, Jack The Call of the Wild

Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years of Solitude

Melville, Herman Bartleby the Scrivener

Melville, Herman Moby Dick

Miller, Arthur The Crucible

Morrison, Toni Beloved

O'Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find

O'Neill, Eugene Long Day's Journey into Night

Orwell, George Animal Farm

Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago

Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar

Poe, Edgar Allen Selected Tales

Proust, Marcel Swann's Way

Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49

Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front

Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac

Roth, Henry Call It Sleep

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye

Shakespeare, William Hamlet

Shakespeare, William Macbeth

Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet

Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion

Shelley, Mary Frankenstein

Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Sophocles Antigone

Sophocles Oedipus Rex

Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath

Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island

Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin

Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels

Thackeray, William Vanity Fair

Thoreau, Henry David Walden

Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace

Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons

Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Voltaire Candide

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five

Walker, Alice The Color Purple

Warton, Edith The House of Mirth

Welty, Eudora Collected Stories

Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass

Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray

Williams, Tennessee The Glass Menagerie

Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse

Wright, Richard Native Son

In the days since the first reports of the crime were received, more details have emerged, which make what was already a scandal for the United Nations in Kosovo even more alarming. First and most disturbing is that the dead assailant, Ali, is being investigated for connections with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. Second is that the same Ali had visited the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, home of the Wahhabi Islamic sect that produced al Qaeda, only a month before he was sent to Kosovo in March.

More thorough descriptions of the incident are horrendous. The group of Americans, along with some Turkish personnel, were leaving a prison in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica when the attack began. It was their first day on the job. According to the Associated Press, they were "trapped between a locked gate and Ali's assault rifle."

The Palestinian carried an M-16, from which he apparently discharged 400 rounds, leading NATO investigators to examine whether his four colleagues in a Jordanian detachment assigned to guard the prison had helped him by feeding his weapon as he fired. All four were detained after the bloody events, but three have now been released, while one of them, whose name has not been disclosed, remains under arrest as a possible accomplice, and his immunity from prosecution has been revoked.

Viewed in this context, the American "defeat" in Iraq projected by the press must be understood as being something wholly different from anything that has gone before. The 800 odd US military deaths suffered since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom a year ago are less than the number who died in the Slapton Sands D-Day training exercise in 1944. The campaign in Iraq has hardly scratched American strength, which has in fact grown more potent in operational terms over the intervening period. Nor has it materially affected the US manpower pool or slowed the American economy, which is actually growing several times faster than France, which is not militarily engaged. The defeat being advertised by the press is a wholly new phenomenon: one which leaves the vanquished army untouched and the victor devastated; the economy of the vanquished burgeoning and that of the victor in destitution; the territory of the loser unoccupied and that of the winner garrisoned. It is an inversion of all the traditional metrics of victory and defeat. That the assertion is not instantly ludicrous is an indication of the arrival of a new and potentially revolutionary form of political wafare.

It was during the Vietnam War that the Left first discovered the potential war-winning ability of media coverage. The concept itself is merely an extension of the blitzkrieg notion that the enemy command structure, not his troop masses, are the true center of gravity on the battlefield. During the campaign of 1940, Heinz Guderian's panzers bypassed many French formations, leaving them unfought, knowing that if their command structure were severed, the whole musclebound mass would fall to the ground headless. What the Left gradually discovered during the course of the Vietnam war was that Guderian had not been bold enough. Guderian still felt it necessary to win on the battlefield. He had not realized that it was possible to ignore the battlefield altogether because it was the enemy political structure, not his military capability, that was the true center of gravity of an entire campaign. It was General Giap during the Vietnam War who first planned a military operation entirely around its possible media effect. The Tet offensive was a last desperate attempt to gain the upper hand in a war he was losing...

...Although Giap failed in every military respect, he succeeded in providing the press with the raw material necessary to alter the dynamics of American domestic politics. While he could not alter reality, the Giap could alter the perception of reality enough to give anti-war politicians a winning hand which they played it to the hilt.

More than a million people have been expelled from their homes and thousands have been killed in one of the most brutal ethnic conflicts of our time, mostly unnoticed by the international media.

While it is doubtful whether the UN will be more successful in stopping ethnic cleansing in Sudan than it had been in Bosnia or Kosovo, the Darfur slaughter raises a wider issue that has bedeviled Middle Eastern politics for decades but has not received the attention it deserves.

The issue is that the Arab political narrative sees the Arab nation – and it alone – as the sole legitimate repository of national self-determination in the region. While Arabs have, of course, the right to self-determination, one of the problems that have accompanied Arab nationalism from its inception is that what the Arabs rightly claim for themselves, they are not willing to grant to other national groups in the Middle East. This exclusivism borders on political racism.

The Kurds are one example. Different in language, culture, and traditions from the Arabs, Kurds have been oppressed for decades by Arab regimes in Iraq and Syria (as well as the non-Arab Muslim Turks in Turkey and Persians in Iran).

Yet no voice in the Arab world has ever confronted the issue of the right of Kurds to self-determination. At a time when the Arab world is united in supporting Palestinian statehood, no Arab intellectual has ever come forward to acknowledge similar rights for the Kurds. The issue just does not exist in Arab public discourse...

...This claim to be the sole bearer of legitimate national sovereignty is at the root of the difficulty of Arab nationalism to come to terms with the national rights of Kurds, black Africans in Sudan, Jews, and Berbers. Not for nothing is the Middle East (admittedly, a bad Eurocentric term) called in Arabic "the Arab region." Italian fascists used to call the Adriatic – if not the Mediterranean – mare nostrum, "our sea."

This exclusivity and monopolistic claim to statehood and sovereignty has long been abandoned in Europe, where it had been the cause of many wars, ethnic cleansings, and massacres in the last two centuries.

The time has come for Arab nationalism to accommodate itself, as a matter of principle, to the need to coexist with other national movements in the region – Kurds and Jews, Berbers and black Sudanese – because they have the same right to nationhood and self-determination as Arabs. It is also time for outside observers to realize that what has been totally discredited in Europe should be viewed as totally unacceptable in our region as well.

The vast majority of the world's news media are so anti-American and so morally confused that they reported the claims of anti-American butchers as if they were facts. Nick Berg's murderers said their butchery was revenge for American abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison, and the world's press dutifully published this as if it were a fact (or even worse, as if it were an understandable, though admittedly extreme, act of revenge).

Here are examples of the headlines — not subheads — in major American newspapers:

"American beheaded in revenge for abuses" — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Grisly Vengeance" — The Hartford Courant
"Militants avenge abuse with taped beheading" — The Des Moines Register
"Vengeance on Video" — The Arizona Republic
"With a Vengeance" — Newsday (Long Island)

Lest their readers be distracted from the real evil in Iraq — the American treatment of Iraqi prisoners — some newspapers actually conflated that with the Berg murder in their headline:

"Amid prison inquiry, revenge" — Minneapolis Star Tribune
"U.S. civilian beheaded in Iraq; abuse responsibility in dispute" — The Providence Journal...

...Revenge? Islamists slaughtering innocents is never revenge. Was the slaughter of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan "revenge"? The terrorists called Berg's murder "revenge" in order to justify their savagery and because they know that the world press is so malleable and so anti-American that it will print their lie. Six months to go until the election... I hope the country can endure it. The Administration plays politics with national security to optimize their chances for re-election, and Kerry and his core do what they can to destroy Bush, not caring that they are harming the country.

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Somehow, the Democrats cannot understand how the cumulative effect of their constant attacks on George Bush has only succeeded in lowering their own popularity. They have moved from the roof of the building to the basement in the polls since they decided that President Bush is really an accidental president, whose only job is to wait to be thrown out of office. Every time they compete with him, he succeeds, yet they cannot believe that he actually knows what he is doing. They convince themselves that they are brilliant and the only reason they keep losing is that he is a dummy who just happened to get lucky again.

This is not the first time the Democrats made such a ridiculous mistake in their estimate of their opponent. They did the same thing with Ronald Reagan. They were just as irrational in their assessment of his intelligence as they are now in their estimation of George Bush's I.Q. However, this "dummy" has the same deceptive craftiness that derailed and dismissed the Democrats two decades ago. Since the Democrats relish the pleasure of looking down at George Bush, they never take the true measure of what they are up against. That is why they are so wantonly reckless in their attacks on him, like a mob of floundering zealots who are hitting everything except the target. As with Ronald Reagan, they have decided he is the wrong man for the job. No matter how irrational, absurd or even ridiculous their attacks, they think the people disrespect Bush as much as they do and so will buy their act. Fat chance.

The activist base of the Democrats has pushed too many people away. Characterized by an unwillingness to compromise, intellectual hubris, and intolerance for , the new Democrats are losing members and helping polarize the electorate. And in the context of the current election, I'll go back to Jackie Mason, "If they had any respect for President Bush or the American people they would never have made such a serious series of condescendingly stupid statements and expected to be taken seriously." Do you think Ted Kennedy is listening?

When we pay attention to our enemies and see the scope of their ambitions and depth of their hatred we must come to a revolutionary conclusion. We, Israelis, Americans, and indeed all non-fascistic Muslims constitute the frontline in the war wherever we are. It was not US military deployment in Saudi Arabia that precipitated the September 11 attacks anymore than it was the Israeli presence in Lebanon or in Gaza or Judea and Samaria or Jerusalem that precipitated the Palestinian-led jihad against Israel. It is our existence that provokes our enemy.

Our enemies, the forces of global jihad, be they Palestinian or Jordanian, Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iranian or Iraqi use all the means at their disposal to wage their war against us. From their television and radio stations and newspapers they incite for our destruction and feed us fictions of our own culpability to both strengthen their forces' will to fight us and weaken our will to defend ourselves...

...As the jihad spreads throughout the world, we must stop finally with our self-destructive self-absorption. The butchers in Zeitoun who kicked the remains of our soldiers like footballs on Tuesday, like the butchers in Baghdad, Karachi, Riyadh and beyond who kill with barbaric ecstasy and primordial hatred do so not because of anything we have done. They do so because they are barbarians. And if we do not wish to be destroyed, we must do everything to destroy them and nothing to give them hope for victory against us.

Why aren't moderate Muslims speaking out? Because they generally agree with the goals of jihad. Even moderate Muslims see the spread of Islam as both good and inevitable. Ignoring them and appeasing them only assists them in their goal...

No, not those torture tapes, the yet more hideous tapes made by Saddam and his cohorts, which are said to contain acitivities that would make the guards in Abu Ghraib (and possibly even Zarqawi) blush. Michael Ledeen, who is visiting me in Los Angeles, has convinced me that such things exist and are in Administration hands. But why have they not yet been released to the press? Is the Administration afraid of being accused of playing tit-for-tat with the repellent and hugely embarrassing Abu Ghraib photographs? I wonder if our media has the cojones to demand to see them. I rather doubt it, considering the narrative they seem to be emphasizing. Perhaps my fellow bloggers should get involved. Transparency is our watchword. Let's get it all out on the table. It's the least we owe to Nick Berg.

flip...This column suggested last week that what brought the abuses about was the climate of imperial posturing that the neocons, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as their top honcho, created on the eve of war...

flop...Americans have taken the moral high ground by taking the Abu Ghraib case very seriously indeed. A string of courts-martial, dishonorable discharges, administrative discipline and prison time await those ultimately convicted in that case. And as far as higher-ups in government are concerned, heads will roll...

flip...The only Americans who have not shown the slightest contrition are the neocons and the racists, with the vanguard of the latter represented by the likes of Sen. Joe Lieberman, who disingenuously connected what happened at Abu Ghraib to Sept. 11, claiming that there was no need for the president or any other American official to “apologize,” since those who attacked the US “never apologized to us,” but if an apology were to be made, it should be made because “Americans are different,” i.e. culturally and morally superior. It is precisely that kind of racism, to wit, that “others” are a lower species of men “different” from Americans, that created the climate that enabled US military personnel in Iraq to treat human beings there so barbarously...

flop...My thoughts on leaving Congress that day? Gosh, I look forward to seeing similar oversight parliamentary bodies looking into acts of malfeasance by Arab officials in our own part of the world. Only then, I figured, can we feel justified in pulling rank on Americans when it comes to analyzing this whole sordid affair at Abu Ghraib.

The West doesn’t have the power to change Islam; it only has the power to destroy it. We have a lot of nukes. We could kill everyone. We could just take out a few troublesome nations, kill millions, and irradiate Mecca so that the Fifth Pillar is invalidated. The hajj would be impossible. Every pilgrim a martyr. I don’t think we’ll do either; God help us if we do, but inasmuch as we have the capability, it’s an option. But it would be a crime greater than the crime that provoked such an act, and in the end that would stay our hand. They know we won’t do it...

...There is another path, of course. Simply put: if a US city is nuked, the US will have to nuke someone, or let it stand that the United States can lose a city without cost to the other side. Defining “the other side” would be difficult, of course – do you erase Tehran to punish the mullahs? Make a crater out of Riyahd? These are exactly the sort of decisions we never want to make. But let’s say it happens. Baltimore: fire and wind. Gone. That horrible day would clarify things once and for all. It’s one thing for someone in a distant city to cheer the fall of two skyscrapers: from a distance, it looks like a bloody nose. But erasing a city is a different matter. Everyone will have to choose sides. That would be one possible beginning of the end of this war.

Would there be any change in moderate Muslim behavior if they knew that they’d be trading Mecca for Milwaukee or maybe all of their capitals for New York? Would it have any deterrent effect? If there’s any chance it could help save lives, it’s certainly worth discussing. As Mr. Lileks points out, “A minimal-casualty defeat of the Islamists will require the help of Islam. I'd like to think that will happen on its own, without some exterior catastrophe to force the issue.” Might a credible nuclear threat be enough to stir action within Islam?

It is essential to note that it is precisely because I believe America's role is to be a moral beacon to the world that those pictures from Abu Ghraib prison so anger me. Americans are not dying in Iraq so that other Americans can pile naked Iraqi men on each other and smile for photos next to them. The harm those pictures have done to the cause of good may be incalculable.

But it is not moral revulsion, let alone newsworthiness, that is animating the news media. One day, a Sudanese black will scour the world press archives to find out what the world was preoccupied with while her family and hundreds of thousands of other Sudanese blacks were raped, enslaved, ethnically cleansed of their lands and murdered. She will learn the world was deeply concerned with a couple of dozen Iraqi men photographed in humiliating sexual positions.

The world's news media are, with almost no exceptions, agenda-driven rather than news-driven. The agendas are:

1. The political bias of the news reporting organization.
2. The monetary need to attract readers/viewers.
3. The desire to be the center of society's attention.
4. Not to be too different from other news media. As one who peruses up to a dozen American newspapers a day, I am struck daily at how virtually identical international news articles are. International reporters are like baseball players — they all do the same thing, just on different teams.

In the case of the massive attention the news media have been giving to the stripping and humiliation of Iraqi male prisoners, all four agendas play a role, but the first one predominates.

Seeing the difference between Joe Lieberman and Ted Kennedy on that stage just points out to me how badly the Democrats have erred in nominating John Kerry. Kerry has ZERO chance of being elected, and the more virulently they attack President Bush without offering a positive vision of America, the wider the gap is going to be.

The Dems need someone like Joe Lieberman, but instead they shoo him away as some tainted pseudo-Republican. I’ll be watching the spin and commentary over the next couple of days to see how it unfolds, but if the Dems take Ted Kennedy’s lead and ignore Lieberman’s they’ll be, once again, heading down the wrong path.

The year 2003 was a triumphant one for America. But much remains to be done to make the world a safer, fairer place. One problem: the UN. What's to be done about that nest of corruption, double standards and staggering incompetence? No point in rehashing the UN's unrelieved record of failure, which in Africa alone has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. I am not suggesting, at this stage, that the U.S. should leave the organization (or disorganization), although that may well happen in time.

What I do suggest is that the U.S. should give the UN notice to quit. When America was the leader of a successful wartime coalition--and the world wished it to continue in that role--it made excellent sense to place UN headquarters in New York. But those days have long passed. America has accepted its world-policeman destiny, and the UN is merely a minor obstacle to the successful performance of that task. The place has become a mere theater of empty rhetoric and shameless deals supporting a growing tide of anti-Semitism and racism and--let us not be mealymouthed--state crime. It is a place where near-bankrupt dictatorships can sell their votes to the highest bidder.

It is also a place where well-connected playboy diplomats from the Third World can indulge in an expense-account lifestyle in one of the richest cities on earth, ignoring the pitiful poverty of their home countries and often using their diplomatic immunity to break the law. This is an insult to the dignity of the human race.

As the UN is now constituted, a far better location for it would be in a city near the gravitational center of the Afro-Eurasian landmass. There it would be close to the realities of the problems it ought to be tackling--poverty; bad, cruel and corrupt governments; international lawlessness; civil wars. The place I'd suggest is Dar es Salaam (though I can think of a half-dozen other equally suitable venues). Having UN headquarters there would hugely reduce the cost of running it and its associated activities from New York. It would also deter the playboy element that is one of the curses of the organization and help persuade both staff and delegations to take their jobs seriously.

Personally, I fear the UN is a lost cause, incorrigibly frivolous and corrupt and beyond reform. But such a move might conceivably give the UN the fundamental jolt it needs.

What Should Replace the UN at Its Site?
Americans may despise the UN's community, but it forms an important part of New York City's economy and its departure would be felt. It should be replaced by a proper, law-abiding and practical world security organization, whose existence is already implicit in what the U.S. and its allies are trying to do in the world.

Since the end of the 1980s and the collapse of the Evil Empire and communism, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--perhaps the most successful alliance in world history--has been in need not so much of drastic reform but of actual replacement by an entity adapted to the 21st century. NATO was established for the defense of Europe--that is, central and western Europe--from an imminent military threat from the Soviet Union. NATO's location, logistics, composition and war plans all reflect that object. The threat has, for all practical purposes, vanished, but others have taken its place.

There is a strong case for America, Britain and other allied stalwarts' maintaining bases in Germany as staging posts to more imminently relevant military theaters, such as the Middle East. But the actual deployment for war in central Europe makes no sense and is grotesquely expensive. Still more out of date is having NATO's headquarters in Belgium, a tiresome and self-righteous troublemaking country. It is, in effect, a French satellite and is given to passing laws that make it difficult for an international body to do its job there.

Sensible Move
A transfer to New York, to the extensive sites currently occupied by the UN, would make a great deal of geographical and administrative sense, since the U.S. is inevitably the fighting and diplomatic core of any updated world-security machine. Proximity to Washington and U.S. military headquarters, to weapons stockpiles and transport systems would obviously save time and money. New York is unrivaled as a communications center, something that cannot be said of Brussels. And New York's population mix reflects the teeming variety of all humanity, which the new system would be pledged to defend.

New York is also close to the world's effective political center. Europe is a continent in relative economic and catastrophic population decline. The composition of its population has been changing rapidly since it lost control of its frontiers. The Muslim migration makes Europe unsuitable for a world base from which to fight, for example, fundamentalist terrorism.

New York, however, is the leading city of a country with a Pacific coast and a glorious pacific future. This is important, for it is vital that a world security organization eventually include all the democratic powers that respect the rule of law--especially small but significant states such as Singapore and old faithfuls in Australasia, as well as India and Japan, which at present do not pull their weight in world affairs. New York, which suffered so brutally in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, deserves to play a key role in devising the machinery to make such tragedies much less likely in the future.

What I mean is, that unless there is a collective understanding that Jews are unimportant, expendable or worse, justifiable targets, the only other explanation is that the world feels the Palestinian Arabs are simply incapable of civilized behavior. Unless the world is collectively thinking, "well, they're Arabs, what do you expect?" then we can explain the deafening silence over this atrocity only through worldwide, systemic and deeply entrenched anti-Semitism.

As Shai puts it:

As usual, all of the Palestinian terrorist groups are crawling over each other trying to take claim for the murders. The nature of the victims -- on top of everything, Hatuel was 8 months pregnant when she was murdered -- makes this one of the more despicable attacks the Palestinians have ever perpetrated...

...The Palestinian spokespeople have been all over the news this afternoon trying to spin this as retribution for Yassin and Rantisi. Do not tell me you can in any way equate killing a man -- even one who was wheelchair-bound -- who inspired and approved acts of violence and killing with the murder of a pregnant social worker and her four young daughters at point blank.

What do you do with a society that produces people like this? Don't give me the standard bullshit about The Occupation; these were four little girls. The level of moral debauchery which leads people to do this and then to crow about it triumphantly comes from a different -- and much worse -- place.