From Fox News Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe?:

"The [Saudis] need to reply and not just say 'these are fabricated reports,'" said Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

MEMRI just released a report that shows that for decades, the Saudi royal family has been the main financial supporter of Palestinian groups fighting Israel. Saudi Arabia came under scrutiny when it was widely reported that it held a fund-raiser last year to raise money for families of suicide bombers in the Middle East.

Through two committees -- the Popular Committee for Assisting Palestinian Mujahideen and the Support Committee for the Al-Quds Intifada -- the Al-Aqsa Fund has given over $4 billion and reportedly pledged Palestinians up to $1 billion to finance the continuation of the Intifada, commonly referred to by Saudi officials as "jihad" and "resistance."

"Four billion dollars is a lot of money and this is just for two committees run by two very high-profile princes," said study author Stalinsky. "It's just a tiny dip in the bucket on Saudi money on what is being spent throughout the world."

New York lawmakers are criticizing the Bush administration for its decision to classify a portion of the Joint Select Committee on Intelligence's report on the September 11 attacks. Senator Schumer came out swinging yesterday, demanding that the 28-page classified section of the report be publicly released. The classified portion of the report is believed to contain damaging information about the role of Saudi Arabia in the September 11 attacks. 'I just don't understand the administration here. There seems to be a systematic strategy of coddling and coverup when it comes to the Saudis,' Mr. Schumer said.

"Richard, as you well know, there's fresh video tonight as well of the bodies of Saddam's two sons after they were cleaned up by Army morticians. We want to warn everybody, the images are still very graphic, but are those new images any more persuasive to the Iraqi people?"

"They are not really more persuasive. But they certainly are more controversial. These bodies were quite radically altered. First, the men were shaved, then putty was used to remodel their faces, make-up was also applied to make them look more life-like. The Americans, however, say these are certainly the men and even displayed a metal plate that bears the identical serial number to a plate that was inserted in Uday's leg after an assassination attempt in the 1990s. All of this has been quite offensive to Islamic sensibilities here. Muslims are generally buried in a simple white shroud without any embalming process at all, Tom."

"You paint a much more optimistic picture of the state of play in Iraq than anyone reading the front pages of the newspapers and watching news broadcasts in this country would get. Partially, I suspect, that's because of the trickle of reports of American casualties, but also other reports of resistance, as well. What is the news media, what are the news media in this country missing?"

Wolfowitz replied:

"I think the success stories. It's a country that's not easy to get around in, admittedly, and it's not easy to understand. There's a language problem, to begin with. And I don't want to paint a rosy picture; there are real problems. The security problem is real, and the security problem is making it difficult to solve other problems like getting the power and electricity restored.

"But when we visited Najaf, for example, where a relatively small Marine unit is preserving a quite stable situation, not perfect situation, but quite stable, in a city of half a million Shia, who some people predicted would be a huge problem, you had a cameraman there, and I asked if he'd been here before, and he said no, he hadn't, he'd been up north where the fighting's going on, but he hadn't been in the south. And the Marines told me, yes, there was a CNN cameraman who's come here once in the last month, and that was when a Marine was killed.

"It's a hard story to cover, but frankly, I think, maybe success [...] people think isn't as good news.

"But the south of the country is largely stable. This is the Shia heartland, which some people predicated would be big trouble. The north of the country is largely stable. This is the country where you have a potentially volatile ethnic mixture of Kurds and Turks and Arabs, and some people predicted that would be trouble. Where we're having trouble -- and we're making progress even there -- is in this Baathist, Saddamist heartland, including his hometown of Tikrit, where the killers of the old regime are putting out $100 for someone to attack a power line and $500 for someone to attack an American. And that's where the trouble is coming from."

Leftist college professors have reached a new high in intellectual absurdity. In a recent study published in the Psychological Bulletin, they claim to have discovered that Reagan, Hitler, Mussolini and Rush Limbaugh have important personality traits in common. They are all right-wing "conservatives," by which the authors mean they "resist change."

Whether such resistance is to freedom or to dictatorship is not mentioned. So as not to sound too obviously left-wing, the professors add that left-wing dictators like Stalin, Castro and Khrushchev (who the leftists have consistently supported or excused) also "resisted change," and thus may also be labeled as right-wing "conservatives."

What could be the motive for lumping together an American President, a talk show host and assorted mass murderers? Obviously to try to "psychologize" away anyone who disagrees with the leftists by evading fundamental differences in the content of their ideas, for example, the fact that conservatives, at least the better ones, support America's founding, and decidedly radical, principles of freedom and individual rights, whereas the mass killers only goal was to obliterate all rights in their mad frenzy to seize power and enslave or exterminate all those who opposed them or anyone they did not happen to like.

With nonsense like this passing for objective scientific inquiry, is it any wonder that the American public is becoming increasingly contemptuous of its intellectuals?

George Bush confirmed on Friday that he has ordered the US military "in limited numbers" to head into the area to support a West African peacekeeping mission. But it is still unclear precisely what the role of these forces will be, or how they will be deployed. A three-ship naval task forces headed by the amphibious helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima, with up to 2,000 US marines aboard, has been steaming across the Mediterranean to be in a position to respond to the president's orders...

...It looks like US forces will be involved only in a support mission. They may not even set foot on Liberian soil in any significant numbers, but limit themselves to an offshore role. That may disappoint many of those who have been pressing for the Americans to take a lead. ["Uncertainties of US Liberia mission", 25 July, 2003, BBC]

Recommended Reading: Foreign Policy and Self-Interest: Liberia Campaign Would Be a Moral Crime
A foreign policy based solely on America's self-interest is not simply practical, but *moral*--which is why any "humanitarian" mission, such as the proposed campaign in Liberia, is a moral crime.