Letters to the Editor
Air Force Vet in Amsterdam
Published Letters: 82 Editor's Choice: 7
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@ definition of adultery in Saudi Arabia
[Read the article: Saudi officials: Rape victim was an adulteress]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Felix is mistaken about the definition of "adultery" in Saudi Arabia when he says it is any instance of a woman being in the presence of a man who is not her "mahram" (protector/guardian such as father, son or husband). That is, to be sure, a bad thing in the eyes of the Saudis and punishable, but it not "adultery," which under Shari’a is defined basically the same way it is in most Western codes, i.e. genital intercourse by a married person with another not his or her spouse.
As a "Hudud" crime (one with a punishment set out in the Qur'an), adultery is a capital offence; though rarely actually punished by death, since the evidentiary standard is the testimony of four Muslim eye-witnesses (assuming they are male - two Muslim women can testify in lieu of one man). So what typically does get punished is the "lesser included offence" of the "immoral act" of being with a person of the opposite sex without chaperone, intercourse or no intercourse.
This all reinforces, as though it were necessary, the hypocrisy of the Saudi victim-blaming here. If they really had proof of adultery they would be imposing a far harsher sentence on her than they are, so calling her an adulteress is libelous and clearly designed to make her look as bad as possible; though I suppose it the Saudi Court might not use the Arabic legal term for adultery and that it was used as a convenient, albeit not quite accurate term in translation.
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Gore's Greatest Error
[Read the article: No Democrat wanted Joe Lieberman's endorsement]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Lieberman can with some justification associate himself with the hawkish pro-Zionist Scoop Jackson; and perhaps even somewhat with Harry Truman whose precipitous recognition of Israel in 1948 was a signature event casting the U.S. in the role of a less-than-honest broker in the Middle East; but for Lieberman to associate himself with a decent and unapologetically liberal Democrat like Hubert Humphrey is, to coin a phrase, secular humanist blasphemy, and deeply offensive.
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Inextinguishable hatred
[Read the article: The Weekly Standard's latest Dewey moment ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I really have the impression that the Weekly Standard, along with many of the "luminaries" in the fields of reporting and commentary that seem determined to bury Senator Clinton's campaign (regardless of whether it is still alive) are engaged in an effort to make up for the failure to remove Bill Clinton from office back in 1999 after the impeachment. Denied one scalp from the "House of Clinton", they are in full hunting mode once again.
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A future Iraq headline
[Read the article: Sorry, Mac, but Iraq is back, too]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And considering that the military is now less than 80 fatalities shy of 4,000, we can expect a lot of headlines on that subject when that sad milestone is officially reached, probably some time around April. It is a sad but telling comment that McCain is more interested in the electorate being allowed to ignore Iraq than to address this festering chest wound in anything resembling a constructive manner. He is no better than the rest of the Republican field (Ron Paul excepted).
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Will the MSM bash Kerry for this?
[Read the article: Edwards on Kerry: Don't stop thinking about tomorrow]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]About four years ago, when Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean, the talking empty heads in the MSM could not stop going on about how Gore could be so disloyal to his runningmate Lieberman, or in a variation on the same familar theme (Everything Gore does is feckless and/or fake), that having identified Lieberman as the second best person to sit in the Oval Office by selecting his as a runningmate, Gore was either being dishonest when he picked Lieberman in 2000, or dishonest in supporting Dean in 2004.
I'll be curious to see if Kerry is subjected to the same abuse for not endorsing Edwards. I doubt he will, or in any case to a far lesser degree, as (a) The MSM may not like Kerry, but their dislike for him lacks the passion in its hatred for Gore, and (b) Kerry is endorsing the MSM's pet du jour, while Gore endorsed a supposedly un-serious, angry candidate.
(For the record, I have long argued that lifting Lieberman out of relative obscurity was the biggest mistake Gore ever made).
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Is McCain talking Straight on Iraq?
[Read the article: McCain owns the Iraq war -- for better or worse]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have always been struck by the fact that McCain - while always on board with Bush on the Iraq war (his claims that he was an early critic of how the war was being fought notwithstanding), only started to vociferously call for a build-up - a surge - shortly before the the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report came out, and most of the fonts of conventional beltway wisdom were certain Bush would use the report as a reason to quickly start scaling back.
I suspect that McCain was counting on such a scaleback which - given that there were and are no good and easy solutions in Iraq would have been at best a mixed success - would then have allowed him to distinguish himself from Bush and Bush policy by positioning himself as the candidate who was more serious, determined and forceful than Bush. And if he then got into office, he would then just deal with Iraq according to his version of Nixon's Secret Plan to end the Viet Nam war.
If that was the McCain calculation, Bush then wrong-footed him by trashing the ISG report and going on to the great surge from which McCain at that point could hardly distance himself, leaving himself unable to put any real daylight between him and Bush on Iraq.
I doubt McCain is really committed to his Bushier than Bush rhetoric; perhaps the Republican Primary voters have the same doubts and are thus not dissuaded by that rhetoric. In a less disfunctional party, supporting a candidate on the hope that he does not really believe what he says would be bizarre, but given the rest of the Repubican field, where (Ron Paul as alwas excepted) else are they to go?