( – promoted by odum)

This is Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman living in Baghdad speaking about conditions in Iraq after almost four years of American/Coalition occupation. 
http://riverbendblog…

Baghdad Burning
… I’ll meet you ’round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend…

Friday, December 29, 2006

End of Another Year…

You know your country is in trouble when:
The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
 

The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.

The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.

An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country’s ‘Golden Years’.

Your country is purportedly ‘selling’ 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.

For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it’s going to cut back on providing that hour.

Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is ‘sectarian bloodshed’ or ‘civil war’.

People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that’s been missing for two weeks.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted.

2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No- really. The magnitude of this war and occupation is only now hitting the country full force. It’s like having a big piece of hard, dry earth you are determined to break apart. You drive in the first stake in the form of an infrastructure damaged with missiles and the newest in arms technology, the first cracks begin to form. Several smaller stakes come in the form of politicians like Chalabi, Al Hakim, Talbani, Pachachi, Allawi and Maliki. The cracks slowly begin to multiply and stretch across the once solid piece of earth, reaching out towards its edges like so many skeletal hands. And you apply pressure. You surround it from all sides and push and pull. Slowly, but surely, it begins coming apart- a chip here, a chunk there.

That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The ‘mistakes’ were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.

The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I’m certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.

Al Qaeda? That’s laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of ‘sniper’ and ‘jihadi’, pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.

This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There’s no way to describe the loss we’ve experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is ‘too Sunni’ or ‘too Shia’. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandanas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.

Again, I can’t help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.

What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it’s just not safe.

Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam’s execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq. Some Sunni and Shia tribes have threatened to arm their members against the Americans if Saddam is executed. Iraqis in general are watching closely to see what happens next, and quietly preparing for the worst.

This is because now, Saddam no longer represents himself or his regime. Through the constant insistence of American war propaganda, Saddam is now representative of all Sunni Arabs (never mind most of his government were Shia). The Americans, through their speeches and news articles and Iraqi Puppets, have made it very clear that they consider him to personify Sunni Arab resistance to the occupation. Basically, with this execution, what the Americans are saying is “Look-Sunni Arabs- this is your man, we all know this. We’re hanging him- he symbolizes you.” And make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood (though low-budget, if you ask me).

That is, of course, why Talbani doesn’t want to sign his death penalty- not because the mob man suddenly grew a conscience, but because he doesn’t want to be the one who does the hanging- he won’t be able to travel far away enough if he does that.

Maliki’s government couldn’t contain their glee. They announced the ratification of the execution order before the actual court did. A few nights ago, some American news program interviewed Maliki’s bureau chief, Basim Al-Hassani who was speaking in accented American English about the upcoming execution like it was a carnival he’d be attending. He sat, looking sleazy and not a little bit ridiculous, his dialogue interspersed with ‘gonna’, ‘gotta’ and ‘wanna’… Which happens, I suppose, when the only people you mix with are American soldiers.

My only conclusion is that the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq, but would like to leave behind a full-fledged civil war because it wouldn’t look good if they withdraw and things actually begin to improve, would it?

Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We’ve all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.

Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn’t believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That’s the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.

Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he’s wanted to marry for the last six years? I don’t think so.

Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn’t make them more significant, does it?

– posted by river @ 1:00 PM

What does America have to gain by damaging Iraq to this extent?  Check out the portion of the Iraq Study Group’s report on privitizing Iraqi oil.  The real question is: What do American oil companies have to gain, and who receives the proceeds of those ill-gotten gains?

Barbara

seen in NH and Iowa.

http://www.youtube.c…

Guess we need to do a little research on him —

Barbara

The cost of the Iraq war to Vermonters passed $506 million today, not counting the lives and future well-being of our troops. 

Published on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 by McClatchy Newspapers
Official Iraq War Costs Don’t Tell the Whole Story
by Kevin G. Hall and David Montgomery

WASHINGTON – During a recent visit to a military family center at Fort Hood in Texas, Joyce Raezer was dismayed to find a sign in a stall in the ladies’ room. It asked women to clean up because janitorial service had been cut back.

“What message does that send to a family member when they walk into a family center?” asked Raezer, the director of government relations for the National Military Families Association.

At Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, swimming pools closed a month early this fall, and shuttle vans were sharply curtailed in an effort to trim spending. At Fort Sam Houston in Texas, unpaid utility bills exceeded $4 million, and the base reduced mail delivery to cut costs.

Belt-tightening at the bases is only the beginning. As the United States spends about $8 billion a month in Iraq, the military is being forced to cut costs in ways big and small.

Soldiers preparing to ship to Iraq don’t have enough equipment to train on because it’s been left in Iraq, where it’s most needed. Thousands of tanks and other vehicles sit at repair depots waiting to be fixed because funds are short.

At the Red River Army Depot in Texas, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in October that at least 6,200 Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, trucks and ambulances were awaiting repair because of insufficient funds.

There’s a virtual graveyard of tanks and fighting vehicles at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. Depot spokeswoman Joan Gustafson said that the depot expects to repair 1,885 tanks and other armored vehicles during the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. That’s up from the 1,169 and 1,035 vehicles repaired in the prior two fiscal years.

Some of the depot’s private-sector contractors haven’t been able to supply enough parts in time to make all the repairs, she said. The depot is trying to reduce the time it takes to get repair and replacement parts from 120 days to 60 days.

Tanks and helicopters are one thing; the toll on America’s warriors and their families is another.

More than 73,000 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and with problems such as drug abuse and depression. That’s enough people to fill a typical NFL stadium.

Internet blogs written by soldiers or their wives tell of suicide attempts by soldiers haunted by the horror of combat, civilian careers of reservists who’ve been harmed by deployment and redeployment, and marriages broken by distance and the trauma of war.

“Back-to-back war deployments has changed both of us – to where it’s as if a marriage does not exist anymore,” wrote a woman calling herself Blackhawk wife on an Iraq war vets Web site. “We just go through the daily steps of life and raising children as best we can.”

A mother of a returning soldier posted this: “Since he has been back, he has had 3 DUIs, wrecked his truck, attempted suicide, been diagnosed with PTSD” and is being kicked out of the Army.

The length of the war in Iraq has strained all aspects of the armed forces, said Dov Zakheim, who was the Pentagon’s chief financial officer from 2001 to 2004.

“In 2003, I don’t think anybody predicted it would go as long as World War II and the wear and tear on equipment would be as intense,” said Zakheim, now a vice president for global strategy consultant Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. “When I left the department, we were spending less than $4 billion a month on Iraq. Now it’s pretty much doubled.”

The length of the Iraq war surpassed that of World War II last month. The costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global fight against terrorism are expected to surpass the $536 billion in inflation-adjusted costs of the Vietnam War by spring. That’s more than 10 times the Bush administration’s $50 million prewar estimate.

Through the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, Congress authorized about $436 billion in war spending, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In October, President Bush signed legislation that tacked on $70 billion, bringing the total to more than $506 billion. That number will rise again once Congress appropriates Iraq stabilization and reconstruction funding.

The armed services, seeking to replace aging equipment and address quality-of-life issues for military families, are believed to be seeking $100 billion to $160 billion in a supplemental spending bill for spring.

If that’s approved, war funding – three-quarters of it going to Iraq-related operations – would reach nearly $700 billion. If U.S. troops remain in Iraq through 2010, it will approach $1 trillion.

In January, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz released a study that said the true costs of the Iraq war could exceed $1 trillion and perhaps reach $2 trillion.

“When I saw that figure, I thought it was an exaggeration. I no longer think it’s an exaggeration,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Vietnam veteran who’s criticized how the war has been fought and funded.

The Stiglitz report focused on hard-to-measure things such as lifetime care for injured soldiers and the economic effect of higher oil prices as a result of the war. But his final numbers for unofficial costs are on pace to be matched by the official costs – which don’t add the intangibles.

“We were very conservative on the numbers, and the numbers have repeatedly come in higher than we estimated,” said Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank, in a telephone interview from Spain. “Those costs continue to pile up: the health care costs, the disability costs, the replacement costs – and there’s obviously an open question now if we ever reconstruct” Iraq.

Here’s a look at some of the costs:

Until recently, little of the authorized war funding went toward reset, the military term for replacing fighting vehicles, tanks, helicopters and other equipment that are wearing out from heavy use.

“We have a backlog of maintenance work to reset, fix, retool all our equipment, and at the same time we have to take care of our civilian soldiers,” said Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, who in January will become chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on readiness. “Many of the units in the United States Reserve or National Guard do not have any equipment because their equipment stayed in Iraq … Humvees, weapons, trucks, tanks. You name it, they need it.”

Gary Schmitt, a defense expert for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the problem existed before 2001. “The war has obviously made that much worse,” he said. “People would be surprised, but the reality is the increases in defense spending have been personnel and operational,” not for upgrading or modernizing the armed forces.

The October bridge funding, which bridges the gap that occurs when the fiscal year begins before funds have been appropriated, included $24 billion for reset costs across the armed services. The Army’s deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. David Melcher, told Congress in March that he expected reset costs of at least $12 billion a year while troops are in Iraq and for two years after withdrawal. In the 2006 fiscal year, the Marine Corps’ reset request was three times bigger than its regular procurement budget.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated a $60 billion reset price tag through 2016, assuming a reduction in U.S. troops in Iraq by 2010.

“As long as the current level of intensity is maintained in Iraq operations, there’s not going to be enough money to meet all the services’ needs,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “We’re really burning up money over there at a furious pace.”

Policymakers are stymied in their efforts to predict war costs, partly because the Department of Defense provides only vague estimates of future costs.

“DOD has provided little information about overall requirements to replace worn equipment or to upgrade capabilities, or how war requirements relate to ongoing peacetime investment,” Amy Belasco, a defense budget analyst for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, said in a September report.

As the chief economist on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2002 and director of the CBO from 2002 until last year, Douglas Holtz-Eakin wrestled with that same problem. “It was hard to get actual cost data,” he said.

-HEALTH

Between Oct. 1, 2001, and June 30, 2006, 35 percent of returning active-duty soldiers and 31 percent of Army reservists and National Guardsmen sought medical care from Veterans Affairs health centers. That figure from the Veterans Health Administration doesn’t include treatment at VA hospitals.

In that period, more than 33,000 returning troops received preliminary diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder. Others experienced depression and drug abuse.

“The wear and tear on soldiers and the wear and tear on their families have been immense,” said John Grady, a spokesman for the Association of the United States Army, a nonprofit group that lobbies on behalf of active and retired soldiers.

Problems are getting corrected, he said, “but they’re getting corrected very slowly because the money is very slow in arriving.”

In the first Gulf war, in which 700,000 U.S. soldiers were involved, 44 percent filed for some sort of disability compensation.

More than 1.4 million U.S. soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2001, and about 26 percent have filed disability claims, according to raw data provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. That percentage could grow as soldiers leave the armed forces.

“I see the whole thing as a mini-Medicare, another huge entitlement program which is going to be sprawling out over the course of our lifetimes and our children’s lifetimes,” said Linda Bilmes, a Harvard University public finance professor and co-author of the Stiglitz study. “The big costs come when they get back … they stand a good chance of being really underfunded and not taken care of properly.”

Veterans groups worry that they’ll be forced to compete with other government programs for funds. Not enough attention is being given to the future mental health and medical needs of Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, they say, especially given how those wars differ from previous ones.

“First, they are deployed to war longer. Second, they are being deployed to the war zone two or three times. The combat there is more intense than the Gulf War for nearly every one deployed,” said Paul Sullivan, a Desert Storm veteran and director of programs for Veterans for America. “There are no rear-area jobs. Everyone is on the front lines … cooks and clerks and truck drivers … the entire country is a war zone.”

-FUTURE READINESS

Military commanders complain that they’ve been forced to fight a war on the cheap, despite its large costs. That’s because military spending totals about 4 percent of the broader economy, a historically low level. Some critics, including Murtha, want to see more funds dedicated to the military’s long-term needs.

“As the ships get older, the airplanes get older, we won’t have the deterrent capability that we need,” Murtha said.

Big-ticket U.S. military programs have been delayed since the 1990s, said Schmitt at the American Enterprise Institute. There are now so many unfunded replacements and upgrades scheduled in the years ahead that the nation faces a “procurement bow wave” that could swamp the federal budget.

A “spasm of endless spending in Iraq and Afghanistan” threatens future Air Force readiness, said Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Forces subcommittee on air and land.

Zakheim, the Pentagon’s former CFO, said diverting money from acquisition programs is akin to “eating our seed corn for the future.”

—

For more on GAO concerns about funding and the global war on terror: www.gao.gov/new.items/d06885t.pdf

For the Congressional Research Service report on war costs, go to www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

For a military challenges report by Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, go to www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.25097/pub_detail.asp

© 2006 McClatchy Washington Bureau and wire service sources

http://www.JewishWor… | Emboldened by the Democrat victory earlier this month, the far left is rising like Dracula at midnight. Just days after the vote, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to ban Junior ROTC in the city’s high schools, tossing more than 1,600 students out of those clubs. The Massachusetts legislature refused to allow a vote on gay marriage even though more than 170,000 Bay State voters signed a petition demanding to be heard on the subject, and a Vermont press group honored Judge Edward Cashman, the guy who sentenced a brutal child molester to 60 days in jail.

Don’t kid yourself, while the majority of Democrats are moderate, there is a fanatical subdivision of the party that is off-the-wall secular-progressive (S-P) and bent on radically changing America.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome told the press he was glad the Board of Education waited until after the election because “cheap shot artists like O’Reilly and Fox would have exploited (the vote).”

Not exploited, Mayor, reported. I coined the term “San Francisco values” and well understand they have little to do with democracy. How nutty is the San Francisco Board of Ed? We’re fighting a lethal worldwide terror movement, and these people are telling high school students the U.S. military is bad, that’s how nutty.

By the way, the ACLU is MIA in the ROTC controversy. Can you imagine what would have happened if the Board of Ed had banned a gay high school club? San Francisco values strike again.

The far left in Massachusetts is almost as bad. Gay marriage was imposed in the Commonwealth by three judges who found a loophole in the state constitution. Marriage was not expressly defined as between a man and a woman. Presto, traditional marriage has company.

But my question is this: If marriage is a constitutional right, which it is not, why can’t polygamists get legal? How about triads? Why can’t you marry your mom?

If one alternative lifestyle, homosexuality, is granted license to marry, you have to include other alternative lifestyles as well. That’s equal protection under the law, is it not?

But the secular-progressive movement doesn’t care about the Constitution. It wants a brand-new America where the people don’t call the shots — the “enlightened” minority sets the agenda.
So get ready for more of this kind of thing. The state of Vermont has already left the building. It elected Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, as junior senator. Compared to Sanders, Patrick Leahy, the other Vermont senator, is Dick Cheney.

By the way, in case you went to public school, a socialist is someone who believes the government has a right to seize private property and do whatever it wants with it. Apparently, Vermonters are down with that, as well as with judges who give child predators the same amount of jail time as bar brawlers. Vermont is the first secular-progressive state to drop all pretenses and declare itself Havana friendly. Wait, that might not be fair. Even Fidel harshly punishes child rapists.

If you think I’m exaggerating, you’re wrong. The far left feels liberated, and it sees daylight. Expect these people to make a strong power run led by S-P mom Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the house.

Let’s recap: no tolerance for the military, no voting on controversial issues, and let’s ease up on those adults sexually brutalizing children. Welcome to the land of the secular-progressive.

Have a nice day.

Why vote Democratic?
http://blog.thedemoc…

Now get out to the heavy traffic areas and wave signs!  (:

Every vote counts!!!!!!!

Peace,

Barbara

( – promoted by odum)

Laura Bush, Barbara Bush, John McCain and Dennis Hastert were warmly welcomed by Rainville and Vermont Republicans. The donors to her campaign are legendary in the latest annals of Republican corruption, and must be confident they will be repaid — if she is elected. 

PAC money from Denny Hastert,  Tom DeLay,  Jerry Lewis,  Curt Weldon,  Roy Blunt,  Curt Weldon,  John  Shimkus,  Don Sherwood,  Peter Hoekstra,  John Boehner, and  Dan Burton was received by Rainville (fine ones to talk about morals and family values, aren’t they?) 

If she really wants to ‘change direction’ why did she even accept, and why won’t she return these donations?  $57,230.69, buys a lot of access.  She may not mind being beholden to these hypocrites, but I do! 

Notice than none of these ‘men’ are pro-choice, and all have scandal attached to them.  Some may not even win re-election themselves, if their poll numbers are anything to go by.

Colin Powell and John McCain were seen as strong figures, but both caved in under intense pressure by the BushCheney cabal.  Still no wmd’s — Osama is laughing his socks off and torture and illegal wiretaps are now the law of the land, with habeus corpus doa.  You go, Martha!  Play with the big boys who don’t take their oath of office seriously either.

And of course she owes Bush big-time for the visits by both his wife and his mother.  So sad; I’d love to vote for a good woman, but Martha is letting herself be used to ‘stay the course’ that is tearing this country apart.

Look what that did for Colin Powell and John McCain — they caved in under pressure and lost a certain spot in history by doing so.  Power corrupts .. and absolute power …

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September 8, 2006 Edition
U.S. Politicians Should Focus On Tehran, Netanyahu Says

BY DANIEL FREEDMAN – Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 8, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/39275

NEW YORK – Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of an American tour repositioning himself for a return to the Israeli premiership, told an audience in New York yesterday that President Bush is preparing to ditch the United Nations to take on Iran alone and that American politicians of all parties would do well to stop squabbling about Iraq and join the president in focusing on threat from Tehran.

The former prime minister, who leads the right of center Likud Party in opposition to the current government, went on to tell lunch guests of the Hudson Institute that another war between Hezbollah and Israel is inevitable and that a shift in Israeli politics is about to take place with his return to power and a return to the principles that guided thinking in Jerusalem until the Oslo Accords.

Largely ignored in the coverage of Mr. Bush’s speech Tuesday on the war on terror, Mr. Netanyahu told his audience more than once, was Mr. Bush’s statement that “the world’s free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.” Not that the “United Nations won’t allow,” said Mr. Netanyahu, but that the “free nations” of the world won’t allow. Mr. Netanyahu called it a sign that on the Iranian problem the president was preparing to stop working through the United Nations and instead work with whoever would join him.

Unfortunately, said Mr. Netanyahu, Britain and America, along with Israel and Iran, are the only countries at the moment that understand what is at stake if Iran acquires the bomb. Meantime, “the Europeans …” Mr. Netanyahu trailed off, struggling to find the right word, at which point members of the audience interjected with inaudible, although apparently uncomplimentary, suggestions. “I’m trying to be diplomatic,” Mr. Netanyahu replied before saying, “for the sake of mankind,” Iran couldn’t be permitted to have a nuclear weapon.

Israel’s one-time ambassador to the United Nations urged Americans of all political persuasions to “not get caught up” arguing about Iraq. Mr. Netanyahu dismissed the argument that fears of Iranian plans for WMD might be false in the way that predictions on Iraq have come under question. Mr. Netanyahu said Israel had told America that claims about Iraq’s weapons were based on “conjecture,” while with Iran “we’re not guessing. We know.”

Americans should be focusing on Iran, Mr. Netanyahu said, because while Iran is now focusing its attention on Israel through its proxy terrorist organization, Hezbollah, “Israel is merely the first step.” There’s a reason, he reminded the audience, that Israel is only called the “little Satan.” No guessing who is next said Mr. Netanyahu.

Mr. Netanyahu’s spoke of what he would do “when prime minister” – or “if” as he laughingly (while winking) had to correct himself. While Mr. Netanyahu refused to criticize Prime Minister Olmert, he predicted the collapse of Mr. Olmert’s political party, Kadima. The way to defeat Hezbollah “next time” – Mr. Netanyahu said as a matter of fact that another war was coming – is to act quickly and decisively.

Anyone who thinks Israel’s military can’t defeat “a few hundred armed Iranian proxies” fundamentally underestimates the capability of Israel’s military, Mr. Netanyahu said. The time to act after being attacked is straight away – when world opinion, “even” the Europeans and most Arab nations, is outside. A quick victory is needed to win the diplomatic war as well.

Mr. Netanyahu, the son of a distinguished historian, used sweeping historical references throughout his remarks. He told of how, when questioned in London about the “proportionality” of Israel’s response in Lebanon, he told British audiences that the number of rockets Hezbollah fired at Israel was 4,000, the same number as the Germans fired at London during the Second World War. Britain’s response to the 4,000 rockets led to the death of hundreds of thousands of German civilians. This is not, he hastened to add, to say that Winston Churchill was wrong – but to put Israel’s actions in context. “That quickly silenced them,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Responding to a question asking whether the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s created Hezbollah, Mr. Netanyahu said that “the Israeli occupation of London doesn’t exist and yet you have militant Islam there,” as well as in Rotterdam and in other places across the globe where Israeli troops have never visited. Hezbollah is not a creation of Israel, he said. Israel’s occupation may have been used as a pretext by Hezbollah, but would have happened anyway – it’s part of the rise of radical Islam.

What really encouraged Hezbollah’s rise, Mr. Netanyahu said, was the manner of Israel’s withdrawal – without victory or a peace agreement. The sight of Israeli troops leaving and Hezbollah terrorists taking their place while celebrating encouraged Palestinian Arab terrorists to hope for the same. To defeat “Militant Islam,” Mr. Netanyahu said, one “must deprive it of victory.” Every time you retreat, every time terrorists gain victory, that’s when they recruit. “Power attracts, weakness repeals,” he said. “Victory attracts, defeat repulses.”

Mr. Netanyahu told the gathering at the Four Seasons that Prime Minister Olmert’s Kadima party was built on the policy of unilateral withdrawals – a premise that is now dead. And so, went his implication, is the party and Mr. Olmert’s premiership. The policy of unilateral withdrawals started with the Oslo Accords. He spoke of how, from Israel’s founding until then, Israel’s military and her relations with her Arab neighbors had been based on Vladimir Jabotinsky’s concept of the “Iron Wall.”

This was a reference to a phrase used by the right of center Zionist, who held that only when the Arabs became convinced that they couldn’t destroy Israel – with every attack on Israel met by an “iron wall” – would peace follow. If Israel’s deterrence and response to attack was so strong the Arab’s found themselves banging themselves against an “Iron Wall,” they’d realize the futility of trying to destroy Israel and seek peace. The “Iron Wall” principle, said Mr. Netanyahu, led to peace with Egypt and Jordan. They attacked Israel, were soundly defeated, and sued for peace.

The Oslo Accords abandoned the “Iron Wall” strategy, said Mr. Netanyahu, and Israel’s leaders decided instead to “build a bridge through the wall.” The Palestinian Arabs responded, as Jabotinsky had warned, with terrorism. But instead of reverting back to the “Iron Wall,” Israel’s leaders instead offered “more freebies” to the terrorists – unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza. “When prime minister,” Netanyahu said he’d return Israel to the “Iron Wall” guiding principle. Mr. Netanyahu didn’t mention that he oversaw the Israeli withdrawal from the city of Hebron.

The second half of Mr. Netanyahu’s case for his return to the premiership was his management of the economy, although he stressed more than once that he’d only take the finance portfolio again if it was with the premiership as well. As finance minister, Mr. Netanyahu told the audience, he introduced painful free market reforms that revitalized Israel’s economy. Mr. Netanyahu described globalization as a “God-send” for Israel and “for everyone.” The first half of the year saw Israel’s economy growing at 6%, with low inflation and falling unemployment. The economy endured the war thanks to Mr. Netanyahu’s reforms, Mr. Netanyahu said, and remains the fastest growing developing economy.

The New York Times reports (3/4 of the way down the article):

Mr. Mehlman, whom Mr. Rove assigned to master get-out-the-vote techniques years ago, has handed custom compact discs with lists of voters, along with information on their voting and consumer habits, to every state Republican chairman.

http://www.nytimes.c…

What kind of insurance companies/organizations/stores are selling our ‘consumer habits’ to the Republicans?  I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know!  How many ways are there to invade our privacy, and how can we stop these violations?

Barbara

The New York Times reports (3/4 of the way down the article):

Mr. Mehlman, whom Mr. Rove assigned to master get-out-the-vote techniques years ago, has handed custom compact discs with lists of voters, along with information on their voting and consumer habits, to every state Republican chairman.

http://www.nytimes.c…

What kind of insurance companies/organizations/stores are selling our ‘consumer habits’ to the Republicans?  I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know!  How many ways are there to invade our privacy, and how can we stop these violations? 

Barbara

Like many of us I was truly undecided between Matt Dunne and John Tracy in the September Democratic primary election for Lt. Governor — until John set himself apart speaking about his experience in the dying days of Vietnam, and about his son being shipped to Iraq in yet another misguided adventure.  He spoke with passion and understanding about the futility of it all and his frustration. 

John supports an investigation into impeachment of both Bush and Cheney.  He verified Vermont’s part-time legislature does not have the time, the staff, the money or the expertise to verify the charges  needed to pass the Jefferson (impeachment by  a state legislature) resolution.  We need a Democratic majority in both Congress and the Senate if justice will prevail.

Democrats spend their time and energy to keep our state in the vanguard of people-issues, and work with our Congressional delegation to say no to pre-emptive wars,  to (again) stop the privatization of Social Security, to (finally) put the 9/11 Commission recommendations into law, and to have a long-term renewable energy plan.  John is a leader who follows through, as he did especially passing civil unions and now health care.  He will preserve, protect, and defend the people of Vermont.

Our troops are still unprotected, living under a cloud of future diabetes, cancer and future birth defects from the effects of depleted uranium contamination.  John is talking to American Legion members to support testing returning veterans.  This is necessary preventive medicine, even if Vermont has to pay for it.  Republicans are silent, keeping this dirty little secret from the voters.

Vermont is a leader in the beginning of universal, affordable health care.  John kept it in the headlines, through compromise and consensus throughout  two legislative sessions.  He never stopped challenging our ribbon-cutting Governor to give the people what they wanted.

We have an embarrassment of riches in this Democratic primary; both candidates are outstanding, and miles above the current Republican Lt. Governor, who is unwilling to challenge Bush policies that are hurting veterans and their families.  John lost valuable campaign time because he continued working until the health care bill was signed, so does not have the same name recognition as his competitor.  He put the interests of the people first, and his re-election/election chances a distant second.  We can show our thanks by voting for him in the September Democratic primary.