On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command [Operating Environment 2008] report, the Army includes Israel within “a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east.”

. . . writes Bryan Jordan recently at DefenseTech. He speculates that, although Israel’s nuclear weapons program has been an open secret since even before former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu disclosed details to the British press in 1986, this may be the first time that the United States has publicly acknowledged it. Though. . . Full Story »

Young Mr. Bush and his handlers managed to squander more than two centuries of American progress. Two interminable armed conflicts and the economic collapse they produced left President Obama with the worst combination of foreign and domestic policy disasters in our country’s history. He faces a conundrum; he needs to take care of the economic problems first, but they won’t fully heal until he straightens out the tangled web of war Bush created in the Middle East. Unfortunately, he made very bad decisions when he chose his foreign policy cabinet secretaries. Full Story »

Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link)

Shashank Bengali, McClatchy News, Israel’s destruction of U.S.-style school shocks Gazans:

“It seems that targeting our school . . . was one of the very few things that fanatic groups and Israel could agree on,” said Sharhabeel al Zaeem, a member of the school’s board of directors. … Yet of the 25 schools and hospitals that Israeli forces hit during the 22-day war, according to a tally by Palestinian officials, only the American International School was destroyed.

Why did they do it? No one to stop them.

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It’s fitting that as young Mr. Bush exited the world stage, the military pardoned itself for lying about his woebegone wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. A report released on January 16 by the Pentagon’s inspector general stated, “we found the evidence insufficient to conclude that RMA (retired military analysts) outreach activities were improper,” and concluded that further investigation into the matter “was not warranted.”

The RMA program flew under the radar until an April 2008 New York Times article revealed that the Pentagon had recruited media military analysts for a “campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.” The article discomfited the Pentagon I.G. office into launching an investigation of the RMA program—nearly six years after it had been initiated. The I.G. report, posted on the Pentagon’s web site the Friday before the inauguration so everyone would be sure to notice it, explained, “the evidence in this case was insufficient to conclude” that RMA activities “violated statutory prohibitions on publicity or propaganda,” but conceded that the judgment had been difficult to arrive at because “the definition of propaganda in this context remains unclear.”

So it all depends what your definition of “propaganda” is. I feel the I.G.’s pain, don’t you?

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Links of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link)

Bill Simmons, ESPN.com, the Sports Guy, on the airliner guided to a crash-landing in the Hudson River:

And was anyone else on a “what will be the New York Post headline?” e-mail chain Thursday? My pick was “FLY-TANIC!!!”

Gideon Levy, Haaretz:

No pilot or soldier went to war to kill children. Not one among them intended to kill children, but it also seems neither did they intend not to kill them. They went to war after the IDF had already killed 952 Palestinian children and adolescents since May 2000. Full Story »

Few conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seem restrained by reason; worse, someone inevitably tosses out the word “Zionism” in some form or another.  Things generally go to hell after that.  “Antisemitism” follows closely on the invocation of the dreaded Zionist, and from then on the “conversation” too often becomes a matter of person A proving that person B hates Jews and person B either defending himself or cloaking actual antisemitism in the guise of being anti-Zionist.  All sorts of proofs and arguments follow from both sides.  I like to call it the good Jew/bad Jew routine.

It was recently suggested that a glossary of terms should be developed.  Unfortunately, many of these terms are subjective and a true glossary would need to be provided by each user of the word.  But the call to duty was raised and i’ve supplemented what i already knew with some quality time at Mid-East Web, the Jewish Virtual Library, and E-Zion.  I purposefully did not visit “anti-Zionist” resources because i don’t really believe that there’s a Zionist in my closet or that a shadowy cabal of powerful, Jewish bankers is plotting the domination/destruction of the planet.  I don’t believe in Leprechauns either.

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“Leave them nothing but their eyes to cry with.”

– Attributed to a Union colonel of the Civil War serving as an adviser to the Prussian General Staff during the Franco-Prussian War.

The United Nations has called for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza strip.Pope Benedict XVI has also called for a ceasefire, and senior Vatican official Cardinal Renato Martino describes Gaza as “a big concentration camp.” Full Story »

It was while reading Gareth Porter’s latest piece at IPS News, Israel Rejected Hamas Ceasefire Offer in December — Israel at its peremptory best — that it occurred to us. Porter wrote:

In the first days after the ceasefire took effect [in June 2008], Islamic Jihad fired nine rockets. … In August another eight rockets were fired by various groups [and] only one rocket was launched from Gaza in September and one in October.

Contrary to Israel’s argument that it was forced to [retaliate] against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original. . . ceasefire arrangement.

Porter adds that Hamas even tried to make other Palestinian groups abide by the ceasefire, detaining and confiscating the weapons of those in violation. But on November 4. . . Full Story »

You’ve probably heard this story by now. . .

From the Washington Post:

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children — emaciated but alive — in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip and accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the site for four days.

You think my subject line was sacrilegious? Paul Woodward didn’t pull any punches either at War in Context with the heading to his link to the WaPo story: “Israel provides Palestinians with snacks as it takes massacre rest breaks.” Full Story »

Thanks to investigative journalist Gareth Porter we know that in January 2006, when Hamas won a 56 percent majority in the Palestinian parliamentary election, the Bush administration initiated actions to overturn the election results. It coerced the UN, the European Union and Russia into demanding that Hamas “disarm” before a political solution could be reached between Palestine and Israel.

This is a signal characteristic of administration’s behavior in foreign affairs: require the target to cede its bargaining chips as a precondition of negotiations. In the case of Iran, the “offer they must refuse” is the demand that they give up their UN guaranteed “inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear development. The administration gave Hamas an ultimatum to bare its throat to an armed and U.S. backed Israel, a move that would have been suicidal. Given the overwhelming preponderance of the Israelis’ actions and rhetoric over the past three years, I see no way to avoid the conclusion that they consider genocide of a defenseless adversary to be a perfectly legitimate course of action.

And it looks like they can get away with it for at least as long as George W. Bush is in office. Full Story »

Gaza is now full blown.  The US of A blocked the Security Council resolution…will wonders never cease?  And still no word from the president to be, who’s now in D.C. and must have full knowledge of the situation.  By “full knowledge” i mean the kind that you can’t read in the newspaper.

I’m either the best or worst type of commentator for this situation.  I don’t have a dog in this fight.  And while i can see some point to both sides being right, i mostly see both sides being terribly, terribly wrong.  The more pressing issues are, as usual, buried under the weight of politics, punditry, and personal animosity.

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I don’t know if there’s a good guy in the Gaza Strip travesty; if there is one, it sure isn’t young Mr. Bush, or Lord Cheney, or Keystone Kondi Rice, or, lamentably, Barack Obama, and it sure as h-e-double hockey sticks isn’t Israel.

Speaking of perdition, somebody needs to throw another handful of clean coal in the brazier under Yasser Arafat, and hopefully someone has confirmed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s reservation for the spot next to Arafat’s. Bush and Kondi and Lord Cheney and Bad Will Ambassador John Bolton must be looking forward to occupying adjoining rooms with a view of the inferno in the LBJ Hilton, because they appear bent on squeezing in as much last minute evil as they can before a house drops on them. Full Story »

“Hamas. … deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people. … This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage — or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb — will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.” [Emphasis added.]

We’re all familiar with this argument, made in this case by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post today. You often hear it from those who reflexively support Israeli offensives, as well as conservatives in general on the subject of urban warfare. Full Story »

I’m continually appalled, although no longer surprised, by what both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (”the conflict” from now on) are willing to do. Islamic Jihad sends a suicide bomber and blows up a bus loaded with Israelis who’s only crime is being Israeli – Israel bulldozes the bomber’s family’s home. Israeli special forces assassinate a leader of Hamas – Hamas responds with Katyusha rockets launched willy-nilly at Israeli towns. Hezbollah kidnaps Israeli soldiers – Israel invades Lebanon and cluster bombs on entire Lebanese villages.

It’s been going on for so long now that we can’t even assign blame anymore. I got pull-off-the-road-and-calm-down furious on Monday when, in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered Monday afternoon, a Gaza politician claimed that either a) Israeli collaborators had launched the rockets into Israel as a pretext or b) there had been no launches at all and Israel was faking the whole thing. And I got just as furious this morning when I the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. refused to admit that Israeli commandos had been assassinating Hamas leaders during the cease fire in yet another NPR interview.

Hammurabi came up with the first written code of laws – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And the result of following that law is that Israelis and Palestinians have each become toothless, blind, deaf, mute, and stupid. Full Story »

The Jew, I said. Not the Israeli.

Though raised Catholic, my father was Jewish (Lithuanian and Romanian). The most WASP-ish Jew you’ll ever meet, though, he imparted none of his ancestral religion to me. My wife, who’s of Scot-Irish descent, likes to joke that she knows more about Judaism than me.

But whenever Israel launches an offensive against Palestine, it brings the Jewish in me to the fore. Full Story »

We got through Christmas without having NORAD accidently blow Santa out of the sky, but don’t let your guard down yet. While visions of sugarplums danced in our heads, the Pentagon flew another escalation strategy under the radar. On the eve of Christmas Eve, Dexter Filkins of the New York Times reported “Taking a page from the successful experiment in Iraq, American commanders and Afghan leaders are preparing to arm local militias to help in the fight against a resurgent Taliban.”

Merry Christmas, fellow citizens. Odds are now almost certain that your country will be in a state of war throughout your lifetimes, and possibly throughout your children’s lifetimes as well. Full Story »

Last week, at a meeting of his country’s ruling party, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused Iran of “trying to devour the Arab states.” Don’t worry, Hosni. Iran won’t eat you. It can’t. It can’t sit on you either. It’s too far away.

What led Mubarak to say such a mean thing about Iran? Well, it seems that a bunch of Iranian students shouted a bunch of mean things at the Egyptian embassy in Tehran, including their apparently genuine wish that someone would hang Mubarak. The Iranian students shouted mean things about Mubarak because Egypt wouldn’t let the Iranian Red Crescent sneak around Israel’s blockade of the Gaza strip and deliver food and supplies to Palestinians, who have been reduced to eating grass. Full Story »

In “Yes We Can,” his response to the skepticism he expected Al Gore’s speech to be met with, the New York Times’ Bob Herbert writes: “When exactly was it that the U.S. became a can’t-do society?”

Naomi Klein on the ease of accessing Iraq’s oil, as opposed to elsewhere: “. . . stick a straw in the ground and suck.”

Don Banks of Si.com on Brett Favre’s appearance on Greta Van Susteren’s show: “For a minute there I thought Favre might have some new information on the Natalee Holloway disappearance.” Full Story »

On Tuesday night, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and Newshour with Jim Lehrer presented two telling examples of how omitting information shapes public perception with regard to civilian casualties.

With Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel, Williams explored the possible outcome of a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran:

WILLIAMS: Despite all the denials, what happens if a military strike takes place?

ENGEL: Well, it all has to do with geography. Iran is in an incredibly strategic location. The Straits of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil shipping routes. Iran has threatened to disrupt traffic in the Straits of Hormuz. In Iraq, the situation has been somewhat calmer recently, but Iranian-backed militias in Iraq could quickly destabilize the situation there. And in Israel, Iran has allies in both in Lebanon – Hezbollah – and in the Gaza Strip. Iran is talking about creating a line of fire from Tehran all the way to Jerusalem. Full Story »

I know that I speak for all Americans. We’ll do everything necessary to try and rebuild their lives.

— Republican presidential candidate John McCain while inspecting flooding in Columbus Junction, Iowa, a town of 1,900 people; June 20; emphasis added.

The country stands with you. We’ll do all in our power to help you.

— President Bush, addressing residents of the Gulf Coast at the end of a Rose Garden press briefing on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; Aug. 31, 2005; emphasis added.
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