Scrapbook
Scrapbook Reality Check Until last week, the editors of the New Republic had distinguished themselves in the liberal camp as defenders (for the most part) of the Bush administration's Iraq policy....
...In 1998 [on the eve of the impeachment vote], President Clinton bombed every known or suspected weapons site...
...On Capitol Hill, Chris Cox, Nancy Pelosi, and Henry Hyde insist that all revisions of Hong Kong law should be undertaken by a fully democratic legislature, and they have called for immediate elections...
...This is what makes Saddam Hussein so distinguished in the field of evil...
...but the defense of American values sometimes requires action in non-American places...
...This is what happened," responded Begala...
...On June 19, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pointedly noted that universal suffrage is "enshrined" in Hong Kong's constitution and the lack of movement "toward full participatory democracy" for Hong Kong was a concern...
...So you can imagine The Scrapbook's astonishment upon rereading the New Republic's September 2, 2002, editorial, headlined "Best Case...
...Puzzled, a senior mainland official and former foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan recently asked "what's the meaning of Hong Kong's return" to mainland rule if the laws on subversion, sedition, and treason are not passed...
...He has already done the dirtiest deed...
...They are retarded...
...administrations accepted Beijing's blueprint and contorted themselves to square it with U.S...
...It criticized the administration's unconvincing claims about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda and argued that, absent a clear terrorist link, it was Iraq's nuclear ambitions, not its biological and chemical stockpiles, that justified U.S...
...In response, Beijing has told Washington to butt out, calling the decision a matter of "China's internal affairs...
...This magazine's argument for war was different," they now insist...
...The administration, they claim, "systematically exaggerated" the Iraqi threat and so "has undermined democracy at home...
...That editorial in fact emphasized Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and stands as an honorable and persuasive statement of the case for war...
...As Baghdad Bob once said, "I now inform you that you are too far from reality...
...Nobody else knows what happened to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, but Begala has come up with a novel (read: psychotic) theory: Clinton destroyed them...
...Writing in the Washington Post this week, Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that 'the frequently cited but essentially demagogic formula that Hussein used weapons of mass destruction (specifically gas) against his own people ignores the fact that he did not use such weapons in 1991 against either U.S...
...And what of the New Republic's own past editorial support for removing Saddam...
...A man who actually employs these obscene devices, who regards them not with trepidation but instrumentally, is not a man who can be trusted to behave as the instructions of political science would have him behave...
...That is the case, and 'the case.' "Of course there are some who are not overly impressed by the moral and strategic ramifications of chemical warfare...
...BEGALA: "We bombed them in '98, and the right wing said it was Wag the Dog...
...Democracy in the Middle East —in Riyadh, in Cairo, in Baghdad— would be splendid...
...When Begala's boss left office, he stayed on TV and kept distorting reality on his behalf...
...And that's why he didn't have them when we invaded in...
...invasion...
...The White House statement shows the Bush administration now recognizes that democracy is every bit as important in Hong Kong as it is everywhere else in the world...
...We do not need to speculate about whether he would do the dirtiest deed...
...If we do not prevent it, it is not least ourselves that we will have betrayed...
...ROGERS: "No, not at all...
...One spectacular thing: He is the only leader in the world with weapons of mass destruction who has used them...
...Both peevishly evade the tough questions...
...Brzezinski sleeps much too well...
...The physical defense of the United States includes also the moral defense of the United States...
...Baghdad Bob, when asked if Saddam was still alive, said, "I will only answer reasonable questions...
...Begala's June 6 Crossfire broadcast was a classic...
...When Saddam fell, Baghdad Bob reportedly fled in shame and terror...
...Hong Kong Update Beijing is facing growing U.S...
...Begala once noted of his opponents, when doing an electoral synopsis of red and blue America, that Texas is "the state where James Byrd was lynch-dragged behind a pickup truck until his body came apart—it's red...
...Now, following in the footsteps of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, they've declared that the White House engaged in a campaign of "misinformation" and "deceit...
...I just don't want to talk about my feelings...
...Both are from the nanny-nanny-boo-boo school of political discourse...
...opposition to proposed new national security laws for Hong Kong...
...During an exchange with Republican consultant Ed Rogers, Rogers asked Begala: "So how close did you guys get...
...Morally and strategically, he lives in a post-deterrence world...
...For years, U.S...
...Tang's question is worth considering...
...Baghdad Begala During the war in Iraq, The Scrap-book was struck by eerie similarities between Saddam Hussein's former information minister, Mohammed Say-eed Al-Sahhaf, aka Baghdad Bob, and Bill Clinton's still-serving information minister and co-host of CNN's Crossfire, Paul Begala...
...After all, China always planned to have control over Hong Kong, with a Beijing-appointed chief executive, an undemocratic legislature, and influence over key judicial decisions...
...They haven't seen this much concern about Hong Kong since the stage-managed extravaganza of the handover of the former British colony to Beijing in 1997...
...The words are worth remembering today, even if the editors wish us to forget where they once stood: "What is it, then, about the villain in Baghdad that should provoke the United States to rid the world of him...
...troops or Israel, both of which had the capacity to retaliate and thus to deter.' The implication here is that there is the rational gassing of innocents and the irrational gassing of innocents, and that Saddam Hussein practices only the rational gassing, and so we can deal with him...
...In international emergencies it is we who must lead...
...No doubt, Chinese officials are also surprised...
...It's been slow coming, but, better late than never...
...The new sedition laws—highlighted in these pages three weeks ago by Ellen Bork ("Severe Acute Tyranny Syndrome")—could be used to ban organizations or prosecute individuals for undefined acts of intimidation against the state...
...And it should not matter to us that these crimes were not committed against the United States, or that Saddam Hussein's missiles do not have the range to hit American places, because the use of weapons of mass destruction, rather like genocide, represents an international emergency...
...But biological or chemical or nuclear war would be intolerable...
...He used them against Iranian troops and against Kurdish civilians...
...I just don't...
...Begala, when asked how he'd feel if Clinton admitted a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, shortly before he did, said, "I don't want to talk about my feelings...
...Baghdad Bob once said of his opponents, the Americans, "They think we are retarded...
...What happened in the Clinton White House...
...But let's not overdo the parallels...
...law—a law that conditions Hong Kong's special status for trade and other purposes on its autonomy from the mainland...
...We would prefer to linger on this side of decency and to insist that the use of weapons of mass destruction denotes a general derangement...
...It turned out he actually destroyed all the weapons...
...2003...
...That's what happened, isn't it...
...You might think that a magazine would be authoritative on the subject of its own past editorial views...
...Earth to Paul: Get help...
Vol. 8 • June 2003 • No. 41
