A source on politics, war, the Middle East, Arabic poetry, and art.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
"Almost not believing that ISG could be disinterested in this story, I contacted my old graduate professor at Georgetown, Dr. Assad AbuKhalil. Dr. AbuKhalil has become a violent critic of Israel and the Bush Administration’s Iraq War, running a weblog called “the Angry Arab” chock full of pictures of suffering Palestinians and Iraqis sent to him by God-knows-who. This angry Arab (with whom I maintain a certain affection and respect) enjoys attacking government officials on television over various policy errors and mistranslations of the Arabic language, such as the Bin Laden videotapes. I sent him the original Arabic documents via email. “Interesting,” he wrote back. He said “nothing would surprise me” about the depths of Saddam’s depravity anyway, and the documents would have to be studied “more carefully.” I never heard back. The fact that this virulently anti-Administration professor could not dismiss these documents as fakes speaks well of their authenticity, in my humble opinion."