1 They're an oasis for liberty. God bless them, lets pray it remains.

1 OT: but did anyone read about the "attempted" suicide bombing of a Saudi Oil facility today? You can always count on that to scare up the price of oil. I'm not sure I get it, we hear all the time that Saudi are a target of radicals and that they share the same goals in destroying the Monarchy there, as they do with destroying democracy here, however can anyone tell me of an attempted assassination, or an actual assassination of any Saudi monarchy by Al-Qaeda?

2 They view the monarchy as infidels cause they help the "west"

3 As I said, where are the assassination attempts on the Monarchy then? they always seem to be attacks on U.S citizens working there or Oil facilities. I think it's just an idea put forth by the Administration to defend our close ties with the Saudi's, I don't believe they're in any danger.

4 Turkey-h4X0rs cause temporary nuisance on Finnish web sites, mysteriously vanish 45 minutes after SuPo is notified. On a related note, kebabs may taste funny for a few days... http://www.yle.fi/yle24/videosali/index.php?a=1&t=4&q=1 Time 9:40-10:15 for the list of sites influenced and for some "Turkey and Islam r so sup4 becoz we 1337 h4x0rs r from it"-animations and links. (the protesting Muslims at 6:35-9:08 are protesting AGAINST Saddam-supporters and terrorists, as well as the inefficiency of the Iraqi government and your army to secure a Democratic system in Iraq (well, as every person with brains knows, the only country where the people actually have the power is Switzerland, all other "Democratic" systems are actually under Parliamentarism) (not 100% sure you can access the news clips from that side of the Atlantic, but anyway... and it will be the wrong clip in about 4 hours from this comment, after that it'll be "perjantai 20.30 TV-uutiset", and the date is 24.6.)

5 Yusuf Kara. A comp bitch, religious fanatic, and kebab ingredient, 19??-2006. May the birdfluey Turkey-guts enjoy your fried body, and your mind be forever lost. Or someone framed him, who cares, just kill someone for this meaningless attack on outdated sites no-one ever heard of.

6 Oh yes, a site that has not yet bothered clicking delete a few times: http://www.elvisry.fi/takahuone/ but it seems a bit dysfunctional, won't load the animations (or I lack patience, either way).

7 'Selective outrage' should be the buzzword for what is currently happening in the Muslim world. One thing is clear is that the vast majority of Sunnis all across the world support al Quaeda and they are killing Sh'ias from Pakistan to Iraq. There was no outrage in the Muslim world against the insurgents who killed the journalist though had she been killed by a coalition bullet the human rights industry would have been crawling all over the situation like rats! Most Jordanians say that while they deplored the attack by Zarquawi on a wedding party in Jordan yet they support similar attacks on civilians and others in Iraq. Where was the outrage against al Quaeda for the bombing of the Samarra Dome? There was none. To my mind the US, UK and others have done their best for the Iraqis and it is now time for the Iraqis to deciede whether they want to live together or hate together. If they dont sort out their sectarian splits then we should pull out and allow the Sh'ias to bring Iraq under control in the way we are not allowing them to do at the moment. There is no shame in that. You can do your best to bring up your kids but if a childs tendency is to crime then ultimatly it is going to take that path with no blame to you. We gave Iraq a tremendous opportunity and they incrasingly show a tendency to mess it up. It's up to the Iraqis, if they dont want the free style of democracy we sacrificed so much to achieve for them then let them live with their own decisions. As to the Pallies, they voted in a democratic election for a terrorist government and instead of moaning that it is not acceptable to other countries, they should realize that freedom to choose you government means that you are now responsible for that government and must take the consequences. as John Stewaret said "Welcome to democracy bitch!"

8 Why would they kill journalists? the ate the bibbist supporters especialy if they belong to the NYTs

1 If the Iraqi people can get a grip after this It's a major victory for them. Sadly it came with a very great cost.

2 Very interesting. I have felt good may come from this if they can get through it. I still wish Sadr was assassinated.

3 Some people (we won't say who) are still insisting that iraq will break out into total civil war. These are the people who, dare I say, want it to happen so they can say, "I told you this war was wrong".

1 I hope you are not suggesting that islam is anything but a religion of peace

2 I am sure that if this were Saudi Arabia they would have blown up thier Mecca. These poeple have no rules of engagement, no respect. They hide behind women and children. What a tragedy for thier poeple and culture.

3 I am beginning to believe that the only way their civil war will end is if the IMAN does return to earth. Look!! Up in the sky it's a bird, it's a plane (an F-16 ?) no it's the Iman !!

4 This isn't going to be good for the President. This is a very bad development and will only enforce the anti-war argument that the administration is not getting the job done in terms of progress--in spite of all the good developments that the MSM refuses to report. It's also bad news because I believe this is the first time islamists have destroyed a muslim holy site. I could be wrong though

5 What I can't figure out is why the Shia in Iran continue to support the Sunni's terrorism all over the World, especially in the Middle East.

6 JJ - politics makes strange bedfellows. Even though there are Shiites in Iran and Iraq, they do not share common goals. The Shiites in Iraq are being far too cooperative with Iraqi democracy for Iranian Shiites taste.

7 It's also bad news because I believe this is the first time islamists have destroyed a muslim holy site. If you're not counting the Iranian backed assassination of the Shia cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei in 2003 which Moqtada al-Sadr was implicated in, and there was no doubt that his following insurrection in Sadr city was orchestrated from Iran either. While a man, is not a shrine he was the son of Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Qasim al-Khoei who was a spiritual leader of the Shia, he was murdered by Saddam Hussein. More importantly, he was a voice of moderation.

8 A good thing to do is to wait and get more information. There are local people who will use religion to gain power like the cartoon distraction of late. Intentionally done to stir up uneducated people and use them for the advancement of a small group.

9 One more indication that the Ummah isn't the big, happy family that we're supposed to believe it to be.

10 I thought the Immam Mahdi fell down a well in Iran... This is the first I have heard that he disappeared from a mosque in Iraq. And yes, I am being serious. Are there two stories (quite possible)or, am I confused?

11 While I have not heard your story before Babs, it would not surprise me such a story was disseminated with an important Islamic figure being claimed by both Iraq and Iran Shia Muslims. It also makes sense due to the fact that the Iranian President ignored the original Shia prophecy in regards to the return of the Mahdi and claimed he felt like he was the Immam Mahdi during his speech to the U.N.

12 The religious war in Iraq began long before we got there and will go on long after we leave. Of course, the Dems will hope that the non-thinkers will forget that and use the opportunity to cite the violence in Iraq as the fault of the President.

13 I'm not sure that statement is correct: The religious war in Iraq began long before we got there What stopped a religious war in Iraq before, is the fact Saddam had everyone executed he felt was a threat. This is evident by the fact that the majority religion was the most oppressed despite their number.

14 Semantics. I suppose you'd rather call it a "conflict?"

15 Babs, he didn't fall down a well, but the Muslims write things on paper and throw them in the well "near" where he allegedly "disppeared".

16 Who to root for? I'm stumped.

17 Oyster, What does "near" mean? The well in Iran and the mosque in Iraq are quite a distance apart, especially considering that this myth started before the advent of the car.

18 Geee A civil war in Iraq who coudda seen that one coming ? Perhaps we should start to consider what the worst case scenarios are instead of what the best case scenario looks like and begin making plans accordingly.

1 I've seen hundreds of similar photos brought back by my boys. MSM and opposition will never show such material for simple reason - they have a vested interest in assisting in our defeat - in the hopes that this will return them to power where they can resume their domestic agenda. Any complications arising from this "defeat" they feel are acceptable and they can deal with (they can't because they are incompetent and gutless).

2 Good pics, Mikey likey

3 Yeah these media scumbags need to be taken to their respective cities squares and horse whipped, now that's a bit of sharia style justice i would support.

4 That's actually the daughter of a Freeper.

5 Ariya, Really? Cool. I asked her how she wanted me to attribute the photos, but she just said the nickname would be fine.

6 Yes hondo that is the bottom line. Always enjoyable to view such photos, thanks

7 MY GOD!!!!! SUCH SAVAGERY!!!!! IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT!!!!!
Analytical Kos Kidz mode off.

8 Wow, everything is ok in Iraq! Those tens of thousand of innocent civilians are just lying about being killed by the US

9 How do these pictures support any of the claims made in the article at the top. Where are the abused puppies?

10 Fuck all you guys.

1 Just imagine when the T1000's take the field.

2 Yes, liquid metal is a good idea. Maybe the first T1000 can morph into Abu Msuab al-Zarqawi's wife only to reveal true self during intercourse. But can the T1000 also assume the shape of a goat?

3 would be a good thing.. see throught clothes technology.. see if the guy's carrying an AK under his robe

4 The T1000 can assume the shape of anything it comes in contact with. I seem to remember there was something about it only being able to get as big as the amount of material it was created with. For example, it couldn't get as big as the earth and hurl itself into the sun since the amount of material used to manufacture it was man-sized. I'm sure I've forgotten some of the other rules of robotics as defined by other movies also.

5 So, it might not be able to assume the shape of a goat--which is generally less massive than a woman. What animal, then, might entice a terrorist?

6 A hog?

7 How about a gay cowboy? Not a Brokeback Mountain gay cowboy. I'm talking about a full-on, pink Stetson-wearing, assless chaps on top of a pair of denim short-shorts, limp-wristed, stiletto boot-wearing, Tom Cruise/Barney Frank team pushups, gay cowboy. But hog is good too.

8 Why not combine the two? A gay hog with chaps and a cowboy hat.

9 You guys are crazy!

10 How long before the CYLONS or CYBERMEN?

1 12 hours of tapes, and the best to cherry pick was a threat that terrorism was coming to America? Are the other 11 hours 59 minutes spent with Saddam singing Frank Sinatra hits and playing Boggle with his henchmen?

2 Rusty no matter what was on the tape I would place little significance on it. His statements were often, well, not very accurate. After all this time there has been no infrastucture for production has been discovered. . The two infamous doctors, Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax have both been released without any charges.http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1520483

3 John, what charges do you think they were being held on? Illegal possession of a chemistry set? I think you will find both were being held for intelligence purposes only, not for a possible criminal trial. So being released means that they have no further useful intelligence only.

4 True, I don’t believe that these tapes will reveal a “smoking gun” in the search for the WMDs. But, I think that they do show that Saddam was a clear and present danger to the US. Here is something from NewsMax that might gain some steam: --------- The FBI translator who supplied the 12 hours of Saddam Hussein audiotapes excerpted by ABC's "Nightline" Wednesday night now says the network discarded his translations and went with a less threatening version of the Iraqi dictator's comments. "What you heard on ABC News was their translation," former U.N. weapons inspector Bill Tierney told ABC Radio's Sean Hannity on Thursday. "They came up with something different on a key element regarding terrorism in the United States," Tierney insisted. In the "Nightline" version of the 1996 recording, Saddam predicts that Washington, D.C., would be hit by terrorists. But he adds that Iraq would have nothing to do with the attack. Tierney says, however, that what Saddam actually said was much more sinister. "He was discussing his intent to use chemical weapons against the United States and use proxies so it could not be traced back to Iraq," he told Hannity. In a passage not used by "Nightline," Tierney says Saddam declares: "Terrorism is coming. ... In the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction. What if we consider this technique, with smuggling?" Tierney's full translations are set for release this weekend by The Intelligence Group in Washington, D.C. ------------- http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/17/125334.shtml?s=ic

5 This show was a staged event. Those 12 tapes (out of 35,000 (?)) weren't ''cherry picked'' by a supporter of this administration. Anyone who treats Saddam Hussein with more respect than our CinC, even as Saddam's brutalized, ignored victims wait for justice in Iraq, isn't intending to enlighten. imfuo I'll wait - indefinitely if necessary - for reliable sources who put national security ahead of politics, who keep WMD info out of the New York Times - Al Jazeera until WMDs are out of reach of genocidal jihadists, and nutcase wannabe-prophets. Saddam Hussein was a WMD.

6 "many on the Right side of the blogosphere have taken those tapes out of context, twisting them to find hidden meaning where no meaning is to be found." I take it you've read the full 12 hours transcript so you know the proper context? Where can we find the complete transcript so we can see the full context of these quotes? And it is no surprise ABC has their own pre-spin on the story using the most innocent possible translation. I'm reminded of CBS' verification process for those TANG memos.

7 Hey JohnMc Keep putting your faith in Bill Tierney, he sounds like a modern day Joan of Arc: Bill Tierney, a former weapons inspector who worked with UNSCOM in Iraq in the late 1990s, was the guest for the first two hours of Friday night’s show. He believes that Iraq has nuclear capability and the intention to use such weapons. Further, Tierney claims that he has pinpointed a hidden location in Iraq (map here) where there is a uranium enriching processing facility. “You can’t put an underground chamber on the back of a truck,” Tierney said, indicating that if an inspection were made in this suggested area, the Iraqis would not be able to haul off the evidence. Tierney’s methods of ascertaining this location were rather unconventional. “I would ask God and just get a sense if something was valid or not, and then know if I needed to pursue it,” he said. His assessments through prayer were then confirmed to him by a friend’s clairvoyant dream

8 John Loftus???? Says a lot (of nothing) if you know who he is.

9 ABC didn't leave anything out of their translation. They translated a sentence differently - and frankly their translation makes more sense than Tierney's. They wrote "What prevents this technology from developing and people from smuggling it?" It's incorrect that they cut that sentence out; they just had a different (and more logical) interpretation of it.

10 Leave it to the Awful Broadcasting Company for this dirty work

11 IF, I recall correctly. Didn't Saddam send his best fighter jets to Iran during the 1st Gulf War? So why not send his WMDs to his Baathist friends (Syria) for safe keeping? OBL didn't have the cash or military that Saddam once had. He used 19 Terrorist and a support network and our Liberalism is a Mental Disorder to attack the USA.

12 It is worth noting that Saddam was much more explicit in 1990 when he warned Envoy Glaspie: On July 25,President Saddam Hussein of Iraq summoned the United States Ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you. That sounds like as clear a warning as a couutry is likely to get. Any more clear and the United States would have been forced to war with Iraq much sooner and the drive to Baghdad would have happened in 1990. I suspect Saddam knew this.

13 At this stage of the game it really doesn't matter what kind of information linking Saddam to terrorism and WMD's is produced. The "lefties" in America have already sealed their closed minds and hold Saddam up as a misunderstood man who the US chose to squash for no good reason. Never mind that Saddam and his men tried to blow up George Sr. during the Clinton administration. He was just a poor guy who didn't deserve what was coming to him.

14 Don, I see your point but my target is not trying to target moonbats. Who cares about them? No my target has been and continues to be those Moms and Dads who send their children over to war and are not news hounds, maybe don't have internet, perhaps depend on MSM for news it is those folks whose will to fight the left is targeting. By discrediting the connections to terror that Saddam had we are taking away reasons for those people to feel like their children are risking their lives for something worthwhile. Our biggest problem and perhaps its endemic to democracies is our will to fight. Take away our reasons for fighting and our will will vanish as well. Fighting for UN Resolutions isnt very inspirational eh? Pierre Legrand The Pink Flamingo Bar

15 Pierre: I agree and disagree with you. Moms and Dads do not send their kids to any foreign land to fight a war. The soldiers, some being admittedly young, are nonetheless adults and have made the career decision to be a full-time soldier on their own accord. The will to fight, or lack thereof, is not endemic to democracies. It occurs when democracies have been beaten down to a politically correct pulp, de-christenized (or any religion for that matter), and run through ringer, effectively, with socialist, anarchistic, or communist ideologies that poison the mind with utopian dreams of happiness. The main effort of the left is to beat down American culture, and when that happens, nationalism and patriotism dwindle along with the moral values our country once proudly boasted. With that being said, I do agree with you that Saddam was not only a threat, he was a guided missle pointed due west to shores of the U.S.. History will eventually show that this man was not only evil, but one of the most notorious individuals to ever lead the government of any country.

1 what bush is waiting for to use the nuclear on these bastards. he should use them before due date runs out!!!!!

2 Guss, Whaaaaaa???

3 Maybe he ment the nut cracker?

4 re: MSM Hypocrisy thanks for pointing it out again. It can't be repeated often enough.

5 Yeah, but the Abu Gharaib prisoners were in their underwear! And they were frightened by dogs!! That's really humiliating, don't you get it?? How dare you draw moral equivalence between these two episodes.

6 More Abu Ghraib abuse photos. Two teens forced to wear panties on head by sadistic vixen.

7 I think the world should know... I'm a mild mannered,Phd Molecular biologist by day.. A devious, raving Aye-rhab hating infidel by night... I already have the virus ready! There is a key component in the brain chemistry of the beaten and cowed followers of Islam. Same said component makes this slightly modified Rhino virus...very deadly. They will sneeze themselves to death! Tsk!!!!!!

8 I think I just read that book.

9 Change of topic: Whats up [Bush, Rummy, Halliburton, noWMDs] with MSM? [Bush, Rummy, Halliburton, noWMDs] They'll show pics of humilated [Bush, Rummy, Halliburton, noWMDs] Arab terrorists with panties on their heads, [Bush, Rummy, Halliburton, noWMDs] But the panzy ass fuckwits [Bush, Rummy, Halliburton, noWMDs] refuse to broadcast videos and pics which reveal how evil and deadly our Muslime enemys are.

10 You dignify them by calling them "insurgent soldiers." They are terrorists, and nothing more.

11 As many have aptly pointed out, not only has this Jihad by Islam been thrust upon us and the West by the events of 9/11 as we sat literally “sucking our thumbs,” complaisant in our “Secular Progressive, Multi-Cultural, Politically Correct, Fairy Tales and Fantasies” of our own creation, that subsequent events have dismally proven exceedingly naive and wrong, such as the continuing riots, death, and destruction over the Mohammed caricatures, or the “Democratic Election” of Hamas in the Palestinian Territories, and other events which are being fueled exponentially by an ever more blatant and open “Culture War” on the part of Islam to overthrow Western Democratic Values, and have them replaced with a worldwide Caliphate; but we are also presently beset by those within our own society, who still immersed in the Leftist, Socialistic opiate of the aforementioned “Fairy Tales,” openly fight against the War on Terror, undermine it in every way they can every step of the way, wish to dismantle our Military as San Francisco Board of Supervisors Gerardo Sandoval told the Nation on an interview with Shaun Hannity the other night, that wish that we would loose in Iraq irregardless of the young men and women of our military who have sacrificed their lives in this endeavor to free Iraqis and the rest of the world from Saddam, and call for our defeat and to cut and run, like Howard Dean and Congressman John Murtha, those who proudly hail their having “Filibustered” the extension of the Patriot Act a “victory” like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, those who consistently oppose and relentlessly undermine every action of the Administration like Nancy Pelosi, or who wish to tie the governments hands in fighting terrorism while “championing” the rights of the terrorists to the point of being their most ardent allies such as Kennedy, Boxer, Durbin and all the rest of their above demagogue ilk, who form a veritable “Fifth Column” in our midst, with the help of the Left leaning, biased, Mainstream Media, which of course will not publish the pictures of the horrors that took place in Saddam’s prisons, much less publish such pictures as those appearing in Jawa about any of the executions, tortures, and all the barbarity that is proudly carried by the Islamist terrorists in front of cameras and then swiftly disseminated through the airwaves by Aljazeera all over the Muslim world, lest, as with the Mohammed cartoons, they offend “Muslim sensitivities”! We are waging a War on Terror, and “Cultural Wars” on two fronts, and one of our enemies lives amongst us! The irony about how “selectively” our Mainstream Media chooses which pictures to air, and make a whole lot of hooplah about, is that while for days now CNN, along with most other major American news outlets, has literally cowered, and failed to show solidarity with their brethren news outlets and publications in Europe (who have had the courage to do so), and to stand up for "Freedom of Speech, and of Expression," repeatedly refusing to show the controversial Mohammed Danish cartoons, claiming that they did not want to “add more fuel to the fire” in a plethora of Wolf Blitzer “apologia,” no sooner had new pictures of the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal been made public by some “sleazy” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, than Paula Zahn had it on her show within hours, complete with “dissident ex-serviceman” bashing our Military et al, without the least apparent qualm about any consequences: the lives it would cost, as happened with the first round of Abu Ghraib pictures with Nicholas Berg, or how many more of our Servicemen will be exposed to greater danger, and be killed as a result! That, even in the face of the fact that it is not breaking news, that the case has been exhaustively investigated by the Pentagon and the Military, and all those that were involved in the scandal have been courtmarshalled, disciplined, reprimanded, or demoted! I must say, that for CNN, Paula Zahn, and her fellow pundits, who were so overly "concerned" with accommodating Muslim sensitivities: “barbarity” and “intolerance,” when it came to showing innocuous Danish cartoons of Mohammed, to propagate these new Abu Ghraib pictures, which at any rate just basically show more of the same as those already published, is nothing but an abhorrent exercise in “ journalistic pornography,” and is totally unconscionable!!! Perhaps the real reason that CNN, Blitzer, and Zahn did not wish to risk showing the pictures of the Mohammed cartoons was that they did not want to run the risk of being “personally” targeted, and their lives endangered by irate Islamists, for doing so, and so they hid under their desks. But now, they scrambled to show the Abu Ghraib pictures, which they believe boosts their Liberal biased “political perspective” against the Administration and its policies, while generally not placing “THEIR” lives in danger (after all, how can it, since with it they aid the “Islamist Propaganda machinery, and Al Qaida?”), yet places the lives of our soldiers, and others working in Iraq, at greater risk. After all, if as a result of these pictures there are more American casualties, wouldn’t that also bolster their position of blaming it on what CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour openly calls the “failed policies of the Administration in Iraq” ?!?! The blood of every US casualty, every civilian death, and every beheading that results from Paula Zahn and CNN enthusiastically, needlessly, helping to disseminate these new Abu Ghraib pictures is on their hands!!! How can we be expected to win the War on Terror with such amongst us?!?! It is appalling!!! Althor

12 Hey Wonderduck, you the same duck from RW sparkle?

13 The leftist whiners consider them to be soldiers, so the whiners should also expect those soldiers to follow the same rules they expect our soldiers to follow. But they don't. Because they are on their side.

14 Apparently, MSM doesn't want the public to see evidence of the vicious terrorist IslamOfascist Monkees brutally torturing, killing and beheading their fellow Muslims. Men, women and children. On practically a daily basis. You see, if more of the masses saw these disgusting photos, more of the masses would start to realize how uncompromising and purely evil these murderous IslaMO Monkee scum truely are. They would start to see the wisdom in working to annihalate ALL of them. Destroy them all without prejudice. They are scourge, they are a disease, these viscious killer monkees, they must all burn on Earth before Hell gets a shot at them. Anybody who feels these monkees have any legitimacy at all is either a total fool, just plain ignorant, or one of the terrorists themselves, or their enthusiastic supporters. If only we could lead these Jihadist Head-Chopping Monkees, and only them, all to one big isolated area...let them call it their own country. It would probably take less than 24 hours before they committed and act of war, then the country could 'simply' be nuked. It is us or them! GOT IT? COMPRENDE???

15 In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.

16 Yeah, these photos and acts are all terrible. The people perpetrating the murders you show, and those yet unshown, should be brought to justice swiftly. That said, I'm one of those sillys who think America's soldiers should hold themselves to a higher standard. These photos have nothing to do with the well documented allegations of torture perpetrated by poorly supervised soldiers at Abu-Ghraib, gitmo, and Bagram. Pointing out another horror doesn't detract from the one already before you. Except to make those of us with the ability to reason wish that our soldiers were using effective means of info-extraction rather than torture to gain the information necessary to bring the people you point out here to account.

17 Can't some cable media be convinced to show these photos?? There must be a way to show these!!! R.Taylor

18 The media sympathizes with the enemy, so they make excuses for all their many and barbaric atrocities. But they don't cut US any slack at all. I have sweet dreams at night of terrorists kidnapping embedded reporters and slicing their fucking heads off. I always wake up happy after those dreams. And I'm a girl.

19 The media doesn't show the savage acts of our enemy for 1 reasons: they want us to lose the war. So they show photos that will incite our enemy, but they won't show photos that will incite Americans because that might steel our resolve and we might fight the war to win it.

20 By comparing the brutal acts of terrorist savages with our soldiers, we set the bar at the level of the terrorists. This is unwise, to say the least, when we are engaged in a war in which winning hearts and minds is literally everything. We must assume a profoundly moral high ground. Nearly all the Abu Ghraib victims were later released from prison, having been rounded up en masse. Most committed no crimes. And even if they had committed crimes, does it make us look god to inflict such wanton cruelty on them? Of course on a Cruelty Scale of 1 to 10, it may score only a 6, compared with the terrorists' 10. But that's still way too high a score. When we need the world to be with us and not against us, this is counterproductive in the extreme. We are there to liberate these people, not harm them in any way. These were not Al Qaeda terrorists, they were mainly innocent men and women, many teenagers. If you think it's okay to rape rape and wound them, you are entitled. but this is not what America stands for, and to simplistically say that the terrorists do worse things is hardly a reasonable argument. We are supposed to be better.

21 Richard, The problem with your "High and Haughty" road of "American Higher Morality" is that when we capture these people that have committed these heinous barbarities as shoiwn in the above pictures we do not do the world a favor and eradicate them from the face of the earth, but on the contrary, we take them prisoners, and keep, them in Guantanamo in climate controlled conditions, with amenities, and Chicken Terriyaki dinners, which to the likes of Senators Kennedy, Durbin and their ilk, or United Nations' "Secretary General of Pilferage and Corruption" Kofi Anam and his anti-American brethren, is nothing but "sheer, inhuman, torture," We can't fight these monsters with our hands tied behind our back as we are, second guessing every move, just parading our soldiers down the "Death Alleys" of Iraqi cities as if they were "target ducks" in a carnival, for the amusement, and target practice of these animals. We should be waging the war more "agressively," retaliating to their barbarity with appropriate military harshness, not "pussy-footing" around the way we are! We have to stop being, such "idealist" fools, and "bleeding hearts," and realize that this is a brutal enemy which despises, and does not value in the least human life, not even that of their own, or of themselves, and that therefore we have to deal with them accordingly, lest we all perish, or are overrun! You and others of your persuation, especially in Washington, should stop "whining" from your "High Moral Ground" of self-congratulatory "conceit," and face reality in a more pragmatic way... before it is too late for us all!!! Althor

22 Well, as a poster upthread makes abundantly clear, American troops DO hold themselves to a higher standard, and American troops turned in the original Abu Ghraib deviants! And they'll STILL hold themselves to a higher moral and actual standard than the Isalamizoids! America's soldiers aren't all Baha'is, but they certainly act as rationally and as morally acceptably as the Followers of the Glory of God!

23 get out of iraq everything will be fine us uk armys rape little girls andkill them

24 get out of iraq everything will be fine us uk armys rape little girls andkill them kill kill kill and be killed

25 Again Althor, I'm all for tratoing monsters and barbarians with the forces that's necessary. But as I said, most of those in Abu Ghraib were there by accident and were release by the US army, which acknnowledged they had done no wrong. We can't terrorize all brown people. Remember, we are there to liberate them. If they are not worth helping and not deserving of our compassion, what are we doing there? What are we dying for?

26 Yeah, these photos and acts are all terrible. The people perpetrating the murders you show, and those yet unshown, should be brought to justice swiftly. Ok, so Libs want a "higher" standard of morality for our troops. Big woop dee doo. So do we all. But that still doesn't explain why the MSM avoids printing these pictures. The reason is simple: "The media doesn't show the savage acts of our enemy for 1 reason: they want us to lose the war. So they show photos that will incite our enemy, but they won't show photos that will incite Americans because that might steel our resolve and we might fight the war to win it." --Rachel

27 I agree with Althor. "Freedom," "justice" and "decency" are pussy-ass ideals that make America weak. Truth is, we need to become even MORE ruthless and savage than our enemies, in order to prove our righteousness and worthiness to survive. And to hell with nuking a "Muslim" nation. Let's vaporize a totally innocent country -- like Lichtenstein -- just to show the Islamist scum we're even CRAZIER than they are...and we mean business. Screw this "beacon of liberty" crap. Our so-called "ideals" are for old women and bedwetters. Frankly, I'd rather be "alive" than be an "American."

28 kuniyat, how bout screw your clumsy attempts at irony and humour.

29 These are obvious Zionist provocations and falsities. All the world knows that the Jihadists are humane strugglers against the Imperialism of the Jews and Bush. These are lies, all lies. Place more photos of the evil Americans torturing the poor innocent Iraqi people at Abu Ghraib. Show us photos of the President of Iraq, Mr. Saddam Hussein, being tried in a kangaroo court run by Jews and Americans.

30 What irony?

31 RE: The Geneva Conventions include Protocol 1, added in 1977 but not ratified by the U.S., Iraq or Afghanistan. It mentions that all parties in a conflict must respect victims' remains, though doesn't mention the photographing of dead bodies. a true incident: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050920glaser/ relating articles: http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051026/NEWS/510260382

32 I look at what is happening in Kurdistan, and the future that the leaders there have in mind for their people, and I am enheartened. Then I look at the rest of the Middle East, and there is nothing but hate, violence, and radicalism. What is the real shame in all this is that the Middle East could be a paradise on Earth, if the people there would just quit hating and get a vision of what they COULD accomplish without radical Islam. Look to Kurdistan Arabs and see what you could become if you really wanted to. You are the only thing holding yourself back.

33 Dear moron: The reason the UN is not demanding an investigation into murders by Islamofascists is because Islamofascists do not hold seats in the UN. You are unbelievably, almost impossibly, ignorant. Your ignorance is all-emcompassing. It is simply awesome in its scope. Say that there were an Islamofascist seat at the UN. What possible bearing would THEIR behavior have on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of ours? Further, since when did we look to Islamist fascists for guidance on questions of ethical wartime behavior? This isn't a difference of opinion. This is basic moral reasoning and you're apparently incapable of exercising it. You are a fool.

34 SP, It takes one to know one.

35 Dr. Rusty Shackleford decides that extremist killers are no longer either terrorists or insurgents but soldiers! If a lefty did that the wingnuts would have conniptions but he's bending the usual rhetoric all out of shape so he can try to counterspin the recent Abu Graib photos, so that's OK, right? Hey Rusty, does that mean the detainees have Geneva Convention rights or is it OK if America descends to the lowest pit of it's enemies' vileness too? The argument that "others do it so it is OK if I (or we)do it too" as forwarded by many of your commenters is a typical argument from moral paucity exhibited by sociopaths. It can be used to "justify" everything from driving while drunk to serial rape and murder. It only works if you don't understand the difference between right and wrong, though. -C

36 These photos would, if widely shown, only ADD to the anti-Americanism currently sweeping the planet, because they would be perceived as yet more evidence that we have - either contrary to naive intentions, or deliberately, depending on your ideological predisposition - unleashed hell in Iraq. The PR battle is lost.

37 Did I miss the part of the post were Rusty said: "Terrorists are beheading civilians in Iraq, so we should do the same" "Terrorists create false trials, and execute, we should do the same if they're captured." It isn't about moral equivalency, or "What we did isn't so bad, look what the real bad guys do" the entry simply compares how the media does not publish any photographs of victims of terrorists/insurgents, does not talk about "two Iraqi's civilians were beheaded by terrorists" or "civilians kidnapped and shot" but spends weeks talking about how Soldiers abused prisoners, Soldiers who were turned in by their own, have since been tried and sentenced for their crimes, the media runs photograph after photograph of the explicit violence metered out by rogue Soldiers and then claims that pictures of the aftermath of Nick Burg, et al. are to explicit to air.

38 Hey guys, let's remember, Muslims are not the enemy here, just the murderous religious psychopaths and the brutal wannabe dictators. The Kurds, who are Sunni Muslims, LOVE America. As Michael Totten put it, the Kurdish areas of Iraq are mor pro-American than America.

39 SP, that's great. Now tell us why the MSM refuses to print pictures and run video of enemy atrocities.

40 its very simple. Gentlemen 'discuss' issues, animals fight. When animals fight, there are no rules. I think the biggest mistake the coalition forces made was not dis-arming EVERYBODY. If they want to get a handle on this insurgent fighter problem, they should announce a new type of curfew: If you have a weapon of any kind, you are open season. that goes for weapons found in homes, garages or burried in the yard. Peaceful Iraqi's don't need guns at this point in time. They can re-aquire them after the country is at peace. In the meantime, weapon=corpse. No exceptions. Also, I'm kinda curious about the roadside bombs too. Are they remotely detonated, or proximity triggered? If its the latter, a well-armoured vehicle in the front of each convoy with explosive-detecting equipment should help. If they are remotely detonated, why can't jamming equipment be used? a massive high-powered jamming signal could interrupt the remote detonation of the bombs. Just a thought.

41 JC Because it would present a broader truer picture of the reality of all this. We can't have that now, can we?

42 Jesusland Carlos: I'm sure the reasoning is that the pictures and videos of the enemy atrocities are much more graphic. For all of the horrible, war-losing, credibility-destroying, anti-American acts being depicted in the Abu-Ghraib footage and pictures, none of it involves anything as bad as a beheading. Which is commendable in a "well you punched a nine year old girl in the face, but at least you didn't stab her" sort of way.

43 jamming equipment was deployed.

44 "seriously?" more graphic? no one is asking publishing someone as their head is being sawed off, however Rusty has posted things that do not contain graphic violence until the very end. Examples that come to mind would be the downed pilot who was made to get on to his feet before being executed. The two Iraqi men you see here in their video before being beheaded for being apostates. Several mass executions of Iraqi national guardsmen who were made to kneel after watching one of them being beheaded while the others were shot in the head one at a time (same with the Nepalese) This somehow is less graphic than for example naked iraqi pyramids, mock fellatio, blooded prisoners, dead Iraqi's in a bodybag on ice or punches being thrown on naked prisoners on the ground etc? please.

45 I'm curious. If news outlets publish those photos of hostages, are they guilty of broadcasting 'the bad news?' I understand the frustration about ongoing publication of US abuse photos, obviously. Still, we're a democracy holding ourselves up as an inspiration to the rest of the world; is comparing ourselves to these guys and saying, 'Hey! They do worse stuff!' the proper response?

46 I'm curious. If news outlets publish those photos of hostages, are they guilty of broadcasting 'the bad news?' Do you watch the news? these are the same people that gave you the "Grim milestone" run ups, waiting for the quota to be filled. Still, we're a democracy holding ourselves up as an inspiration to the rest of the world How do old pictures, that people have been tried and sentenced for inspire the world? did I miss something?

47 Slippery Pete, The question you refuse to ask yourself is just what are you prepared to do to protect your country and your way of life. Apparently you are not prepared to do much. This is not a Kumbaya choral group we are facing in the Al Qaeda and the Islamofascists. These are people who are prepared to do anything to kill you and the rest of us. If you are not willing to look at the photos of what they are doing right now and compare that to the photos of what went on at Abu Ghraib and see that there is a fundamental difference, then you do not deserve to have the kind of life you are now leading. These people have told us over and over and shown us over and over what they will do and you still stick your fingers in your ears and ignore them. Pitiful!!

48 JC - The reason the "MSM" runs (some) US atrocity pictures but not videos of Islamofascists beheading people is that the latter is far more graphic. They never show videotape that graphic, no matter who's committing atrocities against whom. Obviously you've already signed onto some kind of weird, paranoid conspiracy theory wherein the US media secretly wish for the downfall of American because they hate it and love Islamic fascists. I can see what you're getting at. There's another reason the "MSM" (what a stupid term) focuses on American abuses. It's because everybody expects Islamic fascists to act like fascists. Until recently, nobody expected US personnel to act that way. It's a classic man-bites-dog story. I find it telling that certain elements of the right don't see it that way, if you know what I mean (and - let's be frank - you probably don't). (PS: the most recent photos were published in Australian newspapers, if I'm not mistaken. Plus Salon, which is hardly "MSM")

49 dave: Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with any media outlets publishing any of these photos or videos. I can see their reasons for not doing so, but it wouldn't bother me a bit if they did. The more info the better. Though I'm a liberal, I agree that the mainstream media generally does a piss poor job of laying out all of the facts relevant to forming a coherent opninion on a variety of issues. Although, even with perfect information at everyone's disposal, I'm not sure a lot of folks have the reasoning ability for it to do any good. Witness the tendency of people to start screaming about kidnappings and beheadings when some western news agency has the gall to publish photos of American soldiers torturing the prisoners under their watch. Yes, these beheadings, kidnappings, and generally brutal acts are horrifying, but, they are a separate issue.

50 dick: Yup, they are brutal and ruthless and want you and me and everyone we know and love dead. I want them stopped. I just don't think torturing prisoners gets that done. In fact, I think it swells the terrorists' ranks and provides crap information that our military and intelligence personnel have to waste time and money on. Beyond that, there is a moral highground that this country (and to a lesser extent western civilization) has always aspired to. Which is precisely the reason I want those that wish it harmed stopped in as effective a way as possible. We abandon our highest aspirations when we excuse the torture of prisoners.

51 The "too graphic" excuse is too lame. That problem could be solved by simply pixelating the pictures, JUST LIKE THE COWARDLY MSM PIXELATED PICTURES OF MOHAMMED.

52 >>>It's because everybody expects Islamic fascists to act like fascists. SP, Really? If that's the case, why does Michael Moore call them "minutemen" and "the revolution"? In fact, the further Left of the political spectrum you go, the more they tell us America is to blame for the world's misery and these islamic fascists are just "victims" of "colonialism." No, the MSM doesn't go that far, granted. They merely refrain from telling the whole story. Why? I think it's for the reasons we've already stated. They don't want to inflame American passions in favor of the war. It doesn't suit their agenda.

53 Jesusland Carlos: I think you're on to something here...So the reason Donald Rumsfeld refused to send enough troops in to secure the weapons caches and keep the peace after the initial invasion was because he didn't want to inflame American passions in favor of the war...he's a leftist plant! Please. The abysmal conduct of this war is what's been reducing support of it.

54 Of course, anyone with any knowledge of the origins of the Iraq War knows that it was cooked up by Neocons who are almost all Jewish extremist supporters of Israel. The four leading promoters of America going to war against Iraq were Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser. All four are Jewish supporters of the radical Likud party in Israel. Perle, Feith, and Wurmser wrote a strategic paper for the foreign government of Israel and Benjiman Netanyahu in 1996 called A “Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” Although these men became the framers of the American Iraq War policy, the paper they wrote was about securing Israel's realm by fostering war against Iraq and ultimately Syria and Iran. The paper suggests that Israel's way to destroy Damascus (Syria) is through Baghdad. The problem they faced was that it would be hard to get Americans to pay the tremendous price of the Iraq war for Israel. Would Americans be willing to have thousands killed, tens of thousands maimed, hundreds of billions of dollars expense and the spawning of worldwide hatred of America for Israel's ability to dominate the Mideast? Of course not, so they produced the lie about “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and the lie that Baghdad was an imminent threat to America. Hardly a mention was made of Israel. The whole process was supported by key Jewish supremacists in different parts of the American intelligence establishment. For instance the man who was in charge of the Iraq Intelligence section of the CIA was Stuart Cohen, a radical Jewish Israeli advocate. Here is quote from ABC when Cohen was defending his intelligence reports on the Iraq “weapons of mass destruction.” Sunday, November 30, 2003. 12:46pm (AEDT) CIA admits lack of specifics on Iraqi weapons before invasion The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has acknowledged it “lacked specific information” about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction when it compiled an intelligence estimate last year that served to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq. However, an explanation issued over the weekend by veteran CIA analyst Stuart Cohen, who was in charge of putting together the 2002 intelligence estimate and currently serves as vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, … We now even know from an Associated Press Article (thanks to an Israeli intelligence chief) that Israel itself provided a lot of the bogus data on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Associated Press December 4, 2003 Israeli General Derides Findings on Iraq by Peter Enav - Associated Press Writer “JERUSALEM – A former Israeli intelligence officer charged Thursday that Israeli agencies produced a flawed picture of Iraqi weapons capabilities and substantially contributed to mistakes made in U.S. and British pre-war assessments on Iraq. The comments of reserve Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom represented an unusual criticism of the Israeli intelligence community, long regarded as one of the world's best. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Brom served in Israeli military intelligence for 25 years, and acted as the deputy chief of planning for the Israeli army… Is it anti-Semitic to point out these facts? Is it anti-Semitic to point out that the most powerful lobby in the United States Congress (AIPAC) is actually for a foreign country: Israel! It is right now in the midst a huge scandal because of its espionage against the United States of America. Is it anti-Semitic to state that the most powerful lobby in America worked tirelessly for the war against Iraq. Not only were the fingerprints of Israel all over the intelligence and government agencies, they are all over America's free press. The two most powerful newspapers in the United States (and both supported the war wholeheartedly) are the NY Times and the Washington Post. Of course, being the main newspaper read by almost every member of the U.S. Government in Washington, DC, the Post has huge influence on politics. Both papers are thoroughly controlled by Jewish supremacists. In fact, in replying to the article that attacked Representative Conyers, Mr. Conyers had to complain to the Chief Editor Mr. Abramowitz and chief Ombudsman, Mr. Getler. It is this same paper that suggests telling the truth about Israel is “anti-Semitism.” It is this same paper that drove Howard Dean to attack those who told the truth about Israel and the Iraq War. And its not just the Post or the Times. Thousands of other newspapers and most of the media conglomerates are dominated by Jewish radicals. Here's a quote from one of the leading Jewish newspapers in America on the subject, the Los Angeles Jewish Times: Four of the largest five entertainment giants are now run or owned by Jews. Murdoch's News Corp (at number four) is the only gentile holdout – however Rupert is as pro-Israel as any Jew, probably more so.” (Los Angeles Jewish Times Oct. 29. 1999) [other sources claim Murdoch's mother, Elisabeth J. Greene, is Jewish] Is it anti-Semitic to state these obvious facts showing the relation of Jewish-dominated media to this disastrous war. Finally, Dean criticized the fact that some leaflets distributed at the DNC claimed that Israel was behind the 911 attack. Very few claim that Israel arranged for the attacks themselves, but there can be little doubt that the attacks took place in direct relation to our Israel-hijacked Mideast policy. Even Osama bin Laden himself said clearly that his anger toward America was primarily because of America's support for Israel's criminal actions. He said this in numerous media interviews before the trade center attacks. But, in the wake of the attacks, these facts were ignored. The pro-Israel media and forces in government, including Bush's main speech writer at the time, David Frum, went out of their way to proclaim that America was attacked because they hated our democracy, our freedom! Well, they didn't attack the longest standing democracies in the world, Switzerland or Iceland! If Americans realized we faced such an atrocious tragedy because of Israel's nefarious control of our foreign policy too many Americans might ask a very good question – Is supporting the criminal activities of Israel really worth it? The Jewish supremacists cannot afford that question to be asked, because the answer is just too obvious. Is it anti-Semitic to tell the truth about why so much of the world hates America?

55 Wow. It's raining bullshit from all sides...

56 Cleanup on Isle 1: Jewish conspiracy feces dropped everywhere, please bring mop.

57 The war on Iraq: Conceived in Israel By STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI © 2003 WTM Enterprises All rights reserved. In a lengthy article in The American Conservative criticizing the rationale for the projected U.S. attack on Iraq, the veteran diplomatic historian Paul W. Schroeder noted (only in passing) "what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy — security for Israel." If Israel's security were indeed the real American motive for war, Schroeder wrote, It would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state. [1] Is there any evidence that Israel and her supporters have managed to get the United States to fight for their interests? To unearth the real motives for the projected war on Iraq, one must ask the critical question: How did the 9/11 terrorist attack lead to the planned war on Iraq, even though there is no real evidence that Iraq was involved in 9/11? From the time of the 9/11 attack, neoconservatives, of primarily (though not exclusively) Jewish ethnicity and right-wing Zionist persuasion, have tried to make use of 9/11 to foment a broad war against Islamic terrorism, the targets of which would coincide with the enemies of Israel. Although the term neoconservative is in common usage, a brief description of the group might be helpful. Many of the first-generation neocons originally were liberal Democrats, or even socialists and Marxists, often Trotskyites. They drifted to the right in the 1960s and 1970s as the Democratic Party moved to the antiwar McGovernite left. And concern for Israel loomed large in that rightward drift. As political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg puts it: One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes [e.g., Palestinian rights]. In the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic values (and American interests), neocons found a political movement that would guarantee Israel's security. [2] For some time prior to September 11, 2001, neoconservatives had publicly advocated an American war on Iraq. The 9/11 atrocities provided the pretext. The idea that neocons are the motivating force behind the U.S. movement for war has been broached by a number of commentators. For instance, Joshua Micah Marshall authored an article in The Washington Monthly titled: "Bomb Saddam?: How the obsession of a few neocon hawks became the central goal of U.S. foreign policy." And in the leftist e-journal CounterPunch, Kathleen and Bill Christison wrote: The suggestion that the war with Iraq is being planned at Israel's behest, or at the instigation of policymakers whose main motivation is trying to create a secure environment for Israel, is strong. Many Israeli analysts believe this. The Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar recently observed frankly in a Ha'aretz column that [Richard] Perle, [Douglas] Feith, and their fellow strategists "are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests." The suggestion of dual loyalties is not a verboten subject in the Israeli press, as it is in the United States. Peace activist Uri Avnery, who knows Israeli Prime Minister Sharon well, has written that Sharon has long planned grandiose schemes for restructuring the Middle East and that "the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from him. But the style is the same." [3] In the following essay I attempt to flesh out that thesis and show the link between the war position of the neoconservatives and the long-time strategy of the Israeli Right, if not of the Israeli mainstream itself. In brief, the idea of a Middle East war has been bandied about in Israel for many years as a means of enhancing Israeli security, which revolves around an ultimate solution to the Palestinian problem. War and expulsion To understand why Israeli leaders would want a Middle East war, it is first necessary to take a brief look at the history of the Zionist movement and its goals. Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, the idea of expelling (or, in the accepted euphemism, "transferring") the indigenous Palestinian population was an integral part of the Zionist effort to found a Jewish national state in Palestine. Historian Tom Segev writes: The idea of transfer had accompanied the Zionist movement from its very beginnings, first appearing in Theodore Herzl's diary. In practice, the Zionists began executing a mini-transfer from the time they began purchasing the land and evacuating the Arab tenants.... "Disappearing" the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence.... With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer — or its morality. However, Segev continues, the Zionist leaders learned not to publicly proclaim their plan of mass expulsion because "this would cause the Zionists to lose the world's sympathy." [4] The key was to find an opportune time to initiate the expulsion so it would not incur the world's condemnation. In the late 1930s, David Ben-Gurion wrote: "What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out — a whole world is lost." [5] The "revolutionary times" would come with the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, when the Zionists were able to expel 750,000 Palestinians (more than 80 percent of the indigenous population), and thus achieve an overwhelmingly Jewish state, though its area did not include the entirety of Palestine, or the "Land of Israel," which Zionist leaders thought necessary for a viable state. The opportunity to grab additional land occurred as a result of the 1967 war; however, that occupation brought with it the problem of a large Palestinian population. By that time world opinion was totally opposed to forced population transfers, equating such a policy with the unspeakable horror of Nazism. The landmark Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified in 1949, had "unequivocally prohibited deportation" of civilians under occupation. [6] Since the 1967 war, the major question in Israeli politics has been: What to do with that territory and its Palestinian population? It was during the 1980s, with the coming to power of the right-wing Likud government, that the idea of expulsion resurfaced publicly. And this time it was directly tied to a larger war, with destabilization of the Middle East seen as a precondition for Palestinian expulsion. Such a proposal, including removal of the Palestinian population, was outlined in an article by Oded Yinon, titled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," appearing in the World Zionist Organization's periodical Kivunim in February 1982. Yinon had been attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and his article undoubtedly reflected high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The article called for Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings. Thinking along those lines, Ariel Sharon stated on March 24, 1988, that if the Palestinian uprising continued, Israel would have to make war on her Arab neighbors. The war, he stated, would provide "the circumstances" for the removal of the entire Palestinian population from the West Bank and Gaza and even from inside Israel proper. [7] Israeli foreign policy expert Yehoshafat Harkabi critiqued the war/expulsion scenario — referring to "Israeli intentions to impose a Pax Israelica on the Middle East, to dominate the Arab countries and treat them harshly" — in his very significant work, Israel's Fateful Hour, published in 1988. Writing from a realist perspective, Harkabi concluded that Israel did not have the power to achieve that goal, given the strength of the Arab states, the large Palestinian population involved, and the vehement opposition of world opinion. He hoped that "the failed Israeli attempt to impose a new order in the weakest Arab state — Lebanon — will disabuse people of similar ambitions in other territories." [8] Left unconsidered by Harkabi was the possibility that the United States would act as Israel's proxy to achieve the overall goal. U.S. Realpolitik In the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. Middle Eastern policy, although sympathetic to Israel, was not identical to that of Israel. The fundamental goal of U.S. policy was to promote stable governments in the Middle East that would allow oil to flow reliably to the Western industrial nations. It was not necessary for the Muslim countries to befriend Israel — in fact they could openly oppose the Jewish state. The United States worked for peace between Israel and the Muslim states in the region, but it was to be a peace that would accommodate the demands of the Muslim nations — most crucially their demands involving the Palestinians. Pursuing its policy of ensuring the security of Middle East oil supplies, by the mid 1980s Washington was heavily supporting Iraq in her war against Iran, although for a while the United States had also provided some aid to Iran (viz. the Iran-contra scandal). Ironically, Donald Rumsfeld was the U.S. envoy who in 1983 paved the way for the restoration of relations with Iraq, relations which had been severed in 1967. The United States along with other Western nations looked upon Iraq as a bulwark against the radical Islamism of the Ayatollah's Iran, which threatened Western oil interests. U.S. support for Iraq included intelligence information, military equipment, and agricultural credits. And the United States deployed the largest naval force since the Vietnam War in the Persian Gulf. Ostensibly sent for the purpose of protecting oil tankers, it ended up engaging in serious attacks on Iran's navy. It was during this period of U.S. support that Iraq used poison gas against the Iranians and the Kurds, a tactic that the U.S. government and its media supporters now describe as so horrendous. In fact, U.S. intelligence facilitated the Iraqi use of gas against the Iranians. In addition, Washington eased up on its own technology export restrictions to Iraq, which allowed the Iraqis to import supercomputers, machine tools, poisonous chemicals, and even strains of anthrax and bubonic plague. In short, the United States helped arm Iraq with the very weaponry of horror that administration officials are now trumpeting as justification for forcibly removing Saddam from power. [9] When the Iran/Iraq war ended in 1988, the United States continued its support for Iraq, showering her with military hardware, advanced technology, and agricultural credits. The United States apparently looked to Saddam to maintain stability in the Gulf. But American policy swiftly changed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Neoconservatives were hawkish in generating support for a U.S. war against Iraq. The Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, headed by Richard Perle, was set up to promote the war. [10] And neoconservative war hawks such as Perle, Frank Gaffney, Jr., A.M. Rosenthal, William Safire, and The Wall Street Journal held that America's war objective should be not simply to drive Iraq out of Kuwait but also to destroy Iraq's military potential, especially her capacity to develop nuclear weapons. The first Bush administration embraced that position. [11] But beyond that, the neocons hoped that the war would lead to the removal of Saddam Hussein and the American occupation of Iraq. However, despite the urgings of then-Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the full conquest of Iraq was never accomplished because of the opposition of General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and General Norman Schwarzkopf, the field commander. [12] Moreover, the United States had a UN mandate only to liberate Kuwait, not to remove Saddam. To attempt the latter would have caused the U.S.-led coalition to fall apart. America's coalition partners in the region, especially Turkey and Saudi Arabia, feared that the elimination of Saddam's government would cause Iraq to fragment into warring ethnic and religious groups. That could have involved a Kurdish rebellion in Iraq that would have spread to Turkey's own restive Kurdish population. Furthermore, Iraq's Shiites might have fallen under the influence of Iran, increasing the threat of Islamic radicalism in the region. Not only did the Bush administration dash neoconservative hopes by leaving Saddam in place, but its proposed "New World Order," as implemented by Secretary of State James Baker, conflicted with neoconservative/Israeli goals, being oriented toward placating the Arab coalition that supported the war. That entailed an effort to curb Israeli control of her occupied territories. The Bush administration demanded that Israel halt the construction of new settlements in the occupied territories as a condition for receiving $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for Israel's resettlement of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Although Bush would cave in to American pro-Zionist pressure just prior to the November 1992 election, his resistance disaffected many neocons, causing some, such as Safire, to back Bill Clinton in the 1992 election. [13] The network During the Clinton administration, neoconservatives promoted their views from a strong interlocking network of think tanks — the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), Hudson Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Center for Security Policy (CSP) — which have had great influence in the media and which have helped to staff Republican administrations. Some of the organizations were originally set up by mainline conservatives and only later taken over by neoconservatives; [14] others were established by neocons, with some of the groups having a direct Israeli connection. For example, Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, was a co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri). And the various organizations have been closely interconnected. For example, the other co-founder of Memri, Meyrav Wurmser, was a member of the Hudson Institute, while her husband, David Wurmser, headed the Middle East studies department of AEI. And Perle was both a "resident fellow" at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a trustee of the Hudson Institute. [15] In a recent article in the The Nation, Jason Vest discusses the immense influence in the current Bush administration of people from two major neocon research organizations, JINSA and CSP. Vest details the close links among the two organizations, right-wing politicians, arms merchants, military men, Jewish billionaires, and Republican administrations. [16] Regarding JINSA, Vest writes: Founded in 1976 by neoconservatives concerned that the United States might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event of another Arab-Israeli war, over the past twenty-five years JINSA has gone from a loose-knit proto-group to a $1.4-million-a-year operation with a formidable array of Washington power players on its rolls. Until the beginning of the current Bush administration, JINSA's board of advisors included such heavy hitters as Cheney, John Bolton (now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and Douglas J. Feith, the third-highest-ranking executive in the Pentagon. Both Perle and former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, two of the loudest voices in the attack-Iraq chorus, are still on the board, as are such Reagan-era relics as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Eugene Rostow, and [Michael] Ledeen — Oliver North's Iran/contra liaison with the Israelis. [17] Vest notes that "dozens" of JINSA and CSP "members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues — support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general — into a hard line, with support for the Israeli right at its core." And Vest continues: "On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war — not just with Iraq, but 'total war,' as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, 'regime change' by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative." [18] Let's recapitulate Vest's major points. The JINSA/CSP network has "support for the Israeli right at its core." In line with the views of the Israeli right, it has advocated a Middle Eastern war to eliminate the enemies of Israel. And members of the JINSA/CSP network have gained influential foreign policy positions in Republican administrations, most especially in the current administration of George W. Bush. "Securing the realm" A clear illustration of the neoconservative thinking on war on Iraq is a 1996 paper developed by Perle, Feith, David Wurmser, and others published by an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, titled "A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm." It was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The paper stated that Netanyahu should "make a clean break" with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan whereby Israel would "shape its strategic environment," beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, to serve as a first step toward eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. [19] Note that these Americans — Perle, Feith, and Wurmser — were advising a foreign government and that they currently are connected to the George W. Bush administration: Perle is head of the Defense Policy Board; Feith is Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy; and Wurmser is special assistant to State Department chief arms control negotiator John Bolton. It is also remarkable that while in 1996 Israel was to "shape its strategic environment" by removing her enemies, the same individuals are now proposing that the United States shape the Middle East environment by removing Israel's enemies. That is to say, the United States is to serve as Israel's proxy to advance Israeli interests. On February 19, 1998, in an "Open Letter to the President," the neoconservative Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf proposed "a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime." The letter continued: "It will not be easy — and the course of action we favor is not without its problems and perils. But we believe the vital national interests of our country require the United States to [adopt such a strategy]." Among the letter's signers were the following current Bush administration officials: Elliott Abrams (National Security Council), Richard Armitage (State Department), Bolton (State Department), Feith (Defense Department), Fred Ikle (Defense Policy Board), Zalmay Khalilzad (White House), Peter Rodman (Defense Department), Wolfowitz (Defense Department), David Wurmser (State Department), Dov Zakheim (Defense Department), Perle (Defense Policy Board), and Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense). [20] In 1998 Donald Rumsfeld was part of the neocon network and already demanding war with Iraq. [21] Signers of the letter also included such pro-Zionist and neoconservative luminaries as Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Gaffney (Director, Center for Security Policy), Joshua Muravchik (American Enterprise Institute), Martin Peretz (editor-in-chief, The New Republic), Leon Wieseltier (The New Republic), and former Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.). [22] President Clinton would only go so far as to support the Iraq Liberation Act, which allocated $97 million dollars for training and military equipment for the Iraqi opposition. [23] In September 2000, the neocon think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) [24] issued a report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century," that envisioned an expanded global posture for the United States. In regard to the Middle East, the report called for an increased American military presence in the Gulf, whether Saddam was in power or not., maintaining that "the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." [25] The project's participants included individuals who would play leading roles in the second Bush administration: Cheney (Vice President), Rumsfeld (secretary of defense), Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense), and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). Weekly Standard editor William Kristol was also a co-author. In order to directly influence White House policy, Wolfowitz and Perle managed to obtain leading roles on the Bush foreign policy/national security advisory team for the 2000 campaign. Headed by Soviet specialist Condoleezza Rice, the team was referred to as "the Vulcans." Having no direct experience in foreign policy and little knowledge of the world, as illustrated by his notorious gaffes — confusing Slovakia with Slovenia, referring to Greeks as "Grecians," and failing a pop quiz on the names of four foreign leaders — George W. Bush would have to rely heavily on his advisors. "His foreign policy team," Kagan observed, "will be critically important to determining what his policies are." And columnist Robert Novak noted: "Since Rice lacks a clear track record on Middle East matters, Wolfowitz and Perle will probably weigh in most on Middle East policy." [26] In short, Wolfowitz and Perle would provide the know-nothing Bush with a ready-made foreign policy for the Middle East. And certainly such right-wing Zionist views would be reinforced by Cheney and Rumsfeld and the multitude of other neocons who would inundate Bush's administration. Neocons would fill the key positions involving defense and foreign policy. On Rumsfeld's staff are Wolfowitz and Feith. On Cheney's staff, the principal neoconservatives include Libby, Eric Edelman, and John Hannah. And Cheney himself, with his long-time neocon connections and views, has played a significant role in shaping "Bush" foreign policy. [27] A Perle among men Perle is often described as the most influential foreign-policy neoconservative, their eminence grise.[28] He gained notice in the 1970s as a top aide to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wash.), who was one of the Senate's most anti-Communist and pro-Israeli members. During the 1980s, Perle served as deputy secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, where his hard-line anti-Soviet positions, especially his opposition to any form of arms control, earned him the moniker "Prince of Darkness" from his enemies. However, his friends considered him, as one put it, "one of the most wonderful people in Washington." That Perle is known as a man of great intellect, a gracious and generous host, a witty companion, and a loyal ally helps to explain his prestige in neoconservative circles. [29] Perle isn't just an exponent of pro-Zionist views; he has also had close connections with Israel, being a personal friend of Sharon's, a board member of the Jerusalem Post, and an ex-employee of the Israeli weapons manufacturer Soltam. According to author Seymour M. Hersh, while Perle was a congressional aide for Jackson, FBI wiretaps picked up Perle providing classified information from the National Security Council to the Israeli embassy. [30] Although not technically part of the Bush administration, Perle holds the unpaid chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board. In that position, Perle has access to classified documents and close contacts with the administration leadership. As an article in Salon puts it: "Formerly an obscure civilian board designed to provide the secretary of defense with non-binding advice on a whole range of military issues, the Defense Policy Board, now stacked with unabashed Iraq hawks, has become a quasi-lobbying organization whose primary objective appears to be waging war with Iraq." [31] "Actions inconceivable at present" As Bush and his people came into office in January 2001, press reports in Israel quoted government officials and politicians speaking openly of mass expulsion of the Palestinians. Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel in February 2001; noted for his ruthlessness, he had said in the past that Jordan should become the Palestinian state where Palestinians removed from Israeli territory would be relocated. [32] Public concern was mounting in Israel over demographic changes that threatened the Jewish nature of the Israeli state. Haifa University professor Arnon Sofer released the study, "Demography of Eretz Israel," which predicted that by 2020 non-Jews would be a majority of 58 percent in Israel and the occupied territories. [33] Moreover, it was recognized that the overall increase in population would exceed what the land, with its limited supply of water, could support. [34] It appeared to some that Sharon intended to achieve expulsion through militant means. As one left-wing analyst put it at the time: "One big war with transfer at its end — this is the plan of the hawks who indeed almost reached the moment of its implementation." [35] In the summer of 2001, the authoritative Jane's Information Group reported that Israel had completed the planning for a massive and bloody invasion of the Occupied Territories, involving "air strikes by F-15 and F-16 fighter bombers, a heavy artillery bombardment, and then an attack by a combined force of 30,000 men ... tank brigades and infantry." Such bold strikes would aim at far more than simply removing Arafat and the PLO leadership. But the United States vetoed the plan, and Europe made its opposition to Sharon's plans equally plain. [36] As one close observer of the Israeli-Palestinian scene presciently wrote in August 2001, "It is only in the current political climate that such expulsion plans cannot be put into operation. As hot as the political climate is at the moment, clearly the time is not yet ripe for drastic action. However, if the temperature were raised even higher, actions inconceivable at present might be possible." [37] Once again, "revolutionary times" were necessary for Israel to achieve its policy goals. And then came the September 11 attacks. Revolutionary September The September 11 atrocities provided the "revolutionary times" in which Israel could undertake radical measures unacceptable during normal conditions. When asked what the attack would do for U.S.-Israeli relations, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded: "It's very good." Then he edited himself: "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." Netanyahu correctly predicted that the attack would "strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror." Sharon placed Israel in the same position as the United States, referring to the attack as an assault on "our common values" and declaring, "I believe together we can defeat these forces of evil." [38] In the eyes of Israel's leaders, the September 11 attacks had joined the United States and Israeli together against a common enemy. And that enemy was not in far-off Afghanistan but was geographically close to Israel. Israel's traditional enemies would now become America's as well. And Israel would have a better chance of dealing with the Palestinians under the cover of a "war on terrorism." Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the neoconservatives began to publicly push for a wider war on terrorism that would immediately deal with Israel's enemies. For example, Safire held that the real terrorists that America should focus on were not groups of religious fanatics "but Iraqi scientists today working feverishly in hidden biological laboratories and underground nuclear facilities [who] would, if undisturbed, enable the hate-driven, power-crazed Saddam to kill millions. That capability would transform him from a boxed-in bully into a rampant world power." [39] Within the administration, Wolfowitz clearly implied a broader war against existing governments when he said: "I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign. It's not going to stop if a few criminals are taken care of." [40] On September 20, 2001, neocons of the Project for the New American Century sent a letter to President Bush endorsing the war on terrorism and stressing that the removal of Saddam was an essential part of that war. They maintained that "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism." Furthermore, the letter-writers opined, if Syria and Iran failed to stop all support for Hezbollah, the United States should "consider appropriate measures against these known sponsors of terrorism." Among the letter's signatories were such neoconservative luminaries as William Kristol, Midge Decter, Eliot Cohen, Francis Fukuyama, Gaffney, Kagan, Kirkpatrick, Charles Krauthammer, Perle, Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, Solarz, and Wieseltier. World War IV In the October 29, 2002, issue of The Weekly Standard, Kagan and Kristol predict a wider Middle Eastern war: When all is said and done, the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North Africa campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But compared with what looms over the horizon — a wide-ranging war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back again to the United States — Afghanistan will prove but an opening battle.... But this war will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. [42] Kagan and Kristol seem to be looking forward to this gigantic conflagration. In a November 20, 2002, article in The Wall Street Journal, Eliot Cohen dubs the conflict "World War IV," a term picked up by other neocons. Cohen proclaims that "The enemy in this war is not 'terrorism' ... but militant Islam.... Afghanistan constitutes just one front in World War IV, and the battles there just one campaign." Cohen calls not only for a U.S. attack on Iraq but also for the elimination of the Islamic regime in Iran, which "would be no less important a victory in this war than the annihilation of bin Laden." [43] Critics of a wider war in the Middle East quickly recognized the neoconservative war-propaganda effort. Analyzing the situation in September 2002, paleoconservative [44] Scott McConnell wrote: "For the neoconservatives ... bin Laden is but a sideshow.... They hope to use September 11 as pretext for opening a wider war in the Middle East. Their prime, but not only, target is Saddam Hussein's Iraq, even if Iraq has nothing to do with the World Trade Center assault." [45] However, McConnell mistakenly considered the neocon stance to be only a minority view within the Bush administration: The neocon wish list is a recipe for igniting a huge conflagration between the United States and countries throughout the Arab world, with consequences no one could reasonably pretend to calculate. Support for such a war — which could turn quite easily into a global war — is a minority position within the Bush administration (assistant secretary of state Paul Wolfowitz is its main advocate) and the country. But it presently dominates the main organs of conservative journalistic opinion, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Times, as well as Marty Peretz's neoliberal New Republic. In a volatile situation, such organs of opinion could matter. [46] Expressing a similar view, veteran columnist Georgie Anne Geyer observed: The "Get Iraq" campaign ... started within days of the September bombings.... It emerged first and particularly from pro-Israeli hard-liners in the Pentagon such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and advisor Richard Perle, but also from hard-line neoconservatives, and some journalists and congressmen. Soon it became clear that many, although not all, were in the group that is commonly called in diplomatic and political circles the "Israeli-firsters," meaning that they would always put Israeli policy, or even their perception of it, above anything else. Geyer believed that this line of thinking was "being contained by cool heads in the administration, but that could change at any time." [47] Lighting up the recesses of Bush Neoconservatives have presented the September 11 atrocities as a lightning bolt to make President Bush aware of his destiny: destroying the evil of world terrorism. Ironically enough, Podhoretz adopted Christian terminology to describe a changed Bush: A transformed — or, more precisely, a transfigured — George W. Bush appeared before us. In an earlier article ... I suggested, perhaps presumptuously, that out of the blackness of smoke and fiery death let loose by September 11, a kind of revelation, blazing with a very different fire of its own, lit up the recesses of Bush's mind and heart and soul. Which is to say that, having previously been unsure as to why he should have been chosen to become President of the United States, George W. Bush now knew that the God to whom, as a born-again Christian, he had earlier committed himself had put him in the Oval Office for a purpose. He had put him there to lead a war against the evil of terrorism. [48] In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, administration heavyweights debated the scope of the "war on terrorism." According to Bob Woodward's Bush at War, as early as September 12 Rumsfeld "raised the question of attacking Iraq. Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? he asked. Rumsfeld was speaking not only for himself when he raised the question. His deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, was committed to a policy that would make Iraq a principal target of the first round in the war on terrorism." [49] Woodward adds, "The terrorist attacks of September 11 gave the United States a new window to go after Hussein." On September 15, Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan. Wolfowitz expressed the view that "attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain," voicing the fear that American troops would be "bogged down in mountain fighting.... In contrast, Iraq was a brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable." [50] However, the neoconservatives were not able to achieve their goal of a wider war at the outset, in part because of the opposition of Secretary of State Powell, who held that the war should focus on the actual perpetrators of September 11. (That was how most Americans actually envisioned the war.) Perhaps Powell's most telling argument was his declaration that an American attack on Iraq would lack international support. He claimed that a U.S. victory in Afghanistan would enhance the United States's ability to deal militarily with Iraq at a later time, "if we can prove that Iraq had a role" in September 11. [51] Powell diverged from the neocon hawks in his emphasis on the need for international support, as opposed to American unilateralism, but an even greater difference lay in his contention that the "war on terror" had to be directly linked to the perpetrators of September 11 — Osama bin Laden's network. Powell publicly repudiated Wolfowitz's call for "ending states" with the response that "we're after ending terrorism. And if there are states and regimes, nations, that support terrorism, we hope to persuade them that it is in their interest to stop doing that. But I think 'ending terrorism' is where I would leave it and let Mr. Wolfowitz speak for himself." [52] Very significantly, however, while the "war on terrorism" would not begin with an attack on Iraq, military plans were being made for just such an endeavor. A Top Secret document outlining the war plan for Afghanistan, which Bush signed on September 17, 2001, included, as a minor point, instructions to the Pentagon to also start making plans for an attack on Iraq. [53] Bush's public pronouncements evolved rapidly in the direction of expanding the war to Iraq. On November 21, 2001, in a speech at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, he proclaimed that "Afghanistan is just the beginning of the war against terror. There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them. We will not be secure as a nation until all these threats are defeated. Across the world, and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win." [54] On November 26, in response to a question whether Iraq was one of the terrorist nations that he had in mind, Bush said: "Well, my message is, is that if you harbor a terrorist, you're a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist, you're a terrorist. If you develop weapons of mass destruction that you want to terrorize the world, you'll be held accountable." Note that Bush included possession of weapons of mass destruction as an indicator of "terrorism." And none of that terrorist activity necessarily related to the September 11 attacks. [55] Transformation complete The transformation to support of a wider war was complete with Bush's January 29, 2002, State of the Union speech, in which he officially decoupled the "war on terrorism'' from the specific events of 9/11. Bush did not even mention bin Laden or al Qaeda. The danger now was said to come primarily from three countries — Iran, Iraq, and North Korea — which he dubbed "an axis of evil" that allegedly threatened the world with their weapons of mass destruction. According to Bush: States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. [56] The phrase "axis of evil" was coined by Bush's neoconservative speechwriter, David Frum. [57] By April 2002, Bush was publicly declaring that American policy was to secure "regime change" in Iraq. And in June, he stated that the United States would launch preemptive strikes on those countries that threatened the United States. [58] According to what passes as the conventional wisdom, Iraq now posed such a threat. Moreover, by the spring of 2002, General Tommy R. Franks, chief of U.S. Central Command, began giving Bush private briefings every three or four weeks on the planning for a new Iraq war. [59] Neoconservatives both within and without the administration sought a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq that would not be encumbered by the conflicting goals of any coalition partners. That push was countered by Powell's efforts to persuade Bush that UN sanction would be necessary to justify a U.S. attack, which the President ultimately found persuasive. That slowed the rush to war, but it also represented a move by Powell away from his original position that Washington should make war on Iraq only if Baghdad were proven to have been involved in the September 11 terrorism. The UN Security Council decided that UN inspectors, with sweeping inspection powers, would determine whether Iraq was violating her pledge to destroy all of her weapons of mass destruction. UN Security Council Resolution 1441 (November 8, 2002) places the burden of proof on Iraq to show that she no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction. The resolution states that any false statements or omissions in the Iraqi weapons declaration would constitute a further material breach by Iraq of her obligations. That could set in motion discussions by the Security Council on considering the use of military force against Iraq. While some have claimed that this might mean that war would be put off, [60] it also allows the United States to use the new UN resolution as a legal justification for war. In fact, the United States could choose to enforce the resolution through war without additional UN authorization. As British journalist Robert Fisk writes: "The United Nations can debate any Iraqi non-compliance with weapons inspectors, but the United States will decide whether Iraq has breached UN resolutions. In other words, America can declare war without UN permission." [61] Armchair strategists Neoconservatives not only have determined the foreign policy leading to war against Iraq but have played a role in molding military strategy as well. Top military figures, including members of the Joint Chiefs, initially expressed opposition to the whole idea of such a war. [62] But Perle and other neoconservatives have for some time insisted that toppling Saddam would require little military effort or risk. They pushed for a war strategy dubbed "inside-out" that would involve attacking Baghdad and a couple of other key cities with a very small number of airborne troops, as few as 5,000 in some estimates. According to the plan's supporters, such strikes would cause Saddam's regime to collapse. American military leaders adamantly opposed that approach as too risky, offering in its stead a plan to use a much larger number of troops — about 250,000 — who would invade Iraq in a more conventional manner, marching from the soil of her neighbors, as was done during the Gulf War of 1991. Perle and the neoconservatives, for their part, feared that no neighboring country would provide the necessary bases, so that this approach would likely mean that no war would be initiated or that, during the lengthy time needed to assemble this large force, opposition to war would so burgeon as to render the operation politically impossible. Perle angrily responded to the military's demurral by saying that the decision to attack Iraq was "a political judgment that these guys aren't competent to make." [63] Cheney and Rumsfeld went even further, referring to the generals as "cowards" for being insufficiently gung-ho about an Iraq invasion. [64] Now, one might be tempted to attribute Perle and the other neocons' rejection of the military's caution to insane hubris — how could amateurs pretend to know more about military strategy than professional military men? However, Richard Perle may be many things, but insane is not one of them. Nor is he stupid. Undoubtedly he has thought through the implications of his plan. And it is apparent that the "inside-out" option would be a win-win proposition from Perle's perspective. Let's assume that it works — that a few American troops can capture some strategic areas and the Iraqi army quickly folds. Perle and the neocons appear as military geniuses and are rewarded with free rein to prepare a series of additional low-cost wars in the Middle East. On the other hand, let's assume that the mini-invasion is a complete fiasco. The American troops are defeated in the cities. Many are captured and paraded around for all the world to see. Saddam makes bombastic speeches about defeating the American aggressor. All the Arab and Islamic world celebrates the American defeat. American flags are burned in massive anti-American celebrations throughout the Middle East. America is totally humiliated, depicted as a paper tiger, and ordinary Americans watch it all on TV. How do they react? Such a catastrophe would be another Pearl Harbor in terms of engendering hatred of the enemy. The public would demand that American honor and prestige be avenged. They would accept the idea fed to them by the neoconservative propagandists that the war was one between America and Islam. Washington would unleash total war, which would involve heavy bombing of cities. And the air attacks could easily spread from Iraq to the other neighboring Islamic states. A war of conquest and extermination is the neocons' fondest dream since it would destroy all of Israel's enemies in the Middle East. (It appears that the Pentagon has augmented the magnitude of the Iraq strike force to reduce the risk of the aforementioned scenario.) [65] "Our Enemies, the Saudis" Indications are plentiful that the war will not be limited to Iraq alone. On July 10, 2002, Laurent Murawiec, at Perle's behest, briefed the Defense Policy Board about Saudi Arabia, whose friendly relationship with the United States has been the linchpin of American security strategy in the Middle East for more than 50 years. Murawiec described the kingdom as the principal supporter of anti-American terrorism — "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent." It was necessary, he claimed, for the United States to regard Saudi Arabia as an enemy. Murawiec said Washington should demand that Riyadh stop funding fundamentalist Islamic outlets around the world, prohibit all anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli propaganda in the country, and "prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services." If the Saudis refused to comply with the ultimatum, Murawiec contended that the United States should invade and occupy the country, including the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, seize her oil fields, and confiscate her financial assets. [66] Murawiec concluded the briefing with the astounding summary of what he called a "Grand Strategy for the Middle East:" "Iraq is the tactical pivot. Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot. Egypt the prize." In short, the goal of the war on Iraq was the destruction of the United States' closest allies. It would be hard to envision a policy better designed to inflame the entire Middle East against the United States. But that is exactly the result sought by neoconservatives. [67] Predictably, the day after the briefing, the Bush administration disavowed Murawiec's scenario as having nothing to do with actual American foreign policy and pronounced Saudi Arabia a loyal ally. [68] However, the White House did nothing to remove or even discipline Perle for holding a discussion of a plan for attacking a close ally — and individuals have frequently been removed from administrations for much smaller faux pas. We may be certain that the Bush administration's inaction failed to assure the Saudis that Murawiec's war plan was beyond the realm of possibility. Murawiec's anti-Saudi scenario simultaneously emerged in the neocon press. The July 15, 2002, issue of The Weekly Standard featured an article titled "The Coming Saudi Showdown," by Simon Henderson of the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy. And the July/August issue of Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee, contained an article titled, "Our Enemies, the Saudis." [69] The leading neoconservative expert on Saudi Arabia, Stephen Schwartz, made his views known, too, though he did pay a price for it. Schwartz has written numerous articles as well as a recent book, The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror, in which he posits a Saudi/Wahhabist conspiracy to take over all of Islam and spread terror throughout the world. As a result of his anti-Saudi comments, Schwartz was dismissed from his brief tenure as an editorial writer with the Voice of America at the beginning of July 2002, thus becoming a martyr in neoconservative circles. [70] As Thomas F. Ricks points out in the Washington Post, the anti-Saudi bellicosity expressed by Murawiec "represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration — especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership — and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers." [71] By November 2002, the anti-Saudi theme had reached the mainstream — with an article in Newsweek alleging financial support for the 9/11 terrorists from the Saudi royal family, and commentary on the subject by such leading figures in the Senate as Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Charles Schumer (D-New York), and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). [72] Bush administration policy has come a long way but has still not reached what neocons seek: a war by the United States against all of Islam. According to Podhoretz, doyen of the neoconservatives: "Militant Islam today represents a revival of the expansionism by the sword" of Islam's early years. [73] In Podhoretz's view, to survive resurgent Islam the United States must not simply stand on the defensive but must stamp out militant Islam at its very source in the Middle East: The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, this axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as "friends" of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen. After the great conquest, the United States would remake the entire region, which would entail forcibly re-educating its people to fall into line with the thinking of America's leaders. Podhoretz acknowledges that the people of the Middle East might, if given a free democratic choice, pick anti-American and anti-Israeli leaders and policies. But he proclaims that "there is a policy that can head it off" provided "that we then have the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated parties. This is what we did directly and unapologetically in Germany and Japan after winning World War II." [74] Expulsion redux Within Israel herself, however, the Arabs would not be expected to adopt a "new political culture"; they would be expected to vanish. Expulsion of the Palestinians is inextricably intertwined with a Middle Eastern war — or, in Ben-Gurion's phrase, "revolutionary times." As the post-September 11 "war on terror" has heated up, the talk of forcibly "transferring" the Palestinians has once again moved to the center of Israeli politics. According to Illan Pappe, a Jewish Israeli revisionist historian, "You can see this new assertion talked about in Israel: the discourse of transfer and expulsion which had been employed by the extreme Right, is now the bon ton of the center." [75] Even the dean of Israel's revisionist historians, Benny Morris, explicitly endorsed the expulsion of the Palestinians in the event of war. "This land is so small," Morris exclaimed, "that there isn't room for two peoples. In fifty or a hundred years, there will only be one state between the sea and the Jordan. That state must be Israel." According to a recent poll conducted by Israel's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, nearly one-half of Israelis support expulsion of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, and nearly one-third support expulsion of Israeli Arabs. Three-fifths support "encouraging" Israeli Arabs to leave. [76] In April 2002, leading Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld held that a U.S. attack on Iraq would provide the cover for Prime Minister Sharon to forcibly remove the Palestinians from the West Bank. In Creveld's view, "The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades," which would rely on "heavy artillery." Creveld continued: "Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days. If the Arab states do not intervene, it will end with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins. If they do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab armies destroyed.... Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973." [77] Although Creveld did not express any opposition to this impending expulsion, in September 2002, a group of Israeli academics did issue a declaration of opposition, stating, "We are deeply worried by indications that the 'fog of war' could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing." [78] The declaration continued: The Israeli ruling coalition includes parties that promote "transfer" of the Palestinian population as a solution to what they call "the demographic problem." Politicians are regularly quoted in the media as suggesting forcible expulsion, most recently [Knesset members] Michael Kleiner and Benny Elon, as reported on Yediot Ahronot website on September 19, 2002. In a recent interview in Ha'aretz, Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon described the Palestinians as a "cancerous manifestation" and equated the military actions in the Occupied Territories with "chemotherapy," suggesting that more radical "treatment" may be necessary. Prime Minister Sharon has backed this "assessment of reality." Escalating racist demagoguery concerning the Palestinian citizens of Israel may indicate the scope of the crimes that are possibly being contemplated. [79] In the fall of 2002, the Jordanian government, fearing that Israel might push the Palestinian population into Jordan during the anticipated U.S. attack on Iraq, asked for public assurances from the Israeli government that it would not make such a move. The Sharon regime, however, has refused to publicly renounce an expulsion policy. [80] Simply a pretext As is now apparent, the "war on terrorism" was never intended to be a war to apprehend and punish the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities. September 11 simply provided a pretext for government leaders to implement long-term policy plans. As has been pointed out elsewhere, including in my own writing, oil interests and American imperialists looked upon the war as a way to incorporate oil-rich Central Asia within the American imperial orbit. [81] While that has been achieved, the American-sponsored government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan is in a perilous situation. Karzai's power seems to be limited to his immediate vicinity, and he must be protected by American bodyguards. The rest of Afghanistan is being fought over by various war lords and even the resurgent Taliban. [82] Instead of putting forth the effort to help consolidate its position in Central Asia, Washington has shifted its focus to gaining control of the Middle East. It now appears that the primary policymakers in the Bush administration have been the Likudnik neoconservatives all along. Control of Central Asia is secondary to control of the Middle East. In fact, for the leading neocons, the war on Afghanistan may simply have been an opening gambit, necessary for reaching their ultimate and crucial goal: U.S. control of the Middle East in the interests of Israel. That is analogous to what revisionist historians have presented as Franklin D. Roosevelt's "back door to war" approach to World War II. Roosevelt sought war with Japan in order to be able to fight Germany, and he provoked Japan into attacking U.S. colonial possessions in the Far East. Once the United States got into war through the back door, Roosevelt focused the American military effort on Germany. [83] The oil motive But what about the American desire for controlling Iraqi oil? Iraq possesses the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, next to Saudi Arabia. Moreover, many experts believe that Iraq possesses vast undiscovered oil reserves, making her the near-equal of Saudi Arabia. Most critics of war allege that American oil companies' desire to gain control of Iraqi oil is what motivates U.S. war policy. Some, mostly proponents of war, have also argued that, once in control of Iraqi oil, the United States could inundate the world with cheap oil, thus boosting the American and world economies out of recession. [84] Although the arguments have a prima facie plausibility, the oil motive for war has a couple of serious flaws. First, oil industry representatives or big economic moguls do not seem to be clamoring for war. According to oil analyst Anthony Sampson, "oil companies have had little influence on U.S. policy-making. Most big American companies, including oil companies, do not see a war as good for business, as falling share prices indicate." [85] Further, it is not apparent that war would be good for the oil industry or the world economy. Why would Big Oil want to risk a war that could ignite a regional conflagration threatening their existing investments in the Gulf? Iraq does indeed have significant oil reserves, but there is no reason to believe that they would have an immediate impact on the oil market. Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, points out: In terms of production capacity, Iraq represents just 3 percent of the world's total. Its oil exports are on the same level as Nigeria's. Even if Iraq doubled its capacity, that could take more than a decade. In the meantime, growth elsewhere would limit Iraq's eventual share to perhaps 5 percent, significant but still in the second tier of oil nations. [86] A war would pose a great risk to the oil industry in the entire Gulf region. As William D. Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale and a member of the President Carter's Council of Economic Advisers, writes: War in the Persian Gulf might produce a major upheaval in petroleum markets, either because of physical damage or because political events lead oil producers to restrict production after the war. A particularly worrisome outcome would be a wholesale destruction of oil facilities in Iraq, and possibly in Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. In the first Persian Gulf War, Iraq destroyed much of Kuwait's oil wells and other petroleum infrastructure as it withdrew. The sabotage shut down Kuwaiti oil production for close to a year, and prewar levels of oil production were not reached until 1993 — nearly two years after the end of the war in February 1991. Unless the Iraqi leadership is caught completely off-guard in a new war, Iraq's forces would probably be able to destroy Iraq's oil production facilities. The strategic rationale for such destruction is unclear in peacetime, but such an act of self-immolation cannot be ruled out in wartime. Contamination of oil facilities in the Gulf region by biological or chemical means would pose even greater threats to oil markets. [87] Nordhaus's forecasts may be excessively bleak. However, the point is that the experts simply cannot gauge what will happen. War poses tremendous risk. In his evaluation of the possible economic impact of a war on Iraq, economic analyst Robert J. Samuelson concludes: "If it's peace and prosperity, then war makes no sense. But if fighting now prevents a costlier war later, it makes much sense." [88] None of this to deny that certain oil companies might benefit from a Middle East war, just as some businesses profit from any war. Particular oil companies could stand to benefit from American control of Iraq, since under a postwar U.S.-sponsored Iraqi government, American companies could be expected to be favored and gain the most lucrative oil deals. However, that particular oil companies could derive some benefits does not undercut the overall argument that war is a great risk for the American oil industry and the American economy as a whole. An American-imperialist strategic motive might be more plausible than the economic interests of the oil industry and the economy in general. Instead of the current informal influence over the oil producing areas of the Middle East, the United States would move into direct control, either with a puppet government in Iraq providing enough leverage for Washington to dictate to the rest of the Middle East, or actual direct U.S. control of other parts of the Middle East as well as Iraq. Presumably that state of affairs would provide greater security for the oil flow than exists under the current situation, where the client states enjoy some autonomy and face the possibility of being overthrown by anti-American forces. Neoconservative Robert Kagan maintains, "When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies." [89] Neoconservatives often try to gloss over this projected American colonialism by claiming that the United States would be simply spreading democracy. They imply that "democratic" Middle East governments would support American policies, including support of Israel and an oil policy oriented toward the welfare of the United States. However, given popular anti-Zionist and anti-American opinion in the region, it seems highly unlikely that governments representative of the popular will would ever pursue such policies. Only a non-representative dictatorship could be pro-American and pro-Israeli. Zionist U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) put it candidly in calming the worries of an Israeli member of the Knesset: "You won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you." [90] A truly foreign imperialism Control of the Middle East oil supply would certainly augment U.S. domination of the world. However, American imperialists who are in no way linked to the Likudnik position on Israel — e.g., Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft — are cool to such a Middle East war. [91] If such a war policy would be an obvious boon to American imperialism, why isn't it avidly sought by leading American imperialists? Direct colonial control of a country's internal affairs would be a significant break with American policy of the past half-century. America might have client states and an informal empire, but the direct imperialism entailed by an occupation of the Middle East would be, as Mark Danner put it in the New York Times, "wholly foreign to the modesty of containment, the ideology of a status-quo power that lay at the heart of American strategy for half a century." [92] Moreover, a fundamental concern of American global policy has been to maintain peace and stability in the world. Washington preaches probity and restraint to other countries regarding the use of force. Hence, for the United States to launch a preemptive strike on a country would undoubtedly weaken her ability to restrain other countries, which would also see a need to preemptively strike at their foes. In short, the launching of preemptive war would destabilize the very world order that the United States allegedly seeks to preserve in her "war on terrorism." In fact, world stability is often seen as central to the global economic interdependence that is the key to American prosperity. [93] Since America already exercises considerable power in the oil-producing Persian Gulf region through her client states — Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates — it is difficult to understand why American imperialists would make a radical change from their status-quo policy. Would the benefits to be gained from direct control of the region outweigh the risks involved? War could unleash virulent anti-American forces that could destabilize America's Middle East client states and incite terrorist attacks on

58 http://www.nowarforisrael.com/

59 stop polluting the comments with your tinfoil rants asshole, wipe the foam flecks from the corner of your mouth and go take a sip from a good mug of STFU. No one wants to read 250 lines of idiotic rambling bullshit, especially when anyone so inclined could click on a link.

60 not to mention other Middle Eastern countries, would place a heavy burden on the U.S. government and people. [94] Would such a burden be acceptable to the American people? Would they support the brutal policies needed to suppress any opposition? In the 1950s the people of France would not support the brutality necessary to retain the colonial empire in Algeria. Even in the totalitarian Soviet Union, popular opinion forced the abandonment of the imperialistic venture in Afghanistan, which contributed to the break-up of the entire Soviet empire. In short, the move from indirect to direct control of the Middle East would strike men who were simply concerned about enhancing American imperial power as the gravest sort of risk-taking, because it could undermine America's entire imperial project. Direct American control of the Middle East would not only prove burdensome to the American people but would also undoubtedly provoke a backlash from other countries. That almost seems to be a law of international relations — operating since the time of the balance-of-power politics practiced during the Peloponnesian War. As Christopher Layne points out: The historical record shows that in the real world, hegemony never has been a winning grand strategy. The reason is simple: The primary aim of states in international politics is to survive and maintain their sovereignty. And when one state becomes too powerful — becomes a hegemon — the imbalance of power in its favor is a menace to the security of all other states. So throughout modern international political history, the rise of a would-be hegemon always has triggered the formation of counter-hegemonic alliances by other states. [95] The British Empire, which might seem an exception to the rule of the inevitable failure of hegemons, achieved its success because of its caution. Owen Harries, editor of the National Interest, has pointed out that England's imperial successes stemmed from her rather cautious approach. "England," observed Harries in the Spring 2001 issue, "was the only hegemon that did not attract a hostile coalition against itself. It avoided that fate by showing great restraint, prudence and discrimination in the use of its power in the main political arena by generally standing aloof and restricting itself to the role of balancer of last resort. In doing so it was heeding the warning given it by Edmund Burke, just as its era of supremacy was beginning: 'I dread our own power and our own ambition. I dread being too much dreaded.'" Notes Harries, "I believe the United States is now in dire need of such a warning." [96] Obviously, the American takeover of the major oil-producing area of the world would be anything but a cautious move. It would characterize a classic example of what historian Paul Kennedy refers to as "imperial over-stretch." Tied down in the Middle East, the United States would find it more difficult to counter threats to its power in the rest of the world. Even now it is questionable whether the U.S. military has the capability to fight two wars at once, a problem (from the standpoint of the U.S. regime) that has now come to the fore with the bellicosity of North Korea. [97] In essence, it is not apparent that intelligent American imperialists concerned solely about the power status of the United States, which holds preeminence in the world right now, would want to take the risk of a Middle East war and occupation. No American motive The previous analysis leads to the conclusion not only that the neoconservatives are obviously in the forefront of the pro-war bandwagon but also that pro-Israeli Likudnik motives are the most logical, probably the only logical, motives for war. As I have noted, Likudniks have always sought to deal in a radical fashion with the Palestinian problem in the occupied territories — a problem that has gotten worse, from their standpoint, as a result of demographic changes. A U.S. war in the Middle East at the present time provides a window of opportunity to permanently solve that problem and augment Israel's dominance in the region. The existing perilous situation, as Likud thinkers see it, would justify the taking of substantial risks. And a look at history shows that countries whose leaders believed they were faced with grave problems pursued risky policies, such as Japan did in 1941. [98] In contrast, no such dire threats face the United States. American imperialists should be relatively satisfied with the status quo and averse to taking any risks that might jeopardize it. *** The deductions drawn in this essay seem obvious but are rarely broached in public because Jewish power is a taboo subject. As the intrepid Joseph Sobran puts it: "It's permissible to discuss the power of every other group, from the Black Muslims to the Christian Right, but the much greater power of the Jewish establishment is off-limits." [99] So in a check for "hate" or "anti-Semitism," let's recapitulate the major points made in this essay. First, the initiation of a Middle East war to solve Israeli security problems has been a long-standing idea among Israeli rightist Likudniks. Next, Likudnik-oriented neoconservatives argued for American involvement in such a war prior to the atrocities of September 11, 2001. Since September 11, neocons have taken the lead in advocating such a war; and they hold influential foreign policy and national security positions in the Bush administration. If Israel and Jews were not involved, there would be nothing extraordinary about my thesis. In the history of foreign policy, it has frequently been maintained that various leading figures were motivated by ties to business, an ideology, or a foreign country. In his Farewell Address, George Washington expressed the view that the greatest danger to American foreign relations would be the "passionate attachment" of influential Americans to a foreign power, which would orient U.S. foreign policy for the benefit of that power to the detriment of the United States. It is just such a situation that currently exists. We can only look with trepidation to the near future, for in the ominous words of Robert Fisk, "There is a firestorm coming." [100]

61 and ps, John, nobody's reading your useless spam.

62 Hey Rusty, please delete the spam. Thanks.

63 The attack on September 11 was certainly not about people hating our freedoms. It was purely in response to America's foreign policy; and it was primarily about our monetary and military support of Israel. many others say that they must fight America for its support of 50 years of Israel's terrorism against the Palestinian and other Mideastern people. He says this in precisely the same way that some say we must bomb Afghanistan into further oblivion for supporting the terrorism of Bin Laden. America is seen as a terrorist nation for having supported the Israeli ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians from their land and homes and the stripping them of their most basic human rights, even depriving them of the right to live where they were born! America is accused of supporting terrorism for backing Israel, even America is aware that Israel tortures 500 to 600 Palestinians in its jails each month. America is called terrorist for supporting Israel even as it killed 40,000 Lebanese in its invasion of that country. They ask the world how America could support Israel even as it bombed civilian Red Cross shelters and killed women and children by the score. Millions of people ask how the President of the United States could dine in the White House with Israel Sharon, a man with a proven history of massacring civilians, and who even Israel held responsible for the cold-blooded murder of 2000 people at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon. America is also called a terrorist state for causing the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi children. It is difficult for us to act morally superior to our enemies when our own U.S. Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, told Leslie Stahl of CBS that America's causing the death of 500,000 Iraqi children was "worth it." What would you say, of someone who thinks it is worth killing 500,000 children in order to punish one man? We must cut off the source of terrorism. That source is not Muslim fundamentalism, it is American support for Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. The American government has been supporting the Jewish Supremacist State of Israeli with economic and military funding, though Israel denies the basic human rights of Palestinians. We believe that our economic and military aid to Israel has caused tremendous hatred toward America and that unlimitedly, it is the American people who suffers the consequences. Any nation that bombs another naturally creates millions of angry enemies against it. America has repeatedly done that in recent times. We have taken sides in foreign conflicts, offered military assistance and weapons, and even bombed other nations. Our actions have caused the loss of many thousands of lives, including the lives of thousands of civilians. Many of the nations we bombed had never harmed a single American or acted in any way against the interests the United States. For instance, we now partially blame Afghanistan for what happened on September 11. Have we conveniently forgotten that we bombed Afghanistan (and killed many innocent civilians) three years ago when we tried to kill Osama Bin Laden. Afghanistan is led by the same people we previously helped against the Soviets. At that time, we actually supported the terroristic activities of Osama Bin Laden against the Soviets and their collaborators. When Bin Laden later turned against us, we attempted to kill him by bombing Afghanistan. We have seen the intense reaction of Americans to the attack on the Trade Centers. What would be the reaction of Americans to any nation who fired Cruise missiles and dropped thousands of bombs on America? After Clinton's bombing of Afghanistan, the Taliban promised revenge against America. September 11 may be that revenge. We bombed Iraq after it invaded Kuwait, yet we supported Saddam Hussein with money and arms when he warred with Iran. In contrast, we continued to monetarily and militarily support Israel even after it invaded Lebanon and killed tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians. We support the Zionist state even though it tortures thousands of political prisoners in its jails. American support enabled Israel to ethnically cleanse itself of 700,000 Palestinians. Bush says we must strike down terrorists wherever they are in the whole world, but he has shared tea and crumpets with Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, one of the world's leading most brutal and bloodthirsty terrorists. Sharon committed a number of crimes against humanity, among them the massacre of 2,000 men, women and children in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. Mr. Bush did not strike Mr. Sharon, instead he toasted him. But why must the media and government create this huge, absurd lie about why we were attacked on September 11. This Big Lie is, of course, meant to hide an obvious truth. Its purpose is to keep Americans from associating this attack with our Israeli policy. If that happens people might begin to wonder if it is in our true interest to having given Israel countless billions of our dollars. They might begin to wonder if it is good for America to serve as the Israeli's shock troops and techno killers in attacks on Israel's enemies such as Iraq. So, the unvarnished truth is that we suffered the terror of September 11 because of our support of the criminal policies of Israel. We have let our country be controlled by a foreign lobby that has worked against the best interests of the American people. Israel has time and again proven it is not really our friend. It has conducted covert terrorist activities against America such as the Lavon affair in Egypt. It has deliberately attacked the USS Liberty with unmarked fighters and torpedo boats causing 174 American casualties in an attempt to blame Egypt and garner American support during the war of 1967. It has spied on us and stolen our greatest secrets, such as in the Jonathan Pollard affair. It has sold secret American technologies to the Communist Chinese. It has stolen nucleur materials from the United States. It has tricked America into bombing other nations such as in the attack on Libya in 1986. I could go on and on about Israel's treachery against the America. And now, under guidance of the Israel Lobby and the Jewish controlled media, the Zionists are preparing America to strike a massive blow against all of Israel's mortal enemies in a global war. They are already talking about not only bombing, but invading and occupying whole nations such as Libya, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Such would spawn a huge wave of hatred and retribution against America from all over the planet. The costs of such a war would cost the American people untold billions of dollars and could well cause the deaths of thousands of Americans. Finally, such a war would not end terrorism, but only spawn more acts of terror against us.

64 >the most recent photos were published >in Australian newspapers, if I'm not >mistaken. Plus Salon, which is hardly "MSM" SP, The pictures originally ran on Australia's SBS network, but were soon picked up by CNN and Reuters. Which, last time I checked, were part of the so-called "mainstream media."

65 America is also called a terrorist state for causing the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi children. ...While Saddam Hussein spent 9 BILLION dollars building his new palaces after the war. Get a clue moron.

66 "Donald Rumsfeld" seriously, That's great. But again, you still haven't explained why the MSM won't report/publish islamic atrocities. You simply keep throwing out the red herrings. The last one was something about expecting "higher standards" from our troops, which completely avoids having to address the MSM's failure to tell the truth. Keep spinning and avoiding the issue, and I'll keep dragging you right back to it.

67 You asked why the US gives billions of dollars to Israel, despite the fact that the Israelis attacked the USS Liberty. You apparently learned only recently of how the Israelis got away with that attack. You seem completely unaware of how Israel and its American Zionists control America. You should know that Zionists control the US government and the media. If you have a significant position in the government or are a significant voice in public, the Zionists will destroy you! If you object to blind support of Israel, they will label you anti-Semitic and threaten you and cost you your job. Do you know that if you complain about Zionist influence, you will receive hate mail and threats of violence? If you object to the billions of dollars of your taxpayer money going to Israel, the Zionists will label you a Jew-hating Aryan, and they will pretend that you don't care that "6 million Jews were exterminated in the holocaust". They will use that "history" to play on yours and everyone else's collective guilt. They will also use it to distract attention from slaughterers like Sharon who kill and maim and destroy everything Palestinian. Zionist Israel and its American supporters will continue the blatant murders of Palestinians - old men, women, children and cripples - until the Zionist genocide of Palestinians is complete. They truly learned much from the Nazis! And, yes, America and Americans' billions supports it all - the killing, the maiming, the destruction of property, the deprivation, the imposed poverty, the theft of water rights, the Bantustans, the Apartheid Wall and the suicide bombers. Do you wonder how America supports the suicide bombers? When an entire people are overpowered, tortured, repressed, subjugated and subdued beyond hope, with America standing on the sidelines applauding and paying for it while Europe turns its head away, what do you expect the people to do? They can't cry. They have no tears left. They can't fight tanks and Apache helicopters and F-16s with stones! If they fire a rocket that hits no one, the source of the rocket will be destroyed anyway. Firing rockets against Israelis with the latest American military detection equipment amounts to suicide with no results. The suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves in a weak attempt at resistance are actually creations of Israel and America. Thanks again to the billions of dollars Americans cough up each year for their endowment. Don't ever again ask why. Ask fellow Americans when you're going to put a stop to the long distance support for a Mafioso of Zionist hit men. When are you going to insist that the president and his men - Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmser, Feith, Cohen - all closer to Israel than they are to America - get prosecuted as members of an organized crime syndicate? Make no mistake: Zionism in America is organized crime! When will you stop electing Senators and Representatives to Congress who can't resist the lure of Zionist support? They're nothing more than legislators who embrace the same organized crime syndicate. When will you stop reading the crap written and published by the New York Times, the Washington Post and US News? When will you stop being influenced by the broadcasts of the Murdoch empire and Fox News? When will you stop supporting organized Zionist crime and take America back from Israel for Americans?

68 Tinfoil, spam, and bullshit all over the place. Yuck. We're gonna need a hell of a lot of that sawdust-vomit-pickup-stuff.

69 here is an answer for all zionists here These phrases, "hate speech" and "anti-Semite", are well-worn devices to shut up a critic of Israel without having to answer the criticisms. Indeed they have been used so much that they have become red warning flags that the person using those phrases has something to hide and needs to shut down the discussion by any means possible. By screaming "hate speech" or "anti-Semite", Israel's supporters hope to shut down the debate without actually examining the issues involved. It is not "hate" to point out facts the American people should be paying attention to, especially on the threshold to what might turn out to be a world war started by deception. It is not hate to ask what really happened to the USS Liberty in 1967 when Israel attacked and killed US sailors. It is not hate to ask if the Lavon Affair can be repeated to sway public opinion in the US. it is not hate to denounce isreali crimes,massacres,ethnic cleansing,mass killings,genocide,assassinations,murders,deportati on,extermination,and holocaust against palestinians. it is not hate to hate this criminal fascist racist nazi zionist ideology which were condemned by the general assembly in 10 th november 1975,resolution number 3379 "as a form of racism,fascism and nazism"

70 It is not hate to call you a gibbering conspiracy nutball either.

71 dave we all know you are a zionist fascist traitor to america read this please we have the pro-Israelis, the perpetual zionists, who, no matter in which country they live, or are citizens of, are only loyal to the state of Israel and no other, who work for the advancement of Israel's benefit at the expense of whatever nation in which they live. They will act as espionage agents, attempting to learn and divulge sensitive and critical secrets from the military and industrial sectors of governments in the nations in which they live, and pass them on to Israel for use or for sale to others. Their infamous work in America is a good example of this.

72 and read this pure truth Traitors to the United States have allowed a terrorist foreign nation (israel) to control the United States government. that a foreign nation controls America's foreign policy. William Fulbright asserted on ABC's Face the Nation television program that “Israel Controls the United States Senate. It is true that they control the most influential newspapers in America, including the top three: The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. They also own the top three newsmagazines: Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. But, even more importantly, they thoroughly dominate the television and broadcast media, the two largest media conglomerates being Time-Warner and Disney; and their domination includes the network news executives of the main three networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. The extreme pro-Israeli partisanship of the media is why most Americans are woefully ignorant of Israel's terrorist record. All this article needs to do is apply just a tiny pinprick into the balloon of Israeli propaganda, for it will take only a few good jabs to burst the balloon of lies surrounding Israel. during the last 58 years Israel has engaged in more murderous terrorism than any other nation in the world; and that by supporting its criminal behavior, America is now reaping the fanatical hatred of hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Support for Israel's terrorism has directly led to the terrorism now going on against the United States. Most Americans don't even realize the magnitude and scope of Israeli terrorism because of the Jewish media control mentioned by General Brown.

73 U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. They often collide, and when they do, U.S. interests must prevail. Moreover, we do not view the Sharon regime as “America's best friend.” Since the time of Ben Gurion, the behavior of the Israeli regime has been Jekyll and Hyde. In the 1950s, its intelligence service, the Mossad, had agents in Egypt blow up U.S. installations to make it appear the work of Cairo, to destroy U.S. relations with the new Nasser government. During the Six Day War, Israel ordered repeated attacks on the undefended USS Liberty that killed 34 American sailors and wounded 171 and included the machine-gunning of life rafts. This massacre was neither investigated nor punished by the U.S. government in an act of national cravenness. Though we have given Israel $20,000 for every Jewish citizen, Israel refuses to stop building the settlements that are the cause of the Palestinian intifada. Likud has dragged our good name through the mud and blood of Ramallah, ignored Bush's requests to restrain itself, and sold U.S. weapons technology to China, including the Patriot, the Phoenix air-to-air missile, and the Lavi fighter, which is based on F-16 technology. Only direct U.S. intervention blocked Israel's sale of our AWACS system. Israel suborned Jonathan Pollard to loot our secrets and refuses to return the documents, which would establish whether or not they were sold to Moscow. When Clinton tried to broker an agreement at Wye Plantation between Israel and Arafat, Bibi Netanyahu attempted to extort, as his price for signing, release of Pollard, so he could take this treasonous snake back to Israel as a national hero. Israel has time and again proven it is not really our friend. It has conducted covert terrorist activities against America such as the Lavon affair in Egypt. It has deliberately attacked the USS Liberty with unmarked fighters and torpedo boats causing 174 American casualties in an attempt to blame Egypt and garner American support during the war of 1967. It has spied on us and stolen our greatest secrets, such as in the Jonathan Pollard affair. It has sold secret American technologies to the Communist Chinese. It has stolen nucleur materials from the United States. It has tricked America into bombing other nations such as in the attack on Libya in 1986. I could go on and on about Israel's treachery against the America. and this Once we have absorbed and understood the fact of Jewish media control, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to break that control. We must shrink from nothing in combating this evil power that has fastened its deadly grip on our people and is injecting its lethal poison into their minds and souls. If we fail to destroy it, it certainly will destroy our nation. Let us begin now to acquire knowledge and to take action toward this necessary end. and read this Palestinians won't get their independence until Americans get theirs! - Ariel Sharon: "We control America" "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister,Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001. "Israel controls the United States Senate." - Sen.William Fulbright and this We must continue to educate our people on this vital point. The most important issue of our time is the Jewish supremacy over our media, our government, our economy, our culture, our future. They are leading us to utter ruin. It is not just Palestine that is occupied by Jewish supremacists; it is New York and Washington D.C. It is not just the West Bank of the river Jordan they occupy; it is the East Bank of the Potomac! I told you that the main difference between the West Bank Palestinians and the Average American, is that the average American does know that his nation is occupied. and this we have to thank the Palestinians for making such terrible sacrifices to help the world see what the Israelis and the Jewish zionists are criminal nazis. Let us hope that the sacrifices made by the Palestinian people will wake up many more around the world and fill them with disgust at America's continuing support for a criminal state of Israel. and this World Zionism, today, constitutes the last racist ideology still surviving and the Zionist's state of Israel, the last outpost of "Apartheid" in the World. Israel constitutes by its mere existence a complete defiance to all international laws, rules and principles, and the open racism manifested in the Jewish State is a violation of all ethics and morals known to Man. and this Most Americans are not aware how much of their tax revenue our government sends to Israel. For the fiscal year ending in September 30, 1997, the U.S. has given Israel $6.72 billion: $6.194 billion falls under Israel's foreign aid allotment and $526 million comes from agencies such as the Department of Commerce, the U.S. Information Agency and the Pentagon. The $6.72 billion figure does not include loan guarantees and annual compound interest totalling $3.122 billion the U.S. pays on money borrowed to give to Israel. It does not include the cost to U.S. taxpayers of IRS tax exemptions that donors can claim when they donate money to Israeli charities. (Donors claim approximately $1 billion in Federal tax deductions annually. This ultimately costs other U.S. tax payers $280 million to $390 million.) truth must be known by all americans and this We must cut off the source of terrorism. That source is not Muslim fundamentalism, it is American support for Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. The American government has been supporting the Jewish Supremacist State of Israeli with economic and military funding, though Israel denies the basic human rights of Palestinians. We believe that our economic and military aid to Israel has caused tremendous hatred toward America and that unlimitedly, it is the American people who suffers the consequences. and this Israel has a very powerful lobby in Washington and no one dares speak of big brother unless in praise or on bended knees. American taxpayers have been forced to hand over more than 120 billion dollars in foreign aid since 1960 and there is no end in sight, even while our domestic problems continue to mount. Our deficit and our national debt is at an all time high, our social security funds are about defunct, and now we need to close military installations to save money. Yet, you will never hear any person up on the hill suggest a reduction of aid to Israel. They know, that such a suggestion would disbar them from the cliques of political power.

74 dave we all know you are a zionist fascist traitor to america read this please Yes, you have me. I am praying to Yahweh right now that you don't die in a fiery carwreck which pushes your spinal column out of your mouth.

75 Sweet mohammed, Johnf.. Get your own Blog.. oh, my allah. It's like you get paid by the word.

76 Jesusland Carlos: Actually, upthread I indicated that I think the media should publish the photos, pixelated or not. That last bit was me indicating that I think your thesis about them refusing to do so because they don't want to inflame american passions in support of the war is weak at best. What the mainstream media wants more than anything else is advertising dollars. Clearly they think publishing the photos would put some of those dollars in jeopardy-for whatever reason. As I said, I assume the reason is that they are "too graphic". You can think that's right or not, but I'd bet a hell of a lot of money it's what the producers or editors say when someone proposes publishing them. Maybe airiing the photos would make support levels for the war increase, or maybe not. There are a whole lot of reasons to criticize the running of this war that more graphic demonstrations of the enemy's barbarity will not erase.

77 I know a johnf type. Hates USA & anything to do with it, yet is a most intelligent person when discussing anything not related to USA. johnf go get a life, read a book of consequence, that is not leftist shit propaganda. Stop wanking off to Michael Moore while your at it, we know you do!

78 Here is the problem I have with many who take the "higher moral ground" position ... You strain at every gnat that looks like American abuse ... but swallow the camel of Islamofascist abuse with only a little throat-clearing in the process. If you were consistent, your criticism of America would be drowned out by your demands that the President act even more forcefully to put a stop to what was shown in the above pictures. What I am talking about here is not wanton slaughter -- it is called precision-guided ruthlessness, embodying the ideal that America is "no greater friend ... no worse enemy". Establish that ideal, and we will win the hearts and minds of the peaceful, while putting an end to those who view peaceful interaction as a weakness to be leathally exploited. Yet, those of you who seem to be so concerned about "morality" stop short of such a call ... and in some cases, compound the inconsitency by demanding that we leave these thugs in place ... or when we do catch them, demanding that we read them their Miranda rights and treat them like ordinary scofflaws instead of the enemy they are. You seem to think that American abuse is the only problem worth resolving ... and not only leave others as victims, but ignore the tendency of such abuse to spread and gain strength when left unchecked. Maybe even grow enough, if left alone, to leave us with two choices in the future ... submission to those who perpetrate such abuse, or a nuclear World War to keep it away from our shores. We can put a stop to this now ... and we could have done so, at a far smaller cost, years ago. We did not, because a significant proportion of our society came to support a "moral standard" that was based upon overextended idealism and not human reality ... in particular, the reality that sometimes, a timely, violent, and decisive response to such abuses of humanity's inalienable rights is necessary and proper. In short, that war IS the answer, sometimes. We must be sure that today's "higher moral ground" is based upon human reality, and not that same flawed idealism that stayed our hand for so long ... or even more will lose their lives and freedom. I'll leave you with the last lines of a song heard on the front lawn of Halliburton in 2004: Yes we see right through you and your calls for peace Right through to your core of disdain For the principles that have made America great And the freedom you say you proclaim If you really want peace, then protest the terrorists who crash planes and slaughter men like lambs ... Your protests, my friends Sound much like breaking wind Your protests sound much like breaking wind

79 Smooth, johnf. Blame Israel and the Jews for all the problems in the world and then try to discredit anybody who would suspect you're a jew-hater. That's like saying blacks aren't as highly evolved as whites and that maybe for the betterment of the human race we should sterilize anybody who is more than 5% negro, but you can't call me a bigot or I'll ignore you. If it looks like an anti-semtite, if it talks like an anti-semite and smells like an anti-semite; chances are... Seriiously, the only way you wouldn't get called a Jew-hater is if we were in an alternate reality where apples are called oranges.

80 It is utterly appalling, and unbelievable, that an otherwise reputable blog like this, would be filled with such off-the-wall, non-sensical, anti-semitic, apologist-for-Islamist-violence comments, full of lunacy, and hatred, many of of them literally "justifying" the death of three thousand innocent people on 9/11, as a collateral of "Zionism," as if the Mexican janitor who came to America seeking a better life, the negro lady working as a Maid in the Hotel, the Muslim tourist visitor to the Towers, the many children, or all the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, sisters, and brothers, of every imaginable Nationality who died pulverized on that fateful day by this heinous, diabolical act, worthy only of the religion of the "Satanic verses," were all but "conspiring Zionists"!!! Not only are we facing the constant threat of violence descending upon us all, unexpectedly, ravenous, and uncalled, for in our Cities, our schools, and our homes, even as we go on with the daily struggles of our lives, from these people who will fling "Allah's Gift of Life" in His very face, gratuitously killing themselves and others, even their own, in total disregard of "His" precious "Gift," just to kill or injure one of their brothers in Abraham, the Jews, or an American, for the "heinous crime" of America supporting a people that have been persecuted and massacred in total disregard for two thousand years, culminating with the Holocaust, which, of course, never happened, and is only a "Zionist" invention, the numbers tattoed on the forearms of the remaining aged survivors, and the horrifying memories they carry within them not withstanding, who DESERVE A HOMELAND as every other people in the world; but the erosion of our "Freedom of Speech," and "Freedom of Expression," as more European governments, as well as the American Media, cower before Islamist violence over those ridiculous cartoons, backing off and capitulating, by sacrificing our "Freedoms" in order "not to offend" Islam, in fact giving it a "Privileged" status above all other Religious beliefs, that do not threat to burn and kill when offended, in a supposedly "Pluralistic" society; a 'Privileged" status which many even want to legislate into Law!!! Some Muslims have even had the gall to compare this Mohammed "Looney Toons" cartoon insanity to the "Muslim 9/11" !!! Were it only that they had limited themselves to burning mocking drawings and pictures of the Twin Towers, instead of MURDERING three thousand innocent people, for which the Palestinians celebrated dancing in the streets of Gaza and passing out sweets!!! It is amazing that we allow these people, shielded by the very "Freedoms" they so hate, as witnessed by some of the signs wielded by Muslim protesters of the cartoon fiasco in London recently: http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/02/british_urging_1.php to utilize the rights, and freedoms we grant them, to try to kill us, or to ram their islamist ideology of intransigence and hatred down our collective throats!!! Wouldn't it be ironic to see all those "American Feminist" women (and "girlie men" who feel like women, as Arnold would say), who so cherish their right to irresponsible promiscuity over the right to life of the children of their own conception, or their right to impose upon the rest of us their "Alternate Lifestyles," who in the majority are devout "Leftist Democrats" who have undermined President Bush's War on Terror every step of the way through the Democrat demagogues that through their votes they have empowered in Washington, be forced to were "burkhas," be "subject" to their husbands, fathers, brothers or other males in their family, and summarily "executed" for the least act of promiscuity, or stoned to death in public for their homosexuality?!?! However, perhaps the opponents of the Iraqi war do have one meritorious point after all, about how we should not have gotten involved in the conflict. These "Islamist terrorists" and "insurgents" deserve no better than such a "viper" as Saddam to decimate them, and keep them in check... the way he used to! It is saddly reminiscent of that old Greek tale of the Benevolent Log who was King of some frogs in a pond, and the frogs complained to Zeus about how "ineffectual," and "powerless" the log was as a King, since no matter what they, the frogs, did, he just sat there; and then were answered in their request by Zeus, who sent them a snake as King in its stead, which not only kept the frogs in check, but ultimaly ate them all! As proven by the recent elections in the Palestinian Territories, perhaps "Democracy," and Islam, are just simply incompatible, just as apparently it is also incompatible with "Peace," "non-violence," and "tolerance"!!! Althor

81 I work here at Camp bucca in Iraq and Ive been on the convoys north of here for 10 months. Ive been shot at and had friends killed. As far as Im concened allah and everyone of these shit house rat bastards of islam and muslim faith can suck my nutsack and eat my western shit.

82 Why doesnt the U.S. Government take a few lessons from Israel? Quit fucking around with these bastards, the hell with the snivelling sadsacks and candy-ass liberals and world opinion...these islamic/muslim psychotic murderers started this war, lets finish it. This aint a game, its WAR. So lets get it over with and go home.

83 to sum up Althors thoughts into 3 points.. 1. it's not the muslims fault, 2. it's Israel's fault but if not, then... 3. it's the West's fault.

84 Dear The Other Dave, Have you read my posts all the way through?!?! You must be confusing me with that "anti-semite" Johnf!!! I support the Administration, the President, and his Policies, and believe the War in Iraq to be not a "luxury," but a "necessity" in the War on Terror! Perhaps you misunderstood my being "ironic," and "sarcastic" about how perhaps these Iraqi people willing to blow themselves up and their fellow Muslims, in order to harm or kill an American soldier, do not deserve "Democracy," but a ruthless Dictator like Saddam who kept them in check by populating mass graves, and "really" torturing them at Abu Ghraib, not just by "humiliating" them as some of our misguided soldiers did, who since then have been tried and convicted for their crimes. I state in the above posts that after having been maligned, ostracized, and persecuted for two thousand years, culminating in their near extermination in Nazi Concentration Camps, the Jewish people DESERVE a Homeland, and to return to their Historical roots! I support Israel's Right to Exist as a Nation, and their heroic struggle amidst a sea of enemies, and have openly condemned all the barbarity, the intolerance and the montrous violence in which most Muslims seem willing to engage on the slightest pretext! Contrary to your assertions, I have not blamed the West and Israel for the escalation of Islamic violence, but rather called for us in the West to open our eyes to see the looming threat Islam poses to Western Civilization, and our values of "Freedom of Speech," "Freedom of Expression, "Freedom of Religion," and "tolerance"!!! You really must have me confused with someone else!!! Regards, Althor

85 Anti- Saudi bellicosity by the Administration indeed Johnf! Pfff!!! The Bush Admonistration has so much "bellicosity" against Muslims and Arabs, that they want to give the UAE control of our ports!!! It's like the farmer hiring the "fox" to guard the "chicken coop"! This world is going nuts!!! Althor

86 I cant believe the pure bullshit Ive been reading on this blog...has everyone forgotten WW1, WW2? If we dont stop this bullshit here in this fucked up, shithole part of the world, its gonna be in our own backyards. The muslim assholes have already attacked the U.S., Spain, France (but who gives a shit about those chickenshit frogs anyway) etc... Anyone remember 9/11? These assholes are EVIL, PERIOD. Didnt somebody once say something to the effect of "in order for evil to succeed, good men need do nothing?" C'mon people, it dont matter who you are, if you arent a muslim, then your a target. So lets turn the tables on these bastards and quit pussy-footin' around and just shoot em all.

87 sorry Althor.. I skimmed through the posts and new that someone was doing the long winded replies.. and saw yours.. my fault for being too lazy to look up and see that it was the other guy taking up all the space..

1 MSM physical contact with the Iraqi people is actually quite minimal. Same goes for the so-called independents and various peace-groups. What contacts they do have are, oddly enough, with Sunnis (allied with the insurgency). The Sunnis constitute 20+% of Iraq's overall population and have a long history of repression directed at the others. That leaves apx 80% of the Iraqi population out in the cold (and being murdered by the others). These people tend to remember - and hold grudges. I wonder how this particular oddity is going to play out in the future. It will come into play eventually. Payback can be a bitch - I'm am not going to be overly caring.

2 Payback certainly is a bitch.

3 Its a wonderful letter and shared sentiment. The blogs are the only source I get info concerning Iraq. Very good post.

4 Some days it's all worth it.

5 Hmmm... anybody could have typed that up... I'm just saying...

6 Ariya It bothers you - doesn't it? A letter of kindest, consideration and thanks. Why?

7 A bit of the letters background here: http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/004167.html and here: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013133.php

8 Cool, Thanks for the background info!

9 I've discovered that Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times was present at a Multi-National Force press briefing on January 19, 2006 at which excerpts from this letter were read. Tavernise's reaction was to ask a question about the number of insurgent attacks in Iraq. She ignored the letter. What a cunning stunt.

10 Good new is bad news for some - or is it bad news is good news? I get them confused. Give Sabrina credit - she knows exactly the "news" she needs - and nothing is gonna stop her from getting it.

11 Cunning stunt indeed!

12 No, it doesn't bother me one bit hondo. I am simply asking for proof that it's real, that's all. The Libtards could easily dismiss this as some fabrication. Proof would mean something.

13 Oh, and btw, thanks traderrob, for the links...

14 Thanks for the info! I'll post the letter on my site as well

15 Please, it's Pentagon war propaganda dissiminated by defendamerica.mil back in mid January: http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/jan2006/a012606wm2.html Now it's making rounds among the lock-stepped military families at the encouragement/direction of our government.

16 This letter was discussed this morning on the Johnboy and Billy radio program. A retired Air Force general said he had discussed this letter with the pentagon and that it was legit. As for the comment about military families doing anything at the prompting of the pentagon, I would like to say the majority of us have no contact with anyone in the military but our loved ones. We support them strongly due to the fact we could lose them at any moment so yes we do celebrate any little positive news we can find since the American media refuses to do so. From the proud father of a U. S. Army Ranger.

17 I also questioned the authenticity of the letter and did some research. I found it mentioned in the New York Post http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/63838.htm so I think the chances are good that it's legit.

18 I just, today, saw the letter from the Iraqui mayor. My son is a Marine officer, currently serving in Iraq for the 2nd time, and he has related a far different "news" picture than is presented by our treasured national print and network media. I would tend to think the mayors words could be true.

1 Kill zaqueery three times. Yep that's three.

2 I would imagine he expected to die for what he believes in long before he committed to any direct action. Maybe Batman can track him down - it's about the best we have to offer for any counter-message in the war of images and messages. Let's face it, it's just more exciting to see the burning and cyberhacking over cartoons than the slow turning wheels of Justice and its paper edicts. You know Zarqawi is peeing all over himself about now knowing Jordan wants him dead. Sorry for the cynicism, it's the next best thing to fighting back.

3 Its actually quite foolish to believe legal action and courts are an effective tool, let alone a deterrent, to a large fanatical cult movement eager to kill and die for its "cause". Suspect Legal action in any country is solely for the purpose of some sort of bizzare self-justification, rationization, and intellectual amusement. Its kind of like taking lots of aspirins for pain - just to avoid seeing the doctor and fear of surgery.

1 More journalist have been killed covering Iraq then in Vietnam. The security situation there is not getting any better. It is often impossible or simply too dangerous to move around the country. There is really no place in the country except Kurdistan that is safe.

2 John, you need to broaden your horizons and read more than the NYT.

3 How many journalists have been killed pontificating from their ivory towers at the Greenzone? Are you somehow amazed that a guerilla insurgency that targets Iraqi citizens and foreigners for kidnap and execution, that has roadside bombs detonated to kill *anyone* not just military targets is a dangerous place? The journalists would probably be better off if they didn't hire stringers hired from the midst of the terrorists.

4 Yes, children murdered by terrorists are fine and all, but DICK CHENEY SHOT A LAWYER!!!

5 These are the child killers they murder kids with abomb they are facless cowards

1 I would be interested in what people in Kurdistan make of this new Turkish anti-American film - especially since some of the events in the film are twisted extrapolations revolving around an actual event that took place in Iraq (sorry - Kurdistan). Rusty - are you aware of the "incident" I'm referring? For diplomatic reasons, its not been openingly mentioned - until now - in Turkey and this film - with a new sanitizing twist.

1 Dear Sir, Turkey is a member of NATO. Their performance during the Korean "police action" is legendary in the US military. They allowed the basing of Jupiter missiles in their country and provided bases for both US intelligence and also nuclear armed strike aircraft. They exposed themselves as the first to die in a nuclear confrontation. They were the first successful secular democracy in the Muslim world. They are dealing with their own problems in a very dangerous part of the world. They have struck a military cooperation agreement with Israel. Please cut them some slack. They have earned it. Regards, Roy

1 This is horrible news for the dhimmicrats.

2 Time for the new government to address this problem.

3 What, they didn't have enough enemies already? They've added al Qaeda to their list?

4 Channeling Monty Python(but only as I remember because I am too lazy to google it); we are the Peoples Judean Liberation front no we are the Peoples Judean Liberation front etc.

5 And what honorific term will they assign themselves-these new Sunni terrorists? Will it sound French? Fester, bubble, boil and voila! Look how many heads this one has, Master, oh holy anoily one! Wait! Those aren't heads! Their assholes! SPIT IT OUT AAACCHMED!

1 If these tapes are authentic, and they actually are of Saddam Hussein talking about WMD which he had, then we should hear some major apologies from the Left real soon. Dude, what planet are you living on?

2 The Surrender Monkeys will claim that is is all some Bushian/Rovian conspiracy, and that it is all made up. At which time it will be pointed out how many around the world, including those on the left, said Saddam had them, and they will reply "but they aren't President." And the reply will be "Thank God for small favors"

3 William Teach, I'm thanking God for huge favors!

4 Dr. S. - I will be charitable and assume your tongue was lodged deeply in your cheek on that apologies comment, otherwise I'm with Stotch.

5 I thought dubya said we weren't supposed to talk about the wisdom of the war anymore.

6 When have you ever paid any attention to what Dubya said, Actus?

7 "When have you ever paid any attention to what Dubya said, Actus?" Oh I pay attention. Which is different than following his lead. I'm more than happy to talk about the wisdom of the war in iraq.

8 Of course, as actus so clearly demonstrates, they are far more interested in proving what a dope Bush is rather than whether Saddam actually had WMDs, and where they went. That's a minor tangent of little consequence in their quest to prove Bush "lied".

9 Rusty I have some ummmm doubts that all things Saddam believes(d) in are true.

10 When was the last time Loftus has been right about anything? Never, from what I can recall.

11 I was going to say that the left will just ignore this and change the subject, but Actus beat me to it by ignoring it and changing the subject.

12 Once upon a time, Saddam had DubyaMD - aided and abetted by Reagan, Rumsfeld, Cheney. The 'dead enders' obviously lust after a modicum of vindication for what has become a disastrous fiasco, and will jump on any gossamer hint as if it were a wanton hussy in heat. Did he actually have naughty bits when Junior interrupted intensified UN insections to launch his ill-fated unprovoked invasion and occupation? 1) What did Saddam know? 2) What did Saddam say? 3) When did he say it? No mobile biolabs, no al Qaeda collaboration, no 'nook-yaller' (with no dedicated aluminium tubes, 'yellow cake' from Niger) programme. Iraq fragmenting in bloody chaos. Jihadists enabled and emboldened. Justified desperation counsels caution. Tipsy

13 >>>Once upon a time, Saddam had DubyaMD - aided and abetted by Reagan, Rumsfeld, Cheney. Notice how the moonbats like to claim how the evil rethuglicans "made" Saddam and gave him his WMDs, but will instantly turn around and say he never had WMDs and Bush "lied" and that efforts to find those WMDs is just "desperation." More of the same-- Lefties trying to play both sides against the middle.

14 and p.s., why do so many moonbats write/talk as if they're mentally retarded.

15 Guys, the New York Sun is NOT a credible newspaper. I can't believe how many people are linking this. This is the first blog I've hit on this so far which references anything BUT the New York Sun. I WANT to believe this but come on, you might as well be citing WorldNet Daily or The Nation. What the heck is "Intelligence Summit" and is there any link available to it??

16 The issue is not whether the Sun, or Worldnetdaily, or the Nation are credible papers, but whether the sources they cite are credible-- in this case John Loftus. I've never heard of the guy and know nothing about him. I'm not inclined to take this all that seriously until/unless the tapes are proven authentic.

17 One should be careful not to cherry pick John Loftus, he not as 'clubbable' as you guys might like. Watch http://www.infowars.com/articles/London_attack/mastermind_mi6_asset.htm where he claims (on Fox) that MI6 have been harbouring, aiding and abetting known terrorists. Doesn't quite fit your simplistic picture, does it? I am not a monkey, a surrenderer nor an eater of cheese.

18 From the Wikipedia entry for John Loftus: Loftus also serves as a media commentator, appearing regularly on ABC National Radio and Fox News. On August 7, 2005, Loftus provided the La Habra, California address of a suspected terrorist named Iyad K. Hilal on Fox News. However, Hilal left the address three years previously and the home was currently owned by the family of Randy Vorick, who were subjected to threats and vandalism and required police protection. [1] Loftus said "I thought it might help police in that area now that we have positively identified a terrorist" but did not say why he did not contact police in a more direct manner. Loftus later apologized for the mistake. Now THAT's funny.

19 The NY Sun isn't credible? Compared to whom, the NY Times?

20 Even if we assume that these tapes are genuine and that Saddam himself believed he still had WMDs at such a late date, that doesn't actually prove that there were any. One of the hazards of being a murderous dictator is that you end up surrounded by sycophants who tell you what you want to hear, because saying anything else is a good way to end up dead. Saddam probably ordered his people to produce/preserve WMDs, and even if they failed they would have told him that they succeeded and that the WMDs were ready to go at a moment's notice.

21 This will be another "wait and see" for me.

22 Steven Den Beste's theory has been my own since the beginning of the war. Thus, my word of caution. But, I don't "know" I'm right, so if evidence comes about to the contrary I'm willing to modify my beliefs on WMD.

23 The dead-ender Bushi'ites actually appear to desire that a rogue nation, Syria, is in possession of contrivances capable of inflicting widespread horror and misery - just so Boy George & Culture Club can be, albeit to a negligible extent, exonerated. Since both patriotic and humanitarian inclinations would dictate otherwise, I shall assume that impression is a misleading one. tipsy

24 Tipsy: I tried to lookup your paragraph in the moonbat dictionary, and it still didn't make sense. Are you one of those guys who doesn't use the Internet until you've downed two six-packs?

25 dave, I looked Tipsy up in the moonbat directory and found him listed under clueless clown.

26 Just curious. People keep claiming that Iraq is an unmitigated, unparalleled disaster. Given the scope of what has been accomplished, the fact that attacks are falling, more and more non-Kurdish Sunnis are joining the Kurds and the Shiites, and all of the other successes (and there are many) can anybody name another campaign or war (this is really a campaign, not a war) that was faced with so much resistance both in the arena and here at home that was accomplished so successfully? By what standard has any of the other wars we or anyone else has fought can anybody like Tipsy honestly say the Campaign in Iraq is the worst ever? Details? Evidence? Because from my understanding in costs and casualties throughout history vs the goals set forth and the success in acheiving those goals, the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have gone off smashingly well. Again: details, evidence. Precise, factual comparisons of the cumulative events on the ground would be useful.

27 Grayson: The war in Iraq is a disaster to Tipsy, because Micheal Moore, and DailyKos told him so. JJ: lol!

28 Search my blog in 2003 for posts about Syria, the Baathist country, being the OBVIOUS answer. If Americans would shut off their ESPN for a moment, they might learn that the orcs are at the door.

29 "The dead-ender Bushi'ites actually appear to desire that a rogue nation, Syria, is in possession of contrivances capable of inflicting widespread horror and misery - just so Boy George & Culture Club can be, albeit to a negligible extent, exonerated." That is the most obtuse and patently ridiculous statement I've read all week. Let's boil it down by eliminating every word that smacks of venomous spittle: "The administration and its supporters hope to prove conclusively that the "LIAR!" label bandied about is unfair and untrue." (The nerve of them!!) Or, let's turn it around: "The whacky conspiracy theorists actually appear to desire that a rogue nation, Syria, is not in possession of contrivances capable of inflicting widespread horror and misery - just so Dingy Harry & The Mooonbat Band can be, albeit to a negligible extent, sanctimonious.

30 >>>That is the most obtuse and patently ridiculous statement I've read all week. Word. Their values have no core, so it's not difficult standing their "witty" insight on its head.

31 As I noted, I assume that any impression that there would be lowlifes actually desiring Syria's possession of proscribed weaponry capable of wreaking misery and havoc is unfounded. Clearly, decent folks everywhere hope that the official findings of Blix, Kay, and Rove that such stockpiles had been destroyed in the early 1990s pertains, rather than such a sinister prospect be valid. Grayson commented, "People keep claiming that Iraq is an unmitigated, unparalleled disaster" evokes, of course, the words of Army Lt. Gen. William Odom on 29 September 2005: “The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.” Yes, such a conclusion is widespread. I hasten to note that, fraudulent pretexts aside, I wish the terrorism introduced to Iraq by the invasion was not rampant, that it were not the case that oil production has now reached the lowest point since the invasion, that allies are abandoning the ill-fated fiasco, and that Iran appears to be, especially in the wake of the Iraqi Islamic party's victory over secularists, the undisputed winner in the whole sordid enterprise (as well, of course, as Osama "Dead or Alive" bin Laden for whom the woeful detour provided a recruiting bonanza.) I am reluctant to diminish the glee of those who detect success in all this, but the facts compel me to concur with most Americans that attacking Iraq was a mistake, going badly, not worth fighting - an American populace who overwhelmingly disapprove of Bush's handling of the matter. I'm afraid that is how I also see the sad state of affairs, but respect the viewpoint of those who still see it otherwise. tipsy

32 tipsy, well you are entitled to your opinion, and parts of it are even understandable given the current circumstances. But despite our current difficulties, I believe we'll succeed if we perservere and not cut and run like you folks want us to.

33 After tipsy sobered up, he actually made a little sense. I don't agree with all of it, but it was coherent. Never blog when drunk, tipsy, that's my motto.

34 You know why I believe there are WMDs? Because OIL FOR FOOD (MONEY)!!!! People made Money!!! (Officials at the United Nations, the Russians, the French the Germans...Incidently Haliburton and Ambramhoff didn't make the list). Who's to say the United Nations' led weapons inspectors didn't turn their heads away? YEAH! YEAH! Conspiracy theory!! What about... "Bush Lied!!" "Bush went to Iraq for Haliburton!!" "Bush went to Iraq for his Oil buddies!!" "There is no stained blue dress at the White House."

35 Oh by the way...... Did I forget to mention that John Loftus us a Democrat? Thought I'll let you guys know. :-D

36 Oh by the way...... Did I forget to mention that John Loftus is a Democrat? Thought I'll let you guys know. :-D

37 Tipsy, the umm, 9/11 commission report has dated documents, pictures and testimony delivered by people working under Clinton confirming saddam's connection to Osama and al queda. It also concluded that Bill based his decision to not go after Usama(as the report spells it) harder due to intense partisan politics and negative media spin. Now, 3/4's of the country believe Bush lied about wmd's and the aforementioned connection, and insurgency estimates and length of "campaign". Ted Kennedy states as fact that it was all made up in texas for a project administration had since day1. Most of the TV and metropolitan print media drum into us how much the admin has lied, and how bad things are going, and how unjustified the war is. The connection has been proven. So was intel on the wmd's shown to exist and not fabricated by the white house.If the wmd's are also proven to exist, even if only saddams' mind, then the negative spin the media constantly puts out will be responsible for further dividing a country and it's officials to the point where health bills, entitlement crisis' and other needed work will never get accomplished. If Saddam thought he had wmd's, then he could threaten to use them. Nobody would wait to see if the missiles launched actually had chem weapons. Nobody would wait for the missiles to launch. If he thought he had them, that alone is reason enough to act pre-emptively. If the media, and the dems were responsible, they would report that estimates of insurgency, war costs and length of times are always guesses at best. Hazzards of war. Name one war where these estimates have been correct. America, france, South africa and most other countries took decades to get truly stable govt's when independence was acquired. Should we expect Iraq to be stable in 2? the fact is, the democrats are telling lies now, and the media is generally supporting those lies, and it's the most dangerous thing in the country right now. The repubs did it also. This type of politics and media spin are putting the country in jeopardy. It's probably just as responsible for 9/11 as any other factor, except the true main factor. Islamic extremism. That must be eliminated before we have a world war over something stupid, like a cartoon. We need our politicians to work together, not at each others throats. As citizens, we should demand it, and not play into the media's power game of how much control they can have in politics, or fear they can instill in politicians through the use of negative spin.

38 These recordings are very old and pre gulf war 1. Loftus is a scammer

39 read general george sada's book.it is very compelling

40 I do beleive tipsy is one of those moonbats with a melon full of bile and hatred absorbed and consumed at one of our prestegious leftist institutions of higher learning that LOVES to read what he writes. Just as all lefties do, reply in a condescending tone....look down your nose at us Bush-ites tipsy. After all.....your party did offer us the likes of John F. Kerry!!!

41 "Secretly recorded tapes" with excellent quality!?! Notice how clear each speaker's voice is! Did the person "secretly" recording these conversations put a microphone in front of everyone?

42 The credentials of Loftus aside, some of the speakers at the Intelligence Summit will be Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, former CIA Director John Deutch, former CIA Director James Woolsey and Maj. General Paul Vallely, U.S. Army (ret.). So there is some real weight there, and the tapes could turn out to be very important in a historical sense. However, anything less than actually finding WMDs will not change the image of the US abroad, nor the tone of the liberal media. No matter how efficiently the war was conducted, and no matter how free and prosperous Iraq becomes, they will never let us forget that the stated reason for invading was never proven. It will not be enough to say that Saddam was so crazy and delusional that he tricked us into attacking him. I am anxious to see the reaction of the MSM tomorrow. I suspect the revelations on the tapes will be overshadowed by relentless images of Abu Graibe (sp?), which the MSM never seems to get tired of.

43 Tipsy, if someone states on tape that they totally support terrorism, and will help sponsor it without being linked, does that mean anything to you? Jeez, he only killed hundreds of thousands of people, (no big deal right, proof he is a dictating Psycho) is a maniac just like Stalin was, hmmm.. do you think he has the mindset for that sort of thing? Seems like he would, don't you think? You don't wait for someone to hit you hard, you hit back first, or else you'll lose, simple as that. Its being realistic.

44 These tapes not only doesn't prove Bush regime's WMD accusation, it is obvious they were withheld from the American public because it shows Saddam warning us about terrorist attack years before 9/11: http://www.ms[remove]nbc.msn.com/id/11299205/site/newsweek/ Saddam Tapes: What They Don't Prove At one point Saddam muses how vulnerable D.C. would be to a "biological" attack, but adds that Iraq wouldn't do it. ... Two government officials, requesting anonymity because of the sensitive subject, say the tapes in no way prove that WMD stockpiles or programs existed at the time of the U.S. invasion or were moved to another country before U.S. troops arrived.

45 CNN and the democrats owe Bush and the Whitehouse a huge apology.michael moore does not matter.They should be ashamed to be aginst their government at time of war.

46 With the Iraq now devolving into the bloody chaos that was predicted, the apologists have an increasingly difficult time defending the fiasco. Even clinging to the discredited pretexts is inadequate at this point. You know it's time to give up the bushwa when one of the seminal thinkers in the neocon school, Francis Fukuyama, abandons the disaster: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=266122006 ...and, not surprisingly, nary a peep from a Bush regime desperate for a modicum of vindication concerning Sada's uncorroborated hearsay. It is revealing that those who hasten to besmirch the reputations of individuals who have served Republican administrations with dedication and integrity such as Richard Clark and Paul Pillar, readily embrace the self-aggrandizing ravings of a bloak who had done whatever was necessary to rise to the second highest post in Saddam's air force. Quite sad, actually. Still, truth eventually penetrates. tipsy

47 Looks as if vestiages of waning support for Junior's Iraq fiasco are drying up, mere dust particles now scattering on the seridipitous winds of war. Following Francis Fukuyama, William F Buckley, Jr. acknowledges and abandons the disaster: http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200602241451.asp

1 The narcissism and elitism of our Fifth Column Fourth Estate strikes again.

2 Strike, not strikes. Sorry.

3 I couldn't figure out why it was such big headline news either. One mention would have sufficed.

4 It's okay Insomniac, given the state of our libtard run reeducation camps, very few people would catch the mistake.

5 Ah, Bluto, you have touched on one of my pet peaves. While attending college I started working part time for a newspaper as a staff reporter, worked my way up to sports editor, then to news editor, and finally to managing editor. My major was in geology. The point I'm trying to make is that the newspaper and media business is pretty easy stuff. These people who major in journalism and media studies are hardly what one would call the intelligent students, and are normally too slow for math and science. Most of them I met were yearbook editors and such in high school and were looking for something easy after they lost their interest in elementary education.

6 Oh, yeah, and there is one other thing that really pisses me off about these media people. They can cover something a time of two and then they try to pass themselves off as experts on the subject. And apparently the people who manage them allow it. That flames my britches, I tell you.

7 Not much to be said that hasn't been said already, but I'll add this: war correspondents consider themselves to be the epitomy of field reporting. Everyone else, even other journalists are way below them. Just a few weeks ago, wasn't a plane load of journalists lost enroute to Iranian military exercises? Did anyone, including journalists come down on the Iranian government for it?

8 An uncle of mine is a professor of journalism at a major state university, (I won't say which one of course because the moonbats might start stalking him too, then I'd have to go on a killing spree), and he is disgusted by the state of the modern media. The ironic thing is that he has taught in countries where the press is government controlled, and he says that students from the repressed countries have a much better grasp on the ethics of journalism, whereas most American students just want to be propagandists for the dhimmicraps.

9 i posted on this days ago. befire the Hess article. i just reposted with her info. NEWSANCHOR INJURED IN IRAQ!!! TIME TO REDEPLOY ALL REPORTERS!!! UPDATED AND BUMPED UP: THE TROOPS AGREE WITH ME! TELEVISION ANCHORMAN INJURED IN IRAQ!!! IRAQ IS STILL DANGEROUS FDOR REPORTERS!!! WHAT MUST WE DO? "Staying the course in Iraq is not an option or a policy for the MSM. I believe we must begin discussions for an immediate re-deployment of all MSM reporters from Iraq. Some claim the answer is to put even more reporters on the ground, but many of our reporters are already on their third deployment, our MSM cannot recruit to its current target, even as they lower recruiting standards. My plan calls for a more rapid turnover of reporting in Iraq to the Iraqi reporters. MSM reporting in in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency. The MSM has become a catalyst for violence. That's why we must redeploy reporters immediately!" (SATIRE OFF.) First, I want to extend my condolences to the Woodruff anf Vogt families. I am praying for their swift and complete recovery. Now.... here's the truth: EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT ACCIDENTALLY ONE OF THE VICTIMS IN THIS ATTACK WAS A CELEBRITY, THERE IS NO NEWS-WORTHINESS IN THIS STORY. The enemy hasn't surrendered and they continue to target soft targets: mosques; funerals; weddings; children getting candy; Iraqi police; Iraqi Army and and reporters riding in Iraq Army vehicles. My sarcastic little pitch was only meant to further expose Murtha and his Leftie comrades, fellow appeasers, dupes, and doves who MISCONTRUE THE DATA (IOW: LIE) and advocate cutting and running. Cutting and running is a stupid policy and a worse strategy. Why does the Left advocate the wrong policy, a policy of premature withdrawal and appeasement!? THEY ALWAYS HAVE. They ran out on the South Vietnamese, they abandoned the CONTRAS, and they would do the same to the Iraqis - and the Israelis. The best strategy is to destroy the enemy. That's how you win wars. The best strategy is to intercept all the sigint - NO MATTTER WHERE IT EMANATES FROM AND NO MATTER WHERE IT GOES. The Leftie doves - and the Old Media and Democrat Party they control - would rather we purchased temporary truce at the price of eternal chains and everlasting shame. For that is all you ever really get when you give into blackmail and terror. The Left's denial of this fact is no different than their denial of the fact that socialism was not only a abject failure at providing the goods, but the single biggest cause of genocide in all of human history. We should no more listen to the Left now, then jump off a bridge. The Bolsheviks were wrong in 1917 and they are wrong now. 2/1/06 - UPDATE: THE TROOPS AGREE WITH ME! UPI/PAMELA HESS: The American media stood up and took notice when an improvised explosive device grievously injured an ABC News crew Sunday. In Iraq, and throughout the military, there is sympathy and concern for anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt, but there is also this question: "Why do you think this is such a huge story?" wrote an officer stationed in Baqubah, Iraq, Monday via e-mail. "It's a bit stunning to us over here how absolutely dominant the story is on every network and front page. I mean, you'd think we lost the entire 1st Marine Division or something. "There's a lot of grumbling from guys at all ranks about it. That's a really impolite and impolitic thing to say ... but it's what you would hear over here." ... "The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday. The troops are EXACTLY RIGHT: the Old Media care more about themselves than our troops our our cause. That's one big reason the Old Media is scum. And their ratings reflect the fact that patriotic Americans realize this!

10 A Geraldo moment! Keep that camera on me unless I point to something - n' then keep me centershot in focus! I'm old enough to remember when reporters stayed off camera while adding narration/commentary - and emerged only at the opening and closing. Those days are gone! When your the star - your THE STAR. JJ! A rockhound? Same here - among other related fields. Noticed that too about college "journalism". It has become the new "Phs ED Degree" for faux-intellectuals. Noted the total lack of secondary substance fields - shows in their work when they cover areas they have absolutely no knowledge and understanding of.

11 Yep, hondo, I plead guilty to the "rockhound" nick. There was a time when I chased quartz crystals, novaculite, pyrite and many another mineral up and down the Ouachita Mountains. What a blast! Then I discovered fossils. So I traveled from one dig to another seeking everything from sharks's teeth to dinosaurs. But couldn't make a living at it.