ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

Israel has bargained and bargained and bargained with land and so far has been rewarded with nothing but more suicide bombers, kidnappings, and rockets fired into their countryside and cities. Now given that situation, when your government has tried the peaceful way and is punished for it, and when you can't go shopping or to work or allow your children to go outside to play because of incoming artillery, what do you recommend your government do about it? Just keep futilely negotiating? Or get mad and actually do something to stop it?

Foxfyre, the rest of the question? I gave a strong answer. Do you mean what are my thoughts on Iran and Syria arming Hezbollah? Should they stand by and allow America and Israel to just bomb nations to bits? No they shouldn't. Bushie defied international law in Iraq and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. The world best figure out a way to rein in these 2 rogue nations. The insane PNAC blueprint for world domination, Rebuilding America's Defenses says it all. We will not allow competition to our economic and military superiority. The plan is to drive the human race to submission. So far none of the countries we've bombed have chosen to grovel at our feet or fall into a fetal position. Not one rose petal has slapped an American soldier in the face.

Do you agree with their kidnapping soldiers?
Do you agree with them firing rockets into civilian areas hoping to kill civilians?
Do you agree with suicide bombings?
Do you agree with them putting their rocket launchers among residential houses where they know civilians are present?

Can you name any tactics comparable to these that Israel has done?

That's interesting. And, in 1916 if the British governor in Dublin had not decided to execute the prisoners taken after the uprising in that city had been put down, the republican movement would never have taken the hold that it did, at least not then. That action was a propaganda gift, and turned the mood of the country.

Foxy, I don't think we can debate this with you because you do not know what Israel has been up to, it seems, and so your view is ultra-blinkered and totally one-sided. I'm sorry if that sound patronising, but I don't know how else to put it.

Lets start with crucifiction of jesus...

But we sure know what Hezbollah has been up to. It has been reported and reported and reported.

I will take your answer to mean that no, you can't name any tactics comparable to those that Israel has done, but it doesn't matter because you're sure Israel is guilty of it all and worse. And in your mind, that justifies anything Hezbollah has done.

I'm almost certainly wrong in my take on that, but when you won't answer a question or questions on its own merits, that's the logical conclusion.

I can't see anything Israel has done that is comparable to what Hezbollah has done and nothing has been reported that Israel has done that is comparable to what Hezbollah has done. I have no problem seeing what Hezbollah was doing is wrong and evil. I have no problem understanding Israel retaliating against that because I would have no reservations supporting my government doing exactly what Israel has done given the same set of circumstances.

You certainly disagree. But I can say why I see it the way I do. I was just hoping one of you on the other side could say why you see it the way you do. But so far all I have gotten from ALL of you is Israel did bad things in the past thus Hezbollah is justified in doing what it is doing now. But you never seem to need to think about what Hezbollah has done in the past.

Do you see the disconnect here? Your view of it makes no sense to me. I was hoping you would try to help me understand something different than what I see in your point of view. But you sure aren't helping me out there.

I think any opinion worth having can be defended. If it can't then I think I should definitely be questioning whether my opinion is right.

Foxfyre, "Can you name any tactics comparable to these that Israel has done?" My goodness cant you? Start here and work your way to the present. http://www.robincmiller.com/pales2.htm

The maintenance of our security will depend on whether we are successful defending ourselves against those self-proclaimed Islamists (for example, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and those that support them) who repeatedly proclaim they are murdering and will continue to murder infidels (that is, murder non-believers of Islam--murder much of humanity in general and murder many Americans in particular), or we are unsuccessful and ultimately doomed to foist a "big brother" totalitarian government on humanity's posterity in general and American's posterity in particular.

What is happening to us today is caused by those self-proclaimed Islamists who seek totalitarian power over us by murdering as many of us as they think necessary to achieve their objective.

The question we should be debating is what is the best way to defend ourselves against those self-proclaimed Islamists who are seeking to foist a "big brother" totalitarian government on humanity's posterity in general and American's posterity in particular.

robincmiller.com does not exist.

Nonetheless, you seem to want to talk about tactics, what do you think of a bunch of savages who teach their children to be suicide bombers?

http://www.pmw.org.il/



You think the stupid bitch who said that is going to get her 72 virgin boys in slammite paradise for that crap?

YOu talk about Jews and Israelis, but it's I-slam and not Judaeism which is said to have bloody borders, meaning that everywhere on Earth where slammites border on non-slammites, there is bloodshed and carnage.

Is that the fault of everybody else on Earth except the slammites?

Is there any instance of a Jew flying an airplane into a building in the world or doing any sort of a suicide bombing thing in a bus or airplane?

ARABS MURDERING JEWS PREDATES JEWS MURDERING ARABS

1915 AD: British Ambassador to Egypt Promises Palestine to Arabs.
1917 AD: British Foreign Minister Balfour Promises Palestine to Zionists.
1918 AD: Ottoman Empire Ends Control of Palestine.
1918 AD: British Protectorate of Palestine Begins.
1920 AD: 5 Jews killed 200 wounded in anti-zionist riots in Palestine.
1921 AD: 46 Jews killed 146 wounded in anti-zionist riots in Palestine.
1929 AD: 133 Jews killed 339 wounded
1929 AD: 116 Arabs killed 232 wounded.
1936,38,39 AD: 329 Jews killed 857 wounded
1936,38,39 AD: 3,112 Arabs killed 1,775 wounded
1936,38,39 AD: 135 Brits killed 386 wounded.
1936,38,39 AD: 110 Arabs hanged 5,679 jailed.
1944 AD: Jews murder Lord Moyne.
1947 AD: UN resolution partitions Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab State.
1948 AD: Civil war breaks out between Jews and Arabs.
1948 AD: State of Israel conquers part of Palestine.

Jews start ruling part of Palestine;
Arabs start ruling part of Palestine.

gunga, Judaeism? Many, many Jews never were in favor of a state of Israel because they said Judaeism was a spititual trip. They predicted that a state of Israel would lead to an abandonmernt of that spirituality and a loss of the concept of the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The article I posted which you dismiss so easily is filled with documented history and contained a long bibliography. It tells a bloody story of treachery and an inhumane slaughter of innocent Palestinians that certainly proves just how far off the spiritual trip that Zionists wandered. The stories in the article jive with the eyewitness reports I've heard from a friend who was 11 years old at the time. In my opinion the Palestinians acceptence of a 2 state solution would be a lesson in forgiveness such as the world has never seen. Palestinians are treated as less than human not only by Israelis but by others who dont have a clue to the injustice meted out to them and dont really wanna have a clue. It was a very difficult thing for Rabin to shake the hand of a "terrorist" like Arafat. But it also was difficult for Arafat to shake the hand of a terrorist like Rabin. Many a Rabbi called openly for the assassination of Rabin and quoted scripture saying it was demanded by G-D that a man who gave away land had to be put to death. Those Rabbis danced in the streets at news of the assassination. With the assassination and all that's happened since Israel proved that it is she who does not want a 2 state solution.

Jewish Murders of Christians : http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-christianmurders-folder.html

http://www.jewwatch.com/

What about you, fruitcake? You actually figure you're gonna end up in slammite paradise servicing 72 virgins of the opposite sex (whatever that means to you) on a permanent basis?

Hamas: Israel Made Offer for Captive Soldier
16:00 Aug 16, '06 / 22 Av 5766
by Hillel Fendel


Hamas, the terrorist organization controlling Gaza, says it has received an Israeli offer to free 600 terrorists - mostly women and minors - in exchange for the abducted soldier Gilad Shalit.


Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zahri, a senior Hamas figure involved in the negotiations over the soldier, told Reuters that the Egyptians received the offer and transmitted it to the Hamas Authority. The offer also includes, in addition to the 600, the release of veteran Palestinian terrorists long held in Israeli prisons.

Arutz-7's Haggai Huberman notes that the Government of Israel has thus far refused, at least officially, to release Palestinian terrorists in exchange for the captive soldier.

19-year-old Corp. Gilad Shalit, of a small community in the northwestern Galilee, was kidnapped almost two months ago from his tank just outside of Gaza. The Hamas terrorist kidnappers killed two other soldiers in the attack.

Abu Zahri refuse to divulge details of the alleged Israeli offer. He noted that three Palestinian terror organizations were involved in the abduction and are not willing to give up on their demands.

A senior Palestinian Authority source said that the Arab country of Qatar, too, is trying to negotiate a solution, and recently submitted its own proposal for a prisoner exchange.

Hamas terrorists in Gaza fired two more Kassam rockets towards Kibbutz Nachal Oz in the Negev on Tuesday morning. No damage was caused. The Israel Air Force responded with aerial attacks towards the launching areas.

Meanwhile, no word has been received on the whereabout of two FoxNews journalists who were kidnapped by Arab gunmen on Monday night.

The question we should be debating is what is the best way to defend ourselves against those self-proclaimed Islamists who are seeking to foist a "big brother" totalitarian government on humanity's posterity in general and American's posterity in particular.

See, I'm not talking about 1948 or 1981 or any other period. I'm talking about 2006 and an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation and that sovereign nation promptly retaliating. I am comparing tactics using by Hezbollah versus the tactics used by Israel in this event.

If you want to trade sins of the past between Israel and Hezbollah and/or any other Islamic terrorist group, you can certainly make a list for each. How will the two lists compare? I suspect Israel will come out lookinh better.

And if you use sins of the past to justify atrocities and obscenities and unconscionable acts of the present, other members have posted a long list of nations who have a LOT of reason to resent others. But somehow it is only Islamic terrorists who seem to think it is necessary to bomb busses filled with school children or busy market places or behead innocent victims or lob thousands of rockets into civilian neighborhoods hoping to kill some civilians or put their rocket launchers in residential neighborhoods where they know women and children are present knowing full well any return fire will likely kill some of those women and children. Why do you suppose all those other peoples who have been greviously treated in the past don't feel it necessary to do things like that?

For the life of me, I can't see how anybody can turn a blind eye to that and accuse Israel of being the villain in this fight.

Foxfyre- Human Rights Watch supports your contention--They issued a very thorough report--See below--
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Israel, the Occupied West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinian Authority Territories
Israel/PA: Suicide Bombers Commit Crimes Against Humanity (Hebrew) (Arabic)



BBC Video Interview - Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch


- Erased in a Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks against Israeli Civilians

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(Gaza, November 1, 2002) The people responsible for planning and carrying out suicide bombings that deliberately target civilians are guilty of crimes against humanity and should be brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said in a new report today.


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"The people who carry out suicide bombings are not martyrs, they're war criminals, and so are the people who help to plan such attacks. The scale and systematic nature of these attacks sets them apart from other abuses committed in times of conflict. They clearly fall under the category of crimes against humanity."
Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch

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The 170-page report is the first full-fledged examination of individual criminal responsibility for suicide bombings against civilians in Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. The report, Erased in a Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks against Israeli Civilians, also provides the most thorough study to date of the suicide bombing operations of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the groups that have claimed responsibility for almost all recent suicide bombings.
"The people who carry out suicide bombings are not martyrs, they're war criminals, and so are the people who help to plan such attacks," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The scale and systematic nature of these attacks sets them apart from other abuses committed in times of conflict. They clearly fall under the category of crimes against humanity."

Since January 2001, 52 Palestinian suicide bombings have killed some 250 civilians and injured 2,000 more.

Well-established principles of international law require that those in authority be held accountable when people under their control commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. Leaders who order such crimes, fail to take reasonable preventive action, or fail to punish the perpetrators are also responsible for such crimes.

The top leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad have openly espoused, encouraged, or endorsed suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians, and indicated that they have the capacity to stop them from happening. Those leaders, such as Hamas's Shaikh Ahmad Yassin and Khalid Mish`al and Islamic Jihad's Ramadan Shalah, should face criminal investigation for their roles in these crimes. The PFLP has publicly claimed responsibility for suicide bombings and car bombings against civilians. Its leaders appear to exercise control over their occurrence and so warrant criminal investigation. In the case of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, control and responsibility appears to be centered at local levels, and those responsible should also face criminal investigation.

The Human Rights Watch report assesses the role and responsibility of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and President Yasir Arafat regarding suicide bombings against civilians. It concludes that the PA failed to take all available measures to deter such attacks or bring those responsible to justice, and by its failure contributed to an atmosphere of impunity for such crimes.

"The greatest failure of President Arafat and the PA leadership is their unwillingness to deploy the criminal justice system to deter the suicide bombings, particularly in 2001, when the PA was most capable of doing so," Roth said.

Roth said the PA's failure to take effective preventive action or to punish perpetrators outside of its control does not meet the criteria of command responsibility under the current state of international law. "But Arafat and the PA do bear a high degree of political responsibility for the atrocities that occurred," Roth said.

The PA has argued that Israeli actions, such as the destruction of PA police and security installations, undermined its capacity to act. But even when that capacity was largely intact, the PA took no effective action to bring to justice those who incited, planned or assisted in carrying out bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians. Instead, the PA pursued a policy whereby suspects, when they were detained, were not investigated or prosecuted, but typically were soon let out onto the street again.

The PA sought to explain these releases by citing the danger to detainees when Israeli forces bombed places of detention. But the PA has not explained why suspects were never investigated or charged, steps that do not depend on holding suspects in places of detention.

Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth interviews with PA officials and members of the armed groups, and closely reviewed PA internal documents made public by Israel. On the basis of what was publicly available to date, Human Rights Watch did not find evidence that Arafat or the PA planned, ordered or carried out suicide bombings or other attacks on Israeli civilians, or that they were able to exercise effective control over the actions of the perpetrator groups, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an off-shoot of Arafat's Fatah movement.

Palestinian armed groups and their supporters have pointed to repeated Israeli attacks that have killed and injured Palestinian civilians as justification for the suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians. The report concludes that these arguments in no way justify reprisals that target or indiscriminately attack civilians.

"The prohibition against targeting civilians doesn't depend on the behavior of one's adversary," Roth said. "Even in the face of Israeli violations of international law, Palestinian armed groups must refrain from deliberate attacks against civilians."

The armed groups responsible for these attacks argue that Israel's continuing military occupation, and its vastly superior means of combat, make such attacks their only option. Again, these arguments find no justification whatsoever in international law, which is absolute and unconditional in its prohibition of intentional attacks against civilians.

"Armed conflicts often involve discrepancies of power between adversaries," said Roth. "Allowing those discrepancies to justify attacking civilians would create an immense loophole in the protections of international humanitarian law."

Finally, Palestinian armed groups also assert that their targets are not really civilians because "all Israelis are reservists" or because, they say, Israeli residents of settlements have forfeited their civilian status. The report points out that international humanitarian law is clear: reserve members of military forces are combatants only while on active duty, and otherwise benefit from protection as civilians. And while civilian Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are illegal under international humanitarian law, persons residing there are entitled to protection as civilians except when they are directly participating in hostilities.

Human Rights Watch called on all Palestinian armed groups to halt attacks on civilians immediately and unconditionally, and urged the PA to ensure that those in any way responsible for such attacks are brought to justice. Human Rights Watch also urged the PA to undertake a public campaign urging an end suicide bombings and other attacks against civilians and making clear that the PA does not consider as "martyrs" people who die carrying out attacks that deliberately or indiscriminately kill or cause great suffering among civilians.

Terror tactics work- they worked for the Jews in Palestine in the 1940s, for the Algerians, for the Irish, for the Vietnamese.

I think the grievances of the Palestinians have to be addressed, as part of a lasting solution.

Gunga said that link did not work? An extract: "Once the Israeli military had forced the Palestinians to flee, various Israeli institutions attempted to insure that there would be no return. The new Israeli government decided on June 16, 1948--just a month after Israel had declared independence, and before half of the refugees had even become such--that it would not permit the Palestinians to return to their homeland. The military, meanwhile, worked to render return a physical impossibility. Its forces leveled 418 Palestinian towns and villages, erasing the majority of Palestinian society from the face of the earth.[18]

Completing the process of dispossession, Israel took control of land owned by the Arabs whom it would not allow to return. Before 1948, Jews owned only 1.5 million of the 26 million dunams of land in Palestine. (A dunam, the local measure of land area, is a quarter-acre.) After the eviction of the Palestinians, Israel controlled 20 million dunams, an increase from 6% to 77% of the total. They simply stole an entire country.[19]

Moshe Dayan, Israeli war hero, described this reality succinctly in a 1969 speech: "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. ... There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."[20]

While a wrong of these incalculable dimensions can never be truly rectified, simple considerations of justice require that the Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel, and their descendants, be permitted to return home."

Equal rights for Palestinians, and a fair apportionment of the land, might stop the violence.

Close: The Building War on Iran

Ray Close, a retired CIA analyst of Arab affairs, writes:

' Despite vehement official assertions to the contrary, indications are increasing every day that the Bush Administration has already decided that conventional diplomacy will fail as a way to manage its confrontation with Iran, and that military action against the Teheran regime has therefore already reached the point of final countdown. This message is not an attempt to analyze all aspects of that highly complex and controversial question, all the pros and all the cons, which are numerous on both sides, but merely to toss a few small but perhaps significant considerations into the balance. Make your own judgments.

1. First, some military realities that have not yet been fully appreciated by the American public:

A. The Lebanon conflict substantiates pre-crisis intelligence that Iran has apparently provided sophisticated "strategic" rockets to Hizballah, such as the Fajr-5 (range: 75 km) and probably also the Zelzal (range: 150 km).

Possession of the Zelzal (or even the Fajr-5) would effectively negate much of the strategic value of attempting to protect Israel's northern regions from attack simply by making the area south of the Litani River into a buffer zone without fully disarming Hizballah and ensuring that it cannot be resupplied --- a goal almost certainly beyond the capabilities of forces presently available. Because the competence of the Lebanese Army is greatly in doubt, and the military and political mandate of a U.N. peacekeeping force is likely to be both tenuous and impermanent, the long-term value of the recent Israeli action against Hizballah is very much in question.

(COMMENT: The tactical and strategic threat to Israel's security demonstrated by Hizballah's use of Iranian-supplied missiles is being underrated. The fact that after a full month of furious Israeli bombardment and infantry assault Hizballah was capable of launching 250 rockets into northern Israel in the last hours before the ceasefire proves that defense of Israel based on narrow buffer zones, multi-national peacekeepers and separation walls is an illiusion. We must remember that it was only the absence of a reliable guidance system that prevented massive killing of Israeli civilians by thousands of Katyusha rockets --- a technological gap that can and will be filled in a very short time, no doubt. This frightening reality, when it sinks in, will redouble the already heavy public pressure on the Bush Administration, strongly supported and encouraged by Israel and the pro-Israel lobby, to "do something decisive about Iran". )

The only real defense against this new kind of threat available to Israel today is the total cessation of Iran's support for organizations like Hizballah and Hamas, and the denial to them of operational bases in Palestine, Lebanon or Syria. Only the long reach of American military power has any chance of achieving that objective on Israel's behalf. Undertaking that effort would be a strategic commitment that went very far beyond traditional American policy of sympathy and support. We are talking here about an historic new departure in American foreign and defense policy, the costs and risks of which the American people have not yet even begun to understand, much less aceept.

B. Hizballah's successful use of the C-802/SACCADE anti-ship cruise missile against an Israeli corvette caught both the U.S. and Israel by surprise. The general consensus among defense intelligence analysts is that Iran's small cadre of IRGC operatives attached to Hizballah (estimated to be about 100 men) helped arm this weapon and guide it to its target. Hizballah's successful use of the C-802 also raises questions about the safety of U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf in the event of Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz in reaction to U.S. military action against the Teheran regime. Iran reportedly has "hundreds" of these missiles (C-802s) lining its shore of the Strait.

(COMMENT: Contrary to some press reports, the C-802 is not an adaptation of the Chinese Silkworm, but rather a Chinese improvement on the [originally French] Exocet that was used effectively by the Argentine navy in the Falklands war in 1982, and by Iraq against a U.S. Navy ship in the Gulf in 1987. This might be viewed as a deterrent to U.S. military action against Iran; on the contrary, however, it has become an added incentive to take urgent action to eliminate Iran's capacity to interfere with the free movement of oil supplies in the Gulf --- a factor that the Bush Administration regards as a potential blackmail threat and an unacceptable limitation on its own capacity to control the actions of a regime that supports terrorism.)

2. Then there is what I must admit is basically an intuitive indicator of Bush Administration intentions to take aggressive action against Iran:

A. It is now indisputably true that during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration aggressively searched for, and then selectively highlighted, any intelligence that they believed would support and justify their already-firm determination to destroy the Saddam Hussein regime by military force. An important part of the rationale for attacking Iraq was to demonstrate, as an object lesson for the whole world to note, that America will "maintain the offensive against terrorism", and will attack and destroy all who support or encourage terrorism anywhere in the world. President Bush deeply believes what he has said publicly on this subject, and nothing he has said or done recently has portrayed the slightest uncertainty on his part about the correctness of the underlying national strategy that made the invasion of Iraq such an urgent necessity in 2003.

B. If the Bush Administration has carefully weighed the risks and costs of launching a military attack against Iran, and decided (after three-plus years of absorbing the hard lessons of Iraq) that making war on seventy million angry Persians is not a sensible thing to do at this moment in history, (as most military experts would argue), then prudence and common sense would dictate that it serves no useful purpose for President Bush and his representatives to emphasize continually and bombastically, at every opportunity, that Iran (and to a lesser extent Syria) are guilty of acting in flagrant violation of the "red lines" clearly defined in U.S. national strategy. As we have repeatedly reminded ourselves, the first rule of diplomacy or war is never to declare objectives that one does not have the means or the will to achieve, and never issue threats that one has no intention of enforcing. At the moment, we seem to be doing both these things at the same time.

Today, the Washington Post reports:

As a U.N.-imposed truce seemed to be holding yesterday, Bush made clear that he blames Hizballah and its patrons, Iran and Syria, for igniting the conflict. "We recognize that the responsibility for this lies with Hizballah," Bush said. "Responsibility lies also with Hizbollah's state sponsors, Iran and Syria." Bush warned Tehran to stop backing militias in Lebanon and in Iraq, where U.S. officials have long accused Iran of feeding the sectarian violence that is threatening to erupt into a full-scale civil war. "In both these countries, Iran is backing armed groups in the hope of stopping democracy from taking hold," Bush said. "The message of this administration is clear. America will stay on the offensive against al-Qaeda. Iran must stop its support for terror, and the leaders of these armed groups must make a choice. If they want to participate in the political life of their countries, they must disarm."

(Note President Bush's familiar technique of implying a direct operational relationship between Iran and Hizballah, on the one hand, and Osama bin Ladin's al-Qaeda organization on the other --- a deliberate distortion of fact similar to the canards associating Saddam Hussein directly with al-Qaeda and hence with the 9-11 events. These subtle but very significant deceptions fly right over the heads of the vast majority of Americans, but they undermine the credibility of our president and hence our confidence in his decisions about matters like war and peace.)

And in today's New York Times we read a dispatch from Baghdad::

"The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said that Iran had been encouraging Shiite militias to attack American-led forces (in Iraq) in retaliation for American backing of Israel's military campaign against Hizballah in Lebanon"

This gratuitous remark makes sense only if one is seeking some sort of legal license from the international community to take unilateral punitive action against Iran. However, at a time when the popularity of Hizballah, and corresponding hatred of Israel, are both at their zenith among the populations of Iraq and the rest of the Arab and Muslim worlds, it is nothing short of foolhardy and irresponsible for the American ambassador in Baghdad to be advertising Iran's contribution to what that critically important constituency regards (correctly or not) as a humiliating failure of mighty Israel and its superpower ally America to defeat and disarm the valiant little "Party of God" in Lebanon.

Unless, of course, Bush and his advisers seriously expect that Iran will be intimidated into reversing its own policies. (Not bloody likely.)

Otherwise, Khalilzad is merely feeding the fears of Iraq's majority Shi'a population that the United States, probably in coordination with Israel, is moving purposefully toward war with Iran, and needs only to pump up its legal justification for taking that action. Not a good way to win the confidence and cooperation of the parties upon whom the success of our enterprise in Iraq critically depends.

This bombastic and posturing style of "diplomacy" is going to lead inescapably to one or the other of the following results:

1. War with Iran (with negative consequences beyond anyone's ability to imagine); or 2. Another humiliating demonstration of impotence. '

Ray Close