I should add that propaganda conflation, whether it's Bush tying Saddam to 9/11 or you tying Israel to our invasion of Iraq, is an age-old manipulation technique, but it discredits you as a clear thinker and as an honest broker.

Only the fool thinks Al Qaeda cared about Israel when targeting America.

The Palestinian cause has not always been uppermost in Bin Laden's mind, at least in terms of explicit political demands. From 1996 his focus was on the US presence in Saudi Arabia, his estranged homeland. In his 1998 fatwa declaring war on "Crusaders and Jews" Palestine was mentioned only third, again after American bases in Saudi Arabia and UN sanctions on Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/30/middleeast

Glenn, for you to reduce the complexity of Arab thought with a reductionist "America=Israel therefore since they hate Israel, they hate America" formula is to do a disservice to the very real complexities of the region (not the least of which is how despised the Palestinians themselves are by many of the surrounding Arab countries).

If you want to make the argument that America should not support Israel, do so on two grounds:

1. The deficit spending costs of giving money to a country that can pay for its own defense

2. The morality of Israel's wars with Hamas

I disagree with both, but they're legitimate points of view.

Claiming our support for Israel is why we're "entangled in the Middle East" and why "they hate us" is intellectually laughable. It's the stuff of conspiracy theorists and beneath you.

Next you'll be adding up how many Jewish people signed the 1998 PNAC letter, then connecting them to Leo Strauss. And I'd bet a dollar these thoughts have crossed your mind more than once (but you're too smart to put them in print).

Why is it necessary for you to create such straw man arguments? Everyone here, including yourself, knows Glenn said no such thing.

I would really like, at long last, for you to address this question, WinSmith.

I realize the reflexive GG defense by his apologists is "Glenn didn't say that!" (or it's variation" you're a liar! A LIAR!") hoping one won't go back and take the time to quote him where he said exactly that, but that's exactly what Glenn said:

Even those who recognize the existence of that rarest of entities -- a just war -- should acknowledge that constant involvement in an endless series of wars, as our Middle East policies currently ensure, causes "America's soul to become totally poisoned." It's just not possible to make real progress in the domestic aims of restoring the Constitution and reversing our military and intelligence expansions if we are simultaneously enabling and blindly supporting Israel's various wars (and therefore dragging ourselves into those wars), while we ourselves continue to wage our own never-ending conflicts in the Middle East. All of those issues aren't merely related but are completely intertwined.

Glenn rather vaguely implies our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are intertwined with our support for Israel. How? Heck if I know. He leaves the details for his underlings to figure out.

Glenn also implies we're attacked because we're seen as supporting Israel so blindling, failing to realize that our greatest decade of support for the Palestinians, the 1990s, ended with 9/11 (which fairly obviously had nothing to do with Israel in any respect, but Bin Laden's rage at America's chummy agreements with the House of Saud).

Glenn is trying to entangle separate issues to "fix the facts to the agenda." These posts are his Downing Street Memos. He uses the convenience of the failure and mistakes of our invasion of Iraq to advocate his agenda -- ending our support for Israel.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the two issues are quite distinct.

Not that it matters, but I'm a Ph.D. candidate and do not yet have my Ph.D. But I try not to use credentials to back an argument, as the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy is a bad one I try not to step in.

Looks like way back in 2007, you got the better of me. But I try to learn from my mistakes, one of which was bothering with your inanities in 2007, and the second of which is responding to you today.

"Glenn rather vaguely implies our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are intertwined with our support for Israel. How? Heck if I know."

Indeed, you don't know, that part was obvious in the first post. Can you keep your posts shorter though?

Here's the great GG apologist card shuffle. Glenn doesn't state the specifics, but the inferences are clear. We have two wars going on right now (Iraq, Afghanistan). Glenn makes the following conflation:

It's important to underscore the supreme importance of significantly changing the U.S. approach towards the Middle East. One sometimes encounters the claim that the issue of U.S. policy towards Israel is separate, or even a distraction, from domestic efforts to restore Constitutional values and the rule of law, rein in limitless surveillance powers, and limit the influence of the permanent military and intelligence factions inside Washington. But those issues aren't separate. They're inextricably linked, and progress in the latter is impossible without real changes in the former.

So to Glenn, we cannot resolve our "approach towards the middle east" militarily without ending support for Israel.

In other words, if you oppose the Iraq occupation and Afganistan escalation, you should also support a withdrawl of financial support for Israel.

The why, the how, the specifics of all this? Not provided.

But at least GG is acknowledging the media and Washington are subject to the grand silencing conspiracy campaign he was floating just last month. I chalk that up as a victory.