The New York Times is against war with Iraq, and is unwilling to limit its opposition to President Bush's desire for "regime change" to its editorial page and opinion columns.
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| | | Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com). | |
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On July 31 and Aug. 1, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked some of the leading authorities on Iraq not currently in government service to testify. One of the witnesses was Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear engineer who defected in 1994. Hamza told the senators Saddam would have nuclear weapons by 2005, if not sooner.
The Los Angeles Times led its coverage of the hearings with Hamza's testimony, as did CNN. Most other news organizations featured it prominently. The New York Times didn't mention Hamza.
"What there is now is evidence that Saddam has reinvigorated his nuclear weapons program," agreed Richard Butler, the Australian who headed the U.N. weapons inspection program. But The Times didn't mention that part of Butler's testimony, either.
The experts agreed Saddam was a menace who could not be prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons by a policy of "containment." They disagreed about how dangerous Saddam is right now, and how difficult it would be to remove him.
The Times led with the testimony of Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said "it is incredibly dangerous to be dismissive" of the Iraqi military.
Retired Egyptian Gen. Salah Halaby said: "The Iraqi army has no chance whatsoever to stand steadfast, and will fall like a sandcastle." The Times didn't report Halaby's opinion.
The motto of The New York Times is "All the News That's Fit to Print." But under the regime of publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. and editor Howell Raines, news is twisted to fit their political agenda.
This means that those who depend on The Times for information are missing signs that war, if not imminent, is likely to come pretty soon.
The Times gave a good deal of play to the statement of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in the midst of an election campaign he is likely to lose, that he opposes military action against Iraq. Less attention was given to the fact that the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal will set sail for the Mediterranean at the end of August. A pleasure cruise? Probably not.
On Aug. 6, The Washington Post published a leaked account of a briefing a RAND Corp. expert gave July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a quasi-official body composed chiefly of retired generals and admirals. Laurent Murawiec described Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil," and recommended that the United States seize its oil fields if the Saudis didn't stop their support for international terrorism.
Murawiec's assessment of the Saudis is accurate and refreshing. But neither it nor the remedy he proposes is particularly new. Debkafile, a private intelligence service based in Israel, reported in March that in a "frank" private discussion with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Vice President Dick Cheney warned him the United States might consider seizing the oil fields if the Saudis persisted in their evil ways.
The interesting questions about the Murawiec briefing are: Who leaked it? Why? And why now? It seems to me to be a not-so-subtle shot across the bow of the Saudis, telling them the time has come to choose: Choose us, or choose the consequences. This could mean the time for action against Iraq is drawing nigh.
Stratfor.com, a private intelligence service based in Austin, Texas, has been examining the pattern of the call-up of Reserve and National Guard troops. "The current mobilizations suggest a repeat of the Desert Storm timetable," Stratfor said. Call-ups for the Gulf war began in August 1990, with the invasion taking place the following January.
David Warren wondered in his Ottawa Citizen column why Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been so uncharacteristically restrained in his response to the horrific bombing at Hebrew University.
"Sharon is holding his fire because something is happening on the horizon that is bigger than the fire at his feet," Warren speculates. "The something is almost certainly Iraq."
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