Hello my dears.

I see you have nothing better to do, even in the wake of Barrack's great victory.

Isn't it interesting that he is not what you thought he would be?

Perhaps he wants to represent my interests too.

Perhaps he wants us all to survive and thrive.

Perhaps he is not as partisan as I thought he would be.

Perhaps he is not as klueless as you are and as klueless as you hoped he would be.

We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

Larry Summers got kicked out of Harvard and now he's whispering in Obama's ear. You gotta be very worried about that, my frems.

Kittsy, I'm a very vibrant sexy 60+ year old, whist you can't remember the last time someone stroked your sweet spots, my dear. You are a nasty, dried up and bitter possy if there ever was one.

Dooshe Bag: you need a reading list because you are very ignorant, asshole.

You could stalk me if you want.

I'm gonna quit this here saloon momentarily, Dooshbag, and read a few more chapters in "The Landmark Thucydides"

Why don't you try reading it too? I have relatives who read it in the original Greek and wrote books about it, you ignoramus. While your relatives were running around in animal skins, and squating in caves, mine were maintaining libraries, you dumbass pos.

Too bad Glenda went to second rate schools where he only learned politically correct nonsense, and no Plato, no Thucydides, no Milton Friedman, just leftwing bullshit, which, to his sorry credit, he totally mastered. Too bad he and so few of you ever got to read Homer, Thucydidies, William Buckley, Friedrich von Hayek or Milton Friedman. Ignorance is bliss and you guys are as high as I could ever be, even on the best Vietnamese pot.

You are all blissfully ignorant, and, if you are unlucky enough to win, all of our great grandchildren will have to die horrible deaths long before they reach adulthood and long before your bullshit global warming proves to be a lie.

I thought you were a retired red neck lifer.

To be sure, the recent evidence that our democratic system cannot be violently exported will temper our Wilsonian principles, but it will not bury them. . . . Iraq will merely close a post-Cold War chapter in American foreign policy, one that began with the Persian Gulf War -- and with Bosnia. After the collapse of communism in 1989, idealism, the export of democracy and humanitarian interventionism were all the rage among journalists and intellectuals -- much as realism, restraint and benign dictatorship are now. . . .

The Balkan interventions, because they paid strategic dividends, appeared to justify the idealistic missionary approach to foreign policy. . . . Neoconservatives and others who had supported our actions in Bosnia and Kosovo then carried the spirit of this policy to its limits in Iraq.,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101222.html

Al Jazeera shows the WP rounds blasting and burning through the Gaza skies but I've never heard any of their people commenting on what they're showing at all. None of the OUTRAGE!!!!­™ about it that is rising in the blogosphere and some other places.

What gets the al Jazeera ire up is all the civilian casualties in Gaza, not necessarily the weapons used. They keep very close count, are at the hospitals frequently, and they've been apoplectic about the Jabalia school shelling incident today which killed 40 or so, wounded many more. The fact that it's the UN, a school, clearly marked, designated a refuge for the civilian population -- which has nowhere else to hide or get away from the destruction; there are no bomb shelters or anything like them -- with coordinates given to the IDF, and the fact that the UN personnel screen those seeking refuge and turn away "militants", all are used to indict Israelis. It's not the weapons, it's what they do with them.

Still, I'm curious why they show the WP rounds but say nothing about them, as the chorus of opposition grows around the world.

Neo-connedcabal smirkingly asserts (note the capitalized 'Lefties' -- what's going on there??): "You Lefties can't claim Bob Kaplan to be some whacked-out Neocon Evil Doer. Brilliant, vastly experienced and often a prophet."

R-e-a-l-l-y????

“Nobody except the ultra-right wing jingoists like Kaplan is comparing atrocities by various countries. What honest people are saying, is that we should pay attention to our own crimes, and stop committing them. The 'just cause' for people like Kaplan is: 'we did it, therefore it’s a just cause.' You can read that in the Nazi archives too.” Noam Chomsky

Why don't you try reading it too? I have relatives who read it in the original Greek and wrote books about it, you ignoramus. While your relatives were running around in animal skins, and squating in caves, mine were maintaining libraries, you dumbass pos.

My ancestors were all poor Jews. I'm sorry you feel that way about them.

I can certainly see that you were bequeathed the greatest refinement and an expensive education by your forebears. It shows in everything you write.

...and taught to walk into an Israeli school and blow himself up amid as many little Jewish kids as he can find, Che Pasa Schmuck, you will NOT hollar to the high heavens, even though that killing was absolutely intential. Why don't you go down to Venezuela, and join the onslaught on Columbia, you nasty little pos/???

Too bad he and so few of you ever got to read Homer, Thucydidies, William Buckley, Friedrich von Hayek or Milton Friedman.

Yeah, there stuff worked out great, huh?

But mostly, Zoltan, it's your refinement I admire. And I'm thinkin' I gotta give you credit for typing while drunk. I can't do that.

1) Would Hamas ever recognize Israel's "right to exist"? After Hamas won the election its leaders made a number of explicit statements indicating readiness to accept, and even offering to negotiate, a permanent peace. See for example, "Hamas reiterates peace terms," AlJazeera 2/13/2006

A leader of Hamas has stated again that the only thing needed for it to halt its armed struggle is for Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories it occupies. In an interview with the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, published on Monday, Khalid Mishaal said: "If Israel recognises our rights and pledges to withdraw from all occupied lands, Hamas, and the Palestinian people together with it, will decide to halt armed resistance. "His comments came as Ehud Olmert, Israel's acting prime minister, reiterated his government's refusal to negotiate with the Islamist group - but he said that his country would not close the door to all peace talks.

For online source: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/VBOL-6LYEPY?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

2) Could Hamas be trusted not to keep firing the rockets into Israel? It is illuminating to look at the tits for tats over the last year -- and decades even. If you plot the acts of violence, you find a pattern of Israeli provocation and Palestinian response. My understanding is that rockets had not been fired from Gaza for several months prior to the imposition of the blockade and siege--which was itself an act of war. This is the same objectively verifiable pattern that could be seen with the suicide bombings in response to provocations by Sharon during the second Intifada. See for example, "Israel's Assassination Policy Triggers Latest Suicide Bombings" by Steve Niva, The Electronic Intifada, 2 September 2003. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1877.shtml. Also Sharon's Fingerprints on Latest Suicide Bombing, by the same author, January 9, 2003: http://www.counterpunch.org/niva01092003.html.

3) Are Jewish journalists safe in Gaza? Normall yes, as you remark. Specifically Haartetz reporters Amira Hass (daughter of Holocaust survivors) and Gideon Levy have I believe reported extensively from Gaza as well as from the West Bank.

4) Re Hamas as an "invention" of Israel: There is a history of Israel destroying moderate opposition and fostering extremism by its enemies. In The Fateful Triangle, Noam Chomsky made the case that Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the PLO because it had adopted a moderate program, which made it more dangerous to Israel's objectives than its terrorism.

5) Re proportionate force. There is another crime: indiscriminate killing of civilians. (Indiscriminate = "not marked by careful distinction; deficient in discrimination and discernment.")

6) Re stopping Hitler. Hitler was not "appeased" in the early thirties. He was supported and encouraged. There is a good eal of literature on this. (For example, Who Financed Hitler? by James & Suzanne Pool (Noontide Press) “The surprising story of how Hitler’s rise to power was funded, both by the rank and file of the NSDAP and financial and industrial magnates in Europe and America, 1920-1933.” Also: “Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism” by Richard Sanders, is an informative monograph, available online. Ambassador George Kennan was saying good things about Hitler in his reports to Washington up to 1941.

Former members of Hitler's General Staff approached Chamberlain and apparently also Washington in1938 or 1939 with an offer to depose Hitler in exchange for not very much, and they were turned down. Chamberlain certainly hoped Hitler would fight Russia. (Sources: To Kill the Devil, by Hubert Mulloy Mason; The German Opposition to Hitler, by Michael Thomsett; An Honorable Defeat, by Anton Hill; and Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 by John W. Wheeler-Bennett.)

“In 1938, Germany was practically defenseless. In the next year it carried out significant military development. There’s a good review of all of this in a recent article on pre-WWII deterrence in a recent issue of one of the strategic analysis journals, I think International Security. If there had been diplomatic opposition, there would have been no need for military response to Hitler’s aggression.” Noam Chomsky in an e-mail on March 16, 2005

Walter Miale