Cavuto Makes Breakfast

I caught Neil Cavuto's Common Sense commentary yesterday — and I almost forgot to let you know: French Toast.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/12/03 02:19:19 PM
Categorized as Political.

Presidential Messages This Week

Today's Radio Address:

.... As Saddam's regime of fear is brought to an end, the people of Iraq are revealing the true hopes they have always held. It should surprise no one that Iraqis, like all people, resent oppression and welcome their own freedom. It should surprise no one that in every nation and every culture, the human heart desires the same good things: dignity, liberty, and a chance to build a better life....

Thursday's Message to the Iraqi People:

.... In the new era that is coming to Iraq, your country will no longer be held captive to the will of a cruel dictator. You will be free to build a better life, instead of building more palaces for Saddam and his sons, free to pursue economic prosperity without the hardship of economic sanctions, free to travel and speak your mind, free to join in the political affairs of Iraq. And all the people who make up your country – Kurds, Shi’a, Turkomans, Sunnis, and others – will be free of the terrible persecution that so many have endured....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/12/03 11:36:09 AM
Categorized as George W. Bush & Speeches and Suchlike.

Why Were the Pundits So Wrong?

The short answer is this: they never learn.

Another good article from John Keegan in the London Telegraph the other day:

.... Perhaps the most intriguing subject for retrospection lies outside Iraq, not within: why did so many otherwise rational people get their predictions wrong?

Military analysis is not a difficult business. It partakes of two other techniques in which newspapers employ experts: investment forecasting and racing tipping. The investment approach requires a knowledge of organisational structure, personnel, equipment and so on - what City writers call the company profile. The tipster ingredient, which is the smaller one, bases itself on form and the look of the animal.

To insert a personal observation, I do military analysis almost unconsciously. Before this second Gulf war, I would have reflected, "antiquated equipment, no air force, high degree of demoralisation following 1991, no senior commanders of any quality". I would also have remembered that such Iraqi servicemen as I have met were not in the same class as their British or American opposite numbers.

So, on both the investment and raceform principles, I would have marked the Iraqi card right down - to the point where I would have put large amounts on Iraqi defeat, if I could have found a taker.

Yet perfectly sensible people, who surely know better, clutter up their minds with such irrelevant factors as "the Arab street", "international opinion", the anti-war movement at home, votes in the UN and so on. They then predict that "American success is not certain", "this could be a long and bitter war" and "the spectre of Vietnam looms over George W Bush".

If they were employed by the City editor, or the sports desk, they would have been given their cards three wars ago. I wonder if any of them will make a better shot of it next time.

(Thanks, Peter, who also blogged this Forum on the War.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/12/03 09:50:15 AM
Categorized as War.

Fettmann vs. Jordan

Why CNN isn't just the Communist News Network anymore.

Eric Fettmann vs. Eason Jordan.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/12/03 07:57:07 AM
Categorized as Media.

Wall Street Journal Slams UN

As it very well should.

In an editorial at OpinionJournal yesterday:

So now they want in. True, Kofi Annan did have the wit to refute a Kremlin announcement that he would be joining the coalition of the unwilling — France, Germany and Russia — at this weekend's confab in St. Petersburg. Yet even in the face of footage from Baghdad that conjures up images of Paris 1944 or Berlin 1989, we're still asked to believe that an America spilling its blood and treasure to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein has less moral credibility than a U.N. that helped prop him up for 12 years.

That much was made plain earlier this week with Mr. Annan's ex cathedra declaration that only the U.N. possessed the moral imprimatur necessary to confer "legitimacy" on postwar Iraq. But legitimacy is not something that can be imposed by the United Nations — or the United States for that matter. Legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed: the people of Iraq.

It's worth remembering that the U.N. drove itself into this ditch. And the Secretary General bears particular responsibility. Over the years Mr. Annan's willingness to look the other way allowed Saddam to pursue weapons we were assured he didn't have, to continue killing Iraqis who opposed his regime and, as we are now learning, use the U.N.'s oil-for-food program as a vehicle to enrich himself (and fund some of his illicit arms projects) while his people continued to suffer from U.N. sanctions....

(Thanks, Patrick.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/12/03 07:26:04 AM
Categorized as International.

Carl Prine With the 1st Marine Division

And Betsy Hiel in the Middle East.

Carl Prine is the reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review who broke the possible-enriched-plutonium story the other day. Here is an index to his stories filed from the war theater.

Betsy Hiel is also in the Middle East for the Trib. Here is an index to her stories.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 04/12/03 07:18:42 AM
Categorized as War.