If a "terrorist" deliberately sets a bomb to detonate at a time when she expects the building in which she placed the bomb to be unoccupied, and further, she calls in an anonymous warning in sufficient time for the authorities to ensure the building is clear (if not discover the explosive), isn't this still considered an act of "terrorism"?

By similar reasoning, if one was technically able to kill only those one is targeting, or destroy only those structures at which one is aiming, this does not make the violence any less abhorrent.

The shades of meaning that we attach to the concept of violence, especially violence done to fellow humans, are meant to justify our violence or assuage our sense of guilt over it.

The choice is as simple as it is stark: we can choose to deal with each other using violence or not. But once you elect to use violence, any further discussion of intentions are meaningless. There is the law of the jungle where might makes right or there are more civilized, shall we say, means of dealing with each other.

The participants in this conflict have made their choice. However, no one, journalist or otherwise, should be cheering either side on or offering justification for a particular side's actions.

Unless one considers it a dog- or cock-fight.

If this isn't Willy Pete I don't know what is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00110/Thursday_-_Gaza_110942a.jpg

This picture is from a photo montage of last-week's news on the Independent, which can be found here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-past-seven-days-in-photographs-806086.html?ino=7. Compare the 2 airbursts of WP shells in the Reuters picture above with the picture accompanying the Wikipedia article on white phosphorous.

Salon doesn't allow for linking in comments, copy-and-paste it into your address bar if you haven't already. Here it is hosted at another site, if that helps

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/3880/whitephospvh7.jpg

If our elected government were lobbing rockets at Juarez

The fucking argument by analogy again. Dude... emotional appeals can be used to argue whatever you like. Take this for example:

Nearly seventy ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

http://counterpunch.org/avnery01122009.html and at sig.

What is happening is happening. It is what it is, not something else. Why can't you argue the merits of the actual situation?

Don't write off Friedman as being a fool. He is using his voice to relay a message on behalf of others who most definitely are not fools. If his terms might seem foolish that does not mean that they will not be ingested and pass muster for the fools he is trying to convince.

I'd bet my bottom dollar that it was Karl Roves scuzzy idea to send Joe the Plumber to report from Israel. Now, do you think Karl Rove is a fool? Do you think Karl Rove himself needs JoP's views on Israel? Of course not - the fool was sent by some one clever than him to report to fools back home in a language only spoken and understood by other fools.

Just because you are brighter enough to see through it doesn't either mean that Friedman is a fool. He's dangerous not foolish.

I was flatly unaware there was any controversy over whether or not the IDF was using WP. As to whether or not it is a War Crime, I thought the only question was "how" they were using it.

Click the linky

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/04/terrorism/permalink/9904fea9d45b55aa3ff90a9934069774.html

or touch sig

According to the Belfast Telegraph (h/t Chris Floyd):

"At least three Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead yesterday after Israeli soldiers fired on a group of residents leaving their homes on orders from the military and waving white flags, according to testimony taken by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem."

Once the right to demand a regime change - no, "demand" is too honest - involved America just toppling the government as it did in Iran in the 1950s, with the connivance of the British. The now ubiquitous matter of oil was at the nub of that. With Mosddeq gone, what should these Americans, so proud of belonging to a republic, do next. It stands to reason. They installed a monarch in the person of the Shah of Persia, with all the attendant pomp and ostentation. Unluckily for the Americans in particular, they couldn't change the electorate, not that Iranians under the Shah had a vote, but people were mutinous. When the Shah was sent packing to Paris or some other attractive place, he had loadsa money so it worked out quite nicely for him. Iran was next governed by a motley of mullahs who were strident in their denunciation of the USA. Now there's Ahmadinejad who is a lunatic-at-large according to the clones of those who parked the Shah on the people of Iran.

Brtain's imperial ambitions were snuffed out years ago but "the new kid on the block" is Israel, small but a proper little bully-boy with the big stick given to it by Uncle Sam. This little bully-boy is very greedy, licking his lips and saying "Yum-Yum" as it thinks about all that water and oil it could get its sticky fingers on if Uncle Sam gives it an even bigger stick with a sharper tip - just about the shape of some of those bombers showering death and misery on the Gaza Ghetto. Little Bully's big pal, Bushie, is going away and Bibi et all were almost tearful when they saw a cartoon of Big Bushie saying good-bye and cheerfully admitting "This is my last chance to do nothing". They've had fun and frolics for eight years, a war with thousands dead and a country destroyed but it was such a buzz that it can't all end just like that, surely. Things are looking good for Little Bully; the Gaza Ghetto has been practically razed, lots of those Palestinian brats have been killed and wimpish types all over the world (but not so much in Big Bully's country) have been protesting. Only a simpleton would think that nightly air-raids on a civilian population with no escape from their ghetto could be construed as torture. Big Bully has re-written the rules and what's a bit of torture between friends, especially if it's Big Bully and Little Bully doing the torturing and breaking international law. "I can't stand that Slobadan Milosevicz." What a clown! How could he expect to get away with it when he didn't have nuclear weapons like the Big Bully family and Little Bully who's recently been seen goose-stepping around his front garden overlooking the Gaza Ghetto.