Israel....now

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post shares Time’s malevolence toward the Jewish state, but both of these papers ran major features in the past week discussing whether Israel’s hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu could turn into a peacemaker.

All Israeli prime ministers have seized any opportunity for peace. The hawkish  Begin returned the Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt and sought one with Lebanon as well.
The even more hawkish  Sharon ordered the Gaza withdrawal. The left-of-center hawk,
Rabin, signed the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan and the Oslo agreements with the PLO, and,
Barak, a former military commander, pulled Israeli forces entirely out of Lebanon. The Israeli public’s yearning for peace is so strong that no leader, of whatever feather, can afford to spurn a chance for it.
In contrast, Arab publics have rarely supported peace and few of their rulers have espoused it. The exceptions have mostly been assassinated, notably Jordan’s first King Abdullah, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, and Lebanon’s Bashir Gemayel.

President Abbas, who presides over the West Bank, is clearly more a man of peace than his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, or than Hamas, the anti-Semitic terror group that rules Gaza. Is he ready and able  to make a deal? Would he dare? And does he or the Palestinian Community Network represent Palestinian sentiment? These are the real questions, and not whether Israelis want peace, which only the blind or the bigoted could doubt.

9th.anniversary...9/11

9/11  a day to remember.
But more later,
 I just wanted to get this date on the blog. I usually write my stuff on the fly..but this subject needs a bit of thinking and putting down the right words. The deed itself, blowing up the world trade center towers, part of the Pentagon and attempting to do even more damage, all on one day, is actually quite remarkable for a bunch of suicide committing religious fanatics. Subsequently, for the USA to murder 1.3 million people in Iraq and totally destroying their country is of course another matter.

We are lucky to have a fellow like Mr. Obama who may possibly be able to bring this totally idiotic nonsense to an end. Will the responsible parties ever have to face justice? Probably not. I'm talking about Blair and Bush 2...along with the military ammo pushers who promoted these crimes in the first place.
....the picture has nothing to do with it...Muslim females running from something...one of them dead or wounded in the gutter...could be Gaza for all I know, but the effect is the same.
An end must be found to stop this.

Iraq

"Only tyrants can take a nation to war without the consent of the people. The planned war against Iraq without a Declaration of War is illegal. It is unwise because of many unforeseen consequences that are likely to result.It is immoral and unjust, because it had nothing to do with United States security and because Iraq had not initiated aggression against us."
Congressman Ron Paul (How true that statement has proved to be).

THE IRAQ DEBACLE: THE LEGACY OF SEVEN YEARS OF WAR

The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues and the reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq can at best be called only a rebranded occupation. While the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be reduced from a high of 165,000, there will still be 50,000 troops left behind, some 75,000 contractors, five huge “enduring bases” and an Embassy the size of Vatican City.

The U.S. military’s overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein did not lead to a better life for Iraqis—just the opposite. It resulted in the further destruction of basic infrastructure—electricity, water, sewage—that continues to this day. The U.S. dropped more tons of bombs on Iraq than in all of WWII, destroying Iraq’s electrical, water and sewage systems. Iraq’s health care and higher education systems, once the best in the entire region, have been decimated. The U.S. war on Iraq unleashed a wave of violence that has left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced, as well as ethnic rivalries that continue to plague the nation. We have seriously wounded millions of Iraqis, creating a lifetime of suffering and economic hardship for them, their communities and the entire nation as it struggles to rebuild.

Life expectancy for Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996 to 67 years in 2007 due to the war and destruction of the healthcare system. The U.S. use of weapons such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous has taken a severe toll, with the cancer rate in Fallujah, for example, now worse than that of Hiroshima.

The majority of the refugees and internally displaced persons created by the US intervention have been abandoned. Of the nearly 4 million refugees, many are now living in increasingly desperate circumstances in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and around the world. As undocumented refugees, most are not allowed to work and are forced to take extremely low paying, illegal jobs ($3/day) or rely on the UN and charity to survive. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has documented a spike in the sex trafficking of Iraqi women.

Iraq still does not have a functioning government. Many months after the March 7 elections, there is still a political vacuum and violence that is killing roughly 300 civilians a month. There is no functioning democracy in place and little sign there will be one in the near future.

The Iraq War has left a terrible toll on the U.S. troops. More than one million American service members have deployed in the Iraq War effort. Over 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed and tens of thousands severely injured. More than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment. PTSD rates in the military have skyrocketed. In 2009, a record number of 245 soldiers committed suicide.

The war has drained our treasury. As of August 2010, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $750 billion on the Iraq War effort. Counting the cost of lifetime care of wounded vets and the interest payments on the money we borrowed to pay for this war, the real cost will be in the trillions. This misappropriation of funds has contributed to the economic crises we are experiencing, including the lack of funds for our schools, healthcare, infrastructure and investments in clean, green jobs.

The U.S. officials who got us into this disastrous war on the basis of lies have not been held accountable. Not George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld. No one. Neither have the Bush administration lawyers who authorized torture, including Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The “think tanks,” journalists and pundits who perpetuated the lies have not been fired—most are today cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan.

The war has led to the pillaging of Iraqi resources. The U.S. Department of Defense has been unable to account for $8.7 billion of Iraqi oil and gas money meant for humanitarian needs and reconstruction after the 2003 invasion. The invasion has also led to the dismantling of Iraqi government control over the nation’s oil. In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended opening up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment. The resulting Iraq Oil Law has led to the global grab for Iraq’s resources.

The war has not made us more secure. The US policy of torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, violent and deadly raids on civilian homes, gunning down innocent civilians in the streets and absence of habeas corpus has fueled the fires of hatred and extremism toward Americans. The very presence of our troops in Iraq and other Muslim nations has become a recruiting tool.

Iraq

Iraq‏
Barack Obama

September 1, 2010 12:21:43 AM
Fred
Tonight marks the end of the American combat mission in Iraq.As a candidate for this office, I pledged to end this war responsibly. And, as President, that is what I am doing.Since I became Commander-in-Chief, we've brought home nearly 100,000 U.S. troops. We've closed or turned over to Iraq hundreds of our bases.As Operation Iraqi Freedom ends, our commitment to a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq continues.

Under Operation New Dawn, a transitional force of U.S. troops will remain to advise and assist Iraqi forces, protect our civilians on the ground, and pursue targeted counter terrorism efforts.By the end of next year, consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, these men and women, too, will come home.Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest -- it is in our own. Our nation has paid a huge price to put Iraq's future in the hands of its people.

We have sent our men and women in uniform to make enormous sacrifices. We have spent vast resources abroad in the face of several years of recession at home.We have met our responsibility through the courage and resolve of our women and men in uniform.

In seven years, they confronted a mission as challenging and as complex as any our military has ever been asked to face.Nearly 1.5 million Americans put their lives on the line. Many returned for multiple tours of duty, far from their loved ones who bore a heroic burden of their own. And most painfully, more than 4,400 Americans have given their lives, fighting for people they never knew, for values that have defined our people for more than two centuries.What their country asked of them was not small. And what they sacrificed was not easy.For that, each and every American owes them our heartfelt thanks.Our promise to them -- to each woman or man who has donned our colors -- is that our country will serve them as faithfully as they have served us. We have already made the largest increase in funding for veterans in decades.

So long as I am President, I will do whatever it takes to fulfill that sacred trust.Tonight, we mark a milestone in our nation's history. Even at a time of great uncertainty for so many Americans, this day and our brave troops remind us that our future is in our own hands and that our best days lie ahead.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama