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Eric Scheie of ClassicalValues emails the following (quoted here by permission). First, with regard to obstacles put in the way of Westerners seeking to know what's being said inside the mosques:
...I wanted to let you know that I think there may be a double standard having nothing to do with Islam, because I have traveled repeatedly in Turkey and Egypt, and was always allowed to enter mosques -- even when worshipers were inside praying. (The only requirement was that shoes had to be left at the door.)
Second, Eric discussed his experience with a mosque near where he lives:
I happen to live 500 or so yards away from a mosque which is part of a Saudi-funded Madrassa/school, and all kinds of weird things go on around here. Their national director was deported for terrorist activities and I wish to God they'd close the place down. Neighbors are frightened.
Let's add this up with:
...and it becomes evident that mosques in the U.S. are already waging a campaign of intimidation against us in our own country.
Let's get tough with these guys. Let's get some undercover FBI guys into the mosques, find out who's preaching violence, and start deporting them.
From AP:
Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.
"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.
The significance of this is not just that Borders and Waldenbooks are refusing to defend U.S. free speech against Islamofascists -- it's also that they believe that U.S. Muslims are capable of violence in the name of Islam, in the U.S., to attack free speech and the Constitution that guarantees it.
Bingham didn't say she was afraid of demonstrations. She said she was afraid for the "the safety and security of our customers and employees."
Have any U.S. Islamic groups stood up to say, "Wait, we would never condone such violence?" Not according to any reports on this I've seen so far. This is yet additional evidence that U.S. mosques condone violent attacks on the U.S.
We need to monitor the mosques and find out what's being said inside them.
Dems famously like to say, "We can do better." Why is it they never say things like, "We can be great," "We can have fantastic success," "We can achieve wonderful things in this country"?
I believe it's because Dems don't trust America. They can't say that with them in charge, America will be great -- because they believe that, even if they were in charge, America still wouldn't be trustworthy. All they can say is that they think that if they were in charge, America would be "better."
They neither promise, nor believe in, a great America. Politicians can't always deliver what they do promise; in this case, Dems won't even promise to try to lead the country, to still greater success.
From commenter A.M. Whittaker:
Upon reflection, I could only wonder how the Crusades could come about; what sparked this reaction from Christians who are supposed to love their enemies and be committed to peace?
I shall list the various reasons...1. 613 Persians capture Damascus and Antioch
2. 614 Persians sack Jerusalem
3. 633 Muslims conquer Syria and Iraq
4. 635 Muslims begin the conquest of Persia and Syria
5. 635 Arab Muslims capture the city of Damascus
6. 636-637 Arab domination of Syria
7. 637 Arabs occupy Ctesiphon
8. 637 Jerusalem falls to Muslim forces
9. 638 Caliph Umar I enters Jerusalem
10. 639 Muslims conquer Egypt and Persia
11. 641 Islam spreads into Egypt
12. 641 Muslims conquer Alexandria
13. 649 Muawiya I leads raid against Cyprus sacking the capital Salamis-Constantia
14. 652 Sicily is attacked by Muslims
15. 653 Muawiya I leads raid against Rhodes
16. 654 Muawiya I conquers Cyprus
17. 655 Battle of the Masts
18. 661-680 Mu’awiya moves capital from Mecca to Damascus
19. 662 Egypt falls to the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates
20. 667 Sicily is attacked by Muslims
21. 668 First siege of Constantinople
22. 669 Muslim conquest reaches Morocco
23. 672 Muslims capture the island of Rhodes
24. 674 Arab conquest reaches Indus River
25. 698 Muslims capture Carthage
26. 700 Muslims raid Island of Sicily
27. 711 Muslims conquest of Sindh in Afghanistan
28. 711 Battle of Guadalate
29. 712 Conquest of Andulusia
30. 715 Muslim conquest of Spain
31. 716 Muslims captured Lisbon
32. 717 Cordova becomes capital of Andalusia (Spain)
33. 719 Muslims attack Septimania in Southern France
34. 721 Muslims cross the Pyrenees
35. 722 Battle of Covadonga First defeat of Muslims by Christians
36. 724 Muslims raid southern France and capture Carcassone and Nimes
37. 725 Muslim forces occupy Nimes, France
38. 730 Muslim forces occupy Narbonne and Avignon
39. 732 Battle of Tours (Christian Victory)
40. 735 Muslim invaders capture Arles
41. 750 Abbasids move capital to Baghdad
42. 756 The Emirate of Cordova is established
43. 759 Pippin III ends Muslim incursions in France
44. 792 Hisham I calls for a Jihad Thousands heed his call to cross the Pyrenees to subjugate France. Many cities are destroyed
45. 813 Muslims attack the Civi Vecchia near Rome
46. 816 The Moors support the Basques against the Franks
47. 827 Sicily is invaded by Muslims
48. 831 Muslims capture Palermo and make it their capital
49. 838 Muslim raiders sack Marseille
50. 841 Muslim forces capture Bari (in Italy)
51. 846 Muslim raiders attack areas near Ostia and Rome. Some enter Rome and damage the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. The Leonine Wall is built to discourage further Attacks.
52. 849 Battle of Ostia (Christian Victory)
53. 850 Perfectus, a Christian priest in Muslim Cordova is executed – one of the first of Many
54. 85111 young Christians are executed for insulting the Prophet Muhammed
55. 858 Muslim raiders attack Constantinople
56. 859 Muslim invaders capture Castrogiovanni slaughtering several thousand
57. 869 Arabs capture the island of Malta
58. 870 Muslim invaders capture Syracuse
59. 876 Muslims pillage Campagna in Italy
60. 879 The Seljuk Empire unites Mesapotamia and a large portion of Persia
61. 884 Muslims invading Italy burn the monastery of Monte Cassino to the ground
62. 900 The Fatimid Dynasty assumes control of Egypt
63. 902 The Muslim conquest of Sicily is completed when the Christian city of Toorminia is captured
64. 909 Sicily comes under control of the Fatimids
65. 909 The fatimid Dynasty assumes control of Egypt
66. 909 Muslims control all the passes in the Alps between France and Italy – cutting off passage between the two countries
67. 920 Muslim forces cross the Pyrenees, enter Gascony and reach as far as the gates of Toulouse
68. 972 The Fatimids of Egypt conquer North Africa
69. 981 Ramiro III, king of Leon, is defeated at Rueda
70. 985 Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir sacks Barcelona
71. 994 The monastery of Monte Cassino is destrpyed a second time by Arabs
72. 997 Under the leadership of Almanzar, Muslim forces march out of the city of Cordova and head north to capture Christian lands.
73. 997 Muslim forces burn Compostela to the ground
74. 1004 Arab raiders sack the Italian city of Pisa
75. 1009 The Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is destroyed by Muslim armies
76. 1009 Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah orders the the Holy Sepulcher and all Christian buildings in Jerusalem be destroyed
77. 1012 Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah orders the destruction of all Christian and Jewish houses of worship in his lands
78. 1012 Berber forces capture Cordova and order that half the population be executed
79. 1015 Arab Muslim forces conquer Sardinia
80. 1064 The Seljuk Turks conquer Christian Armenia
81. 1070 Seljuk Turks capture Jerusalem and begin persecuting Christian Pilgrims
82. 1071-1085 Seljuk Turks conquer most of Syria and Palestine
83. 1071 Battle of Manzikert
84. 1073 Seljuk Turks conquer Ankara
85. 1078 Seljuk Turks capture Nicaea
86. 1084 Seljuk Turks conquer Antioch
67. 1086 Battle of Zallaca
68. 1088 Patzinak Turks begin forming settlements between the Danube and the Balkans
69. 1090 Granada captured by Yusuf Ibn Tashfin
70. 1091 Cordova is captured by the Almoravids
Yesterday I quoted the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. trying to justify Saudi Arabia's use of physical violence to prevent non-Muslims from congregating in churches and synagogues:
As King Abdullah has said, and I think on American television, he said that we're pretty much like the Vatican. And one cannot imagine Muslims building a mosque inside the Vatican. Or Jews building a synagogue inside the Vatican. When the practice of religion is concerned, the regulation is that people can practice their religion in their homes any way they like. Without any hindrance. And that is the regulation in the kingdom.
(Video of the Ambassador saying this is here.) Since then great additional info on this has been posted here by several commenters.
Hexdump responds to the statements of the Saudi Ambassador:
When the practice of religion is concerned, the regulation is that people can practice their religion in their homes any way they like. Without any hindrance. And that is the regulation in the kingdom.Baloney. I lived in Saudi 1989-1993 and my wife was active in a clandestine christian network. They would meet regularily at members houses for services. At one point the "religious police" busted one of these meetings and some were jailed and some were evicted from the Kingdom.
That's jail time and deportation, for doing what the Saudi Ambassador claimed was permitted!
James M. shows how poorly Saudi Arabia compares to Israel, on the terms used by the Saudi Ambassador:
So what he's saying is that allowing a church in Saudi would be less like Israel allowing mosques on its territory, and more like Israel allowing a mosque on the Temple Mount.
Which would be silly.
Oh, wait…
And A.M. Whittaker further exposes the facetiousness of the Ambassador's comparison of Saudi Arabia to the Vatican:
As much as I am flattered that I was quoted, I think the point of my Vatican comment was not so much that Vatican City is so small (which is a valid point and germane to the comment), but despite the fact that within its gates it might be inappropriate and unseemly to worship in any fashion other than what is prescribed by the Roman Catholic Church (the Pope being the supreme head of the church), the largest mosque in Europe is outside the gates well within the Bishop of Rome's diocese (A Diocese is the territory or churches subject to the jurisdiction of a bishop. ) i.e The King may be Catholic in his palace, but his support staff, countrymen, tenants, and visitors in his kingdom are free to worship/or not worship according to their respective consciences.
Last week I posted video of the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. trying to present an argument we would accept in favor of the Saudi laws that forbid churches and synagogues. And let's bear in mind that "forbid" means that if Christians or Jews get together to worship, they will be physically harmed. From the video:
As King Abdullah has said, and I think on American television, he said that we're pretty much like the Vatican. And one cannot imagine Muslims building a mosque inside the Vatican. Or Jews building a synagogue inside the Vatican. When the practice of religion is concerned, the regulation is that people can practice their religion in their homes any way they like. Without any hindrance. And that is the regulation in the kingdom.
Got that? Non-Muslims can practice their religion "in their own homes any way they like." What an arrogant statement, in view of the fact that the way they like to practice their religion is not merely in their own homes, but in churches and synagogues, which Saudi law forbids to them under pain of physical violence.
Additionally, commenter A.M. Whittaker exposes the facetiousness of the comparison to the Vatican:
...while I am not a Roman Catholic nor have been to Vatican City - or Rome - I do know these facts:
The size of Vatican City is 108.7 acres (Acres not miles!)
It is surrounded by Rome
The population living within Vatican City is under 1000
All lay workers(about 3000) reside outside of Vatican City in Rome and its suburbs
The Saudi Ambassador pretends that the whole nation of Saudi Arabia is comparable to a city with a population of under 1000. The argument is so spurious as to appear duplicitous -- it depends on the Westerners in his audience not knowing the facts about the Vatican.
In light of the news that international pressure has saved his life, it's worth taking a moment to consider the heroism of Abdul Rahman. Rahman was told by the courts in Afghanistan that he would be executed if he didn't renounce Christianity -- and he refused to renounce it. He felt so strongly about the beauty of Christianity that he refused to convert from it, even under this threat.
That's heroism.
Rahman, meanwhile, said he was fully aware of his choice and was ready to die for it, according to an interview published Sunday in an Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
"I am serene. I have full awareness of what I have chosen. If I must die, I will die," Abdul Rahman told the Rome daily, responding to questions sent to him via a human rights worker who visited him in prison.
"Somebody, a long time ago, did it for all of us," he added in a clear reference to Jesus.
Rahman also told the Italian newspaper that his family - including his ex-wife and teenage daughters - reported him to the authorities three weeks ago.
He said he made his choice to become a Christian "in small steps," after he left Afghanistan 16 years ago. He moved to Pakistan, then Germany. He tried to get a visa in Belgium.
"In Peshawar I worked for a humanitarian organization. They were Catholics," Rahman said. "I started talking to them about religion, I read the Bible, it opened my heart and my mind."
From Olah Chadasha's weblog, Greetings from the French Hill:
Hamas - the best thing to happen to Israel
If anyone had a doubt that Hamas winning the elections in the PA was a good thing, we got final proof of it today.
Reuters has quoted Incoming Palestinian interior minister Saeed Seyam, chosen by Hamas to oversee three security services saying-"he will not order the arrest of militants carrying out attacks against Israel."
Finally an honest Palestinian. After years of dealing with the 2 faced Fatah and Co. Telling us one thing and then going and doing the exact opposite, we got a party that truly has no problem to say what they think.
No more games, no more fake negotiations that they never fill, no more lies, and no more fake love. They hate us, we know they hate us, they SAY they hate us. This is someone I can Deal with (and I have just the weapon to do it - F-15 anyone??).
Hamas has managed to do what no one in the Israeli Right has been able to do for years, Shut the Crazy Israeli left up. It's amazing how quiet it is around here since they have won. I don't hear the Bailin's and the Peres's whining about giving them another chance and that they really do want peace, but don't know how to show it.
I suspect that the Mid-East is changing faster than most of us realize. From Victor Davis Hanson:
Even our current clinical depression is typically American. In July 1864, Lincoln was hated and McClellan and the Copperheads who wished a cessation of war and bisection of country canonized. Truman left office with the nation's anger that he had failed in Korea. As George Bush Sr. departed, the conventional wisdom was that the budding chaos and redrawing of the map of Eastern Europe would prompt decades of instability as former Communists could not simply be spoon fed democracy and capitalism. During Afghanistan by week five we were in a quagmire; the dust storm supposedly threatened our success in Iraq - in the manner that the explosion of the dome at Samarra marked the beginning of a hopeless civil war that "lost" Iraq.
The fact is that we are close to seeing a democratically elected government emerge, backed by an increasingly competent army, pitted against a minority of a minority in Zaraqawi's Wahhabi jihadists.
While we worry about our own losses, both human and financial, al Qaeda knows that thousands of its terrorists are dead, with its leadership dismantled or in hiding - and most of the globe turning against it. For all our depression at home, we can still win two wars - the removal of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of jihadists that followed him - and leave a legitimate government that is the antithesis of both autocracy and theocracy.
Syria is out of Lebanon - but only as long as democracy is in Iraq. Libya and Pakistan have come clean about nuclear trafficking - but only as long as the U.S. is serious about reform in the Middle East.
And the Palestinians are squabbling among themselves, as democracy is proving not so easy to distort after all - a sort of Western Trojan Horse that they are not so sure they should have brought inside their walls. When has Hamas ever acted as if it has a "sort of" charter to "sort of" destroy Israel? We worry that Iran is undermining Iraq. The mullahs are terrified that the democracy across the border may undermine them - as if voting and freedom could trump their beheadings and stonings.
Ever since 9/11 we have been in a long, multifaceted, and much-misunderstood war against jihadists and their autocratic enablers from Manhattan to Kabul, from Baghdad to the Hindu Kush, from London and Madrid to Bali and the Philippines. For now, Iraq has become the nexus of that struggle, in the heart of the ancient caliphate, rather than the front once again in Washington and New York. Whose vision of the future wins depends on who keeps his nerve - or to paraphrase the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, "Hard pounding, gentlemen; but we will see who can pound the longest."
You know you're doing some good blogging when you are getting comments that are as good as blog posts. Today once again I'm quoting a comment from Olah Chadasha. Olah commented on this post, in which I quoted the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. as admitting that Saudi Jews and Christians are forbidden to congregate for worship, are forced to worship only in their own homes, and are forbidden to have churches or synagogues.
Olah adds:
Did he mention the fact that Jews are NOT allowed to be buried in Saudi soil? Or, as you pointed out, that any-one of another faith are not permitted to publically pray or show any symbols or behavior(s) of their faith, outside of Islam? Who does this guy think he’s kidding?!? Even with government controlled press in Saudi Arabia, what’s happening in there is trickling out to the rest of the world. Is he actually convincing anybody with his meaningless diatribes?
And let's be specific about what it means, that non-Muslims are forbidden to do such things in Saudi Arabia. It means, that if the non-Muslims do such things, they will be physically attacked. They will be jailed and subject to severe punishment.
In lieu of actually having any sort of strategy whatsoever to prevent another 9-11, Dem leadership likes to all get together and agree to say the same criticisms of GWB. This month a phrase many top Dems are using is "dangerously incompetent." Examples:
Senator Biden: "These guys have priorities that are backwards and they’re dangerously, dangerously incompetent."
Senator Ted Kennedy: "President Bush continues to see Iraq through the same rose-colored glasses he’s always used. He assures the American people that we are winning, even though even his policies have been dangerously incompetent and Iraq’s future and the lives of our troops hang so perilously on the precipice of a new disaster."
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid: "To me it shows how dangerously incompetent [Bush] is.”
Senator Debbie Stabenow spoke in front of a red sign that said, "Dangerously Incompetent" -- except from a photo it looked like a comment on her!
Isn't it amazing that the Senate Dems all get together, and work up something they want to present in unison to the U.S. public, and it's not even an attempt at a new policy or a new strategy? It's just a new stupid insult? What good are these people trying to accomplish?
Doesn't it seem a bit duplicitous that they don't appear on one podium or release one statement signed by all -- but instead go around all parroting the same phrase, as if it just popped into their heads that second?
"We can do better," they like to say. But evidently all they really want to do is make up better insults.
I just ordered a new digital camera, a Panasonic Lumix LX1. 8 megapixels, image stabilization, raw format, 16:9 aspect ratio, video capability -- it's pretty cool. Some reports say that it can be noisy over 100 ISO, but I'm willing to put up with that to get the rest of the great features. Photos here should be cooler than ever starting in a week or so.
On Tuesday the Saudi Ambassador to the United States threw a big shebang at the Millenium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.
Check out the woman with the camera crew -- she was showing the Saudis that American women don't wear burqas.
His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Ambassador of the United Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to The United States, irritated me at the start of his remarks, by beginning in Arabic. I considered this rude, because he didn't appear to offer any translation. Immediately non-Arabic speakers were excluded from what he was saying. This goes ominously well with the Koranic teaching that other religions are inferior to Islam. As a matter of fact, the Ambassador went out of his way to point this item of Koranic teaching out to us. From an audio recording of his remarks:
We Muslims not only accept but we also revere and adore all of the prophets, from Noah to Jesus and Mohammed, [odd that he mentioned no famous Jewish religious figures. -- ed.] and hold them equally as prophets of God sent down for the education and betterment of mankind. We also consider Jews and Christians as people of the book, and their books, whether as Torah or New Testament, are revered by Muslims, as we revere our own book, which is the Koran, which we believe is a completion of the revealed books, whether it is the Torah or the New Testament. And so, this is the ideal state.
In other words, the world's other religions are incomplete. Only Islam is "the ideal state." Perhaps that is part of the reason the Ambassador chose to open his remarks in a language used only by the Muslims in the room.
The Ambassador didn't mention that the Koran instructs that "people of the book" be treated as second-class citizens, but he was forced to admit it when an audience member spoke up and asked aloud if he would comment on the status of churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The Ambassador then stated that none were permitted. Jews and Christians were welcome to worship all they want... in their homes. But congregation in places of worship, is forbidden to them. Here's the video:
Click image to play. Requires Flash.
Listen to how he sounds. He doesn't sound hopeful. He sounds like he submits to something sadly, and like he's determined for us to submit too. "Islam" means "to submit." From Wikipedia:
Islam, "submission (to the will of God)" is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the world's second-largest religion. Followers of Islam are known as Muslims or Mohammedan. Muslims believe that God revealed his divine word directly to mankind through many prophets, and that Muhammad was the final prophet of Islam.
...Muslim, a follower of Islam, an agentive noun meaning "one who surrenders" or "submits" to God.
What's wrong with this belonging in our culture, is that, as we have seen in the riots over the Mohammed cartoons, and as we see again in the treatment of non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia, to Muslims, submission means sacrificing our freedom of speech, and treating non-Muslims as second-class citizens with severely restricted freedoms of all kinds.
I'm in favor of doing business with the Saudis. But until Islam reforms and learns not to physically attack people of other faiths, it is important to do as Robert Spencer has advised:
Up until a few weeks ago, critics of the war were arguing that the U.S. was failing in Iraq because the price paid by the U.S. in terms of casualties to our soldiers was too high. Well, that argument's out the window. From NewsMax:
The press is marking the third anniversary of the liberation of Iraq with an avalanche of reports that a sectarian "civil war" has broken out, which, reporters say, means U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are on the verge of failure.
But only a few short weeks ago reporters were measuring success [or, in their case, failure] in Iraq by a completely different standard: the number of U.S. troops killed in combat operations.
So why the shift in focus? It turns out that while the so-called Iraqi civil war has been raging, the number of U.S. casualties has plummeted to less than half of what they were over the previous five months.
In fact, as I posted last week, by almost any standard, we're achieving a historic win in Iraq:
Iraq today vs. Iraq under Saddam:
- 3 times less civilian deaths per day
- 60% decline in infant mortality
- A public that believes in democracy 4-to-1 over dictatorship
- "Surging" participation in all elections
- Doubling of oil revenues
- Improved access to clean water, health care and education
- Free print and broadcast press
Other key measures:
- The number of Iraqi boots on the ground has surpassed that of Coalition forces
- Coalition casualties are down by 62% versus year-previous numbers
- Casualties among Iraqi police and army units are down sharply
- Attacks on other soft targets are down
- Popular support for a tips hotline is "dismantling" the insurgency
- Iraqis believe their own security forces are winning the fight against the terrorists
There's no way to look at those numbers and argue that we're losing in Iraq. Has there been a price paid for the great gains we've made in Iraq so far? There certainly has, although the loss of American life is historically low for a war effort. 20 times more U.S. troops -- 58,000 -- died in Vietnam. But if the Left thought that there was no price to be paid to prevent another 9-11, they were kidding themselves. Achieving national safety has always required heroism and tragic sacrifice, and that has not changed.
This week, however, the Left is saying that there's a civil war in Iraq, so all those gains will be lost. It's an argument based, not on a fact, but on a pessimistic prediction: even if there is a civil war, that's no guarantee that all these gains will be lost.
But is there a civil war? Or is it just the people of Iraq vs. the terrorist hold-outs who want to take over and follow Saddam as dictators of the nation? David Frum says it can't be called a civil war, because the insurgents have no chance at gaining control of the country:
Is Iraq engaged in a civil war? Vice President Cheney has taken some heat for saying "no" on yesterday's "Face on the Nation," but he's right. Not to minimize the problems in Iraq, but we do not face the problem of contending centers warring for power - which is what I think most of us mean when we use the term "civil war." Rather, we are facing an attack on a weak government by an insurgency that can command support from only a very small fraction of the Iraqi population. The insurgency is brutal and effective and difficult to suppress. But it is purely a destructive force, not a contender for power.
If the United States were to withdraw prematurely from Iraq, the odds are vanishingly small that the insurgency would be able to take power. Much more likely, unfortunately, would be a "Guatamelan solution," in which the Shiite majority would suppress terrorism by waging all-out war against Iraq's minority Sunni population - with horrific humanitarian and regional consequences.
Conclusion: so far we're winning in a big way in Iraq, and the Left is going to look pretty silly if this so-called "civil war" is confirmed as being nothing more than a clean-up effort against terrorists and remnants of Saddam's supporters.
Yesterday Iraqi General Georges Sada spoke at the Wednesday Morning Club in Los Angeles. I got some video of him describing his first-hand experience with regard to Saddam's decision to hide the Iraqi WMDs.
(Click picture to play QuickTime version.)
(Or, click here to play the Windows Media Player version.)
The video was captured using a camera that's primarily used for still photographs. But even so, the General's personality comes through in a way it never could from a written transcript.
At the moment, there's no independent corroboration of Sada's description of events. Video such as this lets us begin to form an impression of his personality so as to help us evaluate his statements.
General Sada is the author of Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied And Survived Saddam Hussein.
From National Review comes this report on a tremendous amount of good news from Iraq, which contradicts what MSM is telling us:
For the next hour and a half, Lt. Indyk, Marine Corporal Richard Gibson, and Marine Sergeant J. D. Johannes laid out their case. Lt. Indyk reported Iraqi growth in GDP and personal income. He contrasted the dinar's stabilization under the Coalition with the savings-wrecking inflations under the Baathist regime. He chronicled the increase in electrical supply, and the doubling of oil revenues in the post-Saddam era. He put numbers to the enormous increase in cell phones, cars, and satellite TVs.
Indyk discussed advances in services as well: the 60 percent decline of infant mortality in post-Saddam Iraq, and the improved access to schooling and medical care. And he described the explosion in business formation that has followed in the overthrow of one of the most regulated economies on earth.
"If Iraqis listened to American media," said Lt. Indyk, "they'd hear that their economy is wrecked and that their services are in shambles. ... But they don't get their news on Iraq through the Western media. They live there. And they say the opposite."Next he laid out metrics of democratization. First among these is surging participation of all segments of the Iraqi populace in elections, not only in the national government, but in Iraq's city and state elections as well. He enumerated, too, the growth of political parties, and proliferation of a free press in print and broadcast.
Then he admitted that facts like these, taken on their own, were insufficient for forming an accurate assessment of progress in Iraq.
"If material and institutional circumstances are really improving," he said, "this will be reflected in the attitudes of the Iraqi people themselves. The polls will either confirm what the official statistics tell us, or they will contradict those statistics."
Indyk then proceeded to describe the findings of the most extensive and scientific polls of Iraq opinion, performed by Arabic speakers for Oxford Research International near the beginning of 2004, then at the end of 2005. These polls covered all of Iraq's major regions and demographic groups.
Asked to compare their current lives with their lives under Saddam, Iraqis reported an improvement in availability of necessities, and an improvement in overall economic wellbeing. They reported superior access to clean water, health care, and education. Iraqi respondents believed that their local governments had improved. Asked what form of government they hoped to live under going forward, democracy won handily: four-to-one over the rule of one-man, and ten-to-one over totalitarianism.
Iraqis list security as their most pressing problem. But a plurality of Iraqis feel safer now than under Saddam, and a majority feel safer from ordinary crime. Moreover, better than 60 percent feel personally safe in their neighborhoods.
Marine Corporal Gibson's presentation sorted out these seemingly contradictory findings. The problem most Americans have, he said, in understanding Iraqi opinions on security, is that we operate from a different baseline. Iraq under Saddam was an incredibly violent place.
Iraq Body Count, an antiwar group that keeps a running tally of Iraqi civilian deaths, reports that the daily toll under the occupation falls in the range of 25 to 28 per day. But under Saddam's rule, the death toll averaged three times that, including 600,000 civilian executions recorded by the Documental Center for Human Rights, and the 100,000 Kurds killed during the Anfal operation. A violent day under the coalition would be just a routine day under Saddam.
Let's recap. Iraq today vs. Iraq under Saddam:
So much success is astonishing. Our MSM propaganda system is suppressing the news and making every effort to falsely convince people that we are not winning in Iraq.
But wait, there's more. Countering MSM reports that make it sound like things are getting worse in Iraq:
Coalition casualties declined by 27 percent in 2005. They have declined by 62 percent in 2006, measured against the comparable period of 2005.
The insurgent strategy of targeting Iraqi police and army units peaked in July of 2005. Since then, casualties among those units have declined by 33 percent.
Attacks on other soft targets are also down. For instance, there were 146 strikes against the oil infrastructure in 2004, compared to 101 in 2005.
The tipping point, Gibson contends, occurred last March, when the number Iraqi boots on the ground - police and army units - surpassed those of Coalition forces. From that point on, the new Iraqi government has proved increasingly able to hold and garrison areas that have been cleared on insurgents.
But more subtly, the growth of native Iraqi security shattered the coalition of Baathist recidivists and Sunni jihadists. The last thing the Baathist factions want is all-out sectarian civil war. "The tactics used to provoke it - mass slaughter of civilians - not only strengthens popular support for the government," said Gibson, "but threatens to turn that government into a blunt instrument of retribution against them."
From March of 2005 to September of 2005, the number of civilian tips informing on insurgents increased from 483 to 4,700, as numerous Sunni tribes declared outright war on al Qaeda. "The insurgency in Iraq," said Gibson, "is being dismantled by the equivalent of a Tips hotline."
Gibson cited polling of Iraqi opinion to support his thesis. Fifty-eight percent of Iraqis feel threatened by terrorists, compared with 10 percent who feel threatened by Coalition troops. And by 71 percent to 9 percent, Iraqis believe that their own security forces - Iraqi security forces - are winning the fight against terror.
"It is fascinating to contrast the triumphant face of the insurgency in our nightly news to the pessimistic assessments of its leaders in their intercepted correspondence," said Gibson. "My assessment of their prospects varies little from their own."
..."If Iraqis listened to American media," said Lt. Indyk, "they'd hear that their economy is wrecked and that their services are in shambles. They'd hear that they are less safe now than before the war, and that they are religious fanatics who demand a theocracy. But they don't get their news on Iraq through the Western media. They live there. And they say the opposite."
Again, to recap:
While MSM propaganda is so widespread that many are concerned that we can't win in Iraq, the facts are that we are winning spectacularly.
I often get the feeling that people are so used to seeing movies, that they want to measure life by the same standards of success people are held to in the theater. They want everything wrapped up in a neat little bow in two hours. Real life isn't like that. Real life requires sacrifice and, often, tragedy. Changing world history, as we are doing in Iraq, takes years, sacrifice, and tragedy to complete. But the people of Iraq feel it's worth it for them. And a democratic, capitalistic Iraq, means a safer world for us as well.
