Scrapbook
Scrapbook Wesley Clark's Source, Cont. General Wesley Clark—potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination—has come one step closer to revealing the identity of the mysterious...
...And so when he called, I listened and I returned the call...
...It's just as clear as it could be...
...Who called...
...We wish him all the best...
...You made the whole thing up...
...He's very well connected to Israeli intelligence and he follows Middle Eastern events very closely...
...Only Caldwell's fellow Brides-head fan happened not to be a budding neocon...
...I haven't changed my position...
...That's when Chilean general Augusto Pinochet overthrew socialist president Salvadore Allende in what was widely believed to be a U.S.-backed military coup...
...You have our permission to raise an eyebrow: The whole affair has the feeling of a playground competition between junior high kids ("My 9/11 was worse than your 9/11...
...In its listings for that day, BBC4 doesn't show any programming on the 9/11/01 attacks...
...SCRAPBOOK readers living in the U.K...
...Indeed the thought of some young fan of, say, Irving Kristol, clutching his itty-bitty teddy bear while reading the essay "When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness" is almost as funny as Waugh's early novels...
...Neither do any of the other BBC channels, but we can't say that comes as a surprise...
...General Wesley Clark—potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination—has come one step closer to revealing the identity of the mysterious caller who irresponsibly urged him to go on CNN and accuse Saddam Hussein of links to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon...
...Our query to Holt has gone unanswered, but a likely explanation has surfaced...
...This is state-sponsored terrorism.'" Clark later clarified that the mystery caller wasn't from the White House...
...But who are the "anglophile neocons" who imitated him...
...This is where Clark's story takes a turn for the surreal...
...can tune into BBC4's production of "Chile: The Other 9/11," which airs at 11 pm...
...Sebastian is of course the Brideshead character Holt is talking about—a Wildean poof who totes a little stuffed bear and orders up lavish champagne and oyster lunches for his Oxford chums, before coming to a most desperate end...
...There are numerous Middle East experts, but no think tank devoted to the Middle East in Canada...
...But who knows...
...I do not know of any Middle East think tank in Canada," says Janice Stein, an acclaimed Middle East scholar at the University of Toronto...
...The Other 9/11 Here's our nominee for the most unseemly and opportunistic exploitation of the second anniversary of 9/11: This week, a host of lefty performers and media outlets will commemorate the "other" September 11 attacks—that is, September 11, 1973...
...On MSNBC's Buchanan & Press, Clark provided more biographical detail about the source, whose identity he still won't reveal...
...Noting that Waugh's literary reputation suffered after his death, Holt writes that "early in the Reagan-Thatcher era, [Waugh's] fame was renewed by the TV dramatization of his most loved (and hated) novel, Brideshead Revisited...
...According to its press release, the show "uses shadow puppets and painted transparencies to illustrate connections between patterns in history and our everyday lives...
...So you can imagine our surprise when Clark appeared on the August 25 edition of Buchanan & Press and once again said that his caller came from a Middle East think tank in Canada...
...There was a concerted effort made in many quarters to link 9/11 to Saddam and it's not true...
...There's never been any evidence that's established Clark's accusations, either...
...Help Wanted THE WEEKLY STANDARD has an entry-level opening for a receptionist...
...A few days after his appearance on Hannity and Colmes, Clark wrote a letter to the New York Times saying that he "received a call from a Middle East think tank from outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein...
...Farewell Attentive readers may have noted the absence from our masthead for the first time in eight years of David Brooks, a senior editor since this magazine's founding...
...Or fax (202) 2934901...
...I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You've got to say this is connected...
...Why does he continue to protect the identity of a man who was not a source in the usual sense but rather lobbied Clark to tell an untruth on national television...
...Your guess is as good as ours...
...They say, General, there is no Middle East think tank in Canada...
...the night of the anniversary...
...CLARK: "A man from a—of a Middle East think tank in Canada, the man who's the brother of a very close friend of mine in Belgium...
...To cushion the blow of his departure from our pages, we will take the rare step of encouraging our readers to turn to the New York Times op-ed page—though only on Tuesdays and Saturdays—where David will henceforth be a regular columnist...
...I subsequently discovered that at the same time people in and around the White House were also attempting to use this as an opportunity to pin the tail on Saddam...
...THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Christopher Caldwell recently wrote in Slate that when he was in his 20s, he'd had an acquaintance who adopted Sebastian's affectation...
...Teddy-cons In an article on Evelyn Waugh for the New York Times Book Review, journalist Jim Holt mentions in passing a startling fact...
...But that assumes he exists...
...It's exactly what I said...
...When Rus-sert asked Clark whom he was accusing, Clark replied: "It came from the White House, it came from people around the White House...
...As he told Fox's Sean Hannity, the call came "from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information...
...I got a call on 9/11...
...And so, it came from all over...
...Funny...
...Here's the latest exchange: BILL PRESS: The Weekly Standard last week did a little research and said, "You would think Clark has a positive duty to expose the man...
...Neoconservatism is known for many things, but theatrically adolescent foppishness usually isn't one of them...
...Because the Canadians The Scrapbook talks to are pretty certain that there isn't "a Middle East think tank" anywhere to be found within the borders of our northern neighbor...
...Not familiar with the date...
...A hint for Holt and other students of conservative culture: Scoop is probably the Waugh title most favored by neocons...
...This anecdote appears to be the likely source of Holt's claim...
...It came from all over...
...Please mail your resume to: Human Resources, The Weekly Standard, 1150 17th Street, NW, Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036...
...There's no waffling on it...
...Some background: As we detailed on this page a few weeks ago, Clark told NBC's Tim Russert in June that "people around the White House" engaged in a "concerted effort" to link the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Iraqi ex-dictator Saddam Hussein...
...Duties include answering phones, greeting visitors, sorting mail, handling back-issue requests, and various other administrative tasks...
...He called me on 9/11...
...So be sure to bring the kids...
...If you're in the Detroit area, be sure to check out the Broken Tooth Puppet Troupe and performance artiste Uptonogood's production of "The Other 9/11: Another Hemisphere Remembers (& Other Tales...
...The series was immensely popular, especially with young Anglophile neocons, some of whom carried around teddy bears in imitation of one of the characters...
...There's never been any evidence that's established it...
...Still, those of you interested in commemorating "the other 9/11" have a variety of activities to choose from...
Vol. 9 • September 2003 • No. 1
