BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
AN INTRIGUING TERROR
CONNECTION. Is there an actual, provable link between Saddam
Hussein's former regime and international terrorism? That's always
been the big question. If the White House had been able to prove such
a connection, a whole lot more people would have supported the war in
Iraq.
This editorial
in today's Wall Street Journal tells what is known so far
(which is admittedly not much) about a terrorist attack that was
foiled in Jordan earlier this month. Among the allegations: the
terrorists had planned to use poison gas, which could have killed as
many as 80,000 people; the gas came from Syria; it might have been
shipped to Syria from Iraq before the war; and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
whom the Bush administration says was given carte blanche to operate
in Iraq by Saddam's government, may have been behind the
plot.
Here is a piece
from the Christian Science Monitor of Tuesday covering much of
the same ground.
Obviously we need to wait for a
much more in-depth report. It's always curious when the
Journal's right-wing editorial page runs with something that
its news section - one of the finest in the world - has ignored. But
this is potentially a huge story.
HATE SPEECH AT UMASS. There
is opposing the war but supporting the troops. There is opposing the
war while openly mocking the troops. And there is a UMass student by
the name of Rene Gonzalez, who actually manages to trash the memory
of Pat
Tillman, the NFL star who
joined the Army Rangers after 9/11, and who was killed in action in
Afghanistan.
Gonzalez, after calling Tillman an
"idiot," writes
in the Daily Collegian:
Tillman, probably acting
out his nationalist-patriotic fantasies forged in years of
exposure to Clint Eastwood and Rambo movies, decided to insert
himself into a conflict he didn't need to insert himself into. It
wasn't like he was defending the East coast from an invasion of a
foreign power. THAT would have been heroic and laudable. What he
did was make himself useful to a foreign invading army, and he
paid for it. It's hard to say I have any sympathy for his death
because I don't feel like his "service" was necessary. He wasn't
defending me, nor was he defending the Afghani people. He was
acting out his macho, patriotic crap and I guess someone with a
bigger gun did him in.
Wow. I guess what surprised me the
most is that Gonzalez is described as a graduate student. Most
people get such crap out of their systems by the time they're 21 or
22.
Well, Gonzalez's views are
protected by the First Amendment, if not by the rule of common sense
or decency.
posted at 12:49 PM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
