Free Republic

In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with World War II jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as “intelligence”. We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George W. Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage. No wonder, then, that Hans Blix’s blunt refutation of America’s “intelligence” at the UN on Friday...

YOU'VE got to hand it to Saddam. In one brisk, neat letter to Kofi Annan, he pulled the rug from right under George Bush's feet. There was the American president last week, playing the role of multilateralist, warning the world that Iraq had one last chance through the UN to avoid Armageddon. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace," he told us all in the General Assembly, "it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long range missiles and all related material." And that, of course, is the point. Saddam would do everything...

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0395/9503079.htm Middle East History?It Happened In March Israel Charged With Systematic Harassment of U.S. Marines By Donald Neff March 1995, pgs. 79-81 It was 12 years ago, on March 14, 1983, that the commandant of the Marine Corps sent a highly unusual letter to the secretary of defense expressing frustration and anger at Israel. General R.H. Barrow charged that Israeli troops were deliberately threatening the lives of Marines serving as peacekeepers in Lebanon. There was, he wrote, a systematic pattern of harassment by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that was resulting in "life-threatening situations, replete with verbal degradation of the officers,...

The rise and rise of Robert Fisk must surely rate as one of the more curious developments of the past year in our country's news media. Only 11 months ago he was just a relatively obscure Beirut-based correspondent for the British Independent and the author of a couple of well-received books on Ireland and Lebanon. But then came September 11 and, seemingly overnight, the unknown journalist reinvented himself as a pundit on the entire Muslim world -- and he has had many antipodean takers since then. Although Dr Fisk (he earned his PhD at Trinity College, in Dublin) nowadays enjoys...

BEIRUT, 23 May — As 12 of the 13 Palestinian fighters exiled by Israel left Cyprus for European countries yesterday, the International Red Cross stated that their “transfer” outside the occupied Palestinian West Bank was illegal under humanitarian law. Citing Article 49 of Annex 4 of the Geneva Conventions, Vincent Lusser, spokesman for the Middle East department of the ICRC in Geneva, told The Independent that “transfers outside occupied territory are illegal and that covers the 13 men.”The EU has claimed that “humanitarian” concern prompted them to give temporary exile to the 13 Palestinians, all of whom spent weeks in...

A Better Man Than TheyRobert Fisk is Real Reporter, Something Most of His Petty Critics Will Never Be by Derek Copold Admittedly, Mr. Robert Fisk’s latest column spends more time wallowing in self-pity than addressing any real arguments, but still, it makes one thing very clear: Mr. Fisk is not loved by all. Ugly letters and e-mail pour in, and rival columnists barely bother to suppress their glee when he’s beaten by Afghans. Mr. Fisk has even been threatened by a Hollywood big shot; Actor John Malkovich mentioned—in jest, one hopes—that he would like to shoot the Independent reporter dead. Oh yes,...