When I think of people doing follow up on an issue that Glenn has pressed, Politico is not what comes to mind BUT:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10204.html

Indeed. Ben Smith emailed me earlier to alert me to that piece. It's actually not bad, and good for them for following up on it. It's like when Howard Kurtz writes about it -- when you're dying of thirst in the desert, you're not picky about where the water comes from.

"Hard to imagine a clearer expression of warlike intent than kicking out the peacekeepers..."

How about actually attacking, like Israel did? Egypt had every right to kick out the UN Peacekeepers. It was Egyptian territory, and, more importantly, the peacekeepers were there to enforce a ceasefire resulting from an unjustified attack by Israel in 1956.

I have no interest in creating a mythical anti-Israel narrative, especially because it isn't necessary. Israel has been the aggressor in many (but not all) of its wars, managing to depict them all--as you do--as pre-emptive attacks. Somehow whatever bellicosity that Israel trumped up to attack becomes the actual first strike. I don't understand the logic, here.

Of particular interest is the DoD link to this:

"The Defense Department has released thousands of pages of documents related to this outreach effort. Years' worth of internal Pentagon memos, military talking points and interview tapes and transcripts with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are all now posted to the Pentagon's website."

I've spent the last couple days -- many, many hours -- reading through those documents. They're amazing, and I'll write something in the next couple days, though I have to say that David Barstow did a great job piecing it all together, highlighting the key parts and telling the story exactly the right way.

It's like you're members of a cult or something.

The cult of common sense.

I declare you apostate.

At the height of the Cold War the 3CP had about twice as many strategic nuclear missiles on alert as the US.

That's because we had the freakin' "triad" of missile ... and bombers and SLBMs. Not to mention we MIRVed long before them.

Do yourself a favour, and read all three of the Richard Rhodes "nuclear weapons" trilogy ("The Making of the Atomic Bomb", "Dark Sun", and "Arsenals of Folly"). That ought to keep you out of trouble for some time, and off this blog spouting inanities like that....

Cheers,

"It's great to hear that the great tit is able to keep pace with the rapid rate of climate change, but then it's probably in the best place to do that," observed RSPB spokesman Grahame Madge.

Gawd bless the Mother Country.

Omooex:

In assigning responsibility for the 1967 war, how do you factor in Eqypt's unilateral pre-war expulsion of the UN PEACEKEEPING force? You seem to have overlooked that inconvenient little detail. Hard to imagine a clearer expression of warlike intent than kicking out the peacekeepers...

I understand that the heroic myth of Israel's history frustrates you and many others, but creation of an equally erroneous counter-myth does no one any good. In the reality-based world I strive to inhabit, Israel is neither a perpetual victim nor a perpetual aggressor. As to the matter under discussion, portraying the 6 Day War as wanton Israeli aggression is just ahistorical nonsense.

LWM:

I just don't share your interest in the Liberty incident. Don't know what happened; not interested in being enraged about it even assuming your unproven theories are correct. I guess I'd say that if I were piloting a ship, I would try to keep it away from war zones.

whatever you think is silly and wrong is probably a great start.

The last thing I want to do is make sense to the likes of you.

"You mean like the 18,000 unguided rockets fired into Israeli towns? Is that what you meant? "

There is simply no comparison between the homemade bombs used by Gazan militants and the cluster bombs used by Israel in Lebanon. I think, in the last six years, those "18,000" (citation?) rockets have killed less than a 100 Israelis (that's based on my memory of keeping good track of this situation over the last decade. Feel free to dispute with citations). Israeli cluster bombs killed hundreds in the space of weeks and left unexploded ordinance scattered around the country that killed and maimed for a good deal of time after.

The IDF admits that it fired a million cluster bombs into Lebanon in those 6 weeks of 2006:

"Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/761781.html

"The scope was extensive and unprecedented in any modern use of these types of cluster weapons," compared to Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003, says Chris Clark, the program manager for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre of South Lebanon, in Tyre.

Additionally:

"UN figures show that 26 percent of southern Lebanon's cultivatable land has been affected, and that 34 million square meters – or 13 square miles – are contaminated....the UN says that nearly all the Israeli cluster bombs were fired in the last three days of the conflict, after a UN ceasefire deal had been reached, but before it came into effect – thereby yielding little military advantage. The timing of the Israeli strikes is "definitely questionable,"..."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0207/p01s01-wome.html

I remember an academic article called "MAD vs. NUTS", which compared Mutually Assured Destruction to Nuclear Utilitaztion Theory Strategies (i.e., "No, we really CAN use those nukes and not end the world ... and here's how we'll do it!"). Predictably, all I remember is the title ...

You did.

The battle, not the war baldster.

Vote Nader

I'll bet that was

a geosynchonous orbit, too, Norbit.

No. Geosynchronous orbits are quite high and stable. This one was decaying and about to re-enter; they were worried that identifiable pieces of the spy satellite might end up in a country that would find such interesting....

Cheers,

You made a statement. I just wanted you to know that someone, in this case me and Human Rights Watch, finally agreed with you.

"You mean like the 18,000 unguided rockets fired into Israeli towns? Is that what you meant? Or did you mean bus bombings and carbombs?"

It's news to me that the people of Blida fired 18,000 rockets into Israel.

But I guess what you're saying is that those civilians have to pay the price for someone else's actions. So why are you trying to pretend you give a damn about terrorizing populated urban areas?