if the current administration would solve these key issues and would stick to it for a year or two, Al Qaeda would fall apart. <br><br>I doubt that..I'm sure the terrorists would find something else to declare war against.<br><br>I'm just curious as to where you get your information. Did you interview any terrorists? Did you read this somewhere? What makes the information that you have definitive?<br><br>Personally I believe that people like Osama and the likes have other issues. All what you mention is just excuses.<br><br>

For a while now, it's been seeming like there's some hidden agenda<br>to keep the tension ramping up, rather than smoothing things over.<br><br>So many things just don't seem to add up, or make sense.<br><br>For instance, some one here pointed out just after the Berg Beheading,<br>that Al Queida had us bent over a moral barrel with the prison scandal...<br><br>...what would they have to gain by blowing that moral victory by turning<br>the tide of world resentment against themselves at that pivotal moment.<br><br><br>It seems to make sense to at least attempt to understand the other side <br>of the story. I suppose some research may be in order.<br><br>[color:green]"...or am I a butterfly that's dreaming she's a woman?"</font color=green>

Maybe it's in all the newspapers, everyday<br>the same as what goes on here is written everywhere<br><br>...and...<br>That could go for both sides I think.<br><br>perhaps...<br>we might not be as different as we are being led to believe<br><br>[color:green]"...or am I a butterfly that's dreaming she's a woman?"</font color=green>

heh...papers..yeah, the bastion of the truth [rolleyes]<br><br>I rarely believe everything the local paper here prints. They like to play up the sensationalism but no substance. <br><br>It could go for both sides? What sides? Me and him or the U.S. and the Middle East?<br><br>And again...when you say "we" in the last sentence of your post, do you mean us here on MM or the world in general?<br><br>I don't think we, as in the people of the world, are different. Sure, some things we may do differently, but I believe that the core things are all the same. <br><br>Who is leading you to believe differently?<br><br>

The question of Israel is sooooo complicated that it's really not possible to think about it briefly. Still, I think it's important to distinguish between the fact of Israel--I mean that it exists--and the policies that the Likud party has deployed since Mr. Netanyahu was PM. The two things are not the same any more than any administration is the same as the nation it leads. And the same thing applies to the Palestinians as opposed to their leadership. I'm sure, positive in fact, that the Palestinians are easy to recruit for terrorism because of the fact that they are an occupied people. However, I'm also sure that with leadership that would seek a real solution to the problems of occupation the Palestinians would be more than happy to be at peace. I don't know enough about Palestinian politics to know if there's such leadership available. But until a miracle happens and both the Palestinians and the Israelis choose leadership that's willing to get beyond the current impasse, I don't see any solution to the continuing violence in Israel.<br><br>And I think Ivan is right that the instability in Israel/Palestine, in which the US is perceived to and does in fact side with Israel, makes the US a potential target for hatred in the larger Arab and Islamic world. I also think that our need for petroleum makes the US willy nilly a (neo-)imperial country, disguise it how we may. Couple that with the way the US is seen in relation to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and we've got serious problems in how we're perceived.<br><br>As I say, I think the solution to the Israel/Palestine issue has to come from inside those two nations--with whatever pushing and encouraging we and the rest of the world can give. The dependency on oil is a different issue, though. I really don't understand why there is not a more dedicated, more focused, more concerted effort to develop fuel sources that will reduce the importance of oil in the world. And its not just oil as a source of energy that we need to do something about. I mean, oil is used for other things, like the plastic bags we get when we go shopping at the supermarket, the plastic of the keyboard that I'm typing this on, the frame for my monitor, the bulk of my G4 tower, printer, scanner, TV set, etc., etc. We absolutely have to find some alternative to oil-based materials as well.<br><br>And I don't think that it's just a matter of the current inernational political situation that compels us to do the research necesary to change the dependency on oil. I have no idea how long it will be before we run out of oil. But there's no doubt that eventually we will in fact run out of oil. Think of that prospect! If you think things are bad now, just you wait 'Enry 'Iggins!<br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>We absolutely have to find some alternative to oil-based materials as well.<br><p><hr></blockquote><p>I can see it now. Cast iron iPods.<br><br>

You use a Gas Powered iPod? <br><br>j/k<br>( know you mean "plastics")<br>...but a solar powered/battery hybrid<br>would be an interesting concept.<br><br>Hey, breaking the fossil fuel bond<br>ain't such a bad idea, you know. <br><br>[color:green]"...or am I a butterfly that's dreaming she's a woman?"</font color=green>

I found this using Google News:<br><br><h2>Suicide Nation</h2> <br><br>one Palestinian recently wrote in response to Ben-Gurion's famous quip on expelling Arabs, ('The old will die and the young will forget,'): 'The old are dying, and the young are dying too, but no one is forgetting.' <br><br>Zionism's 'original sin', as one Israeli historian calls his nation's original 1948 expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians and massacre of hundreds more, is the basis of both Israel's existence and the continued non-existence of the more than four million caged, dispossessed Palestinian victims who demand justice. <br><br>Endurance means, first and foremost, staying in place. Its greed for land and settlements partially hindered by Palestinian presence, Israel has responded by robbing the natives of any legal, political or human rights, and has constructed what Israeli anti-occupation activist Jeff Halper calls a 'matrix of control' to stifle their lives, including settlements, military checkpoints, roadblocks, curfews, embargoes, and detention centers. But merely living in this hellish scenario constitutes a victory against the root logic of Israeli colonialism, which is to 'purify' the land by removing its indigenous population. <br><br>Resistance, on the other hand, refers to active measures against the occupation. In the first Intifada and in the beginning of the second Intifada this almost always took the form of unarmed protest or stone-throwing, but Israel responded by mowing down hundreds of Palestinians with machine guns and breaking their bones, bringing in bulldozers to demolish homes and tanks to enforce even harsher living conditions. Their restraint further rewarded with an atrocious death ratio of 25:1, Palestinians tired of digging rows of graves for their children and patriots just to be patted on the head by a few polite Western liberals, and turned to armed struggle, the most extreme form of which now manifests itself in suicide bombing. <br>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Sharon's 'solution' to the country's dual crisis is in the tradition of Revisionist Zionism, founded in the 1920's by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, an admirer of Italian fascism who wrote honestly but with the aspirations of a conquistador-cowboy that Palestinians 'look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie.' One disciple of this doctrine was Israeli war hero Moshe Dayan, who admitted, 'There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population,' and advocated the following method to expand this theft: '[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no - it must - invent dangers.' <br>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>But it turns out that Israel is now neither safe nor far from the reach of its victims, and that its main strategy for addressing its problem involves exposing all its citizens to injury and death just to whip up enough self-righteousness and hate to repeat the cycle all over again until the conditions are ripe for mass expulsion. In this sense Israel is akin to a guilt-ridden wife beater; acutely aware of its own immorality, it provokes its victim into some futile kind of resistance to inspire itself with enough hatred to justify continuing the beating, awaiting all-out world war to finish the job without eliciting much protest.<br><br>[color:green]"...or am I a butterfly that's dreaming she's a woman?"</font color=green>

...and this... <br><br><h2>Israeli Torture Template</h2><br><br>Written by Wayne Madsen, a Washington, DC-based investigative <br>journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security Agency <br>(NSA) during the Reagan administration.<br><br>Wherein Mr Madsen claims that the "mysterious sub-contractors" that<br>keep getting mentioned in connection with the Prison Torture Scandal<br>were indeed sanctioned by the top level of the Bush administration, <br>...and goes on to say how they were trained. <br><br>[color:green]"...or am I a butterfly that's dreaming she's a woman?"</font color=green>

Hey guys, Boothby here. I'm on the machine at work and didn't have my password handy. Ivan I appreciate the nice words, thanks. I only brought the job into it because the information being put out gives me a different view..............and quite frankly it scares the $hit out of me.<br><br>Ivan the whole WMD thing is very much a question in my mind. I recently saw a very good documentary on Discovery Times, where they talked about the Son in Law and WMD. What they said was that in the mid 90's ( I can't remember the year) the son in law defected. What he told the west was that the WMD program was alive and well, and that one of his duties had been to hide the stuff from the UN inspectors. In my mind the real question is where did all the stuff go. I honestly believe he shipped it out of the country before we invaded. Just because they didn't find anything there doesn't mean it didn't exist...........Of course it doesn't mean it did either.<br><br>As for the Isreal thing, I think that Isreal has really screwed things up with the way they have handled the Palestinians. Having said that I believe that two wrongs don't make things right. Terrorist bomb attacks are wrong, and Saddams second hand support of that was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to destabilize an already screwed up situation. If he was willing to support terrorists in one arena then it's not hard to believe he would support them in another. Especially when you consider everything else he had done. That made him public enemy #1. Under President Clinton we tried the whole sanctions thing. We tried limited, proportional responces. We tried not to stir the hornets nest. He even passed on the chance to get Bin Lauden (why I don't know). We saw the result of that kind of policy. Now we have a President who is taking direct action. I know for many people around the world it doesn't look good, but then again they weren't attacked. 9/11 was the worst attack in US history. 3000 of our citizens were killed. The last time something came close was Pearl Harbor. When that happened we went to war against 3 countries, and dropped two nuclear weapons on one of them. Our responce today is tame by comparison. Saddam was a looming threat to this country and we had two choices. We could wait for the next attack or we could go after the threats. I know the rest of the world doesn't like it........I sure hate it for them.<br><br>