Letter to the Editor
The Republicans seem disparate. Their message is effectively "Vote Republican or Die!" Their claim is that if we don't stay the course and achieve victory in Iraq then the Islamic Terrorist Fascist Insurgents are coming to get you. Bush compares the war in Iraq to fighting the Nazis in World War 2 as if it were some noble cause. But we can never win in Iraq because the enemies are the same people that we are trying to liberate.
The truth is that Bush has failed and the Republicans have failed. We can either change direction now or wait till it gets worse and change direction later. The question that voters have to figure out is how bad are we going to allow things to get before we do something about it? I say lets throw the bums out.
You would think that a company as big as Comcast could run an email server correctly but they can't. Even simple things that any network engineer knows is beyond their ability to comprhend. And there's no way to get feedback to the as their support staff is hidden and unresponsive. Which probably explains why they are unaware that they have severe email problem.
So - maybe by posting on my blog the message will eventually get to them and they can fix their problems.
If you are a Comcast customer and wondering why your email isn't being delivered, it might have to do with the fact that Comcast's mail servers are severely misconfigured. The main problem they have is that the reverse DNS lookup on their servers have an IP mismatch between what host they say they are and what the host name resolves to. When the server reverse DNS is looked up it returns a name. When the name is looked up it resolves to a different IP. What does the mean? it means the reverse DNS has failed.
So - if you are a Comcast employee or customer or stockholder - or have any Comcast commections - please tell them to FIX THEIR EMAIL SERVERS. I'm getting tired of having to take the blame for Comcast email not reaching my servers.
Letter to the Editor
The new Republican buzz phrase this week is "Islamic Fascism" saying that anyone who questions the Iraq war is immoral and is the kind of person who would have appeased Hitler. Excuse me? Who was it that decided to lie our way into a war with Iraq? Who was it that decided torturing people was OK? Who supports kidnapping people off the street and rendering them to countries where they are tortured and killed? We do have a problem with a new kind of fascism. Rumsfield is the fascist and he is the one who is emulating Hitler. If not for the Republicans we could actually deal with real Islamic terrorists rather than fighting fake wars against the wrong enemies.
Letter to the Editor
Now that JonBennet Ramsey's murder suspect John Mark Karr has been determined to be some nut case who made a fake confession to get attention, I'm trying to figure out what is more perverted. Was it Karr's obsession with young girls or is it the media's obsession with perverts? The journalists are supposed to be the "normal people" but they were more obsessed than he was. Now they caught polygamist Warren Jeffs so now the news media has a new pervert to obsess on. With two perverts in the news we may never know how the war in Iraq turns out.
What ever happened to the good old days when news was news and the tabloids covered the perverts?
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I mean - Jesus! Media obsession on sex scares me. Journalists seem far more obcessed than the stalkers do. Yeah the perps are creazy but watch the journalists covering them. Talk about people who have problems.
After a year 10,000 FEMA trailers still sit at the airport in Hope Arkanasa sinking in the mud rotting away where the government pays $25,000 a month rent for the space. Is it deliberate or just stupidity? If this doesn't symbolize the failure of Bush I don't know what does.
Letter to the Editor
It's been one year since Bush let New Orleans drown and emergency trailers are still not yet delivered and people are just left with nothing. During this same period the oil companies have got another 14 billion in subsidies, the super rich got more tax breaks. and Congress raised it's pay. The only thing people got from the insurance companies was a rate increase. The gulf coast states voted for Bush so the lesson to be learned is that if you elect an incompetent president then you get incompetence.
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Of course I feel sorry for those who voted for Kerry who lived in New Orleans but to some extent when you elect stupid people, and that includes Ray Negan, then you get the government you elect.
Years before the hurricane I'd seen several specials on what could happen to New Orleans if the right hurricane hit so even I was familiar with it. So there is was with many days worth of warning and they all just sat there and did nothing. Everyone knew the canals and levies had problems and did nothing. When the storm came they just sat there like morons.
Letter to the Editor
Have you heard that there is a secret Republican plan to impeach Bush? If the Democrats win both houses it just might happen. Here's the reason. If the Dems win then they might impeach Bush and Cheney making Nancy Pelosi president as she would be Speaking of the House and next in line. However, if the Republicans impeach Bush before the Dems take power in January then Dennis Hassert becomes president instead of Pelosi. But they would have just over 60 days to do it so they have to have it all planned out in advance.
It does seem extreme for Republicans to impeach Bush, but as we know if Nancy Pelosi is president she will probably pick Hillary Clinton as VP and the Republicans can't let that happen. So the rumor might just be true. When you think about it it all starts to make sense.
What to do about the future of Israel is anyone's guess but the establishment of the Jewish state was a mistake. However, I'm not advocating the overthrow of Israel because the Islamic states around it are even worse, but barely worse. The problem is that in any nation when you create a system where members of one religion has superior rights over those of other religions it is a situation that leads to war.
Case in point - Israel. Even with one of the most advanced cultures on the planet, and having been persecuted and slaughtered themselves, in less that 60 years it is clear that the Jewish state has learned nothing and Israel has more of a desire for war than it has for peace.
Israel treats all non Jews like they are vermin. The rest of us are subhuman and our lives don't count. When you look at the way Israel treats it's neighbors and the non Jews within it's borders it is clear to me that they have formed a mentality that they thing they really are God's chosen people. Since God is fictional they are at best the chosen people of their own fictional deity. As the founder of the Church of Reality I can claim that we are the chosen people of the Flying Spaghetti Monster but that claim is as fictional as Israel's claim.
Jews in other countries are more humble and socially adjusted and they are normal productive members of society. They respect other people and they don't take themselves seriously the way Israeli's take themselves.
When I listen to what the country of Israel is saying they have no regrets about the number of Lebanese they kill and these other people are in the way of Israel's goals. Israel complains about kidnapping of it's people but when they kidnap 1/3 of the Palestinian Parlament they call them "detainees". Like Islamic terrorists Israel has its own death squads that hunts down and kills people who don't support their agenda, including their own leaders like Yitzhak Rabin.
The problem isn't with Judaism itself as much as it is with the idea of having a society with a superior class and an inferior class. It creates the illusion that they are actually better people and it create an imbalance that tends to lead to war as the oppressed rise up against the oppressors.
For a culture that is over 5000 years old you would think that after being both oppressed and oppressor that the Jews would get it. However - they don't.
What is the solution? I don't know. But the solution has to be a government in the region where all people have an equal standing. The state of Israel as a Jewish homeland where Jews hold superior status must end. This is true of Islamic states and Christian states as well.
Now I have to figure out who's going to kill me first for this opinion. Will it be Jewish, Islamic, or Christian death squads?
Letter to the Editor
This election in 2006 is about denial. Are we as a nation going to face the reality that America is heading in the wrong direction or are we going to lie to ourselves for 2 more years and pretend that everything is just fine? If we are going to survive we are going to have to stop the breeding and accept that America needs a new direction. However - I still waiting to for the Democrats to state what they have to offer. I want to hear a message of change. I just can't stand the lying anymore.
We are in really bad shape and we can't pretend that it's all going to just go away. I'm looking for real courage and I'm not seeing it. If America turns it's back on reality then reality might turn it's back on America. And that's a scary thought.
Letter to the Editor
Bush said that we aren't going to leave Iraq until the "job is done". I suppose we should have got out of Iraq 4 years ago when Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" because we were closer to having the job done then that we are now. Now Iraq is a lost cause, fighting a civil war, and our troops are there to try to hide the civil war till after the elections. We are left with a choice of accepting failure now or waiting till things get worse. I fail to see the logic in staying the wrong course.
Letter to the Editor
Even though cultures and religions have been at war for thousands of years the problem of war can be solved. In order to have a war there has to be an agreement to go to war. This agreement comes from a Vocabulary of War.
In the Middle East Muslims and Jews kill each other, but in San Francisco Muslims and Jews march together to protest for peace. The reason San Francisco is different than the Middle East is that San Francisco uses the Vocabulary of Peace and the Middle East uses the Vocabulary of War. We respect each other here. In San Francisco "we" are all "us", fellow members of the human community. Over there "they" are "terrorists" or "Infidels" and "they" deserve to die.
The Vocabulary of Peace humanizes people. The Vocabulary of War dehumanizes them. The difference is in the vocabulary and I think that if we change the vocabulary we can change the world. It's harder to kill people when you see them as individuals. And they have a harder time hating you when you are being respectful and considerate.
I can't believe that this guy is still in the news. The guy is a weirdo, but he didn't do it. I think he wanted a free ride back to the USA because he's probably in trouble in Bancock and this gets him out. Or - he's just delusional.
Even if he did it - it's not the most important thing in the news. It's bigger that 2 wars and everything else in the world? It's infotainment - not news.
I'm usually an Asus fan and I've bought several of their mother boards so when they came out with the M2NPV-VM for the new AM2 socket AMD processors I thought it would be a great board. Boy was I wrong. I think it's a bios problem but this is at least the third bios and the current version 0303 is very broken. It won't run the current 2.6.18rc4 Linux kernel and it is very picky about memory.
I bought the OCZ Gold Edition high performance ram and it's clear that this memory is incompatible. It's supposed to run at DDR2 800 speeds but even at DDR2 400 it still has memory errors. I'm hoping a future bios will fix this. Asus - you disappoint me. Fix your product!
Went to Linuxwork in San Francisco and Redhat wasn't there? What's up with that?
Letter to the Editor
With the less than successful Lebanese war coming to a close it may be time for the people of Israel to come up with a long term better plan to establish a new relationship with the world community. Israel has been at war with other religions for thousands of years. I ask the question, how many more thousands of years does the war have to continue until Israel figures out how to get along with the rest of the world? Or, perhaps it's time for Israel to rethink it's role in the world now and spare generations of war?
Israel needs to stop dehumanizing Arabs and start seeing them as people. They are not "Hezbollah" who are all "Terrorists" who need to be exterminated as vermin. They are people like you and me who have children, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and a community of people who they care about. They are good people who are trying to do the right thing as bast they know how. Seeing the enemy as people is the first step towards peace.
Here in San Francisco California we have Jews and Muslims but we don't kill each other here. We are a community that includes all people and here Jews and Muslims live together and work together and we march together to Anwar Sedat protest the US invasion of Iraq. What is different here is that Jews and Muslims respect each other and we speak the vocabulary of peace, not the vocabulary of war.
So if we can do it then Israel can do it. In 1979 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat put aside put aside his hatred defying the Islamic community to make peace with Israel and now Egyptians and Israelis no longer kill each other. Sadat put aside the vocabulary of war in favor of the vocabulary of peace and it worked. It is time for Israel to look to the future and put aside the past and decide if it wants to embrace reality and be a peaceful member of the world community.
Letter to the Editor
Bush just lost another war to Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran. I say Bush lost the war because it turns out that it was Bush who talked Israel into fighting a proxy war against Hezbollah and failed to get Syria and Iran involved in a larger regional war. The losers in the war includes the people of Lebanon, a democracy almost wiped out by the US and Israel. Israel and the US are also big losers because this war was an unjust war and it has turned world opinion against us. The winners, unfortunately, are Hezbollah, who held off the Israelis and Iran and Syria who had the restraint to not get involved, and Islamic radicals.
Because America has a weak and stupid president Bush has made us weaker while making Islamic terrorists stronger. It is time we get rid of the Republican congress so that we can impeach this criminal and restore America to be a force for good rather than the biggest threat to democracy and freedom on the planet. Bush has make us the bad guys now that we have destroyed yet another nation we have to do whatever it takes to stop him.
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Think about it. Israel destroys Leboneese homes and now Hezbollah is going to rebuild homes. Who do you think is going to be more popular with the people? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the party the rebuilds your house is going to be more popular than those who destroyed it.
As to Bush being behind the war on Lebanon, I found this articl on Consortium News.
Bush conveyed his strong personal support for the military offensive during a White House meeting with Olmert on May 23, according to sources familiar with the thinking of senior Israeli leaders.
Olmert, who like Bush lacks direct wartime experience, agreed that a dose of military force against Hezbollah might damage the guerrilla group's influence in Lebanon and intimidate its allies, Iran and Syria, countries that Bush has identified as the chief obstacles to U.S. interests in the Middle East.
As part of Bush's determination to create a new Middle East one that is more amenable to U.S. policies and desires Bush even urged Israel to attack Syria, but the Olmert government refused to go that far, according to Israeli sources.
One source said some Israeli officials thought Bush's attack-Syria idea was nuts since much of the world would have seen the bombing campaign as overt aggression.
In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post referred to Bush's interest in a wider war involving Syria. Israeli defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria, the newspaper reported.
While balking at an expanded war into Syria, Olmert did agree on the need to show military muscle in Lebanon as a prelude to facing down Iran over its nuclear program, which Olmert has called an existential threat to Israel.
With U.S. forces bogged down in Iraq, Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the inclusion of Israeli forces as crucial for advancing a strategy that would punish Syria for supporting Iraqi insurgents, advance the confrontation with Iran and isolate Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
But the month-long war has failed to achieve its goals of destroying Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon or intimidating Iran and Syria.
Instead, Hezbollah guerrillas fought Israeli troops to a virtual standstill in villages near the border and much of the world saw Israel's bombing raids across Lebanon which killed hundreds of civilians as disproportionate.
Now, as the conflict winds down, some Israeli officials are ruing the Olmert-Bush pact on May 23 and fault Bush for pushing Olmert into the conflict.
Building Pressure
Soon after the May 23 meeting in Washington, Israel began to ratchet up pressure on the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories and on Hezbollah and other Islamic militants in Lebanon. As part of this process, Israel staged low-key attacks in both Lebanon and Gaza. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com A "Pretext" War in Lebanon.]
The tit-for-tat violence led to the Hamas seizure of an Israeli soldier on June 24 and then to Israeli retaliatory strikes in Gaza. That, in turn, set the stage for Hezbollah's attack on an Israeli outpost and the capture of two more Israeli soldiers on July 12.
Hezbollah's July 12 raid became the trigger that Bush and Olmert had been waiting for. With the earlier attacks unknown or forgotten, Israel and the U.S. skillfully rallied international condemnation of Hezbollah for what was called an unprovoked attack and a kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.
Behind the international criticism of Hezbollah, Bush and Olmert justified an intense air campaign against Lebanese targets, killing civilians and destroying much of Lebanon's commercial infrastructure. Israeli troops also crossed into southern Lebanon with the intent of delivering a devastating military blow against Hezbollah, which retaliated by firing Katyusha rockets into Israel..
However, the Israeli operation was eerily reminiscent of the disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Like the U.S. assault, Israel relied heavily on shock and awe air power and committed an inadequate number of soldiers to the battle.
Israeli newspapers have been filled with complaints from soldiers who say some reservists weren't issued body armor while other soldiers found their equipment either inferior or inappropriate to the battlefield conditions.
Israeli troops also encountered fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas, who took a page from the Iraqi insurgents by using explosive booby traps and ambushes to inflict heavier than expected casualties on the Israelis.
Channel 2 in Israel disclosed that several top military commanders wrote a letter to Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the chief of staff, criticizing the war planning as chaotic and out of line with the combat training of the soldiers and officers. [Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2006]
One Israeli plan to use llamas to deliver supplies in the rugged terrain of south Lebanon turned into an embarrassment when the animals simply sat down.
Reporter Nahum Barnea, who traveled with an Israeli unit in south Lebanon, compared the battle to the famous Tom and Jerry cartoons with the powerful Israeli military playing the role of the cat Tom and the resourceful Hezbollah guerrillas playing the mouse Jerry. In every conflict between them, Jerry wins, Barnea wrote.
Olmert Criticized
Back in Israel, some leading newspapers have begun calling for Olmert's resignation.
If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day, the newspaper Haaretz wrote in a front-page analysis. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power.
You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month and then say, "Oops, I made a mistake." [See Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2006]
For his part, Bush spent July and early August fending off international demands for an immediate cease-fire. Bush wanted to give Olmert as much time as possible to bomb targets across Lebanon and dislodge Hezbollah forces in the south.
But instead of turning the Lebanese population against Hezbollah as Washington and Tel Aviv had hoped the devastation rallied public support behind Hezbollah.
As the month-long conflict took on the look of a public-relations disaster for Israel, the Bush administration dropped its resistance to international cease-fire demands and joined with France in crafting a United Nations plan for stopping the fighting.
Quoting a senior administration official with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, the New York Times reported that it increasingly seemed that Israel would not be able to achieve a military victory, a reality that led the Americans to get behind a cease-fire. [NYT, Aug. 12, 2006]
But the repercussions from Israel's failed Lebanon offensive are likely to continue. Olmert must now confront the political damage at home and the chief U.S. adversaries in the Middle East may be emboldened by the outcome, more than chastened.
As in the Iraq War, Bush has revealed again how reliance on tough talk and military might can sometimes undercut not build up U.S. influence in the strategically important Middle East.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
I went to check on the Liebernan web site and it's back up. It's a one page site and it has a Joe Lieberman video on it - but the video isn't being fed from his web site. It's being fed from the You Tube servers. So instead of paying for his own bandwidth Lieberman is ripping off someone else. I wonder if Youtube knows that they are making a donation to Joe Lieberman?
I suppose all cell phone compaines suck and Verizon is no different. Now they are trying to screw me on service. I have a two phone plan that I've had for over 2 years and the phones are more than paid for. Last december I changed the terms of the plan which extended my service for another year.
So - the second phone was for a friend and it costs $20/month extra to be on my plan. However she reciently had to move to Wheeling West Virginia to care for a sick aunt. We would be more than happy to keep the service except for one problem. Verizon has no coverage in Wheeling West Virginia. Not even with roaming. Zero coverage.
So - not needing the second phone anymore I contacted Verizon to cancel the second line and now they want to charge me $175 penalty for early termination. Even though the cost of keeping it is far less.
So - several issues here.
My position is that the contract is a fee for service contract and I'm paying the fee but they aren't providing the service. Wheeling WV is not some small town out in the boondocks. Wheeling is the 3rd largest city in WV with a population of 30,000 or so. Since Verizon is the nations largest cell phone provider and that AT&T has voverage there, Verizon could provide coverage as well. But they don't - so since they don't they are in breach of contract - not me.
Second - I extended the main contract but I see the add on line as an additional feature and that is a separate contract. Since the original contract is over two years old Verizon has already got enogh money to cover the cost of the phone. Since the terms of the contract would be the same regardless of if I had a second phone I don't see the obligation as applying to the second phone.
Verizon said that they would agree to drop the second line but the conditions for doing so didn't apply to our situation. They asked for a copy of the utility bill in her name. But there is no bill in her name because she is living with her dying aunt and the home and the bills are in her aunt's name. I suggested other documentation but they are not cooperating. The are insisting on the utility bill.
Furthermore I read an article where the president of Verizon has said that they were going to stop these termination charges because they were pissing off customers liike me.
I don't know if I'll win this but I will make sure Verizon loses. There are some people you fuck with and some you do't and I am a professional asshole and when someone screws with me I ensure that they lose money doing so. So because of this block Verizon will lose customers. I always make sure that corporate stupidity is never rewarded.
Several years ago MCI burned me. And I ended up doing This Interview on the CBS evening news.
With less than 100 days till elections the Republicans need to shake the boggie man and try to create some terror. Republican need terror and rigged votimg machines to win elections. With Lieberman losing it's Red Alert, new plot to blow up planes.
Lets see what this plot looks like next week. I remember the last two plots that fizzeled out into nothing. Lets see where this one goes. Expect a lot more trror as we get close to the election. Maybe they can even fet Bush's buddy Osama to make an election eve endorsement like he did in 2004.
I want to be the person at the airport who's supposed to inspect the breast milk.
If you are like me and loyal Linuxcong user you might have noticed that the web interface (http) stops working on FC5. I figured out the problem. The pam modules with Linuxconf are not compatible with Fedora Core 5. The fix is simple.
cd /etc/pam.d
rm linuxconf*
ln -s login linuxconf
ln -s login linuxconf-pair
This makes the code in login run for linuxconf. In theory it makes Linuxconf even stronger because it gives it LDAP compatibility. And it will help Linuxconf stay current with future changes.
New details are coming out about Lieberman's lie about the site hack. This Yahoo Story has some interesting new details.
The campaign spends about $100 to $150 a month on Web hosting services with MyHostCamp, said Dan Geary, who administers the site for the campaign. Geary said that MyHostCamp, which is owned by a friend of Geary's, gave the site more than enough bandwidth — 200 gigabytes a month — to handle a crush of visitors.
200 gigs a month? Is that all? If that's a hard limit it's no wonder it's down. This server that this blog is on puts out about 6000 gigs of data a month. Two years ago during the last 2 weeks of the 2004 election we put data out at a rate of 32000 gigs/month. That's over 100 times the capacity that Lieberman had, and I'm not running for Senate.
If Lieberman ran into his bandwidth caps wich considering the national attention he should have then the issue isn't an attack, but that he was just tyring to be cheap.
Additionally the tech admitted something important.
Geary acknowledged that he has no idea who hacked into the site. Lamont's campaign has denied any involvement.
So if Lieberman's tech guy admits he has no idea who is behind the attack then why is Lieberman shooting off his mouth accusing Lamont of doing it. For all he knows it could be Hezbollah or Republicans. Or most likely there wasn't an attack. They just didn't buy the bandwidth to handle the traffic. I'd say that there's no way 200 gigs a month is enough for Lieberman when 200 gigs a day is barey enough for me.
From Lieberman's web site.
UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE
STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: "For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review."
"We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."
The problem is that it's just not true. Lieberman doesn't have a dedicated server. He shares his server with hundreds of other sites that are all working fine. I tested his email and it appears to be fine as well. For more information about Lieberman's server, Click Here. I just sent an email to postmaster@joe2006.com and according to my logs it to 5 seconds to deliver it.
Of course Lieberman has called on Lamont to stop it as if Lamont has something to do with it or can control it. This is just a political ploy. Nothing More.
I remember from the first day of this war that the Bush people was saying things about this was about Syria and Iran - both of which aren't involved. They also used the term "proxy war". Generally one of the Neocon signature traits is to accuse the other side of exactly what you are up to. Israel is fighting a proxy war for America, or maybe we are Israel's proxy.
I know one thing for sure - what they are telling us to believe isn't true. But what is true is sort of a puzzle for us to solve. But without knowing who and how it's happening the intent is clear. The players involved want a far wider regional war and perhaps even a world war. I believe that Israel and America are trying to start World War 3. We have to put a stop to it.
Here's the Article from Consortium News
Three days after the May 23 summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President George W. Bush, a car bomb killed two officials of Islamic Jihad in the Lebanese city of Sidon.
Immediately, Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, denounced the murder of brothers Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub and pointed the finger at Israel as the prime suspect. On June 10, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh was arrested for the car bombing and, according to the Lebanese army, confessed that he was a Mossad agent.
Rafeh, a 59-year-old retired police officer, belonged to a “terror network working for the Israeli Mossad,” which had smuggled a booby-trapped door into Lebanon from Israel for use in the assassination, the Lebanese army said.
In retrospect, the Majzoub assassination looks to have been part of a larger U.S.-Israeli strategy – following the Olmert-Bush summit – to encourage a tit-for-tat escalation of violence that would ratchet up pressure on Palestinian and Lebanese militants – and through them their allies in Syria and Iran.
That violence also set the stage for the current Israeli-Lebanese war, which now has raged for almost one month and has claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 Lebanese and 100 Israelis.
A Year for War
According to Israeli sources, Olmert and Bush agreed at the May 23 summit to make 2006 the year for neutralizing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while deferring a border settlement with the Palestinians until 2007.
Provoking a wider regional conflict also revived hopes among Bush’s neoconservative advisers that they might yet create a “new Middle East” that would be amenable to U.S. and Israeli desires and interests.
In this context, the Israeli-Lebanese war was a confrontation looking for a pretext, not an ad hoc response to Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. That so-called “kidnapping” has been sold to the American people and many world leaders as the precipitating event for the conflict, but it now appears only to have been a trigger for a prearranged scheme.
Israeli sources indicate that Bush gave Olmert a green light for the conflict at the May 23 summit. The sources said Bush has even encouraged Israel to expand the war by attacking Syria, although Israeli leaders balked at that recommendation because they lacked an immediate justification.
One Israeli source said some Israeli officials considered Bush’s interest in an attack on Syria “nuts” since it would have been viewed by much of the world as an act of overt aggression. Bush, however, is said to still hold out hope that reactions by Syria or Iran – such as coming to the aid of Hezbollah – could open the door to a broader conflict.
In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post hinted at Bush’s continued interest in a wider war involving Syria. “Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria,” the newspaper reported.
Bush pursued a similar “pretext” war strategy in 2003 when he sought a provocation by Iraq that would give legal cover for invading that country.
A leaked British document recounted an Oval Office meeting between Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. Even as Bush was publicly telling the American people that he viewed war with Iraq as a “last resort,” he had already made up his mind and was scheming to find excuses for justifying an attack on Iraq.
According to minutes written by Blair’s top foreign policy aide David Manning, “the U.S. was thinking of flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”
Regardless of whether a casus belli could be provoked, Bush already had “penciled in” March 10, 2003, as the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq, according to the memo. “Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,” Manning wrote.
As it turned, Bush brushed aside Blair’s worries about the legality of an unprovoked invasion of Iraq and went ahead with the assault on March 19, 2003. Though Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted after a three-week U.S.-led assault, Iraqi insurgents have battled the American occupying army since then in a war that has claimed the lives of almost 2,600 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
New Ambitions
Many American observers believed that the disaster in Iraq would tamp down Bush’s ambition to remake the region. However, with Olmert’s ascension to power in Israel in 2006, Bush saw a kindred spirit who believed that military force was the only way to get Islamic adversaries to make necessary concessions.
After the May 23 meeting with Bush, Olmert declared that “this is a moment of truth” for addressing Iran’s alleged ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.
In a speech to a joint session of Congress on May 24, Olmert called the possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon “an existential threat” to Israel, meaning that Israel believed its very existence was in danger.
Two days later, the car bomb killed the Majzoub brothers in Sidon and a new cycle of escalation began. In reaction to the assassinations, Islamic militants fired rockets into Israel, which, in turn, counter-attacked killing one Hezbollah fighter.
Tensions rose further when fighting between Israelis and Palestinians resumed in Gaza. On the night of June 23, Israeli commandos crossed into Gaza and seized Osama and Mustafa Abu Muamar, two sons of Hamas activist Ali Muamar. [BBC, June 24, 2006]
Early on the morning of June 24, Hamas militants snuck into Israel via a tunnel from Gaza and attacked an Israel patrol, killing two soldiers and capturing Corporal Gilad Shalit as a part of a demand for a prisoner exchange. Israel is reported to hold about 10,000 Palestinian prisoners.
On June 27, as these tensions mounted, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was still working to advance a possible peace settlement with Israel. Abbas coaxed the more radical Hamas, which controls the Palestinian parliament, into endorsing a document proposing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Abbas’s success represented a potential breakthrough in a border settlement with Israel, since Hamas implicitly was accepting Israel as a neighbor next to an independent Palestinian state.
But the next day, June 28, Olmert sent the Israeli army crashing into Gaza to avenge the “kidnapping” of Shalit, a phrasing that the U.S. news media immediately adopted in blaming Hamas for instigating the crisis.
As the Israeli army overwhelmed scattered Palestinian resistance and began “detaining” – not “kidnapping” – Hamas legislators, tensions were also mounting on the Israeli-Lebanese border. On July 12, Hezbollah forces attacked an Israeli border outpost, killing three soldiers and capturing – or “kidnapping” – two others, also seeking a prisoner exchange.
The July 12 incident opened up the floodgates of violence. Israel launched a broad air-and-ground offensive aimed at crushing Hezbollah by blasting apart its strongholds in south Lebanon and destroying much of Lebanon’s economic infrastructure, from roads to communications. Hezbollah launched hundreds of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.
Besides the almost 1,000 Lebanese who have died, an estimated one million – or about one-fourth of Lebanon's population – were displaced from their homes. The Israeli death toll, both military and civilian, stood at about 100.
While many international leaders called for an immediate cease-fire to stop the bloodshed in July, Bush staunchly defended Israel’s actions as a legitimate act of self-defense against “terrorists.”
In an unguarded moment during the G-8 summit in Russia on July 17, Bush – speaking with his mouth full of food – told Blair “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.”
Not realizing that a nearby microphone was turned on, Bush also complained about suggestions for a cease-fire and an international peacekeeping force. “We’re not blaming Israel and we’re not blaming the Lebanese government,” Bush said, suggesting that the blame should fall on others, presumably Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
Meanwhile, John Bolton, Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the United States would only accept a multilateral U.N. force if it had the capacity to take on Hezbollah's backers in Syria and Iran.
“The real problem is Hezbollah,” Bolton said. “Would it [a U.N. force] be empowered to deal with countries like Syria and Iran that support Hezbollah?” [NYT, July 18, 2006]
‘Cease-Fire’
By early August, as rage throughout the Middle East rose to a boil, the Bush administration finally put forth a cease-fire plan. But it read as if it were designed to further stir Arab anger and extend the conflict.
While demanding that Hezbollah stop fighting and effectively disarm, it would allow Israeli forces to remain in south Lebanon and only require Israel to cease “offensive” operations. A multinational force would then replace the Israeli army and police a buffer zone carved entirely out of south Lebanon.
Bush said his cease-fire goal was to strike at the “root cause” of the conflict, the existence of Hezbollah as an armed militia inside Lebanon.
“By taking these steps, it will prevent armed militias like Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors from sparking another crisis,” Bush said at an Aug. 7 news conference in Crawford, Texas.
“The loss of life on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border has been a great tragedy,” Bush said. “Millions of Lebanese civilians have been caught in the crossfire of military operations because of the unprovoked attack and kidnappings by Hezbollah. The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is of deep concern to all Americans, and alleviating it will remain a priority of my government.”
But the reality appears to be quite different. Much as Bush told the American people that he considered war with Iraq “a last resort” long after he had decided to invade, Bush is now saying his goal is to relieve a humanitarian crisis when he actually hopes to expand the conflict and force a showdown with Syria and Iran.
While U.S. officials have been careful not to link the Lebanon conflict to any possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, they have spoken privately about using the current conflict to counter growing Iranian influence.
Only days after the Lebanon-Israel conflict began, Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that “for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East. …
“Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants – with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.” [Washington Post, July 16, 2006]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Lieberman doesn't care about archane concepts like the will of the people through democratic elections. He's smarter than us and he can't let the election results stand. "I can not and will not let that result stand," he declared. Nothing else matters to Joe because the rest of us don't matter. The only thing that's important is what he wants. It's all about Joe and what he wants.
Joe Lieberman's web site that he claimed was hacked by Lamont is still down today. When you go to his web page at http://joe2006.com it redirects you here:
http://server1.myhostcamp.com/suspended.page/
Notice the URL is called "suspended.page" which implies that this is not a hacked site, it's a suspended page. That supports the theory that Lieberman got suspended for not paying his bill. So if he called the cops and the FBI in over this he filed a false police report. We need to call the bastard on this lie.
Also - this site is on a shared server with hundreds of other sites. All the other sites are still online. So there's no server damage or denial of service attack. So - think about it - all the other sites are up and Lieberman's site is redirected to a "suspended" page. And - after 40 hours it's still not back up? What does that tell you?
Now that we have defeated Lieberman it's time that the Democrats get the message that we are against the war, against Bush, and against sucking up to the right wing. We aren't going to support Democtats who are in the pockets of big oil, tobacco companie, and vote for tax breaks for the rich.
Our valuse are important and our resources are limited. So we should only support those Democratic candidates who are worthy of support. We should contribute to candidates of our choosing and not to organizations who just fund incumbent dems regardless of their position on important issues like the war. So if the DCCC doesn't take an anti-war stand and Move-on does then give to Move-on. We also need to give to the Democratic organizations who helped defeat Lieberman and to make it clear that Democrats aren't going to get our support unless they are more than just not being a Republican.
Here's the site I've been looking for that has the Real Story about Lieberman's web site.
"Update: DailyKos points out that none of the other 73 sites hosted on that same server are down. That really kills the credibility of the Lieberman campaign claiming it was a DoS attack."
If there was an attack all the web sites on that server would be down. And if someone copied over Liebermans site it only takes a few minutes to restore from backups.
I don't know what's really happening but I know what's not happening and that's Lieberman's version. Someone needs to ask the hosting company for an explanation.
Letter to the Editor
Anti-war activist Ned Lamont, a political unknown who has never held public office has won over a pro-war Democrat Joe Lieberman, who just 6 years ago was almost elected vice president. Clearly the people are sending a message that we are against the war, we are against Bush, and we are going to vote out Democrat collaborators who support a right wing agenda. The time has come for the people to rise up against this failed congress and vote the bums out. If you are a Democrat or a Republican it's time that you get the message. No to war, no to Bush. If you don't get it then we'll replace you with someone who does.
Being a web host myself I'm not buying this story that Jieberman's site was hacked story. His site has been down far too long for that excuse. Unless he is totally incompetent all you have to do is restore from backups and put it back online. If someone hacked any site on my servers it would take me less that 10 minutes to restore.
The other version, that he didn't pay his bill is more likely. Many vendors get stiffed by politicians during elections. If the vendor wasn't paid and thought he was going to get screwed then he might pull the site. There are blogs out there that captured the original message that his site was pulled for not paying his bill.
Lieberman's accusation that he seems to know that Lamont did it is just an election day ploy. Even if he were hacked, how whould he know who did it?
The WHOIS data on the joe2006.com site is interesting.
Friends of Joe Lieberman
P.O. Box 231294
Hartford, CT 06123
US
Domain Name: JOE2006.COM
Administrative Contact:
Diana Fassbender fassbenderdw@yahoo.com
Friends of Joe Lieberman
P.O. Box 231294
Hartford, ct 06123
US
Phone: 203-449-7365
Fax:
Technical Contact:
Domain Administrator hostmaster@securesites.com
Friends of Joe Lieberman
PO Box 3895
Englewood, CO 80155
US
Phone: +180.14370220
Fax:
Billing Contact:
Diana Fassbender fassbenderdw@yahoo.com
Friends of Joe Lieberman
P.O. Box 231294
Hartford, ct 06123
US
Phone: 203-449-7365
Fax:
Record updated on 2005-09-03 13:33:00
Record created on 2002-06-23
Record expires on 2007-06-23
Database last updated on 2006-08-08 16:23:29 EST
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.THEPLANET.COM 207.44.128.228,207.44.128.229,70.86.61.133,70.86.61.134,70.87.7.70,70.87.7.71
NS2.THEPLANET.COM 207.44.128.230,207.44.128.231,70.86.61.135,70.86.61.136,70.87.7.72,70.87.7.73
TransferGuard LOCK Status => DISABLED
Notice the transfer lock as disabled. That's just a little sloppy for a political candidate.
Letter to the Editor
If a Jewish man is drunk leaving a bar and his friend takes his car keys refusing to allow him to drive home drunk, is that antisemitism? Of course not! Israel has engaged in a war that is very very wrong and this war is bad for Israel. The bigger their military success the worse it will be in the long run. Supporting this war is against the best interest of Israel. Opposing this war is in the best interest of Israel. I therefore say that it is not those who of us who oppose this war who are antisemitic. It is the supporters of this war who are. True friends keep you from self harm, not encourage it.
Letter to the Editor
The Republicans say that the Democrats are weak on terror. Perhaps they are right. Democrats have never terrified me that way Republicans have.
Letter to the Editor
If Israel doesn't respect Lebanon's right to exist then how can Israel expect the rest of the world to recognize its right to exist? If you can't play nice with your neighbors then you might get find yourself getting kicked out of the neighborhood.