Blog of Adam Daifallah -- author, journalist, law student. Lover of politics, writing, golf, curling, fitness, fashion, bacon and maple products -- not necessarily (but probably) in that order. Partisan of the Anglosphere. Contact me via email at adam@daifallah.com. This summer I am joined by Keir Wilmut and Omar Soliman.

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

Must, Must, Must Read
OK, have I been emphatic enough? This oped from the Los Angeles Times (registration required, but free) was written by Matthew Gutman, a friend who works for the Jerusalem Post, about his recent experiences in Iraq. The emotion in this piece is powerful. I feel exactly the same way as him.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 12:08 AM

  

Saturday, December 27, 2003

Well said Stanley...
Stanley Hartt, former chief of staff to Brian Mulroney and the chairman of Solomon Smith Barney, on the antics of Joe Clark and Scott Brison. The piece is all the more significant given that Hartt was until recently a big Brison booster.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:13 PM

  

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Gephardt's moxie
The newspaper where I formally worked, The New York Sun, continues to write newsy stories (unlike CNN), living up to its reputation as the newspaper world's "little engine that could." The lovely Luiza Savage, who is travelling with Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt, reports out an interview in which Gephardt asserts that he would toughen up America's stand against its putative Middle Eastern "ally," Saudi Arabia. A snippet:

In an interview with The New York Sun, Mr. Gephardt said he would not rule out economic sanctions or the threat of military force against the kingdom, which he accuses of financing terrorists.

“What I would do as president is lead a world alliance to try to change their behavior. I don’t pretend that would be easy. I don’t advocate that we could easily get that resolved. But I think we’ve got to try,” he said.

“I believe that the Saudis — in part because they have the greatest amount of oil in the world and we are dependent on oil — they have misused and supported terrorism with a lot of that money. They also support schools that train people to be terrorists,” he said.

Asked whether he would use economic sanctions or the threat of military force to pressure the kingdom, Mr. Gephardt would not rule out any options.

Good for Dick Gephardt. I have long thought the Bush administration to be vulnerable on its mollycoddling of the House of Saud. But most Democrats are too pussilanimous to speak up on it, fearful of coming down "to the right" of Bush on the issue. Looks like there's at least one Dem with the intestinal fortitude to do so.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:30 AM

  

Monday, December 22, 2003

CNN story on Chalabi: Completely Non Newsworthy
The mainstream media continues to recycle patent falsehoods about Iraqi political leader Ahmad Chalabi. In this "news story" (based on a Sunday interview on "Late Edition" with Chalabi) CNN brings up this tired old canard about Chalabi's bank fraud conviction in Jordan without doing any digging whatsoever. This "story" epitomizes the culture of lazy/biased journalism that I believe has so tainted post-war (and pre-war, for that matter) news coverage. Let's deconstruct this thing. First, the headline.

Chalabi dismisses Jordanian fraud charges
Iraqi politician backed by Pentagon: 'Let them come and fix it'
Sunday, December 21, 2003 Posted: 7:51 PM EST (0051 GMT)

So,why is it news that Chalabi has dismissed the fraud charge? He has dismissed the charge since the day it was levied, way back in 1992. He has publicly dismissed it literally hundreds of times. Why this headline?

Second, politican "backed by Pentagon" is sloppy. Many people back Chalabi. Some at the Pentagon like him, some don't like him. (If he had truly been championed by the Pentagon, he'd probably be president of an Iraqi provisional government by now). But many on Capitol Hill support him as well (two that I can think of off the top of my head are Sens. Brownback and McCain).

Let's go further down.

In 1992, a Jordanian military court sentenced Chalabi in absentia to 22 years at hard labor after his Petra Bank, which had been Jordan's third-largest, collapsed in 1989 amid the charges of wrongdoing.

"My response to this is that this sentence is unjust, and it's ill-founded and based on falsehood," Chalabi said on CNN's "Late Edition." "And even the legal procedures that surround it are very, very questionable and invalid."

This is it -- there is no further elaboration of or follow up on Chalabi's point. CNN should do some reporting on the case before leaving it at that, and (see below) using smear quotes from Jordanian King Abdullah II to further slime Chalabi.

In particular CNN should look at the court records. They should look into the dubious links between the late King Hussein of Jordan and Saddam, and how Chalabi might have known too much about their relationship. Or, failing that, the New York Sun editorial which laid out the bare facts on how this case was prosecuted. If they had, they'd learn (quoting from the Sun editorial), amongst other things:

-- The Jordanian "military court" that was used to prosecute Chalabi was established on April 1, 1992. It had its first hearing on April 8, 1992. The following day, April 9, 1992, the court handed down a 223-page decision against Mr. Chalabi. How was it possible for this court to thoroughly and fairly examine matters involving a complex international banking empire and issue a 223-page ruling all in the space of 24 hours? Is this the way the rule of law works in Jordan?

-- Did the timing of the Jordanian security court's attack on Mr. Chalabi and his bank have anything to do with Mr. Chalabi's appearance in a "60 Minutes" segment in early 1992, in which he showed documents detailing the links of... King Hussein to arms purchases by Saddam Hussein's Iraq?

-- Prince Hassan of Jordan...made a surprise appearance at an Iraqi opposition meeting held in July (2002) at London, where he gave a luncheon speech on the historical ties between Iraq and Jordan, the New York Times reported. The meeting was led and organized by Mr. Chalabi, who was in attendance. If Mr. Chalabi was so discredited by this banking scandal, what is Prince Hassan doing signaling support by attending his meetings?

-- The only time the Petra Bank case went before a serious court, in Hong Kong in 1993, the court found that under British law the whole Jordanian martial law takeover of the bank had been illegal.

In addition to the Sun editorial, I was told by sources when I worked in Washington that the case against Chalabi was so flimsy that interpol refused to act upon it (which explains why Chalabi was never arrested when he lived in the US, Lebanon or England).

Further down in this sad "news story":

He [Chalabi] is believed to have been a source of intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, which have not been discovered in the nine months since Saddam's regime fell.

Again, CNN has not confirmed or even investigated this claim. "...believed to have been a source of intelligence..." is all they'll say. If they had asked Chalabi about that, as PBS' Frontline did, they'd learn that Chalabi turned over exactly THREE (3) defectors who provided intelligence to the US government about Saddam's WMD.

PBS Interviewer: The United States built a case for the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam, based on weapons of mass destruction and imminent threat. [AD note: This past sentence is erroneous. Never did President Bush try to paint Saddam as an "imminent threat"] Now people are feeling that they were suckered into a war where there was no imminent threat, that the real reasons for this war are far more idealistic and ambitious, and have to do with the transformation of the Middle East. Some people would say that you were the primary actor in that process of providing intelligence. What do you say to those critics?

Chalabi: I say to those critics, let them look at the facts. We provided exactly three defectors on the weapons of mass destruction to the United States..." (Chalabi goes on to explain who each one was: One was an engineer involved in building sites for weapons storage, one who knew of mobile weapons labs and a third who provided information about an isotope separation facility.)

Now, back to the CNN story.

He [Chalabi] was also the champion of a plan to rid Iraq of Baath Party influence that has caused rancor among many Iraqis.

"Rancor among many Iraqis" is the kicker here. Yes, rancor among Baath Party members who were high-ranking officials in the Saddam regime and members of Saddam's army! Chalabi championed a program called "de-Baathification," which he modelled on the de-Nazification of Germany, meaning that it was not enough to simply remove Saddam from power; the entire government and society had to be cleansed of the poisonous Baathist ideology. The plan was adoped by L. Paul Bremer, the American administrator in Iraq. He banned the top four levels of Baathists from holding any public office (estimated by muckraking journalist Joel Mowbray to be between 15,000 -- 30,000 people.)

The disbanded Iraqi army is, admittedly, a high number -- around 400,000. That is tough for them, but what else could you do? Every expert on this subject, even Clinton-appointed undersecretary of defense, Walt Slocum, who is serving as an adivser in the Iraqi Defence Ministry, has said that leaving the Iraqi armed forces intact was simply not an option.

Sorry for the long rant. But I am sick and tired of the media smear campaign against Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi has his faults, sure, but this is going way beyond any semblance of objectivity.

All in all, this story is a farce. CNN and the rest of the mainstram media ought to dig further into these stories before regurgitating the State Department/CIA talking points and reporting such overtly biased claptrap.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 10:23 PM

  

Sunday, December 21, 2003

My friend, Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard, continues to do the best reporting for any managazine anywhere with his work exposing the Saddam -- Al Qaeda connection. His latest is sure to raise some eyebrows, if the media is actually willing to pay attention.

The clincher came in the spring of 1998, when the CIA secretly gathered a soil sample from 60 feet outside of the plant's main gate. The sample showed high levels of O-ethylmethylphosphonothioic acid, known as EMPTA, which is a key ingredient for the deadly nerve agent VX. A senior intelligence official who briefed reporters at the time was asked which countries make VX using EMPTA. "Iraq is the only country we're aware of," the official said. "There are a variety of ways of making VX, a variety of recipes, and EMPTA is fairly unique."

That briefing came on August 24, 1998, four days after the Clinton administration launched cruise-missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan (Osama bin Laden's headquarters from 1992-96), including the al Shifa plant. The missile strikes came 13 days after bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 257 people--including 12 Americans--and injured nearly 5,000. Clinton administration officials said that the attacks were in part retaliatory and in part preemptive. U.S. intelligence agencies had picked up "chatter" among bin Laden's deputies indicating that more attacks against American interests were imminent.

How much more proof do we need folks? Read the whole article.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 8:02 PM

  

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Robert L. Stanfield
The death of Robert Stanfield, who led the federal Tory party from 1967-1976, symbolizes the end of an era in politics. Stanfield was undoubtedly a well-intentioned and decent men; I've never heard of anyone who knew him speak ill of him. Not once. We wrote about Stanfield on the National Post editorial page today, and my views on him are pretty much summed up in that piece.

Whatever one might think of his Red Toryism (I dislike it quite a lot) it is easy to forget that Stanfield almost stopped Trudeaumania dead in its tracks, losing to PET by only 2 seats in 1972. If he had won that election, there's little doubt the size of government would not have grown as fast, nor would taxes have risen as quickly or by as much.

And the political nostalgist in me does lament the death of the men who came from Atlantic Canada and essentially hijacked the PC Party in the 1960s: Dalton Camp, Finlay MacDonald, Stanfield and their ilk. They are all gone now, and their disciples -- Joe Clark, Flora MacDonald, Lowell Murray, and others are now being relegated to the sidelines in the new Conservative Party or are not particpating in it at all. Canadian politics is indeed changing -- for the better in my view.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 11:30 PM

  

What to do with Saddam
The world of political commentary has been deluged in the past two days with pieces on what to do with Saddam. Wm. F. Buckley is just one of dozens to weigh in on the subject. I liked Buckley's piece because he spares us from all the legalistic minutia and cuts right to the chase. Saddam's trial:

"should be of the order we'd have given to Adolf Hitler if he had been taken alive. Exhibit him, make him dwell on what he has done, satisfy the Iraqi people that we share their concern, and that having dispatched an army to their country to contain and disarm him, we will back the Iraqi court that sends him to the gallows. If anybody around wants to plead his cause, go ahead. There will always be fever swamps from which they can make their nescient calls."

Hear, hear.

My view on this is pretty much the same. Let the Iraqis deal with Saddam's fate. He should be tried publicly and if the Iraqis decide on capital punishment, fine. If they don't, thats OK too. (I favour the former; preferrably in Firdos Square in Baghdad by his old statue.)

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:05 AM

  

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Latest curling column...
is up online. It's regarding what to buy the curler on your Christmas list. Check it out.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 2:07 PM

  

Sunday, December 14, 2003

On Saddam's capture
We have to remember above all else that this is a day for the Iraqi people. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to be Iraqi freedom fighter Ahmad Chalabi today, going to confront Saddam for the first time. I am so happy for him and all the others who dedicated their lives to fighting this tyrannical murderer.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 8:07 PM

  

Saturday, December 13, 2003

Progress
I'm slowly but surely getting this blog to where I want it to be. I changed the template so that each post has its own URL for easier linking by friendly bloggers (yes Paul, it's for you!:). I also just liked this colour better.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:27 AM

  

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Extra curling column this week
Kevin Martin, the Olympic curling silver medallist, was in town yesterday, so I did an extra curling column about the evolution of the sport. You can see it here.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 9:37 AM

  

Lipsky on Bartley
My former editor at The New York Sun, Seth Lipsky, apparently gave a speech on the life of Robert L. Bartley, the just-deceased former Wall Street Journal editor, to his reporters yesterday. The text is reprinted in today's Sun. Seth was a huge admirer of Bartley's, having worked under him at the Journal for many years. His speech makes for great reading; one realizes what a giant of a man Bartley was.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 9:37 AM

  

Noonan's eloquence
Absolutely fantastic eulogy-type piece on Bartley by the indispensable Peggy Noonan. [Hat tip to Paul Tuns ]

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:15 AM

  

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Brison's defection
There's lots to say about Scott Brison's defection today to the Liberal Party, but I'll keep it short.

First, it doesn't surprise me too much. I first met Brison shortly after he was first elected in 1997. I've never liked him and was always suspicious of him. He always seemed more like a social climber than a principled politician.

Some people tried to paint him as a "small c" conservative and chided those who claimed Brison was a pink Tory (I was one of those doing so) and die-hard Joe Clark defender (which he undoubtedly was.) They never had any meat to put on the bones of their claims. Other than the fact that Brison presented some very innovative ideas during his 2003 PC leadership run, especially in the area of Atlantic Canadian economic renewal, Brison didn't have a conservative credential to speak of.

Brison has revealed himself as a two-faced, unprincipled, shameless, spineless, opportunistic dork. I feel sorry for all those, including some good friends of mine, who supported him for the PC leadership or anything else over the years. He has let those people down more than anyone else. I hope he loses the next election.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 9:27 PM

  

Robert L. Bartley, RIP
Robert L. Bartley, the former editor of the Wall Street Journal who only last week was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom (see below), has died of cancer at 66. I had heard he was ill, but didn't realize it was so serious. Check out the WJS's fitting obituary here.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 8:50 PM

  

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Grover and the Islamists
Today, Frank Gaffney, a leading American foreign policy hawk and former Reagan Pentagon official, published an absolutely stinging indictment of conservative tax-fighter Grover Norquist. Norquist, probably the best known Republican activist in America, has been feuding with Gaffney for about a year over Norquist's supposed coddling of Islamist radicals.

The fight between these two men was all the talk in Washington conservative circles over the summer (word travels fast, its a very small group) and Norquist eventually kicked Gaffney out of the regular Wednesday morning meetings that Norquist hosts for Washington conservatives at his K Street office. As an attendee of some of these meetings last year, but who was not present at the one where this issue erupted, resulting in Gaffeney being banned (it is outlined in Gaffney's piece), I can attest to the fact that tension between Grover's Muslim friends and the more neocon-ish elements of the movement in the room was palpabale.

All I can say after reading through the above-linked piece is that it looks pretty bad for Grover. However, I recognize that this is only one side of the story. I would certainly like to see a response from Grover, which I hope is forthcoming.

One thing I know for certain is that Grover would never willingly do anything to harm President Bush. If Gaffney is right, either Grover is just totally naive and unaware of his colleagues' incriminating records, or he's totally blinded from reality and neglecting proper character analysis in his desire to bring more people into the Republican tent.

Grover thinks everyone should be a Republican, no matter who they are. That's just the way he is. So maybe his view that people of all races, religions, colours, etc... should be in the "tent" is clouding his judgement. I just don't know. He's very passionate about not sterotyping ethnic groups, especially Muslims, post 9/11. I remember an incident at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last year when Grover was on a panel about immigration and he broke down in tears during a passionate defence of an "open borders" policy. He's very touchy about these things.

Anyway, enough said. And enough ink has been spilled over the last year on Grover and his Muslim connections. I hope he lays everything out in public so the air can be cleared once and for all and this case can be shut.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 8:18 PM

  

Friday, December 05, 2003

Coverage of Bartley's medal
News coverage of Robert Bartley being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom has been scant.

A search on Google News revealed about six articles, including short mentions in both the NY Times and Washington Post. Others to pick up the story were the Boston Globe and the Washington Times, which wrote a laudatory editorial.

I guess I'm not too surprised by this. Newspapers don't really like covering the achievements of other newspapers or their personnel. And, of course, the liberal mainstream media opposes everything Bartley stands for.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 9:04 PM

  

All-Christmas radio
A number of radio stations seem to go "all Christmas" from about mid-November until the end of December. One is CHFI in Toronto. I am so tired of hearing that song by "Band-Aid" about feeding Africa. It seems like they play that particular song a dozen times a day.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 7:36 PM

  

Great column...
...by my friend Bob Tyrrell on Townhall.com on the Conrad Black affair. Likely the best take I've seen on it yet.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:02 AM

  

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Robert L. Bartley awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
Should be interesting today to see how widely in the press the news is picked up about Bob Bartley, the recently retired editor of the Wall Street Journal, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

I cannot think of a more deserving man for such an honour. I only met Bartley once, at a dinner last year in Washington, but I'm hard pressed to think of any person outside of electoral politics who has done more for the conservative movement in the last few decades than this man. Bartley championed issues on the WSJ editorial page like supply side economics and a strong defence for the US when these ideas were considered far out of the mainstream. I truly believe the Reagan victory would not have happened without Bartley's incessant championing of conservative values. He is also, as my friend Bob Tyrrell mentioned in a speech last year, responsible for the invention of the "reported editorial." Before Bartley editorial columns were primarly space for editors/writers to pontificate and mouth off. Bartley's editorial page included original reporting, often moving stories ahead and even breaking news. He's one of the 20th century's greatest newspapermen, no question. I'm told by a friend his health is not well, either, so all the more special for him that he has been awarded the medal. Congratulations.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 1:46 AM

  

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Ahmad Chalabi
In today's National Post I had a rare signed op-ed published. (Yes, it was a big day for me.) It's a defense of Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi is the most pro-western, pro-democracy Iraqi you'll find and he's often the target of attacks. Read my take on him here.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 6:41 PM

  

Curling Column
I'm not sure if I've previously mentioned it or not but I'm now writing a weekly column on the sport of curling in the National Post sports section. Today I wrote about mid-year team break-ups. Its very rare indeed, but a prominent women's team from PEI skipped by former world junior champ Suzanne Gaudet has done just that. Check it out here.

# posted by Adam Daifallah : 6:39 PM

  

 

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