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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (136140)	6/10/2004 3:41:21 AM
From: dumbmoney	Respond to of 281500

Has everyone on the thread gone crazy? Go look at a map. Look at the size of Israel. Look at the size of Iraq. Look at the territory in between. Look at the size of Israel's armed forces - as if they had nothing else to do. It's not my idea of a good time, but the American branch of the Likud Party recommended it in 1996; read the famous "Clean Break" paper by Perle et al. a) Provide the best foreign Mideast intelligence the US gets. b) provide a port and supply route not subject to closure. The US used Haifa port heavily in the runup to war. c) Provide special forces to help clear out scuds in Western Iraq. d) be the only ally in the entire Middle East whom the US can be sure is not playing a double game with the terrorists. Right, not much. The least they could do is decline the $3 billion/year until we get our war debt paid off.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (136140)	6/10/2004 10:15:05 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Has everyone on the thread gone crazy? Without FL moderating, it's not FADG anymore. Don't miss this article in Salon about the Gaza pullout. You have to "watch" a commercial so don't bother unless you have broadband. What I do is open a new browser window, mute the volume, and wait it out while looking at other things. salon.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (136140)	6/10/2004 12:54:20 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

This thread has a pretty long history of craziness on the war cheerleading front, but I don't imagine that's what you're referring to. So one at a time: a) Provide the best foreign Mideast intelligence the US gets. That could be taken as extremely faint praise. I'm sure Israeli sources did their best to assist Feith's "documentation" of Mylroie's "truth", but that's not exactly strategic information. Then there's the issue of advice on the Gitmo - Abu Ghraib style of intelligence gathering, which jaundiced observers might consider more negative than positive in overall effect. b) provide a port and supply route not subject to closure. The US used Haifa port heavily in the runup to war. Um. Why? I don't exactly see what there was to gain by dropping in on Haifa on the way from Spain or Italy to the Suez canal. I could see Rumsfeld insisting on it for symbolic reasons, but otherwise it seems sort of pointless, if not counterproductive. c) Provide special forces to help clear out scuds in Western Iraq. What scuds? We're talking '03, not '91, right? I assume that if any scuds were actually cleared out, we'd have heard about it early and often.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (136140)	6/10/2004 3:59:53 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Today David Gordon, who writes the blog for the Von Mises Institute website, critiques Frum and Perle's An End to Evil. In part, he argues, Frum and Perle generalize - he says fallaciously - from Israel/Palestine to all confrontations involving radical islam. mises.org I don't like Perle at all, and Frum is an intellectual lightweight, so, so far I've refused to read the book. Can it really be as cartoonish as he argues? Israel/Palestine live in a constant state of war that has no foreseeable ending. The rest of the world lives, for the most part, under a threat of random terrorism that is amorphous and dangerous, and therefore frightening, but not war. I am coming around to the position that the best way to handle Islamist terrorism really is through excellent police work. But I also support the position that we threaten countries which are even thinking about supporting Islamic terrorists that intervention will occur unless they cooperate in exterminating safe havens.