I was thinking about the Moussaoui case a short while ago, while discussing the issue of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners with some friends. The US government, in prosecuting Moussaoui, claimed that he knew about the plans for 9/11 and, had he told them about them, they would have been able to prevent it. What I was wondering is if anyone in the Justice Department, the American intelligence forces or anywhere in government, actually believes that claim.
Do we have a government that is plain evil or plain incompetent?
The best evidence that Moussaoui did not know about 9/11 is that it happened. I’m pretty sure that the one lesson they teach you in Terrorism 101 is that if a plan you’ve made has been compromised, then you should not carry on that plan. If they arrest someone who knew about the plan, you have to assume the plan was compromised. No matter how much you trust the person or how much you like them (and really, would anyone have even trusted Moussaoui?), you have to assume that they will be tortured or otherwise “pressured” and that they will sing. So you change your plans, or at least you postpone them.
Now, you’d expect the administration and the justice department to both know that this is basic operating procedure for any organization of any kind conducting secret operations, and to trust that al-Qaeda members would be intelligent and organized enough to follow procedure. If they don’t know this, then we might as well give up on this so-called War on Terror, we just are not going to win.
If they do know that, and their whole point on going after Moussaoui was, as it’s safe to suspect, a clumsy attempt at propaganda – then perhaps we should start thinking that our government is filled with people who really have no respect not only for democratic ideals, but for the American people in general. Ok, OK, this is what many of us have thought for a long time. But there is always the voice of doubt (in my case, my husband) standing up and shouting “it’s incompetence, not evil” – but just how incompetent can a government be?
Author: marga (Page 124 of 158)
The PMS Murders are part of the Jane Austen series, another formulaic not-real-mystery, this time starting a struggling freelance writer. These books are not really mysteries in the sense of giving you a limited number of suspects and enough evidence that you could figure out who did it. Rather, they follow the “detective” through her progress of finding out what happened. Pretty much all “newer” mysteries are of this sort, lighthearted and quick reads and completely forgetable. Junk reading at its best.
What somewhat differentiates the Jane Austen mysteries are their humor. They are written by Laura Levine, whom according to the book’s jacket is a comedy writer with a lot of TV credits from the 1970’s, and they are hillarious. I particularly enjoy the e-mail correspondence between Jaine and her wacky parents in Florida. So much so that I was afraid I’d wake up Camila as I couldn’t contain my laughter.
This is the third Jaine Austen mystery I’ve read (I think), and I’ll look for others at the library.
I haven’t written a book report in quite a while, in part because I have less free time since Camila was born and in part because I haven’t been reading as much. When she was very little I could read while I nursed her, later she started grabbing for the book making that activity impossible. Now she’s been weaned, so I can once again read while I lie next to her, but that usually happens only at night – as she either takes her naps at daycare or in the stroller in the way home. None of this, of course, has anything to do with “The Attack.”
“The Attack,” is the title of a much-reviewed book by Yasmina Khadra, the nome de plume of Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer and writer. Khadra’s former profession makes me suspicious of him – (clearly I’m not the only one). He is a man who has killed and committed god knows what other attrocities (he was in the Algerian army, he couldn’t have done otherwise) and who denies the commission of massacres of civilians by the Algerian army (these have been well documented by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations), so I think I’m well justified in my suspicions. But I think the book stands up well on its own, and that whatever small insights into the mind of suicide bombers Khadra offers are at least honest.
The book chronicles the quest of Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli surgeon of Bedouin origin – to understand why his beautiful, happy wife one day tied a bomb to her body, went to a restaurant near the hospital where he worked, and blew herself up, taking with her several children and adults. His desire to understand is to understand is very personal, he feels betrayed by his wife (and rightly so) who gave him no hints he could discern (at least until later) of her purported unhappiness and political leanings. He is shocked and he is angry and he wants answers. He seeks them from the people whom she might have worked with, who gave her the bomb, who sent her on her way of destruction. But all the answers he can get are the obvious ones – “look around us, look at the dispossesion, the missery and humilliation of occupation, look at our lack of weapons and resources, how else can we fight this war than with our own deaths?”. An honest, a compelling answer but not one that can really explain why this particular woman chose that path. She had been walking in Israeli society for years, her best friends were Israelis, why not use her status to give voice to the Palestinians instead? Of course, perhaps I’m speaking out of my own prejudice.
As Dr. Jaafari explores the Occupied Territories looking for answers, for the first time (or so it seems) he becomes aware of the plight of his people, he remembers where he comes from and what he is. Alas, at the end I’m not sure this means anything.
And indeed, that was ultimately the problem with the novel for me. It was a quick and easy read, a compelling theme, but not one that was satisfactionally developed. We could empathize with the doctor’s emotions, but then what? We could be curious as to the motives of his wife, but as I said we never get much of an answer for what they were. At the end, I don’t think I learned anything, saw anything new about human nature, but at least I was entertained.
The sultan of Brunei surely has a sense of humor. Among the gifts he gave to president Bush are a copy of the “Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook” and a vocabulary-expanding game called Forgotten English. Could he possibly have been trying to send a hint to the president?
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