Reports of Mossad, US assassinating Iraqi scientists ...

[Sepka]

Havanagilla, I think if you read it again, you'll see that I was making (or trying to make - perhaps I was unclear) a comparison between Arabs and Germans, not between Arabs and Nazis. Both are (presumably) ordinary people under the sway of an evil philosophy. Both are dangerous because of that philosphy, not because of any inherent characteristics. Once that philosphy has been destroyed, it's to be hoped that a better world can be built. And yes, I'm deadly serious about that.<br><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The arab culture is by far superior to that of west in terms of human rights and tolerance to minorities and difference. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>So if, for instance, I wanted to open a gay roller disco in Cairo, there'd be no legal obstacles in my path? How about a storefront Wiccan church and supply shop in Tehran? How about sending Mormon missionaries door to door in Mecca? Publishing newspaper editorials and cartoons that mock Mohammed and Islam? Speaking out against the King or Ayatollah in the terms that most posters here use toward Bush? <br><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I don't see why anyone has to prove their good feelings to americans, to merit a humane treatment. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>They don't. They shouldn't expect kind treatment when they offer unprovoked hatred and aggression, though.<br><br>-Sepka the Space Weasel <p></p><i></i>

[havanagilla]

the gap bn our positions on this issue is too wide to bridge and so perhaps it was my mistake getting into it. We have a saying in Hebrew, "and each person shall live in his/her faith" (or, live and let live). Just one comment you may want to ponder about in your free time - it is not the arabs that put the gays in the ovens after gassing them to death. And it is not iranians who hanged and burnt thousands of witches (wiccans or not) in a frenzy. So, a gay person may not kiss his lover in he streets, but rest assure he is not under a periodical threat of being amassed and shot dead with his fellows. This kind of periodical murderous "enlightenment" has happened in the west, and will probably rear its ugly face again, once the traditional two-three decades of "lets be tolerant" elapsed. I prefer imperfection to bi polar maddness. <p></p><i></i>

[chiggerbit]

jc, is this 01/05 article the same Salvador Option that the article you linked was talking about? I can't believe that Rummy was referring to this, not even obliquely. <br><br> <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/">www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802.../newsweek/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq<br><br>Updated: 8:59 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2005<br>Jan. 8 - <br><br>"What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon's latest approach is being called "the Salvador option”and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November's operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time”than in spreading it out.<br><br>Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras. There is no evidence, however, that Negroponte knew anything about the Salvadoran death squads or the Iran-Contra scandal at the time. The Iraq ambassador, in a phone call to NEWSWEEK on Jan. 10, said he was not involved in military strategy in Iraq. He called the insertion of his name into this report "utterly gratuitous.") <br>Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK. <br><br>Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government—the Defense department or CIA—would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special presidential finding. (In "covert" activity, U.S. personnel operate under cover and the U.S. government will not confirm that it instigated or ordered them into action if they are captured or killed.)"<br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chiggerbit@rigorousintuition>chiggerbit</A> at: 5/13/06 6:46 pm<br></i>

[jc]

chiggerbit,<br><br>the newsweek articel, yeah. SO courtesy of Negroponte. <p></p><i></i>

[jc]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I can't believe that Rummy was referring to this, not even obliquely. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>made me think of this:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Everybody knows that the dice are loaded <br> Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed <br> Everybody knows that the war is over <br> Everybody knows the good guys lost <br> Everybody knows the fight was fixed <br> The poor stay poor, the rich get rich <br> That's how it goes <br> Everybody knows <br> Everybody knows that the boat is leaking <br> Everybody knows that the captain lied <br> Everybody got this broken feeling <br> Like their father or their dog just died <br><br> Everybody talking to their pockets <br> Everybody wants a box of chocolates <br> And a long stem rose <br> Everybody knows <br><br> Everybody knows that you love me baby <br> Everybody knows that you really do <br> Everybody knows that you've been faithful <br> Ah give or take a night or two <br> Everybody knows you've been discreet <br> But there were so many people you just had to meet <br> Without your clothes <br> And everybody knows <br><br> Everybody knows, everybody knows <br> That's how it goes <br> Everybody knows <br><br> Everybody knows, everybody knows <br> That's how it goes <br> Everybody knows <br><br> And everybody knows that it's now or never <br> Everybody knows that it's me or you <br> And everybody knows that you live forever <br> Ah when you've done a line or two <br> Everybody knows the deal is rotten <br> Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton <br> For your ribbons and bows <br> And everybody knows <br><br> And everybody knows that the Plague is coming <br> Everybody knows that it's moving fast <br> Everybody knows that the naked man and woman <br> Are just a shining artifact of the past <br> Everybody knows the scene is dead <br> But there's gonna be a meter on your bed <br> That will disclose <br> What everybody knows <br><br> And everybody knows that you're in trouble <br> Everybody knows what you've been through <br> From the bloody cross on top of Calvary <br> To the beach of Malibu <br> Everybody knows it's coming apart <br> Take one last look at this Sacred Heart <br> Before it blows <br> And everybody knows <br><br> Everybody knows, everybody knows <br> That's how it goes <br> Everybody knows <br><br> Oh everybody knows, everybody knows <br> That's how it goes <br> Everybody knows <br><br> Everybody knows<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>kind of sums up everything re our current situation, i think <p></p><i></i>

[AlicetheCurious]

Thanks for standing up, Hava. As a token Arab on this board, it speaks volumes for me that you, an Israeli, are raising your voice against the vicious demonization of entire nations as justification for their pillage and slaughter. <br><br>The enemy is not a race, or a nationality, or a religion. It's the poisonous hatred that infects individual hearts and makes them callous and cruel. Who are "we", Sepka, what are the criteria to join your exclusive club?<br><br>May I disagree with you and still be allowed to live? May I aspire to freedom? Are the members of your club allowed to kill my kids, to use torture, to disappear me and my husband, to destroy the home of my elderly parents, to bomb us, to use depleted uranium, to steal our land and our resources because "you" are BETTER than us? How many war crimes are you allowed to commit? How many crimes against humanity?<br><br>Look in the mirror, Sepka, the blind hatred you accuse entire peoples of, is nowhere more evident than in your racist and immoral arguments for cold-blooded murder, torture, enslavement and genocide, based on the victims' religion and nationality. <br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>They</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> shouldn't expect kind treatment when they offer unprovoked hatred and aggression, though. - Sepka<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Pardon me while I gag.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? <br><br>Or how wilt thy say to thy brother, "Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?" <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->." Mathew 7:3-5<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>

[havanagilla]

no prob AliceTC, it just happens to be what I really think and believe, (although it could be viewed as a tactical move, if i have to seek refuge in egypt when the shit hits the fan here). <br>--<br>There were some publications here recently about the Copts situation being "inflamed" over there.(actually, i was reading it with MC in my mind, with all those "schizophrenics" suddenly popping out of no where..right ?). <br>I had a run in with the local copt church while looking for a rental, and was wondering how come the rich brethern from your part of the world, are not chipping in to help restore and do some serious renovations. pity, actually, there are nice buildings here, but they will soon just crumble. <br> In fact, I was going to offer you a joint project - to do the fundraising for the renovations here, well, you do the fundraising among your folks there, and I can do the rest here, we can both cut a nice share for a truly good cause. Seems like the brethren here are in deep shit, financially and otherwise. Surely, with such a run down church, the "flock" is not enthused, maybe they all converted to catholicism/orthodoxy, just to get better facilities.<br>Anyway, it was an interesting tour, as they are looking to rent out, but would rather have tennants who are somewhat sympathetic to the palestinians, which I qualified for (under the grill of their real estate manager here), but the property is really run down. So he took me on a grand tour of all the "estate", and this is really a pitty, such beautiful architecture all lost to negligence. So, finally he says "you know what copts are ?" I said "sure", and he said quickly "these are the children of Pharao" :-). ("pharao? you mean that neocon ?") .<br>--<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[Sepka]

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>May I disagree with you and still be allowed to live? May I aspire to freedom? Are the members of your club allowed to kill my kids, to use torture, to disappear me and my husband, to destroy the home of my elderly parents, to bomb us, to use depleted uranium, to steal our land and our resources because "you" are BETTER than us? How many war crimes are you allowed to commit? How many crimes against humanity?<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Gee, Alice... had you just waited one day, you could have said that on the anniversary of the <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma'alot_massacre">Ma'Alot school massacre</a><!--EZCODE LINK END-->, for extra irony points!<br><br>Try as I might, I just can't see any moral equivalency between cold-blooded, unprovoked murder, and the acts of soldiers striking back to defend their homes and families against those same murderers. Like Havanagilla graciously pointed out, we're probably not going to be able to bridge the perceptual gap.<br><br>-Sepka the Space Weasel <p></p><i></i>

[AlicetheCurious]

You know, Sepka, "perceptual gap" is a very good way to explain why our views are irreconcilable. You and I both define the world in terms of "us" and "them", probably because what I call tribal instincts are something hard-wired into our brains.<br><br>We just define our tribes according to different criteria. I've had the experience of living among many very different cultures and have always had an ethnic patchwork of friends, acquaintances, co-workers; I've never known what it's like to live among "my own kind" in an ethno-cultural sense. No matter where I've been, I've been a minority, usually of one.<br><br>This used to be a real problem for me when I was a teenager, as you can imagine. Gradually, somehow, it became transformed into a great source of joy, as I realized that the members of "my tribe" are there to be found among all peoples, everywhere. It's so difficult to describe in words what my heart immediately and unambiguously recognizes in certain people. The words are inadequate: humanity, decency, fairness, curiosity, wisdom, that spark of intelligence...<br><br>I don't know if you have children, Sepka, but if you share the awe I feel for these amazing, miraculous beings, try for a moment to imagine the deep revulsion I feel towards anyone who would harm them, or kill them, or justify such a crime, or look with indifference upon it because they belong to the wrong race or ethnic or religious group, or for any reason whatsoever. Whatsoever.<br><br>You've decided that because I condemn war crimes or crimes against humanity against one group, that I accept them against another. In your view, apparently, it's the ethnicity or religion of the victim that determines whether or not a crime has been committed. Obviously, you're not alone. Your mirror image exists in every ethnic-religious "tribe", reflecting your hatred back and forth between yourselves, convinced that you're different from each other when you are just the same.<br><br>Heads or tails, it's the same coin. "You're either with US or you're with THE TERRORISTS". Yet "us" and the "terrorists" are indistinguishable from the perspective of their many, many innocent victims. <br><br>Somehow you've convinced yourself that I'm like you, maybe because you only see yourself and your reflection, and think that's all there is.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I just can't see any moral equivalency between cold-blooded, unprovoked murder, and the acts of soldiers striking back to defend their homes and families against those same murderers<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>If only that were true! But I hope that you are too intelligent to believe that that is what is happening in Iraq and in Palestine, unless you are pathologically divorced from reality. <br><br>You must surely know that those whom you have defined as "murderers" include tens of thousands of innocent civilians, among them many children, including babies. You must know that the majority of those held in secret detention camps and tortured have no connection to <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>any</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> crime, let alone "murder". Are you arguing that the many people whose lands have been confiscated, whose homes have been destroyed, who have been murdered and maimed and deprived of basic necessities like medicine, food, water and electricity, are "murderers" and deserve what has been done to them?<br><br>What is the difference between an Israeli child who is harmed and an Arab one? What is the difference between an American thug and an Arab thug, both of whom believe they are serving a 'higher good' that places them above the law and above the basic principles of human decency? The difference between you and me is that I see none.<br><br>"Perceptual gap" indeed.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[AlicetheCurious]

By the way, Hava, I've got a really nice guest room, and you're welcome any time. Although if the "shit" is nuclear, we're ALL out of luck, because your home and mine are less than 250 km away from each other, a stone's throw in WMD terms.<br><br>Re: the buildings own by the Coptic church in Israel/Palestine. It's probably a matter of priorities and logistics. Also, Copts are forbidden by church decree from visiting the Holy Land until the Palestinians are liberated from occupation. So, there's no important Coptic community there, nor is it of major interest to Copts to build there.<br><br>Don't worry about Copts and real estate -- you should see the magnificent churches and buildings being built not only in Egypt, but all over Canada, the US and Australia. Where I lived before, in Canada, they couldn't build churches fast enough, and even so it was usually standing-room only for most of the church-goers.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[havanagilla]

Oops,there goes my "get rich quick" plan. too bad.<br>--<br>I remembered now a class i had to take in DC, by a former egyptian (copt) who was a law prof., and he was saying that he took part in the Nasser revolution and assisted in the legal planning of the constitution, but then Nasser failed him and entered Islam as "state religion" whereupon he escaped/left Egypt to the USA. (or something). I think his name was Al Fishawhi or something like that (almost 20 yrs ago..he is probably gone by now, was pretty old then). <br>--my "copt" connection...It was the first time I heard about this religion, and it sounded ancient. The guy here from the church next door, told me that a couple of years back they had a rich donor (from abroad..without saying where) that pledged a million for renovations. After he did the wall (there is a nice new wall surrounding the church) he asked that his name be put on the building and this is why the deal was off. I don't know the politics, its just a very nice building going to waste. <br>--<br>Anyway, thanks for offer ! the "shit" can take many forms here, but I feel we are witnessing the gradual shutting down of the Sinai check point, from Eilat, which would make it harder to run for one's life...i should work on my swimming skills...:-).<br><br>--<br> <p></p><i></i>