I dont agree with everything he says, maybe not even the majority of what he says, but you give nothing for me to agree or disagree with. All you do is spout off bullshit about how "communists are going to fight with me anyway" (meaning that anyone who fights with you is a commie?) and that only a communist could possibly think the US is wrong in any way.

Did you know that back in the cold war, being gay used by the McCarthyists as proof of liberalism and therefore communism?

And I'm not even going to start on that little anticommunist rant of yours. I'm definitely not going to defend the communist regimes, but what the FUCK does that have to do with the Israel/Lebanon conflict?

To sum up, so you can't bullshit out of this one like you did with your last post...
TW IS NOT A COMMUNIST, capitalized for effect.
Show me a SINGLE thing tw has said that is remotely communist. Prove it, like you completely failed to do with your useless 'tw is a communist!!!!11!one!!!eleven' thread.


...tool.

Not anymore?

No, but UG's argument that being liberal and not agreeing with him equalling communism is just as ridiculous.

Ah... them naughty pinkoliberalcommietreehuggin bastards...

If the cease-fire doesn't hold, whose fault will it be: Israel's, or the US? Time to pay attention, and keep your scorecards handy.

Times (UK)

^^I am sure we, the Great Satan, are at fault for this and I am breathlessly awaiting some Brit to spell it all out for me.

Why does zippyt get to say "Fuck 'em" and nobody cares but when I say it...

Well this morning the French announced they would not disarm Hezbullah by force, so I guess we know what to expect.

This is a surprise?

Ok I got to page two and decided not to read any further. So....forgive me if I repeat something someone else has said later in the thread.

What the hell is all this crap about what Israel being flattened? Have you seen what they've done to The Lebanon? Israel is probably the only country in that region who ISNT going to be flattened. Quite apart from anything else, Israel is a nuclear nation, yep that'right they gots the bomb. They are the regional superpower. Why are they the regional superpower? Because they have the absolute and total support of their 'allies' the USA.

Why is Bush in any way responsible for what's going on over there? Well, giving Israel permission to flatten the fuck out of Southern Lebanon and vetoing calls for an immediate ceasefire spring to mind. The neo-con American govt. has its part to play in this, as does my own cowardly govt.

When the arabs launch an attack (of any kind) our governments condemn them in the strongest possible terms. When Israel launches an attack we are silent. When they respond to arab attacks disproportionately and destroy whole towns, a country's infrastructure and kill civilians indiscriminately, we don't condemn, we 'urge restraint'.

We are happy in the West to name Hezbollah as guilty of warcrimes when they hide their people and weapons amongst civilians. We are much less keen to name Israel guilty of warcrimes when they engage in collective punishment (as they did with the Palestinians just prior to Hezbollah's entry into the fray)

This is why my government and the American government are partly responsible for the current crisis. We have dealt with the region so unevenly, that we no longer have any voice with the Arab side, meanwhile we waste what voice we have with Israel by being complicit in the scale of their response.

I love by the way, that Israel calls its army a 'Defense Force'. That's so cute. The way they defend their country by tramping through someone elses. I remember seeing a great picture of an israeli soldier defending his country by holding a gun to palestinian child's head, in palestine:P

tw does not give facts as much as he asks questions. I tracked down the answers to a bunch of his questions regarding Hamas and Hezbollah expecting the them to have an effect on my opinion, they turned out to be irrelevent. Plus, I think he's gone off the deep end with all the apocalyptic
shit he's been throwing around. I don't care how much someone disagrees with me, if they accuse me of wanting to bring about the End of Days and the return of Christ I'm not going to take them seriously.

UT asks an important question. Whereas this conflict once threatened to draw others into a big war, it now appears to be getting a logical response.

However the ceasefire is grossly flawed. It mostly ignores underlying reasons and threatens to put a too small and too lightly armed international peace force between two sides who have not yet been hurt sufficient to want peace. Hurt enough only to want a pause. A pause that still does not address the underlying disagreement.

From the New York Times:
Which answers how long Condi Rice could run interference for Israel. NY Times continues: The Washington Post adds further background: Ceasefire is a flawed compromise. It will be enough in the short term. But the world needed a long term solution. Ceasefire may have been too early for all sides to address real reasons for conflict - including too many Israeli centrist still thinking like extremists.

One more problem. Israel has done about 20 years of damage to Lebanon. The country is $40billion in debt due to the last unjustified Israeli attack on Lebanon. As Dr Landis of U of Oklahoma notes, who in their right mind is going to loan any money to Lebanon? That makes Lebanon unstable and a festering pool of extremism. It makes the Lebanon government unstable and weak. Another wound that was healing until Israel tore that wound wide open again. This so that the Israeli government could brag to its extremist that it too had a 'big dic'.

The entire conflict was unnecessary - a classic result of leaders with too much ego and too little respect for why healing takes 30+ years. They simply put the Middle East right back to 1980s.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government will fall as Israelis learn how weak this man was. He is a pathetically weak leader. He took a cheap and knee jerk reaction to appear strong and politically correct rather than act like a leader. He is weak and not leadership material - which is obvious once this latest war is analyzed from a logical and unemotional perspective. Sharon's and Arafat's leadership skills both were so superior to Olmert - who has about as much leadership ability as Gerald Ford.

That's a shame because it puts Likud right back in power.

Dana, parts of that post above don't even sound like you. I know how emotional all this is...it pisses me off, too.

I see all your points. I also see that hzblh was the first to muddy the waters by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, that hzblh uses women and children as shields and hzblh has NO interest in a peaceful co-exsistance with Israel. It is very hard for me to see where the fault lies with Israel. It is tantamount to declaring someone 'bad' for defending themselves. Arabs are masters of victimization--just ask them. OBL is pissed about things that happened 600 years ago. Hzblh, hammas and the palestinians will never never be satisfied with ANY concession Israel makes because their aim is the destruction of an entire people. Pres. of Iran has said the Holocaust was 'blown out of proportion'---what a laugh. The Holocaust is blown out of proportion but the suffering of Arabs is real. You don't see any jaundice in that?

Israel doesn't give a crap about Shebaa Farms. Sharon's final policy seems the most sensible of all: withdraw to defendable borders. They would gladly give up that land, but they need to give it up in a way that doesn't seem to grant a victory that empowers the wrong assholes.

When figuring out which side is aggressive and which defensive, the tie-breaker should be in favor of the side that doesn't have an AK47 on its flag.

(And a globe.)

Answer was never intended to affect your opinion. Answer was to teach you about yourself. The difference between Hamas and Hezbollah are so massive that the difference should have been common knowledge. Since you had to 'track down the answer', then your knowledge of the Middle East - of facts and trends most relevant - is near zero. You don’t yet have about one decade worth of learning to have a grasp of the Middle East. It is fabulously complex. You have a vast ignorance of the entire region if you did not know, immediately, the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah. You have a Daily News, Fox News perspective which means you have not yet started to learn.

Imagine someone who claims to know all about America and yet does not even know who Abraham Lincoln is. That is 9th Engineer in the Middle East.

Someone who does not even know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah is then fodder for propagandists - ie AIPAC. Do you see AIPAC spin every week? Or again, is your grasp of the region so minimal that you don't even know the difference between AIPAC spin verses reality? Not knowing the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah also means you have no idea why, for example, kidnapping two Israeli soldiers is no different from a crash on the mid-town expressway. Welcome to a region where all parties are that immoral or that jaded. Where lies (political spin) is normal because all sides are so far apart.

Politicians in the region are so far apart as to speak even nonsense rhetoric - for example Israel should be moved to Europe. They don't really think this. It is how you measure your political adversary - how you measure whether he wants to talk or instead wants to hype on that political fiction. Welcome to the Middle East where so many Americans cannot even see through the Hezbollah propaganda of 'destruction of Israel' which is nothing more than a bargaining chip and rhetoric to hype your less intelligent extremist supporters. And yet those in America who have no grasp – don’t even know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah – could never understand what is an honest point of conflict and what his propaganda hype. Everyone in the Middle East – even Israel – routinely hypes nonsense.

The fact that you had to look up Hamas and Hezbollah means you can not even see through propaganda from AIPAC – or even know what is AIPAC and Christian Zionist spin. The fact that you had to look up Hamas and Hezbollah says you don’t yet have a clue about mostly everything in the region.

Try learning some perspective. You have about 10 years of learning ahead of you. Robert Baer’s books might be a good beginning. Or read the Economist – every issue every week. You have not yet started to learn about the Middle East – because you did not even know something as fundamentally equivalent as “the House of Representatives verses the Senate”.

If Israel does not car about Sheeba Farms, then why does the problem remain? Those defensible borders were defined in 1967. Sharon instead represented zionists who literally deny Palestinians have any right to land. And so the massive West Bank land grab. Meanwhile, Sharon that was dying suddenly reversed himself. Classic 'big dic' thinking also used by Gen Curtis LeMay to destroy the United States. "We are already at war with the Soviet Union and the American public does not know it yet".

UT - your solutions are constantly found in a 'big dic' perspective - as if pre-emption solves everything. Only mental midget extremists such as George Jr believe such rediculous childish notions. I can routinely count on you to promote AIPAC rhetoric. I can always count on you to call for military solutions rather than negotiated settlements. Even your believe in WMDs was based in pre-emptive and militarist emotion - not in any viable facts. Same people that also want to fight in a bar.

Same people who did not even know the only purpose of war - a negotiated settlement.

Solution:

Rock the Casbah - the Clash

Only solution.

A cultural war. I bet we win.

PS-- I bet more than me alone skips tw's posts. No one prolly has the balls to admit it though.

I don't care what you think I write, because you routinely misinterpret and misstate what I write. A few times you've even boldly assumed what I've written and took sides against it -- when I didn't write anything at all.

A few times, I wrote "A" and you assumed I wrote "B", and took positions against it in favor of "A".

And I'm not here to convince you, because you're not here to be convinced or to discuss things honestly and openly.

Most of the time you're a wedge to me, a means to move the conversation around.

It's called indentifying the spin - misdirected reality - and confronting it with facts. One reality, UT, is your blind support for Israel. Your support for Lebanon could not condemn Israel for attacking innocet Lebanese civilians - even in Tripoli - because that would accurately identify Israel as the aggressor. It is correct to blame Israel as the aggressor. And it would demonstrate a pro-Lebanon attitude. You did not do that. That is reality - for others here to judge.

I skip them most of the time. I think anybody who posts here at all has to, just on a time-consumed basis.

I still think the "wonton acceleration" post was funny, though...especially coming from somebody who's such a pretentiously stuffy Cassandra de le Noir all the time.

Listen to yourself tw, you constantly blame people for 'spin' anytime a position is taken other than that where everyone is equally to blame. You say that we cannot acknowledge acts of aggression on the part of Israel, which we usually do, because of our 'need' to see Israel as blameless (which is not what anyone here has been saying). However, look carefully at what you are saying:

You are simply taking the stance exactly opposite to what you blame us of saying. You see Israel as the unilateral aggressor, the aggressor, not an aggressor. You then make the single biggest mistake, you state your opionion and call it the reality. Throw in an assortment of personal attacks and a few cliches like 'mental midget extremests' and you have a tw post.

I skip most of them, although they provide a bit of entertainment. Kind of like X-Files, except 'I want to believe' turns into 'I'm right your stupid'.

I'm really happy to let others judge what I write. All I ask is that they read it first.

I tend to skip them because I enjoy the discussion here and posts that sound like lecturing while not inviting input or opinion don't serve a point.

You know, someone ought to ask the same question in a poll...

...no, wait, that'd be mean.

From what I've read here from tw is a little pedantic, but he hits the nail firmly on the head most of the time.

Brianna. Do a quick head count of how many people have died in Israel to arab attacks ( including all those dead to palestinian suicide bombs) and then do a quick count on the death toll in the Lebanon and Palestine in the same period, then tell me the Arabs are good at playing victim.

Israel is illegally occupying someone else's country. It is recognised by the United Nations as being engaged in an illegal occupation. Goliath is camped out in David's back yard and the world is feeling sorry for Goliath.

That last post didn't sound like me? Well, it was. This issue is one I feel very strongly about. It's also a subject I know quite a bit about. I have friends who make regular trips of months or years at a time, to Gaza. I have letters and videos brought back by them. I know the names of people they've lost. I know what they have borne witness to (in the name of peace, they are a Christian Mission).

Like I said, through the looking glass, straight through the rabbit hole, turn left and watch out for cluster bombs. The world's turned upside down. The victims are held to full account and the ones with the biggest guns get to wail their losses.

And how do we justify this? That some voices in the Arab world decry the presence of a Jewish state. Well. I know in the past the Israelis had to fight for their survival, but those days are long gone. They are now the power and the voices crying for their destruction are really spouting the rhetoric of the defeated. It is a willful misunderstanding of that fact which allows the Israeli state to unleash such unrestrained and bloody slaughter on those enemies.

This is an unevan struggle. Even with a war on two fronts they are a lion swatting at mice. With each night of rockets the Hezbolla attacks kill or maim a few unlucky souls. Meanwhile Israel destroys utterly any semblance of civilisation amongst the Lebanese in order to strike at Hezbolla, even though most of the casualties have nothing to do with Hezbolla.

And before people point at hezbollah and say,that they are drawing israeli
fire upon the civilians and that makes them guilty of war crimes, Israel has a choice as to whether to launch such a devastating response.

They could have considered other responses. For instance they could have done a prison exchange as Hezbollah wanted and as has been done in the past.

On a side note: do you know how many Arab women and children the Israelis hold in their jails these days? Betyou don't. These of course being jails under a system in which torture is legal.

Considering that when they "play" victim they don't give a rat's ass about the body count, as long as it advances their cause?

They're good at it.

After all, it worked on you, didn't it?

And the Israelis do give a rats ass about body count? They certainly don't make much of an effort to minimise civilian deaths. Given that they're supposed to be the civilised one in this war.

So basically Maggie what you are saying is that its the arabs own fault that their death toll is so high? and that theyve willingly allowed many of their people to be brutally slaughtered just to fool the likes of me?

Wasn't anything to do with any of that that made me see the injustices of that region. It was something much smaller and far removed from Hamas or Hezbollah fighters. A tiny incident, an instance amongst many in an ordinary daily life.

The looking glass logic is truly in effect here. Just as it is when we look at Iraq. An American president who cannot conscience the murder of feotuses to save lives but will happily preside over an initial assault on Baghdad that took nigh on 30,000 civilian lives.

We make up our morality on the fly. We twist it to suit our agendas and to fit the faces of our friends.

Body count:

Israel: 43 civillian, 112 soldiers
Lebanon 1043, mostly civillian (or actors?)

I think you'll find they're mostly actors, hippy K..... in the biggest snuff movie ever made....


You look at the news... this buliding down, that one a pile of rubble...

but there's dead people in that oh so surgically struck wreckage....

Tw invariably supports antidemocracies, and downs democracies -- we all know that. Draw your own conclusions about whether this man is worth the powder to blow his nose.

Jeb, the short answer is that aside from his having the kind of emotionally immature personality the Left attracts -- I've seen it elsewhere -- the man's communism is the fundamental cause of him being wrong. I insinuate nothing: j'accuse.

We all know that Israel is being defensive.....not offensive, no matter how aggressive their defense is.

*checks thread for previous germane posts by townie hoodie*

NONE FOUND! (sirens wail)

TROLL ALERT! TAKE COVER!

Don't try indulging in ignorant caricature -- I end up bending the people who try it over a picket fence and sandbagging them. They end up being made fools of. It is not, after all, necessary to be a communist to "disagree" with us, but it's extremely likely that communists/socialists will do that, because our libertarian sort of social order is a standing reproach to their markedly poorer and visibly inferior approach to just plain life, let alone prosperity. It is routine for communists to rail against the best capitalist example, and it is equally routine for communists to desire that we be defeated. Has tw at any time evinced a desire that we, the democracy, win? AFAIK he hasn't. Tw's behavior is remarkably consistent in this regard.


This is a reasonably fair question, but I am surprised you don't see the connection. Socialism is -- what? -- communism dilute? Both are collectivist, right? Is there even any particular line with distinctively pure socialism on one side, and a pure communism on the other? It is also my experience that totalitarianisms are more alike than they are different. They exist to oppress; the good thing about democracies is that they aren't in the oppression business. Add secure property rights to a democratic social order and you've got something no totalitarian society can match: mighty wealth, nurtured in a society congenial to it, which is not seen under the rule of an oppressor. In Israel/Lebanon we have a battle between the socialist Ba'ath ruling party of Syria and the oppressive regime of mullahs in Iran on one side and the most successful and established democracy anywhere in the Middle East on the other.

Capitalized to demonstrate your inability to recognize a devoted communist, you mean, Ibbie. Sorry, not impressed. Your education has a huge hole in it. For the proof of tw's communist views, you need only to do two easy things -- okay, fairly easy: recall every communist propaganda trope you've ever heard or heard of, even if you have to research them first, and see if you can find them in what tw writes. If he's not a communist, he does an incredibly precise imitation of one. Communist takes on world history pop up in his historical comments all the time -- he's a mess on Vietnam, being visibly happy our cause was lost. At first I thought tw was simply irrational, but when he invoked that popular communist boogeyman Pinochet -- as a boogeyman -- there was my first clue. Then I saw all the other left/communist stuff sprinkled through his posts and the lightbulb came on. I've remarked in the thread you refer to that he makes no denial to any effect of my findings -- he knows he's a communist too, and his last shreds of personal integrity cause him to tacitly admit that. You can't have personal integrity and communism at the same time -- either it will drive you nuts or the other communists will shoot you.

Communism has no understanding of human nature or of economics, as its record of grandiose failure shows. It was the work of a crank, and it produced, apparently inherently, only waste. Communism itself being without worth, what does that make the communists?

It makes them something to avoid, or better, to destroy. Absent any other brand of totalitarianism, the anti-Communist is in my experience the pro-Human. I urge all of us to be pro-Human. Some, alas, will not respond to this call, perhaps because they imagine me to be anti-human or something.

You can dislike things the US has done without being communist.
You can misunderstand human nature without being communist.
You can agree with things that commies have said without being communist.
You can think that democracies are not automatically right without being communist.
In fact, you can easily do all of those without being communist.

Show me where tw has ever said anything about wanting socialism, communism, totalitarianism, or anything of the sort. You logic is along the lines of 'He runs fast, has a big wang, is strong, wears baggy clothes, and wears hats, so he must be black!' It's nothing but stereotypes and incomplete assumptions.

And I thought McCarthy was dead for years...

UG wrote: I am finding it hard to know just where to begin on this one. It does say a lot though doesn't it?

There can be no democracy without communism anyway. Everything needs a paradox; an equal and opposite force. It's one of the principal laws of physics. What makes communism so evil anyway? (can't wait for this)

*Hands Aliantha a hardhat and tucks in behind the sandbags, damp ciggie hanging from lips*

Well this should be entertaining.

(Incidentally and appropos of nothing: is that Aliantha as in the berry?)

Yeah...big Stephen Donaldson fan here. ;) Being a lefty, I spend a lot of time in fantasy land. :)

note: I do realize the definition of paradox is not 'an equal and opposite force', so don't bother correcting me. It'd be fairly easy to argue that communism is a paradox of democracy though.

ps. That note wasn't for your benefit Dana. ;)

Ahhh.....The Land:) I spent many happy hours there:P well, alright not exactly happy.....more tense as fuck and often harrowing, but hey not all fantasies are fun :)
(Have you read Runes of the Earth by the way?)

Note to any new readers: None of the above is actually true.

I think that's a very interesting strategy UG is employing there. I can see how in a battle of intellects, being bent over a fence and sandbagged must be the ultimate riposte. Gosh, they must feel so silly. Egg in their faces really.

Dana, you say that Israel should 'do like hzblh wants' and do a prisoner exchange. why on earth should Israel do what hzblh wants? Your crying foul because Israel didn't respond "correctly" to these thugs? then you ask for a fair fight. I say don't pick on someone who can squash you.

Why is it that if someone is big and burly they are called upon to show restraint when provoked? "Look, I know that little guy keeps hitting you and hitting you and spitting on you, but, you're so big...just take it, ok? Let him do whatever he wants to you coz you are big and rich. Let him piss on you if he wants, ok?" Rubbish.

That's the new theory - and it may be right, that if Israel allowed the attacks to go on and did nothing about it, they would eventually be seen as the highly moral actor.

To get there, all a culture needs to do is to collectively reach a Gandhi-esque level of moral development in over 50% of its population, before it reaches a level of learned helplessness in same, by thoroughly accepting the occasional citizen killed by potshot or lobbed missile as somehow a good thing.

All the while the team doing the lobbing grows exponentially in strength.

Look, the Palestinians have a reasonable cause, even if they do not always follow a reasonable path to get there. Hezbollah, however, does not. I would like to see them all dead, in big dic fashion, instead of just the 25% who were offed in the last month. But I realize this may not be able to be accomplished and may have an unreasonable level of "blowback" amongst people who actually like the highly violent, islamofascist, thugs who assassinate anyone who disagrees with them. (Not only opposition leaders, but TV commentators who disagree with them.)

And so the current action may not actually be a good idea, but I don't know, which is why I must be content to let history be the judge.

Breast implants save Israeli woman's life in rocket attack

At last a lighter side. via Fark of course.

Now all she has to worry about is the toxicity of the silicone. Presumably they removed the damaged implant and as much of the silicone as possible.

I'm so glad I opted *not* to get implants. I'll wear external body armor when necessary, thanks.

To remind you, below the timeline of the beginning of this conflicts. Now who attacked? Do you consider the kidnapping an attack? Kidnappings happened all the time. BTW Chief of Staff Dan Halutz sold his stocks hours before the start of the Israeli attacks, he knew that something big was coming long time before...

July 12
Hezbollah fighters seize two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. Three Israeli soldiers are also killed in the attack.

It says it will release them if Israel frees Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

"Fulfilling its pledge to liberate the prisoners and detainees, the Islamic Resistance ... captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine," a Hezbollah statement said.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, said the attack was an "act of war" by Lebanon and said he would make the country pay a "heavy price".

July 13
Israeli jets bomb the runway of Lebanon's only international airport, the Rafiq Hariri Airport in Beirut, at dawn. The airport is closed and flights are diverted.

Israel announces an air and sea blockade of Lebanon, and says that Hezbollah will not be allowed to return to its former position along the border.

July 14
Israel bombs targets across Lebanon including bridges, roads and power stations. Israeli aircraft also hits Hezbollah's headquarters in Beirut.

Israel also attacks broadcasting facilities belonging to Hezbollah's Al-Manar television channel.

Hezbollah fires an Iranian-made anti-shipping rocket at an Israeli naval vessel off Beirut. The attack kills four Israeli sailors. Israeli accuses the Lebanese army of assisting Hezbollah.

July 15
Israeli aircraft destroy Hezbollah's headquarters in southern Beirut in an attempt to kill Hasan Nasrallah, the group's leader.

Israel bombs Lebanon's ports and other sites across Lebanon. The attacks kill at least 35 people.

Eighteen Lebanese civilians die when an Israeli rockets hit their van near the southern city of Saida.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, promises "open war" against Israel.

Hezbollah rockets hit Tiberias, an Israeli city in Galilee. The attacks are the deepest so far.

Walking past one of the many televisions now perpetually tuned to CNN in my office (complete with never-ending 'breaking news' ticker) I noticed that they were discussing "who won the war?" in post football game-style analysis.

I repeat: I hate the news.

The correct timeline goes back six years, to 2000, and includes about 25 Hez potshots, kidnappings, and missile firings. I posted it earlier.

Yes, everyone knew this was coming. I posted a Michael Totten entry where he visited the borders in April and it was obvious. And when you put 13,000 missiles into an area, you are sort of telegraphing your moves.

It is more true colors that these things were happening all the time and the world shrugged. This is why the "patient moral actor" theory doesn't apply. The world has constructed a different set of rules for Israel, rules which if applied to your own country, would be obvious nonsense. If an armed, UN-outlawed, illegal militia in Mexico started lobbing missiles at LA from Tijuana, we wouldn't be asking about proportionate reponse. We'd be asking what to rename Tijuana since we took it over yesterday, with extreme violence and tank shelling of innocents. And if A.N.S.W.E.R. showed up in LA to demand a peace really, they'd be met by guys with tire irons to explain reality to them.

If Dover were being bombed by an illegal UN-outlawed armed militia in Calais, we would be loading up the troop transports and nobody would be wailing about French babies occasionally taking one up the gut.

Yes, everyone knew this was coming. When he visited the mid-west in April, it was obvious. And when you put 1054 nuclear tipped missiles into silos, you are sort of telegraphing your moves.

Clearly that shows why the United States started WWIII.

UT, concede. Israel started this. Israel even overtly attacked and killed innocent Lebanese all over the country in some myth about only attacking Hezbollah. When you concede to the reality, then we can move on to more interesting and realistic curiosities about this Israeli started war. Questions such as who won - being asked without first defining fundamental concepts - asked from so many different perspectives.

Then we can ask how good or bad is Olmert's leadership. What happened to make those kidnapped Israelis irrelevant. Then we can ask why this ceasefire is flawed or why it miraculously accomplishes something.

You are now grasping at six years ago when Hezbollah was doing what is precisely Hezbollah's only reason to exist: to defend Lebanon from Israel. Your pro-Israeli bias is badly exposed.

Using the term 'reality' in your posts to describe your opinion doesn't make it true tw. Cut the bombastic language from your pleas for people to take you seriously (not happening) and just debate like everyone else here, don't just repeatedly tell people they are denying reality.

Quiz questions for tw

1. According to the UN, who was supposed to disarm Hezbollah?

2. Who said about Jews, "If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide?"

3. When you watch this February 2006 video of Nasrallah calling the crowd to chant Death to America, do you A) secretly get a hard-on, or B) secretly wish that neighborhood was the first in Beirut to be hit?

4. As you watch that video, aren't you embarrassed that you claimed that Beirut is, and I quote, "devoid of Hezbollah"?

9th Engineer. You proved to all that you don't yet have a grasp. You did not even know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah. You could acknowledge your limited grasp of the world, or respond more like UG - like a child. I am losing respect for your opinions because 1) you don't yet grasp the lessons of history, and 2) you are now responding more like a hurt child rather than like an adult that would keep learning.

It is a reality, 9th Engineer. In this war, Israel started it. Israel also (for reasons that still befuddle) attacked innocent Lebanese all over Lebanon. Those are facts. They are provided with supporting evidence. If you have a problem with 'reality', you can post other evidence (as an adult) or you can nag like an old hag. Your last post does not even state an opinion or provide a useful fact. It is only a personal attack.

Currently, you did not even know most basic knowledge: the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah. That void should have been informative. Instead you nag like a hag - starting to sound more like Urbane Guerrilla. Admit the reality. You do not have a grasp of the situation because you did not even know basic facts. Instead you took personal insult for what is a fact - you did not even know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah.

5. Since the beginning of hostilities in Lebanon, there is one other country that experienced more deaths, yet did not receive any sort of UN cease-fire demand, media attention, or spin of any kind. Name it

And if you get less than 3 out of 5 on my quiz you are not allowed to speak on the middle east any longer.

In reality - no one. That is remains the problem with 1559. It really makes no one responsible for disarming because it even demands what could not be accomplished:
UN Resolution 1559

Your other questions are from those who need to see 'good and evil' everywhere. Those citations are no different than what Rush Limbaugh does for the White House. Rhetoric for those without enough grasp to even sit through a Kristol/Holbrook/Rose interview. Classic of what the AIPAC promotes to successfully promote hype.

Do you also take Geobel's type propaganda as if it represents the actual thinking of Hitler? But that is what you do. You look for fake pictures to justify your extreme pro-Israel bias rather than step back and ask what the hell is going on. Had you first stepped back, then embarrassing questions would have been asked - such as why is Israel attacking innocent people even in Akkar and the Beirut Airport - the crown jewel of all Lebanese people?

Unlike you, UT, I see nothing of factual value in those videos. I don't see anything but propaganda for the cannon fodder. Rush Limbaugh hype for the masses. Little different from Goebel's propaganda. And just like Krushchev banging his show on the podium in the UN, I did not for one minute see a madman. You would. The difference: I want facts; not rhetoric for the cannon fodder (people too short sighted to see through to reality). You see Krushchev banging his shoe on the UN podium as proof final that Krushchev is a madman. You do not see through the rhetoric.

I know, UT, that you are very capable of seeing through that rhetoric. But for reasons that again befuddle me, you don't. You refuse. I just don't know why you refuse to look beyond the fog to find a structure.

What causes us to have sharp disagreements? You will not even admit that Israel was targeting innocent Lebanese through out Lebanon. And even when Hippikos provides the time line, you still deny. We are right back to those aluminum tubes again where you just knew - all facts be damned. You knew only because you 'felt' you knew. Meanwhile, facts back then said those aluminum tubes were just not good for WMDs. You even grabbed on irrelevant facts (such as those tubes were anodized) as proof that you must be right. IOW you deny facts when it does not fit your agenda. That is lying.

And again, UT, Israel started this war. That is a fact. Israel even attacked Beirut airport where there was no Hezbollah and attacked it over 15 times. Another fact. You refuse to acknowledge that reality. That denial - just like those aluminum tubes - is why we have sharp disagreements.

If you have facts, then post those facts. Don't waste waste bandwidth with another Rush Limbaugh type tirade as if that proves anything. Those videos demonstrate to me that you cannot see through propaganda – therefore grasp reality. Those videos tell us nothing useful. Those videos only demonstrate how to hype the cannon fodder – as Limbaugh also does.

Schools of thought are why very smart people disagree. I've been considering starting a post on it in Philosophy, and maybe this is the ideal time.

My word for it is "perspective". As I have said often, there is no 'good and evil'. There are so many perspectives.

And in the meantime Israel was planting olive trees in S Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, right?

Some timelines you might be in terested in:

1982:
Founding of Hizbollah, after Israel invaded Lebanon and killed thousands of civillians.

November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely, Arthur James Balfour

1897, Basl, Switzerland
Theodore Herzl called the first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897. The Zionist aim was to re-establish the ancient Jewish homeland in the area now known as Palestine. Their program was succinctly captured in the phrase: "a people without a land for a land without people." It was a simple and catchy slogan, but it was also false; Palestine had people, the descendents of the Arab conquerers who had been on the land since the seventh century.
The ancestral homeland of the Jews, where they had constructed the first and second temples, was in the ancient land of Israel with its capital at Jerusalem, but this polity existed as an established state under Kings David and Solomon for only about 80 years between 1010 and 930 BC.