Two Via Ut Unum Sint

Christopher Hitchens looks at the "peace" marches, and demonstrates the power of the single sentence:

.... There are not enough words in any idiom to describe the shame and the disgrace of this....

.... A more gruesome political alliance I have never seen....

.... I think I would prefer to have Vaclav Havel in my corner than the grotesque, corrupt, cynical dandy Jacques Chirac....

And Alistair Cooke recalls a lesson from history:

.... During the last fortnight a simple but startling thought occurred to me -- every single official, diplomat, president, prime minister involved in the Iraq debate was in 1938 a toddler, most of them unborn. So the dreadful scene I've just drawn will not have been remembered by most listeners. Hitler had started betraying our trust not 12 years but only two years before, when he broke the First World War peace treaty by occupying the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland. Only half his troops carried one reload of ammunition because Hitler knew that French morale was too low to confront any war just then and 10 million of 11 million British voters had signed a so-called peace ballot. It stated no conditions, elaborated no terms, it simply counted the numbers of Britons who were "for peace." The slogan of this movement was "Against war and fascism" - chanted at the time by every Labour man and Liberal and many moderate Conservatives - a slogan that now sounds as imbecilic as "against hospitals and disease." In blunter words a majority of Britons would do anything, absolutely anything, to get rid of Hitler except fight him. At that time the word preemptive had not been invented, though today it's a catchword. After all the Rhineland was what it said it was - part of Germany. So to march in and throw Hitler out would have been preemptive - wouldn't it? ....

There is other good stuff, too, at Ut Unum Sint.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 02/20/03 07:52:38 PM
Categorized as Political.

"Give Us 22 Minutes, We'll Give Up The Country"

"If liberals cared about ideas or knew any facts, they would cease being liberals."

Thanks to a reader for the notice of this article by the incredibly gorgeous... er... profoundly insightful Ann Coulter:

.... For years, liberals would pass off mediocrities as broadcasting geniuses for surviving the brutal competition of a monopoly market. In the pre-cable era, Phil Donahue was promiscuously called the "daytime guru," a "legend," "daytime television's biggest star," a "star" – even a "major star." In 1993, Donahue was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Hall of Fame. His millions of viewers were touted as evidence of his gift for television.

Of course, back when there were only three TV stations, it was impossible to tell whether television "stars" like Donahue were actually popular. Did people enjoy watching a man with the IQ of the average TV newsreader who passed himself off as Bertrand Russell? Or did they just want to watch something on TV?

We have the answer to that!

In a controlled scientific experiment, Donahue was given his own TV show on MSNBC in the new competitive environment of cable TV. That Boy's ratings are the lowest in primetime TV for any news program. They are so low, Nielsen can barely detect them. One wishes bitterly that MSNBC could give shows to all the other pompous liberal blowhards once forced on the public, like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, so we could see how they'd fare with a little competition. Nielsen would not be able to "See It Now." ....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 02/20/03 02:04:46 PM
Categorized as Media.

Jacques Chiraq

At Strategic Forecasting, LLC.

Here is the heralded analysis, Feb. 19:

.... In September 1975, Hussein traveled to Paris, where Chirac personally gave him a tour of a French nuclear plant. During that visit, Chirac said, “Iraq is in the process of beginning a coherent nuclear program and France wants to associate herself with that effort in the field of reactors.” France sold two reactors to Iraq, with the agreement signed during Hussein’s visit. The Iraqis purchased a 70-megawatt reactor, along with six charges of 26 points of uranium enriched to 93 percent -- in other words, enough weapons-grade uranium to produce three to four nuclear devices. Baghdad also purchased a one-megawatt research reactor, and France agreed to train 600 Iraqi nuclear technicians and scientists -- the core of Iraq’s nuclear capability today.

Other dimensions of the relationship were decided on during this visit and implemented in the months afterward. France agreed to sell Iraq $1.5 billion worth of weapons -- including the integrated air defense system that was destroyed by the United States in 1991, about 60 Mirage F1 fighter planes, surface-to-air missiles and advanced electronics. The Iraqis, for their part, agreed to sell France $70 million worth of oil.

During this period, Chirac and Hussein formed what Chirac called a close personal relationship. As the New York Times put it in a 1986 report about Chirac’s attempt to return to the premiership, the French official “has said many times that he is a personal friend of Saddam Hussein of Iraq.” In 1987, the Manchester Guardian Weekly quoted Chirac as saying that he was “truly fascinated by Saddam Hussein since 1974.” Whatever personal chemistry there might have been between the two leaders obviously remained in place a decade later, and clearly was not simply linked to the deals of 1974-75. Politicians and businessmen move on; they don’t linger the way Chirac did....

Former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who held office at the time of the negotiations with Iraq, said in 1984 that the deal “came out of an agreement that was not negotiated in Paris and therefore did not originate with the president of the republic.” Under the odd French constitution, it is conceivable that the president of the republic wouldn’t know what the premier of France had negotiated -- but on a deal of this scale, this would be unlikely, unless the deal in fact had been negotiated between Chirac and Hussein in the dark and presented as a fait accompli.

There is some evidence for this notion. Earlier, when Giscard d’Estaing found out about the deal -- and particularly about the sale of 93 percent uranium -- he had ordered the French nuclear research facility at Saclay to develop an alternative that would take care of Iraq’s legitimate needs, but without supplying weapons-grade uranium. The product, called “caramel,” was only 3 percent enriched but entirely suitable to non-weapons needs. The French made the offer, which Iraq declined....

(Thanks, Rush.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 02/20/03 01:57:59 PM
Categorized as Political.

Why the "Peace" Protests are Immoral

By Michael Kelly.

From The New York Post yesterday:

.... To march against the war is not to give peace a chance. It is to give tyranny a chance. It is to give the Iraqi nuke a chance. It is to give the next terrorist mass murder a chance. It is to march for the furtherance of evil instead of the vanquishing of evil.

This cannot be the moral position.

(Thanks, Karen.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 02/20/03 08:09:17 AM
Categorized as Political.