It's ridiculous to demand that people wade through 500 pages when you could point it out to us in two seconds.
If it were immediately obvious, I suspect that you would have done exactly that already.
Cycloptichorn
Regarding technology and science exchanges, see
http://www.usistf.org/
by Mitchell Bard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait dramatically illustrated the potential of regional states to threaten vital U.S. interests. Israel again demonstrated its reliability as it maintained a low profile and absorbed the Scuds.
Israel's posture reflected a deliberate political decision in response to American requests. Nevertheless, Israel did aid the United States' successful campaign to roll back Iraq's aggression.
- The IDF was the sole military force in the region that could successfully challenge the Iraqi army. That fact, which Saddam Hussein understood, was a deterrent to further Iraqi aggression.
- By warning that it would take military measures if any Iraqi troops enter Jordan, Israel, in effect, guaranteed Jordan's territorial integrity against Iraqi aggression. Jordan's continued existence as a buffer state between Iraq and Israel is indispensable for the maintenance of regional stability.
- The United States benefitted from the use of Israeli-made Have Nap air-launched missiles on its B-52 bombers. The Navy, meanwhile, used Israeli Pioneer pilotless drones for reconnaissance in the Gulf.
- Israel provided mine plows that were used to clear paths for allied forces through Iraqi mine fields.
- Mobile bridges provided by Israel were employed by the U.S. Marine Corps.
- Israel Aircraft Industries developed conformal fuel tanks that enhance the range of F-15 aircraft. These were used in the Gulf.
- Israeli recommendations, based upon system performance observations led to several software changes that make the Patriot a more capable missile defense system.
- General Dynamics has implemented a variety of Israeli modifications to improve the worldwide F-16 aircraft fleet including structural enhancements, software changes, increased capability landing gear, radio improvements and avionic modifications.
- An Israeli-produced helicopter night-targeting system was used to increase the Cobra helicopter's night-fighting capabilities.
- Israel also produced the canister for the highly successful Tomahawk missile.
- Night-vision goggles used by U.S. forces were supplied by Israel.
- A low altitude warning system produced and developed in Israel was utilized on Blackhawk helicopters.
- Other Israeli equipment provided to U.S. forces included flack vests, gas masks and sand bags.
- Israel offered the United States the use of military and hospital facilities. U.S. ships utilized Haifa port shipyard maintenance and support on their way to the Gulf.
- Even in its low-profile mode, Israeli cooperation was extremely valuable: Israel's military intelligence has focused on Iraq much more carefully over the years than has the U.S. intelligence community. Thus, the Israelis were able to provide Washington with detailed tactical intelligence on Iraqi military activities. Defense Secretary Cheney said, for example that the U.S. utilized Israeli information about western Iraq in its search for Scud missile launchers.
During a visit to Israel May 30, 1991, Defense Secretary Cheney said: "We think that the cooperation that we were able to engage in during the war in the Gulf...emphasizes how important the [U.S.-Israel] relationship is and how well it works when put to the test."
Critics have argued that the U.S. desire for Israel to maintain a low profile to facilitate holding the coalition of Arab states opposing Iraq together reflects a diminution of Israel's strategic value; however, Israel was never expected to play a major role in hostilities in the Gulf. American officials knew the Arabs would have to be prepared to defend themselves. Moreover, the fact that it was possible to build this U.S.-Arab coalition at the same time U.S.-Israel strategic relations are closer than ever, illustrates the two are not contradictory. The United States can continue to strengthen its ties with Israel without worrying about jeopardizing ties with the Arab states.
Your first link isn't relevant to the discussion. There's no reason we have to pay Israel to partner with us in scientific development.
The post after that is cute, but it's important to remember that you are talking about technologies made with US funds, given to Israel, and products are then sold back to the US army for use. Not exactly the deal that you make it out to be.
Cycloptichorn
Advocate wrote:by Mitchell Bard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The United States benefitted from the use of Israeli-made Have Nap air-launched missiles on its B-52 bombers. The Navy, meanwhile, used Israeli Pioneer pilotless drones for reconnaissance in the Gulf.
- Israel provided mine plows that were used to clear paths for allied forces through Iraqi mine fields.
- Mobile bridges provided by Israel were employed by the U.S. Marine Corps.
- Israel Aircraft Industries developed conformal fuel tanks that enhance the range of F-15 aircraft. These were used in the Gulf.
- Israeli recommendations, based upon system performance observations led to several software changes that make the Patriot a more capable missile defense system.
- General Dynamics has implemented a variety of Israeli modifications to improve the worldwide F-16 aircraft fleet including structural enhancements, software changes, increased capability landing gear, radio improvements and avionic modifications.
- An Israeli-produced helicopter night-targeting system was used to increase the Cobra helicopter's night-fighting capabilities.
- Israel also produced the canister for the highly successful Tomahawk missile.
- Night-vision goggles used by U.S. forces were supplied by Israel.
- A low altitude warning system produced and developed in Israel was utilized on Blackhawk helicopters.
- Other Israeli equipment provided to U.S. forces included flack vests, gas masks and sand bags.
- Israel offered the United States the use of military and hospital facilities. U.S. ships utilized Haifa port shipyard maintenance and support on their way to the Gulf.
I don't know where you get this stuff, but much of it looks false, and I note the absence of words and phrases like "some" or "a few" or "augment US systems", ets -- all giving the decidedly false impression that without Israel we would have no conformal fuel tanks on F-15s, mobile bridges, pilotless drones, night targeting systems on attack helos, and all the rest.
The F-15E, introduced in 1984 had extended range conformal fuel tanks developed by General Dynamics for the USAF. This was a U.S. development, not an Israeli one. All of the other systems cited are available in the U.S. inventory.
There is indeed a good deal of political pressure for us to use "special" Israeli hardware - this has been going on for a long time. The military goes through the motions because it must - even though in most cases we have alternative means of doing the same thing. Meanwhile the Israeli propaganda machine grinds out volumes of stuff for people like you to quote.
About all of substance that is there are a few software chanfges for Patriots and a few special use bits of avionics gear. Not much to show for the billions we give the Israeli military.
Advocate wrote:by Mitchell Bard
-Critics have argued that the U.S. desire for Israel to maintain a low profile to facilitate holding the coalition of Arab states opposing Iraq together reflects a diminution of Israel's strategic value; however, Israel was never expected to play a major role in hostilities in the Gulf. American officials knew the Arabs would have to be prepared to defend themselves. Moreover, the fact that it was possible to build this U.S.-Arab coalition at the same time U.S.-Israel strategic relations are closer than ever, illustrates the two are not contradictory. The United States can continue to strengthen its ties with Israel without worrying about jeopardizing ties with the Arab states.
The Gulf War coalition was exclusively the result of saddam's seizure of Kuwait. It is now at best a distant memory. This hardly proves that "The United States can continue to strengthen its ties with Israel without worrying about jeopardizing ties with the Arab states". A falsehood so palpable as to be laughable.
blatham wrote:Quote:Thursday, October 04, 2007
Tutu Excluded
Double Standard at the University of St. Thomas
Bishop Desmond Tutu has stood all his life for nonviolent peace-making and an end to racism. Obviously, he would be upset about the Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians, and has said so.
For that stance he was uninvited from speaking at the Catholic University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.
(See also Richard Silverstein on this issue). The "quote" attributed to Bishop Tutu supposedly comparing Israel to Hitler and Nazi Germany was completely made up by the Zionist Organization of American (which has a long history of such cult-like lying and smearing) and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency printed it without fact-checking.
The Israel lobby strikes again, limiting what can be heard in public in the United States about those policies of Israel that are contrary to basic human rights norms.
And here is the kicker. UST is guilty of a whopper of a double standard. Two years ago, the university allowed Ann Coulter to speak on its campus.
Ann Coulter once said of Muslims, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Coulter can speak at UST. But not Desmond Tutu. http://www.juancole.com/2007/10/tutu-excluded-double-standard-at.html
While I agree that what the school did is atrocious,there really is no double standard.
Its a private school,and they can invite or disinvite anyone they want.
To be fair,I would have rather listened to Desmond Tutu then Ann Coulter,but the school has the right to do what they did.
mysteryman wrote:
While I agree that what the school did is atrocious,there really is no double standard.
Its a private school,and they can invite or disinvite anyone they want.
To be fair,I would have rather listened to Desmond Tutu then Ann Coulter,but the school has the right to do what they did.
The point of pointing out St. Thomas' disinvitation of Desmond Tutu isn't to question whether they were in their right to do so. The point of pointing out St. Thomas' disinvitation of Desmond Tutu is to show a double standard in their implementation of their right to invite or disinvite their guest speakers. Comprende?
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 8:48 PM
Subject: Fw: Dennis Miller's take on the Middle East crisis
"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go:
The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention.
Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."
So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."
Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course-that's where the real fun is-but mostly they want Israel. Why?
For one thing, trying to destroy Israel ?- or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it ?- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.
It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.
Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.
My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshalling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab state into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.
Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations coming up against Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of supermodels who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11 our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.
If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id ... uh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.)"
Advocate wrote:Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 8:48 PM
Subject: Fw: Dennis Miller's take on the Middle East crisis
"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go:
The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention.
Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."
So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."
"
This is an all-to-familiar lie and semantical deception. Indeed the contradictions are even visible in the screed itself. Palestine is indeed the name long applied to the Land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean - essentially what today comprises Israel and the West Bank. The Davidic Kingdom of Israel itself never included all of what is today called Palestine - an important fact to consider in light of the contemporary Israeli claims to the whole region. (Remember those pesky "Canaanites"?)
The region was known as Palestine during its centuries of rule by the Ottoman Empire and as Palestine long before that. The Term, "Jordan" for the region east of the river was coined by the British in their division of the spoils of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. During that era "Palestine" was ruled by the British as a League of Nations (later UN) mandate (merely a convenient cover for their imperialistic land grab), and the people who lived there - Christian, Jew, and Moslem were known as "Palestinians".
At the moment before the declaration of the state of Israel, all of the population of the region - Moslem, Jew and Christian- were correctly known as Palestinians -- and that indeed was the word universally used at the time.
Thus the population of the West Bank and the displaced population of the land, as well as the population of Israel can all today correctly be called Palestinians.
The notions that "there are no Palestinians" or that the term is something of recent invention that is misapplied to (say) the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza are fictions -- semantical evasions deliberately created by Zionist apologists to create the illusion that there were and are no victims attendant to the creation of the Israeli state.
The Palestinians by any other name would still be the people in the Occupied Territories subjugated and oppressed by the state of Israel.
InfraBlue wrote:The Palestinians by any other name would still be the people in the Occupied Territories subjugated and oppressed by the state of Israel.
You fail to mention that the Pals brought on the occupation by unrelenting attacks on Israel. They attacked Israel hundreds of times before an Israeli even set foot in the WB and Gaza.
Advocate wrote:
You fail to mention that the Pals brought on the occupation by unrelenting attacks on Israel. They attacked Israel hundreds of times before an Israeli even set foot in the WB and Gaza.
But I thought you believed there are no Palestinians - that the term was a misnomer?
georgeob1 wrote:Advocate wrote:
You fail to mention that the Pals brought on the occupation by unrelenting attacks on Israel. They attacked Israel hundreds of times before an Israeli even set foot in the WB and Gaza.
But I thought you believed there are no Palestinians - that the term was a misnomer?
It is just for the sake of identification.
Advocate wrote:georgeob1 wrote:
But I thought you believed there are no Palestinians - that the term was a misnomer?
It is just for the sake of identification.
It is interesting to compare Advocate's reaction above to the substance of the very substantive and, in my view, appropriate letter Blatham cited, also above.
It is simply a lie for protagonists on either side of this dispute to proclaim themselves as advocates for any path to peace (other than final conquest and destruction), if they cling to the notion that the other party in this long-standing dispute has no status or rights as human beings. Those who provide continued support and assistance to either party have no remaining moral or strategic interest in continuing that support if their client is not willing to take the indicated steps towards peace.
The Pals could have had a state of their own many years ago. Unfortunately, their leadership is holding out for the destruction of Israel.
Advocate wrote:The Pals could have had a state of their own many years ago. Unfortunately, their leadership is holding out for the destruction of Israel.
We have covered this ground before. The "state" they "could have had" would (apart from Gaza) have no borders with any other state; would have no water or airspece rights; and would have been broken up into about 20 distinct non-contiguous enclaves, all but Gaza, completely surrounded by Israeli territiory. This is no state - merely a collection of Apartheidt Bantustands transported to Palestine. (Or would Ghettos be a better term for them?)
You need to consult a map. The WB borders on Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Gaza presently borders on Egypt.
The details of any Pal state are subject to negotiation. Ohmert and Abbas are currently in negotiations.
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/il.htm
