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And in the news ...

April 07, 2003 ~ 12:13 p.m.

Ali Hassan al-Majid, �Chemical Ali,� is dead. Maddas entrusted him with preventing Coalition forces from advancing through southern Iraq. Previously, al-Majid had poisoned Kurdish villages with gas in 1988 and is also responsible for brutal crackowns on Shi�ite populations in southern Iraq, especially during the 1991 Gulf War. British forces in Basra have confirmed his death, after an Allied missile strike on his home. Al-Majid�s death is seen as another nail in the coffin of Maddas� regime.

Enjoy your trip to Hell, Chemical Ali. You�ve earned it.


Elie Wiesel, who won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize on the strength of his �peace, atonement and human dignity� message, has called the war in Iraq justified. In Montreal, he spoke of the war�s necessity based on the fact that there was no other alternative to disarming Madass.

"You can accuse me of being naive, but I think in all conscience that this war was necessary,� Wiesel, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, told those gathered at the Quebec-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. Instead, he opined that this war �will change the world.�

He also said that while being uncomfortable with the war, in no way was he a pacifist and believed in the right to interfere. He took a shot at �unnamed� European nations. "If some European countries put as much pressure on Saddam Hussein as on (US President George W.) Bush, there would have been no war," he said.

Thank you, Mr. Wiesel.


Andrew Sullivan, in his April 6, 2003 column in The Sunday Times, entitled �Hitler? He�s not half as bad as Bush,� laid into the Left, notably the American Left, accusing them as incapable of seeing Maddas as the villain. However, he noted that there is a subgroup of the Left which does support the war as an unfortunate necessity that will show the world the fascism and flagrant abuse of human rights will not be tolerated. This particular subspecies of Americanus liberalis, while remaining hostile to Bush�s domestic policy, embraces the philosophy behind the war, that it really is about liberating the people of Iraq. Paraphrasing the Old Left Nat Hentoff, Sullivan writes, �But Hentoff saw � that any liberal who does not rejoice at the destruction of Saddam�s despicable regime is no real liberal.�

Three paragraphs from his column will suffice to provide the essence of Sullivan�s argument:

�There you have a core belief of some in the left-wing anti-war movement [that Bush is a war criminal]. Such sentiments help explain why at almost every anti-war rally, President Bush is portrayed as Hitler on posters but Saddam is almost completely absent. The rhetoric of the left has consistently argued that this is a criminal war, conducted by an illegal president for nefarious ends�oil contracts, the Jews, world domination, etc. When you have used rhetoric of that sort, why shouldn�t you, when push comes to shove, support the enemy?�

�Who is Saddam, after all, but another Mussolini or Hitler, reborn in Islamic guise? Look at the personality cult, the secret police, the mass murders, the purges, the vast and inhuman wars, the scapegoating of the Jews, the vicious genocide against the Kurds (whose only crime was not to be Arabs).�

�Good liberals, as they did in the 1930s, should not shy away from confronting this new (Islamic) fascism. In fact, given their political legacy, they should feel doubly responsible for confronting it. Liberalism cannot co-exist with terror or totalitarianism. One must vanquish the other. And when you look at what we are learning about Saddam�s Iraq � its horrifying brutality, its deep alliance with terrorism, its genocidal core, its fanatical anti-Semitism, its contempt for human freedom and human life � you see what, at the deepest level, this war has been about.�

Time for a rethink on the part of the Left is all I can say. Thank you too, Mr. Sullivan.

� M.E.M.

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