#1
I still think she could have done more with the Pepto Bismel, perhaps when angered reaches for it and then thinks twice and grabs a tumms. After all Pepto Bismel is target marketing if they advertise on the View.
#4
14,514 now, (17:15) including a recent couple of Rosie supporters who signed their names (as variants of) "Steel does not melt at the temp jet fuel burns" thereby showing their lack of adequate engineering education. Or stupidity.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/04/2007 17:16 Comments ||
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#5
I still think she could have done more with the Pepto Bismel, perhaps when angered reaches for it and then thinks twice and grabs a tumms. After all Pepto Bismel is target marketing if they advertise on the View.
10 Second Spot:
When Rosie starts jerking off about the twin towers, just reach for a smooth swig of Pepto.
I didn't know before I read this that Rosie had repeatedly mistaken the recently fired federal attorneys for judges. 30 million people listen to her and many of them vote. Incredible.... and frightening.
What started out as an embarrassment ABCs hiring of Rosie ODonnell has turned into a disgrace. With each passing day, ODonnell spews anti-American rhetoric which shows that she is not only a left-wing moonbat, but totally out of touch with reality. We should all tell ABC that it is time for Rosie to go.
Last week, the ensemble of The View decided to venture into the story involving fired U.S. attorneys, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the White House.
During the show, Rosie said:
ODONNELL: Okay, Republican officials who supposedly called these judges that were fired and said, are you going to prosecute this Democratic, and they said, I cant talk about that because Im actually a judge, and its illegal. And they said click, and they got fired.
HASSELBECK: Yes.
ODONNELL: Now what is really scary, are the ones who they called and said yeah, sure I will. And theyre still on the bench. Thats even more frightening.
Hey Rosie U.S. attorneys are the governments prosecutors. They are not judges. They are presidential appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president and who can be dismissed at any time.
As noted in NewsBusters.com, Rosie also tried to say that firing only a few judges was actually worse that firing all of them.
ODONNELL: But wait, but wait, if he wiped out 95 judges the first day, and you dont cherry pick the ones who are going to hurt your administration. Thats very different. Thats mob tactics. Thats Tony Soprano. Were going to lean on people. Thats what the presidents doing. Thats scary.
The next day (March 29), during a discussion on Iran, even the other co-hosts took notice when ODonnell spoke sympathetically about Iran:
BEHAR: This guy Amanidajaja (sic), whatever his name is. He is a bad guy, he is a very bad guy. He stated explicitly he wants to wipe Israel off the map. This guy is a bad guy.
ODONNELL: Im not saying hes a good guy and I want him over for breakfast. No Im not. Im saying that in America we are fed propaganda and if you want to know whats happening in the world go outside of the U.S. media because its owned by four corporations one of them is this one. And you know what, go outside of the country to find out whats going on in our country because its frightening. Its frightening.
Rosie also went down the path of 9/11 conspiracies and melting metal during this exchange (thanks again to NewsBusters.com):
HASSELBECK: Do you believe that the government had anything to do with the attack of 9/11? Do you believe in a conspiracy in terms of the attack of 9/11?
ODONNELL: No. But I do believe the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself, it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved, World Trade Center Seven. World Trade Center one and Two got hit by planes. Seven, miraculously, for the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.
HASSELBECK: And who do you think is responsible for that?
ODONNELL: I have no idea. But to say that we dont know it was imploded, that there was implosion in the demolition, is beyond ignorant. Look at the film. Get a physics expert here from Yale, from Harvard. Pick the school. It defies reason.
The first time fire has ever melted steel??? Hello! How does she think steel is made in the first place. Perhaps she might want to take a look at the response in Popular Mechanics.
These are just a few examples of recent Rosie rants, and it amazes me that ABC will continue to employ someone who is not only blatantly anti-American, but who is keenly unaware of the facts.
Please let ABC know how you feel. Its time for Rosie to go!
Rosie the Beast, ignorant, arrogant, obnoxious, and slovenly, is the quintessential post-60s pop-culture figure. Her complete descent into drooling insanity, and her network's unwillingness to address it, are early tremors presaging the complete collapse of mass-market pop-culture.
This sub-culture, so brilliantly documented and eloquently condemned in Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool, has dominated American life for over 40 years.
It was rooted in the pervasive centralized media of the 1960s and it will not long survive their overthrow. That it has survived so far only indicates the monstrous scope and inertia of its influence.
I will not miss it. And in 500 years people will shake their heads in amazement that such a destructive force was ever allowed to exist.
#2
I love how Rosie champions the state run/financed media around the world as superior to Americas free press simply because our free press has private ownership by large companies.
#3
ABC hired her cause she is controversial (Full of it). To have an effect you have to put pressure on the money. How about a list of advertisers that can be contacted and boycotted? Its the only way to get their attention.
#5
Perhaps she might want to take a look at the response in Popular Mechanics.
She did. But -- dah di dah! -- SupeRosie is impervious to logic! Facts bounce right off her diamond-hard head! No source of information is a match for SupeRosie!
By the way, I liked this:
Get a physics expert here from Yale...
That would be the same Yale whose academic reputation is in the toilet because Bush went there? They need to synchronize their moonbattery.
#7
In yesterday's Rosie-o'Mania, there was a link to some video of Danny Bonaduce delivering a penetrating analyis - in what Bizarro World can you write that? - about how it is *all* about ratings. As long as Rosie is generating the numbers, she is doing the job she was hired for, however disgusting that may be.
#8
And Bonaduce to the extent of his own intelligence is absolutely correct. Examine closely when television's quality went down the toilet. I place it in the late fifties and early sixties. Even shows like "Route 66" contained morality plays and other useable context or content. Concerned people like Rod Serling were still optimistic about the revolutionary role that a superb medium like television could play in uplifting the average American's consciousness.
Right around that time is when television producers stopped selling television programming to the public and began selling their viewing public to the advertisers.
This single reorientation of or shift in television's profit center paradigm is what begat the bane of all televised media: Lowest common denominator programming. In the blind scramble for Nielsen rating numbers, quality programming got left in the dust. Kraft Playhouse, Onimbus and Hallmark Hall of Fame were vigorously thrust aside in favor of such puling drivel as Baywatch, Squeal of Fortune or Roseanne.
So, Bonaduce expert that he is in lowering that common denominator is quite right about ratings driven television. Much like with "The View", it is up to Americans to boycott the horrendous garbage being shoveled out of our television screens each day and night. Unless we stop watching tripe volcanoes like "Survivor" and "American Idol", we'll only get more of the same. And we will deserve it.
#9
MEMRI > WHY DO THOSE WHOM INCITE VIOLENCE AGZ THE WEST CONTINUE TO LIVE THERE [or words/title to that effect]. *Post 9-11/Cold War freedom + democracy + pluralism + libertarianism in America > can argue for OWG + Socialism in America ONLY BY DEGRADING + HUMILIATING AMER, INSTEAD OF ARGUING ON OWN MERITS-ADVANTAGES. WITHDRAWING FROM IRAQ-ME + ENDING THE WAR + GETTING OUT OF IRAQ = ENDING "ONLY" "ACTIVE" "US-LED COMBAT/GROUND OPERATIONS" "IN IRAQ". IOW, the DemoLeft is trying hard NOT to say US milfors under Dubya are staying = will stay but undergo minor Iraq-specific downsizing/redux-in-scale, UNTIL SOMETHING {AMER HIROSHIMA?} INDUCES OR CAUSES A SUBSTANTIVE OR OVERWHELMING CHANGE(S).
Predictions that the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia last Christmas would hasten rather than halt the country's political disintegration are proving grimly accurate.
In fact, any opinion that stated, as its premise, that 'Somalia will be a shit-hole for decades to come regardless of whatever is done' would be 'grimly' accurate.
In the league of failed states, Somalia is runaway leader. With international attention focused on Zimbabwe and Darfur, it is the hidden shame of the world.
And a fat lot of good 'international attention' has done either Darfur or Zimbabwe.
More than 1,000 civilians have been killed or wounded in recent fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, and tens of thousands have fled their homes. The UN says wounded civilians are lying untended in the streets after heavy artillery and mortars pounded residential areas. Since February, 96,000 refugees have swelled the ranks of Somalia's 400,000 internally displaced persons. And despite a temporary truce today, it seems likely that worse is to come.
I suppose it could get worse. The ICU could gain back power and bring al-Qaeda in to help them. We could get a regional war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But most of what's going on there is the 'same-old, same-old' of tribalism. With modern weapons.
Ethiopia's defeat of local Islamist forces, known as the Council of Islamic Courts, that seized control of Mogadishu last year was accomplished with the help of American air strikes, intelligence and logistical support. It allowed the widely disavowed, western-approved transitional federal government (TFG) to expand its area of nominal control. It may have also furthered Washington's aim of curbing supposed al-Qaida efforts to "Talibanise" the Horn of Africa although the evidence for that claim is thin.
Which fit our interests pretty well, which is what GWB is required to consider first, isn't he. I don't think anyone thought the TFG would be choir-boys, and no one would ever consider them competent. But if the choice is TFG or al-Qaeda, I know where my money is.
But the intervention, opposed by many Somalis and by Ethiopia's regional foe, Eritrea, was not nearly as decisive as its main architect, Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has claimed.
Other than chasing the ICU out of town like nancy-boys.
In recent weeks the country has slipped back inexorably into a maelstrom of violent rivalries pitting hostile clans, resurgent warlords, militias, and foreign jihadis against each other in an ever more destructive struggle for dominance.
In other words, just like the last couple thousand years. It's called tribalism, Simon, and you've seen it before.
And far from being vanquished, the Islamists, whose support is largely drawn from the powerful Hawiye clan, may be making a comeback.
They'll be tip-toeing around the Aethiops, however, since the Aethiops have this disturbing tendency to let fly with mass quantities of hot lead regardless of the number of 'civilians' around.
"Politically Somalia has now been returned roughly to where it was when the TFG was formed in October 2004," says the latest report of the International Crisis Group. "The government is weak, unpopular and faction ridden, and the power vacuum in southern Somalia is rapidly being filled by the same faction leaders and warlords that the Courts overthrew.
Politically Somalia has been returned to about 800 BC.
"Many Mogadishu residents resent the Courts' defeat, feel threatened by the TFG and are dismayed by the presence of Ethiopian troops," the report added.
Many Mog residents were unhappy about being forced to grow beards and close the movie theaters. How quickly they forget.
"Ethiopia's victory has dismantled only the most visible part of the Courts. Other elements, including the militant Shabaab leadership, remain largely intact ... The grassroots network of mosques, schools and private enterprises remain in place and continues to expand thanks to contributions from Islamic charities."
Contributions to the Widows Ammunition Fund are just flowing in.
Despite an emergency meeting in Cairo today of the international contact group, which includes the US and Britain, and plans for a national reconciliation conference on April 16, Somalia's prospects look bleak.
But no bleaker than before the Aethiops came to town, when the choice was a weak, goofy TFG or a nasty, brutish ICU.
The African Union has failed to insert an effective peacekeeping force. Only Uganda has sent troops so far and they have become targets, rather than arbiters, as the weekend killing of a peacekeeper showed.
The Ugs might want to learn from the Aethiops -- mass quantities of hot lead aimed appropriately can be quite pacificing.
Meanwhile previously peaceful Somaliland and Puntland in the north show signs of incipient instability.
And that's the shame, since particularly Somaliland was on its way to escaping this mess.
Several attempts by Mr Zenawi to set a timetable for an Ethiopian withdrawal, as volubly urged by Eritrea (which is backing the Courts), have meanwhile been thwarted by continuing resistance. He announced on March 13 that his troops would pull out in two phases. But two days later, Ethiopia's foreign minister promised the troops would stay until the TFG was in control "across Somalia" which by most estimates, will be a very long time indeed. The Ethiopians now face an Iraq-style quagmire.
The ICU doesn't want them to leave, the ICU wants them to stay as a rallying point for jihadis from all around the Mideast. You just wait and you'll see Yemenis, Syrians and (of course) Paleos helping their country brethern out.
According to Michael Weinstein of the Power & Interest News Report, the reluctance of the TFG president, Abdullahi Yusuf, to negotiate genuine power-sharing arrangements with moderate Islamists and other forces is likely to scupper the reconciliation conference.
And with who is he supposed to negotiate? It's all tribalism again; tribal chiefs take delight in shifting alliances and changing sides (but always being true to themselves). 'Negotiations' are a waste of time.
Having waited so long to gain power, and after so many years of bitter strife, factions within the transitional government were now reluctant to relinquish any part of it to erstwhile enemies.
The western powers, neighbouring countries such as Kenya, and donor countries faced a dilemma, Dr Weinstein said. "If they press the TFG into open reconciliation talks, they risk its implosion; if they stand back and let Yusuf proceed with his approach to reconciliation, they risk increasing instability."
Implosion and instability seem to define Somalia since its independence. It's not like we've not seen this before. If you really want to fix the place turn it into a UN mandate and let the Italians run it for a few more generations.
Even if it takes place, the April 16 peace conference was "highly unlikely to succeed," he concluded. Instead its failure may signal the next stage of Somalia's unremarked descent into the inferno.
It isn't descending, it's been there.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/04/2007 00:00 ||
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Article: In the league of failed states, Somalia is runaway leader.
Sudan isn't a failed state in the sense that it has been held together through the massacre of 500,000 blacks. If the alternative is Sudan, I'll take Somalia any day of the week.
THE usual band of white leaders in the West have tried megaphone diplomacy to halt Robert Mugabe's tyrannical regime in Zimbabwe. And failed. Black leaders in Africa opted for quiet diplomacy, believing that Africans must become masters of their own destiny, left to solve their own problems. That failed. Now, nothing short of dramatic action from black African leaders can end the ravaging of Zimbabwe by a black despot.
But don't count on that. Last week in Tanzania, a meeting of African leaders demanded an end to Western sanctions against Zimbabwe. The next day, Mugabe was duly re-endorsed as presidential candidate for the 2008 election. Doffing their race-laced caps to an old revolutionary, African nations have become complicit in the killing of a neighbouring people. Taking action against Mugabe would essentially mean siding with white Western leaders, apparently a sin worse than genocide. This African-style neo-racism means that a black despot goes on killing black people.
In 1980 Mugabe became a revolutionary symbol. His leadership was supposed to signal an end to white racist oppression of blacks. In fact, it seems to have inspired a unique African racism, blacks killing blacks. Within a few years, ethnic cleansing was part of Mugabe's political repertoire. Trained by the North Koreans, his crack squad, the 5th Brigade, wiped out 20,000 civilians in Matabeleland.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2007 00:00 ||
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inspired a unique African racism, blacks killing blacks.
Only unique in the sense that it's not whites killing whites or orientals killing orientals. ZimBobwe, the PRC, Cambodia, the USSR, Cuba, all have something in common besides killing large numbers of their own people. Care to guess what it is?
#2
Black leaders in Africa opted for quiet diplomacy, believing that Africans must become masters of their own destiny
Appears to me they are doing a smashingly good job of "destiny mastering." I'd recommend we ship them all the small arms ammunition they need, stay the phuech out of it, and leave them to their business.
#4
Doffing their race-laced caps to an old revolutionary, African nations have become complicit in the killing of a neighbouring people. Taking action against Mugabe would essentially mean siding with white Western leaders, apparently a sin worse than genocide.
And this is what dooms sub-Saharan Africa. It is a racism more powerful than even a Klansman can conceive of. Genocide pales beside such tribal barbarism.
He hangs out at UN lovefests in New York, last September delivering a speech that drew a standing ovation when he talked about "an unprecedented era of peace and tranquillity" dawning in many parts of Africa.
Its tranquil at the top. Nowhere else, but always at the top.
Cool looking medals
Someone needs to take that necklace of sprockets and strangle Mugabe with it but slowly, very slowly.
Btw, be sure to bookmark John Fonte's "ideological war within the West" here in pdf.
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
Most thoughtful observers of the contemporary American polity are astonished that the highly partisan fight over the future of Iraq has almost entirely obscured the larger problem of which the Iraqi theater is but one front: the truly global conflict against Islamofascist ideologues and their enablers that is best described as the War for the Free World.
#1
I have a few quibbles of terminology.
"in the form of a new transnational hybrid regime that is post-liberal democratic"
It is indeed post-liberal, but I don't think it is inherently democratic. There is more of a faux-populist "Bread-and-circuses" gloss to it, but I don't think what the people say will carry much water. Only what the 'correct' people say.
"this alternative ideology [of] 'transnational progressivism' ... constitutes a universal and modern worldview that challenges in theory and practice both the liberal democratic nation-state in general and the American regime in particular."
It is not a modern, but a post-modern worldview.
I believe it was Bob Bennett that pointed out that the divide between post-modernism and otherwise is the starkest fault line in our culture. Fonte's work shows where that leads, and it isn't to an America I recognize.
#2
Just in time for PRAVDA > Tsarist Russia made a serious mistake in selling Alaska to America. Not only lost Alaska's resources but decadent America used the sale as part of an internal Americanski scheme to bribe politicians. CHINESE MIL FORUM > RUSSIAN GENERAL WARNS USA ON ATTACKING IRAN - US can attack and harm Iran, BUT WILL NOT WIN IN THE END. D ***nged PENN STATE WARSAW PACT COMMIE BIKINI BABES.
#1
I like it and I hate it. I like it because it will probably lead to the capture of Binny and Mullah. I hate it because I am too old and lazy to undertake this assignment. How hard would it be to assemble a 1000 highly trained privateers and go hunting? Yes there are that many highly trained special forces folks that would sign up for a Million $ payout.
#2
Heh, I come from an old line of privateers...
This is just soooooo tempting.....
Posted by: DanNY ||
04/04/2007 18:00 Comments ||
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Remember the Internet Assassination Pool? The one where the feds busted the guy who thought up the idea, because it was so dangerous?
The basic concept is that an anonymous host creates a list of individuals, and in exchange for a code number, you can "bet" a given amount of money that someone, say Osama bin Laden, will die on a certain date.
Even some lesser terrorist might get several million dollars bet on him, and if you "guess" the right date when he gets a bullet through his forehead, in such a way that it is quickly known, you get 90% of the pot.
The rest goes to "the house". The payoff goes to whoever presents the code number, and they receive their money through some discreet manner.
The best part about this is that the cost of a bet is so relatively small that ordinary people can get involved, and maybe hit big if some terrorist gets killed by somebody.
It's hard to catch a Democrat who will actually explain the party's vision for Iraq after they complete the troop pullout they advocate. Joe Biden is universally regarded as one of the party's brighter and more sober minds, In a relative sense, anyway.
as well as an important leader on foreign policy. His comments on Countdown are illuminating.
I don't have an official transcript; this is my own rendition. Biden first discusses the period right after the liberation of Baghdad, and says that at that time, a 'surge' was the right policy:
...We did not do what we were supposed to do then - what many of us urged, which was to immediately get paramilitary police in there - to increase the number of troops we had to stabilize the country to begin to pass on responsibility to the Iraqis quickly.
What did we do? We had too few troops. We didn't do any of what I suggested and Civil War broke out.
He then explains indirectly, that a surge will not work today. He says that our experience now shows that violence in Iraq is like a water balloon--you bring order to one neighborhood and violence pops up in another. He cites Tal Afar as an example of a place where a 'surge' was tried--where we joined Iraqi forces in putting down the insurgency, only to see it return after we departed. He says that in the current surge we may bring order to a neighborhood, but we do not have enough troops to bring order to the whole country. And even if we did, the senator says, that does not create a 'political solution.' He says that a political solution requires that the parties be separated, that they have local control with a limited central government.
Biden then seems to say that he thinks the President will sign the Iraq supplemental, because of the change in mission it calls for:
It says something else, Keith. It changes the mission. It says Mr. President, here's what you do: you cannot thrust these troops in the middle of a civil war. You can use them to train Iraqis, keep al Qaeda from occupying large swaths of open territory, and protect our troops. If you do that Mr. President, you need a lot fewer troops, you can start to bring our troops home, and you can then move to a political solution of local control.
Biden is saying that Iraq is currently experiencing a civil war and that our troops should have no part in it. We should train Iraqi troops--presumably those of the Maliki government. Which means taking sides in the civil war we're not supposed to be taking sides in.
However, Iraq needs a system of local control with a weak central government. as opposed to the United States, which needs a strong central government with extensive control over local affairs in the form of regulatory mandates . . . but I digress.
So since we cannot militarily step in and help set up such a system, we should... what? Encourage civil war, as long as it's leading to the system that Biden says Iraq needs? That's Biden's 'political solution?'
What if our troops become targets in the Iraqi civil war? What if--sitting at their bases and training troops--insurgents attack them? Are we allowed to move among the general Iraqi population to weed out the insurgents? Because that sounds rather like what we're doing now. Or should U.S. troops simply stay on base and accept the 'slow bleed' as part and parcel of being in Iraq?
And what if we determine that al Qaeda is closely aligned with one of the parties to the civil war? Can we effectively take sides to keep terrorists from seizing large swaths of Iraqi territory?
Does anyone think that the Democratic 'plan'--insofar as it does not involve retreat--can actually work?
Posted by: Mike ||
04/04/2007 06:04 ||
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From whom did Biden plagiar this one?
Posted by: ed ||
04/04/2007 8:29 Comments ||
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You can e-mail Joe here. His website advises you might not get a personal response unless you're from Delaware, but he appreciates "getting views and feedback from everyone who takes the time to write me."
Unlike Queen Nancy.
I guess maybe I have less respect for her than just about anybody I can think of. Perhaps she's a good Grandmother?
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/04/2007 10:50 Comments ||
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Joe Biden is universally regarded as one of the party's brighter and more sober minds That discounts Ted Kennedy on two counts.
#2
I also found Chertoff very interesting on the subject of a "softness" he sees in US society five years on from 9/11. "I think there's an element of complacency that has worked its way into some segments of our society - frankly, more of the intellectual elite than the average common sense person.
It seems as though some Israeli military and political leaders are champing at the bit for a rematch with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon after the bloody nose the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) got there last summer.
The difference this time around? The IDF will go into Gaza, too - and it is all part of a plan to neutralize Iranian proxies on Israel's borders, one element of a strategic effort to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons and overthrow the mullahs in Tehran.
The plan was laid out in Washington last month by Effie Eitam, a hawkish former general and darling of the orthodox hard right who now leads a small religious splinter group in the Knesset. But Eitam is also head of the Knesset subcommittee overseeing the IDF's lessons-learned exercise following the disastrous IDF operation in southern Lebanon last year, and on this issue, some analysts say, he speaks for a significant current of opinion within the Israeli military.
What he has to say might sound scary to US ears. Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon "are not separate issues," he said, either from each other, or from the strategic challenge posed by Iran. "They are part of a terroristic system inspired, financed, and directed by Iran," he said, citing the recent testimony of Israeli officials about Tehran's support for Hamas. "They are part of a bigger plan," he told United Press International by telephone from Jerusalem, to use the threat of "deterrence and retaliation" to constrain Israeli options in confronting the mullahs.
The freedom these groups had to operate just outside the frontiers of the Jewish state, Eitam said, meant "they are actually Iran on the Israeli border." Islamic militants equipped with anti-tank weapons and surface-to-surface missiles like those being stockpiled in Gaza and southern Lebanon, he said, were "something like Iranian missile batteries and Iranian infantry divisions."
He called Gaza and southern Lebanon "two arms of Tehran closing around us." "The question is when and how those arms will be dealt with," he said, adding it would be answered "in the context of how we are going to defeat the whole ideological system" the Iranian revolution had spawned. "If we don't defeat this regime, this ideology," and Iran is able to develop nuclear weapons, "there will not be even one safe place" in the whole world.
For this reason, he said, the question was "not only an Israeli one, although we are at the front line." The mullahs "have to know that, if diplomacy fails, the alternative of a nuclear Iran is not acceptable."
"Within the planning for that" confrontation, "we will have to give consideration to their proxies here."
Eitam said that a US withdrawal from Iraq "before defeating the Iranian regime ... [would have] enormous strategic consequences." "We would witness a total collapse of US credibility," he predicted. "The only way to bring about strategic change in the region is to defeat the Ayatollahs," he said, advocating "use [of] all means" including diplomatic measures and economic sanctions. But "some military action is almost inevitable," he warned.
"Israel has full right, morally, militarily, and legally to preempt the installation" of long-range missiles by terrorists in either Gaza or southern Lebanon. "I don't mean we should attack tomorrow," he said. "We have some time," he added, referring to the range of five to 15 years various analyses estimate it could take Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon.
But "the window of opportunity for action is narrowing, and it could close" unexpectedly if there were any sudden breakthroughs by Tehran, Eitam said.
The experience in southern Lebanon, which he said was in part the fruit of a failure to deal with a festering problem, teaches that "The longer we wait, the tougher, the harder, the worse in terms of loss of life," the eventual reckoning will be.
However alarming such views might be in Washington, analyst and former Israeli official Daniel Levy told UPI that, when it comes to Gaza and more especially southern Lebanon, Eitam represents a significant current of opinion within the military establishment. Some officers, he said, were "champing at the bit to go back into southern Lebanon" to dispel the widespread impression that they had suffered a bloody nose last summer. "In terms of [his] assessment that there is a need to go back into southern Lebanon, and perhaps into Gaza, too, as part of a necessary process of 'de-fanging' Iran and neutralizing what [he sees] as its proxies [Hezbollah and Hamas], he represents more than just the leader of a three-member breakaway faction from the religious right," Levy said.
If the rightwing is able to form a government, he added, Eitam could well get a cabinet post. In any case, there would be a continuing demand for more aggressive action against alleged terror bases. "Some in the military are keen to show that they have learned the lessons from last summer. There will be pressure on the political echelon to let them go back," Levy said.
But he added that "in Israel as a whole, and certainly in today's Knesset, that thinking is still a minority current." "There is a lot of resistance in Israeli society to the idea of re-occupation," said Levy, adding that there was also a widespread perception that the failure to respond robustly enough to the rocket attacks and logistical buildup engineered by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon had set the IDF up for failure last summer. "If you can present this as a robust response to provocation" it would be possible to build a political consensus behind it, he said.
#1
I read about an Eitan that was a Katsas or assasin for Mossad sometime back. He had retired from service and worked as a scrap dealer. He's mentioned quite a bit in Gideon's Spies. I wonder if this is the same guy.
#3
What was it Gen. Patton said? "We're gonna grab 'em by the nose, and we're gonna kick 'em in the ass, and we're gonna keep on kicking 'em in the ass..." all the way back to tehran, circa stone age, would be nice...
#4
i don't understand how everyone says that israel was beaten so damn badly in the war last summer. looked too me hezbollah and the leabanese suffered the most damge and casualties. oh yeah but i forgot no muslims ever lose a battle.
#5
Israel should ignore Lebanon and go for Damascus and install a strongman to replace Assad so they don't have to occupy the place themselves. Lebanon would sort itself out quickly after that.
If the Pals really act up during the war Israel might consider relocating a number of them to Syria as well.
#6
The only thing that matters to Israel is maintaining the status quo. That is a recipe for disaster.
They have to make it clear that every single time they fight the Muslims, great or small, the Muslims have to lose something--and something tangible.
By this I mean land. Suicide bombers by definition do not even care about their own lives, so just taking their lives is just a temporary fix, because there will always be more of them right next door. But if you take away their land, then eventually they will be so far away that they *can't* fight you.
Posted by: ed ||
04/04/2007 08:45 ||
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We Buddhists must realize that we, and our cherished practices, would be swept away entirely and crushed utterly, should Islam ever gain ascendancy in this world in which we live. Islam is the only belief that propagates itself thus by the sword.
#5
Buddhism was extinguished in the land of its birth , India, by the islamic invaders who destroyed all the temples and libraries and slaughtered all the monks.
Today many think Buddha, the former Indian prince Siddhartha Gautama, to be an obese grinning Chinese man instead of an Indian ascetic.
The Indian monk Boddhidharma brought Zen Buddhism to China. He also introduced the Indian martial art Kalari Payattu to the monks. This influenced the native Chinese martial arts. The monastery where Boddhidharma was educated is no more. It did not survive islam.
Posted by: John Frum ||
04/04/2007 16:41 Comments ||
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#6
D ***ng, was it BUDDHISM or HINDUISM Radical Islam said they had "nothing against" last yarn???
Dr. Watson, late of Baker Street, and having himself served in Afghanistan, would have appreciated what he undoubtedly would have called: The Curious Case of the Severed Afghan Head. When the green metal box first arrived in Washington from Kabul, allegedly bearing the skull of Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, President George W. Bush is said to have said, only half in jest: "So if it turns out to be Zawahiri's head, I hope you will bring it here."
Afghan tribal chiefs had sent what they believed to be the skull of Ayman al-Zawahiri in hope of collecting a $25 million reward. The Americans, needing proof, asked Egypt for a DNA sample from Zawahiri's brother, whom the Egyptians were holding. According to Ron Suskind's account, in his "The One Percent Doctrine," the Egyptians offered to cut off the brother's arm and send it to CIA. Just a vial of blood will do, said a stammering CIA man.
The severed head turned out not to be Zawahiri's, and the skull was shipped to a warehouse in New York's Staten Island, according to Suskind. George Tenet, CIA director, got to keep the tin box it came in.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
the Egyptians offered to cut off the brother's arm and send it to CIA. Just a vial of blood will do, said a stammering CIA man
Opportunity lost thanks to a slow-witted CIA man. :-)
#3
Meanwhile: The curious case of the severed head
Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed, "Did someome says cut his head off?"
Chinese Gordon
Posted by: Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed ||
04/04/2007 3:48 Comments ||
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#4
I think someone should complain to the head man.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/04/2007 5:53 Comments ||
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#5
Just a vial of blood will do, said a stammering CIA man.
Throwing in that English 101 crap lessens the believability of the rest of the story. Who'd they send? Valerie Plame?
The Egyptian intel guys don't live in mud huts, like them all the time or not. They're as capable of making a joke as we are. And somebody approaching the caliber of Mike Spann wouldn't have come down with the vapors at the thought.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/04/2007 8:43 Comments ||
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#6
and the skull was shipped to a warehouse in New York's Staten Island,
A very LARGE warehouse with all kinds of strange things in it. Like this one strange crate with a bunch of Nazi symbols on it and there was this strangely ominous humming sound coming from it. All very STRANGE!
#7
The alarmed British sent one of imperialism's best soldiers, General Charles Gordon, to Khartoum with instructions to evacuate the Sudanese capital.
They were British soldiers, not soldiers of imperialism. Yet another Leninist screed in a supposed quality newspaper.
My favorite bit of "The River War" is when Churchill describes gunboats opening up on the mosque at Omdourman before the British set about scything down 11000 jihadis. These days those sort of "holy site" would be off limits. The Victorians were much more clear eyed than we are.
#8
The Mahdists massacred Hicks Pasha's Egyptian army of nearly 10,000 almost to a man in 1885.
The loot included the Remington rolling-block rifles with which the hapless Egyptians had been armed and millions of rounds of ammunition.
They attacked Kitchener's force with the same wild tactics 13 years later, apparently not having heard of the Maxim machine gun or quick-firing artillery in the meantime.
In many ways, it was the high noon of Imperial Britain and a lesson for young Winston Churchill that he never forgot.
#9
Actually a few days before Gordon's death they attacked a British column and were clubbed without machine guns. Just proper reconnaissance (for avoidibg ambush) and discipline (for proper salvos and holding formation) was all what was needed.
#11
Fascinating drawing of the Mahdi. The head shows what at the time were considered markers of the superior race of humans: high forehead (room for more brains), a high bridged, narrow nostrilled nose, the plane of the face at close to 90 degrees to the jaw, a strong chin... Except for his colouration and costume, the Mahdi is drawn as an Englishman.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
by Simon Tisdall
THE usual band of white leaders in the West have tried megaphone diplomacy to halt Robert Mugabe's tyrannical regime in Zimbabwe. And failed. Black leaders in Africa opted for quiet diplomacy, believing that Africans must become masters of their own destiny, left to solve their own problems. That failed. Now, nothing short of dramatic action from black African leaders can end the ravaging of Zimbabwe by a black despot.
