More Niger Nonsense - October 7, 2003
Times Watch for October 7, 2003
More
Niger Nonsense
Sunday's front-page story by Elisabeth Bumiller, "C.I.A.
Chief Is Caught in Middle by Leak Inquiry," looks at how CIA director George
Tenet is handling the controversy over who leaked the identity of Joseph
Wilson's wife. Once
again, the Times gets a key fact
flat wrong.
Bumiller writes: "In the
summer, the conflict broke into the open when Condoleezza Rice, the national
security adviser, said that Mr. Tenet had been primarily responsible for not
stripping from the president's State of the Union address an insupportable claim
that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger."
Wrong. What Bush actually
said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Journalist Andrew Sullivan
has picked up on this media trend of claiming Bush referenced Niger in his
address.
The distinction isn't
merely a matter of lazy journalism or ethnocentric conflation of one country in
Africa with the entire continent. As liberal media critic
Bob Somerby
points out, the British intelligence Bush referred to in the State of the Union
focused on the Congo as the possible source of Iraqi uranium, not Niger.
Somerby adds: "The
American National Intelligence Report of October 2002 seemed to support the idea
that Iraq sought uranium from African nations other than Niger. 'Reports
indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the
Democratic Republic of the Congo,' the NIE said. 'We cannot confirm whether Iraq
succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources. Reports
suggest Iraq is shifting from domestic mining and milling of uranium to foreign
acquisition.' True or false? We simply dont know. But if you got the impression
from recent reporting that the Brit intel was all about Niger, you just may have
been snookered again."
For the rest of Bumiller's story on the Joseph
Wilson investigation,
click here.
Africa
|
George W. Bush
|
CIA
|
Elisabeth Bumiller
|
Iraq War
|
Niger
|
Joseph Wilson
Times
Ethicist Goes Bananas
Randy Cohen, the Times resident ethicist,
once again takes up
the class-warfare cudgels in response to a question rather loosely related
to the subject.
A reader searching for
advice sends this query to Cohen's Sunday magazine column: "My dermatologist,
one of Manhattan's best, is well paid for his work. When he referred me to an
internist, I assumed this doctor was, too. I went for a routine physical knowing
he did not accept insurance, but not that his fee would be $500 for 25 minutes
spent with me. I say charging $500 is unconscionable, but do I have an ethical
leg to stand on?"
Cohen responds: "There's
nothing discreditable about asking to be well paid for your work. But while the
doctor's doing so is not unethical, the consequences can be undesirable,
contributing to a system that allocates medical resources on the basis of a
patient's income, not his need, and thus reinforcing a societal drift toward
great disparities of wealth and poverty. The solution lies less in individual
rectitude than in civic virtue. The medical community must devise ways to
deliver health care equitably. And the entire nation must consider the
consequences of income distribution akin to that of a banana republic."
For the rest of Randy Cohen's column,
click here.
Class Warfare |
Randy Cohen |
Columnists |
Ethicist
Syria
Spotless, Israel to Blame
Tuesday's front-page story from Beirut by Neil
MacFarquhar is a sympathetic look on how Syria (on
the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism) feels about
Israel's strike on a terrorist training camp in Syrian territory. In "Arabs'
Fear: A New Crisis-Wider Conflict Seen After Israeli Airstrike," MacFarquhar
takes Syria's point of view, and for good measure, melodramatically portrays
Iraq as "teetering on the brink of bedlam."
He opens: "Behind a
seemingly calm facade, with Damascus toothless to respond militarily to the
deepest Israeli air raid in Syria in three decades, the Arab world was reeling
Monday from the idea that yet a third major conflict could erupt in the Middle
East. Already, the region is traumatized by the open wound that
Israeli-Palestinian clashes have become and by an American-occupied Iraq
teetering on the brink of bedlam."
That last sentence begs
the question: If Arab nations like Syria truly are "traumatized" by the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, why do they coddle and sponsor anti-Israel terror
groups like Hezbollah?
"On a day when Israel was
quietly observing Yom Kippur, senior Arab officials and analysts listed what
they saw as three basic reasons behind Israel's decision to strike at what it
described as a training center for Islamic Jihad northwest of Damascus, and
which Syria said was a long-abandoned camp, hidden in the depth of a dramatic
ravine. First, after three years of tit-for-tat attacks, the Arab analysts said
the Sharon government was running out of targets within the occupied territories
to hit after each new suicide bombing, the latest killing 19 people in addition
to the bomber in Haifa on Saturday."
MacFarquhar's phrase
"tit-for-tat attacks" is an odd way to describe the pattern of Palestinian
suicide bombing and Israeli counterattacks. Arab officials may indeed claim such
a moral equivalence, but that's not how the victims or most Americans feel.
MacFarquhar passes on more
talking points from Arab officials: "Second, the United States declared war on
terror, and its invasion of Iraq has abruptly made more feasible the idea of
reaching across borders to smite any enemy. Third, with the Palestinians clearly
unable to stop the suicide attacks carried out by militant groups like Islamic
Jihad and Hamas, bombing Syria was seen by these Arab analysts as an effort to
exert pressure on the larger Arab world to play that role."
Who says the Palestinians
are "clearly" unable to stop suicide attacks?
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat claims he can, when it suits him
politically, at least.
Then MacFarquhar suggests
(again, through Arab talking points) that Israel's defensive fight against
terror avoids its own culpability in the Arab-Israeli conflict: "Ultimately,
though, there remains a widespread sense that Israel and, by extension, the
United States, through all their antiterrorism slogans and other accusations
pointed at various Arab capitals, are ignoring the larger, older issue-ending
the 36-plus years of Israeli occupation of Arab lands."
Without challenging the
Arab leaders' self-serving assertions, MacFarquhar follows up: "Analysts believe
that if Syria does respond it will be indirectly-the young president, Bashar
al-Assad, following the pattern of his late father-either through one of its
proxy forces like Hezbollah in Lebanon, or perhaps by making life more difficult
for American forces in Iraq." "Making life more difficult" is apparently
MacFarquhar's euphemism for killing American soldiers in Iraq.
He continues: "The
problem, many Arab officials and analysts believe, is that Israel wraps its
attacks in the colors of the campaign against terrorism. 'Since Sept. 11, the
Israelis have been able to introduce all this as part of the antiterror campaign
and it's not,' said Mustapha Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic
Studies at the University of Jordan. 'They are two separate things. Al Qaeda is
one thing, and the West Bank and Gaza are something else.'" Though MacFarquhar
leaves that assertion (as well as all the others) unchallenged, there are plenty
of Syrians who disagree with Hamarneh.
Here's a March 28 excerpt
from the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz (courtesy of the
Shark Blog): "Syria is granting free passage across its border with Iraq to
volunteers who wish to join the fight against the U.S. and British forces. Thus
far, dozens of volunteers, primarily Palestinians from the refugee camps in
Lebanon, have crossed over into Iraq through Syrian-controlled border posts."
Some Palestinian terrorists seem to think there's a rather strong connection
between the "West Bank and Gaza" and al Qaeda-one they're ready to kill and die
for. If they make the link, why shouldn't Israel and the United States?
For more of Neil MacFarquhar's musings on Arab
opinion,
click here.
Arabs |
Iraq War |
Israel |
Neil MacFarquhar |
Palestinians |
Syria |
Terrorism
Israel
Attacks a Terror Camp? Blame Bush
In his Monday story from Baghdad, "Wider Violence
Will Follow Israeli Attack, Arabs Warn," Patrick Tyler writes on Israel's attack
on a terrorist camp in Syria: "There was an added measure of disquiet in the
Middle East as Israel's strike deep into Syrian territory crossed new
boundaries. It underscored how little progress the Bush administration has made
in developing or enforcing a strategy to reduce violence and provocation by
Palestinians and Israelis."
While placing rather a lot
of responsibility regarding Israel's actions onto Bush's shoulders, the passage
also reveals a double-standard at the Times regarding foreign policy. While the
Times often bashes Bush for unilateralism and excessive interference in other
countries affairs when it comes to Iraq, when the subject turns to Israel,
suddenly it becomes Bush's responsibility to interfere for the sake of Mideast
"peace."
For the rest of Patrick Tyler's story on
international response to the Israeli action,
click here.
George W. Bush |
Israel |
Palestinians |
Syria |
Patrick Tyler
