acts of war
Did you know we were bombing Syria? From the Jerusalem Post (via Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast) we learn that U.S. Air Force jets - bearing among their armaments tactical nukes - bombed that alleged nuclear development site in Syria two months ago.
Not Israeli jets. U.S. fighter jets:
These guys won't be happy until there's rubble from Istanbul to Islamabad.
Not Israeli jets. U.S. fighter jets:
The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a suspected nuclear site under construction.
The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.
The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.
At the beginning of October, Israel's military censor began to allow the local media to report on the raid without attributing their report to foreign sources. Nevertheless, details of the strike have remained clouded in mystery.
...
The New York Times reported on October 13 that Israeli planes struck at what US and Israeli intelligence believed was a partly constructed nuclear reactor in Syria on September 6, citing American and foreign officials who had seen the relevant intelligence reports.
According to the report, Israel carried out the report to send a message that it would not tolerate even a nuclear program in its initial stages of construction in any neighboring state.
On October 17, Syria denied that one of its representatives to the United Nations told a panel that an Israeli air strike hit a Syrian nuclear facility and added that "such facilities do not exist in Syria."
These guys won't be happy until there's rubble from Istanbul to Islamabad.
posted by missy at
10:25 AM
11 Comments:
"the Al-Jazeera Web site reported"
ahahahahahahaha
seriously, and i say this realizing that this is your blog, and i want to be respectful, but are you fucking kidding?
ANY possible excuse to blame your country and especially Bush, from ANY source is good enogh for you.
you're pathetic in your blind hatred of your president and your country. I find it to be sad and quite frankly kind of silly.
i think i greatly overestimated you.
By
Rhino-itall, at 11:55 AM
It was picked up by the Jerusalem Post, which is a respected newspaper.
Whatever, Rhino. Your blind loyalty to this administration and its policies show a lack of understanding of the world and of the basics of U.S. Constitutional representative democracy.
Why have we turned into a country of chickenshits lashing out at everything and everyone in the hopes of fending off another attack, and willing to give up so much of our freedom and the moral highground just to feel safe? Truthfully, I am much more afraid now of what my country has become than I am of the possibility of another terrorist attack.
30,000 people die each year in auto accidents in this country, but we don't ban cars or torture carmakers. 400,000 die of complications from smoking, but we don't ban cigarettes or turture cigarette-makers to get them to turn over their addicting formulas. We don't even ban the product.
But 3,000 people die in what was admittedly a heinous attack, and we are willing to give up our freedoms and our privacy.
Why do we externalize our dangers, pinning them on the Other, when we create enough dangers here at home that we refuse to deal with?
By
slim, at 12:50 PM
First of all if you read my blog you would know that i don't have a blind loyalty to this admin. and in fact i criticize Bush and co. regularly.
Secondly, your analogies are ridiculous. By that standard then, why do we put people in jail for raping and killing children when more children die in auto accidents every year than are killed my child molesting murderer! why do you waste my time with that bullshit? If you don't have a legitimate argument then just admit that i'm right and move on.
A country of chickenshits is correct however but you're pointing in the wrong direction. We were attacked on 9/11 BEFORE we went into Iraq. and i could go on and on about this.
Breifly, the going got tough in vietnam (kennedy's war not Nixons by the way) the response by Nixon?
Retreat
We didn't back the shah and our people were taken hostage. The response? NOTHING
The marine baracks bombed during Reagans time, the response? RETREAT
The embassy bombings in Africa, the USS COLE, the first World Trade Center bombing, our soldiers dragged through the street by filthy animals in Mogadishu etc. etc. during Clinton admin. The response? Retreat.
ENOUGH of being chickenshits!
I don't love W, and i don't like a lot of the things he's done. I don't agree with a lot of his domestic policies, and i don't think he's been a great president.
BUT
He didn't retreat, and he's not hiding behind the U.N. and he's NOT a chickenshit.
In a nutshell, that's why i support him. You want to cry for a terrorist who gets water boarded? go ahead, i say fuck him. You think this country is so terrible then tell me what's better and why you're not living there?
As far as U.S. "Constitutional representative democracy", the enemy doesn't get the protections of our constitution.
By
Rhino-itall, at 5:09 AM
BTW, the Jerusalem Post is reporting today that Iran will have Nukes in 2009.
You do the math.
By
Rhino-itall, at 5:32 AM
What about all the folks who get waterboarded who aren't terrorists? They don't get constitutional protections either.
IRAN: First, the U.S. staged a coup that deposed the democratically elected President of Iran and installed the Shah. What right did we have to expect anything but hatred and revolution after that? And what should we have done - invaded and assured that all of the hostages would be killed?
VIET NAM: that started as an anti-colonial war and you're right, Kennedy got us into it. We shouldn't have been there in the first place, fighting a war on another country's soil against a homegrown insurgency NEVER works. Retreat was the only option. How much longer would you have stayed, Rhino, and how many more soldiers would you have sacrificed?
LEBANON: As that was a peacekeeping mission, I cannot disagree with our presence there but I understand the political reason why Reagan brought them home. What he did next, though - invading Grenada to try to prove the U.S. still had its cojones intact - was stupid and pointless and illegal.
IRAQ: Going into Iraq WAS a chickenshit move. Bush didn't have to go personally, he and his family/friends are all safe at home, and it cost him nothing in terms of political capital. And, as Friedman and Wolfowitz and Perle all said, it was the place we COULD go and kick some Arab ass after 9/11, because we knew Saddam didn't have the wherewithal to fight back, and - according to Rumsfeld - it would be more satisfying than bombing Afghanistan, which had nothing of value to destroy. NICE MOTIVES, ASSHOLES!
The brave thing would have been to say we're going to take these terrorists down where and when we find them, using diplomacy first. The brave thing would have been to say that collective punishment - bombing the hell out thousands in order to kill dozens - is contrary to the international law of proportionality and it's not the way America does things. It would have required patience on the part of the U.S. - a little more maturity than pining for the excitement and satisfaction of the Shock & Awe Show.
Ordering the bombing of an unarmed country takes no guts at all. It's chickenshit showboat stuff (not for the pilots, but for the guy who orders it.) Asking your country to be patient so that we get the perpetrators while protecting innocents - and even bettering the conditions in these countries so they don't become susceptible to anti-Americanism - is the courageous thing to do.
By
slim, at 10:15 AM
So once again you'll ignore my argument.
1. if they're being tortured, it's because they're our enemies. I don't give a shit about them either way and we can take the "moral high ground" forever and our citizens and soldiers will still have their heads cut off with rusty knives on TV for the world to see as they beg for their lives gurgling with the blood filling their lungs.
You want to cry for the enemy? Knock yourself out, i'm crying for my countrymen.
You say we;
"externalize our dangers, pinning them on the Other"
I say it's not our fault that we were attacked. We meddled in the affairs of other countries? So? Is their an innocent party here? Iraq didn't meddle? Iran didn't meddle? Please name me the country that doesn't...... You can't because that country doesn't exist. we have some bad things in our history, as does EVERY country, but the difference is that we have brought freedom and peace and prosperity to more people around the world in our relaively short history than any other country in the history of the world.
We are the greatest country to ever exist, for all our faults, for all of our mistakes.
Why is it so hard for you to think that maybe we were attacked all those times because the attackers were the bad guys? maybe they're the crazy ones? That's not possible? Osama's motivation was revenge for Lebanon? for the Shah? or could it just be that these people are sick and twisted and believe in spreading their religion by the sword?
The truth is that they hate us, probably mostly because of Israel. So if we want to keep them off our backs for a while we could abandon the Jews. I'm not Jewish, i don't have any Jews in my family, but i wouldn't abandon Israel just so that some sick fucks will leave me alone for a decade or two.
By
Rhino-itall, at 12:32 PM
They are bad people. Not very pc to say, but its the truth. Prior to my Presidency, The United States of America had paid $1,000,000 a year(roughly 20% of our revenues at the time) in ransom/tribute to the Barbary Pirates (moslem terrorists) yet they continued to enslave/kidnap/murder American seaman and steal/destroy American property.
I kindly ask you to point out what exactly was it about our foreign policy that angered them so? Israel didnt exist and we had yet to open a base in the House of Saud.
If the old Arabic saying "that the enemy of my enemy is my friend" then surely these Moslems states had no gripe with us as we had just fought a long and arduous war against Britain aka their enemy, yet they continued their assault on American interests regardless.
Appeasement didnt work then just as it doesnt work now and it wasnt until over fifteen years of that failed policy and only when military actions commenced did the hostilities cease (well at least for about 100 years that is)
Just because The USA wears a hot pink mini skirt doesnt mean she deserves to get raped. The blame does not lie with Clintons failure to act, or Bush's (in your opinion) over-reacting.... the onus for all these trouble rests firmly at the bloody feet of the terrorists and the states that support them.
By
Thomas Jefferson, at 12:59 PM
Yeah...
What he said!
By
Stephen Decatur, at 1:02 PM
"Just because The USA wears a hot pink mini skirt doesnt mean she deserves to get raped."
No. But the last time I checked the U.S. is the one with a military budget that exceeds the military budgets of all of the rest of the world's countries combined, and is not incapable of defending itself.
What I am concerned about are the U.S.'s offensive actions - and I mean offensive in both ways.
Acting the world's bully doesn't make people any less angry with you, and it certainly doesn't make the people whom you hurt - or help others to hurt - your friends.
Pakistan has a far more unstable situation than either Syria or Iran, and we KNOW they have nukes AND an intelligence service willing and able to disseminate nuclear know-how and hardware to just about anyone willing to pay. So why aren't we bombing Pakistani facilities? And why, for the sake of all that's good and holy, is Bush asking for $88 million to load bunker busters on Stealth Bombers to hit Iran, when the budget to secure Russia's WMDs - not just a prospective weapons programs but actual nuclear, biological and chemical weapons - has been cut by $68 million over the last two years?
By
slim, at 2:21 PM
Slim why do you change the subject and your argument?
Your argument is WAS that we were asking for it by meddling in the affairs of these muslim countries. Now your argument is that we have the means to defend ourselves????
Please explain.
Pakistan has WMD? So now you're saying we should bomb their facilities? NO you would call that another illegal war so why bring it up? Russia has WMD? So? Are you saying we should continue to pay that corrupt govt. to secure SOME of their weapons? when we KNOW they are helping the Iranians build new ones right now????
Why don't you just admit that your argument is based solely on your hatred for your president and your country and is not rational or logical, but purely emotional?
By
Rhino-itall, at 7:13 AM
What I'm saying is that there is no logical basis to who we allow to continue developing WMDs and who we bomb. After the Soviet Union collapsed we had made a commitment to use part of our "peace dividend" to secure WMDs in the former Soviet Union, which would have the beneficial effect of both keeping the weapons out of the hands of terrorists and getting money to scientists who might otherwise decide to sell their services to the highest bidder. This very logical program has been cut by Bush again and again. Meanwhile, we're bombing Syria and threatening to bomb Iran, neither of which have weapons. That's what doesn't seem logical to me.
I don't hate this country - there are many wonderful things about it, including "innocent until proven guilty," the Bill of Rights, and the principals of Civil Rights. As I've said before, I may not like George Bush, but I don't hate him. I don't know him, so how could I hate him?
This is what I have distilled from all of your comments, Rhino:
1) The U.S. can bomb anyone who is a threat, but no one has the right to view or treat the U.S. as a threat;
2) Killing innocents through terrorism is wrong, but killing innocents through pre-emptive war is okay, even when the aim of your war is not self-defense, but regime change;
3) Torture is okay even when it doesn't work or when we torture the wrong people; and,
4) Everyone we capture and interrogate is the enemy, so we are free to torture them.
Those four things alone show a level of contempt for what America stands for far beyond any disgust or shame I may feel at our actions over the last 5 years.
By
slim, at 8:38 AM
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