Unexploded anti-personnel bomblets litter south Lebanon
Welcome home, families
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/world/middleeast/19cluster.html?th&emc=th
Well, you know, McTag, if people know that there are unexploded bombs in the area, I am certain that the Lebanese army can help clear them out. As far as I am concerned, I would rather take my chances with unexploded bombs that with a fanatic Islamo-fascist murderer who had captured me and tortured me to talk on Video before he cut my throat !!!
If you don't see a difference there, you are just a partisan hack!!!
BernardR wrote:Well, you know, McTag, if people know that there are unexploded bombs in the area, I am certain that the Lebanese army can help clear them out. As far as I am concerned, I would rather take my chances with unexploded bombs that with a fanatic Islamo-fascist murderer who had captured me and tortured me to talk on Video before he cut my throat !!!
If you don't see a difference there, you are just a partisan hack!!!
Bernard, you must increase the medication, and try to get some sleep.
Violent fanatics are always with us, unexpoded bomblets in fields and villages are a present from Uncle Sam.
And, the latter will not dissuade the former.
McTag wrote:
Violent fanatics are always with us, unexpoded bomblets in fields and villages are a present from Uncle Sam.
Really, have you examined the bomblets? I think not!!! So stop the BS.
Secondly, the level of fanaticism exhibited by the Islamo-fascists exceeds the horror of the Nazi concentration camps because the Islamo-fascists put thier crimes on video so that the world can view them.
You have a great many Muslims in England. I pray that you will be safe and that none of those Murdering Savages who think that the world must be united under ALLAH will cut your throat some dark night!!!
At least the Nazis surrendered. The muderering Islamo-fascists will never surrender. Don't you understand? They are religious fanatics. That type must be exterminated!!!
Ticomaya wrote:xingu wrote:Wrong answer. You should know that Lebanon is to weak to do anything about Hizbullah. Look at Israel. It's the strongest force in the Middle East. Yet she couldn't destroy Hizbullah. Why should we expect the Lebanese army to do any different?
She could've destroyed Hezbollah, or at least done considerably more damage.
I didn't expect the Lebanese army to do any different.
Why should you or anyone expect a weak Lebanese to do that? You, as well as everyone in this world, knows the Lebanese army is very weak. It's not an army supplied by America with the latest military technology like the Israeli army. It has no air force to speak of. It is unrealistic to expect the Lebanese army to do anything about Hezbollah and Israel knows that. There was no reason for Israel to attack Lebanon and the Lebanese people. It the process of doing so they generated more support for Hezbollah and showed the world that they are as much terrorist as their enemies.
Ticomaya wrote:blatham wrote:An exercise in compare and contrast...how many columns from Ann Coulter, of all people, have you pasted here?
I've not recommended anybody go read Coulter. Matter of fact, I'm sure I've recommended to people that they NOT read Coulter.
Some people read Dave Barry ... I read Ann Coulter.
A fully dishonest analogy in a fully disingenuous post.
Now here's something that's practical and pragmatic, which means our warmongering conservative friends will hate it.
Quote:Bush Must Negotiate to Make America Safer, Say Former Generals
Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US
Fri., Aug. 18, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 17 (OneWorld) - Twenty-one former generals and high ranking national security officials have called on United States President George W. Bush to reverse course and embrace a new area of negotiation with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. In a letter released Thursday, the group told reporters Bush's 'hard line' policies have undermined national security and made America less safe.
Of particular concern for the generals was increased saber rattling between Washington and Tehran over the development of an Iranian nuclear program.
"We call on the administration to engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions to help resolve the current crisis in the Middle East and to settle differences over an Iranian nuclear program," their letter read.
"An attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security in the region and U.S. forces in Iraq," they argued. "It would inflame hatred and violence in the Middle East and among Muslims everywhere."
n a telephone news conference Thursday morning, the former security officials took particular aim at the Bush Administration's policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists or with states that support them.
"That seems strange since Ronald Reagan was willing to negotiate with the Soviets even though they were the 'Evil Empire," said retired Lt. General Robert Guard, who served as special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War and now works at the non-profit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. "One wonders why George Bush can't negotiate with the Axis of Evil."
The generals further argued that the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq is at least partially responsible for Iran's drive to develop a nuclear program.
"When you announce an axis of evil of three countries and invade one and then say that Iran should take that as a lesson, it does seem that it may give them an incentive to do precisely what they don't want them to do," Guard said, "develop a nuclear weapon."
Former director of Policy Planning for the State Department, Morton Halperin, said the same goes for North Korea. The more belligerent the Bush Administration behaves, he said, the faster North Korea will work to develop nuclear weapons.
"The North Koreans want to talk to us directly," said Halperin, who now works for the Washington, DC-based Center for American Progress. "Their concern is about getting security assurances from us and about getting diplomatic recognition. We should not be afraid to talk to our opponents."
At the White House, Bush's spokesperson Tony Snow dismissed the letter.
"In a political year people are going to make political statements, including retired generals, and they're perfectly welcome to," Snow told reporters at his daily briefing. "It's an important addition to the public debate. But we're also--the president is a guy who has got real responsibility here. Now, I've got to tell you, just given to what I said...in response to the sort of ongoing cost of promoting freedom around the globe, do you not think a president will do everything in his power to succeed? And the answer is, yes. He's not sitting around saying, boy, I'm stubborn, I'm going to stick with it.
"That's not the way the president is," Snow said, insisting the Bush administration is planning policy changes while declining to offer specifics.
But the generals who signed the letter say Bush has been stubborn, and a poor student of history.
General Joseph Hoar, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Military Central Command under presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, said the George W. Bush administration would be advised to remember the French occupation of Algeria, which lasted 134 years.
Nationalist rebels launched an insurgency against the French in 1954. After eight years of insurgent bombings and counter-terrorism operations, France was finally forced to quit Algeria in 1962.
Hoar says like the Battle of Algiers the current war on terror is a war of ideas.
"Until we get away from the idea that we can solve these problems through the use of military force and begin to change the political problems causing discontent by providing security and services, we're not going to win this war," he said.
SOURCE
Former generals, you say?
Good, sounds like the effort to weed the KKKlintonistas out of the military has succeeded.
Damn, looks like Rumsfeld ran this operation.
Looks like Israel bit off more than she could chew this time. I guess she underestimated her enemy.
Quote:Hizbullah achieved this in various ways. On the strictly military level, a small band of irregulars kept at bay one of the world's most powerful armies for over a month, and inflicted remarkable losses on it; the manner in which it did this - a combination of professional skills, ingenuity, intrepidity, meticulous preparation, masterful use of anti-tank missiles, brilliant organisation, labyrinthine underground defences - is only now fully coming to light. This was only possible because Hizbullah represented something else: the first non-state actor to single-handedly take on Israel in a full-scale war of this kind. Only such an actor could have secured the freedom of action to prepare for and conduct such a war. Yet it was Israel itself, through its earlier attempts to change its strategic environment by force, that did so much to create Hizbullah, just as, in Palestine, it did so much to create Hamas.
It is not just Hizbullah's performance in itself that has changed the balance of power at Israel's expense; it is the example it sets for the whole region. In his way Hassan Nasrallah is now an even more inspiring Arab hero than Nasser was; Hizbullah's achievement has had an electrifying impact on the Arab and Muslim masses that largely transcends the otherwise growing, region-wide Sunni-Shia divide; it will contribute to their further radicalisation and, if that is not appeased by the Arab regimes, to upheavals in the whole existing order. "Public opinion says to the regimes, 'If they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?' " says Mouin Rabbani of the International Crisis Group.
King Abdullah of Jordan, who - like Egypt and Saudi Arabia - made the mistake of publicly accusing Hizbullah of "uncalculated adventurism", and clearly hoped that Israel would punish it, admits that if things go on like this then new Hizbullahs will emerge, with his kingdom among the candidates for one.
Hizbullah has no intention of disarming, and it is improbable that anyone else can get it to do so. Never before, therefore, has Israel ended a war so persuaded that, sooner or later, it will only generate another. The only way to prevent that is to get Israel and the US to realise that those "root causes" out of which it grew lie on their side too. Israel may not have caused "global terror" and Islamic extremism, but with its own violence, especially that against civilians, it greatly inflames it. And Israel resorts to violence, at bottom, because it cannot achieve peace; and it cannot achieve that because the only peace it has ever offered falls so far short of what Arabs and Palestinians could ever accept. This is the conclusion a few Israelis, Europeans and even leading Americans are drawing. But there is no sign of the Israeli establishment or President Bush doing so. They should bear in mind, says Israeli commentator Nissim Kalderon, that "the difficult war imposed upon us obliges us to take greater risks for peace after the war. Because the risks of the coming missile war with the fundamentalists could be greater. Much greater."
SOURCE
Things are going all to hell in Israel. Olmert and his wife are being questioned about an
apartment deal and a justice minister is going to be indicted for assaulting a
female employee. On top of that there are sexual harassment and scandal accusations against Israeli's President
Moshe Katsev. '"Who does he think he is? Clinton?" a pair of comedians wrote in a newspaper column this week.'
Sounds like the same thing going on in this country.
Quote:
Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.
Kind of depends on what you do; consider what Hezbollah does for instance:
Israel unilaterally pulls out of Lebanon as a gesture of good will, and so for six years the hezbullies sit there and recreate the bunker system of Iwo-Jima across the border from Israel and then, since they basically are paid by, take orders from, and report to Maxmoud Ahmadi-najad who is a certifiable lunatic, when Najad calls them up and tells them to do some dog-wagging for him to take heat off his nifty atom bomb project (with which he means to threaten Europe, and not just the evil heebie jews in Israel), they (the hezbullies) stage a raid into Israeli territory killing several soldiers and kidnapping two, and when Israel atempts to go in after them to retrieve the two soldiers, they start firing volleys of katyusha rockets tipped with ball-bearing/explosive warheads into population centers in northern Israel, and hiding out in their bunkers other than to run out for a few minutes and set up a rocket launcher in the most heavily populated civilian area they can find nearby and fire their rockets.
To me, that's terrorism and the people doing it are a bunch of despicable a$$holes, and anybody who supports them in any way is a despicable a$$hole, and the people, government, and military of Lebanon are largely to blame for the situation.
Ahmadi-najad, Bashir Assad, Nasrallah and the hezbullies are in such a big ****ing hurry to see what atom bombs look like; put me in charge of Israel and they'd have all just seen it.
Quote:put me in charge of Israel and they'd have all just seen it.
Curly (of the Three Stooges)
"I'm trying to think. But nothing happens."
Those poor, innocent, Lebanese. Boo hoo hoo!
**Those Poor, Innocent Lebanese*
>
> /By Irwin N. Graulich August 4, 2006/
>
> Let me get this straight. You allow one of the largest terrorist
> organizations in the world to set up shop throughout your country.
> You permit them to completely take over the entire southern third of
> your country and you claim to have seen nothing.
>
> You allow the terrorists to build sophisticated, fortified bunkers
> and you did not see any heavy equipment building them. You allow the
> Hezbollah terrorists to move into many of your towns and villages,
> including the complete takeover of one of the largest neighborhoods
> in Beirut, where they proceed to build numerous, complex command and
> control centers ... and you claim ignorance.
>
> You allow the terrorists to store weapons, bombs and rockets in your
> basements. You turn a blind's eye when they carry arms into your
> restaurants, stores and buildings. Yet you call yourself an
> "innocent civilian."
>
> You sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas. You sleep with
> missiles, you wake up dead.
>
> You watch the parades with hundreds of thousands of participants
> including children screaming, "Jihad. Death to Israel, Jews and
> Americans," burning American and Israeli flags. Goose-stepping
> soldiers with Nazi-like salutes receive your cheers--and all of you
> "innocent civilians" did not see a thing (even though you were
> captured on videotape).
>
> There are giant posters of the rubenesque terrorist leader, Hasan
> Nasrallah, all over Lebanon with headlines declaring the imminent
> destruction of Israel. Yet you choose to elect this terrorist party
> to your government--and all of the so called "innocent Lebanese" do
> not know anything about anything.
>
> Twenty thousand rockets and launchers are shipped into your country
> along with other military equipment by plane, truck and ship, and
> the government industrial complex knew absolutely nothing; and
> neither did all those "poor, innocent civilians" who are now crying.
>
> The Lebanese "knowingly allowed (aka aided and abbetted)" murderous
> terrorists to proliferate in their sovereign nation. Like spoiled
> teenagers, they now refuse to take any responsibility. Of course
> there are some truly innocent civilians, but there were hundreds of
> thousands of beautiful German babies and mothers in Dresden and
> Berlin who were blown to bits. If an attack emanates from your
> country, the entire country is responsible. That is how life works.
> Sometimes it is unfair.
>
> I hate when people lie to my face and expect me to believe their
> vile fabrications. Does the Muslim world really think that the vast
> majority of Americans are that foolish? Only the quislings at CNN
> like Larry King, Nic Robertson, Wolf Blitzer, et al will fall for
> this Joseph Goebbels-style propaganda.
>
> The confused, immoral left and their paper of record, The New York
> Times only see "innocent civilians throughout Lebanon." Europe, that
> moral bastion which gave birth to Nazism, will look at photos of
> men, women and children in despair, without putting the image into
> its proper context. Yet countries like Sweden, Switzerland and
> Ireland, who could not decide whether to support Hitler or Churchill
> during WWII, can drum up the moral authority to criticize Israel
> today. And leave it to Vichy, France 2006 headed by Jaques "Petain"
> Chirac to condemn Israel's response.
>
> Seeing television snippets of wounded or dead Lebanese with people
> sitting on the ground crying and calling them all "innocent
> civilians" is the same as looking at a photograph of the armpit of
> Christie Brinkley and saying, "Here is the photo of a supermodel.
> Isn't she beautiful?" The armpit picture is only a part of the
> story. When human beings see babies or mothers hurting, no matter
> what, we feel the pain. If we saw baby pictures of Charles Manson,
> we would want to cuddle him.
>
> We cannot look at photos of so-called "innocent civilians" in a
> vacuum. It is important for all "moral, decent" human beings to
> realize that the compassion emotion is similar to the sex emotion.
> Often times, it interferes with truth, logic and morality.
>
> Listen up, all you "Innocent Lebanese along with your innocent,
> Hezbollah supporting government." Do you want to know why your
> towns, villages and cities are smoldering? Do you want to know why
> 800,000 people are homeless and 600 are dead? Do you want to know
> why your infrastructure is devastated?
>
> The answer is: "The Jews are simply not going to pack up their
> little valises and walk into gas chambers again. The Jews will not
> be taken from their homes and marched into the Mediterranean Sea by
> Nazis or Hezbollah-Hamas-Syrian-Iranian, Nazi-like sympathizers.
>
> The Jews in Israel or anywhere else are just not going to allow
> themselves to be shipped away like you dream about every day.
> Attention all radical Muslims throughout the entire world and
> Jacques Chirac. The Jews will not be walking into death camps or
> graves ever again, and if you dare try it, Qana, Tyre, Nabatiyeh,
> Bint Jbeil, Kounine, Beit Yahoun, Rashaya, Baalbek, Majdel Zoun,
> Ayt-a-Shab, etc. will all look a whole lot worse than Dresden and
> Berlin. And Beirut may in the end become hotter than Hiroshima.
>
> Attention Lebanon--your country is smoldering because Jews are sick
> and tired of being murdered. You keep pushing those pathetic, weak,
> Torah-studying Jews by using terrorism and kidnapping soldiers and
> all, yes all, of Lebanon will be smoldering.
>
> I urge any person that will be having dinner with Sayed Hassan
> Nesrallah, the big fat brave man hiding in his little rat hole while
> his fighters are being picked off like little olives on a tree, to
> make sure his life insurance is fully paid.
>
> Nasrallah is just a pimp for Iran, sending out his Hezbollah
> terrorist hookers to "screw the Jews." The amazing thing is that
> Iran is not an Arab country. They should not be involved in the
> Arab-Israeli conflict.
>
> They do not border Israel, so there is no Iranian territorial
> dispute where they claim, like everyone else, that Israel occupies
> their land.
>
> Yet, Ahmadinejad's (pronounced--"a mad dog on Jihad") hatred for
> Jews and Israel rivals that of Adolf Hitler.
>
> It is no wonder that the Iranian president feels this way. Israel is
> supreme in virtually every area--technically, militarily,
> scientifically, culturally, morally and religiously. Each attempt by
> macho Muslim/Arab countries to destroy Israel has been met with a
> totally devastating, humiliating defeat. Like Saddam, the skinny
> little Ahmadinejad aspires to be the big hero of the Muslim world.
>
> Ahmadinejad should not be deluded into thinking that he will get off
> as lightly as the Lebanese. He does not comprehend is that Israel
> will not use a tongue depressor when they capture him and his
> associates. Should Iran dare make one wrong move on Israel, Israel
> will simply "Beat the Shiite out of them!"
Funny, we never seem to have a shortage of really brave armchair warriors who are in favour of dropping bombs on other people.
Maybe Rumsfeld was right when he said that you fight with the army that you have. Wars are always very messy, and it is impossible to prepare for everything.
Israel certainly didn't lose. It suffered all of 118 dead, less than might be killed in a single suicide bombing in Haifa.
The Lebanese government is now taking steps to take authority away from Hez. The former doesn't want the latter to be able to unilaterally bring down the wrath of Israel.
