No, I was asking YOU personally to encourage the Palestinians to do something in the pursuit of life. Like not firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

This sounds like the oft-heard comment during the massive demonstrations leading up to the Iraq war: "Why the hell don't you protest against Saddam Hussein who used WMDs on his own people and ..." yadda yadda yadda.

The answer, obvious to most, is that neither Saddam nor the Palestinian leadership consult with Americans in their decisions, nor do they have any obligation to please us with those decisions.

On the other hand, the Israeli government (as the single largest foreign beneficiary of my tax dollars) and George Bush (who, last I checked, was the leader of a government touted as being "for the people"), do need the support of Americans, and therefore have an obligation to listen to our concerns.

So, while I would love for the Palestinians to unite under a "we recognize Israel's right to exist" banner, I understand that this will or won't happen regardless of my opinion on the matter.

But hey, if the Palestinians want to eschew a life of peace and prosperity, for the life of misery and poverty, than it's very likely it's what they'll get.

Try and understand, the vast majority of Palestinians want peace and prosperity, same as everyone else. They voted for Hammas, not because they share Hammas' utter hostility to Israel (most Palestinians accept Israel's existence), but because Fattah was so corrupt, whereas Hammas had for years been effectively providing basic services (schools, medicine, etc) for Palestinian society.

The Palestinians have always been in a very difficult situation, and making comments like "Why the hell don't they just do X" only shows an ignorance of this fact.

You mean third after Iraq and Egypt, #1 and #2.

Okay, I'll take your word for that as a quick Google didn't turn anything up on that score. Regardless, with billions in US taxpayer dollars going to Israel, that should require them to be a bit receptive to the views of the US public, no?

BTW all US military aid to all countries is spent in the US with US companies employing US employees.

I'm not sure how that is relevant to the point I was making. End of the day, Israel still gets a bright, shiny fighter jet on my dime. The fact that the US military industrial complex gets to keep a nickel of that is of no consolation and completely immaterial.

41 percent who still believe that Saddam Hussein's regime was "directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001."

To me, this startling fact is proof positive that, regardless of the power manipulations of Cheney and the others, the American public is too stupid to enjoy a democracy.

The people in Gitmo are not criminals in the traditional sense nor are they POWs, since they do not fight in uniform under a recognized state. That is why a new category has been created for them: foreign enemy combatant.

The term you're actually looking for is "Unlawful combatant." That was the term the Bush Administration manufactured to cover themselves while they do what they want to those captured on the battlefield.

This distinction, of course, violates Geneva and therefore violates US law. Here's what Geneva has to say about prisoners who do not readily qualify as prisoners of war (per Article 4):

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

I don't recall any such tribunal (much less a competent one) determining the status of the Gitmo prisoners, do you? Without such a tribunal, Bush's policy regarding these "unlawful combatants" is just plain illegal.

But because they fight under an ideology and a loose affiliation of an organization that wishes to destroy our country, that makes them especially dangerous; there is no central power we can defeat to make them stop fighting.

The majority of prisoners in Gitmo were picked up in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban. In other words, they were fighting an invading force of their home. That's not quite the same as "wishing to destroy our country," is it?

Granted, there are quite likely prisoners in Gitmo who do want to destroy the USA. But being able to distinguish the dangerous ones from the non-dangerous ones is the difference between countries with real judicial systems and a real concept of justice, and countries like Iran. If you'd rather live in the latter, couldn't you just go to one of those countries and leave us with this one?

The only alternative is to hold them, well, forever. We already know what happens when we release them; they go back to fight us again, as evidenced by recapturing some guys who had previously been released from Gitmo.

Based on the evidence coming slowly out of Gitmo (and those who have already been released), it is quite likely that at least some of those people were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet you're happy to imprison them forever. Is this a good moment for me to wish that to happen to you?

As for releasing prisoners who end up fighting us again, that's an infinitesimally small number compared to the new recruits who have been inspired to join Al Qaeda based on our own foreign policy. And let's face it; if we didn't torture them while they were imprisoned, the number would probably be much, much lower.

Keep in mind that during WW2, the German and Japanese POWs were actually shown democracy in action in the treatment they received. We did not make them into enemies for generations, as we've done in our war on Islam. And that serves the cause of peace far better than anything we're doing this time around.