February 3, 2006

"The Religion of Peace" isn't Islam.

I've long contended that the idea of Islam being a "religion of peace" was a lie. Michelle Malkin has some photos of European muslims showing what TRUE Islam is about.

Hatred, destruction, division, and holocaust. That's what I expect from Islam. That there are many nice, peaceful people who practice Islam and contribute to a productive society doesn't take away from the fact that Satan is at the heart of their "faith."

IMHO, of course.

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November 11, 2005

Left Wrong on WMDs Again (and Again, and Again...)

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. The left continually says that Iraq posed no threat, that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, and that Hussein made no attempts to gain access to nuclear materials. None of this is true, of course, but that doesn't stop people who have no understanding of the word "truth" from saying it over, and over again. Saddam Hussein had made open threats against America many times, and had his military fire on our planes for years. He used WMDs on the Kurds, and we have found chemical weapons. The first two points, therefore, have long since been proven false.

Now, the third major argument of the left goes down in flames. The BBC is reporting on an operation by the United States to remove 1.77 tons of enriched uranium and other radioactive materials. In other words, Iraq had a nuclear program, just like the intel had said.

"The United Nations nuclear watchdog - the International Atomic Energy Agency - and Iraqi officials were informed ahead of the operation, which happened ahead of the 28 June handover of sovereignty."

One day, the left will learn to not speak authoritatively on stands they have no evidence to support.

No, probably not.

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November 8, 2005

French [Muslim] Youth Riots Continue - Media Oblivious

As I walked into the break room at work, this morning, a co-worker of mine wondered aloud what the reasons were behind the riots in France. In a carefully worded sentence, and a hushed tone, I gave him a major detail he hadn't been aware of, and that most of the major media has been avoiding. These youth that are rioting in France are Muslims, and evidence exists that shows the riots to be much more organized than they appear.

Newsday gives a little of the background story of the riots.

"The two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore, were polite young men who liked to play soccer. Their families were of African origin, one from Mauritania, the other from Tunisia.

"They grew up in a sprawling public housing project in Clichy-sous-Bois, a bleak northern Paris suburb, and they died on Oct. 27 by accidental electrocution while fleeing a police identification check."

Two muslim kids flee from a police ID checkpoint, and in the process of their flight, are accidentally electrocuted. That's enough motivation to start days of riots, destroy millions of dollars in personal property, and directly or indirectly, cause additional deaths. What a pathetic excuse that is. That's almost as pathetic an excuse as Yassir Arafat's "palestinian" intifada because Ariel Sharon decided to pay a visit to the temple mount in Jerusalem.

One of the most visible weapons in the riots is the infamous "Molotov Cocktail." Now, any kid could grab a glass bottle and a rag, load up on gasoline, and make a firebomb, but police have raided apartments and found bomb factories creating these weapons for the rioters. This is a clear indication that the riots are more than simply a groundswell of dissatisfaction. Someone is fanning these flames, and ensuring that the rioters have the tools to destroy as much as they can.

If you're willing to dig a little deeper, which is easy enough to do with Google News, you can find this information for yourself. It's just too bad that we can't trust CNN or many of the other major media outlets to do this basic research, or tell the truth about it once they discover it.

That Islam was involved in these riots was a surprise to my co-worker. It shouldn't have been.

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August 16, 2005

I'm No Fan of the Gaza Pullout

It really bothers me to watch the strife in Israel over Sharon's pullout from Gaza. Israeli citizens are being pulled out of their homes as an appeasement to enemies of Israel, and only Israel is to blame. Israel has been beset by enemies on all sides since its inception thousands of years ago, and today is no different. One difference today, though, is that we have a United Nations to give those enemies political viability. Under the UN's influence, Israel was restored, only to be divided. At every step, attempts have been made to divide her further.

I believe that Israel should be restored to its biblical borders. My own choice would be those borders of the time of David, minus conquered Syrian land. In current border standards, this would mean the whole of the current borders of Israel, plus the West Bank and Gaza areas. There are no historical "palestinian" claims to these areas that can compete with the claims of Israel.

Luckily, the Bible, being a book of future history in addition to the past, tells of a future united Israel. I only wish that Ariel Sharon was working to reconquer the whole of Israel instead of giving it away.

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August 9, 2005

Christopher Hitchens on Iraq

Christopher Hitchens is one of my favorite liberal commentators. He's a true "Liberal's Liberal" in that his liberalism is ideological by nature, and not simply the liberalism of opposition that has become so prevalent in today's politics. He wasn't afraid to stand up and point out that Bill Clinton was a useless liberal, in that he made a lot of liberal promises, but rarely followed through with them. Now, he's laying out his views on Iraq. They're worth reading

It never seemed to me that there was any alternative to confronting the reality of Iraq, which was already on the verge of implosion and might, if left to rot and crash, have become to the region what the Congo is to Central Africa: a vortex of chaos and misery that would draw in opportunistic interventions from Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Bad as Iraq may look now, it is nothing to what it would have become without the steadying influence of coalition forces. None of the many blunders in postwar planning make any essential difference to that conclusion. Indeed, by drawing attention to the ruined condition of the Iraqi society and its infrastructure, they serve to reinforce the point.

Go and read the whole thing. In fact, if you don't read Hitchens regularly, you should start. Even when I think he's wrong, which happens frequently, he bases his views in a well-thought-out belief structure which is usually absent among the left in America.

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July 21, 2005

Terrorist-Losers - Explosions Mostly Harmless

There are reports of explosions in three London tube stations. Shepherd's Bush, Warren Street, and Oval stations are reported to have been hit by explosions, with at least one "nail bomb" included. There are also reports of a possible bus explosion, as well. I'd say it's a good bet that Islamic/Islamicist terrorism is involved.

Fox News is reporting that noises similar to gunshots were also heard at the Warren Street stop, which may have been denotators going off, but failing to actually detonate the bomb. Also, one man's backpack exploded enough to blow up the pack itself, but not enough to do much else, causing some consternation on his part.

The London Telegraph is reporting that the incident is not being treated as a major event at this time. Reports are that the bus that was hit hat its windows blown out with no casualties.

Early reports seem to show that this attack (possible attack?) did not go off as planned, with failed detonations, smaller-than-expected detonations, smoke and some smells being the end result. Could this be a separate cell that didn't have the skills of the previous group? Whatever the case, incompetence on the part of the terrorists works in our favor.

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July 7, 2005

Coordinated Explosions Rock Mass Transit in London

[UPDATED]I'm sure a lot of people will try to blame George Bush for this, but you can't expect better from them. Six explosions, coordinated to go at approximately the same time, have occurred in London. Targets included the subway system and the bus system. Early reports are at least 2 dead and 9 seriously injured. I would expect that these numbers will increase greatly. Casualty numbers are estimated to be at least 200, with news still coming in.

I'm looking at the possibilities for who could have done such an evil thing. I'm down to three big probabilities.

Any guesses?

CNN, Fox News, Associated Press, UPI
The Washington Post is reporting that the Washington DC Metro system is seeing stepped up security, including searches for unescorted baggage.
BBC Radio is reporting that Al Qaeda has taken credit. I guess the Buddhists are off the hook, but I still worry about the knitting group.
This AP Article says, "A group calling itself 'The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe' posted a claim of responsibility for the blasts, saying they were in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Web statement, republished on the site of the German magazine Der Spiegel, could not be immediately confirmed."
The Australian has this quote, "We are aware that one of the sites does containly[sp] does contain indications of explosives."

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April 28, 2005

Liberals Wrong Again in Iraq

They said we wouldn't be able to defeat Iraq in 1991. They said we'd need 10,000+ body bags if we invaded Iraq the second time around. They said we couldn't liberate Afghanistan. They said we couldn't have elections in Afghanistan. They said we couldn't have elections in Iraq. They said a lot of thing. They also said this couldn't happen. For some reason, the media still takes them seriously.

Hat tip PoliPundit.

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April 24, 2005

Syria's Pullout from Lebanon Nears Completion

It looks like Syria is getting close to finishing its pullout from Lebanon. That's a good thing. Now, if we could just start with a "palestinian" pullout from occupied areas of Israel, we'd have some real progress.

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April 22, 2005

Palestinian Despair and Israeli Opportunity

You often hear some who know no better trying to explain how the despair of the people in the palestinian-occupied areas of Israel (Gaza and the West Bank) is caused by Israel itself. To see why this is not true, one need only read the news. In this story about a 15 year old being arrested with pipe bombs, we get to see some of the truth.

"Hassan may have wanted to be detained by the army in order to do his high-school matriculation exams in an Israeli prison, says his brother Amar.

“There’s a rumor among youngsters that it’s easier to succeed in Israeli jails,” he told Ynet. “Many boys were detained at roadblocks with weapons, in order to do the tests in jail."

In other words, teenagers in the palestinian-occupied areas believe it would be easier to find success by going through the Israeli prison system than it would be to live under the control of their own political leadership.

They're probably right.

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"Palestinian" Population Problems

Joel Mowbray reveals another of the untruths at the heart of the "palestinian" problem. According to Mowbray, the population statistics for the "Palestinian" occupied area of Israel has been inflated since Israel passed over controlling authority, to almost double the real figures. Fudged population figures and falsified birth-rate statistics are par for the course for the government that was, until recently, under the dictatorial control of one of the greatest liars and murderers the world has ever known. A good read.

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One Lesson of Ukraine

In 2000, George W. Bush and Al Gore were the major players in a presidential election. The results were very close. Al Gore actually got more of the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the electoral college tally. Florida was a sticking point, with some small irregularities turning into major issues, because of the closeness of the state's vote. In the end, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that recounts should be done in limited areas, which forced the US Supreme Court to step in to ensure equal protection under the law. They said that a statewide recount must be performed if one was to be done at all. The recounts were stopped, the already certified election results were considered final, and Bush won the state.

Immediately, the left began pushing a fiction that "Bush stole Florida" and thus the election. It wasn't true, and a statewide recount performed by the major media proved it, but truth isn't something that the left is really all that concerned with. For four years the drumbeat continued that Bush had stolen the election.

In the past few days in Ukraine, the people have been dealing with what appears to be a stolen election. Unlike the left in this country, they truly believe that their election was stolen. Why do I say "unlike the left in this country?" I'm of the opinion that the left in this country KNOWS the truth, that Bush won the 2000 election fair and square.

Ukraine has been rocked by protests for days. Although the media have been concentrating on protests in Kiev, they're going on across the country. One half of the country is protesting the election, and the other half is protesting the protests. Ukraine is a divided country in the truest sense. It isn't the simplistic fiction of division used by the left in this country, where approximately 50% of the population falls into one political belief and 50% in the other. Ukraine is divided right down the middle, with one physical half of the country being in political opposition to the other physical half.

A stolen election there, a stolen election here. What's the difference?

I believe that the difference is in preception of reality -vs political spin of reality. The reality of 2000 is that Bush won a close, and hotly contested political race. Bush did not steal the election. Bush did not steal Florida. Bush did not look to some "cronies" on the Supreme Court to give him the Presidency. Al Gore failed to win a majority of votes in Florida, and Florida's votes went to Bush, pushing Bush over the 270 electoral vote threshhold and causing him to win the presidency.

The political spin of that reality is that Bush stole the election. This spin was strictly part of the political game. It was an attempt to energize the Democrat base for the matchup in 2004, and to some extent it worked.

The perception among most liberals in this country was that Bush really won. They kept this to themselves, though, as the truth did nothing to help them and their political positions.

How can I be so sure of this? It's very simple. Where were the hundreds of thousands of protesters? Where were the crowds in the streets, across the country, refusing to accept the election? Sure, we had a bunch of bussed in professional protesters down in Florida for a short time, but around the country, business went on as usual.

In Ukraine, protesters came out in force. Businesses shut down. Government offices were blocked. Huge crowds filled town centers. They stayed out for days. Why is that?

The protesters in Ukraine, unlike the liberals in this country, truly believe that their election was stolen. They're not pushing a story they know to be a lie.

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Is the UN Worth Saving?

William Rusher of Human Events Online poses the question, "Is the United Nations worth saving?" What follows is a thoughtful and informative piece that attempts to answer this question, and provide a detailed explanation. Excerpts:

" ...About 1960, a flood of new ex-colonial nations entered the world body, and quickly organized themselves as the Third World, ostensibly neutral in the epochal struggle between the Communist powers and the Free World. By virtue of sheer numbers this new entity seized control of the General Assembly -- and with it control of the United Nations' central bureaucracy -- and began selling itself to the higher of the two global bidders: Washington and Moscow. Slowly, however, under the leadership of India, the Third World began siding regularly with Moscow, and the United Nations followed suit.

"This thoroughly unsatisfactory state of affairs lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. That forced the Untied Nations, which, like any bureaucracy, is interested first and foremost in self-preservation, to seek a new sponsor. In the past decade, as France and Germany have increasingly seen themselves as the leaders of Europe in an effort to create a counterbalance to the American superpower; the United Nations has progressively yielded to their guidance. Today, it is little more than a marginally useful tool in their schemes to rein in the United States.

"That is one reason why, in 2002 and 2003, the United Nations did its unsuccessful best to block the American invasion of Iraq, despite Saddam Hussein's defiance of 12 successive U.N. demands that it abandon its development of chemical, biological and (if possible) nuclear weapons of mass destruction. And that is also why U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is today contending that any American military effort is "illegal" if Washington doesn't first receive the United Nations' permission."

I suggest you give the whole thing a read.

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Abu the Egyptian is Dead

Yassir Arafat is finally, officially dead. It is unknown how long he has actually been dead, but now it is official, probably allowing for a Friday funeral. Friday is the muslim equivalent of the sabbath. Arafat was the inventor of the airliner hijacking. He was a murderer. He was a liar, which is no surprise. He was the single greatest barrier to peace in the middle east. He was also the most frequent foreign leader in the Clinton White House.


Good Riddance. Arafat now resides in the muslim equivalent of paradise, known in christianity as Hell.

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The Volokh Challenge

I've decided to take up the challenge of Orrin Kerr of The Volokh Conspiracy

First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?

I believe that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea. The United States, under the provisions of the United Nations, had been involved in an ongoing war in Iraq for 11 years. Many millions of dollars was being spent in ongoing patrols, intelligence gathering, attacks on military targets and defensive maneuvers in response to aggressive action by Iraqi troops. No end was in sight to this ongoing battle, as neither the US or UN had any intention of moving forward with war, or backing off of enforcement of the terms of Iraq's surrender.

In addition, Iraq was refusing to comply with UN directives on its creation, ownership and use of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had been instructed to end all WMD research, destroy all of its stockpiles, and comply with UN inspectors in the verification of the end of its WMD programs. Iraq did not dismantle its WMD programs, as evidenced by the discovery of chemical weapons and delivery systems. Iraq did not destroy its stockpiles, as evidenced by the discovery of chemical weapons and delivery systems. That the international forces in Iraq have not found large amounts of WMDs is not sufficient evidence to conclude that there were no WMDs in Iraq, because small amounts have been discovered and there is belief that more may be hidden away or exported to Iraq's allies. The UN inspection teams that attempted to verify the end of the WMD program should have been escorted by Iraqi officials to the existing weapons stockpiles to witness their destruction. They should have been directed to the manufacturing and research facilities to witness their dismantling. Instead, inspectors were restricted from access to many major facilities, held back from others for hours at a time while materials were moved out the back, and generally led on a wild goose chase around Iraq.

The United Nations should have acted on these problems with decisive actions. They did not. To take such actions would have required action by the Security Council. The Security Council's actions can be vetoed at any time by any one of its permanent members. In this case, the problem child was France. France, it seems, had been cooperating with Iraq in defying UN mandates over oil exports, weapons sales, and equipment for Iraq's WMD program. Also defying UN mandates were Germany and, possibly, another permanent UNSC member, Russia. There was no way that action against Iraq could be taken, because of a veto by France. Likewise, the US and Britain would have opposed any end to the restrictions and the requirement for inspections. The resulting waiting game could have lasted for decades, as it has with Cuba.

The wait is now over. Saddam Hussein is out of power. The WMD programs of Iraq are now finished, and verifiably so. Soon, the need for US and international military actions in Iraq will be finished for the first time since 1991. Collateral wins in this battle include Libya, which has decided to end its own WMD programs and willingly submit to proper UN inspections as Iraq should have done.

Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days, such as the stories I link to above?

With any military action, casualties can be expected. That US soldiers die is not evidence of failure. In fact, the relatively low numbers of casualties in this war are an indication of how successful it has been. As with any war, there are forces who will refuse to recognize the end of hostilities. It happened in Germany. It happened in in Korea. Indeed, after the end of our own Civil War here in the US, there were some areas in the Southern states that a northerner would risk his life to enter for years.

News stories from Iraq are written from a very limited point of view. Reporters are, for the most part, limited to safer areas of the country. They report on statistics they receive. They're not going out into the countryside and seeing the schools. They're not witnessing the de-baathification classes. They're not looking at the miles of electrical wire or oil pipelines in operation. They do, however, report on the feet of oil pipeline destroyed in an act of violence by terrorists who would prefer a return to the deadly days of Saddam. The bottom line is that you simply cannot trust any given media source to give you the truth on any story. One must look to multiple sources for information, something the blogosphere has made easier.

Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?

This is a great question, and one which I have not spent enough time thinking on. That said, here's my first list.

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South Africa's Problems

South Africa is a country with some real problems. The murder rate is 313 per 100,000. The world average murder rate is 7 per 100,000, for comparison. Taking a cue from Zimbabwe, white farm owners have been found dead, and farm nationalization is slowly underway. Rumors abound of a planned genocide against whites on the night of Nelson Mandela's funeral. There are many problems, and they're getting worse.

One of the "root causes" of the problems in South Africa is racism. The response of many in power to the racism of yesterday is a new kind of racism. The new racism is never actually called racism, though, but is couched in terms like restitution and justice. This doesn't make the news much in America, because the new situation in South Africa makes the Apartheid era look good in comparison.

The other "root cause" of South Africa's problem is the teachings of Karl Marx. Many of the leadership of the African National Congress were trained in the former Soviet Union to govern with Marxist policies. Stalinist politices are also beginning to take hold as defense forces are being replaced with members of the ANC's former military wing.

There is a correlation between communism and hatred, racism and poverty. Cuba, "Palestine," Zimbabwe, and now South Africa are examples of what happens when the people who run the show were trained in the Soviet Union. Justice is non-existent, blame is deferred onto others, basic infrastructure is horrible, and people die of starvation when Marxism is the school of thought.

I've been following this story in South Africa for several years. I have a customer in my bookstore who visits his family about once a year. He's from what he believes is a safer area of South Africa. After talking with him, I've sought out news about South Africa. As the situation worsens, the world news organizations will be forced to talk about it. I just hope that we don't have to wait for Nelson Mandela's death and the possible genocide to follow for the reporters to be in place.

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Words of an Ex-KGB Officer

A classic post from Lockjaw's Xanga Page

How about a look at our current terror war, and some other things, from the POV of an ex-KGB officer?

From an interview in Front Page Magazine.

An introduction to our man of the hour. Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service. In 1987 he published Red Horizons (Regnery Gateway), reprinted in 24 countries. In 1999 Mr. Pacepa authored The Black Book of the Securitate, reportedly an all time bestseller in Romania. He is now finishing a book on the origins of current anti-Americanism.

On the Palestenian Liberation Organization:

In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow. The Palestinian National Covenant and the Palestinian Constitution were also born in Moscow, with the help of Ahmed Shuqairy, a KGB influence agent who became the first PLO chairman. This new PLO was headed by a Soviet-style Executive Committee made up of 15 members who, like their comrades in Moscow, also headed departments. As in Moscow—and Bucharest—the chairman of the Executive Committee became the general commander of the armed forces as well. The new PLO also had a General Assembly, which was the Soviet-inspired name given to all East European parliaments after World War II.

On Yassir Arafat:

“Tovarishch Mohammed Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar,” was built into a Palestinian leader by the KGB in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War. In that war Israel humiliated two of the Soviet Union’s most important allies in the Arab world of that time, Egypt and Syria, and the Kremlin thought that Arafat could help repair the Soviet prestige. Arafat had begun his political career as leader of the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah, whose fedayeen were being secretly trained in the Soviet Union. In 1969, the KGB managed to catapult him up as chairman of the PLO executive committee. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was also a Soviet puppet, publicly proposed the appointment.

Soon after that, the KGB tasked Arafat to declare war on American “imperial-Zionism” during the first summit of the Black International, an organization that was also financed by the KGB. Arafat claimed to have coined the word “imperial-Zionism,” but in fact Moscow had invented this battle cry many years earlier, combining the traditionally Russian anti-Semitism with the new Marxist anti-Americanism.

On Islamic terrorism:

September 11, 2001 was directly rooted in a joint Soviet/Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operation conceived in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War. The object of this joint operation was to repair Moscow's prestige by turning the Islamic world against Israel and by creating a rabid and violent hatred for its main supporter, the United States. The strategy was to portray the US, this land of freedom, as a Nazi-style "imperial-Zionist country" financed by Jewish money and run by a rapacious "Council of the Elders of Zion" (the Kremlin's epithet for the US Congress), the aim of which was allegedly to transform the rest of the world into a Jewish fiefdom. In other words, the heart of the joint plan was to convert the historical Arab and Islamic hatred of the Jews into a new hatred of the United States. We threw many millions of dollars at this gigantic task, which involved whole armies of intelligence officers.
P>From This Op-Ed in National Review.

On John Kerry's anti-american testimony to the US Congress during the Vietnam era:

The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups (much of which has since been discredited)? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.

As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success."

On the anti-nuke movement:

Many "Ban-the-Bomb" and anti-nuclear movements were KGB-funded operations, too. I can no longer look at a petition for world peace or other supposedly noble cause, particularly of the anti-American variety, without thinking to myself, "KGB."

From "The KGB's Man"

On Celebrities

KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in February 1972 laughed to me about the Yankee gullibility for celebrities. We'd outgrown Stalinist cults of personality, but those crazy Americans were still naïve enough to revere national leaders. We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace.

On the creation of Yassir Arafat:

Next, the KGB gave Arafat an ideology and an image, just as it did for loyal Communists in our international front organizations. High-minded idealism held no mass-appeal in the Arab world, so the KGB remolded Arafat as a rabid anti-Zionist. They also selected a "personal hero" for him -- the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the man who visited Auschwitz in the late 1930s and reproached the Germans for not having killed even more Jews. In 1985 Arafat paid homage to the mufti, saying he was "proud no end" to be walking in his footsteps.

This guy's an interesting read. I'd love to get his book, and spend a weekend with it.

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