idrankwhat

Holy warrior caped Crusader! Where did you get THAT out of that interview? Or did you just skip reading it and just reply? Edited to add: Sorry, my response was a knee jerk response to your knee jerk response. I'll read your links for context.

perhaps they read the roster of nations on the rights committee? Yea, you're right. We should get those countries who use torture off the roster right........uhhhhh....wait........nevermind.

Personally, I'd call the kidnapping of political leaders a deliberate act of war against the people who elected those leaders. Israel gets what it asks for. And since they have US backing they don't care if they break international laws. Hamas is only considered a terrorist organization because that's the label given to them by the US and Israel. And the fact that the US supports this attack on a fledgling democracy in the middle east just shows precisely the nature of the hypocrites running this country. Their logic reminds me the old saying "The beatings will continue until morale improves" .

No it's not. Israel crossed the border into Gaza in June and kidnapped/arrested almost 40 Hamas politicians and cabinet members. No reason was given that I'm aware of other than that they don't like the democratically elected Hamas leadership.

My facts *are* in order. Admittedly Israel did not carpet bomb Lebanon but they busted up the infrastructure all over the state. Their plan was to bomb the shit out of everything so that Lebanon's Christian and Sunni populations would hopefully rise up against Hizbollah and to keep Hizbollah from being able to transport anything. And for the icing on the cake, Israel even left some nifty little cluster bomblets behind to spice up the clean up. Wasn't that thoughtful? http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/17/lebano14026.htm

Why do people support Israel when they're in violation of numerous UN violations on occupation and human rights, have WMD's, are occupying land that is outside their borders, staging mock and real air raids frequently, kidnapping their neighbors and detaining thousands of political prisoners? Why support either side? The only reason that I speak up and point out Israel's role in propagating this conflict is that Israel already has plenty of apologists and the media portrays them as a victim instead of an active participant. And if they would get back on their legally recognized land and quit provoking their neighbors then I'd be in full support of them.

Ahhhh......You're beginning to see how the Arab's feel about Israel's role in the region.

Then they're free to leave. I'll hold the door for them. If they want to stay, that's fine too but they need to realize that the US military and US taxpayer dollars are to be used in the best interest of the US. Their votes count as much as your's does. That's true, but I don't have one of the most powerful PAC's in Washington promoting my middle east agenda.

That was until June 27th 2006. I'm not sure if they still feel that way. Israel may have pissed...I mean bombed that opportunity away. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5121164.stm

Sure it is. To touch on your primary issue, that we should go to war with Iran, the only reason that Iran is a problem right now is that the CIA interfered and helped to overthrow Iran's stable Democracy. You reap what you sow.

The jews in the US would never go for that. Then they're free to leave. I'll hold the door for them. If they want to stay, that's fine too but they need to realize that the US military and US taxpayer dollars are to be used in the best interest of the US.

Basically, simply closing our checkbook is my realistic desire. It will get the job done and it really won't cost us a dime. The military "whack a mole" exercise would be very expensive. The only argument for initiating it would be to illustrate to the entire region that we're not picking sides and that all wrong doers should be crushed. I think either or both would go a long way towards making the American people safer and in less debt.

I like some of your other posts but on this issue, you scare me. That aside, I have a better solution. I'm tired of this as well and it's in the interest of the US's national and fiscal security to put an end to it. My proposal is to mobilize US Air Force and Navy as well as a few satellites to orbit Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. Any and all Arab and Israeli military vehicles need to return to return to their bases inside of their internationally legally recognized borders. Any movement of those vehicles/aircraft and they will be immediately targeted and destroyed. Any aggressive action or occupational incursion will be met with destructive military force. I don't care who does it. One strike and you're out. Oh yea, we should also take at least half of the money that we give Israel and use it to rebuild Lebanon and Gaza. Either that, or we take our money, our military hardware and our UN veto pen and go home.

Lebanon was developing nicely until a month ago. Basically, if the country has the support of the US it will thrive. If it doesn't, then it periodically gets blown back into the stone age. Where do you put the blame for lack of development? On the people of the country or the people who consistently aid in the destabilization that country.

Tell that to the Christians that Israel killed in the Bekaa valley a couple of days ago. (what did he say? Christians living in Lebanon?) I didn't cop out of anything. You may feel like you can justify killing innocent people because you "trust" Israel. I don't trust Israel because of what they have done just as I don't trust Muslim extremists because of what they have done. In my eyes there's no difference. I will not play your game of "pick your favorite terrorist and kill all the rest".

No I don't have to ask myself that question? That's a dangerous question. You're basically asking me to elevate one group of people over the other even if it's on some minor subconcious level. And by doing so I would be marginalizing the lives of second group. And that's what I think we're seeing here. People are willing to turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by "their side" and are far too willing to transfer the blame, even in extreme circumstances, to the marginalized party. I won't do it. War crimes are war crimes and dead innocent people are dead innocent people. Allowing yourself to stoop to the level where crimes are acceptable in this conflict simply because the "good guys" did it is just as reprehensible as allowing yourself to let the US torture it's prisoners. Wrong is wrong and anything else is a double standard.

... and you know this because you are a miltary intelligence analyst responible for assessing targets/threats and confirming hits for the Israeli army? I really think people shouldn't comment on somthing they know little or nothing about. With the media pushing stories in favour of their own agenda and the use of propoganda I don't think someone from the outside can really comment accurately. EDIT TO ASK: Amazon, you seem pretty clued up or full of knowledge. Can I ask what your position is. Do you live or have relatives living in the affected areas? I'm not really sure how or even if I should respond. I could repost links of pics and reports on Israel's human rights atrocities and Geneva convention violations but I'm pretty sure you're not interested. Amazon has provided nothing but un-referenced pro-Israel/Anti Hizbollah rantings and you consider those passionate opinions as "pretty clued up or full of knowledge"?

Badabing! Good one!

Don't hold your breath folks. As the 6 AM Cease-Fire Takes Effect ... the Real War Begins By Robert Fisk The Independent UK Monday 14 August 2006 The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose. In all, at least 39 - possibly 43 - Israeli soldiers have been killed in the past day as Hizbollah guerrillas, still launching missiles into Israel itself, have fought back against Israel's massive land invasion into Lebanon. Israeli military authorities talked of "cleaning" and "mopping up" operations by their soldiers south of the Litani river but, to the Lebanese, it seems as if it is the Hizbollah that have been doing the "mopping up". By last night, the Israelis had not even been able to reach the dead crew of a helicopter - shot down on Saturday night - which crashed into a Lebanese valley. Officially, Israel has now accepted the UN ceasefire that calls for an end to all Israeli offensive military operations and Hizbollah attacks, and the Hizbollah have stated that they will abide by the ceasefire - providing no Israeli troops remain inside Lebanon. But 10,000 Israeli soldiers - the Israelis even suggest 30,000, although no one in Beirut takes that seriously - have now entered the country and every one of them is a Hizbollah target. From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground. Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours. Israel itself, according to reports from Washington and New York, had long planned its current campaign against Lebanon - provoked by Hizbollah's crossing of the Israeli frontier, its killing of three soldiers and seizure of two others on 12 July - but the Israelis appear to have taken no account of the guerrilla army's most obvious operational plan: that if they could endure days of air attacks, they would eventually force Israel's army to re-enter Lebanon on the ground and fight them on equal terms. Hizbollah's laser-guided missiles - Iranian-made, just as most Israeli arms are US-made - appear to have caused havoc among Israeli troops on Saturday, and their downing of an Israeli helicopter was without precedent in their long war against Israel. In theory, aid convoys will be able to move south today to the thousands of Lebanese Shia trapped in their villages but no one knows whether the Hizbollah will wait for several days - they, like the Israelis, are physically tired - to allow that help to reach the crushed towns. Atrocities continue across Lebanon, the most recent being the attack on a convoy of cars carrying 600 Christian families from the southern town of Marjayoun. Led by soldiers of the Lebanese army, they trailed north on Saturday up the Bekaa valley only to be assaulted by Israeli aircraft. At least seven were killed, including the wife of the mayor, a Christian woman who was decapitated by a missile that hit her car. In west Beirut yesterday, the Israeli air force destroyed eight apartment blocks in which six families were living. Twelve civilians were killed in southern Lebanon, including a mother, her children and their housemaid. An Israeli was killed by Hizballoh's continued Katyusha fire across the border. The guerrilla army - "terrorists" to the Israelis and Americans but increasingly heroes across the Muslim world - have many dead to avenge, although their leadership seems less interested in exacting an eye for an eye and far more eager to strike at Israel's army. At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon. But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate. "The Lebanese government is our address for every problem or violation of the [ceasefire] agreement," Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday, as if realising the truce would not hold. And that, of course, provides yet another excuse for Israel to attack the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon. Far more worrying, however, are the vague terms of the UN Security Council's resolution on the multinational force supposed to occupy land between the Israeli border and the Litani river. For if the Israelis and the Hizbollah are at war across the south over the coming weeks, what country will dare send its troops into the jungle that southern Lebanon will have become? Tragically, and fatally for all involved, the real Lebanon war does indeed begin today.

Wow. I can't say that's spin. It's too misleading and inaccuate to be called spin. That's about the broadest whitewash of reality I've read anywhere.

And no one is talking about the nearly 40 Hamas cabinet members/government officials who were "arrested" in Gaza in a cross border incursion by Israel. I heard someone make that point yesterday and kinda went "hey....you're right". When Israel goes across the border they "arrest" people....of course they don't charge them with anything but that's a different matter. When Hizballah does it to a couple of soldiers it's called "kidnapping" and sufficient and justifiable impetus to destroy a country. Double standard?

Less than 40% of the public supports the war. I don't have the figure but I'd be willing to guess that at least 75% of democrats are against the war. So basically, those who support the war are the "fringe" and Lamont's victory is right in line with the thinking of the vast majority of democrats as well as 60% of all Americans. That's nine disapproval percentage points higher than a "mandate".