Roundup: Media's Take

June 9, 2005

Holly Lebowitz Rossi: Modern Wahhabism: A Mutation of Its Founder's Islamic Principles

Holly Lebowitz Rossi, from the Religion News Service (6-9-05)The words are chilling, especially to non-Muslim ears."(We) will pursue this evil force to its own lands, invade its Western heartland and struggle to overcome it until all the world shouts by the name of the Prophet, and the teachings of Islam spread throughout the world."This missive, found in a Houston, Tex., mo

June 9, 2005

Hicham Safieddine: Creating Democracy is a 'Difficult Thing'

Hicham Safieddine, from the Toronto Star (6-4-05)When George W. Bush donned a flight suit and declared the end of combat operations in Iraq in May 2003, Rashid Khalidi was not impressed. He had more than a hunch that trouble in the freshly occupied country and the region was only b

June 9, 2005

Fareed Zakaria: What's Wrong With Europe?

Fareed Zakaria, in Newsweek (6-13-05)In English, a double negative usually means yes. but not in European. Last week's double "no"—from France and the Netherlands—has for all practical purposes killed the new European constitution. Most Americans are not quite sure what to make of this. The clearest and loudest voices have been gleeful. Conservative commentators have del

June 9, 2005

Rodger Citron: After Rehnquist?

Rodger Citron, in Legal Times (6-6-05) [Rodger Citron is an assistant professor of law at Touro Law Center.] The resignation of Chief Justice William Rehnquist is inevitable, if not imminent. And the impending departure of Rehnquist already has prompted consideration of the Supreme Court's relationship to the politically divided public, the Court's proper role in government, and -- to a lesser extent -- the chie

June 9, 2005

Peter Grier: The Image War Over US Detainees

Peter Grier, in CSM (6-6-05)The Bush administration appears to have opened a whole new front in its war on terror: a forceful, full-scale defense of the morality of its detention-camp policies.First came harsh criticism of Newsweek magazine for its since-retracted charge of Koran abuse at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. More recently top officials have pushed back -

June 9, 2005

Sidney Blumenthal: Where Nixon Failed, Bush Has Succeeded in Muzzling the Media

Sidney Blumenthal, in the Guardian (6-9-05): The unveiling of the identity of Deep Throat - Mark Felt, the former deputy director of the FBI - seemed affirm the story of Watergate as the triumph of the lone journalist supported from the shadows by a magically appearing secret source. Shazam! The outlines of the fuller story we now know, thanks not only to Felt's self-unmasking but to disclosures the Albany Times Union of upstate New York, unreported so far by any major outlet.

June 9, 2005

Richard Cohen: Clinton, a Tough Underachiever

Richard Cohen, in the Washington Post (6-7-05)Not too long ago I went up to Harlem to see Bill Clinton. Our talk was off the record, so I cannot tell you what he said, but I can say -- can't I? -- that he was smart and encyclopedic and wise and knowledgeable. As always, I was impressed, but then, shortly afterward, I read "The Survivor," John Harris's smoothly re

June 9, 2005

Peter Wallsten: Watergate Weighs on Today's White House

Peter Wallsten, in the Los Angeles Times (6-7-05)Shortly after a 91-year-old man was revealed last week as the answer to the 30-year-old mystery of the Watergate affair, President Bush cast the scandal as something from the distant past."A lot of people wondered ... who 'Deep Throat' was, including me," Bush said after news broke that form

June 9, 2005

Gail Russell Chaddock: Watergate-week Fallout

Gail Russell Chaddock, in the CSM (6-7-05)The long-awaited naming of Deep Throat has become a reminder of how vital anonymous sources can be in breaking an important story - and how tough it is to do it in a way that preserves public confidence.These are lessons that go back before Watergate, and they continue to be learned by today's crop of reporters. But rarely do they generate

June 9, 2005

James Carroll: Antagonism between the West and Islam Factored into the French and Dutch Rejection

James Carroll, in the Boston Globe (6-7-05)AMONG THE factors leading to the French and Dutch rejections of the European constitution last week, none looms more ominously than the nightmare of antagonism between"the West" and Islam. Many Europeans fear a rising tide of green, both within the continent and from outside it. Where once communists threatened,

June 8, 2005

Fraser Nelson: How African Aid Can Be the New Imperialism

Fraser Nelson, in the Scotsman (6-8-05)TWO men wanting to change the world met in the White House yesterday. They discussed their agendas, and did not quite agree. But this was always going to be the case when there are conflicting visions of a global empire.The "imperialist" charge against George W Bush is clear: his plans to spread democracy around the world amount to an American empire in all but name. He

June 8, 2005

Debra Burlingame: The Great Ground Zero Heist

Debra Burlingame, in the WSJ OPinion Journal (6-8-05)[Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.] On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had

June 7, 2005

Brendan Miniter: Hero or Not, Mark Felt Did America a Great Service

Brendan Miniter, in the WSJ Opinion Journal (6-7-05)[Brendan Miniter is an assistant editor at OpinionJournal.com.] This is an open memo to those on the right who've spent the past week chastising their counterparts on the left for calling Mark Felt, a k a "Deep Throat," a hero. It's true that the recently outed Watergate supersource might have acted for his own inte

June 7, 2005

James Taranto: Kerry, a C-Man in the Navy

James Taranto, in WSJ Opinion Journal (6-7-05) On Jan. 30, John Kerry told NBC's Tim Russert that he would release his full military records to the public, something he had refused to do during last year's campaign. It took 128 days, but today the Boston Globe reports that he had done so. The records revealed what many of us had suspected: Kerry served in Vietnam. But according to the Globe, &q

June 7, 2005

James S. Corum: How the British Defeated Insurgents in Malaya

James S. Corum, in the NYT (6-2-05):[James S. Corum, a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve, is a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.]MOST Americans, including many of those making military decisions in Washington, have been surprised by the intensity of the Iraqi insurgency since the January elections. How, despite their failure to coalesce into a united front and their lack of a coherent political program, have the armed factions sh

June 6, 2005

Davie Brooks: Life Lessons From Watergate

David Brooks, in the NYT (6-5-05) The most interesting part of this Deep Throat business is Bob Woodward's description, in Thursday's Washington Post, of the state he was in when he met Mark Felt. He had graduated from Yale and was finishing a tour in the Navy, but he had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life. He

June 6, 2005

WSJ: Bolton and Syria

WSJ Opinion Journal, Featured Article (6-6-05)On Thursday, Samir Kassir, a prominent Lebanese newspaper columnist and long-time critic of Syria, was murdered in Beirut when a bomb exploded under the hood of his car. The following day, we learned that Syria had test-fired three missiles the previous week--one Scud B, with a range of 190 miles, and two Scud Ds, with ranges of 400 miles. The missiles, of No

June 3, 2005

Frances FitzGerald: The 19th Century Echoes in Bush's Space-Based Weapons Plan

Frances FitzGerald, in the NYT (6-3-05):[Frances FitzGerald is the author of "Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War."]FOR some time now the Air Force has been pressing the White House for a new national-security directive that would permit the deployment of space weaponry. A decision could come within weeks. Most space-to-groun

June 2, 2005

David Runciman: How the Right Persuaded Americans to Abolish the Estate Tax

David Runciman, in the London Review of Books (6-2-05): The politics of taxation can sometimes be gripping for a nation’s citizens, but not often: the arguments tend to be too technical when they are true, and too obviously bogus when they are false, to sustain public interest for long. By extension, the politics of another country’s tax system is unlikely to be of much interest to anyone with any sort of normal life. Listening to the ins and outs of other people&r

June 2, 2005

Norman Solomon: War Made Easy ... From Vietnam to Iraq

Norman Solomon, in his weekly column (6-2-05): [This article is an excerpt from Norman Solomon’s new book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” which comes off the press in mid-June. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com.]On February 27, 1968, I sat in a small room on Capitol Hill. Around a long table, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was in session, taking testimony from an administration official. Most