Memeorandum gets it very wrong!
Memeorandum is a consolidator that links the most popular stories on the web and adds links to other news sources that have commented about them. Those of you who are bloggers are undoubtedly familiar with it; for those of you who are not bloggers, you should know that Memeorandum is very popular with bloggers because it brings lots of hits. Not to mess with one of the Gods of the blogosphere, but they messed up big time today.Memeorandum has been running a story all day today from Haaretz entitled "U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan." The story has been commented on by three other bloggers: The Newshoggers, Informed Comment (which is Juan Cole's site) and TPM Cafe. I don't expect those names to sound familiar to most of you because they are all lefty sites.
I saw the story this morning and said, "that's nothing new - they talked about that when the US first invaded Iraq." But I haven't posted in a couple of hours, and I wanted to post something, so I clicked on the link and got to this story in Haaretz.
Something in this story is very suspicious. Here's what tipped me off:
National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan's consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that "due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel."Paritzky was forced to resign from his ministry and the Knesset in disgrace in 2004 after Israel TV’s evening news broadcast a tape of him conspiring with a private investigator about ways in which they might destroy Paritzky’s Shinui party rival Avraham Poraz. So the Haaretz article dates from no later than 2004, and probably 2003.
Israel's current Minister of National Infrastructures is Binyamin (Fouad) Ben Eliezer.
Moral of the story: Homework, homework, homework. At least learn what's going on here before you try to comment. Obviously the three bloggers who commented have no clue what's going on here. They're just looking for an excuse to impugn America's motives for invading Iraq - and to take a crack at Israel at the same time. But then, I wouldn't expect anything different from moonbats.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:13 PM
2 Comments:
If an oil-related arrangement with Iraq did help both Iraqis and Americans, who exactly should be upset? Since when is America a non-profit organization? Its profits fund much of the economic progress in the world.
Ram,
I'm not sure where you are, but one of the claims of the hard left in the US is that America went to war for oil and Israel. It's a lie of course. But apparently someone on the left used this article to try to promote that myth and hurt both the US and Israel. What they didn't realize is that the article is four years old.
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