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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (17759)	11/13/2006 4:11:12 PM
From: Elmer Flugum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Call It What It Is: a Massacre What Happened at Beit Hanoun counterpunch.com "IMMEDIATELY AFTER the facts became known, the entire choir of professional apologists, explainers-away, sorrow-expressers and pretext-inventors, a choir that is in perpetual readiness for such cases, sprang into feverish action. "An unfortunate mistakeÖ It can happen in the best familiesÖ The mechanism of a cannon can misfunction, people can make mistakesÖ Errare humanum estÖ We have launched tens of thousands of artillery shells, and there have only been three such accidents. (No. 1 in the Olmert-Peretz-Halutz era was in Qana, in the Second Lebanon War. No. 2 was on the Gaza sea shore, where a whole family was wiped out.) But we apologized, didn't we? What more can they demand from us?" There were also arguments like "They can only blame themselves." As usual, it was the fault of the victims. The most creative solution came from the Deputy Minister of Defense, Ephraim Sneh: "The practical responsibility is ours, but the moral responsibility is theirs." If they launch Qassam rockets at us, what else can we do but answer with shells? Ephraim Sneh was raised to the position of Deputy Minister just now. The appointment was a payment for agreeing to the inclusion of Avigdor Liberman in the government (in biblical Hebrew, the payment would have been called "the hire of a whore", Deut. 23,19). Now, after only a few days in office, Sneh was given the opportunity to express his thanks. (In the Sneh family, there is a tradition of justifying despicable acts. Ephraim's brilliant father, Moshe Sneh, was the leader of the Israeli Communist Party, and defended all the massacres committed by Stalin, not only the gulag system, but also the murder of the Jewish Communists in the Soviet Union and its satellites and the Jewish "doctors plot"). Any suggestion of equivalence between Qassams and artillery shells, an idea which has been adopted even by some of the Peaceniks, is completely false. And not only because there is no symmetry between occupier and occupied. Hundreds of Qassams launched during more than a year have killed one single Israeli. The shells, missiles and bombs have already killed many hundreds of Palestinians. DID THE shells hit the homes of people intentionally? There are only two possible answers to that. The extreme version says: Yes. The sequence of events points in that direction. The Israeli army, one of the most modern in the world, has no answer to the Qassam, one of the most primitive of weapons. This short-range unguided rocket (named after Izz-ad-Din al-Qassam, the first Palestinian fighter, who was killed in 1935 in a battle against the British authorities of Palestine) is little more than a pipe filled with home-made explosives. In a futile attempt to prevent the launching of Qassams, the Israeli forces invade the towns and villages of the Gaza Strip at regular intervals and institute a reign of terror. A week ago, they invaded Beit-Hanoun and killed more than 50 people, many of them women and children. The moment they left, the Palestinians started to launch as many Qassams as possible against Ashkelon, in order to prove that these incursions do not deter them. That increased the frustration of the generals even more. Ashkelon is not a remote poverty-stricken little town like Sderot, most of whose inhabitants are of Moroccan origin. In Ashkelon there lives also an elitist population of European descent. The army chiefs, having lost their honor in Lebanon, were eager--according to this version--to teach the Palestinians a lesson, once and for all. According to the Israeli saying: If force doesn't work, use more force. The other version holds that it was a real mistake, an unfortunate technical hitch. But the commander of an army knows very well that a certain incidence of "hitches" is unavoidable. So-and-so many percent are killed in training, so-and-so many percent die from "friendly fire", so-and-so many percent of shells fall some distance from the target. The ammunition used by the gunners against Beit-Hanoun--the very same 155mm ammunition that was used in Kana--is known for its inaccuracy. Several factors can cause the shells to stray from their course by hundreds of meters. He who decided to use this ammunition against a target right next to civilians knowingly exposed them to mortal danger. Therefore, there is no essential difference between the two versions." Pop goes the weasel! len

To: Machaon who wrote (17759)	11/13/2006 4:59:21 PM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Respond to of 32591

Qaeda threat to blow up white House 11/12/2006 12:35:00 AM - By Habib Trabelsi Dubai, Nov. 11: Al Qaeda's Iraq chief threatened on Friday in an audio message posted on the Internet that the terror network will "blow up the White House". "We announce today the end of a phase of the jihad (holy war) and the start of a new one... to usher in the project of an Islamic caliphate and restore Islam's glory," Abu Hamza al-Muhajer said in the message. "We swear we will not rest from our jihad... before blowing up the filthiest house, dubbed the White House," in the course of establishing the caliphate which began with the proclamation of an Islamic state in Iraq, he said. The authenticity of the message could not be independently confirmed. "The location chosen by your mujahideen brethren to set up their state... is but a stepping stone for the leap," Muhajer said, referring to the "Islamic state of Iraq" proclaimed last month. An alliance of Sunni insurgents headed by the Iraq branch of Al Qaeda announced the creation of an independent Islamic emirate in Iraq in a video posted on the Internet on October 15, after Parliament in Baghdad approved a federal Constitution for the war-ravaged country. In Friday's message, Muhajer said he had mobilised 12,000 fighters for the Islamic state and was grooming 10,000 more. "I tell the commander of the faithful, the honourable Sheikh Abu Omar al-Baghdadi: I have put 12,000 Al Qaeda fighters at the disposal of the Islamic state of Iraq," Muhajer said, pledging allegiance to the state's emir. The Al Qaeda chief appealed to major Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups, notably the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, the Islamic Army of Iraq and the Mujahideen's Army, to endorse the self-styled state and pledge allegiance to its emir. Muhajer criticised US President George W. Bush, gloated over his Republican Party's defeat in mid-term elections widely attributed to US involvement in Iraq, and said US forces occupying the country were preparing to cut and run. "The enemy is now teetering under the blows of the mujahideen... and preparing to pack up and flee," he said. "I thank the most stupid and worst President America, the country of slaves and drugs, has ever had for giving us this great historic opportunity," said the voice. "The American people have taken the first step on the right path in order to get out of their impasse and have started to realise the treachery of their President and his subordination to Israel, voting for a measure of reason in the latest elections," Muhajer said. "I tell (Bush): don't hurry to flee like your defence minister (Donald Rumsfeld). We have still not quenched our thirst for your blood." Muhajer also charged that Mr Bush's policies had enabled Shia Iran to spread its influence in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries. (AFP)