I don't know the fellow, quickdraw, but I am almost sure you can't get oil out of the ground with an airplane. Not even the stealthy ones.

:bah.

Israel is a nuclear-armed power. Israel's nuclear arsenal could destroy the entire Muslim world with no assistance required from the United States.

So with that in mind, is the subject of American "support" for Israel based on anything other than theology? It's certainly not based on realpolitik.

This type of "Israel-right-or-wrong" support is bad for America and bad for Israel -- as evidenced by American support for Israel's ruthless and ultimately counterproductive bombing campaign against Lebanon.

Of course, one can sympathize with Barack Hussein Obama's attempt to prove to the yokels that he isn't a Muslim by establishing his pro-Israel bonafides.

Has there ever been another country besides Israel to which American politicians are required to vow absolute allegiance?

Yes. A mythical pre-Castro Cuba.

It's like you can all spot each other on sight ...

Ohio State paraphernalia is hardly what I'd call camouflage. And we (mostly) do accents poorly too.

;-}

PNAC

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

It isn't about theology. It is about total dominance of the region.

Iran, Syria, and Lebanon are in the queue, and according to an interesting article up on Counterpunch, the train has already left the station.

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp05122008.html

This part should ring true to a lot of people:

The readership of sites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Antiwar.com know the main points. They know that Dick Cheney, the most powerful vice president in history (and the most secrecy-obsessed among powerful figures in U.S. history), has made his office the hub of a cabal of neocons hell-bent of effecting “regime change” throughout Southwest Asia by the end of Bush’s second term. They know that the Office of Special Plans fabricated “intelligence” to terrify the masses and gain support for the invasion of Iraq. They know that U.S. intelligence has actually concluded that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and that the UN’s IAEA scientists have found no evidence for one. But they also know that Cheney insists that he knows there’s one, just as the neocons such as Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen know there’s one. Just as top Israeli officials know there’s one as they demand U.S. action against Iran. They know there’s a huge anti-Iran propaganda campaign underway very similar to the one that preceded the lie campaign leading up to the Iraq War now in its disastrous sixth year. They know that the U.S. is funding terrorist groups to carry out attacks in Iran. They know that the administration’s allegations about a Syrian nuclear program are highly dubious.

They know that there are conflicts between the traditional intelligence community and the neocons, and that the latter draw upon a coherent (Straussian) philosophy that justifies the “noble lie” in order to induce the foolish masses to support what the “wise”---who must conceal their real objectives---want them to support. They distrust anything the administration says about Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan…

Glenn says: "Yet no politician dares to express these majoritarian views. Right-wing neocons with clearly fringe views have succeeded in making the mainstream views -- the ones held by most Americans -- off-limits to mainstream political leaders, upon pain of being subjected to the sorts of toxic "anti-Israel" accusations of the kind now being baselessly directed at Obama."

A majority of Israelis don't share the neocon views either. And in Israel a loud open debate with all sides being heard is the norm. But here in the States, to have such an open debate, is seen as somehow being anti-Israel or worse, anti-semitic. The majority of Israelis want a two-state solution and are more than happy to give up land to achieve this if they have a partner on the other side who can make such a peace (as opposed to Hamas who still denies Israel's right to even exist and sees its destruction as its main goal.) Sadly, the Likud and neo-conservative view of things is the one President Bush has endorsed, and so we've wasted eight years and destroyed the hard work our last Democratic president worked so hard to achieve.

Kind of a cheap and superficial criticism, I know, but I think it's on target. You could say the same about a lot of so-called defense intellectuals and their output.

That's exactly why hearing him on the subject made me sad. He's just another neocon defense consultant now.

Although perhaps he always was that---perhaps his theories of "the levers of power" were just as cynical and wrong-headed as his theories of air power. I wonder if the CIA followed his advice when they hired Chalabi. But how quickly they gave up ...

Has there ever been another country besides Israel to which American politicians are required to vow absolute allegiance?

I mean, our leaders and their leaders kiss and hold hands and stuff. Does a wink and a nod toward religious tyranny (as long as the tap is on) count as absolute allegiance?

We prop up oppressive regimes and dictators (you just gotta love our secrecy infested CIA), support terrorist groups that don't like the same people we like, calling them "Freedom Fighters", and then we can't figure out why people would be pissed off at us and/or want to blow up our shit and fly planes into our buildings. We Americans are fucking geniuses.

Republican get away with the latter BECAUSE there is truth in the former. It is that germ of truth that allows them to smear Obama with notions of hidden motive.

Hundreds of words, and this claim is all your evidence. I've never heard anyone make the claims you cite about Israel at this blog. You'll find them in the Arab press and, I'm sure, plenty of other places. But not here. And I've never heard them from the "left," whatever that is, either.

You're making this up, WinSmith.

Like gay rights. But you'll never hear that at Glenn al Jazeerwald. It's all Jew bashing all the time. The thing that most journalists will tell you is that what you don't cover is as important as what you do. Point being, nothing in Glenn's world operates independently of his antisemitic rage. Everything has to be shoehorned into that no matter what. If it can't, then safely ignore it, whatever it is.

Now if you'll excuse me there's power coupling acting up on our nuclear orbiting battle station and it's affecting our mind control ray projector.