Jeez, I lie awake at nights worried about what Andrew Jackson is going to screw up next.

Ill is the leader, for better or worse, of his country, and a whole bunch of them goose-steppers are primed and ready to die for him in battle. Go figure.

I learned a long time ago that when dealing with pea-brains with power (dumb cops, and maybe 10-20% can be pretty dumb and obnoxious) one did best to not antagonize them in any way. Some people dream of new ways to put a chip up on their shoulder for you to knock off.

I'm not saying such people's a$$es should be kissed. Just that needlessly inflaming the rhetoric is a net loss.

Here's the deal. If a guy down the street beats his wife and starves his children yet the authorities that be choose to do nothing about it. That in no way means that I have to be nice and polite to the guy. In fact, I'm sure I wouldn't be. Why should I expect different of the leadership of the country? Perhaps if more leaders had the balls to speal frankly then we wouldn't have all this stupidity going on worldwide.

Search your memory. We found out once the hard way what a tough nut North Korea is to crack on the battle field. And, what a lousy theater that is for a war. We should just nuke 'em huh? Yeah and Seoul would quickly look worse than Southern Lebanon.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

THANK GOD none of that stupidity was authored by anthropogenic Americans.

We were fighting China.

So your solution is to be nice and give KJI something sweet? Maybe we should give him lots of stuff and look the other way while he builds nuclear weapons, all the while pinky swearing that he won't. Oh yeah, we tried that already.

??? Americans caused by human activity wrote something about stupidity


???:wtf:



PS, thanks, I'd been wanting to use the little WTF flag thingy for a while now.

Oh, and of course China wouldn't think of stopping us a second time.

Sanctions eventually worked with Libya, no matter how much you and Bot want to repeat the full on nonsense that it was fear of Dubber-stein that brought them into line. It's late. I've got some ideas on what I'd do differently with Korea but there's no point in telling you.

Ok, Dude, g'night.

It was a JOKE, you stiff. :wacko:

Maybe, but I got to use the WTF flag!

I thought you were going to bed?

Would those sanctions you mention be the ones that the UN lifted in 1999?

I should but I'm not smart enough for that. It's late and why bother trying to act like I've got the solution for the N. Korean problem (and typing 4 long, incredibly well reasoned and painstaking paragraphs).

In short, I think we should smuggle mini TVs with a built in bundle of flash memory giving a message from the countries of the world to North Koreans. I'm thinking we float them over the country on tiny parachutes. Have a little mechanism to get them to sort of drop where we want them to. It'd be like Radio-Free-Korea: the podcast.

Build them well enough so they can be used for regular TV purposes so that they are sought after trade items. Just think how many we could blanket that country with for ohhh, 1/10th what we'll spend on SDI this year? And if 1/3 the country has them, it'll be hard for the NK Gestapo to punish them all or even very many of them.

I think that approach would work great in Iran where the internet and satellite TV is very common. PRNK is a different animal I think. The country is stuck in the 50's. From what I've heard, once you get out of the city it's more like the iron age. No tractors, no machinery, no electricity. Population ruled by fear. With a significant number of the populous already in "reeducation camps" I think you'd have a tough nut to crack with the TV idea. And what does the evil pygmy troll do when we violate his airspace to drop them?

Whatever, it was made clear to Libya by the Clinton and Bush admins. that they would not be received into the community of nations until they paid their reparations and stopped nuke research. It was soft power that won them over -- their desire to partake of the techo-science wonders of the world that were denied them.

Don't tell me you haven't read Flynt Leverett's analysis of Libya?

http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/fleverett/20040123.htm

That's where the parachute idea comes in. We drop them from 50 or 60 thousand feet way off shore, in int. air space.

It's a bit far-fetched, I'll admit, but those deprived folks in the countryside might eat it up like candy. They'd have to be solar or crank powered. The common people need to have their eyes opened before any progress can take place, methinks.

Yes, interesting piece. Even he gives credit where credit is due. He has a lot of opinion though and seems to claim that it was primarily the State department that did the negotiations, of which he was a part. Everything I've read has credited Britain with the bulk of the negotiations. Indeed it was a British company that signed and oil rights deal with Libya in 2004. BTW, the Bush admin was the one who insisted on an end to WMDs and Libya agreed to this right around the time of the invasion of Iraq.

Lets just agree to disagree about how clear you are on that point.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5217176.stm

Gee I wonder how the people of Austria, Canada, China and Finland feel right about now.

Our "friends" are loving people, eh?

I'll answer your question Peragro.

The Bush-haters, the pusillanomous hand-wringers and the rest of the useful idiots and their retinue cannot stand the fact that America is not only the world's only super power but that America's star continues to rise. They hunt around for signs of America's alleged moral decline and inevitable downfall. They see nothing but parallels with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire (and overly done and completely incorrect comparison).

So in their frustation they vent aimlessly at the current administration. "Aw, things would be so much better with Gore (or Kerry, or Biden)."

I call BS on that.

:bsflag:

On the issue of President Bush.

He may be a dunce (as some claim) but that doesn't make him a bad president. Jimmy Carter must have had the highest IQ of all recent presidents and look at the mess he made. No one really wants Carter back, right?

Compare Bush to Clinton. Maybe too much has been made of Billy's affairs, but even if they have been blown out of all proportions (according to French standards anyway), Bill's reign was evil.

When he started bombing Kosovo it was clear that Bill was an opportunistic sociopath. Did he want the bombing to take away the attention from him and Lewinsky? Not directly. That would be too callous even of the fence-riding Clinton.

But I think that his impeachment was the thing that made him behave as he did. All the other reasons for starting the bombing are too contrived for me. If you know how a person acts when he is accused, you can understand that it was Clinton's idea to indict Milosevic. Few things are so stressful as being on the dock (as Clinton was during the impeachment hearings) so this was Clinton's post-traumatic therapy: Make the others feel the same as you.

Anyway, this is getting off-topic again.

Israel has the right to defend itself against those who wish to kill all Jews and wipe Israel off the map.

Everything else is just BS.

Under Clinton:

No War
Budget Surplus (google historical US deficit chart)
Booming Economy
World Trade Center still standing
Thousands of military men and women alive - not dead.

To compare Bush and Clinton is just plain :silly:

Clinton benefitted from the economic policies established by George Sr.

Clinton sowed the seeds that directly led to the WTC bombing.

Did you forget what happened after WTC--Part One?

Did you forget about clinton's useless gesture in firing a few missiles at a couple of camels foraging by OBL's former camp?

Yep, the WTC would still be standing, and we would not be figting the war that we are now fighting the war we are now fighting if Billy boy had the cojones to do the right thing, instead of wasting his time shoving a perfectly good Cuban cigar into Monica's internal plumbing.

Yep, comparing Bush the man to Clinton the jackass is totally :wacko: and :silly:

I saw one probably that big near the 7 mile bridge in the Keys. All the dive guides tell stories of 900 pounders swallowing divers. I should snope it and see if anything turns up.

OMG! LOL:

Jewfish are amazing. They have big strips on their back. The Jewfish has a brownish lime colored skin. Jewfish can also change color! Jewfish eat whatever they want like shrimp, fish, baby sharks, other groupers and even trash when they have to. They even eat people. That’s happened about three times. This is very rare. Jewfish live in Florida, the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Gulf of Mexico, and Brazil. They tend tolive in old ship wrecks, and under ledges. They live in mainly dark places.

--- A good name for them.

What about your friends and the resolution they ignored? 1559 comes to mind.

You forgot

No 911
No Katrina
No increased security at airport

However you are right. It is plain silly to compare. Circumstance were different. Kinda like comparing apples to oranges.

By contrast, W focused on al Qaida like a laser beam from the moment he took office. Or was it that he did nothing at all? I can never remember.Clinton screwed up plenty and W wasn't in office long enough to bear the blame for 9/11, but terrorism is not a subject that can be used to demonstrate W's superiority to Clinton. IMHO.

Kidding right?

NK was a tough one not because they were tough. It was because we made it tough. Lets try this. I come beat you up and when you chase me past a certain line, you have to stop and I get to come back for another round another day.

It depends. Politics is about today, here and now. If it is advantageous for us to be friends, we do it. If not, we fight. Tomorrow is a different story. Things change, people change. Try remember the phrase "What have you done for me LATELY." in politics. Lately being defined as very recent or even immediate.

Knowing at this time that say Iran was sponsoring Hezbollah and who knows what other muslim group and is determined to develope nukes, would you feel safe? Lets say you are right. In 20 years it works. You going to be around in 20 to feel happy?

No. I am serious. Your article was titled "Israel troops 'ignored' UN plea" so lets talk about the other side that also ignored the UN. Why aren't you as outraged about it? BTW, one was a plea and the other was a resolution.

Both sides, Bush and Saddam, ignored the UN, so I am not sure that situation is analogous to the situation in Isreal.

GSgt Hartman to recruits: Because I am hard, you will not like me, but the more you hate me the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here! I do not look down on ******s, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless!

Huh? Simply talking about a fish -- you're reading into things.

Seriously, you need to read -- A LOT more. You are clearly Pro-Israel at any cost. When it comes to ignoring the UN Israel and the United States are the biggest problem. And notice how they are the two nations that are in the "fight" agianst terror?

Here's a thought, if Israel played by the rules, maybe people won't want to blow them up and push them into the sea?

And since people are so fond of this method:

You have a fat kid that owns a candy store. He goes into his friend's candy store and steals candy to sell in his store. After the first time, the other kid tells the fat kid to stop. The fat kid doesn't listen. He keeps saying to stop. Fat kid keeps doing it. After a while the other kid gets fed up and goes to the fat kid's store and tries to steal something -- he gets caught and the fat kid beats him. The other kid now knows he can't beat the fat kid up because the fat kid has been training at gym. Only the other kid isn't allowed into the gym to train and defend himself. The other kid goes and finds the fat kid's friends and family, and beats them up.

Get it now? If the fatty stopped being a bully and a theif, the other kid would have backed off and and been happy to sell his candy in his candy store. Instead the fat kid had to have more and more and more.

When you start to let the other kid train at the same gym and make things fair, all will be better.

Got it?

I'm pro US. At this time, it is in our interests to maintain Isreal. Tomorrow, if all the muslims in that area died, I could care less if the Isrealis died with them too. Lets not forget Britain too, BTW. Spain, oh, never mind, they caved in when they were bombed..

What rules? The ones that the other side will not follow? They withdrew from Lebanon and what happens? Hezbollah moves in and shells them. Rules are only good if BOTH sides are willing to play by them. Otherwise, the rule is "There are no rules".

You keep saying that they are stealing land and what not. I have asked you why you though they started it and you said they did but didn't elaborate. So, here is another example for you. Everyday your dog keeps pooping in my yard. I tell you to stop it and you don't. Now, I want you to leash your dog and make sure it is kept away from my fence line since it keeps pooping in my yard. You still refuse. Waht do you expect me to do? Send you another letter?

Hypocrasy will not get us anywhere...
 

Amazing thing about how quick we are to pull out rules and regs when convineint and how quickly we forget them when not...

Peace requires active participants who want it, peace is multisided, peace cannot be imposed...that's hypocracy

Pulling out UN resolutions that were not adhered to by one side is pointless, 1559 not adhered to by Lebanon...so what...there are 14 UN resolutions dating since 1948 regarding illegal Israeli land grabs that Israel has yet to adhere to...did we forget those? so what?

We in the US proclaim, denounce and pressure others to conform to Kyoto, and Nuke non-prolif agreements, to which we have not ourselves signed of find obligated to follow, but the rest of the world must.

Do not use the (right to defend yourself) arguement, this is also hypocracy, so I guess the US, Israel and any other worthy ally has the right to preemptive defense of their interests, but other nations who we deem as evil states don't share the same right aka NK's missle program, what's the difference? We get our panties in a wad because NK is testing their missles, we say they shouldn't and at the same time conduct our own missle tests...BS

The point is simple, do as I say but only if...I also do as I say I do. The middle east crisis has been in the making for millenia, neither Clinton, nor Bush nor anyone individual President is more or less culpable for the crisis today, they all contributed towards it equally:D

The US quandry in the middle east is a result of our own actions over time, we are so short-minded that we forget how many of these states we put into power only to screw them later. We set up Iran against Iraq, then the revolution and we switched sides and supported Iraq against Iran. That problem solved (short term) we cannot understand today why both Iranians and Iraqi's distrust us...can you say fair weather friends. The same is tru for Lybia, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Somalia, Ethiopia and countless others:rolleyes:

We flip -flop sign treaties as we are breaking them, preech equality and freedom for all...so long as it is our version. We have freedom of speech so long as it is politically correct, there is true equality in this society so long as you belong to the highest socioeconomic layers. Eqaulity of human value send natural disaster aid to south east asia in 2 days, take 2 weeks for Katrina. 10x as many Lebanese dead is equal to 1/10 Israelis. Argue regarding US prisoner of war rights (Geneva) and then Gitmo...they're not POW's...they are terrorists, no rights, but Bush pulls our war powers acts all the time in our war against terror which is a War when Bush want's it to be but not a War when the inconvinient truths are questioned.

I love this country very much, I have served it both at the local and national levels but I am dismayed at the increasingly self-centered, me-first mentality that has become so pervasive lately. We no longer act as a member of the global community with a larger than us perspective in mind, we are losing the long term focus and this is leading to a very dangerous twist in global politics.

We need to wake up, we cannot remain supremely confident in our superpower status, this is very narrowminded. The US is the world's only superpower but for how long? Alienating the EU is only aligning them more with Russia, guess what EU and Russia together are far more powerful than the US alone, China is on the way to ousting us altogether from that lofty role, on it's own, the only way to keep them in check is a US, EU, Russia alliance, nothing less will be able to stop them, so rather than foreign policy designed on alienation, we need one that is focused on unity, or else we lose in the end.

Sorry for the long rant, just upset at how poor stewards of this planet we have all become, and we are certainly not leaving a better world for future generations, time to act and make change for the better.

I keep thinking about the prolonged Israeli assault in 1967 on the USS Liberty. At one point, an Israeli helicopter flew so close, one survivor could clearly see the pilot's face. The ship was plainly flying a US flag and was not the size or shape of any warships the Israelis might have encountered.

Yet they pounded the hell out of it, killing 34 Americans. A wonder they didn't sink it. Hold out your hand Israel....SLAP!! Don't EVER do that again, ya heah?

Vast oversimplification.

Israel hates the UN...
 

There is no doubt in my mind that the Israeli attack on the UN outpost was intentional. The Israeli's hate the UN, I've worked extensively with the IDF before and know this to be a pervasive feeling within the Israeli military.

I can't say that I don't disagree with the Israeli feeling on the UN, the UN has only served as a thorn in Israel's side for many decades, claiming to be peace keepers but doing nothing to prevent terrorism, so essentially, they only ever served as a legal roadblock for leagally recognised nations (Israel mainly), but no impediment to terrorist groups whatsoever.

Now as to bombing them (UN), this is going too far, and the Israeli position that it was an accident is total BS, it was hit by smart bombs, APX100's to be specific, these bombs require lazer painting of the target by ground troops, usually IDF special forces, there can be no mistake on a painted target with smart munitions, so the target was painted and bombed on purpose, no BS excuses please, this was payback of some sort...not wise in winning global support...by planned none the less.

Thank you for not allowing this fact to fall into the shadows. Israel played the "accident" game with the USS Liberty -- and the US public fell for it then.

Interesting info you've provided. Thank you.

:) Pete

You anti-semite bigot.

(Thought I would beat the others to it).

Thats quite a statement. Looks like Israel is is taking way too many liberties, and the UN is lame and useless. Obvious to me, the problem needs to be resolved within the Lebanese military. The creature with 2 heads cannot live. Its very telling that Siniora's government seems to hold no authority or military capability against Hezbollah. Will of the people?

TV news guy said that UN forces had complained of Hizbollah setting-up launch positions adjacent to UN outposts. news guy didn't know if the complaint came from the site that was attacked. It has already been proven that Hizbollah (and Hamas) use emergency vehicles to transport combatants and materiale to combat zones. And both groups site military targets in civilian neighborhoods.

Each of these are violations of the Geneva Conventions. Is there a call for international tribunals?

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Beuller?

B

We'll see what is made public...
 

The U.N., IDF and NSA are currently looking at the recorded communications between the UN outpost and IDF, the exchange between them. Seems so far that at least 12 direct communication links have been made between the UN outpost and IDF regarding their friendly status. These communications occured during 12 smart munitions drops. After the last communique from the UN apparantly anoth 5 smart munitions where dropped on the compound.

This means that 17 lazer guided munitions were dropped on the UN outpost over the course of 1.24 hours with a 45 minute gap between raids. Recorded communication between both parties regarding friendly fire status.

IDF GB Special Forces had to paint the same target 17 seperate times to guide the bombs in. To paint the target they have to be within 2000 yards of it, close enough to see the UN flag and recognize the outpost, been there 30+ years. GPS coordinates for the outpost are well known by the IDF, so how...how can they possibly claim that the attack was an accident???

There was clear communication, visual confirmation and targeting, GPS coordinate confirmation and targeting, an extensive, target elvauatory pause between sorties, and then a resumption of sorties...sorry folks this is planned, I hate hypocracy.

BTW
No comparison to WWII tactics of carpet bombing, we have been in the smart munitions age for over 30 years, our weapons acurracy today is plus minus 10 meters. Doesn't anyone remember the marvel of precision targeting we saw live on CNN during the first Gulf war?

We both know that, and I'm certain all the US Based Israel supporters know it. But in the end, one thing is VERY certain. It will be labeled an "accident" during a time of war -- and swept under the same carpet as the dust-bunnies of the USS Liberties.

Wow, you get transcriptions from NSA? I'm impressed.

Bot

It's not a clean business
 

There is always the likelihood that Hisbollah used a launch point close to the UN post, this is a normal tactic for them, but none the less, the IDF knows the post is there and it is occupied. There are other means of going after the Hizbollah target, ground forces, or targeted sorties as has happened, but USUALLY, Responsibly, you contact the UN and tell those guys to get out of there, we are targeting Hizbollah close to you, you don't bomb first then call to see if someone is alive, find out that there are survivors, and then bomb again until all are dead.

I'm not taking sides in the conflict as it is an eternal lost cause, and as much as I admire the IDF militarily, this action was clearly unacceptable and cannot be hidden under the accidental veil. Time will tell with how much is made public...

If the Hizbollah were using the UN facility as cover, regardless of UN intentions, the Hizbollah position was a legitimate target. And who is the knucklehead that orders UN people to stay in a war zone? That jackass should be on the carpet.

B

Leave it to you to blame the victim. :rolleyes:

Impassioned maybe
 

Bot I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all, I don't, all of this is objective opinion only, but in my service to this country I have worked for NSA and was part of the defense military complex working on these weapons systems and sumarily training the IDF on their use. You get to know the cultures quite well and the decision methodology used which hasn't changed in many years.

Not taking sides but firendly fire incidents should never be swept under the rug IMO.
We had many of these friendly-fire incidents in our own military in the past and currently in Iraq, and by sweeping them under the rug we devalue our valiant dedicated young men and women serving and dying for our country everyday. We need to take responsibility for our actions and correct mistakes when possible, not hide them, deny them and hope no one takes notice, this will only build discontent within the affected base.