Port 80

I’ve written before about the difficulties of being a pro-war Catholic, when the Church has shown itself to be anti-war almost to the point of blindness. Given that, the recent statements made by Cardinal Renato Martino don’t surprise me overly. (Particularly in light of his previous statements on the war.) To quote from Reuters:

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department and a former papal envoy to the United Nations, told a news conference on Tuesday it would be “illusory” to think the arrest of the former Iraqi president would heal all the damage caused by a war which the Holy See opposed.

“I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures,” he said.

“Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him,” he said in answer to questions about Saddam’s arrest.

Here, Cardinal Martino has presented us with an excellent example of compassion for all those who are imprisoned.

He has also provided us with one of the most repulsive examples I have seen in my entire life of moral relativism.

(more…)

Someone in the Bush administration’s public relations staff, who is clearly not am expert on the Middle East, has made a truly hilarious error on the White House web page describing operations in Iraq. The banner graphic proudly advertises “Renewal in Iraq,” and even features an image of Bush speaking before a banner that reads “Renewal in Iraq.”

This hapless staffer needs to be quietly taken aside, and someone has to explain to him or her exactly what the origin of the name “Arab Baath Socialist Party” is. I thought the goal was to get “Renewal” out of Iraq…