THE WAR IN GAZA

Funny that ebrown and FreeDuck both came up with the "economic crisis" scenario.

Could be!

Could be!

Gotta cross our fingers, legs, and anything else that can be crossed without lottsa pain.

I just wish, for everyone's sake, that this thing would just stop.

I don't know Frank, I was a bartender as well and I've seen many paople who were once enemies, suddenly become friends.

Montana wrote:

I don't know Frank, I was a bartender as well and I've seen many paople who were once enemies, suddenly become friends.

I've seen that too. It was usually AFTER meeting the local ecstasy dealer...

Hey Montana. Didn't mean to disregard you...but after I hit the "reply" button, I remembered I didn't say hello. Knew you'd be back with another comment...and I'd get another chance.

So...Hi!

Glad everything is crossed.

Although I imagine the people watching you must be wondering why you just don't go to the john and pee!

From the looks of things, O boy will only make matters worse for the Palestinian people.

H2O MAN wrote:

From the looks of things, O boy will only make matters worse for the Palestinian people.

Blah, blah, blah...

Are you ******* kidding us? They have no water. They have no real natural resources. No access to shipping through a port city. No industry. No financing or underlying infrastructure. What do you expect them to 'build up?' This is one of the dumbest and most insulting things you've ever written, Foofie; you're blaming the prisoners for not making the prison a nicer place on the inside, when it's your people who have starved and choked them off from the outside world.
Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Are you ******* kidding us? They have no water. They have no real natural resources. No access to shipping through a port city. No industry. No financing or underlying infrastructure. What do you expect them to 'build up?' This is one of the dumbest and most insulting things you've ever written, Foofie; you're blaming the prisoners for not making the prison a nicer place on the inside, when it's your people who have starved and choked them off from the outside world.
Cycloptichorn

I quoted this just because it's worth repeating. Too, even were it not true, it has to be hard to make serious investments in infrastructure or business when some nitwit next door might decide to set off some rockets, making your neighborhood into the next target.

You are hoping O boy will be like GW... we should be so lucky.

My hopes are shared by civilized peoples worldwide.

We can only hope that someday the Palestinians will get tired of the despots, terrorist, and war mongers running their area and join the civilized world by doing something productive for themselves.

Massacre story needs to be told
By RON ROYHAB
BLADE EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Mike Ware of Haskins, Ohio, a veteran of the Army's 101st Airborne Division who served in Vietnam during America's most controversial and divisive war, reacted to an ad in The Blade last week that promoted the series of articles that started on today's front page.

This series reveals for the first time anywhere that members of a platoon of American soldiers from the 101st known as Tiger Force slaughtered an untold number of Vietnamese civilians over a seven-month period in 1967.

After a 4 1/2 -year Army investigation concluded that at least 18 Tiger Force soldiers committed war crimes, the matter was dropped by the Army. The official files were buried in the Army's archives since 1975, and to this day military officials continue to withhold them from the public.

Mr. Ware called The Blade to ask about our series. "Why do you have to do this?"

That's a fair question, and one that other readers may be asking.

Why would we write about war crimes committed by American soldiers during an unpopular war 36 years ago? Why would we spend eight months researching records, interviewing more than 100 people, and travel to two provinces in Vietnam, and to California, Arizona, Washington state, Indiana, Washington, and several cities in Ohio and Michigan for this story?

This was a serious topic of discussion among Blade editors and the newspaper's publisher and editor-in-chief, John Robinson Block. One reason is that the public has a right to know that American soldiers committed atrocities and that our government kept them from the public. We would have been party to a cover-up if we had knowledge of these war crimes and did not publish the story.

Wrongdoing on this grand a scale is always significant. It is important to know what happened and why it happened because that's how a democracy functions. The people need to know what is being done in their name and who is responsible.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/SRTIGERFORCE/110190136

H2O MAN wrote:

My hopes are shared by civilized peoples worldwide.

We can only hope that someday the Palestinians will get tired of the despots, terrorist, and war
mongers running their area and join the civilized world by doing something productive for themselves.

JERUSALEM (AFP) " US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

Bush has consistently placed the blame for the conflict on Hamas, telling reporters on Monday that while he wanted to see a "sustainable ceasefire" in Gaza, it was up to Hamas to choose to end its rocket fire on Israel.

But a US State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, denied Olmert's claim.

"Mr. Olmert is wrong," the official said.

Even if everything had gone according to plan, "she would have abstained. That was the plan," said the official. "The government of Israel does not make US policy."