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

To: geode00 who wrote (196281)	8/8/2006 9:20:37 PM
From: Nikole Wollerstein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

We have been so close to having worthless demagog in the White House when 50% of the USA electorate voted for Kerry What a scary thought!!! U.S Policy U.S. Insists Cease-Fire Must Await Plan to Disarm Hizballah - Jim Rutenberg and Thom Shanker The U.S. firmly reiterated its position on Tuesday that there can be no cease-fire in Lebanon until there is a solid plan in place to disarm Hizballah. "The United States is working for a cease-fire, for an end to the hostilities that will not allow a return to the status quo ante," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday. U.S. officials have said anything short of a plan to ensure the disarming of Hizballah before Israel halted fighting would leave the group in a position to lob missiles at Israel, and perhaps solidify the gains it has made in the Arab imagination for standing up to the regional superpower and surviving.

To: geode00 who wrote (196281)	8/9/2006 1:36:37 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi geode00; While sharing intelligence with Israel about Hezbollah resupply is fairly natural, I doubt that the Israelis will widen the war, either with that information or without it. The reason that Iran is so safe from the United States is that the US military is fully occupied in Iraq and doesn't have the extra forces required to deal with a country 3x larger than the one they already are dealing with. Similarly, the mess that Israel has gotten itself into has shut down about 25% of their GDP, but the costs go much further what with all the weapons getting used, wages being paid to reservists, and payments the government is promising to make to Israeli refugees. At the beginning of hostilities, when the Israeli government expected maybe a week of rocket firings, the shutdown of 15% or 25% of GNP didn't seem like such a big deal. With 52 weeks in a year, those 25% shut down for only a week amounts to just 0.5% of 2006 GDP. But each week this goes on another 0.5% gets eliminated. I haven't seen any recent estimates, but it has to have the pencil pushers worried. Imagine what it would be like to have 25% of the US evacuated because of bombings or rocket attacks. Directly attacking Syria and Iran is an open invitation to getting hit with longer range rockets and possibly worse. With Israel's economy already in tatters, I doubt that they want to add on to their list of enemies. And there are stories out there claiming that Hezbollah has missiles with sufficient range to hit Tel Aviv, but haven't used them due to not getting permissions from Syria or Iran. So Syria and Iran are safe from Israeli attack for the same reason that Iran and Syria are safe from US attack. Both Israel and we are up our butts in alligators already and neither of us feel like wandering into a much deeper swamp. -- Carl