As you say, this is no way to run a hostage situation, and the Israelis know how to run a hostage situation, but, as you say, they don’t put much value on the lives of the “hostages”.
]]>– Badtux the Scenario Penguin
Badtuxยดs last blog post..A scenario
]]>Maybe Rupert Murdock can find Howard a job so he isn’t dependent on old friends letting him sleep on their spare couch.
]]>I was just laughing. LOL Enjoy Howard! ๐ He’s all yours! LOL He can stay with the other losers we don’t want back. ๐
]]>As you say, agitprop is not going to change anyone’s mind. It is going to require long term consistency in an even handed policy before even the moderates will begin to separate Israel and the US.
As for Howard, the Shrubbery might offering a two for one deal, the medal and citizenship if he asked for it, that is if the price were right. The Shrubbery has to think about his retirement, because the speaking fees aren’t going to be flowing in this economy, and there are a lot of countries he doesn’t dare visit.
]]>LMAO @ Howard! ๐ We have the distinct belief here that Howard will be applying for US citizenship any day now! As have many of our a**holes who discovered that Australians are NOT Americans, and will only tolerate their crap only for so long. ๐ LOL He certainly won’t be missed, even by his own party. ๐ The political parties here tend to be rather fickle about huge losers. ๐ No… Howard wouldn’t be feeling at all comfortable in the Embassy, assuming they even let him in. ๐ Perhaps Howard decided it would be prudent not to put it to the test. LOL
]]>OT: I thought you would be interested in the fact that the reason the incoming First Family is being put up at one of the world’s most expensive hotels at taxpayers expense, rather than at the official guest house, is some retired politician named Howard is going to be staying there to pick up a medal from the Shrubbery. It would seem that Tony Blair and Mr. Uribe will be staying at their embassies, but Mr. Howard isn’t comfortable doing that.
]]>The explosions marked the second time in hours a U.N. school came under attack.
The Israeli Defense Force has shelled a UN school in the Gaza strip, killing 30 and injuring 55. Israel claims that Hamas militants were using the school as a base to mortar their troops, but the UN says that all the dead and injured were civilians. Even if the IDF were correct, something the Right accepts unquestioningly because the IDF never, ever lies like their enemies do, then Israel would only be responding to Hamas’ war crime by committing another war crime. You can’t get to the moral high ground – let alone win a COIN operation – by allowing the rules of war to be set by barbarians, something that the intellectually and morally bankrupt Right never seems to acknowledge.
And there are good reasons to believe that the IDF is simply lying as part of a propaganda war it admits has been eight months in the planning: the use of indiscriminate white phosphorus airbursts, in contravention of international law as it is understood everywhere except the US and Israel (the 1980 Protocol III to the Convention on Conventional Weapons contains a blanket restriction on dropping incendiary weapons from the air against military objectives “located within a concentration of civilians”); the way in which the IDF is throwing explosives around so freely that almost as many of its people have been killed by its own “errant’ tank shells as by enemy action.
Of course they cannot acknowledge this – otherwise their only recourse for all the warmongering they’ve cheerled in the last eight years would be to commit symbolic sepukku and fall on the swords of their own punditry before vanishing from our public discourse forever.
All the relevant links can be found at the original post at C&L:
Destroying the School To Save It
Israel is truly doing their best to be globally despised. The good news is that perhaps they will shift the traditional anti-Christian/anti-American terrorist groups focus to Israel/Jews. Is that the silver lining? Of course, there would be more likelihood of that if Obama were to pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t see that happening until the roof caves in, maybe not even then. The USA does seem to have this penchant for being their own worst enemies. I don’t get it.
]]>He needs for people to forget what happened before he tests the waters again.
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