COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, March 18, 2013

Making Israel a major strategic ally: United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013. A recipe for disaster.






The Fiscal Cliff and Israel’s Appetite for US Welfare Funds

Global Research, March 14, 2013


US legislators who regularly squabble over local spending, never fail Israel’s appetite for taxpayer’s largesse. Now they have another opportunity to show their servitude when considering bill H.R. 938 United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013;  a uniquely privileged status putting Israel’s welfare ahead of members of the US army.
Failing to agree on ways to reduce the deficit, the US president was forced earlier this month to enact the Budget Control Act (BCA) into law. The debt ceiling compromise was originally agreed to between Congress and the president in summer 2011. Known as sequestration, it forces across the board spending cuts by over $85 billion in 2013, increasing to $109bn thereafter reaching $1.5 trillion by 2021.
BCA cuts were divided equally between domestic and defence programmes. It was originally stipulated to take effect on January 1, 2013 but was delayed for two months to avoid the “fiscal cliff”.
Economists predicted the US economy would nosedive into recession if the compulsory budget cuts were combined with the expiration of the Bush tax breaks for the rich and increased payroll tax. Each of the two parties were hoping the results of the 2012 election would send a resounding message to the new leadership to settle the argument over the best approach to reduce US budget shortfall.
The election, however, put things back to pre-summer 2011 when it re-elected again one party for the executive branch and another, albeit weakened, remained leading the House of Representatives. The discretionary reduction in the defence covers areas such as weapon purchases, base operations, construction work, educational assistance to American soldiers, in addition to $168 million for security enhancement at US embassies.
The domestic cuts came from both mandatory and discretionary spending on low-income programmes ranging from aid for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Head Start for low-income children, “Meals-on-Wheels” for hungry seniors, unemployment trust fund to Social Security and Medicare. All in all, BCA could cost the US economy more than 750,000 jobs and over half a point from GDP growth.
It is certain when considering the impact of budget cuts on taxpayers neither political party gave much consideration to foreign beneficiaries. Not until now at least.
While American taxpayers became content with the painful cuts, Israel and its lobby were not. To the chagrin of Israeli firsters, sequestration stands to reduce Israel’s welfare cheque this year by more than $200m. Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz expressed trepidation over the looming US budget constraints at the Israeli cabinet meeting on March 3 declaring: “the economic difficulties in the United States worry us. I hope that we will not be hurt by them”. Steinitz’s message was heard by America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Literally two days later, AIPAC massed thousands of Israeli firsters at its annual policy conference in Washington for this year’s mission. The inculcated lobbyists swarmed the Halls of US Congress readied with two-prong strategy:
- first urge US Senators to pass a resolution supporting an Israeli attack on Iran.
- second seek exemption of Israel’s $3.1bn as well as its extra $211m for the Iron Dome missile defence system from sequestration.
To do so, AIPAC solicitors contrived a clever approach to sidestep BCA by promoting a US legislation to designate Israel as a “major US strategic ally”. A status enjoyed by no other nation which will presumably save Israel’s aid from BCA axe.
Last week Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren echoed AIPAC’s objectives and in what sounded like lecturing US legislators, he warned in the Jerusalem Post: “This is no time to reduce critical assistance which would only result in greater and graver costs”. While BCA across the board cuts did not spare more than $40bn from America’s defence budget, the Israeli ambassador and AIPAC want elected officials to preserve US taxpayers’ funding for Israeli military budget. US legislators who regularly squabble over local spending, never fail Israel’s appetite for taxpayer’s largesse.
Now they have another opportunity to show their servitude when considering bill H.R. 938 United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013;  a uniquely privileged status putting Israel’s welfare ahead of members of the US army.
About the author: Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes weekly newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper. Jamal is a frequent contributor to www.news-beacon-ireland.info .

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On Tenth Anniversary, Israel Partisans Behind Iraq War Still at Large
by Maidhc Ó Cathail / March 12th, 2013
Three years ago this month, I wrote a piece entitled “Who’s to Blame for the Iraq War?” to mark the seventh anniversary of the US invasion. My sole purpose in compiling a by-no-means-exhaustive list of 20 Israel partisans who played key roles in inducing America into making that disastrous strategic blunder was to help dispel the widespread confusion — some of it sown under the guise of “progressive investigative journalism” by likely crypto-Zionists – about why the United States made that fateful decision. As the tenth anniversary approaches, there is no excuse for anyone genuinely interested in the facts to deny the ultimate responsibility of Tel Aviv and its foreign agents for the quagmire in Iraq. Nevertheless, it’s an appropriate time to remind ourselves of some of the chief architects of the devastating Iraq War.
1. Ahmed Chalabi, the source of much of the false “intelligence” about Iraqi WMD, was introduced to his biggest boosters Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz by their mentor, a University of Chicago professor who had known the Iraqi con man since the 1960s. An influential Cold War hawk, Albert Wohlstetter fittingly has an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference centre named in his honor.
2. In 1982, Oded Yinon’s seminal article, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s” was published in Kivunim, a Hebrew-language journal affiliated with the World Zionist Organization. “Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets,” advised Yinon. “Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.”
3. “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” a report prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, recommended “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq—an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board during the initial years of the George W. Bush administration, was the study group leader.
4, 5. A November 1997 Weekly Standard editorial entitled “Saddam Must Go” opined: “We know it seems unthinkable to propose another ground attack to take Baghdad. But it’s time to start thinking the unthinkable.” The following year, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative group, published a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein on the pretext that he was a “hazard” to “a significant portion of the world’s supply of  oil.” PNAC co-founders William Kristol and   Robert Kagan also co-authored the “Saddam Must Go” editorial.
6. In Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, published by AEI Press in 1999, David Wurmser argued that President Clinton’s policies in Iraq were failing to contain the country and proposed that the US use its military to redraw the map of the Middle East. He would go on to serve as Mideast adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to mid-2007.
7. On September 15, 2001 at Camp David, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz attempted to justify a US attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan because it was “doable.” In the lead-up to the war, he assured Americans that it was “wildly off the mark” to think hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to pacify a postwar Iraq; that the Iraqis “are going to welcome us as liberators”; and that “it is just wrong” to assume that the United States would have to fund the Iraq war.
8. On September 23, 2001, Senator Joe Lieberman, who had pushed for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there was evidence that “suggests Saddam Hussein may have had contact with bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network, perhaps [was] even involved in the September 11 attack.”
9. A November 12, 2001 New York Times editorial called an alleged meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague an “undisputed fact”. Celebrated for his linguistic prowess, columnist William Safire was egregiously sloppy in his use of language here.
10. A November 20, 2001 Wall Street Journal op-ed argued that the US should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism, claiming, “Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction.” The professor of strategic studies at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University who made these spurious claims was Eliot Cohen.
11. George W. Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address infamously described Iraq as part of an “axis of evil.” It was David Frum, Bush’s Canadian-born speechwriter, who coined the provocative phrase.
12. In a February 2002 article entitled “How to win World War IV,” Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine, asserted: “Yet whether or not Iraq becomes the second front in the war against terrorism, one thing is certain: there can be no victory in this war if it ends with Saddam Hussein still in power.”
13. Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board member and PNAC signatory, predicted in a February 13, 2002 Washington Post op-ed: “I believe that demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”
14. On August 3, 2002, Charles Krauthammer, the psychiatrist-turned-Washington Post columnist, enticed Americans with this illusory carrot: “If we win the war, we are in control of Iraq, it is the single largest source of oil in the world…. We will have a bonanza, a financial one, at the other end, if the war is successful.” 
15. In a September 20, 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “The Case for Toppling Saddam,” current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Saddam Hussein could be hiding nuclear material “in centrifuges the size of washing machines” throughout the country.
16. “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel.” Despite this candid admission to a foreign policy conference at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, Philip Zelikow, a member of President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, authored the National Security Strategy of September 2002 that provided the justification for a preemptive war against Iraq.
17. According to a December 7, 2002 New York Times article, the role of convicted Iran-Contra conspirator Elliott Abrams during Colin Powell’s efforts to negotiate a resolution on Iraq at the United Nations was “to make sure that Secretary Powell did not make too many concessions to the Europeans on the resolution’s wording, pressing a hard-line view.” Abrams was senior director of Near East and North African affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration.
18. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff until he was indicted for lying to federal investigators in the Valerie Plame case, helped draft Colin Powell’s fraudulent February 5, 2003 UN speech.
19. According to Julian Borger’s July 17, 2003 Guardian article entitled “The spies who pushed for war,” the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) “forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel” to provide the Bush administration with alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq. Douglas Feith was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who headed the OSP.
20. Bernard Lewis, a British-born professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University whose 1990 essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage” introduced the dubious concept of a “Clash of Civilizations,” has been called “perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq.”

50 comments:

  1. Ready for another ME war yet?

    Syria promises to loom large in discussions between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack H. Obama when the latter visits Israel this week. And according to the Guardian newspaper in Britain, those discussions will entail an Israeli request for the U.S. to take military action against Syria.

    Israeli sources do not expect Obama to agree to the Israeli request – but the objective is not necessarily to get Obama to commit American troops to yet another imbroglio in the Middle East, but to convince him to approve an attack by Israel if Bashar al-Assad tries to transfer chemical weapons to Lebanon.

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  2. Iran is at least a year away from successfully developing a nuclear weapon, according to Barack Obama who last night told Israeli television that the US would not stand back and allow Tehran to acquire such a weapon.

    Speaking just days before his first state visit to Israel as president, Mr Obama said he had always been clear - that Washington will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power.

    “I have been crystal clear about my position on Iran possessing a nuclear weapon. That is a red line for us. It is not only something that would be dangerous for Israel. It would be dangerous for the world,” Mr Obama told Israel’s Channel 2 News.

    “...I've also said there is a window, not an infinite period time, but a window of time - where we can resolve this diplomatically.”

    Mr Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, differ on Iran’s ambitions with the Americans yet to be convinced that Tehran actually wants to develop a nuclear weapon. The Iranians deny any plans to make a bomb and that its nuclear programme is designed for peaceful means.

    The issue is just one that has the potential to antagonise the two leaders during Mr Obama’s three-day visit next week. Mr Obama appeared to try and smooth the historically icy relations between himself and Mr Netanyahu during the interview, referring to the Israeli prime minister by his nickname, ‘Bibi’, no fewer than 10 times during the interview.

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  3. I am sure a military attack on Iran would be a slam dunk.

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  4. Such a war would be a grave miscalculation for US interests and would continue the economic ruin started by George Bush. I hope Obama is not foolish enough to be sucked into such a staggeringly expensive and consequential misadventure.

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  5. Jonathan Freedland

    This should be a rare moment of hope. On Friday Israel got a new government and in a few days it will be treated to a US presidential visit, the first of Barack Obama’s second term. You’d think that, like jump leads applied to a car whose battery died years ago, this double jolt of electricity would inject some life into the long-stalled quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
    A new coalition in Israel, a new US secretary of state - one who, by all accounts, has got “the peace bug” - and a renewed American president: it should surely add up to what this enduring problem desperately needs, a fresh start.
    And yet, to recall Obama’s one-time slogan, you’ll find almost no one who expresses hope for any change. Expectations for this week’s visit are rock bottom. Even those well-disposed towards Obama say he’ll be coming to Israel as a tourist, seeing the key sights and shaking a few hands, with no initiative to launch, no plan to unveil. As one Palestinian salesman in Ramallah told the Global Post: “I know he’s coming, but he’s coming for nothing.”
    Expectations for the new government are scarcely brighter. It’s not only that the prime minister remains the same Binyamin Netanyahu, a man whose belief in, and commitment to, what used to be called the peace process is slim to nonexistent.
    The makeup of his coalition, which took nearly two months to assemble, suggests paralysis is the best we can hope for. Some will have been heartened by the appointment of the relatively dovish Tzipi Livni to oversee negotiations with the Palestinians. But realists say she’ll be no more than a public face, charged with making nice in foreign capitals, holding endless rounds of talks, enabling Netanyahu to say Israel is doing its bit, while achieving precisely nothing.
    That Livni and her tiny six-seat party are destined to be a figleaf is confirmed by the merest glance at the coalition arithmetic. Even if she were somehow to make a breakthrough, that would necessarily require Israeli concessions which would be instantly vetoed by the more powerful Jewish Home party headed by Naftali Bennett. Elected on a promise to annex 60% of the West Bank and having ruled out a Palestinian state for the next 200 years at least, Bennett will block any deal that the two sides could plausibly make.
    So yes, there are more amenable faces - chief among them the surprise star of the January election, the TV host and columnist Yair Lapid - but in practice there will be little change affecting the core conflict.


    {…}

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  6. {…}


    The hawks still have the best seats at the top table, Bennett reinforcing both a Likud party whose newest intake has shifted sharply to the right, and the faction loyal to the scandal-plagued ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman, who is himself a West Bank settler. Put simply, there is no meaningful move this coalition could make towards the Palestinians without falling apart.
    Bibi would prefer to concentrate, as he has for 20 years, on the ‘threat’ of a nuclear Iran. Doubtless he’ll keep bringing Obama back to that topic next week. But otherwise he newly weakened PM, now answerable to Bennett and Lapid, will instead be compelled to focus inward.
    Lapid was elected on a domestic platform, promising action on the economy and “sharing the burden”, code for ensuring that ultra-orthodox Jews - their parties absent from the ruling coalition for the first time in years - lose their current exemption from military conscription.
    After the social protests on the streets of Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, Israeli politicians have received clear instructions from the electorate: take care of the home front.
    Meanwhile, the Palestinians are beset by their own, more familiar troubles: the weakness of Mahmoud Abbas and the enduring division of Hamas and Fatah, which makes Gaza ever more distant from the West Bank.
    The result is that this conflict is as stuck as ever. That notion can sound comforting: if the status quo holds, then at least things aren’t getting worse. But it’s a delusion. There is nothing static about this status quo.
    As Hagai El-Ad of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel puts it, when things seem to be standing still they are always changing, most obviously through the creation of “facts on the ground”, the expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The more of those there are, the harder it will be to turn that land into a future Palestinian state.


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    1. .

      Few believe in the moribund 'peace process'. Less believe it will happen.

      This from The Economist on the one-state/two-state issue. Its is the latest I've seen of several articles and editorials on the same issue.

      Israel’s right, frustrated Palestinians, and assorted idealistic outsiders are talking of futures that do not feature a separate Palestinian state. It is a mistake

      Naming Names: Who are the naysayers?

      .

      Delete
  7. {…}


    It’s too late to change Obama’s itinerary, but perhaps not too late to influence the in-flight entertainment on Air Force One. It’s a long journey, so the president should have time to see two films, both Oscar nominees. The first is not Les Miz or Argo, but 5 Broken Cameras. Shot by an amateur Palestinian film-maker in the West Bank village of Bil’in, it is a powerful eyewitness account of the everyday reality of the occupation, from unarmed villagers clashing with Israeli soldiers to Bil’in’s cherished olive trees set aflame by nearby settlers.
    That will show the president what this stuck situation is doing to the occupied. But then he should watch The Gatekeepers, released in the UK next month, to see what it is doing to the occupier. This remarkable film consists chiefly of interviews with six former heads of Israel’s security agency, the Shin Bet. The men speak with astonishing candour of past operations, explaining in brutal detail how they took on the ‘terrorist enemy’, whether in an interrogation cell or by a bomb dropped from the sky. They are hard men, one smiling with pride as he recalls the ingenious elimination of Hamas’s top bomb-maker via a cellphone packed with explosives. “It was clean,” he says, “elegant.” These are not men to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
    Yet asked to assess the bigger picture, each one is crystal clear. “You cannot make peace using military means,” says Avi Dichter. “For Israel, it’s too much of a luxury not to speak with our enemies,” says Carmi Gillon. “There is no alternative to talking,” says Avraham Shalom. Each one of these warriors concedes that their work is ultimately futile, that Israeli security will only be achieved by a negotiated accommodation with the Palestinians.
    These men, who guarded the very gates of Israel, have come to understand that force only buys you time - and that time is running out. Weary, they declare that 46 years of occupation has corroded the soul of the nation they have devoted their lives to protect. “We’ve become cruel,” says Shalom, perhaps the hardest of these hard men. “To ourselves, but mainly to the occupied population.”
    As his plane heads towards Ben-Gurion airport, Obama should reflect on that.
    If he actually means the words he’ll spend several days repeating - about the ‘great friendship’ between the US and Israel - if he truly cares about Israel, he cannot come as a mere tourist. He must come with a message. He should listen to those who understand this occupation best, because they understand that it has to end.
    –Guardian

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  8. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  9. They should not give Arias the death penalty.

    She is a confused woman.

    Done very wrong, I do believe.

    But we are saying something about ourselves if they give her the death sentence.

    She needs help.

    And we should try do to that, if we are civilized.

    bob

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  10. It was 10 years ago this week that George Bush launched his ill-fated war of choice in Iraq. The anniversary comes as politicians in Washington and Israel continue to discuss the option of military action against Iran.

    The parallels with a decade ago are striking.

    Once again, we hear claims of a grave threat from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and the possibility of military action. Vice President Joe Biden recently told the convention of the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) that “all options, including military force, are on the table.”

    Then as now we are warned of the need to take action before it’s too late. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sent a video message to the AIPAC convention claiming that Iran will soon cross a nuclear “red line.”

    We’ve heard this story before.

    Who can forget Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s infamous line “we can’t wait for the smoking gun to be a nuclear mushroom cloud”? Or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s ludicrous attempt to explain the whereabouts of Iraq’s WMD: “They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

    Some of us reported at the time that no evidence existed of Iraqi WMD, and that UN inspections during the 1990s had dismantled Saddam Hussein’s nuclear, ballistic missile and chemical weapons threat, but our voices were ignored in the march to war. Official investigations during the occupation confirmed the complete absence of any WMD threat.

    Some politicians apparently never learn.

    Today, prominent Democratic and Republican senators are lining up behind Senate Resolution 65, which declares that “if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support.” The resolution is in effect a backdoor authorization for war. It sets the stage for the United States being dragged into a future Israeli attack on Iran.

    One of the authors of the resolution is Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer. The senator was sharply critical of George Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, but now he is resorting to Bush-style misrepresentation to justify a potential attack on Iran. According to Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council, Schumer is telling constituents that Iran “continues to enrich uranium into weapons-grade nuclear materials” and that the resulting fuel is “sufficient to arm a nuclear warhead.”



    {…}



    Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/03/18/yesterday-iraq-tomorrow-iran/#ixzz2NwOO8oR7

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  11. Thank you, Deuce.

    May slavery long live in your mind.

    bob

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Now go about your business of taking it down.

      bob

      Delete
    2. Make your arguments. Refrain from personal attacks. If you persist in acting like a juvenile, all your comments will be deleted.

      Delete
    3. I am not the one acting like a juveline.

      You accused me of rooting for Lt. Calley.

      Nothing could be further from the truth.

      You owe me an apology.

      I am waiting.

      bob

      Delete
    4. You would not get away with it on other blogs. Get it through your head that no one is interested in your juvenile trash talk, least no me.

      Delete
    5. If I said it, or if it seemed as if I said it, either way, I apologize because I know that you would not share those sentiments.

      Delete
  12. {…}

    Not true.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency reports regularly on Iran and has no evidence of uranium enrichment to weapons-grade level. This past week the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was on Capitol Hill to repeat what U.S. intelligence agencies have reported consistently for years: Iran is not enriching uranium to weapons grade and has not made a decision to build a bomb. Of course, real concerns exist about Tehran’s nuclear program, but there is no imminent nuclear threat from Iran or justification for threatening military attack.

    Sanctions-based diplomacy offers a formula for resolving the nuclear stand-off with Iran, just as sanctions and UN inspections were a viable alternative to war 10 years ago. Back then my colleague George Lopez and I reported that targeted sanctions and renewed inspections were working effectively to prevent Iraq from acquiring nuclear materials and rebuilding its war machine. Today U.S. and European sanctions are squeezing Iran’s economy and reducing its oil exports, providing significant leverage that could be used to negotiate a diplomatic settlement.

    The 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is a good occasion for trying to learn from the mistakes of the past…and to make sure we are not misled into war again.


    David Cortright is the Director of Policy Studies at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He blogs at www.davidcortright.net



    Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/03/18/yesterday-iraq-tomorrow-iran/#ixzz2NwOiSb9U

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    1. You are a true idiot, for believing that non sense.

      WiO is right, you so wrong.

      You don't give nuclear weapons to the insane.


      bob

      Delete
    2. No one is advocating GIVING anyone anything, but you, boobie.

      You advocate giving Israel carte blanche with US foreign policy.

      As drastic an error as the US could make.
      It would make your predictions of Obama ruining the US come true.

      Delete
    3. Please expound on just who is GIVING Iran nuclear weapons.

      Delete
    4. How many US soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines will you sacrifice to stop the transfer from occurring?

      If there is no weapons transfer imminent, just what would you do to stop Iran from further nuclear research?

      Delete
  13. I don’t believe in giving Iran nuclear weapons. I believe that the US and Israel, two nuclear powers, should not give Iran an incentive for needing them. If Iran gets them ( a reasonable thing from their interest), we can handle it.

    I believe in minding our own business and wuit interfering with others and killing people and destroying lives and property all around the globe.

    I do not believe that the same fools that rule the US from Washington are international geniuses and smart enough and wise enough to get us involved in endless wars.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I put domestic US interests in front of all others. I do not care about anyone’s religion. I basically dislike them all. I write what I think and express the same personally. Deal with it or not as you see fit.

    ReplyDelete
  15. One more Middle Eastern war will do irreparable damage to this country and the wealth of Americans. That is more important to me than the welfare of any and all other countries. We live in a hemisphere that is relatively peaceful and has every resource and market that we need. We should mind our own business and pay attention to our own needs.

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  16. I don’t like killing for any reason especially for so-called dead holy men, priests prophets and gods of all creation.

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  17. I don’t like killing for presidents, senators or members of school boards. I do not need some politician to tell me who my enemy is. I like my children and woman alive and well. I do not believe that dead people go to a better place. Rot is rot.

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    1. Fool. Moron. Idiot. This girl at least knows more....

      Bob,
      It sounds pretty great! Being bored and having time to figure out interesting and rewarding ways to spend ones time is a lovely pleasure. :)

      I would think the aches you are feeling would be better with warmer temperatures. You might be having an allergy attach due to a lovely spring arriving. My allergies are going crazy. I live on a golf course and I am allergic to every type and form of grass. :) Aching is unfortunately a part of aging and speaking to individuals far older than ourselves I understand it increases each year. Ugh!

      I loved reading the information you sent. So much I had forgotten! I thought the population of both Moscow & Lewiston would be far larger now. Everyone must know everyone! :) Very nice 99% of the time!

      Need to start dinner.
      Night!
      Jacque :)

      Sent from my iPhone

      7:21 PM (15 minutes ago)

      to
      My allergies are going crazy. I live on a golf course and I am allergic to every type and form of grass. :)

      :) I invite you to my alfalfa field.:)

      heh,heh, just joking

      Jacque, I hate getting old.

      Let us be honest about it, it is a son of a bitch without any rewards.

      Least than I can think of.

      Please tell me otherwise :)

      If you can think of anything. ???

      How about sending me your favorite music, you must have some, I am just laying here with Leo, looking at the ceiling.

      I have gotten to love Country Western, the very best stuff of it.

      Out of Wyoming - no twang country!

      bob

      country music coming.....

      Delete
    2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkKn5HrKgHQ

      bob

      Delete
    3. And she knows to apologize when she is wrong.

      bob

      Delete
  18. Is everyone on this blog heavily medicated? Cheeeez.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Deuce, Rat, the others, non thinking folk.

      bob

      Delete
  19. . Rot is rot.

    Speaking of yourself.

    A fool, an unread man, a person who hasn't grasped it at all, a failure of thinking.

    A deleter. Who has deleted himself.

    bob

    ReplyDelete
  20. to me
    Brain lag - hate those coming more often with old age I now remember it's Maria Callas! Onasis's true love! She was amazing! :)

    Sent from my iPhone

    8:05 PM (0 minutes ago)

    to
    I am becoming worried about myself.

    I forgot a passage of one of my favorites the other day.

    Help me please!

    grrrr....

    bob

    ReplyDelete
  21. This is the part of Libertarianism I can get on board with.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Make up your own definition. Works for me.

      Delete
  22. I'm in Seattle/Portland this week. Sunny today. You could see Helena. Rainer, and Hood. Or as the locals say: the mountains were out.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Rot is rot.
    To be fought against.

    Death is the mother of beauty.

    6

    Is there no change of death in paradise?
    Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
    Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
    Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
    With rivers like our own that seek for seas
    They never find, the same receding shores
    That never touch with inarticulate pang?
    Why set pear upon those river-banks
    Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
    Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
    The silken weavings of our afternoons,
    And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
    Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
    Within whose burning bosom we devise
    Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

    Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning

    Life is Imagination. An overcoming of the thoughtlessness of those who do not think at all.

    bob

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    Replies


    1. sleeplessly

      :)

      You get??

      bob

      Delete
    2. But then, rot is rot, for the unimaginative.

      bob

      Delete
  24. Dinner time conversation -

    Bob,
    I of course love music! Almost all! New country is fine with me. Twang can get on the nerves. Like Willy! I love classical, opera, contemporary, & rock. Still love Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, & Dean Martin. Steve Lawrence still has his voice and lives here. Poor Eydie Gorme his wife is in very poor health. Great voice. Hate Streisand's politics but love her voice and Linda Eder who sounds like Streisand and Judy Garland mixed together. Edith Pilaf-Caruso-Bogelli-& going blank Onasis girlfriend whom I love too. So many! Then good ole Rod Stewart is a major favorite. Harry Connick Jr. Love Steve Tyrell! Louis Armstrong. On and on! Today in the car I was listening to Seal! :) Journey & Foreigner! I listen to most! I have 500 CD's on my home player. Goodness knows 100 also in the car. I need to modernize though to I-pod or phone only. It would take to many hours to down load. Eventually! :)
    Back to the dinner dishes and will add additional tomorrow. I love music!!!


    8:38 PM (10 minutes ago)


    Send me your favorties, please.

    I have listened to more Willy Nelson that any other man still alive, I can tell you that.

    John Deere radio, endless.

    :)

    There was the most beautiful song by a girl when we went through Wyoming, God she gave me the chills, but I can't find it now.

    They had lovely Country down that way

    My old lover, took care of Sinatra at the Desert Inn, chief concierge, made a lifestyle of it, created the Conciegre Association of America or what it is called.

    You can count on her for music.

    bob

    ReplyDelete
  25. I was sitting with Hamdoon on the Piazza Navona having an early coffee in the early morning Roman sunshine.

    He looked worried.

    "What do you think will happen" I said.

    He stroked his cigarette and said -

    "I am worried now"

    He continued " I think humans will still be humans, and I am now worried"

    After our breakfast, we went to our mutual hotels.

    bob

    ReplyDelete
  26. .

    Getting old is a bitch, Bob.

    In addition to enduring it ourselves must we be forced to watch you do it in excrutiating detail, minute by minute, e-mail by e-mail, insult by insult?

    Remember, whatever you were doing from the demise of the EB until your recent reappearance here,

    Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

    .

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fuck you. slim bug

      I am trying to teach.

      Death is the mother of beauty, and imagination is life, and time is a mode of human perception, a category of our understanding, and being bounded with our senses we are not normally able to perceive the Source.

      How are thing at the gas station in Detroit?

      bob

      Delete
    2. things, with the bros...at the gas station....????

      bob

      Delete
  27. .

    When they perceived Patroclus had been killed, who was so brave, and strong withal and young, the horses of Achilles stood, and hung
    their heads and wept: indignant sorrow filled
    the imperishable nature that was theirs,
    at the perception of this deed of death.

    They tossed the abundant mane, they stamped the ground with hoof impatient, and bewailed the fate that changed Patroclus, knowing he would be found disfigured in the dust — inanimate —
    mere flesh now without spirit, valueless —
    incapable of resistance — without breath —
    lost to them for all time: gone unawares,
    from life gone back to the great Nothingness.



    Cavafy

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is meaningless, Quirk.

      The Spirit of Christ hovers over the Illiad, in that wonderful phrase, as we know from that French Jewish philosopher who died young, whom De Gaul called crazy, and whose name I am going to tickle you with.

      If you don't remember her, you are uncouth.

      She said, 'The Spirit of Christ hovers over the Illiad"

      The Spirit of Christ hovers over the Illiad.

      Wow, think of that!

      Can you even get to it?

      Sad, and glorious.

      Such stupidity.

      Whoever said mankind was enlightened?

      Back in the day.

      And what dumbshit would quote an old poem to make a point today?

      But there is more to it than you think, soda jerk.

      An if you read close, you will find the Illiad is very different from your mis reading.



      bob

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    2. I was sitting in the cafe, when Hamdoon said -

      " I conclude Quirk is an idiot"

      He looked away, and fondled his passport.

      Then he lighted his cigarette.


      bob

      Delete
  28. .

    living life thru others words,

    the pedant lauds the existential,

    the fool on the hill a fool?

    .

    ReplyDelete
  29. What a information of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious knowledge regarding unpredicted feelings.


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    ReplyDelete