Recent history -- what started TODAY'S mess:

I agree that we should stay OUT of this, though I fear the timing of this all was purposely designed to drag us into it right before Inauguration Day.

Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen

A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory.

Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured. The violence represented the most serious break in a ceasefire agreed in mid-June, yet both sides suggested they wanted to return to atmosphere of calm.

Israeli troops crossed into the Gaza Strip late last night near the town of Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military said the target of the raid was a tunnel that they said Hamas was planning to use to capture Israeli soldiers positioned on the border fence 250m away. Four Israeli soldiers were injured in the operation, two moderately and two lightly, the military said.

One Hamas gunman was killed and Palestinians launched a volley of mortars at the Israeli military. An Israeli air strike then killed five more Hamas fighters. In response, Hamas launched 35 rockets into southern Israel, one reaching the city of Ashkelon.

"This was a pinpoint operation intended to prevent an immediate threat," the Israeli military said in a statement. "There is no intention to disrupt the ceasefire, rather the purpose of the operation was to remove an immediate and dangerous threat posted by the Hamas terror organisation."

In Gaza, a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, said the group had fired rockets out of Gaza as a "response to Israel's massive breach of the truce".

"The Israelis began this tension and they must pay an expensive price. They cannot leave us drowning in blood while they sleep soundly in their beds," he said.

The attack comes shortly before a key meeting this Sunday in Cairo when Hamas and its political rival Fatah will hold talks on reconciling their differences and creating a single, unified government. It will be the first time the two sides have met at this level since fighting a near civil war more than a year ago.

Until now it had appeared both Israel and Hamas, which seized full control of Gaza last summer, had an interest in maintaining the ceasefire. For Israel it has meant an end to the daily barrage of rockets landing in southern towns, particularly Sderot. For Gazans it has meant an end to the regular Israeli military raids that have caused hundreds of casualties, many of them civilian, in the past year. Israel, however, has maintained its economic blockade on the strip, severely limiting imports and preventing all exports from Gaza.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, had personally approved the Gaza raid, the Associated Press said. The Israeli military concluded that Hamas was likely to want to continue the ceasefire despite the raid, it said. The ceasefire was due to run for six months and it is still unclear whether it will stretch beyond that limit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians

• We need to do a little history lesson - sm
  • Ron Paul on peace and non-intervention. sm - LVMT
    • yep, saw that......which is exactly the truth - we need to butt out!!! NM
  • If you are looking to point fingers --- Palestine was under the control - Lu
    • win or lose......it's not our place to intervene - sm
  • Thanks for the info....(sm) - Just the big bad
    • You are buying into her so-called "history" - Poster makes her own history as she likes.nm
      • Recent history -- what started TODAY'S mess: - Marmann
      • What you call so-called history is on the books - sm
      • I think my post....(sm) - Just the big bad
    • The U.S. is guilty of doing the same thing - sm
      • Especially when it has become painfully apparent - jj
        • Oh, please acting like you know what you are - talking about. nm
          • Devolving into personal slams in drive-bys usually indicates - jj
          • Think she meant to please stop acting - like you know. Nobody has the answer here.nm

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

influx of rudeness on this board change your mind about coming here.  As you can see by reading the whole board, most of us don't treat each other rudely.

I don't agree with the present administration in this country, but I'm basically a very happy, cordial, friendly person.  Most of the other posters on this board seem to be very friendly and easy going, too.

So don't let a few bad apples spoil your experience here.

Excellent movies.  Should be required viewing in high school civics class.  If, like Mrs. Palin wishes, creationism be taught along side science, then Michael Moore's beautifully patriotic films should be too.

interview.  There is much more to the story that the article does not include.  Biden's explanation seemed reasonable when I heard it.  You can, of course, disagree with me on that point.

Take a look at the date... Olbermann Still Lying About O’Reilly, Fox Ratings

Sunday, November 9, 2008 8:45 PM By: David A. Patten Article Font Size

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has won the Worst Liar in the World Award once again. His latest big fib is not a new one. He continues to claim that he is beating “The O’Reilly Factor,” the longtime king of cable news programs hosted by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. But the numbers show otherwise. But that apparently doesn’t bother Olbermann. MSNBC took out a full-page ad in The New York Times proclaiming “A Sweeping Victory” for its ratings and declared “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” the No. 1 cable news program. Independent ratings consistently show O’Reilly gets about twice the ratings Olbermann does. Although Olbermann frequently leads his viewers to believe he has overtaken “The O’Reilly Factor,” in this case the numbers really do speak for themselves. O’Reilly’s program, which Fox airs at 8 and 11 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, averaged about 4 million viewers a night during the month of October, compared with Olbermann’s average of about 2 million, according to TVbytheNumbers.com, a leading Web site that analyzes the Nielsen ratings. Olbermann not only overlooks the fact that O’Reilly trounces him but also claims the opposite is true. Olbermann wrote on MSNBC’s Web site on Oct. 24 that O’Reilly “has seen the ratings spike here at MSNBC and decided that it is the result of a fraudulent conspiracy . . . ” So how can a news network tout ratings that actual Nielsen research doesn't support? The explanation is an almost-invisible line of fine print at the bottom of the ad, stating it refers to the 8 to 9 p.m. time slot for the dates Oct. 27 through Oct. 31, for viewers between 25 and 54 years of age. In other words, MSNBC is touting one time period or ratings category, which is the exception to the overall ratings. Consider: According to the Nielsen ratings, show on Thursday was the single most-watched program on cable television that week, other than Disney’s “Hannah Montana” and “Monday Night Football.” The second-most-watched program the week of Oct. 27 was O’Reilly’s program that Tuesday. And by the way, O’Reilly also hosted the fourth-most-watched cable program that week. The highest any of Olbermann’s programs placed that week was 19th. (It was the only Olbermann show to crack cable’s top 40 programs that week.) “O’Reilly’s lead in average viewers is large and has never been challenged by Olbermann,” Bill Gorman, co-founder of TVbytheNumbers.com, tells Newsmax. He points that “Olbermann has substantially increased both his average viewers and adults 24 to 54 substantially over time.” But data shows Reilly continues to regularly outpace Olbermann even in that key demographic group. Olbermann appeared elated this past week with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. But the win may be a Pyrrhic victory for the liberal news anchor. Olbermann had positioned himself as the anti-Bush, anti-Republican news source on MSNBC. With Democrats firmly in control of the White House and Congress, it’s questionable that his audience will grow. Fox, meanwhile, may be a big beneficiary of the Obama win. So far, the “early returns” suggest Fox may be growing already. On Nov. 5, the day after the elections, Fox kept about 12 percent more of its Election Day audience than MSNBC.

This was pulled from journalism.org.

After four years of war in Iraq, the journalists reporting from that country give their coverage a mixed but generally positive assessment, but they believe they have done a better job of covering the American military and the insurgency than they have the lives of ordinary Iraqis. And they do not believe the coverage of Iraq over time has been too negative. If anything, many believe the situation over the course of the war has been worse than the American public has perceived, according to a new survey of journalists covering the war from Iraq.

Above all, the journalists—most of them veteran war correspondents—describe conditions in Iraq as the most perilous they have ever encountered, and this above everything else is influencing the reporting. A majority of journalists surveyed (57%) report that at least one of their Iraqi staff had been killed or kidnapped in the last year alone—and many more are continually threatened. “Seven staffers killed since 2003, including three last July,” one bureau chief wrote with chilling brevity. “At least three have been kidnapped. All were freed.”

A majority of journalists surveyed say most of the country is too dangerous to visit. Nine out of ten say that about at least half of Baghdad itself. Wherever they go, traveling with armed guards and chase vehicles is the norm for more than seven out of ten surveyed.

Even the basics of getting the story are remarkably difficult. Outside of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, most U.S. journalists must rely on local staff to do the necessary face-to-face reporting. Yet nearly nine out of ten journalists say their local staff cannot carry any equipment—not even a notebook—that might identify them as working for the western media for fear of being killed. Some local staffers do not even tell their own families.

Most journalists also have a positive view of the U.S. military’s embedding program for reporters. While they acknowledge the limited perspective it provides, they believe it offers access to information they could not otherwise get.

And most journalists, eight out of ten, feel that, over time, conditions for telling the story of Iraq have gotten worse, not better.

The survey, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism from September 28 through November 7, was developed to get a sense of the conditions journalists have faced in trying to cover the war over the last couple of years. It was not designed to poll their sense of the situation in Iraq at this one or any other particular moment in time, or to offer a referendum on the success of the surge. It will be followed, later this year, with a content analysis of coverage on the ground from Iraq.

The survey included responses from 111 journalists who have worked or are currently working in Iraq. The vast majority, 90 of them, were in Iraq when they took the survey or have worked there in 2007, and most have spent at least seven months in the country cumulatively since the war began.

The journalists are from 29 different news organizations (all of them U.S. based except for one) that have had staff in Iraq—including newspapers, wire services, magazines, radio, and network and cable TV. This represents, by best estimates, every news organization in the U.S. save one that has had a correspondent in Iraq for at least one month since January 2006.¹

Nearly everyone surveyed also responded to open-ended questions – often at length – offering a vivid and sobering portrait of trying to report an extraordinarily difficult story under terrifying conditions.

“The dangers can’t be overstated,” one print journalist wrote. “It’s been an ambush – two staff killed, one wounded – various firefights, and our ‘home’ has been rocked and mortared (by accident, I’m pretty sure). It’s not fun; it’s not safe, but I go back because it needs to be told.”

Whatever the problems, a magazine reporter offered, “The press….have carried out the classic journalistic mission of bearing witness.”

“Welcome to the new world of journalism, boys and girls. This is where we lost our innocence. Security teams, body armor and armored cars will forever now be pushed in between journalism and stories,” one bureau chief declared.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is non-partisan and non-political, is one of eight projects that make up the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., a “fact tank” funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Princeton Survey Research was contracted to host and administer the online survey.

instead of talk radio or Gore's electrice bill. I am referring to Libby's trial,

Well....he was convicted of perjury and if he in fact did lie under oath to the grand jury, he should go to jail.  That being said...why not pardon him?  Clinton was cited for exactly the same things...lying under oath (perjury) before a grand jury and obstruction of justice.  He is free as a bird, finished his term as President, making money hand over fist....yes, for that reason alone I think Libby should be pardoned to level the playing field again.  If liberals were happy that Clinton walked, they should not scream bloody murder if Bush does pardon Libby.  Because it is the very same thing and would expose the hypocrisy BIG time.  But, that has never stopped them before, has it? 

the firing of 8 judges,

I am having a hard time finding much usable information about this.  What I can find are various blogs that lean hard right or hard left and not much fact.  I saw where it was stated that they were fired for cause, citing one refused to file death penalty cases, one refused to file immigration cases, yada yada.  But I did not really find anything compelling and not in a blog that compelled me to fall either way on this.  I don't see any reason to think they were not fired for cause...don't see anything in writing to convince me either.

Pete Domineci,

If you are talking about the firing of David Iglesias, I am not much buying it that the administration fired him because of something he did or did not do back during the presidential election.  I can't find any evidence to prove that.  It is of concern to me that Iglesias held that information all this time, and now that he has been fired brings it forward.  He said himself, or at least was quoted as saying, he had no proof that his firing was related to that.  It sounds like sour grapes for being fired to me.  Typical, human reaction to being fired.  But because it is a political position, the sour grapes are made public.

the unnecessary and ever rising numbers of dead - everywhere, 40 towns in Vermont calling for impeachment (of course this won't go anywhere but the gesture is telling),

Nothing much to say about this.  Wars kill people.  Most of the Iraqi deaths are at the hands of other Arabs.  You can blame that on America if you wish.  I choose not to.  More Iraqis are coming forward and fingering the bad guys, and that is what it is going to take.  We have had a lot of successes.  Of course, you have to watch Fox to see them.  CNN studiously ignores such things as it does not fit their agenda.  As do the networks.  I hope you are not going to suggest that Fox has a soundstage where they fake the reports.

a pardon for Libby (and does he have to admit guilt to be pardoned which he has not done), the fact that Libby was the attorney to the much maligned Marc Rich who was pardoned by Clinton, which was also much maligned. Was Scooter as evil as Clinton for having defended him in his dealings with Iran and his tax evasion as Clinton was for pardoning him ??  If all this was just about infighting between the FBI and the administration and George Tenet, then why did Libby lie at all; wouldn't be important enough to lie about, IMHO. Throwing it out there.

This whole thing smacks of getting back, to me.  More interesting to me than Scooter and Marc, is Fitzgerald and Comey.  Fitzgerald and Comey were both prosecutors working on the Marc Rich case.  Obviously they were not happy when they were on the eve of an indictment when Rich ran (wonder who leaked to him that the indictment was imminent) and were even more UNhappy when Clinton pardoned him.  And who should be now prosecuting Scooter?  And who did most of the investigation?  Why, that would be Fitzgerald and Mr. Comey.  Which is why I think they went for Scooter's throat and did not indict the man who REALLY leaked the information, Richard Armitage.  Payback in politics is hael, my friend!!

I will have to admit though that I don't know that much about that aspect of it.  I do know there is some controversy surrounding the whole Hezbullah vs Hamas and Lebanon vs Gaza.  I obviously have some catching up to do on that one...LOL.

I do think, however, that Hamas kind of got a bad rap because they couldn't keep up with the demands for food, housing, etc, and particularly the distribution of aid....?  However, I also think that it's kind of hard to keep that flow of aid going when Israel is attacking incoming ships that carry that aid.  With that and the constant bombardment from Isreal in a military sense on the ground, I think it kind of put them on shaky ground to begin with.

I think in the end the success of whoever wins will be very dependent upon us being able to control Israel.

the economy.  Cooporations starting to lay off and anticipate many more lay offs next year, affecting local and state governments, police, fire and rescue operations due to a fall in tax revenues, precipitating more foreclosures.  Wow, all frowning faces and gloom and doom.  I really think we are on a runaway train into the second great depression, something we have no idea about other than stories from our parents and grandparents.  Very scary.  I think that we MTs are pretty secure in our jobs but so many people's jobs are at risk. 

To top it all off, the treasury department has decided to not use our tax bailout money they way they promised, rather are taking a different tactic without telling any of us or congress.  I sure hope they know what they are doing because I sure don't understand it. 

    Tuesday 30 August 2005

    Who lost Iraq? Someday, as a fragmented Iraq spirals further into religious madness, terrorism and civil war, there will be a bipartisan inquiry into this blundering intrusion into another people's history.

    The crucial question will be why a preemptive American invasion - which has led to the deaths of nearly 2,000 Americans, roughly 10 times as many Iraqis, the expenditure of about $200 billion and incalculable damage to the United States' global reputation - has had exactly the opposite effect predicted by its neoconservative sponsors. No amount of crowing over a fig leaf Iraqi constitution by President Bush can hide the fact that the hand of the region's autocrats, theocrats and terrorists is stronger than ever.

    The U.S. now has to recognize that [it] overthrew Saddam Hussein to replace him with a pro-Iranian state, said regional expert Peter W. Galbraith, the former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and an advisor to the Iraqi Kurds. And, he could have added, a pro-Iranian state that will be repressive and unstable.

    Think this is an exaggeration? Consider that arguably the most powerful Shiite political party and militia in today's Iraq, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its affiliated paramilitary force, the Badr Brigade, was not only based in Iran but was set up by Washington's old arch-foe, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It also fought on the side of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war and was recognized by Tehran as the government in exile of Iraq.

    Or that former exile Ahmad Chalabi is now one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers. The consummate political operator managed to maintain ties to Iran while gaining the devoted support of Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, charming and manipulating Beltway policymakers and leading U.S. journalists into believing that Iraq was armed with weapons of mass destruction.

    Chalabi is thrilled with the draft constitution, which, if passed, will probably exponentially increase tension and violence between Sunnis and Shiites. It is an excellent document, said Chalabi, who has been accused by U.S. intelligence of being a spy for Iran, where he keeps a vacation home.

    What an absurd outcome for a war designed to create a compliant, unified and stable client state that would be pro-American, laissez-faire capitalist and unallied with the hated Iran. Of course, Bush tells us again, this is progress and an inspiration. Yet his relentless spinning of manure into silk has worn thin on the American public and sent his approval ratings tumbling.

    Even supporters of the war are starting to realize that rather than strengthening the United States' position in the world, the invasion and occupation have led to abject humiliation: from the Abu Ghraib scandal, to the guerrilla insurgency exposing the limits of military power, to an election in which our guy - Iyad Allawi - was defeated by radicals and religious extremists.

    In a new low, the U.S. president felt obliged to call and plead with the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, Abdelaziz Hakim, to make concessions to gain Sunni support. Even worse, he was summarily rebuffed. Nevertheless, Bush had no choice but to eat crow and like it.

    This is a document of which the Iraqis, and the rest of the world, can be proud, he said Sunday, through what must have been gritted teeth. After all, this document includes such democratic gems as Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation, and No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam, as well as socialist-style pronouncements that work and a decent standard of living are a right guaranteed by the state. But the fact is, it could establish Khomeini's ghost as the patron saint of Iraq and Bush would have little choice but to endorse it.

    Even many in his own party are rebelling. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur, said Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel last week, one of a growing number of Republicans who get that we should start figuring out how we get out of there.

    Not that our what-me-worry? president is the least bit troubled by all this adverse blowback from the huge, unnecessary gamble he took in invading the heart of the Arab and Muslim worlds. What is important is that the Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion, not at the barrel of a gun, Bush said.

    Wrong again, George. It was the barrel of your gun that midwifed the new Iraq, which threatens to combine the instability of Lebanon with the religious fanaticism of Iran.

nm

That's why it didn't pass last week. It was too one-sided.