As I suspected would eventually happen - Sharon has tested George Jr again by escalating the conflict - this time to the ultimate taboo. He has attempted to murder Arafat using helicopter gunships and other military equipment. George Jr has given permission by his 'inaction'. Any attempt to murder Arafat sits right on the head of our President who could have stopped all these military attacks with one phone call. Instead, George Jr sat on his hands.

Why is it that Republican conservatives fully support the Israelis and outrightly encourage attacks on Muslims? Maybe this quote a few Augusts ago by another Replublican extremist on his '700 Club' explains an attitude of right wing extemist Republicans:
Only a religious racist would say such things - such as a conservative Republican religious leader. Is that also true of all Republican extreme conservatives who would encourage the assassination of an Islamic leader?

Today is a very black day for everyone who wants peace in the Middle East because it makes America an enemy to all Arab 'men in the street'. We, or more specificially our President, is the main reason that Sharon is in power and attempting to murder a world leader.

blah blah blah...yawn. typical liberal rhetoric, vast conspiracy theories, politicians hellbent on the destruction of the world, etc. yet, absolutely no facts, just another over opinionated individual (i use this term very loosely) with too much time on their hands.

To any Palestinians or Arabs that might read this:

I am not your enemy. I like everybody. Please don't hate me.

Love, Sycamore

ohh it seems we've collected our first diehard right winger here. This should be fun. I neither support or dislike Arafat, he is irrelevant, the sheer bloody-mindedness of Sharon (here the latest quote "anyone dealing with the Palestinians should first inflict heavy losses on them" (that might be a slight misquote)) has driven peace out of reach other either side while Israel wrings its hands and realises that they can’t kill all of them after all. It’s a bit like Vietnam, kill them all you want but they will keep coming because they are just *far too pissed of to care* to words of the infamous General Giap come to mind
Q: how long would you have considered continuing to fight the Americans?
Giap: Another twenty years, maybe one hundred as long as it took to win, regardless of the cost. The cost was over 1 million soldiers dead.
I'm sure Hamas have read his book on how to mount an insurrection for underdeveloped countries.

So bruteforce, what's you take on the situation? Or does your name say it all?

Yes. Yes... 'blah blah blah...yawn' is a marvellous example of cold hard facts.

I am always charmed by the intellectual neatness of dismissing somebody else's arguments by babbling "typical liberal rhetoric" or "typical right-wing blow-hard".

They're just such compelling arguments, clearly demonstrating the individual's ability at putting his point across in a concise and non-dogmatic fashion.

Hurrah for reason!
Hurrah for sense!
Hurrah for stream-of-consciousness writing devoid of proper grammatical structure, normal capitalization, or logical punctuation!
Hurrah for laughing at others simply because reading their long postings gives you headaches!

X.

King just didn't get it. "An eye for an eye" was a way of STOPPING vendetta. Someone takes out your eye, you take out his as retribution, AND IT STOPS THERE. You still both have an eye left.

Israel and the Palestinians are in another situation. Both sides keep using the same failed tactics and seem surprised when they keep failing. Some Palestinians shoot or blow up a few Israelis, the Israelis take revenge against some other random group of Palestinians, and imposes various sanctions on all Palestinians. All that does it get both sides pissed off. That's not justice, even of Hammurabi's sort; it's insanity. The Palestinians are never going to get rid of Israel with suicide bombings, and the Israeli's are never going to stop them or even slow them down by random acts of retribution.

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/Best-of-t...handelsman.JPG

Cartoon by Walt Handelsman, Long Island, NY, Newsday

I don't know how long this link found on http://cagle.slate.msn.com/ will work as a image.

I recommend this link as one of my favorite sites for Editorial Cartoons.

Israeli soldiers taking trophy shot
 

We used to call those 'trophy' shots in Vietnam ... photos of you and your buddies standing over bodies of dead VC and NVA.

Here how we thought about it. You hunt Charlie day after day, night after night while he occasionally slips into your village to steal rice, murder a school teacher or kidnap a couple of teenagers to use as draft animals. Most often your ambushes and patrols come up empty. When you catch Charlie, you open fire on shadowy figures that disappear. Next day you find a splash of blood, a discarded backpack, a small bag of rice... nothing really concrete. Frustration is high.

When you actually kill a bad guy you feel like you just scored a touchdown. It's a thrill. You want to capture the Kodak moment. Years later you start to sympathize with the VC soldier dead at 19. He no doubt thought he was doing the right thing. Too fuckin' bad, but better him than you.

chaz