Scrapbook
Scrapbook More Documents, Please (cont.) On February 14, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a study of 28 al Qaeda documents captured after 9/11. The West Point study provides...
...Had it been released by now, it might have provided some important context for understanding the mosque attack in Iraq last week...
...Annals of Direct Mail Many moons ago, The Scrapbook was enrolled in the junior-year-abroad program of a school that shall remain nameless...
...For these reasons, and in the spirit of freedom of expression, the assembled faculty members wish officially to register dissent from Mr...
...It smacks of trying too hard...
...intelligence community has treated the captured documents as if they are little more than a historical curiosity...
...Washington Post columnist David Ignatius pointed to one of the documents for the insights it might provide on the disputed deal to let a United Arab Emirates company manage some U.S...
...According to one Iraqi official who read a February 2003 memo from the former director of Iraqi Intelligence, the plan was simple: blame Sunnis for the violence done to Shiites and blame Shiites for the violence done to Sunnis...
...We should note that our friends are small and irregular donors, but they apparently live in the right Zip Codes...
...And on it goes...
...We couldn't help but wonder if this elaborate mailing is a sign of trouble on the fundraising front...
...We, the Faculty, vote to dissent from these positions ofMr...
...We are concerned that Mr...
...We noticed that, instead of using our university's usual, tasteful red-on-buff official stationery, these letters went out sporting a gaudy, saw-toothed gold seal, with red and blue ribbons affixed...
...While there are many views about what this new cache of documents means, there is little disagreement over the value of publicly analyzing and debating the documents...
...Summers' promise to improve his communication with us, but we remain concerned about the substance of Mr...
...invasion...
...Summers has demonstrated little concern for his role as the foremost public representative of the University...
...This episode was brought to mind by a direct-mail fund-raising solicitation received last week by a couple of SCRAPBOOK friends: a suitable-for-framing certificate, reproduced here at a much-reduced size, from the National Republican Senatorial Committee...
...First class postage for all of the above: $1.59...
...Military officials tell CNN they were chilled when they read a document known as the al Qaeda employment contract, which they strongly believe to be authentic...
...Over the past three and a half years, faculty members have discerned in the conduct of President Summers a pattern of aggressive communication and inattention to faculty opinions, both of which are inconsistent with the principles of free inquiry and the democratic management of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences...
...Summers' stated opinions regarding the innate capacities of subordinate populations, the wisdom of dumping in third-world nations, the authorized presence on campus of organizations that infringe upon the equal rights of gay people, and the proposition that the criticism of Israeli military policy toward the Palestinians is inherently anti-Semitic...
...The Faculty acknowledges Mr...
...Summers' tendency to vocalize his speculations without due regard for either the standards of scholarship or the effect of careless pronouncements, particularly from the president of one of the world's leading universities, on the human beings concerned...
...Summers, to demand that they not be employed in the governance of the University or in restricting the free speech of professors and departments, and to halt any further expansion of presidential prerogatives that will facilitate the propagation of these positions...
...The most important aspect of the study was its accompanying release of the al Qaeda documents...
...Yet he has moved to increase the powers of his office significantly, through, for example, the creation of "divisional appointments...
...The U.S...
...Summers' apologies for remarks minimizing the innate capacities of women and for lapses of respect in his communication with faculty members, the Faculty also wishes to register its dissent from a number of public pronouncements by the President that would otherwise appear to represent us collectively, and to urge limits on the proposed expansion of presidential prerogatives...
...Like the "dago dazzler," it is calculated to impress the rubes and, even by the low standards of direct mail, is spectacularly over-thetop...
...ports...
...The Idiocy of the Harvard Faculty Elsewhere in this issue, James Piere-son refers to the Harvard faculty's March 2005 passage of a resolution of no-confidence in President Larry Summers, who announced his resignation last week...
...A CNN report discussed the "extraordinary details" in the documents...
...One day a secretary, pointing to the decoration, whispered to us, "We call this the dago dazzler...
...We know that the Iraqi Intelligence Service called on its operatives and allies to assassinate Sunni and Shiite clerics and to attack Sunni and Shiite mosques...
...In fact, for the good of the Americans and Iraqis fighting insurgents in Iraq today, the sooner they are released the better...
...Translation: Hey...
...That document was found in April 2003...
...We'd like to see many more of the documents captured in postwar Afghanistan...
...We know that Saddam's regime organized many elements of the ongoing insurgency long before the war began...
...THE SCRAPBOOK thinks they have a point...
...For instance, we know that the former Iraqi regime imported and trained jihadists for years before the U.S...
...That introduction made explicit the infantile leftist agenda of Summers's detractors...
...A USA Today article notes that the documents "came from a variety of sources and were selected because they show al Qaeda discussions of ideology, tactics, potential operations or training...
...The West Point study provides an in-depth look at al Qaeda from those inside the organization, including Osama bin Laden...
...But before our yearlong scholarly pub-crawl across Europe could begin, a bureaucratic correspondence had to be carried on between the American university and its European counterpart...
...Or is it...
...Piereson notes that the resolution had an introduction, which was later removed before final passage...
...And Iraqi documents could be just as valuable in enhancing our understanding of the enemy there...
...In addition to the certificate, a nice piece of printing business in itself, the envelope came stuffed with a stiffening piece of cardboard, three-page letter, reply envelope, and tissue to give the thing a classy feel...
...Summers' latest remarks minimizing the innate intellectual capacities of women reflect Mr...
...Summers' apparently ongoing convictions about the capacities and rights not only of women but also of African Americans, third-world nations, gay people, and colonized peoples...
...Our gimmick is still pulling in the bucks after a quarter century...
...Unfortunately not visible on our small scan here is the embossed eagle seal, situated midway between the autopen signatures of Elizabeth Dole and Mark Stephens, commemorating the "Republican Senatorial Inner Circle, 19792004...
...It is worth reading in full, and is reproduced below in all its politically correct glory: While the Faculty gratefully acknowledges Mr...
...Either that, or some of our profiteering friends in the direct mail business are making out like bandits...
...If Nero had sent out direct mail, it would have looked like this...
Vol. 11 • March 2006 • No. 24
