Antiwar.com Blog

How sincere is Walid Jumblatt’s much–hyped conversion to the Bush Doctrine? Well, according to a FrontPageMag article just two months back, Jumblatt told a Saudi daily:

We are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory.

Is it conceivable that these days, old Walid is just using a credulous media to manipulate America into doing his dirty work? That he doesn’t mind the prospect of more U.S. soldiers dying – this time in Syria – so that he can spew his syphilitic garbage in an independent Lebanon?

Nah. Can’t be. All is well, warbots. Reality is whatever you need it to be.

The Canadian government has rejected US orders that it comply with the incredibly dangerous and wrongheaded waste of resources euphemistically called the “missile defense shield”;

Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that Canada would not join the contentious U.S. missile defense program, a decision that will further strain brittle relations between the neighbors but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race.

Let’s go back in time a bit. Early in the Cold War era, a problem developed for Canada. In the event of a Soviet bomber attack against the US, the bombers would have to fly east to the north pole, and then south over Canada, to get to the targets in the US. It was decided that Canada should help its partner to the south by constructing some sort of defense (My solution would have been to tell my friends the Americans “Hey hosers, about this cold war thing, cut it out willya? Thanks, eh?”). In 1954, development began in Canada, on a homegrown project which would, within four years, produce the greatest warplane of it’s era. Continue reading “US bully losing influence over Canada”

Yet another crazed Jumblatt quoter pops up and is efficiently dispatched by lenin.

One of the Harry’s Place commenters appeals for mercy for the Jumblatteers, “Oh, leave HP alone! Can’t you see they’re hanging to reality by their finger-nails? :)”

Sibel Edmonds is about to make life very unpleasant for the FBI;

The Department of Justice has abandoned its claim that allegations made by a fired FBI translator are secret, paving the way for a court case that will air embarrassing allegations about incompetence, poor security and possible espionage in the translation unit of the Bureau’s Washington Field Office.

The story goes on to say;

Edmonds reported that many of those hired to work in the unit could barely speak English; that they left secure laptop computers lying around while they went to lunch; that they took classified material home with them; and – even more disturbing – that one co-worker had undeclared contacts with a foreign organization that was under FBI surveillance.

Edmonds was fired from the FBI, but;

Edmonds is suing the FBI, claiming she was fired for bringing to light these problems – which have been identified by several inquiries as significant contributing factors to the success of the Sept. 11 plot.

Putin humiliated next to Bush “It could be that he kept his cool Thursday because he couldn’t quite believe what was happening to him.”

Robin Shepherd, Washington Times:

“It all happened following the end of bilateral talks when a televised press conference turned into a relentless and devastating assault on Putin’s backsliding on democratic reform.
Since global democratization has been made the centerpiece of Bush’s second term foreign policy agenda, analysts and politicians in the United States and elsewhere had billed this meeting as the first key test of the American president’s credibility.
As Russia analysts James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul had put it in a commentary in the current issue of the Weekly Standard: ‘If the president neglects to affirm his commitment to freedom with Putin at his side, Bush will be signaling that his words don’t count.’
So most of us were expecting the issue to be raised, if only in passing.
But no one could have been prepared for what was about to unfold.
While observing diplomatic niceties, President Bush’s opening remarks included a pointedly blunt statement of his concern that Russia was not fulfilling “fundamental” democratic principles.
And this was nothing to what President Putin was forced to endure in the subsequent questions, every single one of which focused on democracy.
Continue reading “Let’s pick a fight with Russia”

Arthur Chrenkoff says that he and his neocon buddies don’t consider Walid Jumblatt an authority on anything. Well, Michael Young sure does, as he has now highlighted Jumblatt’s testimony in two essays (here’s the first) affirming the efficacy of the Bush Doctrine in Iraq and/or calling for more of it in Lebanon/Syria. In the latest, Young writes:

Writing in the Washington Post on Wednesday, David Ignatius offered up this quote from Lebanon’s paramount Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who, after siding with Syria for decades (he didn’t have much choice; they killed his father) and opposing the U.S. war in Iraq, has become the leading figure in the anti-Syrian Lebanese opposition: “It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world . The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”

Jumblatt, for whom political changeability has long been the price to pay for protecting his minority community (and his control over it), nevertheless means what he says. Like many Lebanese, albeit at much greater risk to his own life, Jumblatt has gone too far in attacking Syria to turn back now. And while there are those in the Middle East and the United States who will refuse to give the administration any credit on democratization, at this end of the table, and in Iraq, the more pragmatic view is that it’s best to take what one can from the outside if expanded freedom is the upshot.

Unlike the warbloggers, who do nothing but read each other’s babble, Young, an editor at Beirut’s Daily Star, can be expected to know better about Jumblatt. Yet here he is, offering not an argument from a dubious source – which would have to be addressed on its own merits – but a sort of hunch or vibe, as if Jumblatt is equivalent to a journalist on a political roundtable saying that he doesn’t think the American people are ready for Social Security reform. We may disagree with said journalist, but we do take him to be something of an authority, insofar as we believe him to have his finger on the national pulse and to have no hidden agenda.

So it’s absolutely fair to say that anyone broadcasting Jumblatt’s hunch as proof of the correctness of Jumblatt’s assertions does, in fact, consider him an authority. Which means it’s also fair to question exactly where Jumblatt’s finger is and what the hell it’s up to. If David Duke comes out in favor of an affirmative action program, saying that he’s had a sudden change of heart, any reasonable person will question his motives, and more importantly, the validity of his analysis of that program. Ditto for Jumblatt, who, incidentally, rather sounds like David Duke:

The oil axis is present in most of the U.S. administration, beginning with its president, vice-president and top advisers, including [Condoleezza] Rice, who is oil-colored, while the axis of Jews is present with Paul Wolfowitz, the leading hawk who is inciting (America) to occupy and destroy Iraq.

And Jumblatt wasn’t just saying such things 50, 20, or even five years ago – he was saying them right up to the goddamn minute he issued his calculated switcheroo to David Ignatius. ‘Scuse me for being a little, er, cynical about both his motives and the validity of his analysis.

This is the best you’ve got?