We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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It is by now a familiar statement from anti-war folk that Saddam had no real links to Islamic terror groups of any consequence. The idea, dear boy, is totally incredible. The man, who after all was a “secular ruler” (conjuring up the image of the old bastard reading Voltaire of an evening). had a positive revulsion of Islamic religious extremism. To suggest a link is to fall prey to the fantasies of the great neoconservative/Zionist/whatever conspiracy now trying to rule the world. Right?
Well, no, actually. The Wall Street Journal has an article today setting out what it believes is rather a big lump of evidence pointing to terror links before and after 9/11:
One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam’s son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime’s dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda “summit” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.
Okay, I know what the responses will be. It’s the Wall Street Journal! You can’t believe these guys! etc, etc.
But stepping aside from this specific article, consider this following general scenario: you have a military dictator who loves taking his nation to the brink even at great cost; his military forces are seriously damaged from two devastating wars and a sanctions regime; he craves revenge and enjoys humiliating his foes. To whom does he turn to help hurt his great enemy, the United States?
Exactly. Why is it so crazy, so bonkers, to think that terror links probably did exist, and that, if it were possible, it was vital for the intelligence services of the Western powers to check those possibilities?
You may say, why does this really matter now? Well, to be frank, the argument that we need to “reshape the Middle East” always struck me as dangerously ambitious, and the costs of such a venture struck me as potentially prohibitive. That is one part of the isolationist position I have some sympathy for, a fact which might surprise some. (“Johnathan Pearce has gone wobbly!”) For me, though, what counted was the potentially deadly nexus of terror groups, mass weapons, and rogue states able and willing to offer harbour and support to such terror groups. My conscience is troubled at the thought that we might have attacked a nation of no serious threat to us. Well, if the latest stories turn out to be even half-true, then the evidence of Saddam’s malignity just got a lot, lot harder.
I took some rather hot flak when I opposed international gun control as an excuse for invading Iraq (if Iraq’s nukes are “bad”, are France’s and China’s nukes “good”?). I have also taken some sharp criticism for saying that invading a country in order to make friends is an odd strategy (worthy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau “We will force you to be free!”).
From Wires blog:
As we were leaving Baghdad, taking a ‘short cut’ through Fallujah and Ramadi, we passed a US Tank involved in ‘Stop and Search’. It had ASSAULT AND BATTERY written on it’s barrel.
Nice Peace – Keeping.
Now I do not take everything fiona says as Gospel, although her first act in Iraq was to try out an AK-47 so she can’t be all bad!
It is clear however that there is no abatement of the resistance to foreign occupation of Iraq. It does not really matter whether the fault is that the occupying forces are too forceful, or failing to keep the peace because of politcally correct instructions, or a row between the US State Department and the Department of Defense. Either way it has all the potential for Vietnam II.
The only worthwhile achievement of invasion was the removal of Saddam Hussein. He has gone, it is time to leave also.
The only worthwhile debate now is whether to recognise an independent Kurdistan or not before the troops pull out and allow Iraqis to sort out their civil affairs.
What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
Bernard Lewis
Oxford University Press, 2001
The Multiple Identities of the Middle East
Bernard Lewis
Schocken Books, 2001
In Goodbye to All That (pub. 1929), Robert Graves reports witnessing an encounter between Lawrence of Arabia and an American oil financier who had come over from the United States to ask him a single question: Did Middle-Eastern conditions justify him putting any money in South Arabian oil? Lawrence, without rising, simply answered: No. That was all the man wanted to know, and he left. At that time, the US produced almost three-quarters of the world’s oil, Iran less than three percent, while its presence in the Arabian pensinsula, if suspected, was unknown.
This exchange, some time in the nineteen twenties, though not alluded to by Bernard Lewis, is a reminder that in the absence of oil the whole region, from the Mediterranean to Iran, now detached from the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, might have been expected to slumber on as it had already done for centuries. Britain was burdened with the administration of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq and the Gulf States, but its only real interest was in safeguarding the route to India via the Suez Canal. It might feel responsible to do rather more for the region than merely keep the peace, a valuable enough favour to the inhabitants, but, in the way of active development, there would be little it could do. One of Lewis’s more surprising statements quotes a World Bank estimate that “the total exports of the Arab world other than fossil fuels amount to less than those of Finland, a country of five million inhabitants (p. 52).” Admittedly there is perhaps little need to export anything else, indicative of the lack of any incentive to do so which has stimulated countries without much in the way of natural resources, but this merely leads us by another route to the question posed by the author: why has the Arab world remained stagnant for something like a thousand years? → Continue reading: Bernard Lewis on what went wrong in the Middle East
There is some interesting new information about the 155mm Sarin shell on Blaster’s Blog:
Iraq never declared any binary 155mm artillery shells. In fact, they never claimed any filled with sarin at all in the UNSCOM Final report (Find on “Munitions declared by Iraq as remaining”). Not declared as existing at the end of the Gulf War, not having been destroyed in the Gulf War, not having been destroyed unilaterally. The only binary munitions claimed by the Iraqis were aerial bombs and missile warheads. Not in an artillery shell.
I was just thinking about this as I returned from breakfast. One of our commentariat pointed out the missing shells were of a smaller size and were of a type with a fairly short shelf life. Suddenly this single shell becomes even more troubling.
This is a very different story now. Is there a whole class of large binary munitions no one was even aware of?
Despite the best efforts of the Negatroid Hordes to convince us otherwise, much in Iraq is going very well.
DEMOCRACY TAKES ROOT: Democracy is spreading – from the ground up, as it should: “In the province of Dhi Qar, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad and a backwater even by Iraq’s standards, residents voting as families will have elected city councils in 16 of the 20 biggest cities by next month.”
Read the whole article and then ask yourself where the journalists have been. No, not just their heads. We know where those are.
I picked up this story from James Taranto’s daily email newsletter:
A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday. Two people were treated for “minor exposure,” but no serious injuries were reported.
“The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq. “The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.
“A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent,” he said.
Interesting. Our enemies are attacking us with those nasty nonexistant weapons.
I will be watching the network News tonight to see if something as inconsequential as the use of nerve gas against American troops gets mentioned. There are, after all, really important stories running: like the life story of a young American dominatrix and how she found fame in an Iraqi prison…
Members of the Iranian student dissident organization, SMCCDI, protested at a May 15th UCLA talk by Shirin Ebadi. According to their press release (no URL supplied):
Tens of Iranian activists protested, yesterday, against Shirin Ebadi’s presence at the UCLA and her controversial stands in line with the Islamic regime’s so-called “reformist” faction and foreign policy.
Protesters distributed templates and tracts while shouting slogans against Ebadi and in condemnation of the Islamic regime’s persistent rights abuses outside the conference room. In addition, several of them were able to introduced themselves in the closed door meeting and to shout slogans and questions to which an embarrassed and interrupted Ebadi did not respond. These questions were mainly focused on the evil nature of the Islamic regime and it’s repressive policies or asking from Ebadi to respond clearly if she’s rejecting the rights abuse in Iran.
Each time the security forces rushed to oust out the protesters and also those who deployed tissue banners denouncing the Islamic republic’s crimes. Several opponents were brutalized by young naive Iranians supporting Ebadi and who are blinded by her Iranian adjective. An Iranian woman activist was reported as agressed by Kazem Alamdari, one of the speech organizers who does frequent travel to Iran and who has obtained the authorization from the repressive Islamic regime to publish his books in Iran. The latter and his wife Nayere Tohidi, both UCLA professors, were in their younger age part of a Marxist guerilla group involved in several murders and which contributed to the victory of the Islamic revolution.
If a member of SMCCDI could supply me with a URL for the full press release, I would be happy to link to it.
Jeannie Fiona Macauley reports the information can be found here.
British troops have been closing to bayonet range in fights against company sized units of Islamist militiamen in Iraq:
Scottish troops fixed bayonets and fought hand to hand with a Shi’ite militia in southern Iraq in one of their fiercest clashes since the war was declared more than a year ago, it was reported last night. Soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders mounted what were described as “classic infantry assaults” on firing and mortar positions held by more than 100 fighters loyal to the outlawed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, according to military sources.
And in support of Britian’s soldiers, some Members of Parliament have called not for rapid reinforcement to be sent but rather for a vote to decide if the Blair government should send any additional troops at all.
It is one thing to oppose British involvement in Iraq in its entirety, it is quite another for politicos to take positions which places UK forces in danger by denying them support without having the courage to just come out and say that Britain forces should just be ordered back to the UK in order to allow Tony Blair to be deposed by more suitably leftward statists. It is unedifying to see the likes of Robin Cook playing political games in Westminster when people are fixing bayonets in Basra and calling for support.
Either support and reinforce the army or (bizarrely) declare defeat and withdraw them.
Once upon a time, I read an article in the Financial Times, which used the slightly peculiar phrase “resigned voluntarily” about six times in the article. Essentially, some CEO had in fact actually decided to leave his job in order to spend more time with his family genuinely of his own accord, and this was such a remarkable thing that the FT felt the need to explain over and over that he had not “resigned” in the usual way (ie been sacked).
A case in point today. Piers Morgan, the editor of the Daily Mirror, ceased to be the editor of the Daily Mirror. The Sun reports that he “resigned” upon the photographs that the Mirror had published purporting to show abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers being proved to be forged. The Mirror itself reports that Morgan “resigned”. The media section of the Guardian reports the truth: that Morgan refused to apologise in any way to anybody, and upon making this refusal clear to Trinity Mirror’s chief executive, Sly Bailey, he was escorted out of the building by security. Given the dreadful way in which the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment and the British army in general have been libeled in these circumstances, it would have been nice to have been there to cheer the security guards on yesterday. In any event, some of the Samizdatistas did get a certain amount of pleasure out of it later.
I particularly like the way the Mirror has the words “Newspaper of the Year” above the banner headline.
And as another observation, the Chairman and Director-General of the BBC and the editor of the Mirror have now all lost their jobs due to their organisations essentially lying in order to make their case of opposition to the Iraq war. It really is not impressive on their part.
A shame we can’t get the editor of the Guardian as well though.
With all the coverage and uproar about the images of American troops, there is probably not much attention spared for the pictures of British troops also accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners/captured. The difference is that the British ones were faked and the saga that started with their appearance in the Daily Mirror with headline ‘Vile’ has come to a climax with the sacking of the editor of the strongly ‘anti-war’ newspaper, Piers Morgan.
The Army has made a forceful rebuttal of the accusations and demonstrated why it was convinced that the Daily Mirror photographs were fakes. The arguments focused on four items – the weapons the soldiers were carrying while ‘abusing’ the Iraqi prisoner, the vehicle in which the alleged assault was supposed to happen, the soldiers’ appearance in the photos i.e. wrong hat, no watch and no tan and the t-shirt worn by the captured.
Our own source listed the ‘things wrong with the photos’ before the published Army rebuttal. It pretty much covers the same points plus a few incidental details I thought you might find interesting.
- The most importanty reasons – it’s too clean. Everything in Iraq was covered in dust and shit. Everything in these pictures is clean- the soldiers, the ‘prisoner’, the truck itself. The uniforms look freshly pressed, let alone washed (after being on patrol..?) Same for the ‘prisoners’. Squaddies have been patrolling the streets, climbed in the back of this truck, and there’s not a mark of dust or mud anywhere? Or was the truck specially cleaned so they would have clean enviroment to beat someone up in? Impossible.
- No one’s sweating. It’s 40+ degrees, the soldiers are beating a guy up, he’s being beaten up, and no one is sweating. Impossible.
- This guy is being beaten almost to death. There’s not a single mark on him. Impossible.
- The truck is a Bedford. We had very few DAF’s in Iraq and all were used by the stores department. Troops on patrol used Saxon APC’s or Landrovers. Try to drive a 8 ft wide truck down the back alleys of Basra catching looters. No way.
- Those photos are way too good. There are enough photo nuts at Samizdata they should know that. [ed. no need to abuse our contributors…] Squaddies in the back of a truck taking crystal clear pictures, with no bad shadaw or anything else? Compare to the US photos that are grainy and blurred in places.
- There’s not a single identifying mark on teh soldiers. No tattoos, no watches, no rings, nothing. And nothing to identify their Regiment or unit either. What’s the point of a ‘trophy photo’ if you can’t prove your in it? You might hide your face, but you would wear something you can point at to prove to your mates that it is you. They won’t believe you otherwise.
- There’s no movemnet. There’s no blurring, so unless they are using expensive, super high speedcameras (on patrol? In Basra?) there is no movement. And if the guy in the floor is being hit, or has been hit, I’m Dutch [ed. no he isn’t Dutch, we can vouch for that.]. I have been hit – you automatically curl up and away and try to protect your head, you just do no lie there stretched out.
- Since when do sqauddies take happy snaps in black and white?
- The rifles. No slings on them (no way do yoiu take your sling off in Basra- someone might grab your rifle) and where did they put them? They look like A1s, though hard to tell. The Mirror’s source claims they were A3s, which will come as news to the manufacturer, let alone to everyone else.
- The kit. They aren’t in proper patrol order, the pouches are not only undone they look mostly empty, and there is no sign of body armour, helmets, or the “platypus” water bags everyone carried. Nor is anyone wearing sweat rags, shamaghs, or anything else. Never saw a squaddy look like that on patrol.
- The hats. Guys did have soft hats like that, were not supposed to wear them on patrol, it was berets or helmets according to the threat. But even suppose they were wearing the hats – they are wearing the hats whilst beating a guy up?! Put on a soft hat, then start moving furniture around your house. See how long you leave the hat on. But very convenient, if you need to wear non-unit specific but obvious “desert” clothes for a nice picture for the Mirror…
- The T-shirt. There were guys wearing T-shirts like that, but not many – it would have been a bit sensitive. It could have been worn by a looter – but mostly bloody convenient, only if you want to show a picture of an ‘Iraqi being beaten up’.
Red Herrings:
- The way the boots are laced. It is wrong, but maybe that guy just laced his different, no one cared that much as we had bigger fish to fry.
- Iraqi looks pale. Many do under their clothes.
- Hessian hoods. Those hoods were used to blindfold prisoners on capture, and to prevent them escaping – though not normally for looters but for higher importance/risk deliberate captures.
The really big point here is what the hell happened to Innocent until Proven Guilty? The Mirror is arguing it is up to us to prove the pictures are false.
Quite. Fortunately, the Army did conclusively prove the pictures were faked, the Mirror admitted they were a hoax, fired the editor and apologised (not unreservedly though). However, the damage done to the morale and reputation of the soldiers and the regiment subjected to such horrendous accusations cannot be easily undone…
I just found out about the latest Al-Qaeda beheading. I haven’t seen the video. Probably I never will.
I thought of Daniel Pearl. I wondered how and when the murdered man’s family learned of the manner of their son’s death. I wondered if he himself knew what was about to happen, as Fabrizio Quattrocchi did.
And such is the unalterably tactical nature of the human mind that mixed in with all that I thought:
Thanks for the reminder, Hellspawn. No thanks for the killing; we’ve had enough of that, but thanks for the reminder. In all this agonized talk about what we are, we were beginning to forget what you are. What you stand for.
What your pictures show.
Andrew Sullivan thought the same way, evidently:
And they [Al-Qaeda] are as stupid as they are evil. Iraqis now have contrasting images. Do they want to be run by people who cut innocent people’s throats at will or by people who have removed a dictator and are investigating unethical abuse of prison inmates? Zarqawi has now done something for our morale as well as his. He has reminded us of the real enemy; and he has reminded the Iraqis. One simple question: will CNN now show these video stills?
Belatedly, but no less relevantly, I was directed to the following Letter to Editor published in the Daily Telegraph last Saturday. It is from a British Army officer who was (still is?) in Basra. Its content was heartily approved by the Samizdata’s own Our Man in Basra – his quotable comment was I could have written every word myself…
Sir, I am a serving Army officer. Publication of photographs that are faked – as appears to be the growing consensus – does not assist our soldiers on the ground but, while such abuse is intolerable to us, brutalised Iraqi opinion differs from ours. Most Iraqis are baffled as to why we do not employ such methods.
Suggestions I have encountered while working with Iraqi governance institutions in Basrah include: crushing looters’ hands, wiring pylon saboteurs to the national grid and hanging rioters by the neck and beating them to death.
In Iraqi eyes, it is not through torture that we have failed Iraq. One year on from liberation, improvements have not materialised. We still seek military solutions to problems caused by policy. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) inherited and perpetuated a Soviet-style centralised bureaucracy without the clear central direction or the threats to back it up that made the Ba’athist system work.
Poor salary decisions mean that operating budgets cannot be paid, so, while there are new police cars, they have no fuel and Iraqi jails lack money for food.
On March 13, after nine months of operations, the Rapid Regional Response Programme, the CPA’s principal project fund for improving Iraqi life had, in the South, identified almost $42 million (£23.5 million) of projects but, owing to excessively bureaucratic contracting, completed only a shameful $627,671 worth. Emergency Infrastructure Project funding achieved more, but millions of dollars worth of projects will not be completed when the June deadline expires.
Yet many Iraqis will endure all this for freedom and democracy. In terms of freedom, Iraqis are still arrested, held indefinitely without trial and, apparently, tortured. In terms of democracy, the CPA, fearing calls for national elections in which Islamic parties may succeed, has banned direct, democratic elections in favour of caucus-style selections derided as undemocratic by most Iraqis.
Meanwhile, those such as Moqtada al-Sadr, the rogue cleric regarded by most Iraqis as a foolish upstart whose lack of support would be revealed by polling, terrorise the country with armed militias. Next month, the CPA will hand over sovereignty and responsibility to an Iraqi nation singularly unequipped to cope.
Iraqis I have spoken to confirm that ousting Saddam was the right thing to do, but if overturning unpleasant regimes is to become a regular feature of foreign policy, we should ensure we have something better to replace them with.
In short, cherchez le politicien.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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