All Hank, all the time.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
it's a reference to an observation I made on another web page about my spelling ability and the abilities of another who also went to Choate- it's supposed to be a good school but we spell poorly- so then I made the insdie joke of asking you if that's where you went- it would be mean except I'm part of the joke- like how wonk isn't anti-semetic just because he wants Israel to use some unworkable rules.

Did you see Munich? Israel knows how to take out targets quietly. They've just decided that "an eye for an eye" is a valid military strategy.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by taxwonk
I don't know if I've lost the ability to communicate, or you're willfully ignoring my message. What I have been saying is that:

1. Israel is, and always has been, both brutal and ruthless in their defense of their territory;

2. Long before it was "their" territory it was a land shared by Jews and Palestinians alike;

3. We need Israel to exist as much as Israel needs Israel to exist and therefore we need to support Israel; but

4. Speaking as a Jew who lost family in the death camps, I can champion Israel while at the same time finding it reprehensible that they are willing to so casually ignore the line between terrorist and civilian; and

5. Their actions in doing so will prolong the conflict and we need to exert some pressure to reign them in at the same time as we lend them support to maintain at least one pocket of relative stability in the Middle East.

I don't buy the "my country, right or wrong" crap when it's used to counter criticism of American actions in the Middle East and I'm not going to turn a blind eye to the fact that Israel sometimes prefers to shoot itself in the dick by responding to Arab attacks with undue ferocity.

Even if we don't agree, I havee faith that you will at least understand my position. I doubt Diane will be able to read the post in its entirety before being distracted by something shiny.

I do understand your position. I agree with some of it. Disagree with 5. Don't really get the last part -- I am hardly in the "my country, right or wrong" camp. Particularly with respect to the middle east, where I think Bush has gotten it pretty much all wrong. (Incidentally, I spent some time today, unsuccessfully searching for one of My Favorite Bilmore posts -- where he chastised Ty for not giving the Bush Doctrine II enough credit for bringing peace and democracy to Lebanon and Palestine.)

My position? I believe in a policy of fierce retaliation against terrorists, including countries and populations that willingly harbor and support them. This is why I believed that attacking Afghanistan was right, despite the civilian deaths. But attacking Iraq was wrong -- sort of like Israel invading Detroit, or Berkeley, on the grounds that the population and even the leadership there agree with the people who attack Israel.

Lebanon has been directed by the UN to disarm Hezbollah. It has failed to do so -- and failed because Lebanon is too beholden to Hezbollah, and to Syria, to do so. The attacks will never stop until Lebanon realizes that the cost of not doing something outweighs the cost of doing something. And that realization will never come -- apparently, and very sadly -- without strong military action by Israel.



What I was saying, though, related to this statement of yours:

The terrorists use their tactics because they have nothing else. And they learned their tactics from men like Ariel Sharon and his predecessors, who used the same tactics against the British.

I was commenting on the last part, which seems to me to be historically inaccurate (terror tactics go back many centuries -- and if you accept Ty's definition include all warfare from the beginning of time), factually inaccurate (Arab terrorists have introduced some new elements), and irrelevant ("so what?")

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Did you see Munich? Israel knows how to take out targets quietly. They've just decided that "an eye for an eye" is a valid military strategy.

Didn't see it.....

But how long did it take Israel to take out these targets? I seem to recall it was a matter of years.

And not all targets are created equal. Do you really, seriously think, that if Israel could just "take out quietly" the leadership of Hezbollah, that Israel would not have done so long before the current crisis? You've been talking about how brutal Israel is -- why would they have left those people alive, if taking them out were so easy?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Didn't see it.....

But how long did it take Israel to take out these targets? I seem to recall it was a matter of years.

And not all targets are created equal. Do you really, seriously think, that if Israel could just "take out quietly" the leadership of Hezbollah, that Israel would not have done so long before the current crisis? You've been talking about how brutal Israel is -- why would they have left those people alive, if taking them out were so easy?

When I made that commetn, I was thinking more of Hamas in Gaza.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I do understand your position. I agree with some of it. Disagree with 5. Don't really get the last part -- I am hardly in the "my country, right or wrong" camp. Particularly with respect to the middle east, where I think Bush has gotten it pretty much all wrong. (Incidentally, I spent some time today, unsuccessfully searching for one of My Favorite Bilmore posts -- where he chastised Ty for not giving the Bush Doctrine II enough credit for bringing peace and democracy to Lebanon and Palestine.)

My position? I believe in a policy of fierce retaliation against terrorists, including countries and populations that willingly harbor and support them. This is why I believed that attacking Afghanistan was right, despite the civilian deaths. But attacking Iraq was wrong -- sort of like Israel invading Detroit, or Berkeley, on the grounds that the population and even the leadership there agree with the people who attack Israel.

Lebanon has been directed by the UN to disarm Hezbollah. It has failed to do so -- and failed because Lebanon is too beholden to Hezbollah, and to Syria, to do so. The attacks will never stop until Lebanon realizes that the cost of not doing something outweighs the cost of doing something. And that realization will never come -- apparently, and very sadly -- without strong military action by Israel.

Had the IDF gone into Lebanon and moved against the Hezbollah Camps, or had they conducted their bombing campaign against the Hezbollah camps, I would agree with you. However, where we part company is that while you view our invasion of Iraq as wrong and what Israel is doing as right, I see them as fairly equivalent.

Lebanon's government is fragile and somewhat inefffective at this point. However, it is also democratic and anti-Syria. By attacking not just Hezbollah but all of Lebanon, you are attacking people for the actions of those who are beyond their control. I find that somewhat analogous to holding the people of Iraq to task for the actions of Saddam Hussein.

I was commenting on the last part, which seems to me to be historically inaccurate (terror tactics go back many centuries -- and if you accept Ty's definition include all warfare from the beginning of time), factually inaccurate (Arab terrorists have introduced some new elements), and irrelevant ("so what?")

My point here was that one man's terrorists are another man's freedom fighters. And terror tactics don't really go back hundreds of years. The sacking of villages by Vikings was not quite on a par with the political strategy of engaging in violence with the aim of forcing the existing leadership to take such extreme measures to control violence that it alienates its populace. That is what was done in Israel in the 40s and in Algeria in the 50s and 60s. The political element was a new twist, and one that has been escalating ever since.

I'm not an apologist for Hamas or Hezbollah. I'm simply pointing out that the Palestinians call that same land home and have for centuries. In a post-colonial world, I don't think Israel can realistically take the position we have with the Native Americans, that "we stole it fair and square and we're keeping it."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
You stated:

"which is why the White House told the Pentagon to plan for the use of tactical nuclear weapons."

The US has not used Nuclear weapons since WWII. It has been US policy not to use nuclear weapons except under the most dire circumstances. Because of the consequences, the use of nuclear weapons would only be used as a last option desperate measure. A use of a nuclear weapon against Iran would create an international firestorm that would be unprecedented. It may have been the administrations conclusion that the only way to get at these underground bunkers is to use tactical nuclear weapons, but that does not mean they ever seriously considered using them. And since the Pentagon plans for everything, they have probably made plans to do so. Just like they may have plans to nuke France. But there is a vast difference between drawing up plans to use nuclear weapons and "planning to use them".

Like nuking France, nuking Iran is never going to happen. The only way we would nuke Iran is if Iran attacked someone and it was our only option. But if Iran refused to back down on this diplomatic stuff, nuking Iran is not an option. Bunker busters maybe, but not nuclear weapons.

The thrust of the Hersh article was that the US was preparing to use tactical nukes on Iran. It was sensationalistic, and got lots of attention, because it alleged that the US was making a drastic change in policy that has been sacrosanct for the last fifty years. But I think that the idea that the US is preparing to nuke Iran is absurd. And I don't believe anyone in any serious position to influence policy told him that. He just heard that the pentagon has drawing up plans to nuke Iran and he or his sources twisted that into the US is planning on nuking Iran.

But of course he could be telling the truth (I doubt it but it is possible). But there is no way to determine if his statements are accurate because his sources are "anonymous". Until the person is named, and that person is questioned about what he or she said, and their position in the administration can be verified, we don't know what the administration plans to do about Iran and we don't know if Hersh's characterization is accurate. We can only speculate.

Once you open the box, the cat is dead. You can only speculate whether it would be alive if you hadn't opened the box.

It's pretty clear from Hersh's article that people at the Pentagon are not happy with the civilian leadership at DoD and the White House, and are leaking things about the Iran war planning as a result. I am inclined to think that Hersh is not making this sh*t up out of whole cloth, since that would make it easier to rebut his allegations (among other things).

It's true that we don't know what the administration plans to do. Hersh says they asked the Pentagon to plan for the use of nuclear weapons, but Hersh does not say -- nor could he -- that the White House has decided to use them. Perhaps they have basically decided not to use them, but want the option in their back pocket. You will notice that neither I nor Hersh made particularly extravagent claims about what he writes.

Even if Hersh quoted someone by name, we would still be in the indeterminate sort of world that seems to cause you so much discomfort. For then how could we trust Hersh unless we called his source and confirmed it ourselves?

When someone asks for a cite, that means a factual source, not speculation. The proper response would have been "there is no cite, but the allegation has been made by anonymous sources.

The word "cite" is short for "citation." We lawyers use the word to refer to authority, not to split fine hairs about the nature of the authority cited.

Hersh is not speculating. He is reporting. There is, in fact, a difference. The extent to which you can verify that which he has reported does not fact it fact or not.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Did you ever read the Agenda by Bob Woodward (Bob Woodward’s expose on the Clinton administration)? Most of it was a work of fiction.

The press gave up a long time ago trying to be serious about facts, but that doesn't mean we should follow along blindly.

Much of the press is more serious about facts than Bob Woodward, who likes to function like a stenographer. You may have heard that CIA sources say Tenet did not tell Bush that the case for WMD was a "slam dunk" -- something that was reported by Woodward. Indeed, Tenet told Woodward that he said no such thing in that meeting, but Woodward's book does not even tell the reader that different sources said different things. It just presents the White House account as the truth.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop

The word "cite" is short for "citation." We lawyers use the word to refer to authority, not to split fine hairs about the nature of the authority cited.

You know perfectly well that when you ask for a cite to back up a fact or a proposition that no judge or other lawyer would accept as "authority" a hearsay statement made from an anonymous source. That is not considered an "authority".

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Much of the press is more serious about facts than Bob Woodward,

Depends on the individual in the press you are talking about.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
who likes to function like a stenographer.

A stenographer that uses hearsay or double hearsay.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by taxwonk
When I made that commetn, I was thinking more of Hamas in Gaza.

So you think Israel could have quietly taken out the military leaders of Hamas over the past few years, but chose not to?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You will notice that neither I nor Hersh made particularly extravagent claims about what he writes.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
which is why the White House told the Pentagon to plan for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

We report, you decide.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by taxwonk
I'm not an apologist for Hamas or Hezbollah. I'm simply pointing out that the Palestinians call that same land home and have for centuries. In a post-colonial world, I don't think Israel can realistically take the position we have with the Native Americans, that "we stole it fair and square and we're keeping it."

So Israel should be pushed into the sea?

And before you say "two-state solution," remember that a number of Israelis have called for that, and Israel has tried it before. But the players on the other side -- currently Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the like, but last time Nasser and his compatriots -- weren't so interested in that. When there was an evolution of views by one actor -- Egypt -- Israel gave up land for peace.

Some Israelis may really want eternal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, but most serious ones do not. As you have pointed out, this may be simple realism, rather than any goodness of the Israeli heart, at work -- but so what? Any realistic Palestinian would reject the notion of devoting your life to driving Israel into the sea. The forced evacuations of Gaza demonstrated that it is serious, realistic people, and not extremists relying on their view of Biblical dogma, who generally run the show in Israel. Neither Palestine nor Lebanon (nor Syria, nor Iran, nor most of the Arab world) has shown any analogous situation.

As long as governments in the Mideast are run by, or cater to, parties that refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, there will never be peace in the mideast.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Lebanon has been directed by the UN to disarm Hezbollah. It has failed to do so -- and failed because Lebanon is too beholden to Hezbollah, and to Syria, to do so. The attacks will never stop until Lebanon realizes that the cost of not doing something outweighs the cost of doing something. And that realization will never come -- apparently, and very sadly -- without strong military action by Israel.

I don't think the central government in Lebanon has ever had the popular support or legitimacy to try to disarm Hezbollah. And it won't now.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
You know perfectly well that when you ask for a cite to back up a fact or a proposition that no judge or other lawyer would accept as "authority" a hearsay statement made from an anonymous source. That is not considered an "authority".

Actually Spanky, I'm a litigator and I go to court and shit, and I'm here to tell you that when a judge or another lawyer asks you for a cite, they're usually asking for a citation to a legal authority. When you want evidence, you don't usually ask for a "cite."

Usually it's the bad plaintiffs' lawyers who just make up new rules of English language like you do.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
A stenographer that uses hearsay or double hearsay.

If you quote your source, it's still hearsay. Jebus.