moses

we already knew that, dont know about majority of the scoobynet

here goes


http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Sto...844021,00.html



Bush 'helped Israeli attack on Lebanon'

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian


The US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raids in July. American and Israeli officials met in the spring, discussing plans on how to tackle Hizbullah, according to a report published yesterday.
The veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine that Israeli government officials travelled to the US in May to share plans for attacking Hizbullah.

Quoting a US government consultant, Hersh said: "Earlier this summer ... several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, 'to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear'."

The Israeli action, current and former government officials told Hersh, chimed with the Bush administration's desire to reduce the threat of possible Hizbullah retaliation against Israel should the US launch a military strike against Iran.

"A successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign ... could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations," sources told Hersh.

Yesterday Mr Hersh told CNN: "July was a pretext for a major offensive that had been in the works for a long time. Israel's attack was going to be a model for the attack they really want to do. They really want to go after Iran."

An unnamed Pentagon consultant told Hersh: "It was our intention to have Hizbullah diminished and now we have someone else doing it."

Officials from the state department and the Pentagon denied the report. A spokesman for the National Security Council told Hersh that "The Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack."

Hersh has a track record in breaking major stories. He was the first to write about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and has written extensively about the build-up to the war in Iraq. He made his name when he uncovered the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war. Most recently he has written about US plans for Iran, alleging that US special forces had already been active inside the country.

DCI Gene Hunt

Your point? assuming anyone gives a ****............

moses

yes plenty do here give a ****


its for them

DCI Gene Hunt

Were the attempted airport bombings for them also?........

Mick

iTrader: (1)

Hersh an 'investigative journalist' - has been putting these sort of stories about for ages... http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/...ess/index.html

- from unnamed sources

Quote:

BLITZER: Do you want to name names?
HERSH: Are you kidding?
BLITZER: I'm giving you the opportunity.
HERSH: No. You know why? Because this is a punitive government right now. This is a government that pretty much has its back against the wall, as you've been saying all morning, in Iraq.
And in the military -- you know, one thing about our military is they're very loyal to the president, but they're getting to the edge. They're getting to the edge with not only [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld but also with [Vice President Dick] Cheney and the president.
BLITZER: The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was asked earlier today about this nuclear option, if you will, to deal with Iran's potential nuclear program. ... He didn't mince any words: "[The idea of a nuclear strike on Iran is] completely nuts" in his words. You want to react to that?
HERSH: Well, what he didn't say -- he didn't deny that there's serious planning about the military strike is the point. I mean, he's absolutely right about a nuclear option, but there is serious planning for a conventional war.

This sort of thing is how these guys make a living... Lots of hype to sell papers...

moses

excellent article by robert fisk


http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle14536.htm



As the 6am ceasefire takes effect... the real war begins

By Robert Fisk

08/14/06 "The Independent" -- -- The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

In all, at least 39 - possibly 43 - Israeli soldiers have been killed in the past day as Hizbollah guerrillas, still launching missiles into Israel itself, have fought back against Israel's massive land invasion into Lebanon.

Israeli military authorities talked of "cleaning" and "mopping up" operations by their soldiers south of the Litani river but, to the Lebanese, it seems as if it is the Hizbollah that have been doing the "mopping up". By last night, the Israelis had not even been able to reach the dead crew of a helicopter - shot down on Saturday night - which crashed into a Lebanese valley.

Officially, Israel has now accepted the UN ceasefire that calls for an end to all Israeli offensive military operations and Hizbollah attacks, and the Hizbollah have stated that they will abide by the ceasefire - providing no Israeli troops remain inside Lebanon. But 10,000 Israeli soldiers - the Israelis even suggest 30,000, although no one in Beirut takes that seriously - have now entered the country and every one of them is a Hizbollah target.

From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

Israel itself, according to reports from Washington and New York, had long planned its current campaign against Lebanon - provoked by Hizbollah's crossing of the Israeli frontier, its killing of three soldiers and seizure of two others on 12 July - but the Israelis appear to have taken no account of the guerrilla army's most obvious operational plan: that if they could endure days of air attacks, they would eventually force Israel's army to re-enter Lebanon on the ground and fight them on equal terms.

Hizbollah's laser-guided missiles - Iranian-made, just as most Israeli arms are US-made - appear to have caused havoc among Israeli troops on Saturday, and their downing of an Israeli helicopter was without precedent in their long war against Israel

In theory, aid convoys will be able to move south today to the thousands of Lebanese Shia trapped in their villages but no one knows whether the Hizbollah will wait for several days - they, like the Israelis, are physically tired - to allow that help to reach the crushed towns.

Atrocities continue across Lebanon, the most recent being the attack on a convoy of cars carrying 600 Christian families from the southern town of Marjayoun. Led by soldiers of the Lebanese army, they trailed north on Saturday up the Bekaa valley only to be assaulted by Israeli aircraft. At least seven were killed, including the wife of the mayor, a Christian woman who was decapitated by a missile that hit her car.

In west Beirut yesterday, the Israeli air force destroyed eight apartment blocks in which six families were living. Twelve civilians were killed in southern Lebanon, including a mother, her children and their housemaid.

An Israeli was killed by Hizballoh's continued Katyusha fire across the border. The guerrilla army - "terrorists" to the Israelis and Americans but increasingly heroes across the Muslim world - have many dead to avenge, although their leadership seems less interested in exacting an eye for an eye and far more eager to strike at Israel's army.

At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

"The Lebanese government is our address for every problem or violation of the [ceasefire] agreement," Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday, as if realising the truce would not hold.

And that, of course, provides yet another excuse for Israel to attack the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon.

Far more worrying, however, are the vague terms of the UN Security Council's resolution on the multinational force supposed to occupy land between the Israeli border and the Litani river.

For if the Israelis and the Hizbollah are at war across the south over the coming weeks, what country will dare send its troops into the jungle that southern Lebanon will have become?

Tragically, and fatally for all involved, the real Lebanon war does indeed begin today.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

moses

this is an brilliant article


http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle14535.htm
Ceasefire or Trojan Horse?

By Mike Whitney

“Israel’s strategy is to establish positions as far north as possible to implement a fighting withdrawal, meaning they will try to take on as much of Hezbollah as they can as they work their way south. “ Ha’aretz editorial 8-17-06
“As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land, it is our natural right to fight them and defend our lands, our homes, and ourselves.” Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese armed resistance Hezbollah


08/14/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Israel’s sudden push to the Litani River is a blatant act of political desperation intended to conceal the humiliating defeat the IDF has suffered at the hands of Hezbollah. It comes in the wake of a UN ceasefire agreement worked out by friends of Israel in the Bush administration who were looking for a diplomatic way for Olmert to climb down from Israel’s greatest debacle since the Yom Kippur war.

The so-called ceasefire is tailored to stop the victim of Israeli aggression from defending himself, but provides the IDF with the go-ahead to continue its rampage. Such is the Kafkaesque logic of the United Nations and their puppet-masters in Tel Aviv.

There is no longer any reasonable expectation that Israel will accomplish any of its stated objectives. The mighty IDF has been slapped around by a handful of tough-minded guerillas who kept Israel pinned-down to within a 5 mile radius of the northern border for a full month. It is, without question, one of the greatest triumphs in the history of asymmetrical warfare.

Hezbollah will not be “disarmed” as Ehud Olmert boasted just weeks ago. Instead, their fortunes look to be steadily improving as Israel continues to flail about dropping bombs indiscriminately on critical infrastructure and civilians with impunity. The conflict has simply reinforced widely-held suspicions that the Jewish State is a loose-cannon ready to go berserk at the slightest provocation.

Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz have been the brunt of withering criticism in the Israeli press, and for good reason. They are, without question, the worst collection of bunglers in Israeli history; the political equivalent of the “3 Stooges”. Sharon may have been a war criminal, but he was an astute strategist. Olmert and “wrongway” Halutz are completely clueless. As soon as it was decided that the war could not be won militarily, Halutz charged up to the Litani River backed by thousands ground-troops afraid that his chances for glory were quickly ebbing-away. In the process, another 31 soldiers were killed in a campaign that still has no clearly defined objectives. Meanwhile, Shaul Mofaz, the only Israeli general who could probably transform the current disaster into something resembling “a draw”; is left sitting on the sidelines.

What a fiasco.

Now that the ceasefire has been approved, the politicians and the generals are stumbling over themselves trying to cobble together the victory that has escaped them for the last 4 weeks. Olmert and co. know that as soon as the dust settles they will face an irate Israeli public looking for someone to hold accountable for the debacle. Ha’aretz op-ed writer Ari Shavit summed up the public mood this way:

“One thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. 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, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say, oooops, I made a mistake.”

Columnist Moshe Arens added to Shavit’s critique saying, “The task facing Israel now is to restore its deterrent posture and prepare for the attacks that are sure to come. But not with this leadership. They have exhausted whatever little credit they had when they were voted into office.”

The anger that is growing in Israel is narcissistic and self-serving and has nothing to do with the vast devastation the IAF has visited on battered Lebanon.

Lebanon is in ruins. The country’s main bridges, roads, industries, ports, canals, telecommunications, oil depots, water facilities and factories have been buried by a steady barrage of Israeli precision guided munitions. George Bush can be credited with a large part of the damage. He rushed an order of high-tech bombs to his friends in Tel Aviv to make sure that the slaughter would continue without interruption. He also blocked the ceasefire resolutions at the UN which allowed Israel to continue its withering bombardment of Lebanon.

The UN ceasefire agreement was clearly written in close collaboration with Israel. It allows the IDF to continue “defensive operations” while Hezbollah is required to stop fighting. Israel interprets this as a green light for aggressively pursuing Hezbollah.

According to Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, “The army will stop its offensive as soon as it is ordered to do so by the political leadership and later it will begin to retrace its steps to uncover any pockets of resistance that may remain in the area.” With troops presently located at the Litani River that could involve military operations throughout the entire south, which means that hostilities could continue for months.

Israel is at war with itself. It’s trying to produce a victory where victory is impossible. With less than 24 hours until the ceasefire goes into effect, they’ve unleashed a massive aerial assault bombing more than 50 cities and towns north and south of the Litani River. The bombing campaign drew the immediate censure of Kofi Annan who said that the attack was not in keeping with the spirit of the ceasefire.

No matter. Israel will keep firing away; savaging what little is left of Lebanon’s tattered infrastructure in the vain hope that they might patch together something that resembles success, but to what affect? Hezbollah may be badly damaged and its supply-lines ruptured, but they merely need to hang on to generate a reliable stream of new recruits and to win plaudits from around the world for standing up to the IDF.

Prime Minister Olmert is ambivalent about the sudden military escalation just prior to the ceasefire. Clearly, the war is controlling Olmert; Olmert does not control the war. The uproar in the media has left him vacillating and hesitant; searching for other solutions besides a quick withdrawal. He looks like a man gabbing at straws, hoping for a decisive event that will prove that Hezbollah is weakening. Meanwhile the IDF casualties continue to mount and the collective angst of the Israeli public becomes more palpable.

As for Sheik Nasrallah, he has resisted the usual inflammatory rhetoric and demonstrated Hezbollah’s lethal proficiency on the battlefield where it counts. The guerillas have matched the IDF man-for-man and forced the world’s 4th most powerful army into a stalemate.

In the early days of the war, Nasrallah described Hezbollah’s abilities in modest terms:

“We are not a classic army extending form the sea to Mt Hermon. We are a popular and serious resistance movement that is present in many areas and axes. Our equation and principles are the following: When the Israelis enter, they must pay dearly in terms of their tanks, officers, and soldiers. That is what we pledge to do and we will honor our pledge, God willing”.

Olmert should study this passage and commit it to memory. Nasrallah has laid out his very limited goals in the war in lucid but powerful language. These are realistic objectives and they are achievable, unlike Israel’s. That’s why he will probably prevail, if he perseveres. Nasrallah does not entertain the foolish idea that he will overwhelm the IDF or invade Israel. He simply plans to gnaw away day by day, hour by hour, at the occupying army forcing them eventually to retreat. He is a shrewd student of asymmetrical warfare and grasps how to exploit the vulnerabilities of a regular army as well as Israeli public opinion (which is already souring on the conflict)

Nasrallah has said that he will abide by the terms of the ceasefire, but will not disarm until the Lebanese Army and the UN forces are in place and the IDF has left Lebanese soil. In his mind, it is pointless to talk about disarmament now when Hezbollah is the only force capable of defending Lebanon from foreign invasion.

Will Hezbollah willingly disarm after Israel leaves?

That is what Israel wonders, but it is the wrong question. The real question is: What are the chances that the IDF will reinvade sometime in the future as they have 4 times before? And, who will provide the weaponry that will create a viable deterrent to Israeli aggression so that Lebanon can live in peace?

Nasrallah’s promises to disarm mean nothing. His primary responsibility is to his own people, to protect their right to live free of Israeli violence and occupation.

If Sheik Nasrallah chooses to disarm and put his faith in Israel’s assurances of non aggression, that’s his choice. But he should pay close attention to the treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza before he sets his rifle down.

DCI Gene Hunt

Insult Law
By Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder
Published 2/14/2006 12:08:58 AM

The Muslims have pronounced their verdict. The cartoon man has been found guilty. The real crime is, of course, not being a Muslim. Now that they have established the crime, they have also pronounced the sentence. Even if you never saw or heard of the cartoon, you deserve to be hit with rocks, your car wrecked, and your embassies destroyed because you are an infidel -- and incidentally, there are no appeals. There was even television coverage of a Muslim religious leader screaming in some unintelligible language. However, on the bottom of the screen the translation appeared. This religious leader was shouting that whoever drew the cartoon should have his hands cut off. This hardly seems for us to be a reasonable penalty for somebody taking a piece of paper, picking up a pen, and drawing something.

Could you picture a Jew doing something like this? Ironically, the cartoonists were not even condemning Islam, they were merely creating a satire of a terrorist. They weren't insulting their religion, they were satirizing a fanatic. But, the Muslims have decided that there are no laws, limits, or boundaries that apply to their behavior. They not only have the right to take your life, they now have the right to rob you of your freedom of expression.

Could you picture a Jew killing anybody for such meaningless reasons? If a Jew gets mad he might sneak into your house and steal your lipitor or he would make a deal with your doctor to lie about your cholesterol number, or just when you have fasted a whole day on Yom Kippur when you finally could eat you would find that he snuck into your house and stole all your pastrami sandwiches.

I never saw a Jew going into meaningless fights. That is why you seldom see Jewish football players. A Jew is not going to take a chance in spraining his neck or tearing a ligament in his knee or wrinkling his clothes just because he was fighting with somebody about catching a ball. He would rather go to a store and buy another ball and avoid the whole problem. That is why there are also no Jewish hockey players. Hockey players spend all their time hitting each other in the mouth with sticks. When Jews saw how Gentiles played hockey that is how Jews found out that instead of becoming a hockey player they would become dentists, and that way they decided to let other people play the game while they found a way to make a profit from it.

Jews are never known to get into unnecessary physical battles. That is why people are never afraid of being attacked by a Jew. Did you ever hear anybody say, "Don't go into that neighborhood it is very dangerous, there are a lot of Jews there?" Jews have for so long been accustomed to being threatened and persecuted all over the world that they could never dream of creating needless violence anywhere because they would be grateful to even find a place where they are allowed to live in peace. Jews could never dream of threatening innocent people with inexcusable violence. Meanwhile the rest of the world is reacting to the Muslims with an amazing cowardice. Instead of a collective fury, we are pleading for forgiveness, and promising not to offend them with any more cartoons. Could anything be more perverted? The same people who are not offended by suicide bombers and terrorist killings, murder, mayhem, and destruction around the world have now decided that a cartoon... "OY VEY IS THIS TERRIBLE!"

Everyday Muslim and European newspapers insult and degrade Jews as animals and rodents, which is not only insulting but, additionally, encourages the hatred of Jews. But did you ever hear any Jewish authority anywhere demanding that we find any of these cartoonists so that we can choke them to death or cut them up. Did you ever hear of an Israeli death squad searching for a cartoonist? If the Jewish people applied the same insult standard requiring a death sentence no Muslim would be safe now, anywhere in the world. Could you picture a Jew deciding that he has the right to kill but you have no right to draw an insulting picture?

Nobody has ever died from a cartoon. If the worst thing the ***** ever did had been to draw cartoons of death camps instead of putting Jews in them, six million Jews would be alive today. When was the last time any country decided to kill a Muslim anywhere in the world because they felt insulted? But the Muslims have created a new international law called the "insult law." This means they have the right to kill you whenever they please, and you have no right to do anything about it. If a Muslim were walking down a street in Israel with a picture of an insulting cartoon in hand, no Israeli would threaten his life. They would be too busy celebrating the fact that it was a cartoon and not a bomb.

Mick

iTrader: (1)

Priceless!

KiwiGTI

You've gotta give that to them, the Jews have a much better sense of humour than the Muslims (who don't appear to have one)

The Zohan

You say that but i am sharing a place (for two weeks) with a muslim guy who loves Little Britian - go figure!

I think it depends on the subject matter as to how good the sense of humour is. as with most people.

DCI Gene Hunt

Hope you have one when he starts bringing his backpacks and bottled water home.............

unclebuck

A programme that takes the pi$$ out of the English. That's exactly what they enjoy most. They are certainly taking the pi$$ at the moment.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I still dont understand how the cartoon were about the Profit Mohammed when we arent allowed drawings so nobody knows what he looks like, did it say somethere on him, if not this is bad as we could drop the word that Shaggy out of Scooby Doo is meant to be him as well, Zoiks !

sociopath

Tell me, when something disagreeable happens do you repeatedly beat and slap your head and wail like a banshee in the street? I just love it when they do that!

The Zohan

LMAO!

I will keep this in mind!

I have not seen it so cannot comment, if so then this is not right and should not be allowed to continue, surley incitement to racial hatred spriings to mind. If the roles where reversed then i am sure all hell would let loose - a bit like the cartoons!


FYI


A (white european) guy i work with just got back (today) to Dubai after a few days in the uk and commented on the feeling of resentment towards Muslims and in particular Asian Muslims.