Newsletter No 384

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                             June 2008
                                                                    No 384

If you live in the United States and want to start a war, the first step is to compare the foreign leader to Adolf Hitler. This technique was on display in a recent PBS NewsHour debate between Norman Podhoretz, a foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, and Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International. At least four times during the debate, Podhoretz likened the clerical regime in Tehran to the Nazis. He argued that there is a danger that Iran may "replace [the existing global order] with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism."

This is a ridiculous claim, and it exalts Iran to status it does not deserve. Podhoretz and his confreres have a sad and curious track record of crying wolf, seeing Hitlers and appeasement nearly everywhere. The danger of embracing the Munich analogy as a catch-all analytical tool for international politics is that it overstates the implications of each international conflict, and demeans the importance -- and uniqueness -- of the threat posed by Hitler. By invoking the Hitler analogy over and over, American leaders and intellectuals put us on a path to war, in many cases where we need not be, and risk numbing the American people to the since-unrivaled consolidation of power and evil under the Nazi party in Germany.

Podhoretz penned a meandering essay in Harper's in 1977 titled "The Culture of Appeasement" which likened antiwar sentiment in post-Vietnam America to the wariness of war in Britain after World War I, and then linked the latter to a homosexual yearning for relations with all the young men who perished in the Great War. In Podhoretz's view, "the best people looked to other men for sex and romance," and as a result, didn't much like them being killed by the score on the Continent. "Anyone familiar with homosexual apologetics today will recognize these attitudes."

Tying things back into the 1970s, Podhoretz pointed to the "parallels with England in 1937" and warned that "this revival of the culture of appeasement ought to be troubling our sleep." (A correspondent in a subsequent issue of Harper's would admit that he "had not previously realized that Winston Churchill fought the Battle of Britain almost singlehandedly while England's ubiquitous faggotry sneered and jeered from below.")

As Zakaria pointed out in their debate, Podhoretz retained his paranoia (without the salacious themes) into the Reagan years, even accusing President Reagan, whom neoconservatives have since tried to retrofit as a neocon, of a kind of appeasement. Podhoretz wrote in 1982 that the Reagan administration was "following a strategy of helping the Soviet Union stabilize its empire, rather than ... encouraging the breakdown of that empire from within." Less than 10 years later, of course, the Soviet Union had finished breaking down from within.

The Hitler analogy has a long pedigree. After Egpytian President Gamel Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, British Labor leader Hugh Gaitskell warned prime minister Anthony Eden that the threat posed was "exactly the same that we encountered from Mussolini and Hitler in those years before the war." Yasser Arafat, Hugo Chavez, and even Manuel Noriega have been vaulted to status worthy of comparison to Hitler.

Sometimes the analogy has been used to start hot wars rather than fan cold ones. In 2002, Richard Perle, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, likened Saddam Hussein to Hitler. Arguing for war with Iraq, Perle noted that "a preemptive strike at the time of Munich would have meant an immediate war, as opposed to the one that came later. Later was much worse."

The Hitler delirium is not limited to the right, either. In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright bluntly admitted the lens through which she viewed war and conflict abroad: "My mind-set is Munich." And one of the more absurd invocations of the analogy came from President Bill Clinton, who, in arguing for war against Serbia, wondered "what if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier?" To be fair, Slobodan Milosevic was engaged in ethnic cleansing at the time, but to liken the scale of the slaughter in the Balkans -- let alone its international implications -- to that under the Nazis was historical malpractice of the first order. When Americans hear “Hitler,” they think World War II.

This Hitler mania has many pernicious implications. First, and most obviously, seeing Hitler and appeasement everywhere risks plunging the United States into endless war. By representing the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, for example, as Hitlerian, one stymies debate about policy. (Are you opposed to confronting Hitler?) It is particularly bizarre that those who view American power as having an almost magical ability to transform the world also believe that any number of two-bit dictators measure up to the threat posed by Hitler.

In truth, the gap between a Saddam Hussein or an Ali Khamenei and Adolf Hitler is enormous. All of the supposed modern day Hitlers have presided over sclerotic economies and led states with barely a hope of defending themselves, let alone overrunning an entire continent or the world. Hitler, by contrast, existed in an entirely different environment. The military balance in 1930s Europe made it far from irrational for Hitler to think that it may be possible for Nazi Germany to consolidate control over the continent.

As economic historian Mark Harrison has pointed out, "in the years 1935-9 Germany had procured a volume of combat munitions far greater than any other power, and equal in real terms to the munitions production of all her future adversaries combined." Hitler was aggressive, disgusting, and genocidal, but the thinking that led to the attempt to dominate Europe was not entirely irrational. For Iran to make a play at dominating a continent, let alone the globe, the leadership would have to be quite literally insane. Yet no evidence has been offered to support this thesis.

As Jeffrey Record of the Air War College observed in his book The Specter of Munich, "no post-1945 foreign dictatorship bears genuine comparison to the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler." Record argues that "the problem with the Munich analogy is that it reinforces the presidential tendency since 1945 to overstate threats for the purpose of rallying public and congressional opinion, and overstated threats encourage resort to force in circumstances where nonuse of force might better serve long-term U.S. security interests."

All of which brings us back to Iran. Another AEI scholar, Michael Ledeen, has argued that there is a danger that Washington may decide to "surrender" to Iran's desire to "create a global caliphate modeled on the bloodthirsty regime in Tehran." But how would this would this work, exactly? Do we have reason to believe that anyone -- the Russians, or the Chinese, to say nothing of ourselves -- are going to somehow acquiesce to Iranian domination of the world order? It's never spelled out.

It is unfortunate that Hitler seems to be the only historical analogy that Americans understand. (For many, the name Franz Ferdinand more readily conjures an indie rock band than a key figure at the center of one of history's great tragedies.) But the ultimate danger of rolling out the Hitler analogy over and over again is that if another Hitler should ever emerge, we may be so sick of hearing about the next Hitler that he just might be ignored.

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=its_past_time_to_bury_the_hitler_analogy

Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.

Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB.

We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags.

Whole population strata were eliminated: Independent farmers, ethnic minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior officers, intellectuals, artists, labor movement activists, "opposition members" who were defined completely randomly, and countless members of the Communist party itself.

In his new, highly praised book "The War of the World, "Historian Niall Ferguson writes that no revolution in the history of mankind devoured its children with the same unrestrained appetite as did the Soviet revolution. In his book on the Stalinist purges, Tel Aviv University's Dr. Igal Halfin writes that Stalinist violence was unique in that it was directed internally.

Lenin, Stalin, and their successors could not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale cooperation of disciplined "terror officials," cruel interrogators, snitches, executioners, guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who were members of the progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet regime of horror and even provided it with a kosher certificate.

All these things are well-known to some extent or another, even though the former Soviet Union's archives have not yet been fully opened to the public. But who knows about this? Within Russia itself, very few people have been brought to justice for their crimes in the NKVD's and KGB's service. The Russian public discourse today completely ignores the question of "How could it have happened to us?" As opposed to Eastern European nations, the Russians did not settle the score with their Stalinist past.

And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name "Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the "bloodthirsty dwarf."

Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star", Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was surrounded by beautiful, young Jewish women.

Stalin's close associates and loyalists included member of the Central Committee and Politburo Lazar Kaganovich. Montefiore characterizes him as the "first Stalinist" and adds that those starving to death in Ukraine, an unparalleled tragedy in the history of human kind aside from the Nazi horrors and Mao's terror in China, did not move Kaganovich.

Many Jews sold their soul to the devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their hands for eternity. We'll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the NKVD's special department and the organization's chief interrogator, who was a particularly cruel sadist.

In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course, were gradually eliminated in the next purges. In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges", and "essianism of evil." Turns out that Jews too, when they become captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the greatest known by modern history.

The Jews active in official communist terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and abroad) and who at times led them, did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but rather, as Stalinists, communists, and "Soviet people." Therefore, we find it easy to ignore their origin and "play dumb": What do we have to do with them? But let's not forget them. My own view is different. I find it unacceptable that a person will be considered a member of the Jewish people when he does great things, but not considered part of our people when he does amazingly despicable things.

Even if we deny it, we cannot escape the Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served the Red Terror with loyalty and dedication from its establishment. After all, others will always remind us of their origin.

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FOR THE RECORD

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Deborah Lipstadt’s Blog

Holocaust denial | contemporary antisemitism | free speech | politically correct idiocies

Friday, December 21, 2007

Fred Töben, Australian Holocaust Denier, tries to post on this blog

[Töben, on right, with Ahmadinejad at Iran conference. Note David Duke over Ahmadinejad's shoulder]

I feel no need to post on this blog comments sent to me by deniers. I long ago determined that this blog would not be a place for deniers -- through the subterfuge of supposed comments -- to wage their battles against historical accuracy.

Today I received a comment from Fred Töben, the noted Australian Holocaust denier. I am posting it here because it demonstrates how deniers have turned on David Irving, even though for all intents and purposes, he continues to deny.

Deniers seem to be eating their young... and their old.

Toben's comment was prompted by my post "David Irving goes to Spain and to the BBC...":

David Irving has always believed in limited gassings and hence he is a Holocaust believer. I refuse to believe, without physical proof, in the systematic extermination of six million European Jews in homicidal gas chambers.

The Holocaust believers have never proven their case but instead use legal means to silence those who refuse to believe in the Jewish Holocaust Shoah.

Fredrick Töben

Adelaide Institute

Posted by Deborah Lipstadt at 5:57 AM 5 comments

Labels: Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Denial: Iranian

http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/search/label/Holocaust%20Denial%3A%20Iranian

5 Comments

MarkH said... He showed up on my blog to comment on Irving as well and squealed like a little pig when disemvoweled. That brightened my day some. I agree, never tolerate their nonsense. They'll cry persecution, yada yada, but that's because they have so little understanding of what real persecution is. Ironic, since real persecution is what they deny. December 21, 2007 7:37 PM

Jeremy Jacobs said... What are the Australians doing about him? December 22, 2007 8:08 PM

hockey hound said... "...they have so little understanding of what real persecution is. Ironic, since real persecution is what they deny." Good point. December 25, 2007 6:06 AM

MS said... I agree with your policy of not letting such people take over your comments section. Your blog would not be readable if they filled it with their filth. Still, I"m also glad you published this example, not only for the point about frictions within the deniers' folds, but also because those of us who don't come into contact with such folks as Töben need to be confronted with it once in a while. It's a healthy reality check. January 13, 2008 2:23 PM

Tonja said... What is there to deny is what I would ask them, how can they debate an issue that is proven through everyones history?I too have encountered some who believe that the Nazi's had a right to defend themselves against their enemies, until I show them pictures of the children being killed by the SS officers in the Ghetto's before the Gas Chambers. How anyone can say a babe of 3 is their enemy is corruptive in sense.

Stay fast and hard against the deniers, for they to shall see the light eventually, unfortunatly it will be by God himself. January 13, 2008 7:59 PM

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10183882&postID=5480775860865754208&isPopup=true

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John Bennett comments on Professor Deborah Lipstadt’s reseach integrity.

In his Australian Civil Liberties Union–ACLU publication, Your Rights, 2000, at p. 82, John Bennett briefly responds to material appearing in Professor Deborah Lipstadt’s 1994 book: Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory:

“Lipstadt’s ‘scholarship’ on Revisionism in Australia – half a page of Lipstadt’s book is devoted to historical revisionism in Australia. Claims by Lipstadt that I am ‘the leader of the Australian League of Rights’, that I have claimed the Holocaust is a ‘gigantic lie’, and that Fred Leuchter who had demonstrated that people could not have been gassed at Auschwitz, has visited Australia, are all incorrect and amount to ‘an assault on truth’.

I am not the lader of the Australian League of Rights, and am not now and have never been even a member of the group.”

Contact John Bennet at johntusonbennett@hotmail.com

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Berlin Jewish Center builds replica of Western Wall
100-square-meter replica of Judaism’s holiest site to cost $8.2 million;

‘this is a symbolic part of making Berlin a central hub of Jewish life again,’ center’s rabbi says

Germany’s new $8.2 million Jewish community center will feature a replica of Jerusalem’s Western Wall - accurate down to the plants sprouting from it, the center’s leaders said.

The 100-square-meter replica will be part of Szloma Albam House, whose opening Sept. 2 will provide another sign of the growth and vitality of Berlin’s 12,000-member Jewish community.

”This is a symbolic part of making Berlin a central hub of Jewish life again,” the center’s executive director, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal told the Associated Press on

Wednesday.

The project began when a team from the Chabad-Lubavitch organization traveled to Jerusalem to photograph a section of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, famous for the tradition of inserting tiny prayers on paper into its many cracks.

Almost 19 tons of “Jerusalem Gold” sandstone quarried in the region arrived in Berlin on July 11, and has since been chiseled and installed to match the photographs.

The complete replica, located in the center’s entryway, will also include identical plants sprouting from the cracks.

The Western Wall replica is not meant to be used for worship, but as a symbol and reminder of the center’s mission.

Teichtal told the AP that the center’s architecture directly reflects center’s philosophy. A large cobalt and light blue glass window greets visitors as a symbol of transparency. The sleek, contemporary design by Russian architect Sergei Tchoban, shows that Szloma Albam House is focused on the future.

”Within the transparency is tradition, and that’s why we’re building the wall,” he told The Associated Press. ”It’s the strongest symbol of the survival of the Jewish people.”

'Tremendous attraction'

Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski, an orthodox rabbi from New York who serves at Berlin’s Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue, said the replica has “no more meaning than a picture.”

”But the wall itself has a tremendous attraction and obviously a deep-felt meaning for many people, so it’s still nice to have a replica.”

The Szloma Albam House, located on Muenstersche Strasse in Berlin’s Charlottenburg neighborhood, has been under construction for three years. Though opening officially on Sept. 2, its synagogue is already open for worship and classes are being held amid construction noise. More than 30 rabbis from around the world and high-ranking German officials will attend.

Teichtal, a Brooklyn, N.Y., Native whose grandfather’s family was killed in the Holocaust, stresses that the center is meant for everyone, including non-Jews.

Along with a synagogue, Szloma Albam House will have a kosher restaurant, a tourist welcome center, library and media center, conference center, seminary, youth lounge, shop, and a top-of-the-line mikvah, or ritual bath.

Ninety percent of the center’s funding was raised within Berlin’s Jewish community.

“This is a sign that people are putting their trust in the Jewish future of Germany,” Teichtal said.

The Jewish community in Germany is the fastest growing in the world, according to the World Jewish Congress, fed by immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The Central Council of Jews in Germany says the Jewish community has some 110,000 registered members. Some 560,000 Jews lived in Germany before the Holocaust.

Berlin, with 12,000 Jews and eight synagogues, has the largest Jewish community in Germany. One of the Szloma Albam House’s primary functions, Teichtal says, is to help these Jewish immigrants integrate into German society. All services and classes will be taught in German.

Associated Press,

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3429991,00.html

On Tuesday, Iran announced it was installing 6,000 more centrifuges — they produce enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon — in addition to the 3,000 already operating. The world yawned.

It is time to admit the truth: The Bush administration’s attempt to halt Iran’s nuclear program has failed. Utterly. The latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions, which took a year to achieve, is comically weak. It represents the end of the sanctions road.

The president is going to hand over to his successor an Iran on the verge of going nuclear. This will deeply destabilize the Middle East, threaten moderate Arabs with Iranian hegemony, and leave Israel on hair-trigger alert.

This failure can, however, be mitigated. Since there will apparently be no disarming of Iran by pre-emption or by sanctions, we shall have to rely on deterrence to prevent the mullahs, some of whom are apocalyptic and messianic, from using nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War, we prevented an attack not only on the U.S. but also on America’s allies by extending the American nuclear umbrella — i.e., declaring that any attack on our allies would be considered an attack on the United States.

Such a threat is never 100 percent credible. Nonetheless, it made the Soviets think twice about attacking our European allies. It kept the peace.

We should do the same to keep nuclear peace in the Middle East. It would be infinitely less dangerous (and therefore more credible) than Cold War deterrence because there will be no threat from Iran of the annihilation of the United States. Iran, unlike the Soviet Union, would have a relatively tiny arsenal incapable of reaching the U.S.

How to create deterrence? The way John Kennedy did during the Cuban missile crisis. President Bush should issue the following declaration, adopting Kennedy’s language while changing the names of the miscreants:

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.

This should be followed with a simple explanation: “As a beacon of tolerance and as leader of the free world, the United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people.”

This policy — the Holocaust Declaration — would establish a firm benchmark that would outlive this administration. Every future president — and every serious presidential candidate — would have to publicly state whether or not he supports the Holocaust Declaration.

It is an important question to ask because it will not be uncontroversial. It will be argued that the Holocaust Declaration is either redundant or, at the other extreme, provocative.

Redundant, it will be said, because Israel could retaliate on its own. The problem is that Israel is a very small country with a small nuclear arsenal that could be destroyed in a first strike. During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. created vast and invulnerable submarine fleets to ensure a retaliatory strike and, thus, deterrence. The invulnerability and unimaginably massive size of this American nuclear arsenal would make a U.S. deterrent far more potent and reliable than any Israeli facsimile — and thus far more likely to keep the peace.

Would such a declaration be provocative? On the contrary. Deterrence is the least provocative of all policies. That is why it is the favored alternative of those who oppose a pre-emptive attack on Iran. What the Holocaust Declaration does is turn deterrence from a slogan into a policy.

It is, of course, hardly certain that deterrence would work on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other jihadists. But deterrence would encourage rational Iranian actors, of whom there are many, to restrain or even depose leaders like Ahmadinejad who might sacrifice Iran’s existence as a nation in order to vindicate their divine obligation to exterminate the “filthy bacteria” of the Jewish state, “this disgraceful stain (on) the Islamic world.”

For the first time since the time of Jesus, Israel is the home of the world’s largest Jewish community. An implacable enemy has openly declared genocidal intentions against it — in clear violation of the U.N. charter — and is pursuing the means to carry out that intent. The world does nothing. Some, like the Russians, are literally providing fuel for the fire.

For those who believe that America stands for something in the world — that the nation that has liberated more peoples than any other has even the most minimal moral vocation — there can be no more pressing cause than preventing the nuclear annihilation of an allied democracy, the last refuge and hope of an ancient people openly threatened with the final Final Solution.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L3342999,00.html

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Take a Look in the Mirror, Israel

Deir Yassin massacre

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948 when between 107 and 120 Palestinian Arabs, predominantly old men, women and children living in the village of Deir Yassin (transliterated Hebrew: Dirat HaYasmin) near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine were murdered by Jewish Irgun-Lehi force.

It occurred while Yishuv forces fought to break the siege of Jerusalem during the period of civil war that preceded the end of the Mandate. Contemporary reports gave an initial estimate of 250 killed.

These had a considerable impact on the conflict and became a major cause of the Arab civilian flight from Palestine.

The threat of war on Iraq is one step closer with the United States and Britain rejecting its 12,000-page weapons declaration.

The American and British response came after the United Nations' chief weapons inspectors, Dr Hans Blix and Mohamed el Baradei, provided their initial assessment of Iraq's declaration to a closed meeting of the UN Security Council.

Dr Blix told the Security Council Iraq had failed to provide the evidence that it no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction. "An opportunity was missed in the declaration to give a lot evidence," he said.

The US Secretary of State Colin Powell, says Iraq is in material breach of the resolution. "This declaration totally fails to meet the resolution's requirements," he said.

Mr Powell called for the inspections to continue and to give high priority to questioning Iraqi scientists outside of the country. "Iraq is obligated to make such witnesses available," he said.

Resolution 1441 calls for serious consequences if the Security Council finds that Iraq has failed to comply.

Before United Nations weapons inspectors had even delivered their assessment, Iraq was already rejecting the allegations it had failed to declare all of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraqi presidential adviser Amer Al Saadi says there is nothing new in the declaration, because there is nothing new to report. He says weapons inspectors have already received all the information they need. "We are not worried," he said. "It is the other party that is worried because there is nothing they can pin on us." Iraq says the US and Britain have no evidence to support their allegations that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction.

There is nothing new in the return of inspectors of so-called weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

An attempt to subjugate a defeated state and population 'forever' was made with the Versailles Treaty in 1920 against Germany and its World War One allies.

To enforce the 'de-militarisation' an Inter-Allied Military Control Commission was formed, which had the power to go anywhere, anytime in Germany to find concealed and illegal weapons. The Commission, formed out of intentionally-chosen technical experts and German-haters, soon became notorious for its chicaneries, which extended not unexpectedly into centres of industrial espionage, economical sabotage, especially in areas where the victors feared German competition. The German chemical industry was therefore its favorite target.

In spite of extensive use of bribery and treason in finding forbidden weapons it was an almost total failure. Yet the commission continued to hang around Germany until 1927 when it was reluctantly disbanded.

General von Seekt, chief of the Reichswehr — the German army of that time — had personally ordered and insisted on adhering to the limitations imposed upon Germany by the treaty. That patriotic officers of lower rank did not always comply was a different matter. But in principle this mattered little, for Germany was effectively disarmed, much weaker than the smallest of its aggressive neighbours, for example, Czechoslovakia. Remember, that even that 'shitty little state' of Lithuania was able to annex part of East Prussia in 1923.

Suring the 1920s French politicians unashamedly and without proof pulled the 'secret German armaments and hidden armies' card and, for their own vindictive ends, made unending demands for 'reparations' with which to blackmail the feeble Weimar republic.

It is worth to remember that the previous search for 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq was a failure, and when Iraq kicked out the inspectors, it was not because of their useless search, but for espionage condoned by that infamous Australian 'diplomat' Richard Butler.

The de-militarisation Commissions for the other loser states of World War One were just as ineffective as in Germany. Austria and Hungary were bankrupt; in Bulgaria the army saw to it that the investigators were utterly frustrated and thereby accomplishing nothing, while in Turkey they never managed to start at all because Turkey refused to ratify the Treaty of Sevres.

"Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent,

arrogant and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president."

Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, September 22, 2002.