Raed Jarrar & CMAR II: A Correspondence

"Iraqi" blogger Raed has recently shut down his Comments section on his site. He claims this is because he is concerned about the "abusive comments" and fears about being sued. I found this funny because only a few weeks previously he had threatened to sue me for things he claimed I said in a blog. He also asked if I wouldn't mind (oh by the way) giving him my personal information so he could sue me.

The truth, as it turned out, was that Raed was about to apply for a work permit in the Imperialistic United States, and his blog comments section had attracted the lowest denominator in supporters of the Iraqi Insurgency. His brother, an insurgent supporter himself, had been arrested by the Iraqi counter-terrorist team just for perusing Raed's comments section for a few minutes. The police spent two minutes reading the bile posted there, and were convinced anyone who would read it must be a hardened bomb-planter. Obviously, his blog as it stood was not going to look good for his upcoming Green Card interview.

Raed is not Iraqi although his mother is. He is "Palestinian" because, I guess, that's what his father is. Most of his life has been spent outside of Iraq too. He cares little for Iraq or Iraqis as I judge from his blogs. He cares about Arab National identity. For those who don't know Arab Nationalism is the Fascism of the Middle East. It is a KEY reason that the region has slipped steadily toward the 19th century for the last 50 years.

This is MY side of a correspondence I had with Raed when he contacted me because I am a contributor to Iraqi Bloggers Central. He informed me that unless the said site stops identifying him as a Ba'athist on its sidebar or proves that he has at sometime joined the Ba'athist Party that he will sue me personally in court for making untrue statements about him. He did not quote any specific instances in which I state something about him that is untrue. Apparently, he sent the same emails to Jeffrey and Mister Ghost.

I began replying to him because I hoped to learn more about his specific background: the ways exactly his family benefited under the Saddam regime and so forth.

An so we begin:

Dear, dear, Raed,

Thank you for the heads up about your upcoming nuisance suit.

I would be anxious to correct any statement I have made about you that is untrue, but you must specify exactly *what* I have said that is untrue (as you will be required to do in court).

I don't recall ever saying you had joined the Ba'athist Party, so I can't take that back. I have said that you are a Saddamist and a Ba'athist. But in a practical sense, one no more needs to join a party to be a Ba'athist than one needs to join the American Socialist Party or the Iraq Communist Party to be a Socialist or Communist. I myself have been accused of being a "neoconservative" many times in the comments section of my blog (here -- you should check out the update section of that post) while in fact I am not a member of any political party of that name or any other and never have been (I don't have the time).

Of course, if your law suit ever comes to trial, I will bring as evidence the fact that your brother Khalid was suspected of being an insurgent by the Iraqi authorities simply for *viewing* your blog for a short time...these were officials who, according to Khalid's own testimony, could barely speak English and knew nothing of your blog beforehand, but they only had to read a few articles to be assured that they were these were the words of one who yearned for "The Return".

If you don't like being thought of as a Ba'athist, you should stop talking like one. Personally, I *don't* think you are merely a Ba'athist. I think you are a cheerleader for any dictatorship anywhere in the world: Saddam, Iran, Syria, Arafat's corrupt regime, and most recently the military dictatorship of Imperial Japan (prior to WWII).

Raed, unfortunately I'm not sure how this law suit will ever come off. Not even Jeffrey or Mister Ghost know who I am, nor do I know who they are or if they have ever met each other. So, as you can imagine, there is no way I would ever willingly provide my personal identity to a fellow-traveler and, in my opinion, financier of the black-hole-minded monsters blowing up cars on the streets of Iraq and targeting the families of Iraqi civil servants.

Keep up the good work my Ba'athist friend. No doubt you have proved to be valuable bait for the Iraqi authorities to identify the terrorists in their midst.

CMAR II

***************

Raed responded with various insults and repeated claim that my statements were libelous, and more insults in an attempt to get me to give him my personal information. While his first missive was very legalistic, this next one was a positive barking rant. I responded:

Dear, dear, Raed,

Wow! Respond to the (current) morose and confused Raed, and get a reply from the (classic) off-his-lithium, drunk-off-his-ass Raed. Cool!

"1) [quote from Raed informing me that calling him a Ba'athist when I know he is not a Party member is a crime in Iraq]

In that case, you should sue me in the Iraqi courts. Welcome to America, Raed!

[quote from Raed that I should preface calling him a Ba'athist the words "in my opinion]

You sure do sound like a Ba'athist to me. (Ba'athism: The National Socialism of the Arab world!) You apparently also sound like a Ba'athist to the Iraqi security forces whose job it is to track down Saddam's Orphans (the violent sort however - not the "shaking his tiny fist at the world" sort like you).

Actually, you sound like a young man mourning his missed opportunity to slip Uncle Saddam a big slurpy tongue -- but that's just my opinion, of course. I don't have any evidence that you tried to join the "We Stuck Our Tongues Down Saddam's Throat Club" (WSOTDSTC), but were denied admission because you were too old.

Thanks for the permission to express my right of free speech, but I'll take advantage of it any way I please, thank you very much.

[quote from Raed that no one knows who I am (even my father) and everyone knows who he is (including my mother): he is Raed Jarrar]

"World-famous crack-pot and alcoholic extraordinaire!" "Boy-whore of murdering, kidnapping, criminal swine." "Bum-rugger and subsister on the mongrel dogs of the world" (like some kind of canine Jeffrey Dahmer). Yes, Raed, we all know you.

[Raed ask why don't I just give him my attorney's contact information.]

Because you are in bed with and financing (with what you don't steal from that kitty you call a "charity") the midge-witted crocodiles who kill decent Iraqis whenever they can find them. I would no more hand over my personal contact information to you than pet a rabid squirrel.

Besides all that, you don't have a case, and merely conversing with you is plenty of entertainment for me. [Note: As it turned out I overplayed my hand in saying this.]

Now that I have answered your questions, I have a couple of questions for you. Please don't take too much time to respond:

• How are you paying your U.S. attorney?


• Is your capitalist father fronting the money, O Principled One?


• Or is the money coming from your "charity"?


• Did you read this post of mine from last year? I'm curious about the
  special benefits you and your family may or may not have received from
  Saddam while the rest of Iraq languished under the U.N. sanctions.


• Could you please refute or elaborate on the claim that Palestinians and other immigrants (including yourself) received special stroking from the government in order to buck-up Saddam's homicidal regime?

Your correspondent,

CMAR II

************************

In his next email, Raed says he is responding to me because I am only adding to the evidence against me.

He says he has never read my blog because he does not read junk. He denies that he or his family have any connection direct or indirect, political or financial with the Iraq leadership and that I should beware making accusations without proof. [Note: Since to my knowledge Raed has never held a real job, where the avowed Socialist Raed gets his money is certainly worth thinking about. He's never mentioned robbing banks for a living or anything. So someone who works for a living must be giving it to him.]

He says he will sue me not under Iraqi law but under US law which takes into account the danger my claims place him in Iraq. He says his attorneys will take his case on the prospect of me paying damages to him and his attorney fees as well. (hee hee) He expresses his love of the American legal system.

And so my long response was:

Raed, Raed, Raed,

Well, "proof" one way or the other is what I'm trying to obtain. But you didn't quite answer my question. I can't believe you haven't read my blog, because if you think merely calling you a "100% National-Fuhrer-Approved, Uber-Ba'athists R Us" is libelous, you should definitely read every line of my blog for important evidence in your case.

In order to make things easier for you to answer question #2, I'll paste the text of what I've been told: [I quote from here:]

So how 'bout it? Can you confirm, deny, or elaborate on any of this? Did you or your family receive perks that were unavailable to average Iraqis based on your father's Palestinian status? Can you provide anymore information on advantages that Saddam provided to foreign Sunni Arabs and especially Palestinians?

Yes, usually I do [love the US legal system]. And I'm touched that you are an admirer of the American system. But from what you are saying, I'm thinking that someone may be taking advantage of you. Have you ascertained that your counselors' legal education consisted of more than watching every episode of the "Ally McBeal" TV show? Let me give you a broad overview of the definition of libel (in most jurisdictions):

The statement(s) must be published to at least one other person other than you the offended party. The statements must be "of and concerning" you. People reading the statement(s) must identify it specifically with you.

Well, that certainly applies.

The statement(s) must actually harm your reputation, instead of being merely insulting or offensive.

This is the first place you're going to have problems. See, your blog does far more than anything I, or anyone else, could say or do to identify you as a Ba'athist, as a Saddam wet-dreamer, as one who is filled with nostalgia for the old regime. As evidence, Iraqis who never heard of me thought the same thing when they monitored Khalid reading your blog. So you see, I have not harmed your reputation. The Ba'athist that lives in your mouth has already done that beyond any further damage.

The statement(s) must also be a false statement of fact.

What does that mean? They must be provably untrue. Name-calling, hyperbole, etc. is explicitly identified as being unprovable and so, is not applicable to a libel claim. In other words, you can't sue a person for calling you a name....such as Ba'athist. Because, even though it is a self-evident implication from your blog, it cannot be proven true or false.

Finally, the statement(s) must also have been made "with fault".

That's a complicated term. It means something like "you should have known better". "Fault" is determined primarily on the status of the plaintiff (that's you). In your case, people in the public eye, such as well-known individuals and people involved in specific public controversies, are required to prove actual malice.

That is another specific legal term which means someone positively knew his statement was false or recklessly disregarded the truth or falsity of his statement. Well, Raed, as you have told me, you are a very well-known individual. Not only do I not KNOW you are not a Ba'athist (or even whether or not you joined the Ba'athist Party), I firmly believe you are one in your heart. Nor have I recklessly disregarded your claims that you never joined the Ba'athist Party since as I have stated, it doesn't matter. Your Ba'athism is evident in your blog: that you gloat when harm comes to the elected Iraqi government, you rail against its viability, authenticity, credibility, and value, and you gleefully prophesy an Iraqi civil war. In fact, you stated that you not only expect a civil war, but that the U.S. should pull out and let that happen (have you deleted that post?).

Raed Jarrar = Ba'athist...and a host of other names I could provide.

[Raed also demanded I prove he has mishandled his charity's money. He warns me that I could be charged with the crime of not reporting a crime in progress.]

Okaaay, I will attempt to prove it if I can. Send me copies of all your paycheck stubs, tax records (you say you have "personal funds" -- so you have paying job, right?), PayPal bank account balances, and receipts since September of 2004. Mind, I don't know whether it is a crime for you take money from this charity for personal use. I can't imagine who has jurisdiction over it if it were. I doubt you've legally registered it as a non-profit organization. In short, these aren't public funds. If you spent most of it on a vacation with your girlfriend, that's probably the business of no court in the world unless you have failed to pay some required income tax. I doubt the cretins who sent you money would care one way or the other.

Also, in America, there is usually no law requiring anyone to report "a crime in progress" (except in some cases with stock brokers and lawyers). But, I don't know, after you send me all that stuff, perhaps I'll have a cause to report something to somebody.

I find it interesting that you have twice now neglected to deny that you are a financier of the terrorists either in providing them with food supplies or in direct funds. Which brings me to your penultimate statement:

[Raed urges me to put my trust in the US legal system and assures me that my personal information will stay between our lawyers.]

I'm already suspicious of the quality of your "lawyers", and anyway you would certainly have a right to any information your attorney has. Nevertheless, I want to assure you that I will never, never give personal information to a fellowtravelerr and financier of those walking apollyons that murder Iraqi civil servants and their family members for $1000 or less...who kidnap retarded children and force them to be murder-suicide bombers...who even trick their own compatriots into being murder-suicide bombers. These people are bottomless pits without evidence of humanity, and if someone chooses to provide aid to their cause (even as only an apologist), what possible assurances could that person give anyone?

[Raed says that if I took back my misstatements we could converse civilly and be friends.]

Actually, we've already conducted a far more civilized dialog with each other than I ever would have thought possible -- and that only happened (in part) because of the statements I've made about you. Without those statements we probably would never have conversed at all. For that reason alone, I'm not inclined to stop.
[There...I blew it right here. Raed cease to continue serious discourse because of that statement.]

But I'm not unreasonable. I'll tell you what, here is how you can make me change my conviction that you are a Ba'athist. On your next post on your blog write a detailed list of things happening in Iraq today that make you glad Saddam was removed by the Coalition forces. I'm not asking you to be happy with everything happening in Iraq today. I would just like to know what makes you happy Saddam is gone.

For example, if I were talking to Khalid, I would point out that he is now able to read blogs that disagree with his government, that he can legally have a blog of his own of that sort, and that if some errant police officer arrests him for that, he can say that it is his right to do those things...and saying that will get him released.

So how about you? What makes you happy that Saddam is gone?

Your Correspondent,
CMAR II

************************

Raed tells me I am a nobody and to say hello to my mom and dad (if I can find him), and that he will not have anything more to say to me unless I give him my personal information. See? I got cocky and went too far. But I take a shot anyway:

Dear Ba'athist Raed (a.k.a The Terrorists' Fluffer),

Who am I? Apparently, I am the savager of the reputation of the highly regarded Raed Jarrar (world-famous crack pot and alcoholic extraordinaire)!

Things you didn't say in your last email:

• Any denial that you and your family received special perks under the Ba'athist regime.


• Any of the proofs I requested that your "charity" is a not a personal vacation fund/car-bomb kitty.


• One single thing that makes you glad Saddam is gone.

I presume your silence springs from an uncharacteristic seed of honesty.

Your Correspondent,
CMAR II

************************
Raed responds with a similar email and says that I will never move him from his "anti-Ba'athist/anti-Occupation ideas". Another comment about my mom and dad. But I'm not giving up yet. Maybe I can still draw him out:

Dear Ba'ath-boy (a.k.a. Saddam's Monkey),

(sigh)
Okaaaay.

My name is Keith Myass
(the last name is French so you have to put the inflection on the second syllable)

My address is the carbuncle on the dog's butt of your "good name". I realize that's not a precise location because your good name has two dog's butts -- one on each end.

Now that I've answered your question have there are some other things you have so far failed to note in your emails. In addition to:

• No denial that you and your family received special perks under the Ba'athist regime.


• None of the proofs that your "charity" is a not a personal vacation fund/car-bomb kitty.


• Not one single thing that makes you glad Saddam is gone.

Also:

• You neglected to note whether you have a job or if the "personal funds" you mentioned came from Daddy (Warbucks) Jarrar or from your Raed's Romantic World-wide Spree charity.

And since when have you ever staked out an "Anti-Ba'athist position?? That's pathetic.

If you are not a Ba'athist then please explain this picture of you and Saddam together:

Your Correspondent, CMAR II

*********************

Now Raed is just sending the same email over and over. I keep trying:

Hey Fluffer!

I loved the reference in your last post to the "mistakes" Saddam made. LOL At least 300,000 mistakes buried in mass graves. Not to mention all the money (designated for food and medicine) that Saddam stole to pass extra pats to Palestinians and other Arabs with foreign visas...and the constant fear Iraqis lived in that they might DREAM something revolutionary (but you didn't have to worry about that.).

"Mistakes".

That's a good one.

So the answer is that you you can't think of ONE thing that makes you glad Saddam is gone.

Talk to you later, Saddamy!

Your Correspondent,

CMAR II

P.S. My mom says she DOES remember you! I'm attaching a picture she had of the two of you.

*****************************

Raed resent his previous email (without the mention of my mother this time).

I gave the project up for lost.

Was The Iraq War Discretionary?12 Reasons Why It Wasn't

It depends. Was the war against Germany in 1942 discretionary for the U.S.?

At the end of 1941 we had been attacked by Japan. Hitler, perhaps presuming we would be busy with Japan anyway, declared war on the U.S. Well, that's what we remember now. Actually, the next day after it was reported, the German government denied that it had declared war on the U.S. At the time, the U.S. went to war against Germany because it was believed that Germany had materially supplied Japan in its invasion of the U.S. or actually helped it as described quite well here. So was the war on Germany based on lies?

Lets assume full hindsight. Was the war with Germany discretionary? That depends on what the meaning of "discretionary" is.

Germany was not an "immenent" threat to the U.S. She was at war with her former ally the USSR on her Eastern flank and at war with the British Empire to her West. Thanks to 50 destroyers supplied to Britain at a crucial moment in 1940, the Battle of Britain had failed. And thanks to the discovery of RADAR, the Germany luftwaffe was neutered.

But the US strategists couldn't have been sure of all that at the time, could they? What they were looking at was the possibility that Britain or the USSR would form a truce with Germany essentially making a truce with both a certainty. Western Europe would be dominated by a poisonous collectivist political philosophy of National Socialism. Where that didn't dominate, it's flip-side, Communism, would. National Socialism was already gaining ground in Argentina and Uruguay. And they still believed Germany was providing material support to Japan with whom we were in a non-discretionary war.

Just because a danger isn't imminent doesn't mean taking it on is discretionary.

• Is it especially likely a foreseen danger will persist until it is imminent?
• Will the forseen danger be more difficult to solve in the future?
• Will the danger be more dangerous in the future.

If the answer is Yes to all three (as was true of the Nationalist Socialists), then talk of "imminence" is absurd. It is worse than choosing to only buy house insurance "when a hazard seems immient". It is more like only calling the police when the prowler outside your house has actually gotten through the open window.

With that in mind, was the war in Iraq discretionary? Here are 12 reasons why it was not.

1) 9-11 seriously upped the ante on the threat of terrorism. In the three months afterward, the U.S. lost 1 million jobs. The ultimate effect of 9-11 actually made the almost 3000 lives lost on that day insignificant. It was the equivalence of fighting a war by undermining the money-supply with counterfiet currency. Another similar attack or two could conceivably remake the economic map of the world. U.S. tall buildings could be made impractical by being made a likely target. U.S. cities could be uninhabitable by the threat of a dirty bomb. Anthrax in the mail slow a postal system to a halt.

2) 9-11 exposed the hopelessness of treating terrorists as mere criminals. The terrorists had governments that harbored them safe from U.S. prosecution. They didn't have ulterior motives like bank robbers (who wanted money) or rapists (who wanted to brutalize and get away without being identified). There existed a statistically small but numerically imposing number of people who wanted only to kill us and die. It was inevitable that they would get us unless we "got" them first in some way.

3) Saddam Hussein had invaded two neighboring countries in less than a decade. I'm not going to debate the U.S.'s support for Iraq during the 1980's because 1) Such scenarios are over-blown and 2) they are irrelevant to discussion of whether the 2003 invasion was discretionary.

But every square mile of oil-rich territory Saddam obtained, made him more dangerous by making him better financed to quell dissention in territories he controlled and to attack his neighbors for more oil-rich territory.

4) After being driven from Kuwait in 1991, Saddam was required to verify the destruction of his WMDs and the destruction of the infrastructure and documentation to create them them. His failure to do so - caused the major intelligence agencies of the world (including France) to conclude he retained them.

Actually the invasion of Iraq provided two categories of invaluable knowledge:

• That there were likely no enormous stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq which would otherwise tie down U.S. resouces worrying about them in a post-9-11 world.
• That Saddam was hiding equipment and documentation to restart his WMD programs after the world looked the other way.

5) The world was about to look the other way: the U.N. sanctions were erroding and would likely have been lifted by now.

6) Like certain other Middle Eastern nations such as Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Iraq was harboring known international terrorists.

7) Saddam had employed terrorists against the U.S. in 1993 when he employed a third-party assassin against former President George H.W. Bush.

8) The U.N. sanctions were a being used by Islamic and Arab Nationalist extremists to recruit terrorists such as the ones Saddam was feared to potentially employ.

9) 1-8 placed the U.S. is an untenable situation. Saddam was too dangerous to "let out of the box" and the box itself was making the U.S. and the world increasingly unsafe by radicalizing Muslims and Arabs. And 9-11 had shown, that Saddam would not need a powerful army to strike at the U.S. anyway.

10) The invasion of Iraq relinquished the necessity to keep U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia (which was Usama bin Laden's original causus belli for the World Trade Center attacks).

11) Just as the invasion of Afghanistan helped to make the U.S. Pakistan policy something besides hopeless, the invasion of Iraq re-stirred the pot of democratic momentum in the Western Middle East which had begun to clump since 1991 with tyrannical Iran and Iraq competing for the role of Anti-U.S. and financially supporting worst actors in the West Bank, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It is no accident that the fall of Baghdad led to Libya getting serious about disarmament, to the Lebanese felt confidence in standing up to Syrian control of their government, and to Saudi Arabia and Egypt at least making a pretense of democratic reform.

12) Although the successful invasion and remaking of Afghanistan is said to have been "a certainty" now, it wasn't in 2002. The same terrorists now said to be being created by the invasion of Iraq, were then being created by the invasion of Afghanistan (which were previously being created by the Iraqi sanctions that "kept Saddam in a box"). Afghanistan was said to be a potential "quagmire" (a term first used in the New York Times for the Afghanistan invasion on October 31st, 2001).

Winning a pitted war against the Muslim and Arab extremists would have been quite difficult in Afghanistan, especially with other nations in the region supporting them. It had no seaports or international airports for ferrying in supplies. It had no highways connecting the Eastern and Western regions. It's people were already shown to tend to be belligerantly fractous and backward.

Taking the battle to Iraq, weakened the enemies of liberal democracy in the region and moved the battle to a modern, accessible theater where it really is a certainty that we will ultimately win if we don't beat ourselves (as the French did against the Germans in WWII).

*

Parallels clear between WWII, war on terror