Posted on 05/14/2004 11:24:22 PM PDT by LifeTrek
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A British reporter says a U.S. journalist in Baghdad told him she wants to see more Iraqis die so President Bush will be thrown out of office in November.
Toby Harnden, Middle East correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, said he engaged in the conversation while taking a break by the pool at the Al-Hamra Hotel in the Iraqi capital.
In an opinion piece for the Spectator magazine of Britain, Harnden said at poolside he "was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials."
The American journalist told Harnden she had been disturbed by his argument that Iraqis were better off now than under Saddam Hussein.
Harnden said he heard from her the usual "script" from antiwar activists, "no WMD, no 'imminent threat' (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world, etc."
But the American then came to her point, Hernden said.
"Not only had she 'known' the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the 'evil' George W. Bush would no longer be running her country.
"Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. 'Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.'"
"Startled by her candor," said Herndon, "I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing."
The British journalist said, "She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go."
He then suggest to her that by this logic another Sept. 11 attack, on about Sept. 11, would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry's poll numbers.
"Well, that's different — that would be Americans," she said, haltingly, according to Harnden. "I guess I'm a bit of an isolationist."
In his column, Harnden then commented on the "moral degeneracy of these sentiments," concluding with:
"Whatever we thought about the war before it was launched, it is imperative that the forces of Arab nationalism and Islamism that now threaten to destroy Iraq are defeated. If America fails in Iraq it will be all of us in the West, not just Bush, who will suffer. But those who would be most in peril, of course, would be the Iraqis, who deserve better than to have their country treated as an electoral playground by the American Left or Right. To wish otherwise is as sick as the grins on the faces of the Abu Ghraib torturers."
War must be hell. Imagine having to "take a break at the pool" at their Baghdad hotel. Yes, the conditions must be horrendous.
You'd think every square inch of Iraq is a bombed out wasteland. Yet, somehow, the media can find sanctuary at the hotel pool. Thank Allah for that!
I've written quite a bit about this recently on various strings:
and this one:"The cultural extremists are whipping themselves up for a violent showdown. To anyone who knows some of these people (and I know a lot of them), it is obvious that this ad was just hyperbole and rhetoric---for now.
It is very dangerous hyperbole, however, since words have power and the ever deepening spiral of extremist rhetoric, necessary to overcome the short attention span of the typical extremist supporter, must sooner or later reach a kind of critical mass.
At that point, some spark will ignite the left's counterparts to Tim McVeigh and the years of incitement will explode into lethal violence. Given the herd mentality of the far left, its principal and defining characteristic, this is likely to overcome any collective sense of self-preservation and reach serious dimensions with stunning speed."
An important new variation might be the use of locally recruited collaborators rather than immigrant operatives to execute the attack.....There should be no shortage of willing recruits if the planners know some psychology and have done their homework on the antiwar movement and far left subculture. An ideal recruit would be a socially isolated individual who has already tried to gain social acceptance in a left-wing organization but who has failed through poor social skills or low status rather than any lack of revolutionary zeal. A working class student who has been rejected by middle-class trustafarian lefties for social reasons would be in denial about this, of course, and the most unbalanced would seek some spectacular gesture to guarantee acceptance.
also this, from a different string and based on my infiltration of far-left chat-rooms:
The naive arrogance of these people is mind-boggling.....Their ideas of violent resistance involve such fantasies as burglarizing National Guard armories or using drug-culture connections to secure firearms and heavy weapons. This, in their view, would instantly allow them to "meet the fascists on even terms." Given that the average lefty literally does not know which side of a gun the sights are on, this seems like an invitation to disaster. It is consistent with their ideology and worldview, however, and any expression of skepticism is shouted down.
That election was a blowout for a liberal. Nixon was a Republican Liberal with. His Keynesianism began the inflation the flowered so beautifully under Carter who had no notion wo what was needed to fix it. But there was a silver lining. Nixon's economic idiocy ultimately gave us Reagan and the destruction of the Evil Empire as well as a return to sane economic policies for the first time sinc JFK.
If AQ has the insight to pick up on such subtleties, which I doubt.
Good insights. And after M&M, we know what terror even a pair of knuckleheads with one rifle can bring. Imagine 50 M&Ms going at once, just taking the odd pot-shot about one week per shooting team. Even though the left by and large aren't shooters, it doesn't take much skill to hit folks with an AR-15 or equal at 50-200 yards. Especially if their rifle is alread equipped with optics, and zeroed in for them at operational ranges.
"Those of us who work for newspapers grow our Shia beards or, in the case of the women and the occasional John Simpson wannabe, wear hijabs and trust in fate"
As I surmised previously, this would explain Nick Berg's beard and maybe even his personal effects.
I agree on that one.
DKK
It's coming. If even a remnant of America is to regain her Freedom, I don't see how it can be avoided.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1136278/posts
Quislings in theater aiming for the SecDef.
Weekly Standard - David Gelernter
"Too many Democrats and some Republicans are acting as if Abu Ghraib means that the Bush administration is in trouble. They are wrong. It means that America is in trouble. And when America is in trouble, every public official is required to help."
This is what we all need to understand.
Good editorial here:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/095tzpqo.asp
DKK
"Leftists themselves are too cowardly to actually carry out massive terrorist" attacks.You have a point there. The Eugene anarchists and some ELF thugs might be groomed into some really nasty terrorists.What about eco-terrorism? I live in Seattle and we saw just how violent these wack-pukes can be during the WTO riots.
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a rebel army, as in a civil war. But if it was a coalition of Islamic & homegrown leftist terrorist groups carrying out a dirty war, that would be possible.
Then what's really weird is if you add in some of those neo-Nazi skinhead/Christian Identity groups who were writing approvingly of 9/11 a couple years ago. Can you imagine Islamists, eco-terrorists, and Aryan Nation-types coming together on a coherent political platform on which to try to base a breakaway country?
I figure to have a true civil war you'd need actual units of the armed forces switching sides. A colonel or general, of course, would have to have a somewhat realistic political vision or philosophy to seduce them and to get the troops under their command to rally around. In today's world that rules out leftism, Islamofacism, or Naziism.
There's always Aztlan & the Reconquista to worry about, but that's not the issue that's driving the country apart like the war on terror is.
It is not at all amazing. It has been blatantly obvious for quite a while.
I know you are right - look at the Unabomber, and the radicals of the 60's. But there are fewer of them than there are of us. I also know it just takes one bomb, or WMD (bio or chem), to wipe out a lot of guns and the people who hold them.
Why am I getting a red x instead of your blue logo?
One can have a regeneration without a DW. Unfortunately, we've too many hotheads on both sides.
Watching this unfold, I feel like a straddling unionist in the South circa 1859.
You are thinking in conventional terms. If it ever came to civil strife in this country it would be largely irregular or guerrila warfare -- riots in the streets, civil destruction and a breakdown of order and eventually economic activity. The left can be very violent...their roots are in violence but not in the kind of violence that is army on army, in the kind that brought about the French and Russian revolutions. Ask the people of L.A., who have suffered through many riots, whether Democrat voters and consticuencies can be violent!
Yep. Just imagine 20 or 30 active Mohammed and Malvo-like teams, and a Madrid type bomb going off every week. That's what a dirty war might look like.
It's like being on a distant mountaintop with a telescope, watching two distant trains on a single track, going at each other full speed.
So much of our vital infrastructure travels right through leftist urban strongholds. Think about the pipelines and railroads and highways which could be cut by sustained insurrection.
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