"There is no glory in war."

If there is no glory in war, then there certainly is no glory in a war of choice promoted by lies and manufactured evidence by a cabal of neocons working for nefarious purposes.

Reading about the Hagel brothers in Vietnam, and thinking about the soldiers in Iraq who are being killed and maimed on a daily basis - not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed as a result of the chaos that ensued the neocons' "liberation" of Iraq - I am so mad that we allowed this evil cabal to deceive the nation into war.

I was shocked by Carter's apology, considering he had shown so much courage in standing up to the Israel Lobby's smear campaign and attacks on his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid".

As long as people like Fitzgerald uphold the fundamental values that keep checks and balances in the American system.

Unfortunately there is no easy way for him to investigate the neocon cabal that brought us the Iraq war of choice under false pretenses.

It is good that the Senate Intelligence Committee has rejected the use of torture. However, they shouldn't do this merely because of "the damage the program does to the image of the United States abroad." but rather because it makes a mockery of core American values.

While they are at it, the Senate should re-examine our blind support of Israel, a country where ethnic cleansing of the indiginous Palestinians is part of the accepted political discourse. As President Carter pointed out, the West Bank is crisscrossed by "for-Jews-only" roads that Palestinians are not allowed to use or cross thus confining them to open-door prisons. How can we support such a country? What message does this send to the rest of the world?

Sadly, this is unlikely to happen anytime soon due to the control the Israel Lobby exercises over US foreign policy (everybody in Washington knows it. No one wants to talk about it until they are close to retirement).

"You can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here."

- Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings as quoted by Gary Kamiya, http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/03/20/aipac/index.html

Portraying Israel, the military nuclear superpower, as the "victim" and the ethnically cleansed, brutalized and imprisoned Palestinians as the "aggressor" -who should simply have been nicer about having their country stolen from them- has always been a cornerstone of Israeli propaganda efforts.

The problem is that this propaganda is now believed only in North America. When people from all around the world see the US financing the occupation of Palestinian lands and the apartheid policies of Israel, they assume that Americans are OK with these policies. As a result, the reputation of the US around the world has suffered greatly.

The role of the Israel Lobby in stifling debate about the Middle East has been one of the greatest sources of US foreign policy failures in the Middle East culminating in the Iraq war.

The essay written by professors Mearsheimer and Walt says it all. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

The fact of the matter is Israel occupied (and continues to occupy) the Palestinian territories.

People living in the occupied Palestinian territories have no rights. In fact civilians, including children, continue to be murdered on a daily basis by Israeli soldiers. Israel does not recognize that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the occupied territories and practices state terrorism in order to force people out of their land.

Unfortunately, US support for Israel has smeared the reputation and credibility of the US in the region and around the world.

This can end in one of three ways.

1) Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which is advocated openly by a number of significant political parties (e.g. Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beitenu)

2) Annexing the West Bank and giving its people full citizenship rights.

3) Withdrawing fully from the West Bank and making peace with the Arab world (all Arab countries agreed to the Arab Peace Initiative which offers Israel full peace and normalization with all 22 Arab countries in exchange for full withdrawal to the 1967 border and an agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem.

I found the comments on Israel in the debate rather interesting. No other foreign country had such prominence in the declarations of the republican hopefuls.

McCain mentioned the US couldn't abandon Iraq because of Israel.

Gilmore mentioned "our interest in Israel, our interest in energy" as the reason for being interested in the Middle East.

Brownback mentioned how Israel was threatened by Iran (but naturally neglected to mention how the helpless Palestinians were being ethnically cleansed by Israel).

No other foreign country -let alone a nuclear military superpower viewed by most of the world as an apartheid state- garnered this much interest from the republican hopefuls!

What we saw was a disgusting real-world play of the power of the Israel Lobby as professors Mearsheimer and Walt described in their essay on 'The Israel Lobby' which was published in the London Review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html