Arnaud de Borchgrave is an Editor-at-Large for United Press International, interviewing heads of state and government and commenting on the critical challenges of the 21st Century. As Newsweek's Chief Foreign Correspondent, he covered most of the world's major news events since joining the magazine in 1950.
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TRANSCRIPT:
After 56 years of journalism, I am fully qualified to demonstrate varying degrees of ignorance in a wide variety of fields. It will be 57 years next month that I've been in this nutty profession called the media. I have learnt the hard way that before you criticize someone you should always walk a mile in their shoes, because that way when you criticize them you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
H.L. Mencken's characterization of journalists is still an evergreen. I would like to read it to you: “A rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal other peoples' ideas and phrases is also invaluable." To get a better perspective of where we are today, I hope you will forgive me in taking you back to the beginning of the last century. I was alive for three quarters of it. Hitler was 11 years old, Mussolini was 17 and a pacifist, Lenin was 30 and about to go into exile after a brief internment in Siberia. No one had ever heard of Nazis or fascists, and communists were simply socialists without a sense of humor. Four years into the 20th century, Japan suddenly burst onto the world stage and sunk the entire Russian fleet in one day.
In 1910, a runway international bestseller called ‘The Grand Illusion' by Norman Angell posited that war was unthinkable given the economic interdependence among the great powers. Four years later, an assassin's bullet triggered the beginning of the biggest bloodletting of the 20th century, and the rest of the century turned out to be the bloodiest in recorded history. Saul Bellow once observed that, “a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep.” As we all know, the need for illusion is an inexhaustible commodity.
In his book, ‘The Pursuit of the Ideal,' Isaiah Berlin wrote, “Utopias have their value. Nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities, but as a guide to conduct, they can prove literally fatal.” All I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty is that the world today is a lot safer than it will be in 10 years from now, as the forces of nationalism, fundamentalism, globalism, and increasingly transnationalism sort themselves out.
The new nexus that I can see at my work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) - where I direct a program about transnational threats – is an emerging link between fanaticism, religion, and science. I recommend to you very highly a book called ‘The Sacred Age of Terror,' by Daniel Benjamin, a colleague of mine at CSIS.
I have also learnt from long experience that political forecasting and economic prognostication have made astrology look respectable. Somebody, somewhere today is planning a post-capitalist world. I see some of the Phd dissertations being written all the way from Singapore to Spain following the scandals we had recently and still have on Wall Street. If present trends continue with democratic governance dominated by political leaders whose main concern is how to get themselves re-elected, then I'm afraid that democracy and the public good may be deemed incompatible, as indeed they were in Europe in the 1920's and 1930's.
I don't think it takes rocket science to figure out how much damage was done to the United States – the citadel of capitalism – by the age of gluttony on Wall Street. These crypto-capitalists saboteurs, as I call them in a column, are the fodder that feeds transnational progressivism, which is a new ideology rooted in the NGOs. It seems to me that we journalists – I am still a practicing journalist who writes a weekly column – tend to lose sight of our responsibilities to inform, but also, to illuminate and dramatize major trends, so that our political leaders can take unpopular decisions that will later be perceived as acts of major and courageous statesmanship.
With the advent of nanotechnology –a field that I have been fascinated with for several years –the world of the invisible, we will see more change during the next 10 years, than what we have witnessed over the past 100 years. Last fall, Hewlett Packard received a patent for a new computer of breakthrough technology that will enable them to manufacture a computer smaller than a spec of dust. There is already a cell telephone so small that it can be planted in a tooth. So the technology revolution is bound to be an integral part of whatever emerges, as invisible molecular structures embedded in conventional chips will be worn, ingested, or implanted. Imagine entire chemical labs the size of a computer chip. Technology is neutral, but one can easily imagine that the forces of evil will harness it to their objectives.
Nations that can no longer be challenged in their conventional military strength – here, I have the U.S. and Israel in mind – are now faced with asymmetric warfare. According to documents found in Al-Qaeda safe houses in Kabul and Kandahar, confirm that the suicide attack on the USS Cole cost them a mere $10,000, and for that, they killed 17 U.S. soldiers, immobilized a billion dollar warship for 14 months, and the repair bill cost $250 million. That was a classic case of asymmetric warfare. 9/11 was the ultimate – so far that is – in low-cost, low-tech, high return terrorism. For less than $500,000 Al-Qaeda inflicted an estimated $700 billion to the U.S. economy alone.
The symbols of American power have now become the key targets. By that, I mean everything from oil installations in Saudi Arabia, supertankers in the Straights of Hormuz, ships in the Suez or Panama Canal, the New York Stock Exchange, water treatment plants - there are 178,000 different water systems in the U.S. – or cyber attacks to discombobulate the national power grid, are all now fair game. One of 17 million cargo containers entering the U.S. ever year through some 300 ports and border crossings are the obvious delivery vehicle for weapons of mass destruction. Only two or three percent are examined for obvious reasons – any more examinations and we would slow down commerce, thus having a negative impact on the economy.
Non-state actors today, even individuals, can wield the kind of destructive capabilities once controlled exclusively by nation states. Would be terrorists can melt into our society with the wherewithal to carry out devastating attacks on a seemingly endless list of targets – witness the Buffalo six, where all those involved were Americans of Yemeni descent. President Bush is absolutely right in saying that we are not at war with Islam or with the Muslim world. He fails to continue to explain that radical Islam is very much at war with the United States. These days, revenge for perceived societal wrongs is only a few keystrokes away. If terrorism is the act of the powerless, mastery of the computer compensates for that act of powerlessness.
The next generation of anti-U.S. terrorists understands full well that a hand on a mouse is far more lethal than a finger on the trigger. Two installations, one in Massachusetts and the other in Oregon, control the electric power grid for 42 American states, all run by computer. Bill Hancock, the top computer scientist at the Exodus Company demonstrated at London's Heathrow airport how the airport could be closed, literally shut down, by his laptop computer in the Admirals Lounge at the airport. He managed to disrupt all the official observations, the automated baggage loading and unloading distribution systems.
America's vulnerability is very much known to the enemy, Osama bin Laden, and his lieutenants, who have read and studied Tom Clancy. It was quite clear that when 9/11 hit, President Bush had never read Tom Clancy. We were clearly not prepared for what I call the malevolent combination of human ingenuity and its capacity for evil. The paradigm shift is arguably more important than the beginning of the Cold War after WWII. As the only journalist who has ever interviewed Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader in Kandahar, three months before 9/11, I take what he said after the terrorist attack very seriously. I quote, "the plan to destroy America is going ahead and God willing is being implemented. It is a huge task beyond the will and comprehension of human beings. If God's help is with us this will happen within a very short period of time.” In my judgment, Mullah Omar was reflecting from what he heard from his good friend, Osama bin Laden about the process of acquiring nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction.
The capture of bin Laden's Chief of operations, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is a major setback for transnational terrorism. However, let's remember that 80 percent of male adults in Pakistan believe that bin Laden is a freedom fighter and not a terrorist. In Pakistan too, President Musharraf has told me that - long before 9/11 and after 9/11 – he estimates that fundamental extremists in his country are no more than 10 percent of the population as he puts it. Well, that's 14-15 million people. When I reminded him of this figure he said that he had not thought of it that way. He prefers to stick with the 10 percent figure.
Washington, as you know, pressured President Musharraf to hold elections on October 10th, 2002. The results produced pro-Al Qaeda, pro-Taliban, and anti-American majorities in two out of Pakistan's four provinces, namely Baluchistan, and the Northwest Frontier Province, which means the entire length of the Afghan border. In other words, strategically located to infiltrate Taliban back into Afghanistan, which is happening today. Fifteen months after 9/11, there are still 600,000 young Pakistani boys in the same madrassas, whose Mullahs have rejected any kind of change in the anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Indian curriculum, and they are still subsidized by the Saudi Arabian Wahabi clergy to the tune of around $500 million a year. Pakistan, which has a nuclear arsenal of anywhere between 35-60 weapons as well as some Generals who are Islamic fundamentalists, and an inter service intelligence agency known as ISI, whose cultural is anti-American – all of this is an incomparably more dangerous situation than anything you have heard about Iraq.
Osama is the name of choice for new born baby boys from Peshawar, the capital of the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan, all the way down to Sanaa, the capital of Yemen at the bottom of the Arabian peninsular. Two very important non-royal Saudis told me on separate occasions, unbeknownst to each other, that “in a free election in Saudi Arabia today, if you put the royal family on the sidelines bereft of the divine right of kings, Osama bin Laden running for office would be elected hands down." In Turkey, a NATO ally and European Union candidate, 83 percent of them are against allowing Americans to traverse their country on the way to attacking Iraq. In Egypt, a U.S. ally that has been collecting $2 billion a year ever since the 1979, peace treaty with Israel, only 6 percent of Egyptians hold a positive view of the U.S. After six assignments that I've had in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India after 9/11, it is very hard for me to escape the conclusion that we do not understand enough about out enemies.
During the Cold War, we marshaled this incredible array of experts in every conceivable field of Cold War endeavor vis-à-vis our enemies at the time. Their knowledge spanned a very broad range of skills. They had an excellent understanding of the subversive enterprises of our major enemies, down to the individual personalities of their leaders. We knew who they were, their habits, their mistresses, what was happening in the backs of their limousines in downtown Moscow. All of this by satellite interception gave us an astonishing perspective of our enemies' lives. Now, the rising specter of asymmetric warfare is forcing us to examine all aspects of intelligence, war fighting, and public safety. Situational awareness has taken on a new meaning, when the battle space includes our families and homes. National security is now personal security. Our enemies on the other hand possess suicidal will, a thorough knowledge of western societies, significant human and financial resources, and a burning hatred of just about everything we stand for.
The Internet has provided the transnational terrorist network with cheap, robust, secure point-to-point communications, and a cultural tool of unprecedented power. With secret micro sites – something embedded in a legitimate website that communicates with another micro site in someone else's website, unbeknownst to them, this being part of the terror network and how they operate. They communicate that way in encrypted phonetic Arabic and with steganography, which is an encoded message inside one of the family pictures that is transmitted over the Internet by millions everyday. This way, Al Qaeda gets a secure, encrypted e-mail, websites for recruiting, and use-net groups for posting encoded messages, current maps, and even overhead satellite photography. According to FBI sources – CSIS works very closely with the FBI – there are an estimated several hundred sleepers in the U.S. waiting to be activated. Al Qaeda are recruiting sympathizers in the U.S. federal prison system, in mosques, in Islamic community centers replicating what they have been doing in Western Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South East Asia. Jose Padilla, the would-be terrorist who was caught on his way to Chicago with orders to set off a dirty nuclear device, was a former member of an American-Latino gang who had converted to Islam in prison. At present, I am directing at CSIS, a major program on how these people are recruited. Poor blacks who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana and sentenced to several years in jail, hating the system – self hating Americans if you will – are easy targets for recruitment by Muslim chaplains who are not appointed by the U.S. federal system, or not even authorized by the U.S. federal system but instead come directly from Islamic organizations.
President Bush has cast Iraq and Al-Qaeda as flipsides of the same coin, which they definitely were not, until it became clear that the U.S. planned to invade Iraq. The old expression that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' has most probably generated a tacit agreement on the need for widely scattered acts of terrorism following the U.S. invasion. When the U.S. throws the first punch, there is no doubt in my mind that there will be retaliation against American interests at home and abroad. There is a mountain of evidence that Saddam has done something in this respect.
I recall an Iraqi story that was leaked to a Kuwaiti paper on June 28. It reported to be an account of a five-hour meeting between Saddam Hussein, his two sons, and his top advisors. They were all begging him to do something before the U.S. attacks, and he said no, we must keep our powder dry, but as soon as America throws the first punch we will let go with all weapons on all fronts. This could include a couple of scud missiles with warheads against Israel, and the activation of sleeper cells here and abroad. Israel would retaliate and the streets of the Arab world already filled with hatred over Washington's policy of benign neglect in the Middle East would erupt again against their own moderate regimes.
A preemptive attack launched against a country that has not yet attacked the U.S. and its allies is undoubtedly a major departure in the world of geopolitics. Given the preponderance over U.S. power, there is no doubt that America will prevail in such a war. However, those policy makers who imagine Iraq to morph into a democratic Garden of Eden, and then become the lone-star of the entire region, are victims of self- delusional mirages. There is little realization in Washington, which has become a bilingual city where truth is the second language, that democracy emerging from free elections would make the region even more anti-American than it already is, by giving free reign to the fundamentalist extremists, and one person, one vote would soon become one person, one vote, one time.
Between 1919, when modern Iraq was created out of Mesopotamia, and 1958, when the monarchy was abolished and the king assassinated, Iraq experienced 9 Kurdish revolts, 9 Shiite rebellions, and 3 pogroms – 2 against the Jews, and 1 against Assyrians. Wars don't solve problems – I speak here as a journalist who has covered 18 wars, and served in WWII for 4 years – they only determine who's job it is right now to solve the problems. The last Gulf War spawned the evil of Osama bin Laden and his global Al-Qaeda network. Gulf War II will create a new generation of bin Ladens, weapons of mass destruction, and weapons of mass disruption. North Korea's admission that it indeed had become a nuclear power as American was beginning its buildup in the Gulf on Iraq, is hardly coincidental. Even though part of the Bush axis of evil alongside Iraq and Iran, North Korea knows full well that there is little the U.S. can do militarily without triggering a devastating war throughout the Korean Peninsula. Local and regional powers - Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea – very strongly oppose. These are also the powers that the U.S. needs to dissuade North Korea from pursuing its nuclear buildup in return for economic incentives. I believe that the more immediate danger from North Korea is not a nuclear bomb or two, or war throughout the Peninsula, but a clandestine transfer of a small amount of plutonium to Al-Qaeda, that would enable bin Laden's terrorists to make a so-called dirty nuclear radiation bomb and smuggle it into a major American city.
Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to some of India's top national security advisors. They talked about a nuclear exchange with incredible casualness as though this is going to happen sooner or later. They said that, “India would survive, and that with the first nuclear shot from Pakistan, it would be wiped of the face of the earth”. This is the way they talk at the top – obviously they know nothing about nuclear war. Some pundits are betting that this is not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of two worlds – the civilized and the barbaric. I wish it were that simple. I think one has to be irredeemably myopic not to see that the breeding grounds of transnational terrorism are the regions that are impoverished, and where 60 percent of the population are now less than 21 years old. Out of 6.3 billion people, 2 billion of them are 14 years of age or less. Terrorism is the weapon of choice of the weak against the strong and has been for time immemorial. Let us also remember that the totalitarian temptation has also existed from time immemorial.
Our relations with the Arab world should not consist of turning our backs on Israel. But they do require on our part, an aggressive policy to midwife a Palestinian settlement. Last year, the Saudi initiative by Crown Prince Abdullah, for totally normal diplomatic and economic relations between all Arab countries and Israel in return for dismantling all Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and Israel's return to its 1967 borders, I feel was the most promising step I have heard since the assassination of Sadat 22 years ago. Unfortunately, we didn't pick up the ball. The message that the Middle East has been hearing from Washington, as my CSIS colleague, Tony Cordesman put it recently, “is petty, mean, intolerant, and that we despise our friends as much as we do our enemies”. Tony incidentally is a staunch Republican, and I, who have been covering the Middle East since 1951 find it very hard to disagree.
The late Eric Hoffer – who, to this day remains my favorite philosopher, the man in the streets philosopher – once wrote that, “one of the most spectacular privileges of intellectuals is that they are always free to demonstrate scandalous stupidity without ever jeopardizing their reputations”. A privilege that we journalists avail ourselves of frequently, with reckless abandon, present company accepted.
Q & A.
Q: I share some of your grim forecasts about the century to come, but if you assume that history is not necessarily set in stone and you can change it, what would you do to ensure that the 10 percent figure in Pakistan that you alluded to earlier doesn't become a 10 percent figure for 1.2 billion Muslims of the world? What can we do to reverse these trends of hatred, especially against the United States, Israel, and India?
A: That question was put to me when I returned from covering the post 9/11 period in Pakistan, and then I went on and did the American operation in Afghanistan. Condoleeza Rice called me in, and said I want to pick your brain. I told her what I had seen and she asked where we should be heading. I said that America today has an incredible opportunity to demonstrate the kind of spirit that animated our foreign policy immediately following WWII. To make sure that the world recognizes that we understand what is going on with the breeding grounds of terrorism, and where the fundamental problems lie. She replied that we will see a major change and that it's in the works. Shortly after the Monterey Conference, she called again and hoped that I was happy with the results. I'm afraid that what happened at Monterey, Mexico – where we increased our foreign aid to $15 billion per year – was not a new departure, there was no new grand design for the world. It was not at all what I had in mind. We do after all spend $1 billion a day on defense, and all we can come up with to try to do something about the Madrassas in Pakistan which are producing these terrorists, is contribute $35 million a year. They are getting almost $500 million a year from Saudi Arabia for the Madrassas, so what difference will $35 million a year make from U.S.A. From what I have seen, I am a little disappointed. My definition of a pessimist is an optimist with experience.
Q: When the revolution started in Iran in 1979, the West didn't realize that the Islamic fundamentalist movement doesn't just hate the United States, Israel, and India. They hate anyone and anything that does not believe or think the same way they do – the infidels. This is something that I feel the rest of the world did not realize. They failed to pay attention to the establishment of the Islamic movement, which had already existed but definitely prevailed with Khomeini and then the Taliban. With all due respect, I believe that American policy is wrong here. Referring back to about a month or so ago, when we arrested the head of the Islamic Movement in London, he said that “we fight for freedom and we fight for God”. What kind of military action can fight against that kind of ideology?
A: I agree with you partly and disagree with you on another front. I have spent a great deal of time with the key leaders of Pakistan, listening to them all night. These are the political religious leaders that hate America because of what they consider to be the values that have poisoned the world. They talk about Hollywood, TV, sexual permissiveness, the glamorization of same sex marriages etc. There is a deep hatred of all this. As far as Iran is concerned, I feel that the major mistake occurred when the Shah nationalized the property of the Mullahs, which really turned them against the regime. When I look back and compare what was happening around 1978 and 1979, with today, the Shah was an enlightened liberal vis-à-vis these yo-yo's.
Q: After 9/11, some European terrorist groups said that they did not want to be linked with Al-Qaeda, as they considered themselves to be cleaner or better. Do you think that there is an interrelationship or contact between these terrorist organizations?
A: My first experience with transnational terrorism goes back to the days of the Cold War when I had to cope with the Red Brigades of Italy, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, Fighting Communist Cells in Belgium, Actiar Directe in France. At the time, when some of us wrote that the KGB was directly involved with this terrorism, we were dismissed as ‘people smoking something'. However, now we know from the KGB archives and from Marcus Wolf's memoirs, the former East German Intelligence Chief, that they were indeed in touch with them and there was a place in the then Czechoslovakia called Karlovy Vary, where all these groups could go have rest and recreation. How is this relevant today? Well, it is evident that if Al-Qaeda operatives were to ask a favor from Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, or any Palestinian groups, or Iraq, or Iran, they would be offered a safe haven. This represents a certain amount of solidarity between people who are quite willing to commit suicide to assert their cause.
Q: You made a very interesting and provocative statement saying that we are much safer now that we will be in 10 years time. Can you describe for us the shape and nature of the threat ten years from now?
A: The question is complex. However, earlier I did allude to the world of nanotechnology, which is the world of the invisible. Imagine self-replicating robots, what they could do. Remember Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems. I heard him in a private meeting and he said he will not go public with what he can see coming because he feels it's so devastating in terms of humanity's ability to self destruct – far worse than anything you have seen in the world of nuclear weapons. The future is extremely difficult to forecast, but recall when the Wright Brothers had their first flight in 1903. Just 66 years later, we were landing on the moon. What is 66 years in terms of history – not even a fleeting second. Use this as a base to imagine what will happen in the next few years.
Q: Your comments about the Pakistani politicians perceptions about the U.S. made me think that this struggle is ideological. One of the problems with the nature of the American model, if you will, is that it's so misunderstood abroad. It is completely understandable that people overseas don't know what makes America tick, because there is a domestic version of the American ideology, and an export version of the American model. There is one thing that seems to get Islamic fundamentals so over excited and that is their regard for America as a Godless and profoundly immoral society. Of course, they have these impressions and get these ideas from media exports, and other such sources. Surely, the challenge now is to help transmit the real nature of American society and its virtues, which in many cases are universal?
A: I agree with you. I know that the U.S. has spent a large amount of time and money investing in this change. However, when you have networks such as Fox showing Bill O'Reilly in places like Indonesia, you suddenly realize that the whole world is being exposed to this kind of provocative American experience. We may find these types of shows witty, but in Indonesia or Saudi Arabia, they could easily be under the impression that we're taking leave of our critical faculties.
Q: Would you care to comment on the present position of France at United Nations, and then comment on your views of the United Nations?
A: I see what Chirac has done. He has reached new levels of popularity not just in France but throughout Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. He has found a mechanism to try and provide a counterweight to the world's only superpower. I think that he's being optimistic when he says that he doesn't see any lasting repercussions. What distresses me greatly is that Saddam Hussein without lifting a finger can now look at the geopolitical landscape and see nothing but wrecks – NATO, EU, the Franco-British Alliance. I believe that the U.N. is an extremely important organization, without which many smaller countries of the world would not even have a voice. It is quite interesting to see that the President of the Security Council in his resplendent robe from former French Guinea was seen on television all over the world, except in his own country because they only get electricity on one day out of four – between midnight and six o'clock in the morning. Yet he had center stage watched by the rest of the world. This is quite important and significant. It's dangerous to just dismiss this and act unilaterally.
Q: From your lecture thus far, I see that you are clearly against a war with Iraq. How can you explain the American government's sudden jump from the war on terror to the war on Iraq?
A: My sense is that most people are asking the same question, as it has not been satisfactorily explained. So, now we are going after Saddam Hussein, which should advance the anti-terror campaign in the world. I have interviewed Saddam three times in my life- in 1972, 1974, and 1978, and once, I had returned from covering the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman. I went up and down the Gulf speaking with special branch people, and they said that, “the biggest problem they had then was Iraqi subversion with KGB involvement”. When I got to Baghdad, I mentioned this to Saddam and he said frankly, “all those regimes have to go – the kingdoms, the emirates, the Sheikdoms - and be replaced by progressive socialist revolutionary regimes”. There is no doubt in my mind, that he had Gulf wide ambitions, and that when he invaded Kuwait that was just the beginning. However, for the past few years, especially the past few months he has been in his own box, threatening no one except his own people.
Q: What kind of retaliatory action will the U.S. be taking against countries that vote against them?
A: We do have an imperial congress that manages to micro manage everything into unworkable policies. Today, we have roughly 72 countries on the list of one kind of U.S. sanction or another. I am quite sure that congress will have a field day and impose all sorts of new restrictions that will make life increasingly difficult for all of us.
Q: A New York Times column characterized the President as having fallen in with a rough crowd. Could you give us your appraisal, your vantage point from Washington about the so-called neo-conservatives and their sway?
A: Neo-conservatives are all powerful, as you know. They are allied with the Likud lobby. I wrote a column about this three or four weeks ago based on a paper produced by an Israeli think tank in 1996, which was supposed to be a roadmap for Benjamin Netanyahu at the time, and later adopted by Ariel Sharon. Richard Perle and Doug Feith were involved in the drafting of this document. When you say this, people believe that you are anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish. These are nonsensical conclusions to draw. Jim Moran's name has been in the paper a lot recently basically because of the way he expressed himself recently. However, everyone knows what he's explaining is nothing new – everyone in Washington realizes and understands this. In the Bush Administration, you start with Paul Wolfowitz, his number two Doug Feith, Dov Zakheim an ordained rabbi, Peter Rodman a former ghostwriter for Kissinger's memoirs, then Richard Perle chairman for the defense policy board, which is the bridge over to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where you find Ken Adelman and Michael Ledeen. That is the group you see on the air everyday pushing for war as quickly as possible with Iraq. Are the networks in favor of war for ideological reasons or because ratings go up? I would tend to agree with the latter. They want a war. I am convinced of that. It's good for ratings.