Why AIPAC Indictment Is Bad News for Rove

I'm on vacation, but I couldn't resist posting the below on my davidcorn.com site, where I routinely obsess over the Karl Rove scandal.

Last week, the Justice Department issued a new indictment of Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon official accused of passing secrets to officials of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying outfit. The indictment is bad news for the Bush White House and Karl Rove.

That's not only because the Franklin case is embarrassing for the administration, the Pentagon, and their neocon allies. (Franklin worked with Douglas Feith, who until recently was a senior Pentagon official close to the neocons.) The Franklin indictment is a sign that Rove and any other White House aide involved in the Plame/CIA leak might be vulnerable to prosecution under the Espionage Act.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald--who is not involved in the Franklin prosecution--has not had to state publicly what sort of case he is trying to build in the Plame/CIA leak matter. The most obvious one would be based on the charge that the leaker violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. But that law was narrowly drawn, and to win a conviction Fitzgerald would have to prove that Rove or any other leaker knew that Valerie Wilson was working under cover at the CIA. There are, however, other laws under which Fitzgerald might charge the CIA/Plame leakers. The Franklin indictment points the way. (And criminal law aside, by sharing classified information with at least two reporters--Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA was classified--Rove committed an offense that violated various rules and would get most government workers seriously punished or dismissed.)

The Franklin indictments notes:

On or about December 8, 1999, FRANKLIN signed a Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, a Standard Form 312 (SF-312). In that document FRANKLIN acknowledged that he was aware that the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by him could cause irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation and that he would never divulge classified information to an unauthorized person. He further acknowledged that he would never divulge classified information unless he had officially verified that the recipient was authorized by the United States to receive it. Additionally, he agreed that if he was uncertain about the classification status of information, he was required to confirm from an authorized official that the information is unclassified before he could disclose it.

Yet, the indictment alleges, Franklin passed classified information to Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two senior AIPAC officials. And the indictment claims Rosen and Weissman shared this information with Israel. Consequently, the indictment charges Franklin, Rosen and Weissman with "conspiracy to communicate National Defense Information under sections 793(d) and 793(e) of Title 18, United States Code. And Franklin was charged with three counts of "communication of National Defense Information"--not conspiracy--under section 793(d). He was also charged with one count of "conspiracy to communicate classified information" to a foreign government.

Let's look at sections 793(d) and (e). The first generally applies to government officials, the second to nongovernment officials. Both sections make it a crime to transmit national defense information--and the identity of an undercover CIA officer would probably count as national defense information--to a person unauthorized to receive it (such as a reporter). These sections define violators as

(d) Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it.

(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it. [Emphasis added.]

Rove, like Franklin, had to sign SF-312. As Rep. Henry Waxman noted in a short report he released on the Rove leak, this nondisclosure agreement states, "I will never divulge classified information to anyone" unauthorized to receive such information. Rove broke that vow. And Executive Order 12958--which Bush updated on March 25, 2003-- says that "officers and employees of the United States Government...shall be subject to appropriate sanctions if they knowingly, willfully, or negligently...disclose to unauthorized persons information properly classified." The sanctions include "reprimand, suspension without pay, removal, termination of classification authority, loss or denial of access to classified information, or other sanctions." So Rove ought to be slapped with one of those punishments.

But worse for Rove--from a legal perspective--is section 793. Rove did communicate classified information which could be used "to the injury of the United States" to a person "not entitled to receive it." The information was the identity of an undercover intelligence official working on anti-WMD operations. Such information could be used to thwart or undermine past or present CIA operations and assets connected to Valerie Wilson. The persons "not entitled" to received this info were Robert Novak and Matt Cooper (and perhaps there were more).

I am--as I've said before--no lawyer. But given the letter of the law in section 793, it seems to me there is a case to be made that Rove essentially did what Franklin did. There may be a difference in intent or awareness. Perhaps Rove did not know he was passing on classified information that could be used to the detriment of the United States (though he should have realized that had he given the matter a moment or two of thought), and it seems that Franklin had to know he was sharing classified material with outsiders. But section 793 does not say a violator must be aware he or she is passing on information that could cause harm to the United States if exposed. It only sets as a criterion that the violator "willfully" communicates this information. I assume that means a purely accidental slip of the lip would not be a crime. But Rove--who told at least two reporters about Valerie Wilson's CIA position--cannot argue he was not "willfully" communicating this information to others.

So might Fitzgerald have a case under section 793? Journalists don't like these sorts of prosecutions, for it brings us close to an official secrets act (like the one that exists in Britain). If prosecutors chased after government leakers--say those who leaked intelligence showing that the White House's case for war in Iraq was weak--the public would suffer. And the Justice Department's indictment of Rosen and Weissman--nongovernment officials--for passing along classified information is also worrisome for reporters who pass along classified information by publishing and airing stories that contain secret information. But Fitzgerald has certainly demonstrated he's not too concerned about pursuing legal cases and setting legal precedents that are bad for journalism. And that's why Rove ought to be sweating the Franklin indictment.

Comments (305)

1. Did Joe Wilson sign a non-disclosure agreement, and if not, why did the CIA send him on a mission without signing such an agreement?

   Posted by RonS at 08/08/2005 @ 1:48pm

2. The investigation is about who blew a CIA operative's cover.

   Wilson did not sign a non-disclosure statement. Whether he did or not is a red herring. Neither in his piece in The New York Times nor anywhere else did Wilson blow his wife's cover.

   Robert Novak did that. The question is: where did Novak get his information? That is what Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating.

   Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 1:59pm

3. Well, at least Corn admits he's obsessed with this incident.

   Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 2:28pm

4. Why shouldn't he be obsessed with this issue? It might end up being an Achilles heel of this administration. With this administration's A+ wall of silence, smoke and mirrors…critics have to take what they can get.

   Posted by BlueTexan at 08/08/2005 @ 2:32pm

5. I guess, if you got nothing else. If Rove leaked, he should go. I don't think he did. Still no reason to obsess.

   Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 2:37pm

6. I guess then there is no valid reason for the excessive obsessivness that occurred over Clinton's flings in the Oval office. That didn't involve anything close to national security and you would have thought he gave away to secret launch codes from the way the "conservatives" reacted.

   Posted by BlueTexan at 08/08/2005 @ 2:42pm

7. I didn't obsess over Clinton, nor did any of my conservative friends.

   Wasn't it Clinton that lost his nuclear codes? Oops!

   Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 2:45pm

8. Well then you and your friends were the only few in America. If the conservatives in Washington would have played nice back in the 90's the Dems might not be looking under every rock to find clues. Well maybe then again, maybe they won't have to, this administration is destined to be tripped up by its own arrogance. (See today's energy bill tax giveaways to the oil companies, who still can't figure out how to spend their billions. Instead of ordering more letterhead, I heard they just decided to start printing on dollar bills.)

   Posted by BlueTexan at 08/08/2005 @ 2:48pm

9. It's not a question of whether he told a couple reporters ....it's whether what he said constitutes a "leak" under the letter of the law. For example if he was merely confirming what another person in the govt had said, I'd say he hasn't technically gone into outlaw territory...however, it's still a blunder, and he should be reprimanded appropriately...

   Posted by wereverywhere at 08/08/2005 @ 2:50pm

10. To WereEverywhere:

    I had an MI MOS in the Army. I have been trained to handle classified information. If one is asked by a reporter to confirm some classified information and does so, he would be in serious trouble if his superiors were to find out. In fact, even to deny it would provide more information than one should give out. The proper response -- and I was told this explicitly during my training -- is no comment.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 3:04pm

11. First let me say I have Jewish friends. I also acknowledge the right of Israel to exist in borders recognized by the United Nations. So save your "anti-Semetic" slanders. That said, the passing of classified info from Larry Franklin(assistant of Douglas Feith, Underscretary of Defense) to senior officials of AIPAC, the Israel lobby, is treason. The classified info was passed from the AIPAC officials to a member of the Israeli embassy, who has now left the country to avoid questioning. This shows the depth of the manipulation of U.S. policy by Israel and friends of Israel in this country. Jonathan Pollard is now serving 40 years in federal prison for a similar act of espionage. The question is : did Douglas Feith, one of the architects of this war, know of his deputy's espionage?

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 3:07pm

12. I want to hear from all you flagwavers and ultra-nationalists: You guys are always using the term "treason". Well, here is some in the Bush administration.

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 3:13pm

13. To PhilBQ:

    Exactly who did what in the AIPAC case isn't really important here, either. There is certainly no reason to get off the topic with conjecture about what Mr. Feith knew.

    Mr. Corn brings it up only to demonstrate that, assuming Karl Rove did what has been reported and Larry Franklin can be charged as he has, then Karl Rove can be charged.

    Whatever motivation these people had is irrelevant. It is a violation to disclose classified material under any circumstances. Any one charged will have to defend himself by casting doubt on the prosecution's case, not by asserting noble motives for disclosing the information.

    Indeed, if Rove or Libby or whoever had a real problem with anything Mr. or Mrs. Wilson did, they should have taken it to the DCI, not the press.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 3:20pm

14. You forgot "neocons".

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 3:21pm

15. Hey USAPRIDE: how do you feel about the probability of treasonous espionage from the Bush defense dept. to Israel?

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 3:26pm

16. Also to PhilBQ:

    Treason is probably too strong a word to use in either the AIPAC or the Plame case. The charges against Franklin are brought under the Espionage Act, as most likely will any charges arising out of the Plame case.

    Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution. This doesn't fit that definition.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 3:29pm

17. If Fitzgerald is serious about this investigation - and all indications are he is - then he will indict more than one "senior administration official" on several counts under several statutes. If no indictments are issued, Fitzgerald will have to do some serious disassembling (to use the President's term) to explain why.

    Posted by rickjones at 08/08/2005 @ 3:30pm

18. Pride:

    Your sounding a little more measured now.....

    As for your assertion that you and your friends are not obssesed with Clinton - all I can say is your lucky I can't go back and cut and paste all the horse beating crap about Clinton that I have read here over the last couple of weeks.....

    By the way, what happened to JIZZM ? We could always depend on him to make a regressive comment about Clinton !

    Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/08/2005 @ 3:40pm

19. Treason or espionage - they both are terrible acts of disloyalty. Spies have been executed in this country. After being called disloyal for not supporting Bush's war, I want to hear some comment from some rightwing flagwavers about a REAL case of disloyalty. But they are strangely silent...reluctant to criticize the Bush administration, are you? That is called hypocrisy.

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 3:43pm

20. To RickJones:

    If any indictments do come down, I am sure that we will then see Melman and other Rove/Libby apologists within the GOP attempt to shift the goalposts again - whether or not there is enough for a conviction.

    Posted by Hman23 at 08/08/2005 @ 3:45pm

21. Hey PhilBQ - it wouldn't be treason. The enemies of the USA were not given info from Rove or anyone else in the Bush Administration.

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 3:52pm

22. TO USAPRIDE: You don't seem to understand. Larry Franklin, the deputy of Doublas Feith, who was Undersecretary of Defense at the time, has been indicted for passing classified info to AIPAC who passed it to a foreign nation, Israel. That is espionage, and it occurred in the Bush administration. There were spies for Israel in the Bush administration. Doesn't that concern you?

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 4:03pm

23. For PhilBQ - I am critical of the Bush Administration for failing to secure our borders. They have dropped the ball big time on this issue. The sad thing about it is, it appears to be for political reasons.

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 4:05pm

24. TO JACKRABBIT: The Franklin case has been underplayed by the mainstream media while the Rovegate/Plame case has been covered everywhere. The Franklin case is far more serious- it involves espionage. Rove may or may not have violated the narrow law on disclosure, and in any conviction will certainly be pardoned as Bush leaves office. His dad pardoned all the criminal officials of the Iran/Contra scandal. Why does the media refuse to cover the Franklin case? I suspect because it involves spying by Israel on its benefactor: the U.S.

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 4:10pm

25. Go PhilBQ

    I was glad to see Corn pick up on my connection in the last thread between Rove-Novak (CIA) - Franklin - (and the killing of Steven Vincent -- but let that pass, for now: they are desparate to kill-- or should one say 'liberate'-- Iran. Aipac = AEI)

    I (neverong) was the only one who linked them. Check it out. (Jones is neverong)

    But the link goes far, far beyond framing legalities and definitions. It goes to the traitors who intentionally, consistently, repeatedly lied about threats to make war for Israel. That includes Bolton. As Malayaian PM Mahathir said, Jews get others to do their killing for them -- the Romans in 0 a.d., US stoogies in 2001. Remember the "Clean break" document signed in l996 neocons? (and three later documents - 1998, 2000, 2001) 1. calling for overthrow of Iraq; 2. undermining US even-handed "land for peace" policy in the Middle East; 3. declaring (this is the best one) to make resistance "suical". Then whining when suicide bombers (psychologially representing death wishes toward Jews, projected into poor Palestinian children to act out) appear. As they will here, according to their Catholic FBI stooge Mueller.

    Where's your head, pride? If it isn't hating Bush and 'neocons', it isn't American.

    What do think 'the topic' is, jackrubbish? -- What Corn shucks off the cob?

    Posted by jones at 08/08/2005 @ 4:42pm

26. You got me JONES. What the hell are you talking about when you address me in your last post?

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 4:50pm

27. The Rove story is dead and buried period. No matter how much you liberals cry about it its a non-issue. Except for the fact CornFlake may have to spend a little jail time for his initial leaking.

    Posted by LIBSARENUTS at 08/08/2005 @ 4:57pm

28. LIBSARENUTS: You sound like ALUDRA.

    Posted by RonS at 08/08/2005 @ 5:04pm

29. ????what is an aludra????

    Posted by LIBSARENUTS at 08/08/2005 @ 5:06pm

30. TO LIBSARENUTS: How do you feel about the Larry Franklin case, which involves a senior Bush administration official indicted for espionage?

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 5:07pm

31. USAPride,

    You believe that Rove did not leak information, even after his lawyer confirmed that he did leak information? Even a confirmation is a leak.

    The story is not dead. There is a very real reason to believe that Fitzgerald will issue indictments. At that point, the story will be all over the media and perhaps Congress will begin to have a conversation about it.

    Posted by Baeller at 08/08/2005 @ 5:08pm

32. I think Mr. Corns assertion that rove can be prosecuted "under the Espionage Act" is pure silliness and he knows it.

    Posted by LIBSARENUTS at 08/08/2005 @ 5:10pm

33. LIBSARENUTS - What's so "silly" about it?

    Posted by BSF at 08/08/2005 @ 5:19pm

34. BAELLER: I believe Rove did not break the law as it is written.

    Also, the story is not dead by a longshot. The MSM will make certain of this.

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 5:21pm

35. CALLING ALL RIGHTWING FLAG WAVERS: So none of you flagwavers out there want to comment about the Larry Franklin case, where a senior Bush defense dept. official has been indicted for spying for Israel? If you care about this country so much, you would be angry about the Franklin case. Or is spying for another country OK if it's done by an official of the Bush administration?

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 5:21pm

36. "So none of you flagwavers out there "

    What do you have against waiving the flag?? I thought you liberals keep trumpeting being patriotic by griping about the war. How does the above statement bolster that phony belief???

    Posted by LIBSARENUTS at 08/08/2005 @ 5:27pm

37. David Corn:

    I hope you are back from vacation, with your camera ready to shoot pictures when they frog-march Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby to the U.S. Courthouse for arraignment.

    Be sure to post them on your blog.

    Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/08/2005 @ 5:31pm

38. Stop dodging the question: will you comment on the fact that a senior official of the Bush defense dept. has been indicted for passing classified info to Israel? What is your opinion?

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 5:32pm

39. not gonna happen, just another liberal wetdream that amounts to nothing as usual

    Posted by LIBSARENUTS at 08/08/2005 @ 5:33pm

40. PHILBQ: You're being too cynical about things. Just because Franklin was indicted doesn't mean the whole administration is guilty. If that were the reality, we might as well shut down the entire government.

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/08/2005 @ 5:33pm

41. Maybe Rove and Libby will be frog-marched to the music of "The Marseillaise"; surely it will be a revolutionary moment in America.

    Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/08/2005 @ 5:34pm

42. It figures you would pick the French Anthem. No shame whatsoever

    Posted by LIBSARENUTS at 08/08/2005 @ 5:37pm

43. LIBSARENUTS; I find it hypocritical that you flagwavers, who want to show your patriotism everywhere, are not concerned by a senior Bush official, indicted for spying for Israel. Do you care about national security? This is REAL disloyalty.

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 5:38pm

44. It's nice to know that I can be away for three weeks, and the blogosphere is still filled with nit-picking rhetoric. The fundamental statement about the Plame/Rove uproar came from the commando-in-chief himself when he stated that his administration would not tolerate leaks and would get rid of anyone involved (or something to that effect). And yet, as this administration has done conistently, they've done a 180, lied about it, and then lambasted the "liberal" media for having the temerity to question issues that are "over". Let the right wing respond (as they will) with insults about being crybabies who never let anything go, but I'd like one to just give a rational explanation for Bush's flip-flop. And without rehashing Clinton's foreign policy faux-pas or Joe Wilson's "faulty" investigating. Bush said he'd take action on anyone who leaked information, there is no doube that Rove played a central role in the leak, and yet Rove is still the man pulling the strings at 1600 Pennsylvania. The conservative community acting like the liberals are lunatics for expecting Bush to actually show some integrity for once illustrates the lack of integrity on the right side of the aisle. Let the liberal bashing begin!

    Posted by Turk33 at 08/08/2005 @ 5:38pm

45. RIGHTWING FLAGWAVERS: Is spying for another country OK with you?

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 5:45pm

46. PHILBQ, you never answered my question from a previous posting. I asked if you had numbers to prove that the Congressmen who supported the Iraq War vote were recipients of large AIPAC donations. You did not provide any numbers. I also asked if you had any websites that could produce these numbers. You did not offer this either. Why is this so? You questioned my understanding of the influence of AIPAC and yet when I simply asked for data to support your claim, you offered me no proof.

    Well, do you have anything?

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/08/2005 @ 5:48pm

47. If you are going to tie pro-war votes to AIPAC money you should at least produce the proof.

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/08/2005 @ 5:49pm

48. USAPride, That is distinctly different from he did not leak. He may not have broken the letter of the law, but he DID leak information. There may be laws he broke too, but that is to be found by Fitzgerald.

    Posted by Baeller at 08/08/2005 @ 5:53pm

49. Yeah so I'm pretty sure that LIBSARENUTS is ALLUDRA (alludra said he was going to stop posting last week I think). I've got to give it to him for using such a clever disguise of all lower case letters as opposed to the all caps, the internet forum equivalent of a fake moustache with glasses.

    Posted by BSF at 08/08/2005 @ 6:03pm

50. Turk 33:

    What we are seeing is typical of many conservatives who post on this site. Rarely is there any reasoned response justifying what Rove (or anybody administration official) did. The grand jury is still convened, but it is somehow a "dead issue." Somebody should tell Mr. Fitzgerald - I am sure he will dismiss the grand jury and move on to another case. Karl Rove made his career of negative smear tactics, and now that the heat is on him, we Libs are the crybabies. It's pretty telling that this whole thing started because Rove and his crew would not rebut directly the conclusions in Joe Wilson's piece - they had to bring his wife into it, and other tangental issues. Consistent with this type of diversion, we now get postings from the Right about such irrelevant topics like Bill Clinton's lies and John Kerry's vote to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq.

    I guess we will all see how dead the issue is in a few months. Meanwhile, Bush's overall approval and honesty ratings continue to plummet every week.

    Posted by Hman23 at 08/08/2005 @ 6:14pm

51. Actually, school started again this week and Aludra had to go back to class. They don't allow 4th graders to post to blogs during class time.

    Posted by BlueTexan at 08/08/2005 @ 6:14pm

52. It will be interesting to see how Franklin is handled because Jonathan Pollard (who is still in solitary confinement for passing secrets to the Israeli government in the 1980s) was pursued by Caspar Weinberger and the Right and was given no leniency whatsoever for his part in spying for one of our allies. Aldrich Ames spied for the Russians and was given less time and greater leniency.

    Will Franklin be pursued with the same concern or does the umbrella of innocence pertain to anyone who has ever done business with this administration?

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/08/2005 @ 6:21pm

53. It will be hard for the Bush White House to duck and cover on this issue.

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/08/2005 @ 6:21pm

54. It does not matter if Rove's defenders take to the airwaves and let him off the hook by stating that Valerie Plame Wilson "was NOT conducting covert operations at the time of the leak". It does not matter if they say that "its ok because she hadn't conducted covert operations for years". This is NO excuse. The fact is that her employment at CIA was deemed SECRECT. IF not for this unfigiveable breach of National Security, she might been able to conduct such operations in the future. And now because of one act of petty political vindictiveness, her carrer is effectively ruined, the lives of anyone she may have developed as an operative abroad may be at risk. Defenders of the Faith may say "God Bless America" but given the actions of this administration over the past five years, I say, God Help America

    Posted by yen4truth at 08/08/2005 @ 6:35pm

55. To PhilBQ:

    I don't believe you can really compare the two cases and make a determination which is more serious. In my view, they're both pretty serious. You're right that one involves espionage for a foreign nation, albeit a friendly one. Even though Israel is a staunch US ally today and is likely to remain one for some time to come, it is not a good idea to pass sensitive information to hands where it cannot be controlled.

    The Plame matter, if we have the facts right, appears to be White House advisers playing politics with classified information. A CIA operative's cover was blown as part of a political vendetta against a whistle blower. I think there's more to it than that, but it is likely that Mr. Fitzgerald will narrow the scope of his probe to the blowing of the operative's cover and not go into other details about how a case for war was fabricated, which would complicate his case and take years to unravel.

    In any event, to answer your objection and also one made by Jones/Neverong, the topic here is what Corn chooses to shuck off the cob. That is the Plame case. The only thing that matters about the Franklin case is that Franklin was indicted under circumstances similar to those for which Karl Rove is being investigated; therefore, if Franklin can face charges, so can Rove.

    Mr. Corn's piece today is one long, elaborate syllogism.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 6:36pm

56. Concerning my 6:36 post

    Let's make that last word in the second paragraph present rather than unravel. (Wake up, Jack!!)

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 6:47pm

57. PRIDE COMMETH......

    The bottom line is this..........

    Does anyone believe that anything that comes out of the White house doesn't have the Cheney or Rove seal of approval. Any notion that any action such as this is the soul iniative of the perpetraitor is ludicrous!........

    So any previous assertions that this does not reflect on the Administration as a whole, are straight out of LA LA LAND!....

    Why do you think FEITH is gone? This is the guy that was orchestrating all the spin of intel for the Oval Office! ......

    Just read this little excert from the Levi Report.........

    The Administration's pattern of utilizing the stronger, less supportable analyses regarding the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was not limited to building its case before the Iraq war. It continued well after the war started. For example, it was recently discovered that Under Secretary Feith failed to make corrections requested by the CIA to a classified document on that topic which he first provided to the SSCI in October 2003. The CIA subsequently reviewed the document and requested many changes be made to accurately reflect their assessments of the underlying intelligence. A new document was submitted by the DOD to the SASC in January, 2004, which was represented to contain the required changes. But, in September 2004, when Senator Levin obtained a copy of the changes the CIA originally requested, it became apparent that key changes had not been made and the pattern of misrepresenting intelligence was continuing. This is discussed in more detail below. ........

    Well, if you want to get a better picture you can go find it and download it like I did, but you get my point!

    Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/08/2005 @ 7:39pm

58. Excuse me , that's an excert from the LEVIN REPORT!

    Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/08/2005 @ 7:41pm

59. Did someone say 'Aludra'?

    Posted by doog at 08/08/2005 @ 9:22pm

60. HHEWM,

    I was trying to see if there was a link between money and the vote. I'm not feeling great so my research has ended pretty quickly. The best I could do is identify the sponsors and co-sponsors of the Iraq War resolution (house and senate) and cross it with the leading recipients of pro-Israel funding. This was not necessarily AIPAC money, but it was along the same lines. In general, there was some amount of crossover but not a great one. Among the top 20 recipients of pro-Israel funds, 5 senators were sponsors or co-sponsors (of the total of 17). Among the top 20 in the house, 9 were sponsors or co-sponsors out of a total of 137. 137--apparently the house really wanted to approve the resolution!

    If anyone can draw a conclusion from these numbers, be my guest. Such figgering is well beyond my memory of college-level statistics.

    Posted by tjbehrens1 at 08/08/2005 @ 9:25pm

61. Libsarenuts,

    "In A time of universal deceit, telling the TRUTH is a revolutionary act." --George Orwell

    It figures you would pick the French Anthem. No shame whatsoever Libsarenuts.

    If you don't like "The Marseillaise", then we can frog-march Rove and Libby to the tune of Blue Truth's "Chained to Reality". You don't get much more American than the blues.

    Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/08/2005 @ 9:55pm

62. To Oraibi:

    My choice is Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land. Is that American enough?

    If we are ever so lucky to see the Frat Boy frog marched out, I would recommend I Am the Great Pretender as recorded by the Platters before playing This Land Is Your Land.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 10:03pm

63. So it appears there was a guy named franklin, who for motives not yet established, is charged with passing classified information to agents of a foreign government.

    OK, i think I get that.

    If established as true, I suppose he will get some sort of punishment. I havn't heard if he has confessed. I hope he gets due process, at least.

    At the same time, apparently Karl Rove has freely disclosed that he was questioned by some reporters. And the details of his conversations I don't know, but apparently he made the matter known to the grand jury several months ago, and released the reporter from confidentiality.

    Subsequent to those conversations the reporter(S?) pointed out that this Valerie Plame was a CIA agent (I suppose If I drove to Langley and parked in employee parking every day most people would figure I was a CIA agent); and the news wasn't so much that she was CIA, as that she was married to this guy Wilson. (I suspect he is covert CIA also, but you didn't hear it from me...) Has anyone gone on KNOWX to see if you can find Valerie Plame's employment history? I would be interested to see if they could blow her cover.

    Anyway, the author is drawing a parallel between these two, in the hope that if there is enough of a stink, then Rove will have to be charged, same as this guy franklin.

    Seems a bit of a stretch to me. Grasping at straws. But we will see.

    Always remember that the choice of whether to bring charges against an individual, or to forbear, rests with the prosecutor.

    And in most cases, the prosecutor exercises considerable forbearance.

    Posted by jonb at 08/08/2005 @ 10:19pm

64. In the first line of my previous post, the Motives refers to franklin's motives for his alleged heinous crime. Not the prosecutor's reason for bringing charges, which I suppose is clear and compelling evidence of guilt.

    My grammar was rather confused.

    Sorry.

    Posted by jonb at 08/08/2005 @ 10:21pm

65. To JonB:

    The meaning was clear to me.

    As I said in an earlier post, Franklin (or Rove or Libby or whoever may be charged under this act) must defend himself by casting doubt on the prosecutor's case. The act, at least as I understand it, doesn't make exceptions for noble motives, if any are claimed.

    It doesn't matter what the motives were. All the prosecutor has to show beyond a reasonable doubt is that the defendant disseminated classified information to unauthorized persons.

    Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/08/2005 @ 10:36pm

66. To HHEMWM: Anybody who knows anything about Congress knows of the awesome influence of AIPAC! If you don't, you are hopelessly naiive. Anytime a resolution is voted on supporting Israel, it passes like 432-3. Check the voting records. It's the truth. AIPAC OWNS Congress.

    Posted by philbq at 08/08/2005 @ 10:40pm

67. Karl, throw all your Jeff Gannons in that sector and you can't miss. *** Buck

    Posted by BuckTurgidson at 08/08/2005 @ 11:03pm

68. PhilBQ, If HHEMWM and others like myself might be too naive to identify AIPAC as the owner of Congress, perhaps you could provide an educational service to us willing students and demonstrate this as fact rather than simply repeating your opinion. Demonstrate this as fact rather than simply repeating your opinion. Demonstrate this as fact rather than simply repeating your opinion. The claim that something is "the truth" sounds a little like a playground argument.

    Posted by tjbehrens1 at 08/08/2005 @ 11:31pm

69. I suspect, knowing people's tendency for self preservation, that:

    If there was any real case to be made against Karl Rove, he wouldn't have deposed the information he did to the grand jury, and he wouldn't have released the reporter from confidentiality.

    Additionally, since the boys in the White House knew all about Karl Rove's involvement, when the President said he would (I paraphrase) can the leaker, it appears to me that whatever Karl Rove has disclosed doesn't rise to the level of a leak, according to the White House definition. And didn't, even before it was known generally that Karl Rove was involved.

    Since nobody seems to think Carl Rove is stupid (though he could miscalculate) I think this is another "Who Killed Vince Foster".

    It got the enemies of the president all riled up, but nothing came of it.

    We will see.

    It is interesting, though. How much the Bush haters are like the Clinton haters. Hostile, Self Righteous, Hoping so much to see blood spilled. Willing to believe any fool thing, as long as it agrees with their hatred and contempt for the president.

    That's how I see it.

    Posted by jonb at 08/08/2005 @ 11:33pm

70. J0NB: What a kick Bin Laden must get out of this. He massacres 3000+ Americans, and we spend the next three years warring amongst ourselves. The CIA blows it on WMD, can't find terrorists that are communicating regularly with Al Jazeera, while their opratives write op ed pieces and publish books attacking our foreign policy.

    Posted by RonS at 08/08/2005 @ 11:41pm

71. Rather than Vince Foster, try thinking of sexual harassment as a parallel. Who really knows who Clinton had "harassed" and who he had not. But he was certainly involved with some. The little blue dress was the big slip-up, though. Bush and his boys exaggerated the threat from Iraq, to the point of massive distortion. The house of cards sat still for a while until the wind started to blow, a big gust coming from Wilson. It was just a matter of time. This chink in the Bush armor needed a patch and the first instinct was to attack Wilson through his wife. Just like Clinton there will be denials and semantic games, until, inevitably, disgrace.

    JonB, don't forget that Rove is not a choir boy; he has a bit of history when it comes to the under the table kick in the groin.

    I gotta get to bed; I feel awful.

    Posted by tjbehrens1 at 08/08/2005 @ 11:46pm

72. Actually, I think people know where Osama is.

    But getting to him is kind of difficult.

    Check out worldnetdaily.com

    The article there seems to me quite plausible.

    Posted by jonb at 08/08/2005 @ 11:49pm

73. Posted by JONB 08/08/2005 @ 11:33pm

    It is interesting, though. How much the Bush haters are like the Clinton haters. Hostile, Self Righteous, Hoping so much to see blood spilled. Willing to believe any fool thing, as long as it agrees with their hatred and contempt for the president.

    That's how I see it.

    JONB It's fascinating that you can see through those blinders you wear!

    The repups who were in control of the senate started an investigation (great excuse for not doing their jobs)which they could not prove then carried it into an area that to that day had been believed to be a citizens personal life. The right wingnuts in the media created the hate Clinton mantra and beat it into those tiny brains till they hated Clinton but to this day can only blame him for lying about his sex life.

    Now we have the Bush administration they lie, steal, dishonor the Constitution and don't have the integrity to stand up and answer for their folly's, to date they have stalled all of the investigations into their actions and the actions of their friends.

    Yet they have you and Aludra/libsarenuts and Love Liberty and the rest of the neocon army of mindless obidiotrons ( made that up like GW).

    You say we are hostile damn right were tired of watching these BS games go on and having to pay for them.

    Self righteous not compared to you we at least have a leg to stand on this administration gives and keeps on giving with their stupidity.

    Hoping to see blood na we just want a little reality check something you neocons are in completely in the dark about.

    Well the S--- is getting deeper and deeper and Rove and the rest are about chin deep next year when the control of the house and senate are controlled by the Dems the investigations will begin!

    You sound like someone who believes he is patriotic yet you make excuses for those who attack our security and our liberties.I believe this quote from the testimony of James Marcinkowski Ex CIA says it best:

    "There is a very serious message here. Before you shine up your American flag lapel pin and affix your patriotism to your sleeve, think about what the impact your actions will have on the security of the American people. Think about whether your partisan obfuscation is creating confidence in the United States in general and the CIA in particular. If not, a true patriot would shut up. Those who take pride in their political ability to divert the issue from the fundamental truth ought to be prepared to take their share of the responsibility for the continuing damage done to our national security."

    JR I agree, hope this is enough to drag Rove and whomever else all the way down with a little luck we may see an impeachment of note in 07.

    Posted by dycel8r at 08/09/2005 @ 01:14am

74. Spare me the "anti-Semitic" nonsense about Lawrence Franklin. Israel has no business receiving classified information as does any other nation. It is a foreign power, albeit a friendly one, but it should not ever be allowed the privilege of receiving leaked material that jeopardizes US security. This is the law. You don't like it, too bad. One cannot obsess over Plame case. The media sure doesn't, so David Corn is doing a great service. The seriousness of this matter cannot be underestimated. Republicans would be drawing and quartering Clinton right now if a similar matter had occurred in his Administration. Yet we dealt with the endless prattle and sheer bologna about the blue dress, etc., all of it of little if any consequence to the well-being of the nation. Stuff that should have stayed in the pages of trashy, tawdry rags such as the Star or Enquirer. The truism "Bush lied, people died has never rang truer than now. A cover is blown on an operative and the front company set up by CIA...any neo-con or their apologists who says this kind of thing is okay is not only certifiable, but suffers the same delirium so common to this administration: obfuscate, lie, deny it into non-extistence. Sorry, too many of us are watching, and they are being called out, as it should be. Witness the insanely laughable denial of Bush giving press the finger. What is especially sad is that the media essentially ignored the fact that they were being told by Bush what he truly thinks of them, which he shows every day in his sneering contempt for the media: F*#$ you! Since people like Judith Miller, Tim Russert, Andrea Mitchell, Robert Novak and Matt Cooper allowed Rove and other Bush minions to walk all over them, why shouldn't Bush give them the finger? They are mere pawns, being used to feed the biggest propaganda campaign since Pravda was the USSR's tool for lies. Shame on them, shame on those who make excuses for them. Judith Miller pled the 1st when in reality she may need to take the 5th. A willing brown nosing purveyor of the most wanton BS of the White House, no sympathy should be extended to her, ever. And get the weasel Novak behind bars, FAST!

    Posted by MCENJ at 08/09/2005 @ 05:44am

75. JONB: The White House defining if Karl Rove leaked is like asking the wolf if he ate the chicken in the hen house. Not exactly the people who should be calling the shots on this one. That's why there is an investigation into this matter...thought this would be something that would be elementary.

    Posted by MCENJ at 08/09/2005 @ 05:49am

76. "... think about what the impact your actions will have on the security of the American people. Think about whether your partisan obfuscation is creating confidence in the United States in general and the CIA in particular. If not, a true patriot would shut up. Those who take pride in their political ability to divert the issue from the fundamental truth ought to be prepared to take their share of the responsibility for the continuing damage done to our national security." Sounds like sound advice for Joe Wilson, the CIA, The Nation, The Left, and the Democratic Party as well.

    Posted by RonS at 08/09/2005 @ 07:52am

77. PHILBQ, I am still waiting for the numbers and websites. Simply telling me that anyone who knows anything knows the power of AIPAC is not an answer. I need facts not conjecture.

    I am not disputing AIPAC's influence, I am looking for verifiable facts. If we want to talk facts we have to provide them.

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 08:14am

78. TJBEHRENS1, thank you for looking for the information for me. I just want to see this in writing and I appreciate your efforts.

    I am tired of hearing all of the false information being thrown around to suit people's particular prejudices on the right, center and left.

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 08:14am

79. If you want to get a discussion like this rolling you need to come prepared. And TJBEHRENS1 has it right; we are waiting for you to enlighten us.

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 08:16am

80. As this article points out, there is very, very, very 'unusual' involvement in the Iraq debacle by ZIONISTS!! But, look how careful everyone is to 'cover' that up. FUNKING MEDDLEING AIPACN

    Mossad, according to AlJazeera, already has a plan to invade IRAN, while the US has already agreed to 'STAND BY' with their hands in their pockets and grin.

    Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 08:53am

81. Some things are like gravity: they are everywhere and obvious. I do not need to define the influence of AIPAC in numerical terms. If you knew anything about the workings of Congress, you would know what I say is true. You are obviously not someone who follows politics closely. AIPAC spreads their money far and wide in Congress. Anytime there is a resolution supporting Israel, even if Israel is in violation of U.N.resolutions as in the current erection of the "security fence" grabbing Palestinian land, Congress always votes nearly unanimously to support Israel. The records of votes are there to be researched if you like. Again, any observer of Congress already knows this to be true: AIPAC owns Congress.

    Posted by philbq at 08/09/2005 @ 08:54am

82. F#cking AIPAC at http://www.aljazeera.com/ As I hate, loath and detest ALL right wing bullshit, certainly including the hatefilled Fundamentalist 'Christians' who take the name of the Lord in shame, I certainly hate, loath and detest ZIONISTS! The sneakest, the most protected, the most violent and the most aggressive, especially if you are Arab.

    Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 08:59am

83. JONB, Those of us here are much more serious 'haters' of the Repugnant agenda, because this was a 'JUNTA' the first time around and still is. It is an illegal government that led us into an ILLEGAL war and killed our son/daughter with as little concern as throwing out the garbage. Their list of the murdered, that we know about, include Dr. David Kelley, the English intelligence officer who 'killed himself'. Sen. Paul Wellstone/Family, Sen. Callahan from Missouri, and Steven Vincent the reporter who wrote about the profiteering in Iraq.

    AND a cast of thousands in Iraq, civilians, 'contractors', soldiers whose pay/benefits they have cut and cut while still trying to 'repeal' the estate tax. You have to get your priorities straight. The Elite have decided to rule the world. Lots of Luck, the Romans tried it, too.

    Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 09:11am

84. Compare the coverage of the Plame/Rove case to the Larry Franklin case. The Plame case is everywhere on every media outlet. The Franklin case is hardly mentioned. I find that odd, since the Plame case involved the exposure of an undercover operative for political punishment, but the Franklin case,in my opinion, in far worse: it involves espionage. I believe the Israeli influence in the mainstream media is keeping coverage of the Franklin case at a minimum. The media has always bent over backwards to favor Israel. Example: With all the current media squawking about the possibility of Iran building a nuclear bomb, the media rarely mentions that Israel has 200 or more nuclear bombs which is driving other nations in the region to also get the nuclear capability. Israel is creating the arms race in the Middle East. And Israel will not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So the most destabilizing force in the Middle East is Israel, but the media rarely mentions that. They just throw up scary articles about Iran, like they did with Iraq leading up to the war. The mainstream media is the protector of Israel, instead of providing balanced coverage. I refer you to FAIR, the progressive media analysis organization.

    Posted by philbq at 08/09/2005 @ 09:14am

85. JONB, Those of us here are much more serious 'haters' of the Repugnant agenda, because this was a 'JUNTA' the first time around and still is. It is an illegal government that led us into an ILLEGAL war and killed our son/daughter with as little concern as throwing out the garbage. Their list of the murdered, that we know about, include Dr. David Kelley, the English intelligence officer who 'killed himself'. Sen. Paul Wellstone/Family, Sen. Callahan from Missouri, and Steven Vincent the reporter who wrote about the profiteering in Iraq.

    AND a cast of thousands in Iraq, civilians, 'contractors', soldiers whose pay/benefits they have cut and cut while still trying to 'repeal' the estate tax. You have to get your priorities straight. The Elite have decided to rule the world. Lots of Luck, the Romans tried it, too.

    Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 09:27am

86. PHILBQ, what you are saying is that you do not have the data. Fine. But you cannot lecture me on my ignorance if you are perfectly content to go around making unsubstantiated accusations. If this were a newspaper story you would not be allowed to say these things and offer no shred of credible evidence. Saying that "somethings are like gravity" does not cut it because what might appear to you to be blatantly obvious is not necessarily so for the rest of the public.

    I am not prepared to accuse anyone of something if I do not have conclusive facts. You have an obligation to provide facts if you are going to make these types of accusations. But I guess I'll move on because you clearly have nothing to offer here.

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 10:03am

87. Just keep in mind the next time Rove and co. do one of their notorious smears that they are under no greater obligation to provide evidence than you are according to your own rules.

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 10:04am

88. When you refuse to accept what everybody knows, you merely demonstrate your ignorance.

    Posted by philbq at 08/09/2005 @ 10:15am

89. I'm sorry, but you still fail to realize the REASON for Mr Corn's self-admitted obsession (actually NOT THAT of the Hard Left, who merely want revenge on Rove, and the fantastical "hope" that it leads to Bush's impeachment)....

    It's about helping the Democratic Party. Since 2002, national security has been at the fore-front of issues. Republicans beat the "Incumbent Jinx" in 2002 (despite "Enron-gate") and Bush won over a "war hero" in 2004 , by hitting the Democrats where they are at their weakest.....national security/defense.

    Without taking that issue off the table, by "neutralizing" the image of "Republicans are stronger on national defense" (which polls 20-40% over the Dems)...2006 and even 2008 will be lost to the Democrats.

    Why do you think Hillary "sounded hawkish"? Why did Evan Bayh just two days ago say "The Dems have an image problem...that most Americans don't think they'll defend the country as strongly as Republicans"? Why was Kerry "the war hero" put up in 2004, and not Howard Dean or John Edwards?

    If "Plame-gate" doesn't destroy the credibility of the Bush Admin. AND Republicans on "national security" (sorry, but continueing insurgency in Iraq just doesn't "cut it")...then Dems are doomed to MAYBE picking up 1 seat in the House and 2 in the Senate...at BEST.

    If Mr Corn's "pet project" comes to fruition though...the issue will be neutralized (Dems can never "win" on it...just make it a "wash") and they might pick up 3-5 seats in the House and 3-4 in the Senate in 2006.

    and THAT is the reason for the season!

    Posted by Mask at 08/09/2005 @ 10:27am

90. PHILBQ, I always cringe when I think about going by "what everyone knows." After all, the mob mentality can be a dangerous thing, historically speaking, don't you think?

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 10:37am

91. Reading some of the garbage being spewed here makes me believe that some of you have literally lost your friggin minds.

    How many of you don't go outside anymore for fear of getting hit in the head with a piece of the sky?

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/09/2005 @ 10:38am

92. And how can it be said that "Israel is creating the nuclear arms race in the Middle East" when it has been the intent of their neighbors to annihilate them since 1948? Don't you think that Iran's nuclear policy is about more than just responding to Israel? Might it not primarily have something to do with the American presence across their border in Iraq?

    Nuclear weapons are lousy, plain and simple. And their presence anywhere significantly exacerbates already simmering issues. But to lay the blame on one country for the actions of its neighbors is an awful lot like blaming the terrorists in Al Qaeda for the Iraq War; It makes no sense. Iran's nuclear policy is not Israel's fault. How about Pakistan's nuclear testing? Or India's? Or France's? France is a tremendous international arms dealer who sells weapons the world over. Is France in some way responsible for a global arms race? What about Iran's relationship with Pakistan or the U.S. occupied Afghanistan? What about those? Why is it always Israel's fault?

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 10:43am

93. Jack Benning, Israel is going to invade Iran and the United States is going to just stand by and allow this to happen? That would be suicide and there is no way Israel's neighbors would allow that to happen without invading Israel in retaliation. Are we going to risk a nuclear war? What possible purpose could Israel have in leaving its borders undefended to invade a country so many times larger than itself? Don't be ridiculous. That is propaganda plain and simple. Besides, how is Israel going to pull that off legistically? If it were to happen the U.S. would have to facilitate the invasion and there is no way the Bush Administration is going to be onboard with something that suicidal. The Israelis are not going to start a war they have no possible way of winning and why would they want to occupy Iran? For what possible purpose?

    Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 10:49am

94. Mask :

    Your right - kinda! Dem's have to learn the fear tactics that won the election for Bush. Talk of iminent threats and generally hawkish rhetoric - very effective! You can be sure that half of Americans won't see through it ( epecially considering the lax effort in regards to homeland security ) and they'll blindly follow along. .......

    They don't even remember that Clinton bombed that aspirin factory. OK , so their memories are short but they are motivated by the threat of a mushroom Cloud.......

    We need a candidate that perhaps can get Americans to visualize a world where there are no fish left in the ocean ( or the ones that are left are full of mercury ) , all the trees are gone and we have plenty of oil but gas is five bucks a gallon. That's the world Republicans want to give us!

    Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/09/2005 @ 11:00am

95. Mask: your heads in the clouds or somewhere else keep believing your own retoric and you will wake up to a whole new world reality will land on you.

    Posted by dycel8r at 08/09/2005 @ 11:02am

96. HHEMWM;

    Fault may be the wrong word but Israel is certainly a reason. We are a reason too since Israel probably wouldn't exist without us. Israel is a burr in the saddle of the Arab middle east. To understand the origin of this you need to remember the Balfour agreement. Israel was a " state " that was imposed on Palestine by us. They didn't establish themselves in the way most nations are born. Altough they have proved their ability to take care of themselves they arguably would not have the military strength they have were it not for our support.......

    Basically, they are an insult and a threat to all the Arab nations around them - thanks to us. They didn't carve their little country out of Palistine on their own and thus didn't earn the respect of their neighbors.......

    As you alluded, NUKES create a vicious circle of fear - and again we started it , so we should empathise with anyone who is motivated by fear to pursue them. Are we going to force all those countries that we deem reckless to give up thier aspirations? And what about those like Korea that already have them? Man , we are going to be real busy!......

    So, given the environment is it any surprise that Iran wants the technology or at least the appearance of having the terchnology? If we are really serious about stifling them it's going to be messy regardless of whether Israel gets involved or not. Having said that, Israel won't make a move unless they are attacked. I can't imagine the White House signing on to that one.......

    Regardless, this initiative by Iran must be percieved as a response to Israeli- American impositons in the middle east. Look, who else do they have to fear?

    Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/09/2005 @ 12:01pm

97. Next blog from Corn: Climate Change is connected to Rove.

    The U.S.A. did not alone create the middle east issues. Will you people get over yourselves. My goodness! The war between Jews, Christians and Muslums has been going on for centuries. THE U.S.A. was off the "edge of the world" when this started. Yes, before oil was ever needed.

    I recommend a book called "Divided Jerusluem", by David Wasserstein. It takes a broader look into the struggles in that region and it not a biased view by a Jew, although Wasserstein is Jewish, he gives a very clear and logical point of view...you know...without emotion.

    I hope Corn doesn't think too much about Rove on vacation, but he is obsessed! I bet he checks his emails and blogs while gone!

    Posted by dancall at 08/09/2005 @ 12:16pm

98. DANCALL: Yes, obsessed to a fault.

    Posted by USAPRIDE at 08/09/2005 @ 12:21pm

99. Dancall,

    Thanks for the suggestion below.

    I recommend a book called "Divided Jerusluem", by David Wasserstein. It takes a broader look into the struggles in that region and it not a biased view by a Jew, although Wasserstein is Jewish, he gives a very clear and logical point of view...you know...without emotion. Dancall.

    Maybe we can get a few suggestions as to what books, written from an Islamic perspective, would be worth reading. It is always good to understand the other side too.

    See, I have the most difficult time buying into Bush's argument that the Islamites hate Americans just because of our freedoms and culture. If Bush's reasoning is really true, then our government is definitely wasting lives and resources in its attempt to bring democracy to Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Bring the troops home now!

    Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 12:38pm

100. David Corn:

     Keep up the good work.

     You, me, and the other believers in an America that is true to its motto e pluribus unum, can take a decent vacation once the nation is safe from the likes of Karl Rove and his ilk.

     Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 12:43pm

101. An aside.

     Re: The blog's clock.

     The clock that provides the time of a post is off by 12 hours. The clock is recording the latest post as occurring in the AM, Eastern Daylight Time - it should be showing PM.

     Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 12:46pm

102. Oraibi, What books do you suggest. Wasserstein's book acutually favors the point that before the turn of the 20th century, Muslums populated that area in the 60% range, followed by Christian and then Jew. Now is has flipped and gives a compelling view point that Jews and some of their policies are very questionable.

     Posted by dancall at 08/09/2005 @ 12:53pm

103. It also gets into the English, French and German influences and does not just point fingers at America, like most liberals today do.

     Posted by dancall at 08/09/2005 @ 12:54pm

104. Dancall,

     I wish I could suggest a book or two. I'm hoping someone else can help us.

     Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 12:59pm

105. ummmmm once again i thought the left hated spys leftists in this country constantly bash the cia, it almost, no it is, a cliche'. why then would the left start foaming at the mouth over outting a spy? is it simply because the offender is a political oppenent? the answers are obvious....... the left clamped on this story to get (i hate to admitt) one of their saviest oppenents

     guys i dont agree with rove either and im certainly left of center (prolly more so then most here) but i have to agree with some of our conservative foes that this is hackery. we on the left have in hard enough without ruining our credibility with mixed messages

     i could be wrong, it happens every once in awhile

     xoxoxoxoxo

     Posted by la volte at 08/09/2005 @ 1:03pm

106. ORAIBI1952,

     You are right to "have the most difficult time buying into Bush's argument that the Islamites hate Americans just because of our freedoms and culture." As Osama bin Laden said in an interview with an ABC reporter a couple years before 9/11, he is angry at the US because we have kept troops in the "holy land" (Saudi Arabia) since the first Gulf War, and because he feels that our foreign policy in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is biased towards Israel. So there it is, spelled out in plain terms. It has nothing to do with our freedoms.

     Certainly Bush knows this. Why he continues to lie about it, I suspect, is due to the propaganda value of the lie.

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 1:25pm

107. David

     Let me see if I remember these correctly. Don't lie. Don't cheat. Don't steal. Don't kill. These are 4 of the ten. I could probably remember more if I had a few hundred monuments to the ten commandments strategically placed around the country for daily worship. Oh wait! Don't worship monuments. Look I remembered another one. These anti-God, government of the people hating, evangelic conservatives scream so loud to have the 10 parked in every court house door, when they seem so intent on breaking everyone of them. Your column illustrates the next act in a long line of evangelic behavior. Lucipher was imprisoned in the universe for attempting to become God. His rapture maniac followers seem to have no other intent then to pick up everything pure and true in America and casually wipe their ass with it. Honor and dignity back to the white house? Evangelic Honor. Evangelic dignity. They are Americas dishonor. They are Americas shame.

     Posted by Will C. at 08/09/2005 @ 1:39pm

108. No-Nonsense, Israel certainly is a "burr" of sorts in the Middle East, I just think that many of its critics fail to understand the reason it exists in the first place.

     There is no doubt that the creation of the state of Israel has caused titanic conflicts in the region and the Israelis alone are not to be blamed for this. We all, all of us, have a share in international peace keeping. This is why I feel like I need to support the UN even if it is prone to corruption and all kinds of misdeed both venal and otherwise.

     I just can't abide by demagoguery. I didn't like the "Axis of Evil" speech because it did little to produce a diplomatic environment where some level of communication could be pursued. While I agree that nations like Iran need to know that pursuing weapons of mass destruction is unacceptable, especially when the government is known to sponsor international terrorism, I can't see how a goading speech accomplishes much other than putting that nation on notice that what happened to Iraq could happen to it too.

     Too many on the Left see Israel as the root of Middle Eastern problems. It is not that simple. And it isn't the bankrupcy of American pop culture or the greed of American corporations either. There are long-standing inter-tribal conflicts and cultural fiats that will continue to make East-West relations difficult. I don't pretend to have a great grasp on all of this but what I do know is that blaming Zionists is intellectually lazy and very much in vogue in parts of the Left. I don't like it and I consider myself to be a man of the left.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 1:45pm

109. One caveat: I do think our oil culture, our pop culture and our support of Israel do not make matters easier but it is more than that. There is a significant cultural divide and a level of mistrust that makes myths such as Mossad is hatching a plan for Israel's invasion of Iran to seem plausible. That is patently ridiculous and fits in with ideas like the Elders of Zion conspiracy that have no merit.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 1:47pm

110. Dancall, who are "most liberals"?

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 1:49pm

111. HHEMWM,

     A couple of points:

     First, blaming Israel or Palestine for the present situation in the Middle East will get us no where. I suspect that we, the U.S., would have a different view of Israel and Palestine if the politics of oil were not involved.

     Secondly, I find the argument that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons a little bit hypocritical. Other nations have them as part of their rights within the concept and laws of national sovereignty.

     Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 1:59pm

112. Ok, for Philbq and others in agreement with him: if Mr Franklin is guilty of the charges against him, he should go to prison. I hope that is stated with ample clarity for you from this solid Bush supporter.

     Now, I find it interesting that nowhere in Mr. Corn's posting or in the thread of comments have the details of the indictment been illuminated (and I believe for obvious political reasons).

     What Mr. Franklin passed (if the charges are true), was information regarding military asssesments of Iran. They did not compromise National Security or our military personnel. That is why the charges are at a lower level of criminality. This does not excuse what was done (if true), I just think it places an entirely different focus than the attempt here to portray it as something far more serious -speak slowly Phil and investigate first!

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 2:18pm

113. Love Liberty,

     You are wrong about what is important about the information that was passed on to the unauthorized recipients.

     The key is that U.S. Government secrets were passed on to unauthorized recipients. It doesn't matter if the secrets were about Iran or Timbuktu; the information was classified as secret.

     Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 2:27pm

114. HHEMWM,

     I suspect that you're being Socratic by asking for information, but I tried looking for information on AIPAC to verify/refute PhilBQ's claims. This site lists Pro-Israel PAC Contributions to congressional candidates:

     http://www.wrmea.com/archives/june2003/0306036.html

     And this site lists a large amount of evidence - anecdotal, but certainly convincing - concerning AIPAC's motives and methodologies:

     http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0012776.html

     And an overview, which is where I found all this, can be found at:

     http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee

     Now if you're asking me to break out a spreadsheet demonstrating the material correlation between AIPAC support and policy, sorry - I'm too lazy and I save my effort for sympathetic venues. But it's a difficult question because it seems that PhilBQ's sentiments certainly do seem substantiable, but on the other hand he seems to enjoy shooting himself in the foot by claiming that AIPAC's influence is obvious.

     I might recommend that everybody take a look at Sourcewatch. It is instructive to see the links between the various organizations and then ask oneself exactly how much of a stakeholder one actually is in any of them.

     Posted by rtan at 08/09/2005 @ 2:52pm

115. I concur with the previous comment: passing classified info to any foreign country is a serious crime. That is why Jonathan Pollard is serving 40 years for also passing classified info to Israel. Do you see a pattern here??? And in response to HHEW, Israel is the first country in the Middle East to develope nuclear weapons. Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Therefore, Israel is driving a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. That is a fact you cannot deny, if you are honest and sane.

     Posted by philbq at 08/09/2005 @ 3:04pm

116. HHEMWM I refer you to Aljazeera, the Iraqi newspaper for info/comfirmation of the story about Israel/Iran. There are numerous other sources tho, of course, you won't find them on Tass or Pravda. You seem pretty lazy as a researcher, and biased toward an obsenity, Israel

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 3:05pm

117. Hhttp://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050801&s=klareere's another source, but I forgot, Repugs don't read.

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 3:10pm

118. Thank you to RTAN for you effort to confirm the obvious.The influence of AIPAC on Congress is obvious to any one who follows Congress. I can see that many of you do not follow politics in Washington DC. You should read the Nation more instead of just spewing out ignorant opinions. I also suggest commondreams.org (a great site for many publications).

     Posted by philbq at 08/09/2005 @ 3:12pm

119. I highly recomend Counterpunch (Alexander Cockburn's site, linked from commondreams.org)

     Posted by philbq at 08/09/2005 @ 3:18pm

120. http://www.corporatepolicy.org/topics/topten2004list.htm

     Here's a fine list of the ten most corrupt profiteers in Iraq now. Quick! Buy some!!

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 3:18pm

121. Rtan, Thanks for the links on what ol' AIPAC is up to that they will talk about. Don't you wish you were a fly on the wall?

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 3:22pm

122. Jack Benning, not lazy at all. I just think that if someone is going to make some claims they need to provide the information for them. If a person is confident enough to make a claim they can then include the appropriate data to follow. After all, by posting their position on this site they are trying to give us something to think about and therefore, if they want to teach us something, evidence is needed.

     Secondly, Israel is not an "obsenity" and if you really think that is true you might want to ask yourself why you feel such hatred.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:31pm

123. I don't like the Bush Administration but I would not call them an "obsenity."

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:31pm

124. RTAN, thank you for the information. I have not been demanding that other people do my research for me, I just think that people who make claims must substantiate them. Thank you for your pains.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:32pm

125. PHILBQ, again you call us "ignorant" but you have no idea what we read, what our education is and whether or not we follow politics in Washington closely.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:34pm

126. I would like to see Israel sign a nuclear non-proliferation agreement. And it is pretty hypocritical to say some nations can have nukes and others cannot, no argument there. But that is not my point. All of these things must be considered contextually. When you see a massive disarmament movement begin where several nations engage in nuclear disarmament then such an option will be more feasible. To expect Israel to do something no other nuclear nation is doing makes little sense.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:36pm

127. But if they want to urge other nations to do so and lead a coalition in this regard, that would be wonderful.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:37pm

128. HHEMWM I would definately, definately DEFINATELY call all of the neo-cons obscenities!!! Unless they get rid of Fitzgerald, I think we might see for our selves.

     I HATE, LOATH, AND DETEST ISRAEL/SHARÓN AND ZIONISTS! There is no, I repeat NO room for zealots, or right wingnuts of any strip, neither Jhidist, nor Zionist, nor FUNDI FU3King Christians.

     I was brought up like every post WWII person, to believe that the poor Jews suffered more than any other people on Earth. PURE CRAP!! The English committed genocide during the potatoe famine. The American 'government' committed genocide on the American Indians. Should I go on? Should I site Bush Sr. in Hondorus?

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/09/2005 @ 3:44pm

129. HHEMWM:

     It may not be the only root but it is the " Tap" root. Look we give them billions in aid and they still spy on us. Why do we tolerate it? The Suadi's pimp us. Why do we tolerate it? The answer to both questions is simple. We need them. Why do we need them? Again the answer is simple - to keep the oil flowing. ........Can you say codependant?

     We are joined at the hip with Israel for strategic reasons, obviousely! They are our outpost in the middle east. They're like that cousin that at times seems like more trouble than he is worth , but he " has a cabin on the river and knows where the fish are so you take him along ! ".........

     As long as The Arab world believes that our support of Israel - against Palestinans is just a politically expediant way to maintain access to the outpost - we will be percieved as unwelcome imperialists. So it really does all stem from our "use" of Israels presense and our exploitation of governments in the region (including Suadi Arabia ). And yes, we are using each other.

     Now it's not that simple but try to put yourself in the Palestinians shoes, for a start. Ask yourself, if some one came to Chicago and bulldozed your whole nieghborhood and told you that you had to move to Gary , Indiana - what would you do? You might become a terrorist too! And then, what if they pushed you into a shitty little corner of Hammond? Would you be outraged? Would you call your cousins in Cleveland and say , " Hey, were is this going to stop? " And when your cousins in Cleveland call back and say, " they're coming here too " , but we don't have any comperable tools to fight with ", what would you do?.....

     Now, don't confuse my empathy with legitimization. I'm just saying have a little perspective....

     Again , they don't hate our freedom, they just want us to leave! Unfortunately they want us to take Israel with us! Sorry for the convoluded example but at least it will give the conservatives something to scream about! As for AIPAC, that's just a part of the codependant relationship.

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/09/2005 @ 3:44pm

130. No-Nonsense, I agree with you that oil is a huge part of the equation and that we do have what appears to be a co-dependent relationship. I just don't like the tendency that many have to hold Israel more accountable than its neighbors for a variety of sins. But you are correct, our relationship with Israel is highly problematic for our "interests" and certainly has made us a target of terrorism. And the displacement of Palestinians is not to be underplayed. I am no apologist for Israel.

     AIPAC is very influential and the money they spend buying influence does affect votes. I never disagreed with that statement. I think we have to look carefully at a.) how much money is being spent and on what candidates. b.) Did this money affect their votes and in what way? It is very easy to say that it was AIPAC that led to Congressmen voting a particular way but I think it should be said that members of Congress have many competing concerns in their minds when they vote. And if they don't (and plenty will say they do not) then they should. But it is easy to play the blame game if it suits your particular purposes.

     Thank you for your posting.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:50pm

131. Jack Benning, then what are you saying, precisely?

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:52pm

132. Are we playing comparative genocides? What is your point?

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/09/2005 @ 3:53pm

133. Thank heavans, someone is obsessing about this horrific Rove incident. The national news media does not seem to be interested, despite the fact that this outrageous incident clearly demonstrates that this administration is bereft of ethics. It treats the truth and facts, and anyone who has the acudacity to speak them as an enemy. This administration as a policy, does anything it can to discredit, intimidate and silence individuals and even national agencies from delivering reports and facts that contradict or undermine their assertions and political policies. From the very beginning, this administration has orchestrated a full frontal attack on the public's right to know. It has consistattly refused to give the Senate, Congressional investigative bodies and the people information and documents that by law, they have the right to see, claiming national security. How can our democracy survive, if we the people are lied to. How can people determine for themselves, how they feel about any issue if the information they need to make up their mind is being kept from them and the media just repeats the ruling party's line without examining, investigating or even stating the facts? When did it become unpatriotic to speak the truth or vigerously question the government? The President and Congress works for us. We pay their saleries and they in return are legally bound to help and protect us. Exposing a CIA operative is flat out wrong period. Doing it to silence a whistle blower who exposed a lie used to justify a pre-emptive war is unconscionable. My great hope is that this investigation will expose Rove, his accomplices and finally begin a process that exposes the full breadth and scope of how this administration has led us down the path to war.

     Posted by Chringram at 08/09/2005 @ 3:54pm

134. Karl Rove is a disgrace. His idea of democracy is a one-party system functioning in secret without debate or dissent. Nixon's enemies list was benign by comparison. Is Karl Rove above the law he so haughtily disdains? He leaked classified information. He broke the law. Cutting hairs is a Delay tactic: even emotionally-stunted frat boys have to pay the piper every once in a while.

     Posted by blevy at 08/09/2005 @ 3:54pm

135. How in the world is Nixon's enemy list benign compared to (if it is true) telling a reporter that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA?

     Posted by RonS at 08/09/2005 @ 4:00pm

136. I have a question for all of you on the left who keep screaming about Rove and now this Franklin indictment; were you screaming just as loudly and looking for blood when Daniel Elsberg leaked the classified secret Pentagon Papers.

     I will bet that most if not all (including Mr. Corn) cheered it then and still consider Elsberg a hero of the left.

     I would love to hear the justifications since there is so much sudden outcry about protecting our CIA agents and classified information all of a sudden from a left that has always tried to out the CIA and anything classified from the Military.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 4:13pm

137. LOVE LIBERTY,

     I can't speak for the entire Left, but as for me, I am "looking for blood" with this Rove situation because it shows how hypocritical the Right is. After 8 years of Clinton bashing for things that were minor by comparison, the Righties in Congress and the media are bending over backwards to defend Rove for a breach of national security. I like watching the roaches scurry for cover when the light is turned on...

     Also, what Rove did is unethical! When senior administration officials act unethically (and perhaps illegally, but I will let the prosecutor determine that) then they should get sacked, period, end of story.

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 4:32pm

138. Love Liberty,

     There is a major difference in what Daniel Ellsberg did and the actions of Karl Rove; one major difference being the purpose.

     Additionally, Ellsberg was tried in a court of law for his actions and the case was dismissed for reasons of governmental misconduct.

     Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 4:33pm

139. P.S. The bad government actors were part of the Nixon gang of criminals whos were subsequently prosecuted in courts of law.

     Posted by oraibi1952 at 08/09/2005 @ 4:35pm

140. Ilovephysics wrote: After 8 years of Clinton bashing for things that were minor by comparison, the Righties in Congress and the media are bending over backwards to defend Rove for a breach of national security

     Many on the left like yourself confuse "Clinton Bashing" with the legal right of the US government to investigate their partnership in the criminal Whitewater Investment Scheme. 15 of their associates were convicted as noted below. The only reason the Clintons escaped was as Starr noted in his report to Congress: There was substantial circumstantial evidence that they also had engaged in criminal activity. But it wasn't solid enough to lead to a criminal indictment of a sitting president and his wife.

     According to an Independent Counsel report on the web site of C-Span [ http://www.c-span.org/report/Final%20ICreport/appe.pdf ] Kenneth Starr was appointed on August 5, 1994. During Mr Starr's tenure, convictions were obtained from the following individuals: Robert Palmer Web Hubbell Christopher Wade Neal Ainley Stephen Smith Larry Kuca Jim Guy Tucker James McDougal Susan McDougal William Marks Sr John Haley

     Thus, it would appear that the individuals whose convictions were obtained by a prosecutor other than Mr Starr were: David Hale Eugene Fitzhugh Charles Matthews John Latham

     It's worth noting that Susan McDougal, Robert Palmer, Stephen Smith and Christopher Wade received pardons from President Clinton on 1/20/01.

     So despite Dem denials and whining, this was a legitimate criminal investigation resulting in the successful convictions of a large number of people including the Governor of Arkansas.

     And like many, you were silent on the treason of Daniel Elsberg who I think should have been executed.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 5:05pm

141. There is a major difference in what Daniel Ellsberg did and the actions of Karl Rove; one major difference being the purpose.

     I understand, it's only treason when someone on the right violates these laws that you on the left are screaming so loudly about. And you dare call us hypocrites!

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 5:07pm

142. Love Liberty, HOW does outing a covert CIA agent for political vindictiveness compare to leaking classified papaers showing government misconduct about leading us into war? Ellsberg was a whislte-blower who did the right thing. Rove and Libby are vindictive, political hacks who serve a corrupt and vile administration. Would that we HAD another Ellsberg so we could impeach and convict this entire corrupt crew of Bush & Co. (a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America)

     Posted by Exhoosier24 at 08/09/2005 @ 5:18pm

143. Love Liberty, Whitewater was a minor land deal and a symbol of the putrid hunting of Clinton by conservative boot-lickers. It PALES in comparison to what Rove and Libby have done. And the lies that led to the illegal invasion of Iraq are TRULY horrendous. Clinton's peccadilloes aer NOTHING compared to those.

     Posted by Exhoosier24 at 08/09/2005 @ 5:20pm

144. EXECUTE Ellsberg??? For showing how our govt ran illegal war operations?? You're nucking futs!!

     Posted by Exhoosier24 at 08/09/2005 @ 5:22pm

145. LOVE LIBERTY,

     Sorry, but you are the one who is confused.

     I was not referring to legal investigations by Starr when I wrote about "Clinton bashing". I was referring to the right wingers who spent the entire Clinton presidency bashing him on talk radio, in print and in any other media into which they could insert their vitriol (Rush Limbaugh, to give an example). Not to mention right wingers in the House who impeached him for having an affair (spare me the legal contortions about how he lied - you would too and it was nobody's business to ask him anyway.)

     If they behaved the same way towards conservatives (Rove, for example) as they did towards Clinton (and his wife), then I would give them credit for being consistent instead of calling them roaches. Actually, I am a bit concerned that I may have insulted roaches...

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 5:48pm

146. LOVE LIBERTY,

     I am silent about Ellsburg because I don't know anything about him.

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 5:50pm

147. Liberty;

     Thanks for assuming the nutty hate monger role in the absense of all your friends. We wouldn't want to think you were one of the more reasonable right-wingers here!

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/09/2005 @ 6:00pm

148. To LL:

     1. Not to speak for anybody by myself, but in a post at 3:29pm yesterday addressed to PhilBQ, I stated that the word treason is too strong for what we understand the charges or potential charges to be in either the Franklin case or the Plame case; I would say, by the same token, that applying the word to the Ellsberg case is just as absurd.

     2. What is legally right and what is morally right aren't necessarily the same thing. I regard Ellsberg's act as heroic, although I recognize he broke the law. However, as I've pointed out on this thread, the law in question (the Espionage Act) doesn't allow for nobility of motives as a defense; Ellsberg knew this and was willing to pay the price. Fortunately for him, Nixon's people blew the case with official misconduct.

     3. There is no nobility in the motives of those who unmasked Valerie Plame. If they really had problems with her conduct, or that of Ambassador Wilson, then they should have taken it to the Director of Central Intelligence, not Robert Novak.

     4. Past cases are red herrings. We may disagree all day long about whether Ellsberg was right to disclose the Pentagon Papers or what merits there were in investigating Whitewater, but who is right and who is wrong about any of it has no bearing on the Plame case. It is a separate matter that will rise or fall on its own merits.

     5. The same may be said of the Franklin case. Not only that, but the Franklin case and the Plame case are separate. The only reason Mr. Corn brings up the Franklin case is to establish a structure for his piece in the form of two syllogisms:

     Syllogism 1:

     * Minor premise: Any one who is alleged to have passed classified information to unauthorized persons may be charged under the Espionage Act;

     * Major premise: Larry Franklin is alleged to have passed classified information to unauthorized persons;

     * Conclusion: Larry Franklin may be charged under the Espionage Act.

     Syllogism 2:

     * Minor premise: Same as above;

     * Major premise: It is possible that Karl Rove may be alleged to have passed classified information to unauthorized persons;

     * Conclusion: It is possible that Karl Rove may be charged under the Espionage Act.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/09/2005 @ 6:01pm

149. LOVE LIBERTY,

     So I answered your question about why I am silent (about Ellsburg). Why are you silent about the double standard of the right-wing media and politicians, who attacked Clinton even before he got elected, and kept on attacking for 8 years, and yet defend Rove. You're OK with that hypocrisy?

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 6:04pm

150. Ellsberg was a whislte-blower who did the right thing.

     Exhoosier24: by your comments you reveal you know nothing about the law or you simply don't care because of your hatred of Republicans.

     Ellsberg knew that releasing these papers would most likely result in a conviction and sentence of many years in prison. Although the Times did not reveal Ellsberg as their source, he knew that the FBI would soon determine that he was the source of the leak. Ellsberg went underground, living secretly among like-minded people. He was not caught by the FBI, even though they were under enormous pressure from the Nixon Administration to find him. ...On June 28, Ellsberg publicly surrendered to the US Attorney's Office in Boston, Massachusetts. He was taken into custody believing he would spend the rest of his life in prison; he was charged with theft, conspiracy, and espionage.

     In one of Nixon's actions against Ellsberg, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt broke into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in September 1971, hoping to find information they could use to discredit him. The revelation of the break-in became part of the Watergate scandal. On May 3, 1972, the White House secretly flew a dozen Cuban CIA "assets" to Washington DC with orders to "totally incapacitate" Ellsberg. (They backed out because the crowd was too large.) Because of the gross governmental misconduct, all charges against Ellsberg were eventually dropped.

     Elsberg only escaped a lifetime in prison because Nixon's people didn't just let the system put him away. He was and remains a traitor to many Americans and is less than scum in my opinion.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 6:04pm

151. ILP

     So I answered your question about why I am silent (about Ellsburg). Why are you silent about the double standard of the right-wing media and politicians, who attacked Clinton even before he got elected, and kept on attacking for 8 years, and yet defend Rove. You're OK with that hypocrisy?

     First of all, in my posting at 2:18 I stated: Ok, for Philbq and others in agreement with him: if Mr Franklin is guilty of the charges against him, he should go to prison. I hope that is stated with ample clarity for you from this solid Bush supporter.

     I will answer the Clinton issue in another posting

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 6:08pm

152. ILP

     I have stated in previous postings that if Rove or anyone else broke the law regarding Valerie Plame, they should suffer the consequences. The president has said the same thing ever since 2003 THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Let me just say something about leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

     http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/09/wh093003.html

     I have stated all along that I am willing to wait for the results of the Grand Jury investigation and let the chips fall where they may. It seems that Dems and other types of liberals who proclaim themselves the great defenders of individual liberties and rights as granted in the Constitution don't believe it applies to Republicans.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 6:14pm

153. LOVE LIBERTY,

     No offense, dude, but you are missing my point completely. I am talking about the hypocrisy of those on the right who are defending Rove when they would have crucified a Clinton staffer who did what Rove did. And your posting at 2:18 does not answer my question! Are you OK with the right-wing media's hypocrisy?

     Also, your last posting includes a mistaken assessment of "Dems and other types of liberals." Certainly some people fitting that description are already convicting Rove in a court of law, but if you go back and read my first posting (a reply to you, in fact) I stated that I was leaving the legal assessment up to the prosecutor.

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 6:25pm

154. ILP

     As regards Clinton, I admit that I was one of those who had extreme animosity towards him even before his election. I had investigated his background and was very disturbed at what I saw.

     I saw someone that had been groomed by the Dems (through Sen. Fullbright) since he was just a teenager. He was in their minds, ideally suited for their long range plans to institute a modern charismatic Roosevelt. The only problem they had was that he was too flawed an individual for their plans (which nearly worked).

     I am just old fashioned enough that I don't want a draft dodger in the Whitehouse. I don't want someone who thinks more of their sexual needs than the needs of the country. I don't think we need rapists in the Whitehouse.

     One reason that we have typically elected those who come from wealthy families is that they don't need the power and wealth that come to Presidents. Very few of humble means have gone into the Presidency and not been corrupted. There are more similarities in that regard between Nixon and Clinton than many on both sides would agree to.

     That doesn't even touch the Socialist background of Hillary which influenced Clinton. Her relationship with the World Federalist Association (now the Citizens for Global Solutions), the Childrens' Defense Fund and Marian Wright Edelman), The Institute for Policy Studies, and the many marxist phrases and ideals (it takes a village to raise a child, universal health care).

     So, I plead guilty to the charge; I continue in it unashamedly.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 6:27pm

155. ILP wrote:

     Also, your last posting includes a mistaken assessment of "Dems and other types of liberals." Certainly some people fitting that description are already convicting Rove in a court of law, but if you go back and read my first posting (a reply to you, in fact) I stated that I was leaving the legal assessment up to the prosecutor.

     I stand corrected in your instance and apologize; but I am really generalizing about the overwhelming number of postings here in the past 3 weeks

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 6:30pm

156. Oops, the last posting should have read: "Certainly some people fitting that description are already convicting Rove in the court of public opinion,". Sorry for the confusion...

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 6:31pm

157. LL,

     You have raised an interesting issue. Let's see if I have this right: You don't want a draft dodger in the White House, and you are a Bush supporter. Hmmm, there is more than one way to skin a cat!

     One way to dodge the draft during the Viet Nam era was to leave the country. Another was to get in the National Guard. That's why there was a waiting list to get in!!!! Not like today when you can join the guard any time you want, back then you needed a politically powerful daddy to get you in the Guard, since everyone knew only 1% of the Guard ever went to Nam. Still, just to be sure, a draft dodger might want to go AWOL from the Guard to cover all the bases.

     Still, such things might be scrutinized later in life. Best to slander a Viet Nam war hero's record in order to take the heat off...

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 6:38pm

158. since I am a veteran I have earned a right to my opinion though of what constitutes a draft dodger. While you may disparage the guard, many did fight in Nam and are fighting Iraq. It is preferable to someone that marched in War protests against the US in England during the Viet Nam War.

     This is again a double standard by the left. Wailing about the use of Guard personnel over now in Iraq but when Bush was training as a fighter pilot, he was a draft dodger. Sorry, but it doesn't wash. Then like now, your unit could be ordered into combat at any time.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 7:00pm

159. ILP, since you stated you didn't know who Elsberg was, I am assuming you are too young to really know about Nam. You are getting too much of your information from left wing talking points about the Guard, and about Bush.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 7:02pm

160. LL,

     Very funny! But liberals don't have talking points, or if we do it is a waste of time. That is because libs are free thinkers, we don't follow in lockstep every order from the high command. That is why some libs (like me) support the second ammendment, for example.

     Now on to a more serious matter - your false accusation. I did NOT disparage the Guard! I simply explained how people were able to use the Guard to avoid going to Nam. If you like it or not, it is still a fact that very few in the Guard were sent to Nam, and this was well known at the time. And I will let you know, I get my information from researching multiple sources. If you don't believe it I don't care, nothing personal.

     So you are a veteran? I am too, serving over 4 years in the Navy. But IMO people do not "earn a right to an opinion". Rights are just that - they are rights and need not be earned. Thomas Jefferson said that people are "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights" and is closer to the mark than you, I think.

     Also, I never "wailed about the use of Guard personnel over in Iraq" even though I got very depressed when my cousin in the Guard was "stop lossed" so she could be shipped out to Kuwait for a year. What I did wail over, if anything, was that Bush would send most of our troops to fight an needless war Iraq when it was obvious that he should be focusing on getting bin Laden. I would say that any bonehead could see that, except that would be wrong - many boneheads in the administration couldn't see it.

     One last thing, sorry to see you resent Clinton so much for exercising his right to peacably assemble (protest). That is in the first ammendment and is a very American thing to do.

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/09/2005 @ 7:28pm

161. One last thing, sorry to see you resent Clinton so much for exercising his right to peacably assemble (protest). That is in the first ammendment and is a very American thing to do.

     It showed bad judgment and has nothing to do with the first amendment when you are protesting in another country against your country while they are at war. I neve met another man in the military who ever agreed with the protesters who went overseas. We agreed with the right to protest here even if most of us didn't agree with their beliefs.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/09/2005 @ 7:34pm

162. I believe that Rove did knowling give away classifed information. Here is the testimony that Cooper gives that states that Rove knownling gave classifed information to a person who was not cleared to receive it:

     The Disclosure by Karl Rove to TIME Reporter Matt Cooper During a phone call on July 11, 2003, Mr. Rove revealed to TIME reporter Matt Cooper that Ms. Wilson worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction.10 Mr. Cooper reported that this "was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife."11 Mr. Rove provided this information on "deep background," said that "things would be DECLASSIFIED SOON," and stated, "I've already said too much."12 To me the operative word here is DECLASSIFED Cooper says in his testimony, Rove said things would be "DECLASSIFIED SOON" To say that things would be declassified soon to be says that Rove knew that the he was giving away was classified at that point in time. To me, he knowling gave away classified info and therefore he has broken the law.

     Posted by forgreen4ests at 08/09/2005 @ 8:08pm

163. No-Nonsense,

     "Fault may be the wrong word but Israel is certainly a reason. We are a reason too since Israel probably wouldn't exist without us. Israel is a burr in the saddle of the Arab middle east. To understand the origin of this you need to remember the Balfour agreement. Israel was a " state " that was imposed on Palestine by us. They didn't establish themselves in the way most nations are born. Altough they have proved their ability to take care of themselves they arguably would not have the military strength they have were it not for our support......."

     "Basically, they are an insult and a threat to all the Arab nations around them - thanks to us. They didn't carve their little country out of Palistine on their own and thus didn't earn the respect of their neighbors....... "

     This is utter horse shit!

     Did you get all this crap from "Mein Kampf"? You blame the Jews! You blame the USA! But you never blame the freaking Muslims, Palestinians, Arabs or any other rag head for anything. The worlds been putting up with their BS since the time of Suleyman. He thought the entire world was his possession as a gift of God. Even if he didn't occupy the lands, he still claimed them as his own. The only difference between then and now, is now we have more self proclaimed Suleyman's trying to take over the world. Back then it was Europes fault, now its the Jews and the USA. And you think they should have nukes? Are you nuts? Poor Palestinians, blah, blah,blah. Hey, why don't you ask what the Muslim brothers in Jorden did to the Palistinians? The only thing other Arab countries hate more than the Palestinians is the Jews. And just because the place was once called Palestine doesn't mean it belonged to the Palistinians. It belonged to the Turks, then the British, then the Jews. Actually, it was the Jews land long before it was anyone elses. And byy the way, the Jews fought for their independence like any other country. In spite of being invaded by Eygpt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jorden, all at once and losing one percent of their total population. They finally won their independence by sheer guts and cheap Czech weapons. And "They didn't earn their respect"? Give me a break! The United States, Russia, Argentina, Austria, Brasil, Canada, China, Czechoslovokia,Eire, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Netherlands,Portugal, Spain, Norway, Switzerland,Turkey and Vietnam, were among the first to recognize Israel's right to exist. You know, "Basically, your a insult" to mankind and a threat to humanity! For the sake of this country, we should do anything and everything to make sure you progressive anti-semitic libs NEVER get into power again! What a disgrace.

     Posted by redstateman at 08/09/2005 @ 8:48pm

164. Given: this thread is about why Rove – Novak (CIA) had to divert attention from the real causes of lying about the uranium Joe Wilson exposed (war for Israel) **** Why anyone who knows anything knows Aipac, as voice of the organized Jewish community, controls Congress. (For the politically illiterate, because you asked for it. How much proof do you want? This only scratches the surface.)

     1. Actual members

     Jews in U.S. Congress, 2002 [after the November elections] - U.S. SENATE [11 total]

     Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) Carl Levin (D-Mich.) * Norm Coleman (R-Minn.)** Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) ** Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.)

     ---

     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES [26 total]

     Howard Berman (D-Calif.) Susan Davis (D-Calif.) Bob Filner (D-Calif.) Jane Harman (D-Calif.) Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) Howard Waxman (D-Calif.) Peter Deutsch (D-Fla.) Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.)** Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) Ben Cardin (D-Md.) Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Sander Levin (D-Mich.) Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) Martin Frost (D-Texas) Eric Cantor (R-Va.) Bernard Sanders (Ind-Vt.)

     2, Sharon's statement "We own Congress" (to Likudnicks, a few years back; lost the reference, but anybody who knows anything knows he said it)

     3. Jews and the media:

     http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-controlledpress-folder.html

     GENERAL OVERVIEW of Massive JEWISH PRESS OWNERSHIP Here are some quotes from a magazine for Jews called "Moment". It is subtitled "The Jewish magazine for the 90's" These quotes are from the Aug 1996 edition after the Headline "Jews Run Hollywood - So What?": "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names." ****** "The famous Disney organization, which was founded by Walt Disney, a gentile Midwesterner who allegedly harbored anti-Semitic attitudes, now features Jewish personnel in nearly all its most powerful positions." The head of Walt Disney studios is now the Jew Michael Eisner. ***** On studios that were bought out by the Japanese the magazine says: "When Mitsushita took over MCA-Universal, they did nothing to undermine the unquestioned authority of Universal's legendary - and all Jewish - management triad of Lew Wasserman, Sid Scheinberg, and Tom Pollack." ******* Here are some quotes from the paper "Jews Control the Media and Rule America"

     "American Broadcasting Companies (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Each of these three has been under the absolute control of a single man over a long enough period of time-ranging from 32 to 55 years-for him to staff the corporation at every level with officers of his choosing and then to place his imprint indelibly upon it. In each case that man has been a Jew.

     "Until 1985, when ABC merged with Capital Cities Communications, Inc...the chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer (CEO) of the network was Leonard Harry Goldenson, a Jew...In an interview in the April 1, 1985 issue of Newsweek, Goldenson boasted 'I built this company (ABC) from scratch.'" ***** "CBS was under the domination of William S. Paley for more than half a century. The son of immigrant Jews from Russia..." "There has been no move by top G-E management to change the Jewish "profile" of NBC or to replace key Jewish personnel. To the contrary, new Jewish executives have been added: an example is Steve Friedman..."

     "The man in charge of the television entertainment division at CBS is Jeff Sagansky. At ABC the entertainment division is run by two men....nearly all of the men who shape young American's concept of reality, of good and evil, of permissible and impermissible behavior are Jews. In particular, Sagansky and Bloomberg are Jews. So is Tartikoff. Littlefield is the only Gentile who has had a significant role in TV entertainment programming in recent years."

     "American Film magazine listed the top 10...entertainment companies and their CEOs...Time Warner Communications (Steven J Ross, Jew) Walt Disney Co. (Michael D. Eisner, Jew)...Of the 10 top entertainment CEOs listed above, eight are Jews." "The Newhouse media empire provides an example of more than a lack of real competition among America's daily newspapers; it also illustrates the insatiable appetite Jews have shown for all organs of opinion... The Newhouse's own 31 daily newspapers, including several large and important ones, such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Newark Star-Ledger, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune; the nation's largest trade book publishing conglomerate, Random House, with all its subsidiaries; Newhouse Broadcasting, consisting of 12 television broadcasting stations and 87 cable-TV systems, including some of the countries largest cable networks-the Sunday supplement Parade, with a circulation of more than 22 million copies per week; some two dozen major magazines, including the New Yorker, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Vanity Fair, HQ, Bride's, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Self, Home&Garden...." *****

     "Furthermore, even those newspapers still under Gentile ownership and management are so thoroughly dependent upon Jewish advertising..." "The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. These three...are the newspapers which set trends and guidelines for nearly all others. They are the ones which decide what is news and what isn't, at national and international levels. They originate the news; the others merely copy it. And all three newspapers are in Jewish hands...The Suzberger family also owns, through the New York Times Co. 36 other newspapers; twelve magazines, including McCall's and Family Circle..."

     "New York's other newspapers are in no better hands than the Daily News. The New York Post is owned by billionaire Jewish real-estate developer Peter Kalikow. The Village Voice is the personal property of Leonard Stern

     ***** NOTE CONNECTION TO NOVAK - COOPER -- PINCUS (leaked to by Rove) "There are only three newsmagazines of any note published in the United States: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report.... The CEO of Time Warner Communications is Steven J. Ross, and he is a Jew. "Newsweek, as mentioned above, is published by the Washington Post Co., under the Jewess Katherine Meyer Graham..."

     "U.S. News & World Report... owned and published by Jewish real estate developer Mortimer B. Zucherman..." ***** " The three largest book publishers...Random House... Simon & Schuster , and Time Inc. Book Co....All three are owned or controlled by Jews...The CEO of Simon & Schuster is Richard Snyder, and the president is Jeremy Kaplan; both are Jews too." "Western Publishing...ranks first among publishers of childrens books, with more than 50 per cent of the market. Its chairman and CEO is Richard Bernstein, a Jew." "Jewish spokesmen customarily will use evasive tactics. "Ted Turner isn't a Jew!" they will announce..."

     "We are doing more than merely giving them a decisive influence on our political system and virtual control of our government; we also are giving them control of the minds and souls of our children..." (Note: this is just the tip of the iceberg. Add: what Goldberg, Mowbry et al did to National Review; Kristol's Weekly Standard, Murdoch's cesspools; much, much more, its just too boring to itemize) ***** 4. In broader terms Understanding Jewish Influence III: Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement

     Kevin MacDonald

     http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/v...erstandIII.html

     --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     Over the last year, there has been a torrent of articles on neoconservatism raising (usually implicitly) some difficult issues: Are neoconservatives different from other conservatives? Is neoconservatism a Jewish movement? Is it "anti-Semitic" to say so?

     The thesis presented here is that neoconservatism is indeed a Jewish intellectual and political movement. This paper is the final installment in a three-part series on Jewish activism and reflects many of the themes of the first two articles. The first paper in this series focused on the traits of ethnocentrism, intelligence, psychological intensity, and aggressiveness.1 These traits will be apparent here as well. The ethnocentrism of the neocons has enabled them to create highly organized, cohesive, and effective ethnic networks. Neoconservatives have also exhibited the high intelligence necessary for attaining eminence in the academic world, in the elite media and think tanks, and at the highest levels of government. They have aggressively pursued their goals, not only in purging more traditional conservatives from their positions of power and influence, but also in reorienting US foreign policy in the direction of hegemony and empire. Neoconservatism also illustrates the central theme of the second article in this series: In alliance with virtually the entire organized American Jewish community, neoconservatism is a vanguard Jewish movement with close ties to the most extreme nationalistic, aggressive, racialist and religiously fanatic elements within Israel.2

     5. Think tanks

     Tbrnews.org Israeli Supporters as Presidential Advisors

     The Israeli lobby has many "think tanks" that provide future advisors to the various administrations, both Republican and Democrat. During the Clinton Administration, the Israeli lobby provided officials from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy like Martin Indyk. During the Bush Jr. Administration, many of the officials the Israeli lobby provided are from their Republican "think tanks," like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). NOTE PERLE AS EARLY TRAITOR-LEAKER

     1). Richard Perle----One of Bush's foreign policy advisors, he is the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. A very likely Israeli government agent, Perle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's after the National Security Agency (NSA) caught him passing highly classified (National Security) documents to the Israeli Embassy. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam. Perle came from one the above mentioned pro-Israel think tanks, the AEI. Perle is one of the leading pro-Israeli fanatics leading this Iraq war mongering within the administration and now in the media.

     Note: On March 27, 2003, it was announced in the media that Perle has resigned as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. His involvement in assisting the Global Crossing bankrupts and his purported $700,000 fee for his work was apparently too much for even the corrupt Bush administration to swallow. When Democrat Tony Cohelo resigned from Congress because of his financial sticky fingers, it was said that he "wished to spend more time with his family." Better spending time with the family than in jail. 2). Paul Wolfowitz----Deputy Defense Secretary, and member of Perle's Defense Policy Board, in the Pentagon. Wolfowitz is a close associate of Perle, and reportedly has close ties to the Israeli military. His sister lives in Israel. Wolfowitz came from the above mentioned Jewish think tank, JINSA. Wolfowitz is the number two leader within the administration behind this Iraq war mongering. 3). Douglas Feith----Under Secretary of Defense and Policy Advisor at the Pentagon. He is a close associate of Perle and served as his Special Counsel. Like Perle and the others, Feith is a pro-Israel extremist, who has advocated anti-Arab policies in the past. He is closely associated with the extremist group, the Zionist Organization of America, which even attacks Jews that don't agree with its extremist views. Feith frequently speaks at ZOA conferences. Feith runs a small law firm, Feith and Zell, which only has one International office, in Israel. The majority of their legal work is representing Israeli interests. His firm's own website stated, prior to his appointment, that Feith "represents Israeli Armaments Manufacturer." Feith basically represents the Israeli war machine. Feith also came from the Jewish think tank JINSA. Feith, like Perle and Wolfowitz, are campaigning hard for this Israeli proxy war against Iraq.

     4). Edward Luttwak----Member of the National Security Study Group of the Department of Defence at the Pentagon. Luttwak is reportedly an Israeli citizen and has taught in Israel. He frequently writes for Israeli and pro-Israeli newspapers and journals. Luttwak is an Israeli extremist whose main theme in many of his articles is the necessity of the U.S. waging war against Iraq.

     5). Henry Kissinger-----One of many Pentagon Advisors, Kissinger sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle. For detailed information about Kissinger's evil past, read Seymour Hersch's book (Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House). Kissinger likely had a part in the Watergate crimes, Southeast Asia mass murders (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), installing Chilean mass murdering dictator Pinochet, Operation Condor's mass killings in South America, and more recently served as Serbia's ex-dictator Slobodan Milosevic's advisor. He consistently advocates going to war against Iraq. Kissinger is the Ariel Sharon of the U.S. Unfortunately, President Bush nominated Kissinger as chairman of the September 11 investigating commission. It's like picking a bank robber to investigate a fraud scandal. The ensuing public outcry about this nomination caused Kissinger to beat a hasty retreat and he promptly resigned.

     6). Dov Zakheim----Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the Department of Defense. He is an ordained rabbi and reportedly holds Israeli citizenship. Zakheim attended Jewish College in London and became an ordained Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in 1973. He was adjunct professor at New York's Jewish Yeshiva University. Zakheim is close to the Israeli lobby.

     7). Kenneth Adelman-----One of many Pentagon Advisors, Adelman also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle, and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supports going to war against Iraq. Adelman frequently is a guest on Fox News, and often expresses extremist and often ridiculous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. Through his hatred or stupidity, he actually called Arabs "anti-Semitic" on Fox News (11/28/2001), when he could have looked it up in the dictionary to find out that Arabs by definition are Semites.

     8). I. Lewis Libby -----Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. The chief pro-Israel Jewish advisor to Cheney, it helps explains why Cheney is so gun-ho to invade Iraq. Libby is longtime associate of Wolfowitz. Libby was also a lawyer for convicted felon and Israeli spy Mark Rich, whom Clinton pardoned in his last days as president.

     9). Robert Satloff----U.S. National Security Council Advisor, Satloff was the executive director of the Israeli lobby's "think tank," Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Many of the Israeli lobby's "experts" come from this front group, like Martin Indyk.

     10). Elliott Abrams-----National Security Council Advisor. He previously worked at Washington-based "Think Tank" Ethics and Public Policy Center. During the Reagan Administration, Abrams was the Assistant Secretary of State, handling, for the most part, Latin American affairs. He played an important role in the Iran-Contra Scandal, which involved illegally selling U.S. weapons to Iran to fight Iraq, and illegally funding the contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. He also actively deceived three congressional committees about his involvement and thereby faced felony charges based on his testimony. Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community service. A year later, former President Bush (Senior) granted Abrams a full pardon. He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Reagan Administration's State Department.

     11). Marc Grossman-----Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources at the Department of State. Grossman is one of many of the pro-Israel Jewish officials from the Clinton Administration that Bush has promoted to higher posts.

     12). Richard Haass-----Director of Policy Planning at the State Department and Ambassador at large. He is also Director of National Security Programs and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He was one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the first Bush (Sr) Administration who sat on the National Security Council, and who consistently advocates going to war against Iraq. Haass is also a member of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

     13). Robert Zoellick-----U.S. Trade Representative, a cabinet-level position. He is also one of the more hawkish pro-Israel Jews in the Bush (Jr) Administration who advocated invading Iraq and occupying a portion of the country in order to set up setting up a Vichy-style puppet government. He consistently advocates going to war against Iraq.

     14). Ari Fleischer----Official White House Spokesman for the Bush (Jr) Administration. Prominent in the Jewish community, some reports state that he holds Israeli citizenship. Fleischer is closely connected to the extremist Jewish group called the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidics, who follow the Qabala, and hold very extremist and insulting views of non-Jews. Fleischer was the co-president of Chabad's Capitol Jewish Forum. He received the Young Leadership Award from the American Friends of Lubavitch in October, 2001.

     15). James Schlesinger-----One of many Pentagon Advisors, Schlesinger also sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor, who supports going to war against Iraq. Schlesinger is also a commissioner of the Defense Department's National Security Study Group, at the Pentagon.

     16). David Frum-----White House speechwriter behind the "Axis of Evil" label. He lumps together all the lies and accusations against Iraq for Bush to justify the war.

     17). Joshua Bolten----White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Bolten was previously a banker, former legislative aide, and prominent in the Jewish community. 18). John Bolton----Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Bolton is also a Senior Advisor to President Bush. Prior to this position, Bolton was Senior Vice President of the above mentioned pro-Israel thinktank, AEI. He recently (October 2002) accused Syria of having a nuclear program, so that they can attack Syria after Iraq. He must have forgotten that Israel has 400 nuclear warheads, some of which are thermonuclear weapons (according to a recent U.S. Air Force report).

     19). David Wurmser----Special Assistant to John Bolton (above), the under-secretary for arms control and international security. Wurmser also worked at the AEI with Perle and Bolton. His wife, Meyrav Wurmser, along with Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, co-founded the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri),a Washington-based Israeli outfit which distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light.

     20). Eliot Cohen-----Member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board under Perle and is another extremist pro-Israel advisor. Like Adelman, he often expresses extremist and often ridiculous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. More recently, he wrote an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal openly admitting his racist hatred of Islam claiming that Islam should be the enemy, not terrorism.

     21). Mel Sembler-----President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. A Prominent Jewish Republican and Former National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Export-Import Bank facilitates trade relationships between U.S. businesses and foreign countries, specifically those with financial problems.

     22). Michael Chertoff ----Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, at the Justice Department.

     23). Steve Goldsmith----Senior Advisor to the President, and Bush's Jewish domestic policy advisor. He also serves as liaison in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (White House OFBCI) within the Executive Office of the President. He was the former mayor of Indianapolis. He is also friends with Israeli Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and often visits Israel to coach mayors on privatization initiatives.

     24). Adam Goldman-----White House's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community.

     25). Joseph Gildenhorn-----Bush Campaign's Special Liaison to the Jewish Community. He was the DC finance chairman for the Bush campaign, as well as campaign coordinator, and former ambassador to Switzerland.

     26). Christopher Gersten-----Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families at HHS. Gersten was the former Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Husband of Labor Secretary, Linda Chavez, and reportedly very pro-Israel. Their children are being raised Jewish.

     27). Mark Weinberger-----Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy.

     28). Samuel Bodman-----Deputy Secretary of Commerce. He was the Chairman and CEO of Cabot Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts.

     29). Bonnie Cohen-----Under Secretary of State for Management.

     30). Ruth Davis-----Director of Foreign Service Institute, who reports to the Office of Under Secretary for Management. This Office is responsible for training all Department of State staff (including ambassadors).

     31). Lincoln Bloomfield-----Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. 32). Jay Lefkowitz-----General Counsel of the Office of Budget and Management.

     33). Ken Melman-----White House Political Director.

     34). Brad Blakeman------White House Director of Scheduling. Michael Santomauro Editorial Director 253 West 72nd street #1711 New York, NY 10023 *** I'm tired. Go google yourself

     Posted by jones at 08/09/2005 @ 10:51pm

165. I think the influence of the Israel lobby(AIPAC0 has been amply discussed. Personally, I am NOT anti-Jew. I believe in freedom and equality for all people of the world. Inthe U.S., anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli govt. or the powerful influence of AIPAC is branded "anti-Semitic". This tactic is intended to silence any legitimate criticism toward Israeli policy. I reject this disgraceful tactic. LOVE LIBERTY:Daniel Ellsberg was in technical violation of the law, but his motives were moral, in my opinion: he was bringing the truth about an illegal,immoral war to the American people. Everything Ellsberg released should never have been classified. The Franklin case is quite different: he was spying for a foreign government, and should go to prison. By the way ... I was corrected about the definition of treason, and I was in error. So are you-look it up in the dictionary. Treason involves the overthrow of the government. Franklin is guilty of espionage, not treason. I accept the point.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 12:02am

166. "liberty", "redstate" and pals,

     You are all parasites with far too much time on your hands. If you really had something important to say, you might begin with your fellows at some "winger" blog site.

     I would never waste my precious life sneaking around a "winger" site. I have much more important tasks to perform, like work, play, taking out the trash, crapping, etc.

     You guys just don't count here. Go home.

     regards,

     Bloppy

     Posted by bloppy at 08/10/2005 @ 12:08am

167. well Bloppy, evidently dialogue and open debate is not your style of democracy. I hardly see how engaging in dialogue with those who have a different world view is "sneaking around". You may not think we count, but the last time I checked, the first amendment had not been deleted from the constitution.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/10/2005 @ 01:13am

168. Philbq, thank you I know the passage well and Elsberg is still guilty of treason in my book. The applicable charge is that in his act of treason, he was bringing aid and comfort to the enemy (just as Fonda did with her treachery). Kerry is guilty of a number counts of the UCMJ (and perhaps treason) for meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris without permission of his chain of command (he was still in the Navy reserves) and encouraging them against the US.

     You and others keep repeating illegal, perhaps you can cite what law was broken in the Vietnam War. Or perhaps you believe that any country that is invaded and attacked by a Communist country (South Vietnam, South Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Guatemala,or Afghanistan, plus Poland, and the whole of Eastern Europe)is just fine and not a problem, unless the attacker is the US.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/10/2005 @ 01:21am

169. Phikbrq

     The partial list of actual Jews and Jewish influenced groups I put up doesn't have anything to do with whatever your personal whine might be -- for which you are willing to be berated by those who say "prove it" (to your claim that "anybody who knows anything knows Jews control Congress".) It documents what you refer to, whether it scares you or not. If you don't stand up for what you say, why do you say it?

     Treason, and traitors, has a broader sense in the present context than what you will find in the dictionary. It goes to what you would find in your gut, if you had a gut.

     Your kind is why LL, n-n, USAProde detest what they call 'liberal'. They know you will be around to help load up the cattle cars when the time comes, jsut like the good Germans. Basic useful idiots, or shabas goyim.

     Anyone who defends the Vietnam war should have died in it. Too bad they didn't.

     Since both Palestinians and Jews are semitic people, and they are at war, the term "anti-semitic" is actually a term of Jewish self-hate, projected onto whoever hates them instead of the Palestinians. Your bob-tailed reasoning probably can't figure that out. To even deal with it buys into their self-hatred. Its so absurd.

     Posted by jones at 08/10/2005 @ 07:06am

170. PHILBQ, it almost seems that your beef is more with Israel than the terrorists. Why is that?

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/10/2005 @ 08:17am

171. To LL:The Vietnam War was illegal in several legal areas:(1)It was in violation of the U.N. Charter, which does not allow military action without the approval of the Security Council,except in cases of defense of sudden attack.The U.S. is a signatory of the Charter.(2)Under the U.S. Constitution,war must be declared by Congress. This never occurred, even though the war went on for years.(3)The so-called government of South Vietnam was illegal, and incapable of authorizing U.S. invasion. The 1954 Geneva Accords designated the borders of South Vietnam as temporary, to be finally resolved after the elections that were to have taken place in the North and South in 1956. A final election for unification was to follow. In the Accords, South Vietnam was clearly described as a temporary entity.It WAS NOT a legitimate nation. Since everybody knew that Ho Chi Minh would win any election, the U.S. urged the South Vietnam puppet government to cancel the election in the South, which they were happy to do. With the cancellation of the election, South Vietnam was now a completely illegitimate government, and there was no legal authority to authorize the U.S. military occupation. It was an illegal occupation.(4)Violations of the Geneva Treaty on rules of war (bombing of civilian populations, torture and summary execution of prisoners, chemical warfare in use of napalm and Agent Orange,etc.) For these reasons, the Vietnam War was illegal.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 08:48am

172. TO JONES: I agree with you about the term "anti-Semetic". That's why I put it in quotes. The term is inaccurate and I do not use it. Both Jews and Arabs of Palestinian ancestry are Semetic peoples. Actually, most of the jews in Israel are of European ancestry, and are not Semetic people. The prejorative accusation "anti-Semetic" is a dishonest device intended to silence critics of Israel. Even Noam Chomsky, a Jew, is accused of this. It is garbage.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 09:01am

173. Don't feed the TROLLS!!!! LL, HHMWM, bloopy etc.

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/10/2005 @ 09:03am

174. Kevin McDonald, thanks for the list. The US is actually a sub-state of F**king Israel, and the Zionists!!!! THAT is why we'll never hear about the whole story about Rove/AIPAC/Iran's sad future. Our poor children dying for this horror!!! And, Jews scream, 'Anti-semitism' to shut up any discussion of the transgressions that common people have to pay for.

     They dare to scream 'Anti-Semetism' while they commit all of WWII's atocracies against the WHOLE Arab world.

     Well, I can see where it comes from for sure. From THEM!

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/10/2005 @ 09:10am

175. LL: Nicaragua ans Guatemala were attacked by a communist country? You have lost your mind. You occasionaly show moments of lucidity, then you go off the deep end. Actually, Nicaragua was attacked by a mercenary force called the Contras, paid and organized by the CIA. The murderous cowards and drug smugglers were afraid to fight the Nicaraguan Army, so they attacked and murdered farmers and civil engineers (Ben Linder). Guatemala WAS invaded in 1954 by a mercenary army organized by the CIA. The ELECTED LEGAL GOVERNMENT of Jacob Arbenz was overthrown, and a brutal military dictatorship was installed, with much torture and murder to follow. You should be ashamed to say the things you do. Lying is wrong. You call yourself a Christian-act like it.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 09:14am

176. I must add that the blood of Nicaraguan farmers is on Reagan's hands, and he has met his judgement.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 09:17am

177. Forgive me, bloggers. I know the topic is Rovegate and Franklin. I just can't ignore blatant intentional untruths.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 09:44am

178. Philbq,

     I know of what I speak. My wife's family is from El Salvador, many of our friends are from Nicaragua and Guatemala. The Soviet Union and Cuba installed many "advisors" in their attempt to turn all of Central America into Communist satellites.

     Several of my friends had families members killed by the guerrilla's who had "blond hair" leaders when they would stop buses and cars on the road in Guatemala and the borders with El Salvador.

     Who do you think the Sandinista's were? They were the puppet government of Castro and the Soviets. The FLMN in El Salvador likewise were strictly led by the Castro/Soviet communists (and they killed or drove much of my wife's family).

     Thank goodness that Reagan was not deterred by the scurrilous cowardly, commie loving Dems in the 80's who tried to stop the move towards Democracy in Central America. The area is in it's greatest economic development in the history of Central America, especially in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Costa Rica.

     I am very proud as is my wife's family and our many Central American friends that Reagan had the courage to turn back communism in Central America.

     Posted by love liberty at 08/10/2005 @ 09:51am

179. LL; I won't even dignify that garbage with a response.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 10:02am

180. Liberty and Red stater;

     It's impossible to take intellectual thugs serious. Those who can't even entertain a PURELY ACEDEMIC argument with out resorting to a hateful or personel responce. You just continue to reveal your regressive psuedo intellectual, partisan hack nature.

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/10/2005 @ 11:27am

181. Since we're hopelessly off-topic . . .

     I'll take this opportunity to tear into some of what has been posted.

     PhilBQ:

     While the term anti-Semitism is technically a misnomer, we all know what it means. The origin of the term is from Europe of the nineteenth century, long before any massive Arab immigration to that continent; in such an environment, Semite and Jew meant the same thing.

     The modern usage of the word appears to be traceable to about 1880 in Germany with the works of one Wilhelm Marr [en.wikipedia.org], who was looking for a more palitable term than Judenhass to describe some of his own ideas. Indeed, Marr's ideas are really the racist aspect of anti-Semitism, which rejects the already fallacious notion that there nothing wrong with a Jew that can't be solved by converting him; in Marr's view, much like those of the Nazis fifty years later, Jews are irredeemable.

     To Love Liberty:

     Ducking into the National Guard was well-known to be a draft dodge in the fifties and sixties. Don't try to parse this: George W. Bush and Dan Quayle were both draft dodgers.

     Of course, student deferments were another draft dodge, so you are quite justified in calling Bill Clinton a draft dodger. On the other hand, so then would you be justified in calling Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney draft dodgers.

     You are entitled to your opinion that Ellsberg and Kerry and Clinton and the rest of us who demonstrated against the war are traitors, but don't expect many of us to take it seriously.

     To Jones/Neverong (1):

     Having rebuked LL just now in my own way, I find your indirect retort to him (Anyone who defends the Vietnam war should have died in it) hateful and disgusting. I believe in democracy, sir, and part of the democratic process is open discourse on civic affairs and a guaranteed set so civil liberties which encourages one to speak his views; accordingly, no citizen should be punished for expressing ideas that are unpopular or even absurd.

     If you are going to disagree with LL over the Vietnam War, there are better ways to censure his views than to express a death wish.

     To Jones/Neverong (2):

     I'm still reading a lot of your droppings as satire. Do you really believe this stuff?

     One can make a case that AIPAC has way too mush influence over Congress without appealing to crackpot Jewish conspiracy theories. One may do so by following money instead of, as you do, somebody's blood line.

     The eleven Senators and 26 members of the House you list in your 10:51 post from last night who are Jewish present a varied group, ranging from Norm Coleman on the right to Bernie Sanders on the left. Other than that these people are Jews, I see no pattern here. By the way, are these Jews Orthodox or Reform? How observant is each? Perhaps you can enlighten me on that; I don't keep up on that kind of thing.

     It is also interesting that among the sources you cite for facts and opinion in that same post is a website called Jew Watch. It is listed in Franklin's Hate Directory [bcpl.net], a catalog of websites promoting hatred based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. The Jew Watch website, in addition to promoting Jewish conspiracy theories, also expounds on Holocaust denial and defends The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious anti-Semitic forgery.

     If that is the sort of thing that informs your views, then I may be pardoned for not taking them seriously.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/10/2005 @ 12:22pm

182. Rabbit;

     Thanks for taking care of that!

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/10/2005 @ 12:30pm

183. Guys,

     Usually this site is a good forum for political arguments. Unfortunately, there is far too much anti-Semitism creeping in. The "Jew Watch" site which was quoted earlier actually has links to Stormfront, the white power web site.

     It's way off topic and more than a little nauseating.

     Back to the topic: the Lawrence Franklin indictment makes my stomach churn. It's no secret that the current administration (and the previous one) have maintained extremely strong ties with Israel. That sort of espionage, however, is likely to occur in pretty much every administration.

     Let's not kid ourselves.

     Posted by Beausoleil at 08/10/2005 @ 12:41pm

184. No, No-sense There is no ACADEMIC discussion with soul maggots to be had.

     LIke: those who defend death squads in El Salvador killing Archebishop Oscar Romero -- because he stood up for the peasants, against the corrupt Catholic-military controlled elite therE in l980. "commie", he was, to them.

     Then, later, they will hold him up as example of a fine Christian martyr.

     Or: with Iraq vets who returning with liberated Shiite wives whose family were brutalized by Saddam Hussein. Living at taxpayers expense.

     Or people who put out the bumper sticker "Terrorists hate Bush. Are you a terrorist?" (or, alternately: "Terrorists hate Israel. Are you a terrorist?)

     If you even acknowledge FOR ONE MOMENT their right to exist your soul is eaten.

     you don't feed pigs cake.

     Posted by jones at 08/10/2005 @ 1:03pm

185. Beausoleil:

     Yeah, we have to be careful that we don't ascribe too much to this kind of stuff. As much as I'd like to see another arrow stuck into this administration - as I said before, they spy on us, we spy on them - we give them financial aid and they help us! It's just a crazy, political relationship of convenience. .....

     As we know from recent revelations about Kissinger, this is relatively insignificant in the sceam of things. However, do we really need this to further reveal the true character of this administration?

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/10/2005 @ 1:31pm

186. Jones;

     What a perfectly apropos handle! Try to stay away from the literary viagra Dude! Your jonesing a little too hard man!

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/10/2005 @ 1:42pm

187. Jack Benning, do you know what you are talking about? To compare Israel's actions to this Nazis is simply ignorant. Israel has done some lousy things but they have not, under any circumstances, attempted to annihilate an entire ethnic group. You can criticize Israel for a variety of policy decisions but it is just plain bizarre to compare their behavior to the Nazis. I am going to assume you have never learned about deportations, transit camps, death camps, krematoria, etc.?

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/10/2005 @ 1:45pm

188. Anti-semitism is not the issue here. We are talking about responsible criticisms. If you want to be an effective critic make reasoned arguments.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/10/2005 @ 1:46pm

189. Am I the only liberal here who finds this irresponsible Israel bashing problematic? I can't imagine my only allies here are conservatives. . . .

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/10/2005 @ 1:46pm

190. JACKRABBIT: Thank you for acknowledging my point that the term "anti-semetism" is inaccurate. But let me say once more: I am not at all anti-Jew. My Jewish friends are some of the nicest, most intelligent, and liberal people I know. I also will agree that Israel, having been established by legitimate international authority, the U.N., has a right to exist in internationaly recognized borders. I merely expect Israel to follw international law, and applicable U.N. resolutions, which it has not. I do not like the anti-Jew talk I have heard here though, and I disassociate myself from it.

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 1:47pm

191. Typo: follow U.N. resolutions...

     Posted by philbq at 08/10/2005 @ 1:49pm

192. LL,

     I don't agree with Bloopy - I like having you righties around to argue with. And if your opinion is that Ellsburg is a traitor, fine. But I must say you righties are getting your clocks cleaned, e.g., PHILBQ's 8:48 AM post. I wish you guys would do less jingoistic flag waving and more fact-finding!

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/10/2005 @ 1:51pm

193. Jack Rabbit, Thank You! You are right about Marr but I'd like to expand on it alittle further below. I think this sums up allot about what is being said here.

     Jones, What a bunch of crap! If you don't like it. Don't buy their movies, Don't read their newspapers, and don't give them your vote. What do you Google? "The Turner Diaries"?

     No-Nonsense, Only you would think someone needs a PHD to recognize what bullshit is. I called it for what it is. I didn't think I had to write a thesis to be able to call something crap.

     *In 1879 the German journalist Wilhelm Marr, a former socialist and anarchist, founded an organization that was novel in two ways. It was the first political party based on a platform of hostility to Jews. And it introduced the world to a new word: "anti-Semite."

     Marr was an atheist, and the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Anti-Semites) was hostile to Jews on the secular grounds that they are an alien "race." However, his account of "Semitism" was not essentially different from the demonic conception of the Jew that had existed in Christian Europe for centuries. It boiled down to this: Jews are a people apart from the rest of humanity. They are the enemy. Wherever they go, they form a state within a state. Conspiring in secret, they work together to promote their own collective advantage at the expense of the nations or societies in whose midst they dwell and on whom they prey. Cunning and manipulative, they possess uncanny powers that enable them, despite their small numbers, to achieve their ends. The term "antiSemitism" has come to refer to this discourse, or variations on the themes it contains, because the same rhetoric persists whether Jewish identity is seen as religious, racial, national or ethnic. Sometimes this discourse is explicit; at other times it is the subtext of attacks on Jews. Anti-Semitism, thus defined, is not new.

     Posted by redstateman at 08/10/2005 @ 2:14pm

194. HHEMWM,

     Yeah, this Lefty also thinks the Israel-bashing is getting out of hand, but I am done with this thread. Thus, nothing more to say.

     Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 08/10/2005 @ 3:02pm

195. Red stater;

     If you're such an acedemic, tell us all about the Ottoman empire and it's relanvance to the history of the region! In addition, If you had studied Middle East conflicts in Grad school surely you would at least acknowledge what the Balfour Agreement did!......

     Of course you're not really interseted in these things because they would reveal that it is in fact you that is full of crap. For those who , once again would like to se how easy it is to dismantle a thugs argument just google Balfour agreement!......

     As for the right of Israel to exist, that is a question that I had no intention of alluding to in my statements.However, the term "imposition" is perfectly correct for describing the placement of Israel in Palestine at that time but does not reveal a value judgement. Again the term "insult" does characterize the the perception of Arabs in regards to the imposition of Israel by predominantly European interests. Those of you who know more about this than REDSTATE may remember that they even tried to place the state of Israel in South America initially , but it was easier to push around Arabs and get away with it! So , I don't deny the right of Israel to exist but we should not kid ourselves about it's birth - A forced labour!.....

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/10/2005 @ 3:16pm

196. Ugh,

     Look, as much fun as it is to speculate on what Fitzgerald is planning to do, we really don't know much, other than the fact that Rove is not likely to be indicted.

     I could be wrong, but nothing I've seen so far leads me to believe that this pseudo-scandal will make much of a dent. McClellan is definitely in an uneasy spot -- I don't expect him to resign -- but I seriously doubt that Rove will leave Bush's side, especially given the fact that the law was never broken.

     We can all disgree on this last point, but no one can deny that obtaining a conviction against Rove under the IIPA is mostly fantasy. Apparently, Mr. Corn is so intoxicated by this fantasty that he can't resist referencing an unrelated case which relies solely on s.739 of the USC.

     Even in the unlikely event that Fitzgerald invokes s.739, Rove's defense would be strong -- the provisions specifies that the person must have reason to believe (that the info) could be used to the injury of the United Stations.

     Plame's cover was already blown by Aldrich Ames. Her name appeared online in a bio on Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson himself acknowleged that his wife was no longer a covert agent at the time of Novak's column. The list goes on. The "injury to the United States" was already done, and it can be argued that Rove had no reason to believe that his communications were injurious to national security.

     All we're left with is the "moral culpability" issue of Rove "outting" a supposed covert agent to allegedly punish Wilson.

     That doesn't work for me. The context of Rove's statements appears to be that he wanted to undercut Joe Wilson's credibility on the Niger/uranium issue. Since we now know Wilson lied about who appointed him to the task, Rove's statements to the media regarding Wilson's credibility were justified and accurate. Furthermore, we know that his assessments about Iraq's intentions in Niger were incorrect. Just ask British intelligence.

     And someday, we'll know what Judith Miller is hiding from us.

     Mr. Corn, it sounds like you need to put down that lap top, order up some margaritas, and watch the sun set.

     Posted by Beausoleil at 08/10/2005 @ 3:18pm

197. To PhilBQ:

     I didn't mean to make it sound like you were anti-Semitic merely because you held a mistaken view of the term ant-Semitism, and my apologies if I did. I'm glad to have been of service in clearing it up.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/10/2005 @ 4:02pm

198. Beausoliel"

     " Just ask British intel. " , well that's hard to do but unecessary.....

     I love infatic statements on such muddy issues! Just google " joe wilson botched niger mission" and you will get this reflection on a Financial Times periodical article.......

     " To be sure, as the FT article reminds us, some documents that detailed alleged uranium transfers as between Niger and Iraq have indeed proved fraudulent.

     So why then, now many months out, is British intelligence still sticking by the story, despite the embarrassing forgeries?

     Here's why:

     However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq. These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored."......

     The old document's were forged but the new intel is legit? "Trust us!" Trust who? "Don't you worry about it"

     So, do we take the so called human and electronic evidense that they claim exists as gospel truth? I think not. Too many conflicting stories. Who do we believe? Well obviousely we believe what we want to. That doesn't make it so though!

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/10/2005 @ 4:10pm

199. No-Nonsense,

     Your reply doesn't refute the British position at all.

     The Butler report confirmed that suspicions about Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium were "well-founded", even after dismissing the fake documents. British Intell still stands by their original assertion.

     What's more, the former prime minister of Niger was convinced that Iraq sought to purchase uranium.

     All you're really offering is a conspiracy theory.

     Posted by Beausoleil at 08/10/2005 @ 5:18pm

200. Beausoliel:

     Like I said, if it works for you -you believe it, but it is far from irrefutable evidence.

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/10/2005 @ 6:09pm

201. Hey No-Nonsense, It amazes me on how you ignore certain parts of history to suit your own agenda. Israel was not a "state" that was imposed by us as you alluded to. The Balfour Document you keep referring to was actually a letter written to Lord Rothschild by Aurther James Lord Balfour on November 2nd 1917. The letter represents the first political recognition of Zionist aims BY THE BRITISH. You keep alluding to this document as if it was an eviction notice to the Arabs in the region. If fact the letter specifically states: "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." It wasn't until 1922 when the "Mandate for Palestine" was finally agreed upon. The mandates for Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine were assigned by the Supreme Court of the League of Nations at its San Remo meeting in April 1920. Negotiations between Great Britain and the United States with regard to the Palestine mandate were successfully concluded in May 1922, and approved by the Council of the League of Nations in July 1922. The mandates for Palestine AND SYRIA came into force simultaneously on September 29, 1922. In this document, the League of Nations recognized the "historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and the "grounds for RECONSTITUTING their national home in that country." In other words professor Nonsense, The League of Nations was givng the land back to the Jews who owned in the first place. You'd have to go back way before the Ottoman Empire to understand that professor. Being the selective historian that you are, I am sure you would want to leave that part out of your dialogue. You talk about the Jews and the poor Palestinians but, you say nothing at all about Syria. Which was "carved" from the same cloth. I don't hear you bitching about how "They didn't carve their little country out of Palestine on their own and thus didn't earn the respect of their neighbors.......". "just crap" And another thing professor, By 1870 there were more Jews in Jerusalem than Arabs. In fact there was Jewish immigration to Israel(Palestine) even under the Ottoman Empire occupation. Most of the Palestinians you whine about didn't own land. Most of the land was held by absentee landlords and cultivated by tenent farmers. You talk about how the Palestinians must feel having their homes bulldozed to the ground but you make no reference to how the Jews feel about being invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordon, Iraq, and Lebanon at the same time. You don't talk about the Sinai Campaign, The six day war, and The Yom Kippur wars. You don't talk about the fact that the Jews lost one percent of their population in the war of independence. You don't talk about how the Jews feel about being persecuted for thousands of years. But when a poor fucking Palestinian terrorist gets his home bulldozed because he just blew up a bus load of innocent civilians you want to stand on your intellectual pedestal and give nobility to them and every other anti-Zionist of the world. And that professer NoNonsense, is utter horse shit! You want to know about influence left on the region from the Ottoman Empire? Do a google search on Suleyman, (as I mentioned in my first post). He thought the entire world was his possession as a gift of God. Even if he didn't occupy the lands, he still claimed them as his own. Sounds allot like some of the same rhetoric coming from the muslim world today. I suppose that influence is our fault as well. Blame the US., blame the Jews but you never blame the Arab world for a damn thing. That my nutty professor, is utter crap!

     Posted by redstateman at 08/10/2005 @ 9:09pm

202. Note: I am an academic whose field is psychosenmiotics – analysis of the psychological content of communication. Since, as this thread says as well as demonstrates, the label "anti-Semitism" is used to chill criticism of Israel, contributing to the attitude that "sharing secrets" with the children of Abraham via Sarah isn't really all that serious, just a matter of rephrasing a few legal definitions for what Perle, Franklin, Pollard, (Feith, Miller, Bolton et al, in the broader course) have done to manipulate the US into making war for Israel, and let it slide. I don't think so.

     **** Analysis

     How use of (the term) "anti-Semitism" breeds anti-Semitism

     The way Jews use "anti-Semitism" (see ADL's Abe Foxman – "Never Again: The Threat of the New Ant-Semitism"; Phyllic Chessler --"The New Anti-Semitism") is a token of, and provokes what it rants against – hatred of Jews.

     This can be seen by, FIRST, realizing that: they HAVE TO preemptively define the feeling and attitude of disapprobation evoked in reaction to the way they are as a people. Otherwise, they would have to deal with spontaneous expressions of negativity ethnic minorities in general arouse and live down (Irish, Italians, blacks, Puerto Ricans, etc.). It is a measure of psychosemitoic control in the interest of group-ego: "HERE is what you are experiencing toward us – goes all the way back to Haman." The idea that it could be a common sort of reaction to ‘differentness', for which they are partly responsible by this preemptive labeling. is thus both tacitly admitted and denied. It's like: you keep telling them (about Israel's behavior, for instance) "Look, you can't do that…" on the basis of good reasons; until, finally, they say "you're just anti-Semitic."

     … and SECOND, by realizing that the HAVE TO define the disapprobative attitude UNDER THE COMMON GENERIC IDENTITY, WHICH ‘LOOPS' THE SIGN-USE PROCESS THROUGH THE NON-INCLUDED OPPOSITE (Palestinians; Abraham's concubine lineage). The generic racial term "semitic" again serves a dual purpose: to evoke, then split off from, identification with the (to them) abhorrent. This transposes negativity toward them ‘up', to the level of the common predicate, then ‘back down' to the infima species . Meanwhile, showing pictures of Arafat schmoozing ("Could you kiss this man?")

     Until it is realized that both these things – 1. definition of other's attitudes toward themselves for others; 2. by way invoking love-of-the-repulsive to avoid "anti-Semitism" getting applied as "hatred of Palestinians" (which no one thinks of doing, the Jews are so beautiful (show pics of Liz Taylor) and persecuted (show lines at the holocaust museums)) -- the cunning manipulation built into use of "anti-Semitic" won't be seen. It communicates as it does through a Sign-use pattern of double-double reverse negative (explained elsewhere; see http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=13900240 )

     Posted by jones at 08/10/2005 @ 10:48pm

203. Jones, What on earth are you and redstate talking about? You are both meatheads.

     Bloppy

     Posted by bloppy at 08/11/2005 @ 01:32am

204. Redstatepile:

     What's "crap" about anything I posted? If "Redstate" means you voted for Bush, you don't have a right to exist in any state that is dedicated to truth since it was known he was a liar in '04. I hold it to be self-evident that anyone who accepts the word of a liar, even supports their massive slaughter, by so doing automatically sacrifices their right to live with truth. As for your:

     "If you don't like it. Don't buy their movies, Don't read their newspapers, and don't give them your vote."

     -- THAT's your response to an ideologial force arranged by 2% of the population that controlls 98%? Just avoid them? If you know so much history maybe you have run across the fact that 98% of the signers of the U.S. constitution were Protestant by heritage -- you can look it up. Jews and Catholics couldn't own property or vote in most locales. OK witch youse? Just ignore the takeover? Anyone who won't stand up for their heritage against those who have taken it away never deserved it in the first place. They are lower than Jews, who never had one. Go eat chimp. And don't reply to what you can't answer by smears and discrediting the source.

     As for the rest:

     loopy -- The 10.41pm post above yours was about use of the term "anti-Semitism". Quote: "How use of (the term) "anti-Semitism" breeds anti-Semitism." If what it said is over your head, just ask; it can be clarified. Just don't pretend you don't know what it's about, when you as well as everyone else obviously do.

     Did someone say Mein Kampf? In it, Hitler remarked about what he encountered early on, as Germany was about to sink under the same tribe-led take-over that brought down Russia, in trying to discuss nationalism with Jews in Vienna. They would repeat the same thing after it was refuted; run away if the argument went against them; resort to vilification, smears, and finally killing the messenger. Basic pattern, I guess. The Zionist state of Israel assassinated Palestinian leader Sheik Yassin from a U.S. made helicopter gunship.

     As for the point that the Jews in Congress represent a broad political spectrum, where are the voices condemning the war for Israel? No, Kevin MacDonald's massive work ("debunked" will be said; but it isn't, that's just one of their pet knee-jerk phrases) demonstrates a deep cultural affinity that winds up, today, refusing to challenge Zionism (except for True Torah ones).

     But as America killers, they have ample help and protection from the fetus worshipping crypto- Croatian Ustasi Catholics (see Avro Manhattan: The Vatican holocaust) aka Giuliani, Scalia, Noval, et al. And the shabbas goy Gingrinchzm, TV whore preachers Falwell, Robertson, etc..

     Finally: this isn't off topic at all. The anacronym "AIPAC" stand for "American Israeli Politial Action Committee", which purports to represent organized Jewry here, and to which Franklin passed our (MY) NATION's classified material.

     To repeat what was posted under neverong: I am White, Southern, Confederate, Protestant West Texas male. I know what America, Christianity, humanity is from inside out, and the usurpers using the chimp now to make war on Iran are anti- all these. Anti-American (using our name), Anti-Christian (using our name), Anti-human (calling themselves "John Israel" in Abu Ghraib).... If and/or when a suicide bomb goes off in this country, those who voted for Bush will be responsible for the deaths, as they have been responsible for those in London, Madrid .. and poor, desparate Iraq. That is a curse they will carry to the grave. Those who opposed it will be 'collateral damage' will deserve to die, as well, unless they speak up.

     Who will?

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 07:47am

205. OFF TOPIC BUT RELATED: To all the defenders of Israel (Redassman), tell me why the world is demanding that Iran stop nuclear developement, but ignores the fact that Israel(in the same region) continues to add to its nuclear stockpile, and refuses to permit inspections or sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? This hypocrisy is obvious to the world, even though the U.S. media won't mention it. The nuclear arms race in the Middle East is because of Israel.

     Posted by philbq at 08/11/2005 @ 08:04am

206. PHILBQ, the nuclear arms race in the Middle East is not just because the Israelis have nukes but because the Brits, the Americans, the French, the Russians, the Pakistanis and the Indians also have nukes. Anyone of the major powers that has ever been a major player in the Middle East has those weapons. Yes, it is hypocritical that some nations can have nukes while others cannot. But it is not Israel alone that makes this a hypocritical situation. And it is not because of a Jewish affinity by the American government. Rather, we tolerate nukes for our allies and detest nukes for our enemies. It is a problem, no doubt. But this is not to be dropped solely on Israel's shoulders.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 09:18am

207. Besides, what should be going on is a world-wide push towards nuclear disarmament, something the Bush administration has been loathe to do. And they alone are not to blame, governments the world over are highly irresponsible for their stance on nukes. I just wish the American government would lead the way in attempting to end nuclear development.

     Frankly, I don't want to see Iran develop the weapons because they are a proven state sponsor of terrorism.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 09:21am

208. Jones, I think you miss the point of anti-Semitism entirely. Anti-Semitism is a very real problem that goes far beyond shielding Israelis and/or Jews from criticism. If you think that is the real reason the term exists you have some reading to do.

     There are parts of this world where Jews are public enemy number one. Just listen to pronouncements by people like the Prime Minister of Malysia who blame Jews for South East Asia's economic woers and offer comfort to disgruntled Muslims who want to target the nation of Israel. If you read about why Theodore Hertzl launched the World Zionist Congress in the first place you will recall the virulent anti-Semitism of the French masses and public institutions during the Dreyfus trial. There were Russian pogroms under the Czars and there was even a pogrom in Kielce, Poland in 1946 after WWII ended where more Jews were killed by anti-Semitic Poles who continued to blame the Jews for all of their woes.

     These events are real. Anti-Semitism is real and is one of so many hatreds the world over that cannot be ignored or denied. If you think the term anti-Semitism exists just to shield Jews from prejudice then you have to ask yourself what the term racism is at all. Are all forms of racism concocted by their victims as a shield from criticism?

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 09:29am

209. HHEMWM: I would say to you this: It is a given in American politics that if anyone makes a legitimate criticism of the actions and policies of the state of Israel, the pro-Israel propaganda machine(yes, it exists) will label the critic "anti Semitic". It is the protectors of the image of Israel who have delegitimized the term"anti -Semitic". Your criticism should be pointed to them. And the term "anti-Semitic" is simply inaccurate and intentionally misleading. It should be ended.

     Posted by philbq at 08/11/2005 @ 09:49am

210. PHILBQ, there is a propaganda machine to protect Israel and there have been many apologists for Israel's policies. But, there seems to be a tendency to blame Israel for all of the conflicts in the Middle East. I am no apoligist for Israel and I also am no Zionist. But I do know that there appears to be a lot of ire generated toward Israel because of the propaganda machine here in the U.S. But is it reasonable to blame Israel for more than its share of conflict because we find the conduct of some in the Israel lobby distasteful?

     What we do not see is that there is a vast amount of anti-Israel propaganda that is filtered out of the American media, for better and for worse. If you lived in another country where there is not as much pro-Israel sentiment you might feel very differently.

     As far as "anti-Semitism" is concerned, what term would you offer as an alternative? There is hatred directed at Jews just as there is hatred directed at so many other specfic "groups."

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 10:07am

211. HHEMWM: Regarding criticism of Israel, it is Israel who is illegally occupying Palestinian land in defiance of U.N. resolutions requiring Israel to return to 1967 borders and return seized land. The occupation is the main source of conflict in the Middle East. So Israel is the number one target for criticism and rightly so. Regarding the term "anti-Semitism", why not call it what it is -"anti-Jew"? That would be at least accurate.

     Posted by philbq at 08/11/2005 @ 10:31am

212. Another thouhgt: I oppose and despise all the Arab kingdom/dictatorships in the Middle East. I will cheer when they are overthrown by their own people. But Israel calls itself a democracy. (Some would argue that it is not, since rights for Jews and non-Jews are not the same)Israel wants to be seen as the "good guy". So when they reguire Palestinians in the occupied territory to pass through military checkpoints to go anywhere, it is hypocritical for a "democracy" to treat others this way. Israel is judged by a higher standard, and rightly so. It is Israel that claims the moral high ground. It should earn it by its actions.

     Posted by philbq at 08/11/2005 @ 11:04am

213. "Jones, I think you miss the point of anti-Semitism entirely. Anti-Semitism is a very real problem that goes far beyond shielding Israelis and/or Jews from criticism. If you think that is the real reason the term exists you have some reading to do."

     As the post above made clear, the analysis was of what the term "anti-Semitism" communicates, not "the real reason the term exists."

     As for "having some reading to do", f*ck you. Anyone who voted for Bush is guilty of what the Re-pube pathological liars and psychotic killers have done. Worse than Jews. You put whatever is said in you own words and reply to that. What is called Anti-semitism wouldn't be such a problem today if the hate state of Israel hadn't undermined the Oslo process.

     As for your "There are parts of this world where Jews are public enemy number one. Just listen to pronouncements by people like the Prime Minister of Malysia who blame Jews for South East Asia's economic woes and offer comfort to disgruntled Muslims who want to target the nation of Israel." ---

     1. I have already referred to Mahathir's statement "Jews get others to do their killing for them" as, in fact, verified: once in 0 ad, instance the Romans; then in 2000 ad. instance US war for Israel. Or are you ignorant of the 4 documents the sweet neocons signed declaring a "clean break" with US evenhanded policy in the MidEast, setting the course for Bush's foreign policy; if so, you have a lot of catching up to do. 2. How do you know the Jews aren't responsible for the economic woes of Malaysia and other countries? 3. Sheer numerical superiority argues that Israel = Wasreal, until they got the US to slaugher Islamists for them andmade us as hated as they are. Now they are repeating the same in Iran. Their new president has been denied a visa to address the UN because, by White House declaration, some members of the family of the '78 hostage situation -- probably arranged by Jews -- think they recognize him as one of the student captors. Which has been proven a lie.

     PALESTINE FOR PALESTINIANS

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 11:29am

214. Heres a little present for all you right-wingers!......

     From todays NY times:.......

     AN obscure provision of the energy bill signed into law this week by President George W. Bush demonstrates how, even in this era of heightened concern about terrorism, narrow commercial considerations can trump national security at the behest of one senator.

     Enlarge This Image

     David Suter

     Forum: Op-Ed Contributors

     Despite widespread opposition - from the Bush administration, a majority of the Senate, leaders of the House Energy Committee, and nuclear regulators from the five preceding presidential administrations - Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and chairman of the Energy Committee, included an amendment that guts restrictions on the export of highly enriched uranium, the same material used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

     If terrorists obtained enough such uranium they could fashion a full-fledged nuclear weapon, not merely a "dirty bomb" that would scatter radioactive waste. As the late Manhattan Project physicist Luis Alvarez noted in his memoirs: "With modern weapons-grade uranium, the background neutron rate is so low that terrorists, if they had such material, would have a good chance of setting off a high-yield explosion simply by dropping one half of the material onto the other half. . . . Even a high school kid could make a bomb in short order."

     The new law increases the likelihood of that nightmare scenario by allowing exports of bomb-grade uranium to foreign companies to rise to more than 100 pounds annually, thereby multiplying the odds that terrorists could steal enough for a bomb while the uranium is in transit to, or in storage at, foreign facilities........

     Start spinning guys, - that's what you do best! Hint ; first dismiss NY TIMES as a liberal rag!

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/11/2005 @ 11:34am

215. Jones, who says I voted for Bush?

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 11:54am

216. PHILBQ, as far as the 1967 borders are concerned, Israel occupies only the West Bank. Gaza was given to the Palestinian Authority and Suez was returned to Egypt after negotiations with Sadat.

     The pre-1967 borders made Israel very prone to invasion and were hardly defensible borders. The fact that they have returned most of the territories seized from their neighbors is a sign of efforts to find a lasting peace. The Golan Heights remains in their possession because of the Syrian threat and they are currently working to create a Palestinian state that would include the West Bank. It isn't perfect but it is an attempt at peace.

     I agree with you there are a lot of problems with internal security and checkpoints. There are also a lot of suicide bombings.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 11:58am

217. Jones, hardly the civilized talk of an academic.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 11:59am

218. I can only wonder how you became so twisted by hatred. The Iranian hostage taking was arranged by Jews? Good grief.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 12:16pm

219. RedSTATER'

     Congragulations for your efforts, however your spin of history is facinating! While you are spot on about certain things your powers of rationale are lacking. First I would ask, since you so dutifully quoted it -do you think that bulldozing their homes was a violation of their civil and humanitarian rights? And that didn't happen after the terrorist bombing acts began as you " deluded " to!.........

     Finally, By your assertion, what is Refered to as RECONSTITUTING their homeland is a perfectly legitemate way to reclaim property that you couldn't hold onto through convential means. By this reasoning it is perfectly logical that we are obliged to give all the American Indians back thier land - because they don't have the resources to fight for it on their own! Let's just bury our heads in revisionist history and forget that they were the victims of superior powers that defeated them and give it all back! In fact lets give all the land back to American Japenese that were thrown in MANSENAR ( actually not a bad idea, but again not realistic). Then lets take care of all the Black relatives of those who were screwed by us! In fact lets just forget the whole concept of ASSENSION and domination that is the basis of human experience! Sounds like a JOHN LENNON SONG......... IMAGINE! No countries, no consequences, no responsibilities, blah, blah,blah. Too bad it , like communism , it ignores the most basic characteristic of human nature!

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/11/2005 @ 12:18pm

220. soul maggot droppings (probably a Jew to boot -- if not by blood, by -ishness: a crypto- worse kind)

     **** Jones, hardly the civilized talk of an academic. Posted by HHEMWM 08/11/2005 @ 11:59am ****

     Jones, who says I voted for Bush? Posted by HHEMWM 08/11/2005 @ 11:54am

     **** I can only wonder how you became so twisted by hatred. The Iranian hostage taking was arranged by Jews? Good grief. Posted by HHEMWM 08/11/2005 @ 12:16am ****

     That's the way they do

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 12:59pm

221. HHEMWM, Well said. I'm glad you jumped in here. For a minute there I thought I was blogging on a "skin head" website. I admire your well founded dialogue and your ability to remain calm in spite of all the ignorance. Their so called intellectual dialogue is nothing more than pure racist propaganda bull shit. What really pisses me off. Is people like Nononsense and Philbq cannot just come out and say who they really are. I guess that would be too politically incorrect. I think Jones is the only one who really shows what his true colors actually are. At least he doesn't try to hide it. I would probably have more respect for the rest if they just came out and said they are a racist, anti-semitic, anti-zionist, bigot or all of the above. Instead they try to hide their true colors behind intellectual dialogue, manipulation of historical facts, a bias media, bias literature, and manipulated sciences. They don't want to know that "criticism of Israel's policies" actually stems from anti-semitic roots. There is little or no mention of the Jihadist responsibilities for their part in destablizing the region and imposing their jihad on the world. But this is nothing new. As long as there are the Jones's, Nononsenses, Philbq's, Adolf's, and the Jihadist in this world. Israel will always have a cornerstone for their policies until the end of time.

     Jones,

     "Anyone who won't stand up for their heritage against those who have taken it away never deserved it in the first place. They are lower than Jews, who never had one."

     Eat this chimp!

     By 1776 and the War of Independence, around 2,000 Jews lived in America, with a significant role in the struggle for independence, including fighting against the British (the first revolutionary to be killed in Georgia was a Jew named Francis Salvador). Jews also played a key role in financing the Revolution, with the MOST IMPORTANT of the financiers being Haym Salomon.

     Salomon, Haym (hīm) , 1740–85, American Revolutionary financier, b. Lissa (now Leszno), Poland. A Jewish emigrant from Poland, he was imprisoned (1778) by the British in New York City for aiding the Revolutionaries and was condemned to death, but he escaped to Philadelphia. There he started a successful brokerage business. He aided Robert Morris in obtaining loans from France and pledged his own fortune to the new government to maintain its credit. Salomon was never recompensed and he died impoverished.

     President George Washington remembered the Jewish contribution when the first synagogue opened in Newport, Rhode Island in 1790 in a letter, dated August 17, 1790: "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in the land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants. While everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig-tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

     If it wasn't for a Jew you wouldn't have a heritage to fight for. And the only credence your Psycho-analysis babaling contributed to science or this country for that matter,is anyone can teach a chimp to hate. And if you think liars ought to die, then why don't you put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. You'd be doing this country and the rest of the world a huge favor.

     And "don't reply to what you can't answer by smears and discrediting the source".

     Posted by redstateman at 08/11/2005 @ 1:53pm

222. Well, there you have it, folks. chimps and the tribe. America the beautiful -- and we owe it all to a Jew named Salamon, immigrant from Poland, financed it all.

     HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

     They really tikkuned their olam that time, didn't they?

     When hate is the truth, the truth is hate.

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 2:14pm

223. Jones/Neverong:

     You are proof positive that opposition to Bush by itself does not make one a liberal, progressive or otherwise left wing. And you certainly aren't moderate. I think we can eliminate sober conservative, too.

     soul maggot droppings (probably a Jew to boot -- if not by blood, by -ishness: a crypto- worse kind)

     Remarks like that clearly show where you stand: to the right of Mr. Bush and his minions. It would be one thing to dismiss those with whom you disagree after presenting rational arguments that at least attempt to refute theirs, but to dismiss those with whom you disagree as Jews, as if that is supposed to be an epithet, is something of a lower order of discourse.

     One of the things that sets the right and left apart from each other that the left believes in substantive democracy and the right believes in some kind of hierarchy, still seeking to find that illusive Platonic utopia where the state is truly governed by the "best". The word aristocracy is from the Greek meaning rule by the best. To Plato, that meant the state would be governed by philosophers who understood his teachings. Historically, there has never been such a state. Rather, aristocracy has been variously defined as rule by slave holders, land holders, wealthy industrialists or, even more perversely, those of a certain racial heritage or religious background. Nazi Germany and South Africa until the nineties were examples of states built on the false myths of racial supremacy.

     The democratic ideal, on the other hand, rejects all such hierarchy as an arbitrary imposion of power by the self-styled elites over all others.

     Racism, including anti-Semitism, is by definition a right wing ideology. It debases the left to embrace an alliance with those advancing that kind of nonsense.

     This progressive will not debase himself that way. Your arguments are hateful and anti-democratic. Your thoughts have nothing in common with those of the rest of us.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/11/2005 @ 2:17pm

224. REDASSMAN: "Criticism of Israel's policies stems from anti-Semitic roots" Are you a member of AIPAC? You sound like it. To people like you, legitimate criticism of Israel is not allowed. So you throw out cheap slander. Well, this is the Nation website, and your garbage doesn't work here. Go back to your cave.

     Posted by philbq at 08/11/2005 @ 2:51pm

225. hh,

     "Am I the only liberal here who finds this irresponsible Israel bashing problematic? I can't imagine my only allies here are conservatives. . . ."

     oy, the jewish question...

     dunno. but this jew can tell you that my only problem with jones' argument (and it may be the fault of the readers--) is the seeming equating of "jew" with zionist. this jew does not believe that israel has a "right" to exist in the way it has over the years--well actually, at all. it's justification for existence is rooted in 5000 year-old bullshit, so there's rational reason for it to exist (of course there's a "rational" reason from the stanpoint of american middle east "policy", but that's different than it's founding).

     those of us on the left have had to confront this exact thing: some jews do some fucked-up shit in the name of what happened in europe 60 tears ago = murderous, fascistic, undemocratic, hateful, chauvanistic, deranged, zealotry, it is. talk to the hasidim in my hood and they'll tell you to use nukes on 'em all. no friends of decency they are. it freaks me out to see them embrace the same ideological framwork that informed the nazis (got the same feeling about black conservatives with respect to the klan).

     but identity is a complex issue. my primary identification is as a knicks fan. honestly, i don't know if i'm really a *jew*. the prostheltizers on the streets of ny think so..... some of my ancestors were religious jews...me? i don't even believe that the jews were slaves in egypt as there's no evidence of it. all bunk if you ask me...but...when they start goose-stepping down 5th ave, they will be rounding me up. should i define myself by what i oppose? i'm soooo confused!

     bashing israel does not mean one is an anti-semite. or against *jews*. it means that one want to hold them to the idea that one practices what one preaches.

     Posted by dabar at 08/11/2005 @ 2:57pm

226. To ResStaeMan:

     "[C]riticism of Israel's policies" actually stems from anti-semitic roots.

     That is ridiculous. To which of Israel's policies are you referring? The Israeli people themselves are critical of their own government's policies. It is, at least for the time being, a fairly healthy democracy. I hope it remains one.

     I have been critical of Israel's policies, especially those of Likud governments, and do not feel that it has anything to do with anti-Semitism. For example, I believe it is just wrong for any nation to build settlements in occupied territory, as Israel has been doing since the Begin ministry. Now, if I said that it is wrong for a Jewish state to do that while approving of it when somebody does it, you might have a case.

     As it is, I want to see that Jewish state preserved, even as an independent and sovereign Palestinian state is brought into existence. I even believe Israel was justified seizing that territory in 1967, but not in taking steps that would indicate that it belongs permanently to the Israelis. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that Israel has the right to occupy that territory until the cows come home or until such time as a credible Palestinian leadership agrees to a non-aggression pact, as long as it is a military occupation for the purpose of security and not a colonial occupation for the purpose of territorial expansion.

     So how does taking such a position make one anti-Semitic?

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/11/2005 @ 3:16pm

227. so there's rational reason for it to exist (of course there's a "rational" reason from the stanpoint of american middle east "policy", but that's different than it's founding).

     should have read:

     so there's NO rational reason for it to exist (of course there's a "rational" reason from the stanpoint of american middle east "policy", but that's different than it's founding).

     sorry about the waste of bandwidth

     Posted by dabar at 08/11/2005 @ 3:30pm

228. Thank you Dabar for your response. I want to see Israel living at peace in internationally recognized borders with a democratic Palestinian State on the West Bank. I hope I live to see it.

     Posted by philbq at 08/11/2005 @ 4:33pm

229. In a fit of lust, Clinton violated an intern.

     In a fit or rage, Rove violated national security.

     Simple.

     Posted by ragbraijoe at 08/11/2005 @ 4:38pm

230. jackrubbish --

     "soul maggot droppings (probably a Jew to boot -- if not by blood, by -ishness: a crypto- worse kind)

     Remarks like that clearly show where you stand: to the right of Mr. Bush and his minions. It would be one thing to dismiss those with whom you disagree after presenting rational arguments that at least attempt to refute theirs, but to dismiss those with whom you disagree as Jews, as if that is supposed to be an epithet, is something of a lower order of discourse. "

     Reply Did you read what that entity replied to my analysis of hjow 'anti-semitism' works in communication? Did you find anything resembling rational criticism there? -- One point: replying to what I said as if it were trying to explain "what ant-semitism really is" -- which was a take-out rephrasing of the point, as I noted. The rest --? nothing. Actually, less than -- goading, sarcastic insult, to which I am supposed to reply rationally? Its straight from Jewishness, and you will notice he hasn't responded.

     It's you who are the problem. Listen to Redstatepile: "I think Jones is the only one who really shows what his true colors actually are." (As if he knew. Right of the right, left of the left -- avoid the bs in between.) "At least he doesn't try to hide it. I would probably have more respect for the rest if they just came out and said they are a racist, anti-semitic, anti-zionist, bigot or all of the above." He's got your number, right? -- you take it, so he must. "Racist, anti-semitic, anti-Zionist, bigot or all of the above." My my. Got a rational response to that? It is a total reversal of what HE is, you see, and it's built into use of "anti-semitism". It doesn't help to rationally respond for the umpteenth time that "criticism of Israel isn't anti-semitic". That will be met with "They don't want to know that "criticism of Israel's policies" actually stems from anti-semitic roots." No matter what you say, that will be re-stated, because it doesn't come from rational sources. It comes from racist, bigot, Christophobic sources.

     Actually, this immature Red-pile is blowing the gig for CHUTZes like HH --no doubt a Jew, manifesting what is hateful about (his type of) them. Their style, which I have encountered on blog boards before and can smell a mile off, doesn't get into anything so out of control. They manipulate, don't get manipulated. Soul maggots. Not to be tolerated.

     Kingship was granted to humans at Kish in ancient Sumeria, circe 2200 B.C., long before the Greeks, who got their objective knowledge mostly from Egypt. (see Solon, Thales, Herodotus, etc.) -- which I thought to add because it is about as relevant as your meandering on Plato, hierarchy, democracy, left-and-right. What about liberal and conservative?

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 4:51pm

231. Redstare;

     You have revealed that the ability to read history does not necessarilly correspond to the ability to draw rational conclusions from it. Well , take solace that you are not alone in your inclination to label anyone that critiques Israel as an anti-semite.......

     However, the video of me holding my best friend's son, in a chair , over my head at his bar-mitzvah would refute your thuggish, narrow minded assertions about my character......

     Having said that, I do have several friends that are very sensitive about Irasel and it's soveriegnty and that's understandable. I don't expect those with an emotional bias to engage in a purely objective and academic manner - it's like trying to tell a Yankees' fan what's wrong with the team! It's hard to be objective about such things. Thankfully, my friends are civil and don't stoop to your level!.......

     Apparently, DABAR is a rare bird! He gets it!

     Posted by NO-NONSENSE at 08/11/2005 @ 5:26pm

232. Thanks, At least someone other than myself is paying attention to this stuff!

     Posted by midiwill at 08/11/2005 @ 5:28pm

233. To Jones/Noverong:

     I replied to RedStateMan at 3:16. See above.

     Perhaps what I had to say to him doesn't fit your world view, but very little of what I say would fit your world view.

     Otherwise, as far our little dispute is concerned, I enter into evidence this latest exhibit . . .

     Actually, this immature Red-pile is blowing the gig for CHUTZes like HH --no doubt a Jew, manifesting what is hateful about (his type of) them. Their style, which I have encountered on blog boards before and can smell a mile off, doesn't get into anything so out of control. They manipulate, don't get manipulated. Soul maggots. Not to be tolerated.

     . . . and I rest my case.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/11/2005 @ 5:30pm

234. The older I get (74 now) the more troubled I get by the constant reminders (through blogs like this and other stuff) of how difficult it apparently is for people to behave in a responsibly fair minded and ethical way towards their reponsiblities and others that will or might be effected by their actions. History seems to suggest that the human race has not progressed very far in this regard in spite of various attempts to improve things. The focus on WHY this sort of problem has always existed does not seem to be a part of the curriculum we teach. All we do is to talk endlessly about any given example until it is either addressed or swept out of sight! If we were to elevate high ethical standards to the top of our most admired human attributes maybe things would change for the better!

     Posted by Wilder Foote at 08/11/2005 @ 5:41pm

235. Redstateman, thank you for your compliment. I appreciate the fact that people are not allowing folks like Jones to get away with the hate speech. I don't think we have to be liberal or conservative to turn around and say that this kind of language is not acceptable period.

     Dabar, I think you would agree that what Jones has been saying is hateful and that whether you feel one way or another about Israel, his comments are just wrong. I for one have equivocal feelings about Israel but I don't have them about hatred.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 9:07pm

236. What Is This Thing Called Hate? (Freud's answer: cathexis of libido (love) that has undergone repression due to abuse)

     July 26, 2005

     Michael Graham, a talk-radio host here in Washington, has stirred a hornets' nest by calling Islam (the whole thing!) a "terrorist organization." After all, he points out, the terrorist acts that have arrested the West's attention lately haven't been committed by the Pennsylvania Amish. They've been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam.

     Naturally, Muslim groups are accusing Graham of "hate." He replies that he's only dealing in plain facts that others refuse to face.

     If the debate (such as it is) ended here, I'd declare Graham the victor. Hate has become the most abused word in the English language. It should be a matter of shame to all of us that American universities, our intellectual strongholds, now have "speech codes" forbidding what is called "hate speech." Most Western countries actually have laws making some forms of expression criminal, punishable with prison terms, even if no actual harm can be proved (or is even alleged).

     Chief among these crimes is what is called "Holocaust denial." An infidel, in the West, might now be defined as anyone who expresses faint doubts about the victors' account of World War II; but the list of taboo beliefs and attitudes continues to swell as the list of self-described victim groups lengthens. Discuss objective realities -- race and violent crime, for instance -- at your own risk. Be sure you treat rap music as one of the vital signs of American culture.

     Pleading truth may be a strong defense, as long as your advertisers aren't upset. Here the seemingly uninhibited Graham is always very prudent. His roster of terrorists doesn't include Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, or Ariel Sharon. The state of Israel is a democracy, of sorts, so Zionism isn't considered "hate," though many Jews are embarrassed by it.

     "To generalize is to be an idiot," said William Blake, generalizing. He wasn't even referring to talk radio or campus speech codes, two areas where it may indeed be idiotic to acknowledge the basic truth of any unflattering demographic observation, no matter what the statistics indicate.

     Of course even hard-looking statistics may soften under analysis. "Facts" about race and crime, which may be accurate as far as they go, look a lot different when you take into account the number of criminals who grew up without fathers. When black illegitimacy was unusual, black crime rates were far lower.

     In a similar way, terrorism among Muslims may be due to more specific factors than their religion, which they share with far more Muslims who aren't terrorists. Many Muslims, especially in the Arab world (where, after all, only a minority of the world's Muslims live), share their grievances without adopting their violent methods.

     Popular stereotypes usually have a grain of truth in them, but they are prone to gross exaggeration. Forty years ago white Americans were spooked by the so-called Black Muslims; they were called a "hate" group. But their scary image in the press was hardly justified by their sober behavior. Still, that image was unfortunately strengthened in 1964 when their spokesman, Malcolm X, made one of the most explosive utterances of the decade: he said the assassination of President Kennedy was a case of "chickens coming home to roost."

     The uproar, now forgotten, was tremendous. I remember my own horror at the time. The Black Muslims silenced Malcolm, who soon broke with them and was shortly thereafter murdered, apparently by some of them. A couple of years later I read his autobiography and was happily amazed to find how badly I'd misjudged the man.

     Today streets and schools are named after Malcolm, and the Black Muslims seem pretty normal -- just part of the American landscape. The old "hate" group has become pretty conservative; in fact, it always was.

     America reeled again in 1964 when the new world heavyweight champ, Cassius Clay, announced that he'd become a Black Muslim, changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and denounced "white devils." But once again the original shock has been long forgotten, and Ali has become an endearing old guy, about as menacing as Smokey Robinson.

     What's hate got to do with it? A fellow may pop off now and then without hating anyone at all. He may have a point most people aren't ready to hear yet. We should be wary of the ones who are eager to shut him up.

     Joseph Sobran

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 9:24pm

237. I suppose that with this logic nobody should ever be accountable for anything they say. I guess we should just accept all of the things Jones said as "love that has undergone repression due to abuse."

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 9:32pm

238. "My son died for Israel" - Says Marine's mom

     Cindy Sheehan blames the Jews and Israel for Iraq. Everyone laughed at her until she said Marines are dying for Israel, then everyone panicked.

     Here is her statement (partial)

     Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry?

     Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel.My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel.

     Am I stupid? No, I know full-well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by a George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy...not for the real reason, becuase the Arab-Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy. That hasn't changed since America invaded and occupied Iraq...in fact it has gotten worse.."

     Read: what it is to deserve hate -- abuse of love. (see previous post)

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 9:37pm

239. "Popping off" is not the same as branding an entire people "maggots." And according to an earlier post, you agree with Mahathir's statement that "Jews get others to do their killing for them" and you cite the murder of Christ as one piece of evidence. Popping off? Okay.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 9:43pm

240. The Right to hate when deserved ... illustrated here

     http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19418

     ex-CIA agent Phillip Giraldi of TAC claims neo-cons to nuke Iran

     Deep Background

     In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. __________________

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 9:54pm

241. Cite the Cindy Sheehan quote so we can find exactly where she blames Israel.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/11/2005 @ 10:06pm

242. "Popping off" is not the same as branding an entire people "maggots." And according to an earlier post, you agree with Mahathir's statement that "Jews get others to do their killing for them" and you cite the murder of Christ as one piece of evidence. Popping off? Okay. Posted by HHEMWM 08/11/2005 @ 9:43p **** See how they do? "Popping off" was Sobran's term, not mine. Any concession is singled out and taken as a sign of weakness. No, I don't "pop off". This goes down to forever, and always has. Unrelenting, unremitting, absolute, complete.

     Not an "entire people". Just Zionazis. Not "aree with" (Mahathir) -- certify verification... by "killing Christ" (not my words)-- Iraq, Iran...

     See how they do? That's Jew (-ishness, the kind that deserves hatre)

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 10:11pm

243. "Popping off" is not the same as branding an entire people "maggots." And according to an earlier post, you agree with Mahathir's statement that "Jews get others to do their killing for them" and you cite the murder of Christ as one piece of evidence. Popping off? Okay. Posted by HHEMWM 08/11/2005 @ 9:43p ****

     See how they do? "Popping off" was Sobran's term, not mine. Any concession is singled out and taken as a sign of weakness. No, I don't "pop off". This goes down to forever, and always has. Unrelenting, unremitting, absolute, complete.

     Not an "entire people". Just Zionazis. Not "aree with" (Mahathir) -- certify verification... by "murdering Christ" (not my words)-- Iraq, Iran...

     See how they do? That's Jew (-ishness, the kind that deserves hate)

     Posted by jones at 08/11/2005 @ 10:14pm

244. Way up top there USAPRIDE says none of his buddies obsessed over Clinton. That's hilarious. Rightwingers did nothing BUT obsess over Clinton, and they're STILL voting against Clinton. Clinton's wife is the most feared person in the red states. You did obsess, are obsessing, and are looking for lies to use as reasons to continue obsessing.

     And thank god for people like David Corn who aren't afraid of these lowlives in the White House. They should all be impeached and imprisoned.

     Posted by hardyD at 08/11/2005 @ 10:35pm

245. To HHEMWM:

     It doesn't matter. Even if Mrs. Sheehan said such a thing, it wouldn't make it true.

     I've bought this nonsense about how invading Iraq benefits Israel, either from Israel's friends or foes. Since terrorists weren't acting with any great effect in Saddam's Iraq, no one can honestly say that the invasion prevented one suicide bombing in Israel. Any new opportunities for a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, such as they are, are coincidental to the invasion.

     Like Aludra's, Jones/Neverong's posts are best scrolled over, lightly read (if at all) and forgotten.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/11/2005 @ 10:40pm

246. correction:

     I've never bought this nonsense about how invading Iraq benefits Israel, either from Israel's friends or foes. Since terrorists weren't acting with any great effect in Saddam's Iraq, no one can honestly say that the invasion prevented one suicide bombing in Israel. Any new opportunities for a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, such as they are, are coincidental to the invasion.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/11/2005 @ 10:41pm

247. Holy shit! They're all alike.

     "I've never bought this nonsense about how invading Iraq benefits Israel, either from Israel's friends or foes. Since terrorists weren't acting with any great effect in Saddam's Iraq, no one can honestly say that the invasion prevented one suicide bombing in Israel. Any new opportunities for a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, such as they are, are coincidental to the invasion. Posted by JACK RABBIT 08/11/2005 @ 10:41pm" ****

     Quick! scroll by! -- Exploding dogs will cut down on the suicide bombers. That will prove the slaughter of Iraq and Iran was to save the hate state of Israel,I guess.

     Exploding Dogs -----------------------------------------------------------------

     Newsday.com

     Quote: Servants -- and Weapons -- of War U.S. forces rely on dogs to detect bombs in Iraq. Insurgents rig them with explosives.

     By Borzou Daragahi Times Staff Writer

     August 10, 2005

     BAGHDAD -- These are the dogs of war.

     At a checkpoint leading to the U.S.-protected Green Zone, Gordy stands sentry. The affable Belgian Malinois has a nose finely tuned to detect the nitrates, plastic explosives, gunpowder and detonation cords that suicide bombers use to blow up people.

     Error! Filename not specified.On a barren stretch of road in northern Iraq, a dog rigged with explosives approaches a group of Iraqi police officers. Detonated by remote control, the bomb tears the dog apart but doesn't harm the cops."

     Posted by jones at 08/12/2005 @ 12:49am

248. Full text of Cindy Sheehan'statement here: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/bullyard/msg/7f523b1a73be1a36?hl=en

     pertinent observation here: "You can count on Our Bellicose Chickenhawks - from Limbaugh to Horowitz to Kristol and back - to set upon the happy task of smearing this woman as everything from a Stalinist dupe of the anti-Semitic left to an anti-Semitic dupe of the Stalinist left.

     And when they begin to compete with each other lionizing Casey Sheehan's great sacrifice, you'll know they're getting ready to torpedo the mother with her own dead son. ("...if only Mrs Sheehan had the steadiness of resolve and love of country that Casey had...", etc)

     Posted by jones at 08/12/2005 @ 01:01am

249. Speaking of republican women, how about Mrs. Bush. During the last campaign it came out through Laura's sorority sisters that she was the "go to" girl for dime bags. She was known as a real party girl. Of course its a fact that Mr. Bush was not only an alcoholic, but a coke hound. Everybody loved to party with George. He always had the best drugs, and the best parties. And he had a daddy who always bailed him out of trouble. He has always had things his way. This all goes to show that hypocrisy is not something that is new for the Bush family. For people who make "family values" such a centerpiece of their image, it should be remembered that they were also young and fun loving in their early days. But I'll never get the image of Laura selling bags of dope in college. The GO TO GIRL.

     Posted by randwolfe at 08/12/2005 @ 07:54am

250. Jack Rabbit, I agree with you.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/12/2005 @ 08:13am

251. Time to tune him out.

     Posted by hhemwm at 08/12/2005 @ 08:37am

252. For a different (and I feel more balanced ) perspective on the Middle East(including Israel), I suggest Al Jazeera(english.aljazeera.net)and the London Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) Of course, the friends of Israel will complain that Al Jazeera is biased toward the Arab perspective. I do not see that. Al jazeera english website is very professional. Try it before you knock it. Check it out.

     Posted by philbq at 08/12/2005 @ 09:15am

253. When one considers the dependence which our President places on Karl for guidance of the President's decisions, my question has to be: "Will our president set a precedent of 'premptive pardon' of Mr. Rove before an indictment is returned? And if our President were to do so will our comp;iant Congress let our Premptive President do so? To ask this question is to answer it: "Yes!"

     Posted by atruedem at 08/12/2005 @ 09:22am

254. ATRUEDEM: I agree with you. Bush will certainly pardon Rove if there is a conviction. Bush Sr. pardoned Casper Weinberger and all the other major figures who could implicate him from the Iran-Contra scandal.(that was where the Reagan/Bush administration sold arms secretly and illegally to Iran to finance their mercenary terrorist war on Nicaragua) Bush owes his whole political career to Rove and he will protect him. But the real question it:What did the President know, and when did he know it???

     Posted by philbq at 08/12/2005 @ 09:43am

255. hh,

     on hate: i'm not above it. i don't know what's going on with this stuff to the extent that i'd agree with every claim made here, that's why i like decent reporting. corn does his thing, i do mine. but to your question; i think you may be confusing jones' indelicate way of putting the matter with a truth that's evident, and been evident, since the inception of the state of israel and the solidification of post ww2 petro-politics. we have funneled so much cash and lives into that country in the name of "stability"... while their/our leaders, one after the other, has done nothing but stand in the way of stability, peace, and democracy (with some rare exception/s--but the butcher of beruit? gimme a freaking break) over and over....but now? with the sadism expressed by bush & cabal.... hatred is a little too tepid a term for me.

     you know, i'm into ideology. i like the history of belief and the study of the trajectory of the same. in my experience, when talking to jews, who may not even identify themselves as zionists, but feel that israel "has a right to exist..." at the end of the day, their m.o. is the 'ole "look out for #1" business. of course, it's never granted to others. the right of chauvanism they feel only for themselves has consequences of a political nature. it defines and shapes their politics as simply reaction and also has the same effect upon the other/s. the problem is that the others are weak...and from there they become what they are: terrorists. it's all they have and they're our children, we made 'em. and yes i hate bush, and all of the neoconical imbeciles who have contributed to this.

     as for jews? it is not me who has set up their agendas, they do. they play the jew card, using their status as *former and currently oppressed* to further reactionary politics and oppression of others. i'm almost not sure if i hate that more than when it's done by bush and his army...but it would only be a matter of minimal degrees.

     philbq, aljazera,eh, kinda foxy if you ask me, but here is some better reporting, imo.

     http://www.worldlinktv.org/mosaic/streamsArchive/

     Posted by dabar at 08/12/2005 @ 10:31am

256. To Dabar:

     One of the things that bothers me about discussing the ME is over generalizing. As Humpty Dumpty said (Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6), "When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." Please take care how some words are used.

     The word Zionism (used in your second paragraph above) is loaded. It is best defined as the belief in the creation and maintenance of a Jewish state as a positive goal. That leaves it pretty broad. Uri Avnery has a much right to call himself a Zionist as Benny Elon, although the they have two very different visions of what Israel is or ought to be. Some Zionists are racists, such as the aforementioned Mr. Elon; it does not follow that Zionism is a form of racism, as others say. Those who use the word should make their precise meaning clear.

     I find the discussion (for want of a better word) between RedStateMan and Jones almost amusing. Both have embraced a black-or-white fallacy about Israel; neither can make any real progress in building their respective cases because the gray areas are eating them alive. For my part, I've been called some pretty nasty names because I believe Israel should continue to exist and some other nasty names, including anti-Semite, because I believe an independent and sovereign Palestinian state should be declared in the West Bank and Gaza.

     as for jews? it is not me who has set up their agendas, they do. they play the jew card, using their status as *former and currently oppressed* to further reactionary politics and oppression of others.

     Ok, some Jews (and others who support Israel) do that and we'd be foolish to deny it. But it is still wrong to maintain the general Jews from the first sentence in the second (they play the Jew card) where the particular should be used. What is wrong is in using the oppressed status "to further reactionary politics and the oppression of others," regardless of who is using it.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/12/2005 @ 12:10pm

257. rabbit,

     i apologize in advance for the brevity here, but i gotta run (wasted enough time today). but yes i agree that the general and specific terms (jew, jewish, and Jew/ish) need to be solid definitionally (a word?) in a context ....i've been up-front-ish in a prior post--i'm a jew, probably only as others would define me, who does not believe that israel has a right to exist based on the rationale given for it's existence...is that clear? sorry, if not.

     but, that said, i'd ask that you consider: if one uses law to justify rights, one must assume some kind of rational basis for the granted "right". the founding of israel is based on old-testament fiction. were the jews in that region 4000/5000 years ago? yeah, probably, who knows? but to use that as a defense of the imperial conquest of the region (granted by the us for the purposes of petro-payback) is not rooted in any conception of justice, law, or democracy. rights are granted by legal consensus, not conquest--at least as far as democracy is concerned--. the history of modern israel is not one that can claim pure, just, legal or better, a secular foundation...like the principles of the u.s.a. --regardless of what the american fundamentalists traitors believe about our founding.

     Posted by dabar at 08/12/2005 @ 12:39pm

258. Where is the anger against the "missed 9/11 Commission Report" on the Able Danger Mission? The Clinton Adminstration holds information from the FBI. They knew about four of the terroristson on American soil one year before 9/11...yes THE CLINTON Adminstration policies trumped our national security!

     Where is this in the press. Where is David Corn on this one? Were are all you free thinking liberals protesting your senators and Congressmen to get the truth out when the Miliatry and Pentagon has documents that verifies they told the 9/11 comission about their findings. Cover up for Mr Clinton? Better Hope Hillary has nothing to do with this!!!

     Posted by dancall at 08/12/2005 @ 3:47pm

259. "Lawyers within the administration told the special forces three times you can't share this information with the FBI,"

     Posted by dancall at 08/12/2005 @ 3:49pm

260. From Nation magazine thread 8.11.2005 - Under "Why AIPAC indictment is bad news for Rove" – David Corn's BLOG | Posted 08/08/2005 @ 1:20pm

     Items: "What Is This Thing Called Hate? (Freud's answer: cathexis of libido (love) that has undergone repression due to abuse)" -- posted by Jones 9.24 pm

     Reply "I guess we should just accept all of the things Jones said as "love that has undergone repression due to abuse." – posted by HHEMWM 9.32 pm

     Comments A Ph.D. thesis could well be devoted to the psychodynamics of this exchange….

     As a matter of fact, to give the devil his due, as associate professor at SUNY Binghamton (upstate NY) I was vilified for challenging the authenticity of an alleged anti-semitic incident November 5, l988, right after George H. Bush was elected president, which consisted of the Jewish Student Union being spray-painted with large swastikas and "kill kikes" on the wall.

     SUNY-B draws a large, mostly excellent, undergraduate group of Jewish students from downstate, and they, along with the community, were rightfully outraged; none more so than I. Although there were rumblings of jealousy on the part of locals at the extra fine facilities the NYC kids enjoyed, nothing remotely resembling an incident of this sort had EVER happened before (I had taught there since '64). But there were suspicious peculiarities. The spray painting and scrawling seemed half-heartedly splashed, the timing also coincided with a krystalnacht memorial service, the papers were full of IDF personnel clubbing stone-throwing youth in the first intafada, so I went off in class to the effect that "they had it coming – lucky the attack was only symbolic."

     Well, shit hit the fan. Ethics committee hearings, job loss pending, wife pleading ‘how could you?', classes severely crimped, more. Got written up in "anti-semitic incidents on campus". Then, after the investigation, the JSU president, James Oppenheim, was charged. He had been there late that night, a spraypaint can with his finger prints was found inside, and as the one responsible for the memorial service, he got a record turn-out. Along with making public statements calling for my dismissal.

     The case drug on until the end of the semester, when he graduated. High-priced NY City lawyers got him off on a technicality. So it was never proven he did it in a court of law. He retreated into the bosom of the family and I got a suspended (with pay) for a semester. Ordeal over. Until now. It remained a mess until hh's post suddenly shed new light.

     ****/

     It could be said I put Jews, particularly the liberal community here, on a pedestal. Although in the Vietnam war, I was far out front, a mere Abbie Hoffman wannabe, and they were wimp city, as far as protest was concerned. "A media campaign is what we need," most said. Not all. There were a few who were up there WITH Hoffman, the Ramparts crowd, and one really remarkable student came back from the '68 Chicago riots to radicalize many of us. I was the only professor to stand on the steps of the Adminsitration building with a rag-tag longhaired bunch the day we actually blocked military recruitment on campus. But it should be said there was also a contingent of right-wing Jewish profs who opposed us, proto-Perles who were never politically beyond the level of Ronald Reagan, and efasily went over to judeofascism.

     And then came their role in this war. The original "neocon watch" was on the Original Dissent Forum (key words), and it began documenting the planning of this war for Israel and the onslaught of deserved pure hate they deserve. They are all James Oppenheim-ers, who support it; and yellow bellied sapsuckers who won't dissociate, as one NYU prof did who called himself "diaspora" Jew and renounced any identification with others.

     But this gets back to what hate is and when it is deserved. When (using Freud's definition, which I accept) any person or group use the regard and consideration others spontaneously extend, to abuse those who extend it, they act on a principle it is logically impossible to generalize. "Give us your love; we'll give you death in return." Kant's morality (which I have defended in print: "Generalization in Ethics", many years ago) states as a categorical imperative "Act only that maxim that can at the same time be willed as universal law," and this one cannot. It is like his example "Lend me some money; I promise to repay (but will not do so)" – noone could could lend on the basis of such lying promises, although the perpetrator might get bucks, for various reason, by pretending to promise.

     As for the hate: that comes in when the act concerns life or death, as in lying wars. Ms. Sheehan used the word "hate' in her statement regarding the murder of her son by the Bush-neocon lying war for Israel. And kindred souls, would examine her words to see if they can pick holes in them to discredit her.

     Posted by jones at 08/12/2005 @ 3:54pm

261. Just an FYI, Jamie Gorelick, was the Asst. Attorney General under Ms. Reno and was on the 9/11 Commission. Why, I wonder? She was never called as a witness? Ms Gorelick is the one who drafted the policy that stop infromation sharing between the CIA and FBI.

     You all want the truth about 9/11 and what lead up to 9/11 and Iraq...start looking real close to the event that occured under the clinton administration...but most of you will never do so because it exposes the half truth you spout off as hate.

     Posted by dancall at 08/12/2005 @ 3:56pm

262. Ms Sheehan is a Greiving mother that is being used by the media and left wing anti war groups. her entire family has come out with a public statement that says she is taking things way to far and for her own personal enrtichment...THIS IS HER FAMILY saying this. Not right wing media outlets.

     Let the mother grieve. She is angry. But why force a meeting with someone else where there are two major differences in opinion on a subject and will be driven by pure emontional rage?

     You all should be ashamed of yourselves for getting invloved with this story. No matter what your views are on the war, Ms Sheehan is being USED!!! BOTTOM LINE!

     Posted by dancall at 08/12/2005 @ 4:04pm

263. Dan:

     Apart from the fact your post is full of baloney (certain members of her husband's family issued such a statement, not "her entire family"), you're on the wrong thread.

     Go to the top. This thread is about the Plame case. This is where you usually post Ken Mehlman's talking points as if they had never been discredited.

     If you want to post right wing talking points about Mrs. Sheehan's vigil, please click here [thenation.com].

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/12/2005 @ 4:14pm

264. Returning the the proper subject matter after a few days . . .

     From TomDispatch via Common Dreams, dated Friday August 12

     How to Prosecute the Plame Case [commondreams.org]

     By Elizabeth de la Vega

     Pundits right, left, and center have reached a rare unanimous verdict about one aspect of the grand jury investigation into the Valerie Plame leak: They've decided that no charges can be brought under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, because it imposes an impossibly high standard for proof of intent. Typically, writing for Slate on July 19th, Christopher Hitchens described the 1982 Act as a "silly law" that requires that "you knowingly wish to expose the cover of a CIA officer who you understand may be harmed as a result." Similarly, columnist Richard Cohen, in the July 14 Washington Post, said he thought Rove was a "political opportunist, not a traitor" and that he didn't think Rove "specifically intended to blow the cover of a CIA agent." Such examples could be multiplied many times over.

     Shocking as it may seem, however, the pundits are wrong; and their casual summaries of the requirements of the 1982 statute betray a fundamental misunderstanding regarding proof of criminal intent.

     Do you have to intend to harm a CIA agent or jeopardize national security in order to violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act? The answer is no.

     Before presenting any case, a prosecutor like Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame case has to figure out "the elements of the crime"; in other words, the factors he has to prove under whatever statute he is considering. If a grand jury finds probable cause to believe that each element has been proved, it may then return an indictment. At trial, the judge instructs the jury about these same elements. Parties can argue about whether the elements have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but neither side can add, delete, or modify the elements even slightly to suit their arguments.

     Read more.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/12/2005 @ 5:49pm

265. As in Watergate, the coverup is more dangerous than the original crime. What did the President know and when did he know it?

     Posted by philbq at 08/13/2005 @ 02:48am

266. To PhilBQ:

     In this case, the President, the Vice President and a few others.

     In Watergate, we never asked about the Vice President. Agnew was a crook, too, but on a more conventional order and in matters that were unrelated to those that made Nixon a crook.

     I'm pretty sure that Bush knew about the Rove caper and even more certain that Cheney knew what Libby was doing, but the next question is: Can it be proved in court? To that, I believe the answer is: No.

     The Bush crooks have avoided two mistakes the Nixon crooks made. First, Nixon recorded himself committing crimes. No President will ever do that again. Second, the Nixon crooks didn't ask John Dean if he wanted to be the fall guy. He didn't. After he was volunteered, he dragged a the rest down with him. Rove and Libby know that if they go quietly, they will be rewarded with pardons at the end of the day.

     Unless Fitzgerald has some other evidence we don't know about, indictments will go no higher than Rove and Libby.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/13/2005 @ 10:06am

267. As I catch up with the postings here, I see again that the Zionists have been allowed to 'frame' the discussion into a criticism of Judism. That is always their tactic. To turn legitimate criticism of a supposedly 'secular' rogue government, into a emotionally charged mud-sling against the religion, to avoid criticism of the GOVERNMENT. DUH!!! Works pretty good, doesn't it.

     Where did Rove AIPAC Franklin et al go to??

     Bearsoleil wants to sweep it all under the rug, no connection with slimy Rove, no connction with Mossad/Israel/Sharón.......all innocent, and hiding behind the religion, AGAIN.

     I like your points Rabbit, but again don't get drawn into the religious bull. Zionism is NOT religious except about MONEY/POWER just like the neo-cons, which is why they 'hang' together. 'Israel-bashing'..............mmmmmmmmmmm OH! another way to derail legitimate criticism of the theocracy Israel.

     Mr. Jones, I do agree with you. This Oil Mafiosa is a Junta. It is a totally illegal horror that led the US into an illegal war,& 'lost' at least $8 billion of Iraq's money already.

     And Poor challenged HH......whatever. The ZIONISTS, THE RIGHT WING POLITICAL FORCE is NOT THE SAME AS THE Jewish people, nor the Jewish religion, and I certainly do know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that Bloody Israel, the GOVERNMENT, has the same blood on their hands that the Nazi's had back then. Israel's PERSECUTION of the innocent Arabs, where ever they find them is NOTORIOUS, and the Zionists are proud of it. You are behind the times.

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/13/2005 @ 10:12am

268. Also, I have no objection to Jews in congress, just Zionists. Here is a legitimate conflict of interest between Jews and Zionists. I wonder how many of the Jews would also describe themselves as Zionists?? I have lots of Jewish friends and they just roll their eyes at Israel's bullying maneuvers. By the way, none of my Jewish friends identify with 'Zionism'. They too sophisticated.

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/13/2005 @ 10:19am

269. To Mr. Benning:

     Again, let's agree on what we mean when we use a word and not play Humpty Dumpty's game. I define Zionism very broadly. I will admit that it makes the word almost useless for discussion.

     Defining Zionism that way hasn't stopped me from criticizing Israel. Again, I believe it is wrong for an occupying power to build settlements for its own population in occupied territory. Israel does this. It is an injustice to the Palestinian people. I have no trouble saying so. When Menachem Begin declared the West Bank and Gaza were integral parts of Israel, it didn't prove to me that they were; it proved to me that Begin couldn't read a map.

     And where do I get drawn into the "religious bull"?

     If you want to condemn the abrogation of the rights of Palestinians living in the territories under Israeli occupation, then I join you in that. However, I don't think that it is a necessary element of Zionism. Consequently, I simply use another term for this kind of injustice.

     Another problem with using the word Zionism for this kind of injustice is that Zionism is a very specific kind of nationalism. It is specifically Jewish nationalism. If a country other than Israel were to overrun neighboring territory and start building settlements for its population displacing the natives, would you call that Zionism? These aren't necessarily Jewish nationalists we're talking about any more, so the word would not apply. Nevertheless, there would be something wrong with what they're doing and it would be every bit as worthy of our condemnation.

     However it came about, we have a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that needs a resolution. We shouldn't look for a perfect resolution; there is probably no such thing. Let's just settle for a resolution to the crisis that will work.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/13/2005 @ 11:57am

270. hmmmm

     The idea that national borders can only be established by the UN.

     It is a nice idea.

     Kind of novel.

     It would seem to me, that a nation attacked, which in defending itself takes territory, has a legitimate claim to that territory.

     It has been viewed that way historically. Not without contradiction. But generally.

     The only basis for peace in the middle east would be the defeat of those who wish to wage war.

     Appeasement will not help.

     It never has in the past.

     So I think the plans being implemented will fail. Sadly.

     Peace will come only if the jewish people are eradicated from the earth. And that will not happen.

     Interestingly enough, while one may question the jewish claims to the land, the "palestinian" claims are not much better.

     The jews were thrown out of the land by the romans. The palestinians were thrown out by the jews.

     There is a practical moral equivalence, I suppose.

     It is like the claims of native americans to parts of the US.

     You can't support them, and reject the Jews claim to Israel, if you wish to have some consistancy.

     Maybe you can say "that was too long ago".

     But then, if the jews hold their occupied territories, how long is long enough?

     When the Jews took the land, they killed off the previous occupants. It simplified things considerably.

     Nobody is looking for a homeland for the perrizites, jebusites, hivites, etc.

     Posted by jonb at 08/13/2005 @ 4:35pm

271. I do think, by the way, that the law requires "Wilful disclosure"

     Which means the person making the disclosure is aware that the agent in question is "covert".

     It seems an adequate defense that one would reasonably assume that a person who drives to Langley, and parks in employee parking, is not a covert agent, merely an employee.

     The story is, her cover was blown several years ago, and they gave her a desk job. So she wasn't going to be sent back out.

     She was not in fact covert, she had no cover to blow. She was only "covert" in job classification.

     Failure to change her job classification may be due to the whole compensation thing. She probably didn't want to take a cut in pay.

     Or maybe it was simply an error.

     In any case, that Carl Rove's actions did not constitute "wilful" disclosure seems likely.

     It would be an adequate defense.

     Like if I saw her Jag Convertible in the parking lot at Langley, and told somebody she worked there.

     It would not be wilful, because I could not be reasonably expected to know that she was "covert", nor could I be reasonably be expected to think that someone who parks their car in employee parking at langley could be a "covert" employee.

     Now, a covert agent for Israel, maybe. (not making an accusation, just illustrating a point)

     Posted by jonb at 08/13/2005 @ 4:46pm

272. To JonB (1):

     I'll answer the point about the Middle East first, in the hopes that by answering the points about the Plame case we can get this thread back on topic.

     First of all, where do you get this kind of sentiment?

     Peace will come only if the jewish people are eradicated from the earth. And that will not happen.

     We have to eradicate Jews in order to have peace? That's revolting.

     Now, on to more important points.

     The UN had a lot to do with the birth of the modern state of Israel. It was recognized as the successor of the League of Nations. Therefore, when the British found they couldn't handle their League of Nations mandate over what is now Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan, they dropped it in the UN's lap. The UN paved the way for Israel's birth when the General Assembly adopted a partition plan on Novermber 29, 1947. The plan was never implemented. That probably owes itself more to Arab intransigence, but it does little good to assess blame now.

     A war ensued as the state of Israel was declared the following May. In the Winter and Spring of 1949, several armistice agreements were brokered in Lausanne, Switzerland. The cease fire lines are well known. The cease fire lines were not to be construed as permanent boundaries.

     Concerning the boundary with the West Bank, Israel's position as late as 1974 [mfa.gov.il] was as follows:

     As for the frontier between the State of Israel and the area west of the Jordan which is not included in Israel, there, too, our aim is peace, and peace negotiations. We have always declared that we should prefer to see a separate Arab State in that area, but we have not set this as a conditio sine qua non to a settlement. This question, too, is a matter for discussion.

     We have an uncomfortable situation here where boundaries have never been drawn, yet no one can say that the West Bank has ever been part of the modern state of Israel.

     As I said elsewhere, I believe Israel was right to defend herself in 1967 and I believe Israel is right to occupy the West Bank and Gaza for the purpose of security. Moreover, Israel should continue that military occupation until such time as a credible Palestinian leadership signs a non-aggression pact. However, this does not give Israel any right to build settlements in occupied territory for use by her own population.

     The moral issues are very muddy. One can go into who's right, who's wrong, who's bigger and stronger and whose war crimes are worse all day long. At the end of the day, the question is still: Is there a solution that will work?

     Regardless of how we got there, the situation we face now is that Israel aspires to be a state that is at once Jewish and democratic. Is that even possible? It is, but only if Israel is content to draw permanent boundaries in such a way to assure that the population of the state within those boundaries remains predominantly Jewish for some time to come. Were Israel to claim all of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, she would soon find a Jewish state existing in a land the majority of whose population is Arab. In that event, Israel would be faced with the choice of:

     * Allowing Arabs to govern the country (in which case Israel ceases to be Jewish);

     * Limiting the rights of Arabs living within the state (in which case Israel ceases to be a democracy and would look very little different from the present situation); or

     * Expelling Arabs from Israel (which would be one of the major crimes of modern times).

     It is very unlikely that Israel will be driven into the sea. There may be some who think that's a great idea on some abstract level, but such people seem to give little thought to what it would entail: a humanitarian disaster on the same order as the third bullet point just made.

     That leaves a two-state solution as the only one viable. Israel finds some Palestinian leaders who are willing to agree to a non-aggression pact, strong enough to stay in power and enforce it against opposition from militants and then allow them to declare an independent, sovereign state.

     Whether Mahmoud Abbas is that leader remains to be seen. If not, we can only hope his successor will be. Without precipitating a humanitarian disaster, no other solution other than a two-state solution will work.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/13/2005 @ 7:36pm

273. To JonB (2):

     I posted Elizabeth de la Vega's piece as a point of discussion. I don't really agree with it.

     If what we read in Mr. Corn's writings and other places is ture, then it is more likely that charges will brought against Rove and Libby under the Espionage Act. It seems a lot easier to prosecute than the IIPA.

     Somebody at the CIA thought that the unmasking of Mrs. Wilson was a serious matter. It was the CIA that referred the case to the Justice Department for investigation.

     If Fitzgerald can show beyond a reasonable doubt that Karl Rove in any way told Michael Cooper or Robert Novak that Mrs. Wilson worked for the CIA, when her employment was classified, then Fitzgerald could win a conviction.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/13/2005 @ 7:38pm

274. Since this thread will no doubt soon disappear into archived eternality, I submit the following propositions to summarize the overall position my posts, as a totality. ****/ Stipulating to what all are presumed in agreement -- in the interest of philosophy, without naming names.

     1. Untrue statements were used as part of the official justification of war

     This thread in Nation exists because the untruths were exposed as known; hence, lies. Attempt to discredit the one exposing them was made by government officials' leaking classified information about his wife to the press.

     2. Whoever causes damage to others by deliberate action should pay for it.

     This is the principle of responsibility for one's actions built into law. It holds even if the damage was not caused deliberately: the driver of the car that rear-ends one stopped in front of it pays for the repair. (I know)

     3. If a bomb goes off inside America, two kinds of people at opposite political extremes will almost certainly be killed: those who knowingly supported this war based on untruths leading to catastrophic destruction in the Middle East, and those who tried to stop them.

     Conclusions. 1. The first kind will be getting what they deserve 2. The second kind will die because of the first kind's acts. 3. The time for the second to hate the first is now.

     Posted by jones at 08/13/2005 @ 9:41pm

275. Jack Rabbit

     I am certainly not advocating the destruction of the state of Israel. God Forbid!

     I only mean to say that as long as it exists, there will not be peace in the middle east.

     This is just an opinion. But it is my observation that hatred for Jews, and hatred for the state of Israel in particular, is quite common throughout the middle east. This has not always been as extreme as it is today. And perhaps a two state solution will make it less of a problem. We can hope so.

     I think my earlier statement was ill considered. A bit too stark.

     I know the UN was instrumental in forming the modern state of Israel.

     I think your position is well reasoned.

     second topic

     We will see if charges are ever brought against Karl Rove.

     I doubt if it will happen.

     Posted by jonb at 08/13/2005 @ 10:14pm

276. To JonB:

     Thanks for clearing up the confusion about your remark on eradicating Israel.

     I really believe charges will be brought against Rove and Libby, but I will eat crow (and love every bite) if indictments go any higher than that.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/13/2005 @ 11:48pm

277. To JACK RABBIT: I agre to your analysis regarding the three paths for Israel>(I have seen these articulated before).I would like to say that your position supporting the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank is at odds with the United Nations and world opinion. The continued Jewich settlements, ever expanding, in the West Bank is against international law: it is illegal to militarily occupy a territory and then displace its people, substituting people from the occupying nation. But the supporters of Israel routinely defy international law, as does its main sponser, the U.S. But perhaps you can understand why Israel has so few friends. International law and the U.N. brought Israel into existence. But Israel (and its supporters) thumbs its nose at the world.

     Posted by philbq at 08/14/2005 @ 08:54am

278. JACK RABBIT: Another thought:The current construction of the so-called "security fence" is another insult to the world. The fence is a defacto border being imposed not by legitimate negotiation, but by force alone. And the trumpeted Gaza pullout(if it happens)is unsatisfactory since Israel has said it will not allow free travel between Gaza and the West Bank. So Gaza is basically a prison. Gaza is a problem Israel is glad to be rid of. Its real objective seems to be grabbing more West Bank land, and then trying to force a desperate Palestinian leadership into a suicide deal giving the "Palestinian state" a tiny amount of West Bank land. That is the deal Clinton tried to bully Arafat into. (the U.S. a neutral arbitrator?) No deal will happen unless Israel gives up almost all land seized since 1967, in accordance with U.N. Resolutions 242 and 337. Finally, a few posts back, you said that Israel was justified in seizing land because its "borders were undefenseable". Wow...the Nazis used that one. If the nations of the world disregarded internationally recognized borders on that basis, there would be continual war. Why should Israel be exempt from international law?

     Posted by philbq at 08/14/2005 @ 10:15am

279. To PhilBQ:

     Parse what I said about the occupation very carefully. It doesn't give as much comfort to the Likudniks as you seem to think.

     Note that I say that I am in favor of the occupation for security. Note I also say that it is wrong for an occupying power to build settlements for use by its own population in occupied territory. If you want to expand wrong to illegal, then you have Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention [icrc.org] to support your position.

     I agree entirely. The settlements are not about security; they are about territorial expansion. They should never have been built in the first place. Outlaying settlements, at the very least, should be dismantled as soon as possible. More populated settlements near the Green Line are more likely to be incorporated into Israel with the adjustment of final boundaries. These settlements can remain, although Israel would have to compensate Palestine with land or cash in exchange; that would be consistent with Resolution 242 [domino.un.org].

     There are two aspects of this occupation: one is for security and the other is for expansion. I support the Israel as far as the first is concerned; as for the second, the grievances of the Palestinians arising out of it are entirely legitimate. It should fill all of us with horror that Palestinian land is taken and homes and businesses demolished to make way for housing in which Palestinians cannot live accessed by roads on which they cannot travel.

     Having said that, no one should expect Israel to just quit the territories. Israel has some very legitimate security concerns. Israel was right in the 1967 war. That was an attempt by Arab nations to annihilate Israel; Israel rebuffed the attack and seized territory. At first, Israel was more willing to exchange land for peace under Resolution 242 than the Arabs. Egypt made her peace with Israel and occupied territory was returned. Well and good; that's how it's supposed to work.

     However, about the same time Begin and Sadat made that agreement, Begin began expressing an unwillingness to deal with the West Bank and Gaza, calling them together "an integral part of Israel." Their status has always been a little murky. Gaza was never incorporated into a state, but was administered (poorly, by all accounts) by Egypt from 1948 to 1967. The West Bank was annexed to the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan; King Abdallah I, the great-grandfather of the present King, attempted to wipe out Palestinian identity and insisted that all the various Arab ethnic groups living in his Kingdom were Jordanians. The King was assassinated in 1951 by a Palestinian nationalist. Relations between Jordan's rulers and their Palestinian subjects were often full of strife; this was most evident in September 1970 when Palestinian organizations attempted to overthrow the monarchy and were crushed.

     The Sabra and Shatila massacre was another atrocity against the Palestinian people that highlights the need for a Palestinian state. A Palestinian state is needed for the same reason most national groups need a state: to protect their human rights and their rights as citizens. Clearly, no one else has shown the slightest interest in this.

     We can see from this that brief overview that the fact there is no Palestinian state has as much to do with the Palestinians so-called friends among the Arabs as with the Israelis. Of course, Palestinian leaders have not always served their people well. Apart from everything else that could be said of Arafat, such as being a terrorist and a crook, he was prone to committing one diplomatic blunder after another.

     A Palestinian state should have been established in 1948. One should be established soon. The Israelis, for reasons made clear in my post last night, need it as badly as the Palestinians do, for reasons outlined in this post.

     Whatever form that state takes and whatever the final borders are, that state must be committed to peace with Israel. That is certainly a reasonable expectation of any Israeli government. They need a Palestinian state with a government that can prevent renegades from sending terrorists into Tel Aviv or Haifa to bomb cafes or commuter buses.

     Until there is such a Palestinian government in place, the Israeli army should remain in Palestine. However, Israeli settlers should not.

     I hope that addresses your concerns.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/14/2005 @ 11:53am

280. Isn't there some sort of leaker due diligence that would require a person intending to out a CIA operative to make a phone call or two to find out if that person was undercover? Seems to me that failure to do so is a willful ignorance of the person's status and not a particularly good defense. -- Bankmaven

     Posted by M. P. Taylor at 08/14/2005 @ 12:36pm

281. To M. P. Taylor:

     Isn't there some sort of leaker due diligence that would require a person intending to out a CIA operative to make a phone call or two to find out if that person was undercover?

     That is why I think prosecutions will be brought under the Espionage Act rather than the IIPA. Ms. de la Vega argues well that Rove (as least from what we think we know) could be prosecuted, but that fifth element could trip up the case. I don't know how much Rove knew about the government's efforts to conceal Mrs. Wilson's relationship to the government. A case against Mr. Libby under the IIPA could be stronger, since Libby is a bona fide expert on foreign policy and was known to be visiting CIA headquarters with Mr. Cheney [washingtonpost.com] with unusual frequency while the Bushies were making their PR pitch for the invasion. Still, we don't know what evidence Mr. Fitzgerald actually has to support any or all of these elements required to win a conviction under the IIPA.

     I'm not sure, perhaps somebody can chime in on this, but I believe Fitzgerald has the option of charging a suspected leaker under both acts in a "kitchen sink" indictment. If he can't convince the jury that the accused violated the IIPA, he may still be able to win a conviction under the less complicated Espionage Act.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/14/2005 @ 2:12pm

282. Hmmm

     We will see.

     It seems a bit of a stretch to me.

     I think the burden of proof would be on the prosecution to show that Rove Had some idea the Valerie Plame was a covert agent.

     If he came by that information through unofficial channels, the claim that it was common knowledge, not a secret in any realistic sense, would have legs.

     It is that "has reason to believe could be injurious to the United States" part.

     If a prosecution were to be attempted, I think this is a point where the defense would focus.

     If he did know this, then he is likely guilty.

     The interesting thing is that because this is about leaks of classified information (and whether she was covert, or even if she wasn't, according to the CIA would be classified,) means there is a great lack of information available to the public.

     It is some catch, that catch 22.

     If in fact she was not in any real sense covert, just misclassified, then the real harm to the intelligence community is not the "leak", but the CIA acting like it is a real leak.

     There are an abundance of political operatives at the CIA, and they are not above spinning a story.

     Since Karl Rove willingly deposed the grand jury, and didn't try and hide his involvement, and since Karl Rove is an intelligent man, and probably consulted with attourneys before doing that, I doubt if there is much of a case against him.

     If he is guilty, He should be prosecuted. And punished according to the appropriate laws. I do suspect President Bush would not pardon him. Just my read of the President.

     In any case, let us hope he is innocent.

     It would be good, don't you think?

     Posted by jonb at 08/14/2005 @ 8:44pm

283. JACKRABBIT: Thank you for your response. Although I disagree with your conclusion(continued occupation), I appreciate you thoughts on the subject of Israel.

     Posted by philbq at 08/14/2005 @ 11:03pm

284. typo: Your thoughts

     Posted by philbq at 08/14/2005 @ 11:05pm

285. To PhilBQ:

     I appreciate your appreciation.

     Now, since you disagree with my conclusion, which is continued military occupation (but not colonial occupation), how would you solve with Israel's security problems between now and the time a Palestinian government strong enough to enforce a peace agreement is established?

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/15/2005 @ 12:14am

286. Philbq & everyone else who questioned my statement earlier,

     "Criticism of Israel's policies stems from anti-Semitic roots"

     I would have replied earlier but my computer went down. Its late. I'm tired, so I'm going to keep it brief and to the point. I suggest all of you read the follow up post as well. Look, Israel's policies take more criticism than any other nation in the world. Everything they do is held to a different and higher standard than any other nation in the world. Just look at all these post. I haven't seen any criticism of Arab or Palestinian Policies. Their policy is not one of peace but one of total destruction of Israel. Then I see all this poor Palestianian crap. If anyone is to blame for all their woes, blame the Arab's. As a former prime minister of Syria, Khaled al Azm, wrote in his memoirs, "It is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon them. [We] exploited them in executing crimes of murder and throwing bombs. All this in the service of political purposes." And so it goes, to this very day. At the time of the founding of the State of Israel, 900,000 Jewish refugees were forced out of neighboring Arab states in a coordinated effort. These refugees were absorbed into the new Israel. Yet the world was, and still is, untroubled by the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands."* So why is Israel criticized more harshly than any other nation in the world? Is it because the are Christians? Muslims? I don't think so! Is it because they are Jews? BINGO! I think HHEWM is the only other one who saw the hypocrisy. At least he gets its. So you wanted to know why the criticism stems from anti-semitism. That's why! And you call it slander?

     Posted by redstateman at 08/15/2005 @ 02:11am

287. All the isms," an English wag once said, "are wasms." Well, not quite. In the 20th century, fascism came and went. Communism came and went. Socialism came and waned. But today several virulent "isms" inhabit the world still. Among the most pernicious are an atavistic anti-Semitism and its 20th-century version, anti-Zionism. These "isms" are graffiti on the wall of history, emblems of a poison still potent and raw, evidenced, most recently, by the remarks of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who said, "Today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

     Mahathir's words were widely condemned. But such comments obscure a deeper truth about this new strain of anti-Semitism, which is not that it is directed at individual Jews or even at Judaism itself. It is directed, rather, against the Jewish collective, the modern State of Israel.

     Just as historic anti-Semitism has denied individual Jews the right to live as equal members of society, anti-Zionism would deny the collective expression of the Jewish people, the State of Israel, the right to live as an equal member of the family of nations. Israel's policies are thus subjected to criticism that causes it to be singled out when others in similar circumstances escape any criticism at all. Surely if any other country were bleeding from terrorism as Israel is today, there would be no question of its right to defend itself. But Israel's efforts merely to protect its own citizens are routinely portrayed as aggression.

     To complain that such portrayals are unfair and illogical is not to dismiss all criticism of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic. A democracy must welcome critics, and Israel surely has its critics in spades -- just look at the spirited Israeli press. "Jews," as one commentator put it, "are gold medalists in the art of self-criticism." But for many, recent criticism of Israel has become so perverse, so persistent, so divorced from reality that it can be seen only as emotional anti-Semitism hiding behind the insidious political mask of anti-Zionism.

     The new anti-Semitism transcends boundaries, nationalities, politics, and social systems. Israel has become the object of envy and resentment in much the same way that the individual Jew was once the object of envy and resentment. Israel, in effect, is emerging as the collective Jew among nations. After more than half a century of Holocaust education, hundreds of courses in high schools and colleges, and thousands of books dedicated to exposing its evils, traditional anti-Semitism as a domestic issue had all but disappeared in much of the world. "The Jewish problem" was no longer defined by what happened to the Jews of Germany or France or Poland or Russia. Instead, in Europe and the Muslim world -- even in Asia -- traditional anti-Semitism has lately re-emerged as anti-Zionism, focused on the Jews of Israel, the role of Israel, and, for some, on Jews in the United States who support Israel.

     This phenomenon has its origins in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Since then, the image of the Jew has been transformed. Shylock, suddenly, has been replaced by a new Jew, cartooned as an aggressive, all-powerful collective called Israel. "Rambo Jew," as the writer Daniel Goldhagen put it, "has largely supplanted Shylock in the anti-Semitic imagination." With the territories seized at the end of the war, the "plucky little Jewish state" was no more. In the years since, as it responded again and again to Arab attacks, sympathy for Israel eroded further still as the world's TVs broadcast images not of terrorists but of armed Israelis responding to terrorism. Only somehow the word "responding" too often got lost in the chaos. The TV pictures seemed to imply that the Israelis were guilty of a disproportionate use of force, for they were rarely accompanied by an understanding that a country with just 6 million in a sea of over 120 million Arabs could never fight a war of equal attrition.

     But no matter. It is as if the world somehow believes Israel must win the "moral man of the year" award in defending itself -- as if responding to those who seek its destruction is morally wrong. Is there really no difference, then, between the violence of murderers who target innocents and the indispensable violence of lawful authorities? Are the arsonist and the firefighter truly moral equivalents? Is Israel's approach, which seeks to minimize civilian casualties, the same as that of the terrorists, who seek to maximize it?

     Such questions are prompted by an unprecedented reversal of history: Arab terrorists, incredibly, have managed to inspire more sympathy than their victims. The Jews, having experienced the genocide of Europe, today stand accused of perpetrating genocide on the hard ground of the West Bank and Gaza. The vocabulary of the accusations presents the Jews as Nazis and their Arab enemies as helpless Jews. The worst crimes of anti-Semites in the past -- racist and ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide, crimes against humanity -- are now increasingly ascribed to Jews and to the Jewish state. The argument has become, if you are against Nazism, you must oppose Israel. Thus has Israeli self-defense been transmogrified as aggression. As a consequence, the era of reconciliation that obtained between Israel and the world after the Holocaust is, tragically, no more. In much of the world's news media and in its elite communities, as a result, there is a pattern of delegitimization of Israel.

     AMERICANS, WHO HAVE COME to take for granted the scurrilous anti-Semitism that routinely appears in the Arab press, might be amazed by what now appears in the sophisticated European press. In England, the Guardian wrote that "Israel has no right to exist." The Observer described Israeli settlements in the West Bank as "an affront to civilization." The New Statesman ran a story titled "A Kosher Conspiracy," illustrated by a cover showing the gold Star of David piercing the Union Jack. The story implies that a Zionist-Jewish cabal is attempting to sway the British press to the cause of Israel. In France, the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur published an extraordinary libel alleging that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinian women so that their relatives would kill them to preserve family honor. In Italy, the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano spoke of Israel's "aggression that's turning into extermination," while the daily La Stampa ran a Page 1 cartoon of a tank emblazoned with the Jewish star pointing its big gun at the infant Jesus, who cries out, "Surely they don't want to kill me again."

     Across Europe, the result has been not just verbal violence but physical. A report issued last year by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, titled "Fire and Broken Glass," describes the assaults on Jews and people presumed to be Jewish across Europe. Attackers, shouting racist slogans, throw stones at schoolchildren, at worshipers attending religious services, at rabbis. Jewish homes, schools, and synagogues are firebombed. Windows are smashed, Jewish cemeteries desecrated with anti-Jewish slogans. In just a few weeks in the spring of last year, French synagogues and Jewish schools, students, and homes were attacked and firebombed. A synagogue in Marseilles was burned to the ground. In Paris, Jews were attacked by groups of hooded men. According to police, metropolitan Paris saw something like a dozen anti-Jewish incidents a day in the first several months after Easter.

     AND THE VIOLENCE CONTINUES. In Ukraine, skinheads attacked Jewish workers and assaulted the director of a Jewish school. In Holland, demonstrators carrying swastikas and photos of Israel chanted "Sieg heil!" and "Jews into the sea!" In Salonika, the Holocaust Memorial was defaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti. In Slovakia, Jewish cemeteries were firebombed. In Berlin, Jews were assaulted, swastikas daubed on Jewish memorials, and a synagogue spray-painted with the words "six million is not enough."

     In the Muslim world, a culture of hatred of Jews permeates all forms of public communications -- newspapers, videocassettes, sermons, books, the Internet, television, and radio. The intensity of the anti-Jewish invective equals or surpasses that of Nazi Germany in its heyday. The public rhetoric combines the blood libel of medieval Christian Europe with cockeyed Nazi conspiracy theories that echo the famous forgery, the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," and the fanciful notion of a Jewish drive for world dominion. Throughout the Islamic world, one finds slanderous quotations about Jews as the sons of apes and donkeys. A leading Saudi newspaper has Jews using the blood of Christian and Muslim children to make their hamantascen pastry for Purim and their matzo, the unleavened bread of Passover. In this fundamentalist religious culture, America and Israel are seen as twin Satanic forces, "The Great Satan" and "The Little Satan," as Iran's religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini used to refer to them.

     The linkage of the two Satans has been emphasized even more intently since the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, in September 2000, and the attacks of September 11. Ever hear the story of the 4,000 Jews who worked at the World Trade Center being told to not show up for work on the morning of September 11? The story was planted on the Internet by Hezbollah under the cover of a Lebanese TV station. This urban legend has now taken root among Muslims the world over, calling to mind the words of W. B. Yeats: "We had fed the heart on fantasies. The heart's grown brutal from the fare."

     Islamists see the fingerprints of their enemy everywhere -- the fantasy that a secret and all-powerful Zionist lobby drains the lifeblood of Arabs and Muslims and incites Washington to war against Iraq, all the while carrying out its sinister plans for global control. In Egypt, a 41-part TV series was broadcast across the Arab world during Ramadan entitled Horseman Without a Horse. The theme of the series was that the Zionists have controlled the world of politics since the dawn of history and seek to control the Middle East -- a fantasy, as Prof. Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University pointed out, imported from the Germany of the 1930s.

     It is difficult for westerners, unmarked by the searing memories of Jewish history, to realize the extent to which the survival of Israel remains an issue for Jews, who cannot dismiss the overheated Arab rhetoric that seeks to justify terrorism against innocent civilians by describing Israel's existence as illegitimate. That rhetoric is the product of a careful calculation by Arab political leaders who recognized the popular appeal of scapegoating Israel for their failure to provide for their own people while legitimizing their regimes.

     Not all Arab politicians, happily, indulge in such cynical calculations. Back in February, I participated in a remarkable meeting convened by President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. The group, which met in the city of Almaty, included the presidents from the central Asian republics of Kirgizstan and Tajikistan, the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, and the deputy foreign minister of Turkey. The meeting was titled the Conference on Order and Tolerance. As we exchanged views, I found myself listening raptly to statesmen who spoke with feeling of their support for a dialogue between Muslims and Jews in an atmosphere of religious tolerance and understanding while denouncing in explicit terms extremism and terrorism. If one takes the number of Muslims among the countries represented in Almaty and adds the number of Muslims in moderate countries like India, the result is a huge swath of the Muslim world that rejects the extremism of the Arab leadership among Israel's neighbors.

     Such tolerance, sadly, is not to be found in the world body created to foster universal values and human ideals -- the United Nations. Tragically, the growth of international hostility to Israel has found its most prominent expression in the operations of the U.N. It has, in fact, come a long way from the legitimization and legalization of the existence of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to have their own state on their own land through its 1947 resolution proposing and approving a two-state solution.

     Since then, the U.N. has adopted an almost reflexively anti-Israeli stance canted to the anti-Israeli majority of its membership. The U.N. today is a regular forum for vicious anti-Israel attacks, conferring on the spurious and the hateful the false cloak of reason and legitimacy, and thus has become an organization for the conservation, not the reduction, of the Middle East conflict.

     Some U.N. actions simply defy belief. At the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, Israel -- the only democracy in the Middle East committed to civil rights, the rule of law, and Arab participation in democratic government -- was attacked by Arab and Third World nations and accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Then there is the Fourth Geneva Convention, drafted originally in response to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, to protect people like diplomats and visitors subjected to a military occupation.

     Last year, U.N. conferees met and, for the first time in the 52 years since its adoption, excoriated one country -- Israel -- for alleged violations. Not Cambodia and Rwanda, with their well-documented records of genocide. Not Zimbabwe, with its racist economic policies. Not the Balkan states, with their ethnic cleansing. Not even China, with its dismal record on Tibet. Only Israel was singled out. Similarly, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, chaired on occasions by such notably enlightened states as Libya, has followed this same pattern, devoting much of its time, energy, and efforts to attacking Israel. The commission went so far as to affirm, last April 15, the legitimacy of suicide bombing against Israelis, or in judgment-free U.N.-speak, "all available means, including armed struggle."

     IN THE ARAB WORLD, Zionism is portrayed not as the Jewish response to a history of anti-Semitism in a world that culminated in the Holocaust but as a hyperaggressive variant of colonialism. But since this new anti-Semitism manifests itself so clearly now as political rejection of the Jewish state, it is worth examining the historical record for a moment. Fact: The majority of Jews came to Israel in the late 19th century and early 20th century not as conquering Europeans backed by a national army and treasury but as the wretched of the earth in search of respite from ceaseless persecution. They were not wealthy; they were young, poor, and desperate. The notion that the traditional position of the Arabs in Palestine was jeopardized by Jewish settlements is belied by another fact: that when the Jews arrived, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and wildly neglected land of sandy deserts and malarial marshes. Mark Twain, in The Innocents Abroad, described it as a "desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds -- a silent, mournful expanse. . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

     Even people unsympathetic to the Zionist cause believed that Jewish immigrants had improved the condition of Palestinian Arabs. Consider the words of Sharif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic holy places in Arabia, in 1918: "One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1,000 years. At the same time, we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine. . . . They knew that the country was for its original sons. The return of these exiles to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren." Hussein understood then, as so many refuse to see now, that the regeneration of Palestine and the growth of its population came only after the Jews returned in significant numbers. As Winston Churchill, then the British colonial secretary, pointed out: "The land was not being taken away from the Arabs. The Arabs sold land to Jews only if they chose to do so."

     The hope was that the Arabs would accept Israelis as their neighbors and, finally, recognize them as such. That hope died aborning. Even war, that grim final arbiter of international relations, has made no difference. The Arabs resisted from the outset a Jewish presence in the region. They expanded their war against Israel into an attack on the very idea of Israel. Zionism, the Jewish claim to a land of their own, was declared racist because the Arabs said it deprived them of their land. They substituted the homeless Palestinian for the homeless Jew. The Arabs, having rendered the Palestinians homeless by refusing to accept partition in 1948 and having kept many of the Palestinians who fled the battle homeless in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan by refusing to resettle them in their lands, now blame this homelessness on the Jews. They have consistently charged that it was the Jews who had driven the Arabs out of Palestine. But as the eminent Arabist Bernard Lewis has written, "the great majority, like countless millions of refugees elsewhere, left their homes amid the confusion of and panic of invasion and war -- one more unhappy part of the vast movement of population which occurred in the aftermath of World War II."

     Even the foreign press, in regular contact with all sides during the conflict of 1948, wrote nothing to suggest that the flight of the Palestinians was not voluntary. Nor did Arab spokesmen, such as the Palestinian representative to the U.N., Jamal Husseini, or the secretary general of the Arab League, blame the Jews contemporaneously with the 1948 war for the flight of Arabs and Palestinians. In fact, those who fled were urged to do so by other Arabs. As then Prime Minister of Iraq Nuri Said put it, "the Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." One Arab who fled encapsulated this thinking in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Difaa: "The Arab governments told us, `Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out, but they did not get in." And a bad situation, impossibly, was allowed to get worse. Arabs and Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war were resettled in camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the only such agency established for any refugee group since the massive dislocations of World War II. The partition of India occurred at the same time as the conflict in Palestine, and millions of Hindus and Muslims were uprooted, but virtually nothing was done for them. Nothing was done in response to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, where a long-standing religious, social, and political culture was virtually destroyed.

     Yet 55 years after they were first established, the Arab refugee camps still exist. With the exception of Jordan, the Arab governments home to these camps have refused to grant citizenship to the refugees and opposed their resettlement. In Lebanon, 400,000 stateless Palestinians are not allowed to attend public school, own property, or even improve their housing stock. Three generations later, they continue to serve as political pawns of the Arab states, still hopeful of reversing the events of 1948. "The return of the refugees," as President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt said years later, "will mean the end of Israel."

     The U.N., through its administration of the camps, has made a complicated problem infinitely more so. How? U.N. officials define refugees in the Middle East to include the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. In other parts of the world, descendants of refugees are not defined as refugees. The result of this unique treatment has been to increase the numbers of Arab refugees from roughly 700,000 to over 4 million, by including children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren. As a former prime minister of Syria, Khaled al Azm, wrote in his memoirs, "It is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it is we who made them leave. We brought disaster upon them. [We] exploited them in executing crimes of murder and throwing bombs. All this in the service of political purposes." And so it goes, to this very day. At the time of the founding of the State of Israel, 900,000 Jewish refugees were forced out of neighboring Arab states in a coordinated effort. These refugees were absorbed into the new Israel. Yet the world was, and still is, untroubled by the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

     TO SINGLE OUT ISRAEL as the only state that must restore a refugee population is to hold the Jewish state to a different standard. Or, perhaps, the more accurate term is double standard. Against such a backdrop, with a history so cynically manipulated by its enemies, the distortions and outright untruths that characterize more recent relations between Israel and the Palestinians should probably come as no surprise. There are virtually countless examples from which to choose, but last year's "massacre" by Israeli forces at the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin is particularly illustrative.

     A Palestinian suicide bomber, on Passover eve, killed 29 people and injured 140 in the Israeli city of Netanya. It was the sixth terrorist bombing that week. The Israelis responded by sending troops into the West Bank, including the refugee camp at Jenin, the principal home of the bomb makers. A 10-day battle ensued. The Palestinians, with support from U.N. representatives, alleged that the Israelis had massacred hundreds of innocents, carried out summary executions, refrigerated the corpses, and removed them. Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian spokesman, reiterated the claim of many hundreds killed. The media accepted his version. But subsequent news reports, and even Palestinian testimony and writings recently collated, established the fact that groups like Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad used women and children as shields during the fighting. The reports showed, conclusively, that there was no massacre of Palestinian civilians and documented that the Israelis exercised great restraint during the battle to minimize civilian casualties while suffering an inordinately high number of their own as a result.

     Distortions and untruths, unsurprisingly, characterize the Palestinians' political dealings with Israel, as well. A critical moment in the relationship was the Oslo agreement of 1993. There, the negotiating principle was land for peace. What Israel received was no peace in return for its offer of land. The most generous Israeli offer of land for peace came at Camp David three years ago. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, including the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The Camp David offer was not only rejected by Arafat but used as a provocation to launch a campaign of violence and terrorism that continues to this day.

     The notion of land for peace bears exploring. If it is taken to mean that Israel must turn over more land until peace is achieved and Arab belligerence ended, the incurious may be left with the conclusion that the lack of peace must be the result of Israel's failure to yield sufficient land. Nothing could be further from the truth. There have been thousands of terrorist attacks since the second intifada began, three years ago. The only way Israel has been able to reduce the number of suicide bombers is eliminating their sanctuary by controlling the West Bank through occupation and sealing off Gaza.

     But the story is not one of occupation of the West Bank by Israel. If the term "occupation" had any relevance at all, it was lost three years ago with Arafat's rejection of Barak's proposal for a Palestinian state. The issue is Palestinian refusal to grant Israel the right to exist as a Jewish state. Israel's battle is not the battle of Jew against Muslim. It is a battle against the hatred of the Jews and their connection to the land of Israel. How else to comprehend the Palestinian rejection of Jerusalem as the sacred city of the Jews and the Western Wall as the Second Temple, except as a rejection of the Jewish presence there? "There was no temple in Jerusalem," Arafat said at Camp David. "It was only an obelisk." To question the core of the Jewish faith is hardly an indication of readiness to resolve the conflict.

     Quite the contrary, the spiraling Palestinian violence evidences a single-minded determination to continue the conflict. The insight of Amos Oz, the liberal Israeli writer, is pertinent. He is haunted, he said, by the observation that before the Holocaust, European graffiti read, "Jews to Palestine," while today it has been changed, to "Jews out of Palestine." The message to Jews, Oz says, is simple: "Don't be here, and don't be there. That is, don't be."

     Graffiti On History's Walls

     By Mortimer B. Zuckerman Jewish World Review Oct 29, 2003

     Posted by redstateman at 08/15/2005 @ 02:34am

288. REDSTATEMAN: Your one-sided diatribe is hardly worth a response, and is best described as propaganda. The Zuckerman piece fits that description. The fact remains that Israel is in violation of several U.N. resolutions pertaining to its continued occupation of Palestinian land. It is therefore defying world opinion and international law. The deal put forth by Barack to Arafat was a joke. No Palestinian leader would have taken it. Clinton, supposedly a neutral arbitrator(?),tried to bully Arafat into taking the poison deal. Arafat's rejection of the wholely unfair deal in no way diminishes the rights of Palestinians to a just settlement under the guidelines of U.N. resolutions 242 and 337.Redstateman, your hot air may convince your rightwing redneck crowd, but it does't work on thinking people. You need a dose of objectivity. But I'm not sure you're worth my words.

     Posted by philbq at 08/15/2005 @ 08:48am

289. JACKRABBIT: Regarding Israel's security situation, Israel is armed to the teeth and has nuclear weapons. Nothing threatens Israel's existence.If you are talking about Palestinian terrorism, I believe it will stop when Israel agrees to withdraw to internationally recognized borders. Incidently, the 1967 borders give Israel more land than was granted at the 1947 U.N. partition. In the violence follwing the partition, Jewish terrorists(led by Menachem Begin) were killing and grabbing land not granted by the partition, as you must know. So the 1967 borders were more generous to Israel than the original partition borders. For a detailed study, I recommend "The Fateful Triangle", by Noam Chomsky. The bottom line for me is when Israel is serious about peace and international legitimacy, it must withdraw from the West Bank to something resembling the 1967 borders. The current Palestinian leader, Abbas, is serious about peace. He is trying to rein in the hotheads. I must say that Israeli demands that Abbas somehow stop all anti-Israeli violence is absurd. An occupying power cannot demand that the occupied police themself. The occupied are powerless, without authority. The solution for peace is withdrawal by Israel.

     Posted by philbq at 08/15/2005 @ 09:13am

290. To RedStateMan:

     First, I reject the notion that Zionism is a form of racism; I embrace the notion that anti-Semitism is a form of racism.

     I am not going to say that No criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but neither is it true that All criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. Some is and some is not.

     You can search my posts above and I don't think you'll find anything remotely anti-Semitic about them. I would say the same thing to Mr. Zuckerman were he reading this. Yet I criticize some Israeli policy; I would have grave reservations about any state building permanent settlements for its population in occupied territory.

     Much of Mr. Zuckerman's case is built on a quibble about what is occupied territory. I don't agree with him. The West Bank and Gaza have never been part of the modern state of Israel. They are occupied territories.

     If you define building Jewish settlements in occupied territory for use by Jews as Zionism, then I'm an anti-Zionist. But I don't define Zionism that way. Zionism is simply the advocacy of the creation and maintenance of a Jewish state. Israel is there and I am not for driving it into the sea. That doesn't mean I believe that Israel's survival is contingent on expanding her borders to the Jordan River; I don't believe that. On the contrary, I believe that peace in the Middle East is contingent on Israel withdrawing to the Green Line or something very close to it, allowing a Palestinian state to come into existence in the West Bank and Gaza and those two states agreeing to respect those borders.

     If I said that it is wrong for a Jewish state to build settlements in occupied territory and fine and dandy for somebody else to do so, you might have a case in calling me anti-Semitic, and therefore a racist. On the other hand, wouldn't I be just as much a racist if I said that it is fine and dandy for a Jewish state to build settlements in occupied territory and forbid all others to do so?

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/15/2005 @ 10:34am

291. To PhiBQ:

     I don't think you or anyone else wants to make Israel's line of defense her nuclear arsenal. Think about that. It would be better if she had peaceful neighbors, even if they begrudge each other's existence.

     You're right. That nuclear arsenal is a great deterrent. But it doesn't guarantee peace.

     If you are talking about Palestinian terrorism, I believe it will stop when Israel agrees to withdraw to internationally recognized borders.

     I'd like to agree with that, but there is a part of me that doesn't. There are extremists on both sides of this argument that are willing fight for the last acre of land to the last drop of blood. Both sides must be prepared to deal with them. They will not be placated by international borders.

     I must say that Israeli demands that Abbas somehow stop all anti-Israeli violence is absurd. An occupying power cannot demand that the occupied police themselves. The occupied are powerless, without authority. The solution for peace is withdrawal by Israel.

     Yet that violence must be stopped. If a Palestinian state were declared and the Palestinian government is too weak to stop militants from crossing the border and launching terrorist attacks, then Israel would have a perfect pretext to re-invade Palestine. We'd be back to square one.

     Consequently, the solution involves something more than Israel's withdrawal, but also involves some positive steps by the Palestinians. Would the Palestinians be able to take those steps even if they are willing? If they are powereless, then they cannot.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/15/2005 @ 10:51am

292. JACKRABBIT: It sounds like you agree with me. As long as there is an occupation, the Palestinian leadership is powerless. If there were a Palestinian state, the Palestinian security force would have legitimacy.

     Posted by philbq at 08/15/2005 @ 11:04am

293. In a couple of your post you say that I said that Israel's expansion is justified because her "borders were indefensible". I've never said that. I said that Israel was attacked by her neighbors who were bent on her annihilation and that justified her defensive posture in 1967.

     Whether Israel's borders are defensible or not is not a judgment I feel qualified to make. Resolution 242 leaves the issue of adjustment of those borders open while rejecting as inadmissible the acquisition of territory by war.

     Israel was justified in seizing land in 1967 in order to use that land as bargaining chips to gain peace agreements with her neighbors. I have never endorsed unilateral territorial expansion by Israel or any one else, even to places where no state actually exists.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/15/2005 @ 11:19am

294. Philbq,

     "it does't work on "thinking people"."

     Thinking people? I'm laughing so hard I can hardly tYpE!

     Objectivity?

     Yet, you cite the works of a anarchist and socialist, the Ayatollah of anti-American, anti-Israel hate, the great manipulator of truth and evidence, as the bases of your objectivity?

     I'm really rolling on the floor now! And you call yourself a intellectual? Now there's a oxymoron for you! You know Philbq? The big difference between you and me, is I know what shit is when I see it. Just like a good little nazi. You on the other hand, rely on someone else to tell you what it is.

     Posted by redstateman at 08/15/2005 @ 12:06pm

295. Jack Rabbit, I didn't refer to you as a anti-semite. I was simply responding to why I thought criticism of Israels policies stems from anti-semitic roots. I also think it would be very naive to think that peace in the Israel and the middle east can be acheived by Israel withdrawing from the "occupied territories". Hamas and Hezbollah has publically announce that they will never disarm. Arab policies go unchanged. My position is that no matter what Israel does, whether for its own defense, or by international law, treaties, etc. It will never be good enough. The root issue is not about the Palestinians, land for peace, etc. Its about Israel's right to exist. Only when the Arab world acknowledges Israel's right to exist, can there be peace. I doubt this will ever happen. At least not in our life time.

     Posted by redstateman at 08/15/2005 @ 12:36pm

296. To RedStateMan:

     To say that criticism of Israel's policies has anti-Semitic roots differs very little from calling one an anti-Semite for criticizing Israel. I take issue even with your milder version of the statement.

     I also think it would be very naive to think that peace in the Israel and the middle east can be acheived by Israel withdrawing from the "occupied territories". Hamas and Hezbollah has publically announce that they will never disarm. Arab policies go unchanged. My position is that no matter what Israel does, whether for its own defense, or by international law, treaties, etc. It will never be good enough. The root issue is not about the Palestinians, land for peace, etc. Its about Israel's right to exist.

     Other than your unnecessary use of glitches around the term occupied territories, I agree with that, at least partially. That's really what I sat to Phil in my 10:51 post.

     Posted by Jack Rabbit at 08/15/2005 @ 12:52pm

297. REDSATEMAN: I prefer to argue with facts. You, like most rightwingers, do not use facts, instead you sink to vulgar insults. That is the pathetic tactic of the weak-minded. You just sound like an angry asshole. Yes, I am an intellectual, and you are simply a man with some knowledge but no class. If you have something to say, I would be glad to respond. Just pretend you know how to have a civil discussion. (Study the exchanges between myself and JACKRABBIT)

     Posted by philbq at 08/15/2005 @ 3:46pm

298. FOR YOUR INFORMATION: Noam Chomsky is one of the most quoted thinkers in the history of the human race. He is the greatest intellectual since Einstein. Chomsky, a Jew, is a prominent critic of the policies of the government of Israel and a political activist, as well as being the greatest linguist in the world. He speaks regularly on the national broadcasts of the many countries who invite him (except this country which has thought control), and is booked years in advance as a speaker. He has described his political philosophy as libertarian socialism. That is still legal in this country,despite people like you. Chomsky is a giant, and his thoughts and words will live forever.

     Posted by philbq at 08/15/2005 @ 4:00pm

299. CHOMSKY CONT. Prof. Noam Chomsky of MIT speaks and writes on peace and justice issues and international relations, as well as liguistics. He is very critical of both of the major political parties in this country. I consider him to be a symbol of truth and justice for all people in the world. Millions worldwide share my opinion.

     Posted by philbq at 08/15/2005 @ 4:33pm

300. Philbq,

     "To all the defenders of Israel (Redassman)" Posted by PHILBQ 08/11/2005 @ 08:04am

     "REDASSMAN: Criticism of Israel's policies stems from anti-Semitic roots" Are you a member of AIPAC? You sound like it. To people like you, legitimate criticism of Israel is not allowed. So you throw out cheap slander. Well, this is the Nation website, and your garbage doesn't work here. Go back to your cave." Posted by PHILBQ 08/11/2005 @ 2:51pm

     "REDSTATEMAN: Your one-sided diatribe is hardly worth a response, and is best described as propaganda. The Zuckerman piece fits that description." "Redstateman, your hot air may convince your rightwing redneck crowd, but it does't work on thinking people. You need a dose of objectivity. But I'm not sure you're worth my words." Posted by PHILBQ 08/15/2005 @ 08:48am

     "REDSATEMAN: I prefer to argue with facts. You, like most rightwingers, do not use facts, instead you sink to vulgar insults. That is the pathetic tactic of the weak-minded. You just sound like an angry asshole." Posted by PHILBQ 08/15/2005 @ 3:46pm

     "Yes, I am an intellectual," Posted by PHILBQ 08/15/2005 @ 3:46pm

     Philbq, I rest my case!

     Posted by redstateman at 08/15/2005 @ 5:22pm

301. How one views the actions of the state of Israel depends greatly on how one views the state of israel.

     Which is to say, its right to exist, its fight to occupy the territories it does, its right to occupy other territories.

     My view is that Israel has the stronger claim, historically and militarily, to the occupied territories.

     Posted by jonb at 08/15/2005 @ 7:24pm

302. I would also say that most of the people I know of who care at all about israel, or the problem between the israelis and the "palestinians", does so because of their personal attitude toward Jewish people.

     I am speaking of non-jews, of course.

     I have also found anti semitism under most every rock I turned over. Especially on the left.

     SO I guess I relate to the statement that most criticism of israeli policy is rooted in anti semitism.

     However, here is a criticism that is not.

     Israel should never have surrendered any of the territor they won defending themselves against their enemies.

     Giving up gaza is wrong, and I fear Sharon will pay a heavy price.

     Posted by jonb at 08/15/2005 @ 7:29pm

303. REDSTATEMAN: IF you have followed my writings here(and you have), you will know that I am generally civil and factual in my arguments. It is people like you, NACL, and Aludra who constantly use personal insults, vulgar characterizations, and non-factual slander. Once in a while, I get fed up with your gutter tactics. I would love it if you people would just stick to the facts, because I will hand you your head. And there are other people on these blogs like Zero, MrMurry, and JohnHalle who will do the same. I challenge you: stick to real debate, and we will see who can defend their position. Do you have the guts???

     Posted by philbq at 08/15/2005 @ 10:43pm

304. JONES, love your hurculean efforts to educate us all. Do you have a web site? I have learned a lot reading your posts here. Thanks!

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/22/2005 @ 10:31am

305. JONES, love your hurculean efforts to educate us all. Do you have a web site? I have learned a lot reading your posts here. Thanks!

     Posted by Jack Benning at 08/22/2005 @ 10:33am