From http://OpinionJournal.com

Best of the Web Today - December 19, 2001
By JAMES TARANTO
On the Run  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61676-2001Dec18.html

Anti-Taliban Eastern Alliance officials say "hundreds of al Qaeda members and their families--possibly including some top commanders--escaped the U.S. onslaught at Tora Bora and reached Pakistan with the help of senior Afghan tribal leaders," the Associated Press reports. The Afghans also say Pakistani authorities are protecting senior Taliban officials, but "Pakistan called both allegations nonsense."

In Pakistan, meanwhile, al Qaeda prisoners staged a riot, the London  Daily Telegraph  http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/19/uwar.xml&sSheet=/portal/2001/12/19/ixport.html  reports:

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156 al-Qa'eda captives were being moved from Parachinar, a town near the Afghan border. A group of them shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) and grabbed the soldiers' weapons.

More than 40 of them fled in prison vans. Six were captured soon afterwards although the remainder are still at large. Most of them were Arabs who had earlier escaped from a detention centre in eastern Afghanistan. They had fled the US air bombardment of the Tora Bora mountains and were captured by Pakistani border patrols.

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A  BBC report  http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1719000/1719223.stm  has a casualty count of "at least six men dead on each side."

Where's Osama? Who Nose?  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/12/18/MN121077.DTL

Still no word on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, but some interesting rumors are starting to circulate. The San Francisco Chronicle scoffs at claims that bin Laden has had plastic surgery to alter his appearance, than turns around and interviews a bunch of plastic surgeons on the plausibility of giving the Muslim maniac a nose job:

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"It's do-able," said Daniel Morello, former president of the American Society For Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. . . . Before brandishing a scalpel, Morello would laser off bin Laden's bushy beard, eliminating evidence of hair follicles, cut his hair (if he has any under that omnipresent white turban) and pluck his thick eyebrows.

"The second we alter the eyebrows, we alter his appearance," said Morello, who would also straighten out bin Laden's "heavy-lidded" eyes and perform a lip reduction to thin his "very full" lower lip.

To create more profound change, Morello took aim at bin Laden's nose. "His nose is very prominent, with wide nostrils and a plunging tip," he said. "I would give him a more nondescript nose, tip up, nostrils in--a nose that's more uniform in width."

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Meanwhile, Boston's  WBUR  http://www.wbur.org/special/specialcoverage/feature_aljaz.asp  reports that Al Jazeera reports that the Pakistani daily Jang reports that "Osama Bin Laden secretly left Afghanistan and arrived in Iran, where an ethnic group, which is opposing the Iranian Government, provided him shelter."

Omar's Still Hanging Around   http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,620349,00.html

London's Guardian reports that "Afghan forces have tracked down the Taliban's supreme leader to a mountain redoubt in southern Afghanistan and will lynch him after wiping out his diehard followers, an intelligence chief said." Mullah Mohammad Omar was reportedly betrayed by some of his lieutenants, who were seeking better treatment from anti-Taliban forces.

What's Next?  http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011219/ts/nato_somalia_1.html

A "senior German official" tells the Associated Press that, in the AP's words, "the United States has decided to take its fight against Osama bin Laden's terror network to Somalia. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no longer a question of whether to go after al-Qaida terrorists in the east African nation, but only when and how."

Knight Ridder  http://web.realcities.com/content/rc/news/attack/miami/1956720407.htm  reports the heat may be off Saddam Hussein--for the moment. "Officials and diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Bush's top advisers are nearing a consensus that there is insufficient international backing for a war in Iraq and uncertain prospects of military success." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the administration's leading advocate of taking on Saddam, tells Knight Ridder that America plans to target "places where we think senior al-Qaida might be trying to escape to or those places where we have tentatively identified possible al-Qaida people hanging out"--which likely means countries like Somalia, Yemen and Sudan.

But an article in  Slate  http://slate.msn.com//?id=2059873  suggests an attack on Iraq may be in the offing, even if not immediately. The Webzine's Inigo Thomas notes that the Paul Mikolashek, head of the U.S. Third Army, was recently sent to Camp Doha, a U.S. base in Kuwait. Thomas cites an article in  Jane's  http://www.janes.com/regional_news/africa_middle_east/news/jmb/jmb011212_1_n.shtml , which notes that the "Third Army's mission during the war was to close with and destroy Iraq's Republican Guard." Concludes Thomas: "A decision to topple Saddam Hussein may not have been made, but if the destruction of Iraq's best troops must be part of this mission, as seems very likely, then the 3rd Army would presumably be reassigned to the task it began in Kuwait and southern Iraq just over a decade ago. Why mess with success?"

Pakistani Grenades  http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/191201/dlnat31.asp

Indian police have found markings from Wah Nobel Industries, a Pakistani subsidiary of a Swedish company, on grenades used in last week's terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, the Hindustan Times reports. All five terrorists were Pakistani nationals.

The  Times of India  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=767291005  reports that ties between India and America are "under strain" in the wake of the attack:

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The theme of "your terrorism-our terrorism" has resurfaced again this week after Washington has declined to endorse New Delhi's charges of official Pakistani complicity in the terrorist attack on its democratic epicenter. Instead, in remarks Indian officials and supporters have found galling, the Bush administration is advising India to work with Pakistan in addressing the terrorism issue.

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Does Osama Do Windows?   http://www.elcom.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=829

A suspected al Qaeda member "claimed that Islamic militants infiltrated Microsoft and sabotaged the company's Windows XP operating system," the Washington Post's Newsbytes News Network reports, citing Indian police. Mohammad Afroze Abdul Razzak "claimed that a member or members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, posing as computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft and attempted to plant 'trojans, trapdoors, and bugs in Windows XP,' according to Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, a New Delhi information systems and telecommunication consultant." A Microsoft spokesman says Afroze's claims are "bizarre and unsubstantiated and should be treated skeptically."

Andrew Stephens's Jewish Problem  http://www.consider.net/forum_new.php3?newTemplate=OpenObject&newTop=200112170010&newDisplayURN=200112170010

In Britain's left-wing New Statesman, Andrew Stephens hints at sinister goings-on in Washington:

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In the enforced but highly contrived multi-culturalism of our era, there was a first in the White House on 10 December: President Bush lit a Hanukkah candle to mark the second day of the minor, non-biblical Jewish festival that now competes with Christmas in all politically correct circles. Though Jews comprise no more than 2 per cent of the US population--there are probably more Muslims, though the statistics are unreliable--Hanukkah is now seen as an event that the US president must officially recognise and celebrate.

His spokesman, Ari Fleischer, is Jewish and a couple of weeks ago put his spin on how the White House expected Yasser Arafat to behave in the light of the attacks on Jerusalem and Palestine; the most hawkish member of the Bush administration, the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, is also Jewish and vociferously argues for war on Iraq. But I have never seen these facts mentioned in the media here, as it would be considered unacceptable to do so. But how long will it be, I wonder, before any of the several million US Muslims are similarly assimilated into such trusted positions in US society?

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Arafat's Trade  http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/12/19/News/News.40203.html

The Saudis may have been too hasty in accusing Yasser Arafat of surrendering. The Jerusalem Post reports the Palestinian Authority chief delivered a "fiery address in Ramallah yesterday, during which he said he is willing to sacrifice 70 martyrs for one dead Israeli." An Arafat adviser claims the speech was mistranslated.

The Post  also reports  http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/12/19/News/News.40205.html  that "the terrorist who planted the roadside bomb detonated near a convoy carrying Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz near Hebron last month was a former member Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's elite presidential guard who trained to fight terror in the US."

A Rowdy Saudi  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-princessbond12182001.story

Saudi Princess Buniah al-Saud, a niece of King Fahd, was arrested in Orlando, Fla., for allegedly beating her Indonesian maid and pushing her down a flight of stairs. Charged with felony aggravated battery, the princess could spend up to 15 years in prison. Those great humanitarians at the Saudi Embassy in Washington "said the princess had diplomatic immunity. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service said al-Saud failed to follow proper procedures by not notifying them of her itinerary in America, thereby leaving her without immunity."

Kabul's Lost Women  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62604-2001Dec18.html

"Taliban soldiers abducted many women and girls, perhaps hundreds or more, during their five-year rule of Afghanistan," according to a chilling report in the Washington Post. "It is impossible to calculate the number kidnapped. Many families have never spoken out because of the stigma, especially strong in this conservative Muslim society, of having a daughter or sister sold for sex. Others fear that protesting could jeopardize the life of their missing loved ones."

Meanwhile, a deep thinker named  Mark Mathabane  http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-12-19-ncguest2.htm , "director of multicultural studies" at the  Catlin Gable School  http://www.catlin.edu/  in Portland, Ore., pens an op-ed piece for USA Today in which he reveals that some American parents are "like the Taliban." Do they sell their daughters into slavery? No, it turns out these parents "anoint themselves as thought and morality police" by trying to influence which books appear in public school libraries and on class reading lists. Oh, the humanity!

The Sky Is Falling!  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2001/12/18/eguillermo.DTL

A civil-liberties Chicken Little called Emil Guillermo tells what's supposed to be a harrowing story of the new police state. Glenn Reynolds of  InstaPundit.com  http://instapundit.blogspot.com/2001_12_16_instapundit_archive.html#8034732  summarizes it nicely:

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Here's his tale of fascist brutality and horror: a man talked loudly and rudely against the war and George Bush, and seemed supportive of terrorists. Some FBI agents knocked on his door. They told him he had the right to free speech. He told them to go away. They did.

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Up in Ottawa, meanwhile, civil libertarians staged an oh-so-clever protest against Canada's proposed antiterror laws.  Reuters  http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20011218/od/santa_dc_1.html  reports:

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Canadian police, taking advantage of sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation, arrested Santa Claus on the grounds that he had a beard, was behaving suspiciously and, in all likelihood, belonged to a underground cell. Or so demonstrators would have you believe.

The "arrest" Monday was stage-managed by local pro-democracy activists who say that the legislation . . . will destroy many civil liberties.

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Oh, isn't that just darling? But in at least one Canadian province, Christmas was banned years ago--for reasons of "multiculturalism." The  National Post  http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20011215/879050.html  reports Gary Doer, the premier of Manitoba, "has decided to reverse a trend begun in the 1980s that has seen the elimination of references to Christ and the Christian holiday at the legislature. The decorated spruce tree that sits in the assembly's rotunda has been officially called the multicultural tree since 1990. The legislature has not officially used the word Christmas since 1996."

'Others May Disagree'  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62924-2001Dec18.html

Michael Kelly has some fun at the expense of a confused young lady named Alison Hornstein, a Yale student, who wrote a column for Newsweek:

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At some point soon after Sept. 11, listening to Yale students and professors offer rationalizations for the mass murders (poverty in the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, etc.) Hornstein had an epiphany. Some things were just wrong. "Just as we should pass absolute moral judgment in the case of rape, we should recognize that some actions are objectively bad, despite differences in cultural standards and values. To me, hijacking planes and killing thousands of civilians falls into this category."

Hurrah! A breakthrough! A moral judgment! Yes, Ms. Hornstein, murdering thousands of people in fact is bad. But wait. A lifetime of instruction is not sloughed off quite so easily as all that; Hornstein's bold moral judgment is not quite so bold as all that. Look at her conclusion again: "To me," it begins. To me. Hijacking planes and killing thousands is not objectively bad after all. It is objectively bad only in Hornstein's opinion. Indeed, she rushes to reassure on this point: "Others may disagree." Others may disagree. And she adds: "It is less important to me where people choose to draw the line than it is that they are willing to draw it at all." Oh, dear. . . .

Ms. Hornstein, push on. Go the last mile. Go out on the limb of judgment. Mass murder is indeed objectively bad--and not just in your opinion. Others may disagree--but they are wrong. Indeed, they are (shut the door for this part, lest the hall monitors catch us) morally wrong. . . . Draw the line, Ms. Hornstein. Draw it where you know it belongs. Dare to judge.

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Islam's Bertrand Russell  http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/22/mooney-c.html
 
The American Prospect profiles "Ibn Warraq," pseudonymous author of the 1995 book "Why I Am Not a Muslim":

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A dense treatise modeled after Bertrand Russell's famous 1927 essay "Why I Am Not a Christian," the work presents a strident historical, moral, and philosophical indictment of Islam and advocates not just a firm separation of mosque and state but outright atheism.

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The Prospect's Chris Mooney observes that the book has drawn favorable attention on the political right, from, among others, Daniel Pipes and WorldNetDaily.com. The American left, however, is "confused or afraid":

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Warraq contends that because of the work of Edward Said and other theorists, the American left has "been scared of being called colonialists and imperialists" and so has adopted a guilt-ridden shyness about Islam. Yet liberals in other Western countries have been more open to his views: Warraq has recently contributed a commentary to the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian; in October, Australia's Radio National devoted an entire Religion Report program to interviewing him. As one Islamic historian put it, "At least until September 11, the place where it was the most difficult to criticize Islam was in America."

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Zero-Tolerance Watch  http://www.ljworld.com/section/citynews/story/77382

Steve Decker, a social-studies teacher at Kansas' Wellsville High School, has been suspended without pay for 60 days. His crime? He had a disassembled hunting rifle, in a case, under the seat of his locked pickup truck, which was parked in the school parking lot. "A search dog hired by the school nosed down" the gun, the Lawrence Journal-World reports, and Decker was suspended under a Kansas law prohibiting firearms on school property.

Homelessness Rediscovery Watch

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"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."-- Mark Helprin  http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/mhelprin/?id=65000507 , Oct. 31, 2000

"New Wave of the Homeless Flood Cities' Shelters"--headline,  New York Times  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/18/national/18HOME.html  (link requires registration), page A1, Dec. 18, 2001

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Trojan Horse  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41138,00.html

In Massachusetts, "proponents of two different ballot referendums are trading barbs over allegations that voters who signed a petition supporting one ballot question were duped into signing the other," the Associated Press reports. The same company was collecting signatures for Petition A, which would ban the slaughter of horses for human food, and Petition E, which "would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman."

Hey, why not just combine the two measures and define marriage as a union between a man and his horse? We suspect even Bay State denizens would vote "neigh," but you have to admit, such marriages would at least be stable.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michiel Visser, Damian Bennett, C.E. Dobkin, Raghu Desikan, S.E. Brenner, Karl Hancock, Moshe Sambol, Nathan Wirtschafter, Paul Music, Yehuda Hilewitz, Gerald Robbins, Victor Colvin, Napoleon Cole, Janice Lyons, T.A. Young, Jim Orheim, George Lenz, Caleb Stegall and Jerry Skurnik. If you have a tip, write us at  Review & Outlook  mailto:opinionjournal@wsj.com : America's resolve must match its awesome power (link requires registration).
- Tunku Varadarajan  http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/?id=95001616 : India must respond to Pakistan-based terrorism.
- Peggy Noonan  http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=95001615 : Excerpts from "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan."
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