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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (7582)	3/27/2004 4:02:34 PM
From: twmoore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Ray,a good article. March 27, 2004 US Complicity in Israel's Misdeeds by Charley Reese The murder of Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheik Yassin, makes perfect sense as long as you understand Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's strategy. That strategy is to make peace impossible. For three years, Sharon has done everything to prevent peace. He himself provoked the new uprising, re-invaded the occupied territories, destroyed the Palestinian Authority, forced Yasser Arafat into house arrest and launched an unprecedented, brutal campaign of assassinations, curfews, fences, destruction of property and random killing of Palestinians. The Israelis have killed about 2,700 Palestinians in the past three years, in contrast to about 700 Israelis killed in the same period. At the same time, Sharon has refused all offers to negotiate, and whenever the Palestinians arranged a cease-fire on their side, Sharon broke it with a provocative raid or assassination. No other rogue state or rogue leader would have been allowed to get away with such behavior, but Israel has the U.S. government in its pocket. That's the answer to the question posed by the French ambassador to Great Britain as to why the world allows "this (expletive deleted) little country to cause the world so much trouble." Sharon doesn't want peace, because he knows that any peace settlement would involve returning nearly all of the occupied territories to the Palestinians. Israel's goal has always been Palestine without Palestinians. He is greatly afraid that the world will lose patience and impose a settlement on Israel. Hence, his strategy is to make peace impossible so that he can impose unilaterally his own settlement – a settlement, of course, that will condemn the Palestinians to unlivable conditions. Now, that's all well and good if you are an Israeli and don't mind condemning future generations to perpetual conflict, but what about Americans? This is, after all, not legitimately our conflict. I've traveled in Palestine and the Middle East, and while it's interesting, it's not high on my list of vacation spots. We would be much better off if the only Americans who ever went there were the crews of oil tankers. Unfortunately, our politicians, by cravenly obeying the wishes of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby, have made us a part of the conflict. We've already paid in blood and treasure. Anybody who doesn't understand that the attack on 9/11 was directly related to the Palestinian and Israeli conflict hasn't been paying attention. The Arab world sees us – correctly – as an accessory before and after the fact to all the crimes Israel commits against the Palestinians and other Arabs in the area. We cannot load Israel down with modern weapons, with gifts of more than $90 billion of American tax dollars, with absolute protection from all attempts to hold it accountable under international law, and then pretend we are innocent. We are guilty by proxy of murder, land theft, destruction of property and all the other human misery that Israel has caused in the region. So, if you're one of those rah-rah Israel First supporters, don't complain when the terrorists come looking for you. You've allowed your politicians to enlist you in somebody else's war, and in war there are always casualties on both sides. America has become a nation of pathological irresponsibility. Nobody wants to take responsibility for his or her own actions, which is the basic cause of the litigation flood. Least of all do American politicians wish to do so. They would rather heap on the manure that the terrorism directed at us has nothing whatsoever to do with the policies they have followed for the past 30 years or more. In truth, it has everything to do with those policies. So, if you or your loved ones get bloodied by terrorists, then blame your Christian Zionists, your Israel First crowd and your corrupt politicians who have their tongues in the ears and their hands in the pockets of the Israeli lobby. comments on this article? send them to backtalk! [visit backtalk!] Back to the Antiwar.com Home Page

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (7582)	3/27/2004 4:07:03 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Newsview: Cross Bush, Face Payback By TOM RAUM Associated Press Writer March 27, 2004, 2:02 PM EST WASHINGTON -- President Bush is playing supercharged hardball in going after his own former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke. It's a risky strategy that shows the single-mindedness of Bush and his re-election team in trying to deflect politically damaging criticism. Loyalty is a hallmark of Bush's administration, with the president and his top lieutenants quick to turn on those who stray from the fold. A week after a broadside that questioned Democratic rival John Kerry's commitment to U.S. troops and fitness to be president -- standard operating procedure for the general election campaign -- Bush's re-election machine unleashed a shock and awe campaign designed to discredit Clarke. Bush's leadership after the Sept. 11 attacks is the guiding theme of his re-election campaign, intended to suggest the nation is safer with him as president. Clarke's claim that Bush ignored the threat from Osama bin Laden and waged a pointless war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein directly challenges that argument. In his book "Against All Enemies," Clarke predicted retribution from a White House "adept at revenge." But Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, are essentially following the same game plan that the late Lee Atwater -- an early political mentor of Rove's -- used to get the first President Bush elected in 1988: define and undercut an opponent early with a fusillade of negative attacks. "This team is tough. You cross them and they go after you and raise questions about you and your credibility rather than what you have to say," said Thomas Mann, a scholar with the Brookings Institution. Others who have fallen out of favor over Iraq include former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki. All voiced concerns about either the expense or number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. All were treated dismissively by the White House. All are gone, but their estimates proved accurate. Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV drew the administration's wrath by suggesting Bush exaggerated Saddam's nuclear capabilities. A federal grand jury is investigating whether a White House official illegally disclosed that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer to get back at him. On the domestic front, Paul O'Neill was fired as Treasury secretary in December 2002 after publicly questioning the need for additional Bush tax cuts -- another core campaign issue for Bush. Administration officials now are waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster, a Medicare accountant who publicly said he was forbidden by his superiors from sharing with Congress a higher -- and more accurate -- cost estimate for the administration's Medicare program. John DiIulio quit as director of Bush's office of faith-based initiatives in 2002, telling Esquire magazine that "Mayberry Machiavellis" led by Rove were basing policy only on re-election concerns. He later apologized for making what he said were rude remarks. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., stood on the Senate floor last week to urge Bush to stop the "character attacks" on Clarke, saying they recalled scorched-earth tactics that Bush and his allies used to defeat Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the GOP presidential primary in 2000, and Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia in the 2002 midterm elections. The risk for Bush in aggressively challenging a former member of his own administration is that it could backfire. Clarke's book instantly became a best seller, and the White House counterattack is helping to give the allegations even wider circulation. But administration defenders said it was important to rebut the charges quickly to ensure that they wouldn't linger unanswered. "I think the American people do not believe that the president of the United States is pursuing a folly in the war on terror," and it is important to drive that home, said Bush National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Not every White House attempt at damage-control works. Last summer, White House officials tried to pin the blame on CIA Director George Tenet for not waving Bush off his State of the Union claim that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons. Political analysts rushed to proclaim Tenet a goner, but those obituaries proved premature. CIA memos suddenly surfaced showing that Rice and her top advisers had, in fact, been given just such a warning by the CIA -- months before Bush's speech. Tenet, a politically wily Clinton administration holdover, remains on the job. newsday.com