Sadly, No!

MedienKritik, which is sort of like a German equivalent of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center (except that no one there looks like a cross between Youppi and Dr. Zaius as far as we know) opens a new chapter in the war on straw: critiquing articles published in the German press in 1998:

It is fascinating to note with what level of alarm and dread SPIEGEL warned of Saddam’s “horror potential.” There was no attempt made whatsoever to deny the fact that Iraq possessed an “enormous arsenal of chemical weapons,” and had a project to “build an atomic bomb.”

We’re assuming the author of that piece speaks German, so surely he noticed that the article from Der Spiegel recounts the post-1991 UN inspections that documented Iraq’s pre-Gulf War “WMD related program activities.” We don’t know why an attempt should have been made to discount the importance of these. We certainly haven’t come across too many people who deny that Saddam did possess and did use WMD. At issue is whether Iraq had anything resembling actual weapons or a meaningful capacity to produce them before the war.

MedienKritik keeps on digging however:

The SPON [Spiegel Online] article further detailed that UN weapon’s inspectors had concluded:

“Saddam was just another 18 months away, the IAEO estimates, from producing the fissile material for the atom bomb. (?) According to Western estimates, Baghdad paid 10 billion dollars in its attempt to become the first Arab nuclear power.”

The conclusion is from 1998… about the situation in 1991:

By the time of Desert Storm in 1991, Iraq had a robust, covert nuclear weapon program, with a completed though untested nuclear weapon design. Baghdad was perhaps one to three years away from building a nuclear weapon at the onset of the war.

Or:

No credible evidence of massive rebuilding of biological and chemical facilities dismantled under U.N. inspection during the 90’s.

Or:

U.N. inspectors say that prior to the Persian Gulf war, Iraq may have been only 12 to 18 months away from producing its first nuclear bomb — not several years away, as many people had previously thought. [Emphasis added]

Rather than look at the Spiegel’s 1998 articles, one might wonder how Colin Powell’s 2003 presentation to the UN can stand the test of time:

He also has been busy trying to maintain the other key parts of his nuclear program, particularly his cadre of key nuclear scientists. It is noteworthy that over the last 18 months Saddam Hussein has paid increasing personal attention to Iraq’s top nuclear scientists, a group that the government-controlled press calls openly his “nuclear mujaheddin.” He regularly exhorts them and praises their progress. Progress toward what end? [Cue scary music]

Or President Bush’s assertions:

I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied ? finally denied access [in 1998], a report came out of the Atomic ? the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon.

Which is odd, given that:

“There’s never been a report like that issued from this agency,” Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA’s chief spokesman, said yesterday in a telephone interview from the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

But the real scandal according to MedienKritik?

The weapons programs he once pursued have been forgotten. The hundreds of thousands murdered by his regime are in the process of being forgotten.

A web site that obsesses about the Spiegel should remember the 13-page feature the magazine published last summer documenting the horrors of the Hussein regime. Or?

Now all we hear from SPON and other German media is that Bush and Blair exaggerated, “sexed-up” and downright lied when it came to Saddam?s WMD.

Well, if that is so, wasn’t SPIEGEL dramatically overstating the danger in 1998?

One would do well to read the article (copied here) which spends much time on chronicling the results of the inspections that took place in Iraq and their results. [A main finding being that much of Iraq’s pre-war arsenal was supplied in part by German firms.] Whether the tone is “alarmist” we’ll let you decide. MedienKritik’s [MK] main complaint, however, reminds us of our earlier The Real Scandal Pronouncement Game. MK is not upset that the Bush’s administration claims about Iraq’s weapons have not been vindicated, they’re upset that the German media are now pointing this out. If you can’t see why it was impossible to be certain of Iraq’s WMD arsenal in 1998 compared to 2003 and 2004, you really need a new hobby. Spiegel quotes Clinton administration sources and Richard Butler about Iraq’s then alleged weapons and weapons programs. As we said above however, the article’s main focus is on the results of the inspections up to 1998, showing what Iraq had prior to the Gulf War.

And the conclusion?

The questions I have to ask in all of this are: Should we have waited until Saddam developed weapons capable of killing millions before acting in a post 9-11 world? Does anyone doubt he would have restarted his weapons program had he been given the chance? Can the US continue to rely on the European model of so-called multilateral diplomacy in a world full of ruthless terrorists and dictators? [Emphasis added]

Wow, it’s like reading a White House Press Briefing transcript, or what the 101st Keyboard Brigadiers have been writing for some time already:

Should we have waited until Saddam got scientists who would have actually made the weapons he wanted? link

Should we have waited until Saddam had these weapons in his hands for all to see? link

Should we have waited until Saddam was more dangerous and more powerful and then gone to war with him? link

Why should we have waited until Saddam gassed an insatallation, or built a coalition with Terrorists, or developed and used a Nuke? link

My point was this, should we have waited until Saddam committed the same atrocities as Hitler until we did something about it? link

Should we have waited until Saddam actually had uranium? or would that not have been “imminent” enough for you??? link

[Collect your own “should we haves?”]

As for how dictators should be handled, looks like there’s a bit of “old Europe” in Bush after all:

BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFERS NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM
Well, we will work to take steps to ease their political and economic isolation. So there would be — what you would see would be some provisional or temporary proposals that would only lead to lasting benefit after North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs. So there would be some provisional or temporary efforts of that nature. –Scott McClellan

Fixed typo, thanks to Frederick from BeatBushBlog.

NewsMax writes:

Kerry was on the phone to Clinton weekly, Vanity Fair magazine reported recently – securing his commitment to campaign this year in states where he could make the difference and listening carefully to the ex-president’s advice.

NewsMax also offers (in the same article:)

And by picking Bill Clinton’s choice [Edwards,] Kerry offers an olive branch to the Clinton political machine, which has never been close to the aristocratic Kerry.

WorldNetDaily adds:

In his book, Anderson claims Bill and Hillary Clinton do not want John Kerry to win the presidency, as it would hurt Hillary’s chances in 2008.

NewsMax:

Reportedly, Clinton has argued that with Edwards in the No. 2 spot, the Democrats may have a lock on the White House until 2020.

Grover Norquist argues:

The biggest loser will be Bill Clinton who, if Kerry wins, will no longer be the titular head of the Democrat party, which he is today.

Norquist:

As a result, every significant Democrat who might be president knows that they would be better off if they woke up the day after the election and Kerry lost.

Whatever they’re doing, we think one thing is clear: the Clintons are evil.

Yesterday, we posted the video from a German TV report about alleged abuse and detention of children in Iraqi prisons. While the US media remains silent (as far as we know,) this story is getting some coverage outside of Germany. Pete from The Dark Window sends us this link from Norway:

Norwegian authorities reacted with shock and disgust Tuesday to a documentary on German TV that American soldiers allegedly have been holding children in prisons in Iraq, and abusing them as well. The Norwegians joined the Red Cross and Amnesty International in calling for an immediate end to the abuse, and release of the underage prisoners, some of whom are as young as 12 years.

The (partial) translation of the report is below. It was prepared by our staff and Pete from The Dark Window. Links to the original video and text (in German) are below.

Soldiers looking for terrorists storm an apartment. Children are sometimes arrested during these raids. What the Army does with them, it will not say. We investigate. Meet with sources.

One that knows something about this is Sergeant Samuel Provance, from the US Military. He spent half a year stationed at Abu Ghraib. Today, 5 months later, we meet him in Heidelberg. His superiors have strictly forbidden him to speak to journalists about what he experienced in Abu Ghraib. But Provance wants to talk about it nevertheless. His conscience troubles him. He discusses a 16-year old he handled:

“He was very afraid, very alone. He had the thinnest arms I had ever seen.
His whole body trembled. His wrists were so thin we couldn’t put handcuffs on him. As I saw him for the first time and led him to the interrogation, I felt sorry. The interrogation specialists threw water over him and put him into a car, drove him around through the extremely cold night. Afterwards, they covered him with mud and showed him to his imprisoned father, on whom they’d tried other interrogation methods.

They hadn’t been able to get him to speak, though. The interrogation specialists told me that after the father saw his son in this condition, his heart was broken, he started crying, and he promised to tell them anything they wanted.” –Samuel Provance

After this however the son remained in detention, and the 16-year old was put in with the adults. But Provance discusses a special children’s section at Abu Ghraib — a secret detention facility.

One that has seen the children’s section with his own eyes is the Iraqi journalist Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz. Our correspondent met with him in Baghdad. He explains how he was picked up while reporting and jailed 74 days in Abu Ghraib:

“There I saw a camp for kids, young, certainly not yet of puberty age. There must have been hundreds of kids. Some were released, others are certainly still there.” –Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz

From his cell in the adult’s section he hears a girl of maybe 12 years of age crying. Later he found out that her brother was held in a cell on the second floor of the prison. Once or twice he says, he saw the girl himself. […] “She called out her brother’s name. She was beaten, she cried out “they took off my clothes, they poured water on me.”” –Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz

He heard her cries every day. […]

These accounts from witnesses are difficult to corroborate. We look for additional proof of the detention of children. We find it at UNICEF, which has written this explosive report, published a few days ago [June 2004, -S,N!]:

“Children picked up in Basra and Kerbala were routinely transferred to a prison in Um Qasr.” –UNICEF

The prison in Um Qasr. These images were shot in 2003. Today, it is too dangerous for reporters to drive to Um Qasr. This facility, a detention center for terrorists and criminals, would have also held children.

“This classification of children as ‘prisoners’ is alarming given that they are held for an undetermined period of time, without contact with their family or expectation of a trial.” –UNICEF

UNICEF will not make any comments about this yet to be released report. […] We look for additional information and contact the International Committee of the Red Cross. After several discussions, additional confirmation, including numbers:

“Over the course of 19 visits in 6 different detention facilities from January to May of this year, we counted 107 children. These facilities were under the control of coalition troops.” –Florian Westphal, ICRC.

The ICRC found minors in both Qasr and Abu Ghraib. Two international organizations confirm, independently, that coalition troops have jailed Iraqi children. But information directly from the prisons remains unavailable. UNICEF was not able to visit the children’s prison in Baghdad:

“UNICEF asked to visit this facility in July 2003, but access was denied.” –UNICEF

No independent observers have been in this facility since December, according to UNICEF. […]

During a visit for the press at Abu Ghraib, no children were seen. We stand by our report: Four sources confirm independently the detention of children in Iraq. Two witnesses allege abuse. […]

–Report by Thomas Reutter.

Contacted for comments, the British Defense Ministry has said its troops have not detained minors and children. We have yet to receive an answer from the Pentagon. –Fritz Frey, Host.

Streaming video from SWR here. Full German transcript here.

Edit: Comments from No More Mister Nice Blog, General Glut and The Dark Window.

Added: Downloadable clip of the TV report. (9MB, RealVideo 10 format.) [The streaming video from SWR is 14MB and of slightly lower quality.]

Also added: Dan Frazier alerts us to a full translation of the Report Mainz story on the alleged abuse and detention of children by US forces in Iraq he prepared along with Angela Petz, posted here.

Related developments here.

In February, they had this. In May, it changed to that. Well, we can’t wait for the followup.

It’s very likely that Hillary will run for Health & Human Services Secretary in 2004.

Poor William Safire.

Yesterday, we wrote about a report on German TV dealing with the alleged abuse by US forces of imprisoned Iraqi children. For those with a working knowledge of German, we can offer the video from last night’s show. You can download this clip (320×240 resolution, 9.3MB, RealMedia format.) We’d make the file smaller if we could (or knew how.) Sadly however, we can’t (or don’t.) [Note: For reasons we cannot hope to understand, starting the video clip on our desktop causes the volume to be set to 0. If you can’t hear the sound, please do check volume settings in Control Panel.]

We hope to offer a partial translation later today.

Edit: Full translation of the Spiegel article quoted in our earlier post here. (Thanks to idleworm.)

And the answer is… fuck you? Andrew Sullivan, June 30, 2004:

JACKASS UPDATE: The initial returns of “Fahrenheit 9/11” were less than “Jackass.” But the adjusted returns show F9/11 inching ahead of the boys with the toys. Let’s see if Moore’s propaganda beats out “Jackass’s” total $64.2 million.

F9/11 total gross for the first two weeks of release, with (estimated) revenue for the holiday weekend:

$US60 million.

Wonder where Andrew will choose to move the cheese this time.

Edit: Slightly rewritten to clarify that $60 million is the two-week total, not only last weekend’s.

TBOGG takes care of this Dennis Prager assertion better than we ever could:

Did you ever notice that there are no Germans going around the world saying, or making movies about, how awful Germany is or has been? Given that Germany unleashed two world wars and invented industrialized genocide, why has there been no German Michael Moore?

Get your answer here.

It might just make you… gay:

When the company behind the New Gay Fuel energy drink started marketing its product, many believed it must be a joke, a parody, an urban legend.

But it’s not.

This will be your only warning.

WTF?!?

In a videotaped exchange at the city’s central library on Thursday, a girl asked [State Education Secretary Richard] Riordan if he knew that her name meant “Egyptian goddess.”

Riordan, who apparently believed he’d been asked what her name meant, replied, “It means stupid dirty girl.”

(Via Jesus’ General.)

The answer, apparently, is Sadly, Yes!

Angered by our theft of Doug Giles over the weekend, World O’Crap responds with a critique of Sadly, No!’s own precious, Amber Pawlik and has called on greater powers to punish us.