Michael Totten describes Juan Cole’s outrage at having to compete with the great unwashed at blog awards:
Juan Cole is decrying all the neocons he’s forced to compete with in the 2008 Weblog Awards for Best Middle East or Africa Blog. He thinks Helena Cobban — a deranged Hezbollah supporter — should have been nominated instead of someone like me. He’s worked his leftist readers into a tizzy, and they’re putting him over the top. I don’t really care if I win this award; I won it last year. But Juan Cole certainly doesn’t deserve it.
Actually, Atta’s will was dated April 11, 1996—one week before the Qana tragedy, on April 18. We don’t know for certain why he made it, but it cannot be because he witnessed any footage from Qana, which was still in the future. And Cole apparently never read the will. It contains no pledge to die while avenging anyone. The will deals with disposition of Atta’s body and possessions in the event of his death. It’s not a “martyrdom will,” but a standardized one, provided by Atta’s Hamburg mosque. (You can read the full text here.)
This is not Cole’s first problem with 9/11 chronology and facts. For an earlier instance, go here.
Update: In the wake of this post, Cole has partly retro-edited his own post (without indicating so).
Don’t let Cole win. Go over there and vote for me. Alternately, My Marrakesh is a beautiful blog written by a woman who isn’t a neoconservative. Go vote for her. Or if you want to vote for a professor, vote for Martin Kramer. He actually knows what he’s talking about. Or there’s always Aussie Dave at Israellycool. I’ve met him, he’s a good guy, and he doesn’t sit around in his office and hatch asinine conspiracy theories like Cole does.
