He Got Paid for That?
November 22nd, 2002 - 2:04 pm
Jesse, I usually enjoy your work. But this snide, willfully ignorant and misleading little piece is beneath you.
Jesse, I usually enjoy your work. But this snide, willfully ignorant and misleading little piece is beneath you.
Snide? Okay. Ignorant? That remains to be demonstrated — followed by ‘willfully.’
Misleading?
Well, he is certainly spinning his opinion in a very particular direction, but to his credit, he did provide the links that permit the reader to draw separate conclusions.
The closing comments are obviously dependent on the validity of the opening assertions, but IF correct, it is a pretty reasonable assessment of US foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East.
I grant the “snide” — I tend to be snide towards those who use chemical weapons on innocent people — but I can’t respond to the rest unless you lay out just what’s wrong with the piece.
I accidentally clicked on the link before returning here to read what you wrote.
Khazraji has been under investigation for some time; a quick Google taught me that. (Here’s a site: http://www.plp.org/misc/iraqopp081702.html.) Actually, Google tells me that this information is all over the ‘Web.
This site places his family in Mosul (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/13/1026185126453.html), which is in Kurdistan, but his family name tracks back to the time of the Prophet in Medina – http://www.al-islam.org/ashura/45.htm – so he’s probably not a Kurd (or Turcoman) himself.
Anyway, how is that article “willfully ignorant and misleading”? If you don’t think the Danes have a guy who gassed Kurds then you need to tell us why. If you don’t think that Kurd-slaughtering is a net minus on a resume then you DEFINITELY need to tell us why.
Hold on a moment, here. This schlep was State’s pick, with associated rumblings by the celebrated Enemy of Third World Democracy, the CIA. Foggy Bottom has an affinity for “moderate evildoers” and to choose this Ba’athist thug is par for the course of the Realpolitik mental-masturbatory pipe-dream that “benevolent dictatorship” isn’t an oxymoron.
Every indication I have shows me that Khazraji made the news in February and March when a meeting was held; war crimes were being mulled as early as December of last year; and that he hasn’t made significant news since.
This is State’s pick. Not Bush’s, and I trust that he’ll take a pass at any thug-for-thug swap; if Bush were as neanderthal-cynic as U.S. diplomats, “regime change” would never have made it out of Cabinet meetings.