:: Netmarcos' Notes ::

:: Friday, April 18, 2003 ::

What are we to think of this bit ?
The Senate minority leader is ordered to stop calling himself a Catholic.

TOM DASCHLE may no longer call himself a Catholic. The Senate minority leader and the highest ranking Democrat in Washington has been sent a letter by his home diocese of Sioux Falls, sources in South Dakota have told The Weekly Standard, directing him to remove from his congressional biography and campaign documents all references to his standing as a member of the Catholic Church.

:: Mark 9:50 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Daniel Henninger invokes Milton To frame the debate over the battle between good and evil, and those who are reluctant to accept that such a struggle may exist.

If this is true--that years of declining belief have diluted evil to an abstraction--it isn't surprising that for a great many people in the Iraq debate the idea that Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi regime were evil enough to require elimination from the civilized world simply did not compute; that's been deleted from their software. Despite the beheadings of women and the severing of dissenting tongues (Amnesty International report, 2000), the now-revealed prisons for children, the torture chambers with meat hooks, nine years of meticulous U.N. archiving of programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, the homicidal gassing of Shiites and Kurds, and a son, Uday, whose life reveals the Husseins to be, more than anything, Neronic voluptuaries, despite what this so obviously adds up to, it could never be "sufficient cause."
Milton thought that should evil win, then earth's base was "built on stubble." Not yet.

It is truly astounding to me that so much of the "enlightened" world would deny the very existence of evil when evidence of its power are so clearly displayed in the chaos that surrounds us.

:: Mark 9:32 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Hugh Hewitt isn't pleased with the tactics being used by Yale lecturer Jim Sleeper, whom he sarcasticaly labels "Tough Guy".

Notice how the left quickly abandons its own self-professed ideals when confronted with publicity. Where are the Critical Legal Studies scholars to note that the power hierarchy of the university is being employed to silence first-year students? Where are the Women's Studies professors to note that an old white male is using verbal brickbats to silence young women seeking to be heard?

Help will not arrive from the usual suspects. Sleeper and his kind, however, are reminders of how far the campuses have slid into intellectual chaos. The absurd are tenured and the truth-tellers are freshmen. Alumni should take note. Is this where you want to invest your dollars?

My producer contacted Sleeper with an offer to appear on my radio program to discuss his article. "Sorry, I don't do radio interviews," he e-mailed back. What a surprise. Professor Sleeper only tackles freshmen.

It was this comment from Sleeper that set him off:

Yale's duty is to help the American experiment get a learning curve. Unlike us in 1968, though, none of you has to risk your life, fortune, or sacred honor for your convictions. You haven't had to oppose this war by risking imprisonment and life as a felon. You haven't had to support it by serving in it -- and I note that none of the Fedayeen Uncle Sams who've intimidated people here has enlisted, as did many Yalies whose names and dreams outlasted their 20s only on those icy, marble walls.

Sleeper is just one more name added to the list of those expressing nostalgia for the days when social activism meant supporting his side of the debate.

:: Mark 9:13 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Syria Won't Allow Inspection, Wants WMD-Free Region

Asked by reporters in Cairo whether Syria would allow inspections, Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said: "No...After this initiative, this Syrian proposal (at the United Nations)...Syria won't allow any inspection.

"It will only participate with its (Arab) brothers and all of the states of the world in turning the Middle East into an area free of weapons of mass destruction."

It was not clear if his remarks were a departure from Syria's previously stated position that it would only allow weapons inspections if they applied to all regional states, including Israel, which is widely believed to have nuclear arms.

More on this later...

After giving this some thought, it appears to be the same old line that many of the Arab states have held for years. The real issue is still Israel's continued existence. If Israel is to survive in the current environment, it must maintain the immpression that it would resort to the most drastic measures to protect itself. A sort of cold war strategy. You know, MAD and all that. The difference here is that the other side, unlike the USSR's opposition to the US, is not known to have the means to assure Israel's destruction, while Israel is assumed to have the capacity to inihilate its neighbors. The true nature of the problem lies beneath this reality: a nation's possesion of nuclear, or other non-conventional, weapons does not, in itself, constitute a danger to the world; it is that nation's willingness and ability to use those weapons that constitutes a threat. Therfore, to get to the heart of the matter, you need to ask just a couple of questions. First, if left to its own devices, free of any consequence, would Israel attack or invade any of the established Arab states? And second, under the same rules, would any of the Arab states take the opportunity to eliminate the state of Israel?

Syria's contention that Israel should be subject to weapons inspections as a condition for clearing the air about their own weapons programs is the equivalent of the assault suspect demanding that a search warrant be issued for the victim's property as well.

:: Mark 4:06 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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There are many things in this world that will never change, but it is becoming more obvious at each passing day and with each pundit's grave review of the effects of the American military campaign in Iraq, that some things have changed. Shock and Awe, the over-used hyperbole used to describe a miltary strategy never truly implemented, can be better employed to describe the world's reaction to the swift, efficent, devestating power of the combined might of the coalition forces. Every military organization on this earth is now tearing through footage and analysis of this war and re-evaluating their own capabilities and readiness. The balanced usage of both high-tech and low-tech, in concert and in the appropriate proportions, has been brilliantly executed. When a GPS guided block of concrete is used, with devestating effectiveness, to counter high priced, dug in, heavy armor and artillery, it is time for a re-think. I realize that this is not really new, as noted here, but the overall vision that it represents, of applying only the force necessary to achieve the desired objective, does signal a near complete abandonment of the cold war military doctrines of both the East and the West.

:: Mark 1:30 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, brought this to my attention: Anatomy of the Three-Week War from Victor David Hanson over at NRO

...the energy of our soldiers arises from the ranks rather than is imposed from above. What, after all, is the world to make of Marines shooting their way into Baathist houses with Ray-Bans, or shaggy special forces who look like they are strolling in Greenwich Village with M-16s, or tankers with music blaring and logos like "Bad Moon Rising?" The troops look sometimes like cynical American teenagers but they fight and die like Leathernecks on Okinawa. The Arab street may put on shows of goose-stepping suicide bombers, noisy pajama-clad killers, and shrill, masked assassins, but in real battle against gum-chewing American adolescents with sunglasses these street toughs prove to be little more than toy soldiers.

Great analysis, good reading.

:: Mark 1:04 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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James Schlesinger has something to say about the war's impact on world opinion over at OpinionJournal.(Registration may be required)

The war has most dramatically conveyed the following realities:

1.) The U.S. is a very powerful country.

2.) It is ill-advised to arouse this nation by attacking or repeatedly provoking it--or by providing support to terrorism; and

3.) Regularly to do so means a price will likely be paid. Far less credence will now be placed in the preachments of Osama bin Laden regarding America's weakness, its unwillingness to accept burdens, and the ease of damaging its vulnerable economy, etc.

It is a good read.

:: Mark 10:10 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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From Ann Coulter over at WorldNetDaily, comes a litany of misdirection, duplicity and hypocrisy from Saddam's support group in the US and abroad.
At least Saddam wasn't at Tailhook!

Despite liberals' calm assurance that Iraq wasn't harboring terrorists, this week Abul Abbas, mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, was captured in Baghdad. This is the second time the United States has caught Abbas. But the last time, the Europeans let him go. That's why liberals are so eager to have Europeans "help" with the war on terrorism. They did a bang-up job last time.

Read it all.

:: Mark 10:04 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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WorldNetDaily reports that :Baghdad Bob may have commited suicide

Al-Sahhaf became an international star in the final days of fighting, making hard-to-believe claims about Iraqi successes and U.S. failures, including:


"Let the American infidels bask in their illusion";

"We have placed them in a quagmire from which they can never emerge except dead";

"God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis";

"I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad."

Either way, I triple guarantee you, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf will live forever...in SNL skits at least.

:: Mark 9:58 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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The more vocal opposition groups speaking out against the Bush administration's foreign policy are now facing some detractors of their own.

"Let's face it … they're getting an awful lot of flack for this — they had to have known that going into it,"

:: Mark 9:45 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Josh Chafetz has a response to the Not in Our Name crowd. This is a great followup the this post.

:: Mark 9:23 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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This is a frustrating situation. I can post all day long and use the extended international character set, but let me try to get a simple "ñ" to display correctly in my template and the whole thing comes apart. ¡Qué las pulgas de mil y un camellos invadan a los sobacos del Pte. de Blogger! ¡Caray!

:: Mark 11:34 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Chatting it up with White House Chief of staff Andrew Card.

:: Mark 11:02 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Life under a totalitarian regime can be hard, but the mental torture that you will undergo as you realize just how badly you were deceived can be harder.

A captured Iraqi colonel being held in one of the hangars listened in astonishment as his information minister praised Republican Guard soldiers for recapturing the airport.

He looked at his captors and, as he realised that what he had heard was palpably untrue, his eye filled with tears. Turning to a translator, he asked: "How long have they been lying like this?"

Glenn Reynolds has some good analysis over at TechCentralStation today.

Go read it.

:: Mark 10:02 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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It appears that several nations have taken notice of the American militay's success in Iraq and are now taking a hard look at their own capabilities in light of this new reality. The Russians are particularly interested.

"The key conclusion we must draw from the latest Gulf war is that the obsolete structure of the Russian armed forces has to be urgently changed," says Vladimir Dvorkin, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's official think tank on strategic nuclear policy. "The gap between our capabilities and those of the Americans has been revealed, and it is vast. We are very lucky that Russia has no major enemies at the moment, but the future is impossible to predict, and we must be ready."
The swift victory by mobile, high-tech American forces over heavily armored Iraqi troops dug in to defend large cities like Baghdad has jolted many Russian military planners. "The Iraqi Army was a replica of the Russian Army, and its defeat was not predicted by our generals," says Vitaly Shlykov, a former deputy defense minister of Russia.

:: Mark 9:33 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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About Navy Lt. Thomas Mullen Adams, killed along with six members of the British Royal Navy when two Sea Knight helicopters flying from the carrier Ark Royal crashed March 22: "He's Just Pining." These are the words that are carved into the white stone marker that was placed over his grave yesterday in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

:: Mark 5:40 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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We have experienced a minor family catastrophe. The cool little chiminea that we have on our patio cracked in half yesterday...before the hotdogs had been roasted! The poor thing split top to bottom and the misses and little ones had to break out the fire extinguishers. Major tragedy was averted and hotdog roasting was relocated to the gas grill. Not as cool, but it got the job done.

:: Mark 5:05 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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This bit from Dorothy Rabinowitz is also a must read critique of the media's coverage of the war in Iraq.

The most noteworthy specimen to date, though, must be the lead Talk of the Town item in the April 14 New Yorker, in which Hendrick Hertzberg writes: "By the end of last week--even though American troops who, by all accounts, have fought honorably and without undue cruelty, were at the gates of Baghdad--it was too late for the rosy scenario of the cakewalk conservatives." We may take it, from that "undue cruelty" reference, that Mr. Hertzberg is willing to credit American troops mainly because they failed to perpetrate war crimes. It is a pronouncement worth remembering, and not for what it says about the troops.

:: Mark 1:59 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Brendan Mintner has an excellent editorial on religios freedom at OpinionJournal entitled God-Free School Zones in response to the firestorm that followed Education Secretary Rod Paige's statement in an interview with the Baptist Press that, "All things being equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school where there's a strong appreciation for values, the kind of values that I think are associated with the Christian communities, and so that this child can be brought up in an environment that teaches them to have strong faith and to understand that there is a force greater than them personally."


What the New York Times and Washington Post may really be afraid of, though, is something Mr. Paige isn't even pushing. That all of this may clear the way for local school boards to allow curriculum to include serious and honest debate about the role religion has played in society. One day public schools students might seriously consider the ideas behind the Protestant reformation or the role of religion in America's founding.
If that happens, students would graduate from public schools with a better understanding of many of the major events that have shaped Western civilization. These students would be prepared to challenge many of the assumptions made by the liberal elites now in control of public education.

Public-school students would be able once again to read and openly debate the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802, in which he described the First Amendment as a "wall of separation between church and state." Responding to a letter from the Baptists complaining about Congress and state governments declaring days of prayer and fasting, Jefferson argued that the First Amendment permits government-supported religious expression, which, he argued, in no way interfered with the Baptists' right to believe or practice their religion. Jefferson--the deified deist of the left--ended the letter: "I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessings of the common Father and Creator of man."

Read it all.

:: Mark 1:53 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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The account of Ali Ismail Abbas is, to me, a stinging indigtment of the basic morality of the press corps. It also highlights the disingenuous duplicity of America's detractors. To leverage this young boy's pain and suffering for ratings, readership, or to advance any agenda other than to secure adequate medical intervention for his care, is the basest and most vile act of exploitation imaginable. The American journalists mentioned herein have little in common with the US Army or the U.S. Marine helicopter squadron that evacuated an injured 15 year old Iraqi girl to safety on the USS Saipan back on March 22nd. The detractors that hold this up as an example of the insincerity of the US claim that no harm is intended to the civilian poplulation of Iraq, do not know the generosity of the American people.

:: Mark 1:43 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun takes the Australian anit-war crowd to task in fine fashion.
The sentiment expressed here should be broadly applied to similarly self-serving narcisists world wide.

WHEN protesters marched to stop this war of liberation, Saddam Hussein was filmed gloating to his generals.

"They support you," he crowed.
So where are you today, you whom Saddam reckoned among his friends?

Where are you who waved anti-war banners that pouted: "Not In Our Name"?

Did you see the Iraqi people kiss and hug the allied soldiers -- our soldiers -- who gave them their freedom after decades of terror?

Now say it again, if you dare: Not In Our Name.

And my personal favorite:
Saddam is gone, and his worst weapons will be found and destroyed. His people have lost a tyrant. Terrorists have lost a sponsor. Iraq's neighbours have lost a threat. Dictators elsewhere have lost sleep. And to all this, our anti-war protesters said: Not In Our Name.


Read it all.

:: Mark 1:12 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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I recently ran across a site dedicated to identifying those responsible for the policies, decisions, and actions leading up to the terrible environmental disaster precipitated by the breakup and sinking of the oil tanker Prestige off the coast of Spain. I have posted a description along with the links in both English and Spanish in the links section to the left.

:: Mark 2:26 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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It is a source of constant amazement to me that so many educated people in this nation, and elsewhere, can be so blind to simple logic. Post 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush stated, with no qualifiers whatsoever, that we, as a nation, would identify and remove the roots of terrorism that posed a threat to U.S. interests anywhere and everywhere they could be found. We have pursued that mission since that time. Our first target was UBL and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that provided him support and protection. We lent a helping hand to the Philippines and others as they confronted al Qaeda sympathizers in their own countries. Next came Saddam Hussein, who has been a vocal and active opponent of the U.S. for more than a decade and a known supporter and financier of terrorist organizations. His regimes penchant for violence and proven willingness to use horrific means to infilct harm on their enemies, foreign and domestic, moved him to the next spot on the list. If confrontation with Syria, or some other nation escalates to armed conflict, this will not signal some grand new plan for world domination. This has been, and will continue to be, part of the same effort. Namely, to minimize or eliminate known threats to U.S. interests by whatever means necessary. Frank, undiluted statements of position are the norm, not diplomatic double-talk. If this offends the sensibilities of the international diplomatic corps, so be it. We will state our position clearly, and pursue all reasonable measures to reach an accord peacefully. But if that fails to elicit the response that we are seeking, more forceful measures will be employed. This will continue until those forces desiring the destruction of our nation and society are deprived of the means, and if possible, the will, to carry out such designs.

If there is honest disagreement with this policy, let it be heard, but let's not look at each situation as an isolated case. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, DPRK, et al are each dealt with based on this policy, not the whimsy of the moment. So, let's stop the posturing over each new situation, and decide whether the policy is sound or not. But agree that, once a determination is made that it is, the only decision left is whether or not a nation or group warrants classification with those already mentioned. If it is determined that this is not a sound policy to follow, then there had better be some viable alternative identified that can achieve the aforementioned goal.

:: Mark 2:00 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Superman Saddam
There is additional proof that Saddam was a looney, as well as an evil genius. He has a special gem implanted in his arm that makes him bulletproof. He has connections in the spirit world. His mother is a magician.

Read it all...and you will still be shaking your head in disbelief three days from now.

:: Mark 8:55 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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