Sunday, November 14, 2004
November 14, 2004OP-ED COLUMNIST
Slapping the Other CheekBy MAUREEN DOWD
ou'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like "love thy neighbor," "turn the other cheek," "good will toward men," "blessed be the peacemakers" and "judge not lest you be judged."
Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office.
I'm getting more the feel of a vengeful mob - revved up by rectitude - running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.
One fiery Southern senator actually accused a nice Catholic columnist of having horns coming up out of her head!
Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist college of the same name, has written a letter to the president telling him that "Christ has allowed you to be his servant" so he could "leave an imprint for righteousness," by appointing conservative judges and approving legislation "defined by biblical norm."
"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn't deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism," Mr. Jones wrote. "Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ." Way harsh.
The Christian avengers and inquisitors, hearts hard as marble, are chasing poor 74-year-old Arlen Specter through the Capitol's marble halls, determined to flagellate him and deny him his cherished goal of taking over the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Not only are they irate at his fairly innocuous comment after the election that anti-Roe v. Wade judges would have a hard time getting through the Senate. They are also full of bloodthirsty feelings of revenge against the senator for championing stem cell research and for voting against Robert Bork - who denounces Mr. Specter as "a bit shifty" - 17 years ago.
"He is a problem, and he must be derailed," Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, told George Stephanopoulos.
Sounding more like the head of a mob family than a ministry, Dr. Dobson told Mr. Stephanopoulos about a warning he issued a White House staffer after the election that the president and Republicans had better deliver on issues like abortion, gay marriage and conservative judges or "I believe they'll pay a price in the next election."
Certainly Mr. Specter has done his part for the conservative cause. He accused Anita Hill of "flat-out perjury" for a minor inconsistency in her testimony against Clarence Thomas, that good Christian jurist who once had a taste for porn films.
Some in the White House thought of giving Mr. Specter the post and then keeping him on a short leash. But the power puritans have no mercy. They say he's a mealy-mouthed impediment to the crusade of evangelicals and conservative Catholic bishops - who delivered their vote with ruthless efficacy - to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Dr. Dobson about his comment to The Daily Oklahoman that "Patrick Leahy is a 'God's people-hater.' I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people," noting that it was not a particularly Christian thing to say about the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. (Especially after that vulgar un-Christian thing Dick Cheney spat at Mr. Leahy last summer.)
"George," Dr. Dobson haughtily snapped back, "do you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about?" Why not? The TV host is the son of a Greek Orthodox priest.
Acting as though Mr. Bush's decisions should be taken on faith, John Ashcroft lashed into judges for not giving Mr. Bush unbridled power in his war against terror.
Speaking Friday before an adulatory Federalist Society, a group of conservative lawyers, Mr. Ashcroft echoed remarks he made to the Senate soon after 9/11 arguing that objecting to the president's antiterror proposals could give "ammunition to America's enemies."
He asserted that judges who interfere in or second guess the president's constitutional authority to make decisions during war can jeopardize the "very security of our nation in a time of war."
And since the president has no end in sight to his war on terror, that makes him infallible ad infini- tum?
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November 14, 2004
U.S. Armored Forces Blast Their Way Into Rebel Nest in FallujaBy DEXTER FILKINS and ROBERT F. WORTH
ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 13 - Army tanks and fighting vehicles blasted their way into the last main rebel stronghold in Falluja at sundown on Saturday after American warplanes and artillery prepared the way with a savage barrage on the district.
Earlier in the afternoon, 10 separate plumes of smoke rose from southern Falluja, as if etched against the desert sky, and probably exclaiming catastrophe for the insurgents.
"It's a broad attack against the entire southern front," said Col. Michael D. Formica, the Army commander in charge of the cordon effort around the city. "We're just pushing them against an anvil."
The assault progressed enough for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to conclude that "coalition and Iraqi forces have completed the move, for all practical purposes, from the north of town to the south" of Falluja.
"Needless to say, there still will be pockets of resistance and areas that will be difficult, so I don't mean to suggest that it's complete ," he said during a visit to Panama. "Clearly there's a large number of terrorists that have been killed or captured, and that is a good thing for the people of Iraq."
But as the battle intensified in Falluja, insurgents roamed the streets of the important northern city of Mosul and the nearby town of Ramadi.
In Mosul, a city with a diverse population of three million, American and Iraqi forces tried to quell a three-day-old uprising apparently set off by the battle in Falluja. Kurdish militiamen have been appearing on the streets to take on insurgents, and many residents have begun to wonder whether ethnic conflict could soon break out.
American commanders said security was also worsening in Ramadi, the provincial capital 30 miles west of Falluja. Insurgents flooded Ramadi before the Falluja conflict began. Guerrillas have been attacking from mosques, the commanders said, and roadside bomb attacks have increased.
In Falluja, mechanized units, mainly M1A2 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, entered the southern district, Shuhada, on Saturday, with muzzles blazing, blowing apart buildings, rolling over barriers and confronting insurgents holed up in mosques and other refuges. It was the sixth day of the battle in Falluja.
From the city's southeast perimeter, the sound of heavy artillery and machine-gun fire was almost continuous throughout the afternoon, when M1 tanks and Bradleys could be seen pounding rebel positions near the city's southern end.
In the direction of Shuhada, a battle could be seen raging between an American M1 tank and a group of insurgents holed up in buildings around the minarets of a mosque, about 100 yards away. Muzzle flashes from AK-47 fire could be seen around the minarets.
The tank, with its rear less than a block from the desert's edge, repeatedly fired its 120-millimeter cannon at the insurgents, sending a sudden dust cloud into the sky as sections of the building's masonry collapsed.
In Baghdad, consequences of the battle for Falluja rippled across the political landscape. A senior aide to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has already led two uprisings against the Americans, said in a televised statement on Saturday that Mr. Sadr would not take part in elections scheduled for January while "Iraqi cities are under attack."
Drawing Mr. Sadr into the political process has been one of the most pressing goals of the Americans and the interim Iraqi government. Mr. Sadr is mercurial, and the practical impact of his statement remains unclear. Until now, he has appeared to be committed to the political process, and the statement could be a way for him to build his support in the period leading up to the elections.
The Iraqi government announced in Baghdad on Saturday that it was indefinitely shutting down commercial flights at the airport because of the hostilities. Gunmen also killed the Shiite mayor of the suburb of Dora, and the Foreign Ministry said a Lebanese man had been abducted, Reuters reported.
The American military said that a soldier in Baghdad was killed by "indirect fire," probably referring to a mortar or rocket attack.
Arrests of senior Sunni clerics continued in the capital. A leading Sunni clerics' group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said Dhari, a Baghdad suburb, was still surrounded by American troops. Earlier this week, American and Iraqi forces stormed the home of Harith al-Dhari, the group's staunchly anti-American leader, and arrested him.
The Associated Press reported that near Falluja itself, four American helicopters had been hit by fire from the ground in two incidents, but that their pilots had been able to fly the craft safely back to their bases.
A Red Crescent spokeswoman in Baghdad said Saturday that the group had dispatched a convoy of cars carrying medical supplies to try to enter Falluja. Several international aid organizations have said in recent days that a crisis could be developing among city residents, though most of the 300,000 residents fled before the offensive. It was unclear how the Red Crescent convoy would enter Falluja as American forces had set up a tight cordon.
Hospitals in Baghdad began receiving civilian casualties from the fighting in Falluja. In Numaan General Hospital, a taxi driver, Farhan Khalaf, 45, stared at two bedridden sons who had been wounded by shrapnel. Alaa, 11, was hit in the chest, and Nafe, 7, lost one of his legs.
"Everything was so quiet," Mr. Khalaf said. "Offices and shops were open, police were in the city. I didn't see anyone carrying guns. Now the Americans are shooting randomly at anything that moves."
"Our houses are completely deserted now," he said. "Look at that child. Does that child look like Zarqawi?"
In Mosul, 225 miles north of the capital, sporadic fighting erupted Saturday, but clashes were smaller than on Thursday, when groups of insurgents overran at least a half-dozen police stations, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia, assigned to control the northern region. Hundreds of policemen fled the guerrillas that day, and the Iraqi government fired the city's police chief on Friday.
Mosul has sizable numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Christians, and ethnic tensions have run high since the Americans invaded Iraq. It is clear that the Sunni Arabs are leading the insurgency here, while the Kurds and Christians are more sympathetic to the American forces.
A car bomb exploded next to a Kurdish patrol in the afternoon, killing at least six militiamen, witnesses said. The city's health bureau said that at least 25 people were killed and 62 wounded in violence on Thursday and Friday, though it was unknown how many of them were civilians and how many were guerrillas.
It is clear that the American-led forces were taken by surprise by the magnitude of the uprising. The Stryker Brigade, a light-armored mechanized unit based in Mosul, had to recall a battalion from the fighting in Falluja. The Iraqi government ordered four battalions of national guardsmen, all Kurds, to the city.
Up to 500 insurgents, far more than American and Iraqi intelligence had predicted, carried out the first big wave of attacks on police stations on Thursday by working in groups of 15 to 50, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of the Stryker Brigade, said in a telephone interview late Friday.
The general said he believed that the insurgency was being organized by former members of Saddam Hussein's security forces.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry appointed a new police chief in Mosul on Saturday, and police officers were returning to the stations, some of which had been set afire, Colonel Hastings said. But the police were being confined to security duties at six sites, he added, because American soldiers might not be able to tell the real police from insurgents who could be roaming the city in stolen police uniforms or body armor.
In Al Wehda, a neighborhood of Mosul, insurgents slit the throats of two Iraqi National Guardsmen in the street, witnesses said.
"When I was driving back to my house, I saw a huge gathering of people, so I stopped the car and went to see what was the matter," said Muhammad Hazim, a resident. "I saw a number of insurgents holding two Iraqi National Guard soldiers and reading a statement calling them traitors and collaborators with the enemy, and then they slaughtered them by slitting their throats and yelling, 'God is great!' ''
General Ham, the commander in Mosul, said the performance of the Iraqi policemen on Thursday had been "very disappointing." While raiding six or seven of the city's 33 police stations, the insurgents made off with up to 40 police vehicles, hundreds of weapons, handheld radios, computers, telephones, police uniforms and body armor.
Two marines were killed Saturday morning when a roadside bomb exploded as they stood next to a vehicle in Zaidon, south of Falluja.
Kassim Daoud, the Iraqi national security advisor, estimated at a news conference that at least 1,000 insurgents had been killed in Falluja.
Reporting for this article was contributed by James Glanz and Edward Wong from Baghdad; Eric Schmitt from Washington; Thom Shanker from Panama, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Mosul.
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today's papersKings of Queens?By Sam SchechnerPosted Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004, at 2:23 AM PT
Everyone leads with the endgame in Fallujah, as U.S. forces pound remaining pockets of insurgents in the smoldering city's southern neighborhoods. "There are no high-fives yet," said a Marine commander in the Los Angeles Times, but by yesterday Iraqi officials were already claiming victory. The New York Times emphasizes that the final battles are particularly intense, with the Washington Post reporting that the remaining insurgents look more like an organized army, wearing blue camouflage uniforms, mounting coordinated attacks, and moving through reinforced bunkers and tunnels. At least 22 U.S. troops have died in the assault so far, with hundreds wounded.
There is no sign in Fallujah of Abu Musab Zarqawi, and the WP's lead says that the American cordon around the city is more porous than advertised, with Iraqi reporters able to slip in from the south as insurgents filtered out on land and along the Euphrates. Meanwhile, as American Humvees broadcast messages yesterday guaranteeing that insurgents who surrender will not be harmed, a mosque blared a caustic reply: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee that we will kill and torture them."
The NYT fronts the most literary scene piece, framed by the broken migration of geese unfortunate enough to be flying over a southern Fallujah neighborhood that GIs have dubbed "Queens" while "tank blasts brought down the sides of buildings as if they were waterfalls and howitzer shots shook the ground over and over, like the aftershocks of some great earthquake." In the Week-in-Review, the NYT's Edward Wong takes a look at the paradoxical necessity of assaulting a Sunni stronghold to win over its residents: "BREAKING A CITY IN ORDER TO FIX IT."
The NYT also goes down the road to nearby Ramadi, where the guerrillas seem to have set up shop. "My personal take is that Ramadi is a less-publicized Fallujah, in the sense of the combat you face every time you go into town," said a company commander at a small downtown base named Combat Outpost. Everyone's Fallujah lead also checks in on the northern city of Mosul, where some 500 insurgents overran and looted police stations on Thursday and Friday. Yesterday, residents told the WP that there was no sign of government or U.S. military presence in the city's western half. The NYT notes that Kurdish militiamen have been appearing on the streets to keep order, and the government has ordered four Kurdish battalions of national guardsmen to the city.
The papers report that Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei promised yesterday to hold presidential elections by Jan. 9, as required by law. Former premier and new PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will run as Fatah's only official presidential candidate, but Marwan Barghouti, the most popular Fatah leader after Arafat, has said he may run for office from Israeli prison, where he is serving five life sentences. Hamas, which the LAT says is now sometimes outpolling secular leaders, may have trouble fielding a candidate, however. Not only is the organization's leader anonymous these days, but a Palestinian official told the NYT that the group would have to drop its stated goal of destroying Israel to be eligible.
Meanwhile, in its off-lead, the NYT outs the so-called quiet steps that Israel is taking to boost the power of moderate Palestinian leaders like Abbas, releasing some $40 million in frozen tax revenue and discussing the possibility of pulling IDF troops from some areas.
The WP and NYT follow up on the Post's revelation yesterday that the CIA's directorate of operations is practically in revolt, with its deputy director threatening to quit (and taking his photos off of his office walls), while a handful of other officials say they may do the same. According to a host of anonymous sources, the new CIA Director Porter Goss has been ineffective at marshalling support within the clandestine service for his as-yet-unspecified plans to refigure it, and has rebuffed the advice of four ex-heads of the directorate about how to win it over. "Clean the place out if it's needed, but you've got to be clever about it," a former operations official told the Post.
Both papers note that Goss lost some momentum early on when he nominated someone who had been arrested for shoplifting in the 1980s as the agency's No. 3 official. Now, some are complaining that the new No. 3—a logistics veteran known only as "Dusty" because he has worked undercover for most of his career—isn't qualified for the job.
French ex-pats continued to evacuate the Ivory Coast yesterday, even as an "eerie calm" replaced the violent anti-French riots of the last few days. Recap: A week ago, Ivoirian jets, claiming to be going after rebels despite a year-old cease-fire, hit a French peacekeeping camp, killing nine French soldiers. The French retaliated by destroying much of the country's tiny air force, a move that, along with other clashes, inspired mobs to attack foreign residents, looting and burning houses.
Everyone notes that Vice President Cheney underwent three hours of heart tests yesterday after experiencing shortness of breath. Verdict: The veep has a severe cold, which aides say he contracted during a pheasant hunt in South Dakota. The LAT, for its part, runs through the process for and history of nominating a new vice president, in the event Cheney were to step down.
Even as New Mexico continues to count ballots and some push for a recount in Ohio, Florida has nevertheless managed to resolve a contentious city council race in a small town west of Orlando. After two recounts, the candidates remained deadlocked at 689 votes. So, in accordance with Florida law dictating that candidates "draw lots," the city organized a coin-toss. Afterwards, both contenders shook hands and hugged. "There's nothing I can do about it," said the loser, who called heads. "He flipped the coin, and I lost."Sam Schechner is a freelance writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109730/
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Everyone leads with the endgame in Fallujah, as U.S. forces pound remaining pockets of insurgents in the smoldering city's southern neighborhoods. "There are no high-fives yet," said a Marine commander in the Los Angeles Times, but by yesterday Iraqi officials were already claiming victory. The New York Times emphasizes that the final battles are particularly intense, with the Washington Post reporting that the remaining insurgents look more like an organized army, wearing blue camouflage uniforms, mounting coordinated attacks, and moving through reinforced bunkers and tunnels. At least 22 U.S. troops have died in the assault so far, with hundreds wounded.
There is no sign in Fallujah of Abu Musab Zarqawi, and the WP's lead says that the American cordon around the city is more porous than advertised, with Iraqi reporters able to slip in from the south as insurgents filtered out on land and along the Euphrates. Meanwhile, as American Humvees broadcast messages yesterday guaranteeing that insurgents who surrender will not be harmed, a mosque blared a caustic reply: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee that we will kill and torture them."
The NYT fronts the most literary scene piece, framed by the broken migration of geese unfortunate enough to be flying over a southern Fallujah neighborhood that GIs have dubbed "Queens" while "tank blasts brought down the sides of buildings as if they were waterfalls and howitzer shots shook the ground over and over, like the aftershocks of some great earthquake." In the Week-in-Review, the NYT's Edward Wong takes a look at the paradoxical necessity of assaulting a Sunni stronghold to win over its residents: "BREAKING A CITY IN ORDER TO FIX IT."
The NYT also goes down the road to nearby Ramadi, where the guerrillas seem to have set up shop. "My personal take is that Ramadi is a less-publicized Fallujah, in the sense of the combat you face every time you go into town," said a company commander at a small downtown base named Combat Outpost. Everyone's Fallujah lead also checks in on the northern city of Mosul, where some 500 insurgents overran and looted police stations on Thursday and Friday. Yesterday, residents told the WP that there was no sign of government or U.S. military presence in the city's western half. The NYT notes that Kurdish militiamen have been appearing on the streets to keep order, and the government has ordered four Kurdish battalions of national guardsmen to the city.
The papers report that Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei promised yesterday to hold presidential elections by Jan. 9, as required by law. Former premier and new PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will run as Fatah's only official presidential candidate, but Marwan Barghouti, the most popular Fatah leader after Arafat, has said he may run for office from Israeli prison, where he is serving five life sentences. Hamas, which the LAT says is now sometimes outpolling secular leaders, may have trouble fielding a candidate, however. Not only is the organization's leader anonymous these days, but a Palestinian official told the NYT that the group would have to drop its stated goal of destroying Israel to be eligible.
Meanwhile, in its off-lead, the NYT outs the so-called quiet steps that Israel is taking to boost the power of moderate Palestinian leaders like Abbas, releasing some $40 million in frozen tax revenue and discussing the possibility of pulling IDF troops from some areas.
The WP and NYT follow up on the Post's revelation yesterday that the CIA's directorate of operations is practically in revolt, with its deputy director threatening to quit (and taking his photos off of his office walls), while a handful of other officials say they may do the same. According to a host of anonymous sources, the new CIA Director Porter Goss has been ineffective at marshalling support within the clandestine service for his as-yet-unspecified plans to refigure it, and has rebuffed the advice of four ex-heads of the directorate about how to win it over. "Clean the place out if it's needed, but you've got to be clever about it," a former operations official told the Post.
Both papers note that Goss lost some momentum early on when he nominated someone who had been arrested for shoplifting in the 1980s as the agency's No. 3 official. Now, some are complaining that the new No. 3—a logistics veteran known only as "Dusty" because he has worked undercover for most of his career—isn't qualified for the job.
French ex-pats continued to evacuate the Ivory Coast yesterday, even as an "eerie calm" replaced the violent anti-French riots of the last few days. Recap: A week ago, Ivoirian jets, claiming to be going after rebels despite a year-old cease-fire, hit a French peacekeeping camp, killing nine French soldiers. The French retaliated by destroying much of the country's tiny air force, a move that, along with other clashes, inspired mobs to attack foreign residents, looting and burning houses.
Everyone notes that Vice President Cheney underwent three hours of heart tests yesterday after experiencing shortness of breath. Verdict: The veep has a severe cold, which aides say he contracted during a pheasant hunt in South Dakota. The LAT, for its part, runs through the process for and history of nominating a new vice president, in the event Cheney were to step down.
Even as New Mexico continues to count ballots and some push for a recount in Ohio, Florida has nevertheless managed to resolve a contentious city council race in a small town west of Orlando. After two recounts, the candidates remained deadlocked at 689 votes. So, in accordance with Florida law dictating that candidates "draw lots," the city organized a coin-toss. Afterwards, both contenders shook hands and hugged. "There's nothing I can do about it," said the loser, who called heads. "He flipped the coin, and I lost."Sam Schechner is a freelance writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109730/
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