“It makes no sense to distinguish between the terrorists and the regimes that support them, for they are one and the same.”

Does this mean that Neocons will retract their support for the “Republic of Kossova”, the Chechen breakaway republic and their bands of terrorist/murderers? I doubt it.

The alienation’s primary cause (and the insight to its cure) has been the heretofore-indestructible wall of liberal propaganda and censorship by the dominant media. The dominant media’s vanguard comprises the big three television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS), the entertainment portions of the lesser networks, and Hollywood. (Fox News is not included.)

For example, I was a teenager during Nixon’s administrations. The always-liberal correspondents never informed us that Nixon was brilliant and interesting as the same correspondents (e.g., Dan Rather) relentlessly informed us in later years about the redneck Clinton. Walter Cronkite (America’s “biggest blowhard,” as aptly described by the delightful and lovely Ann Coulter) has finally admitted the media has a liberal bias. In his heyday, Walt was billed as the most trusted man in America. If the media had included conservative networks, the networks might have revealed the Clinton’s redneck nature: a sleazy and successful car salesman leaning back in his chair with a piece of straw in his mouth at a sweaty small-town used car dealership making vile jokes about women and black people while shrewdly and selfishly allying himself as Oscar Schindler did before his awakening. (Clinton does even reach the moral level of Machiavelli, who proposed ruthlessness in the public sphere but insisted on purity in the private sphere.)

Although a cradle conservative and therefore a Nixon supporter, I succumbed to amusement over the media’s “Tricky Dickey” caricature. The media did not display Nixon’s brilliance until the 1980’s when Time Magazine’s front page declared, “He’s Back.” Nixon finally was presented on television in a relaxed atmosphere. (Nixon probably contributed to his earlier stiff appearances because of conscientiousness over the enormous burden of being one of America’s major cold nuclear-warriors.) I was pleasantly stunned by his sophistication and humanity.

The corrosive power of brain washing (propaganda and censorship) is enormous. This is supported by realizing cognitive (thought) restructuring has emerged as a respectable, powerful psychological therapy at least as effective as drug therapy for anxiety disorders and depression. Cognitive therapy is not brainwashing but an unrestricted examination of the efficacy of particular ideas. In contrast, brainwashing is relentless exposure to a restricted set of ideas whether or not the ideas are effective (functional).

Traditionalist television networks and film studios would be at least as important as traditionalist philosophy. Internet-based publicity of an initial public offering could yield tens (at least) of thousands of investors. Touching movies and news segments are essential to any modern cause. Imagine the power of a Bruce Willis movie or a Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer series with traditionalist themes.

The bare fact is that on the eve of a military campaign initiated by the United States to destroy his regime Hussein was caught talking to someone who doesn’t like the US and is willing to back up his dislike with violence. How persuasive would that fact be to someone not already persuaded that Iraqi support for terrorist networks is a decisive argument for the war?

What is demonstrated is the simple fact that members of terrorist groups are present in Iraq and are welcome at the highest level of the Hussein regime. Does Mr. Kalb disagree with that statement?

Or, is he suggesting that the terrorist wouldn’t have been in Iraq but for the approaching U.S.-led war, in other words, that there has never been cooperation between Hussein and the Palestine Liberation Front until George W Bush’s aggression drove them together? That could be true, of course, but there’s no basis for one to ASSUME that it’s true, unless one was already persuaded that an Iraq-terrorist nexus doesn’t exist and/or poses no threat to America.

In Mr. Auster’s second paragraph he seems to agree that the significance of the event depends very strongly on one’s previous analysis of the situation. That being so, it does not constitute a demonstration as Ledeen claims. Which was my point.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. We began telegraphing a war with Saddam for conspiring with terrorists months ago. Should it come as any suprise that in the interim, he allied with people dedicated to violent resistance to the U.S.?

And isn’t this fascinating, too? I suppose Hussein is making chemical weapons because neocons said he was. We wouldn’t want to disappoint David Frum and Jonah Goldberg, after all, so we’d better build a 100 acre chemical weapons facility:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/PrinterFull&cid=1048389497622

The chemical plant could be significant event if they don’t find later on it was manufacturing only phosphorus insecticides. Then later report it was manufacturing surfactants. Then … ah, well, you know … look at the 51st Mech Division.

Does Mr. Eubanks suggest that we should try not to let the chemical plant discovery get us into a lather? :-)

It was Mr. Kalb who introduced the idea that Hussein’s actual cooperation with a terrorist does not prove that Hussein cooperates with terrorists, unless one is predisposed to believe that. In turn, I suggested that by rejecting the obvious inference, it is Mr. Kalb, not I, who is looking at this through ideological blinders. Now he has interpreted my gentle tweaking of him as a confession from me that, yes, I also am looking at this through my own prejudices. I must decline the compliment. The presence of a terrorist at Hussein’s side—for whatever reasons, and under whatever circumstances—proves that Hussein cooperates with terrorists. Period.

Besides which, there is lots of other evidence of Hussein training and giving logistical and financial support to terrorist groups. Just a couple of days ago in a public ceremony the Iraq government gave $210,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

The idea that our attack has forced Hussein into a terrorist alliance which, absent our attack on him, would not have existed is not unlike the notion that any terrorist attack that may now hit the U.S. is only “retaliation” for our wrongful invasion of Iraq, as though the terrorists hadn’t attacked us before we hit Iraq. Cycles of violence, anyone?

We are, of course, familiar with this outlook on the left. But now it exists on the right as well.

“It was Mr. Kalb who introduced the idea that Hussein?s actual cooperation with a terrorist does not prove that Hussein cooperates with terrorists, unless one is predisposed to believe that.”

The thought was somewhat more complicated than that. Those who think it worth unravelling can read the Ledeen quote, with which Mr. Auster seemed to be concurring, and what I said in response.

Since I find it impossible to carry on a discussion with Mr. Auster in connection with the Middle East that I regard as productive, I will no longer attempt to do so.

Mr. Kalb said the presence of a Palestinian terrorist at Hussein’s side would not indicate a Hussein-terrorist link unless one was predisposed to believe that, and he suggested that the terrorist’s being there was probably only due to our attack on Hussein. I pointed out that there could just as well be a predisposition at work on Mr. Kalb’s side of the argument, and I also indicated the parallel between his argument and certain liberal statements, the common thread being the assumption that what our enemies do is our fault. Apparently Mr. Kalb thought that the parallel was unreasonable or irrelevant, and so announces that he finds it impossible to have a productive discussion with me about the Middle East.

While I have no desire to offend Mr. Kalb, I’m not sure that the parallel I made is either untrue or unfair. Those who see America as being in the wrong in this war will also tend to construct any negative facts that arise in connection with the war as having been caused by America. I don’t see why it’s illegitimate to point that out, especially as it was Mr. Kalb who initially raised the idea of how one’s prior beliefs determine one’s interpretation of facts.

More news from the front, with all appropriate caveats:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/28/1048653833092.html

U.S. Troops being treated for exposure to Sarin gas in an Iraqi military compound:

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/5573683.htm

Update: Reuters says that missiles armed with chemical weapons have been found.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=PUDKPSFKWP3HGCRBAE0CFFA?type=topNews&storyID=2521303