a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Friday, August 30, 2002 Gee vem, brahThis week the blog will be down completely, because I need to get in some surfing on Kauai. But anyone looking for content should have a look at the lead article on Radio Free Mike, about a pre-September 11 bomb threat aboard a United flight from Germany. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:55 PMThursday, August 29, 2002 Preparations for WarTwo weeks ago I argued that we've been at war with Iraq since 1991, and Asia Times has details. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:50 PMMonday, August 26, 2002 Goddammit, this is a democracy!So it's actually an argument in Washington, whether Congress needs to declare war -- or whether the President, as Commander in Chief, can just send in troops and planes. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:53 PMFriday, August 23, 2002 Hazard trees?On paper, and in Washington, cutting down "hazard trees" looks awfully good: The Forest Service allows a logging company to take down a nearly-dead, tilting-over, dry, or ready-to-topple tree -- one that might start a fire or fall on somebody's head -- and gets money for it. The timber companies get excellent, sometimes old-growth wood, and everyone's happy. The trouble is that on the ground, "hazard trees" become a loophole. Karen Coulter, who monitors timber sales in Oregon, tells me that access roads have been wildly redrawn by Forest-Service workers to veer under good old-growth trees so the trees can be marked as "hazards." The Forest-Service workers are not usually people in uniform; sometimes they're locals with summer jobs who want to give work to local logging companies (and keep themselves employed)."We have photographs of some of the so-called hazard trees that were green and so forth, and we also have photographs of the situation that I told you about, with the skid trails deviating wildly," Coulter said, in an interview for a story I haven't written yet. "The funny thing about one [trail] in particular is that you can see where the old skid trail was ... They moved off the old skid trail, even though it was still wide-open, in order to catch these trees. They flagged it for road, to catch every single tree." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:15 AM Counterrevolutionary... has a great piece on what happened at the Iraqi embassy in Berlin. The idea, in case you haven't read it, is that the whole thing was so mysteriously soft, and mysteriously nonviolent, because the Iraqi "dissenters" were in fact agents of the CIA or German intelligence, who infiltrated the embassy in order to find certain documents:It is worth remembering that Mohamed Atta and his whole crew came from Germany. So if there is an Iraqi connection to September 11th then it would be filed away in the Embassy ... So that’s the theory – a group of Iraqis trained by friendly intelligence penetrate the enemy fortress, steal the required documents and prove conclusively that Iraq was involved in the attack. In a few weeks, the President will announce that the CIA has found these important documents (in Afghanistan?) or perhaps the leak will come from elsewhere. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:53 AM Saturday, August 17, 2002 Who says we're (not) at war?Here's a column from Marc Erikson in Asia Times arguing that we've been at war in Iraq since March. I agree, in theory -- in fact I think it's been longer than that. But notice how none of his troop numbers are substantiated. At one point he even mentions "Israeli sources" that most likely comprise, um, Debkafile.Still, I'll argue that we've been at war with Saddam since 1991. At least Saddam has never been out of war with us. That's his motivation for backing the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, if Laurie Mylroie is right -- and that would be his motivation for helping Atta & friends last year (if he did). So, yes, we should oust him. But we should also make it formal, and declare war. This is a democracy, right? Erikson's column comes courtesy of Instapundit. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:17 AM Friday, August 16, 2002 More on planes 'buzzing Baghdad'A reader named Bob Macaraeg sent the excerpt from Debkafile (below, "War?") to a friend of his in the Navy. The friend is skeptical about waves of American warplanes "buzzing Baghdad":Having been stationed at prince Sultan Air Base numerous times and knowing first hand how the Saudi Government limits our military activities from their air base, I find it hard to believe that waves of anything left PSAB for a flight over Baghdad. Secondly, with Afghanistan still going on and a carrier actively engaged in the North Indian Ocean, which "carriers" are left to be launching waves of bombers over Iraq?? Radio Free Mike's surveillance satellite is on the fritz, I'm afraid, so I have no idea. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:17 AM Thursday, August 15, 2002 Cynthia Ozick... has a good paragraph in an essay called "Public Intellectuals" -- written in the ’90s -- that applies beautifully to the Arundhati Roy-style War protests that try to put George Bush's sins on a level with Muslim fundamentalists'. I like Ozick because she can think about politics without immersing herself in this or that wing. She's writing about E.M. Forster's aloofness from world events in 1941:Some will say, how is it you have the gall to use so unforgivably denigrating a term as "barbarians"? Must you despise your opponents as other, as not of your own flesh? What of the humanity of the other? Are we not all equally flawed, equally capable of mercy? Are we ourselves not in some respects worse? Shall we not be decent to the other? But -- in a jurisprudential democracy especially -- a moment may come when it is needful to be decent to our own side, concerning whom we are not to witness falsely or even carelessly in order to prove how worse we are. Without such loyalty -- not always a popular notion among the global sentimentalists -- you may find you are too weak in self-respect to tell the truth or to commit yourself to the facts ... "I have seen the enemy and he is us" is not always and everywhere true; and self-blame can be the highest form of self-congratulation. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:16 PM Wednesday, August 14, 2002 Debka hoo-hahOther people have written to say Debkafile's completely unreliable. Dan Hartung points out: "There'd be something to back this up, not the least being whining from Baghdad. If we seized an airfield, they'd protest to the UN double-quick. So, Debka hoo-hah." Maybe so. But at least now there's a blog about it, dammit, and there wasn't yesterday. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:11 PMDrums of WarThe Debkafile story this blog refers to is called "US Campaign Has Its First Engagement." You have to scroll down on the Debka site to the story with a photo of George W. Bush. Read the whole thing. A simple piece about American planes bombing an Iraqi anti-aircraft site wouldn't interest me. Also read my original entry, below ("War?").posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:03 AM Aha! Official word.Dan Hartung sent a press release from U.S. Central Command. He thinks I should take that Debka report (below, "War?") with a grain of salt. The release confirms the destroyed air-defense base: "In response to recent Iraqi hostile acts against Coalition aircraft monitoring the Southern No-Fly Zone, Operation SOUTHERN WATCH Coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons today to strike an air defense command and control facility at a military site in southern Iraq. The strike occurred at approximately 1 a.m., EDT." That seems routine enough -- not an act of war, under the circumstances. But nothing about warplanes buzzing Baghdad ... Anyone else? posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:53 AMDebkajournalismJoseph McNulty in North Carolina questions the Debka report of warplanes buzzing Baghdad (below, "War?"), and he's right -- not everything on that site is reliable. Sometimes their unnamed "sources" are on the money, sometimes they're from Mars. But it surprised me to find nothing -- not a thing -- about this report in the blogosphere, let alone in the usual newspapers. McNulty's e-mail is the kind of discussion I was looking for. So here it is:I doubt that I am the first to tell you this, but DEBKA is of uncertain reliability. According the DEBKA, there were 6,000 Chinese troops in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban last winter, setting the stage for a China/USA crisis. DEBKA is interesting, and its analysis of the machinations of the Palestinians is often (I believe) close to the truth. But I don't know about this report you mention. If American and British war planes were massively buzzing Baghdad last weekend, don't you think we would have heard about it from al-Jeezera or some other source? Wouldn't the antiwar elements, like The New York Times, have loved to report this story? Wouldn't the Iraqis have made some noise about it to argue that the USA was violating Iraqi airspace outside the "no fly" zones in a provocative manner? I read DEBKA, but I don't take it as gospel without confirmation from other sources. After all, we don't even know who DEBKA really is. It may be a disinformation site for the Israelis. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:35 AM Tuesday, August 13, 2002 War?Has anyone noticed the news on Debkafile? The U.S. and its allies have been skirmishing in Iraq. Never mind rumors of troops massing in Jordan, special forces in Kurdistan, or editorial-page throat-clearing about whether arms inspections are a good idea. Last week, according to Debkafile, we knocked out an Iraqi air-defense base and sent a fleet of warplanes to buzz Baghdad. Does this bother anyone? Are we at war, or not? Here's the heart of Debkafile's report, called "U.S. Iraq Campaign Has its First Engagement":Tuesday August 6, at 0800 hours Middle East time, US and British air bombers went into action and destroyed the Iraqi air command and control center at al-Nukhaib in the desert between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The center contained advanced fiber optic networks recently installed by Chinese companies. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources say the raid made military history. For the first time, the US air force used new precision-guided bombs capable of locating and destroying fiber optic systems. The existence of such weaponry was hitherto unknown. Following the destruction of the facility, about 260 miles (415 kilometers), southwest of Baghdad, waves of US warplanes swept in from the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia and from US aircraft carriers in the Gulf and flew over the Iraqi capital. The Iraqi air force and anti-aircraft system held their fire on orders from above. This deep air penetration told the Americans that the early warning radar system protecting Baghdad and its environs from intrusion by enemy aircraft and missiles was inactive. I happen to be a hawk on Iraq, but it bugs me that I have to learn about my own country's military maneuvers from a news service in Israel. No wonder Iraq closed down any hope of arms inspections over the weekend. They know the idea is a sham. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:54 PM | |
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