Could you say more about why you think Hamas is a threat to Abdullah?

Hamas is still outlawed in Jordan, I believe. They "divorced" in 1999.

Hamas is the "Arab street" and the Arab street is definitely no friend to the monarchies and emirates. Since we deposed a repressive monarch ourselves once you might think we would be more impartial in this matter.

This is why the PLO wound up in souther Lebanon fomenting civil war there. Since there are several hundred American special forces troops in Jordan today, Hamas probably sees that as a poor opportunity right now to wage a war.

BTW, the current king of Jordan's Great Grandfather was assassinated at the al Aqsa in 1951 by a Palestinian after he (the king) suggested that he could make peace with the state of Israel. Another reason why the Hashemites are not fond of rabble rousers.

So to speak. The Arab street, if such a thing exists, exists because of many things, the media, politics, the mosque. But the sharia inspired fundamentalism of Hamas is not popular.

• I knew what was coming when Asher Steinberg challenged Glenn's Serious assertion; it was only a matter of time.

And I wanted to beam into the exchange, like a bit player coming on-screen in a classic Hollywood film noir, rushing up to Glenn and sobbing, "Glenn! Glenn! Stop it! Stop it! He's dead! Can't you see? He's dead!"

Then a close-up of Glenn's face, the narrowed slits of his eyes relaxing through the curls and wisps of smoke from the barrel of his emptied gun...

That's Entertainment!

• Until I read the context, I guessed that Maverick of the Living Dead simply meant to say "al Qaeda" and "Hamas" popped out by mistake. In Wingnut Speech, they're all synonymous euphemisms for "Evil Sand Nigger", after all.

Incidentally, of all of the multifarious atrocities and wrongdoing perpetrated by this maladministration, one would think that the open repudiation and undermining of the Palestinians' democratically-elected government would serve to universally put the lie to Amerika's pretensions to worshipping democracy.

I presume that outside the belly of the beast, the world generally sees such egregious, heinous hypocrisy for what it is.

But I was amused by Maverick LD dragging "Danny Ortega"'s name into the mix; I guess Nicaragua is part of the Axis of Evil. Who knew? But when one is trolling for wingnuts, no button is too dusty or obsolete to push.

I'll bet that somewhere on the Straight Talk Express, Maverick LD still has his "Ayatollah Assahola" T-shirt.

"By the way, more Palestinians died in the intra-Palestinian fighting following the Hamas apparent victory in the 2006 elections than in the previous 6 years of the al Aqsa intifada."

Where the hell did you get this info? Even the most hardened Israeli propagandist wouldn't make such a proclamation. Nearly five thousand Palestinians have been kill in these six years of Al Aqsa intifiada. I'm not sure what the total number of deaths resulting from intra-factional fighting in Palestine (I'd be surprised if it totaled a hundred for the entire period you're talking about) but if you can find a source that confirms your outrageous claim I suggest you post it asap. Otherwise, you're making supporters of Israeli aggression look even dumber than they usually do.

Thanks for the links. They go some ways to undermining your arguments, though.

The assistance to Israel you're talking about is only the $3b/year in military assistance. Israel has also been in receipt of $3b/yr in economic assistance and access to a (circa 2003) $800m/yr rotating line of credit guaranteed by the US. Israel remains the largest recipient of US foreign aid (Egypt is the 2d largest ... used to be they were both the largest by far, but the gap has closed since Bush).

Saying that 2/3 of the money has to be spent on US defense contractors is not quite the same as saying it's 'just as the defense contractors want it', since Israel's DM can still competitively source (as opposed to the US approving $3b for Israel's Patriot system, outside of these numbers, which went to the contractor), and there's the issue of asset specificity ... you don't have an option of buying F-16s from an Israeli source, unlike the case with economic assistance where there's some elasticity.

Compare that to the total $1.8m economic assistance since Oslo in '93 (as of the very useful Feb 2006 CRS report you helpfully linked to), and the $2.3 million (2005 only) non-lethal security assistance, and you're looking at two clearly incommensurable cases. True, the PA gets more aid from the rest of the world, but you were talking about US aid.

You were concerned about leakage of US aid into Hamas' presumably terror-inclined schemes. The Telegraph story seems to validate those concerns, because the PA has no control over its own finances. However, the bulk of the USAID money was programmed, i.e. it went to private contractors/NGOs (80% US) or Palestinian PVOs (20%); there are stringent financial reporting structures for each such grant, co-op agreement or contract (there are differences between the regimes for each contract instrument), and as the CRS report says, $1m of the program was committed for audit expenses (if you're really bored, I can tell you from experience how these are done in development projects), and the Comptroller General was also required to audit.

That still leaves the potential that the 'direct' assistance (under the Presidential waivers, used only four times since Oslo) to the PA could have been looted ... but then, there's 'direct' and then there's 'direct'. In some cases, the state dept and other donors will deposit the funds directly into a recipient govt's account, and ask for a report from the proponent ministry ... but that would never happen in a highly sensitive case like the PA.

As the CRS report says, some of the funds that went directly to the PA were disbursed through the UN or UNWRA (which has its own auditing mechanisms, such as they are) or through the WB/Holz mechanism ($36 million), etc. That money is audited ; there are still ways to steal it, but it's not right to suggest that no one knows where it went. Other 'direct' assistance never went through the PA's hands at all ... paying utility bills to Israeli companies, purchasing equipment for police, paying for infrastructure projects, etc.

I know all too well how possible it is to loot money even out of these monitored and audited accounts, but the amounts are not what you would think ... and besides, what theft there was is more likely to have gone into someone's pocket as a bribe, or to pad someone's bank account than it was to pay suicide bombers. I say this from experience ... by and large, the driver is that everyone is poor, and they want to be less poor ... they don't want to get caught doing something that's going to put their families under the scrutiny of the security services, or take away their ability to provide.