Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....

[Last Real Burner]

Who said four years.... if he succeeds and establishes military control of the US, he will not relenquish power until death by Zoo Zoo.


steadfastly,
mr smith

[DVD Burner]

Geroge W. Is an admited dictator. dont you know what that means?

[cowboyangel]

if ...and that's a big friggin IF it happens...this guy is movin to Ukraine.......

[Lark]

if ...and that's a big friggin IF it happens...this guy is movin to Ukraine.......

...where politicians get assasinated with stunning regularity, so you don't have to worry about any one official for very long.

[Simply Joel]

SHOULD WE HAVE GONE TO WAR?
By William F. Buckley Jr.

I said 10 days ago that if I had known back then in February 2003 what we know now, I would not have counseled war against Iraq. That statement struck some as disloyal to a cause, some others as prime bait for exploitation by such as John Kerry. Then on July 12, President Bush gave an enormously illuminating speech to the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which sheds light on ambient questions.

What especially catches the eye is his saying that "Libya is dismantling its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile programs. This progress came about through quiet diplomacy between America, Britain and the Libyan government."

The mind travels immediately to the question: Well, why could not diplomacy have accomplished in Iraq what it accomplished in Libya? But the president keen-wittedly bases the success of Libya on quiet diplomacy to be sure, but quiet diplomacy backed up by our own commitment to "defending the peace by taking the fight to the enemy." He is contending, in effect, that if it hadn't been for our military entry into Iraq, Qaddafi might well have continued his development of nuclear weapons. Who can dispositively argue that this analysis is wrong?

On that plane, here is one to ponder. A couple of years ago, Saddam Hussein could have spent the night in any one of a hundred palaces he kept for his contingent whims. Now he sleeps in a 12-by-12-foot cell. What's going through his mind on the matter of doing things differently?

Obviously Saddam knew he didn't have a handy supply of weapons of mass destruction. Yet having apparently nothing to lose, he didn't cooperate with the United Nations search team sufficiently to establish that there were no such weapons in Iraq. So, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney -- and Tony Blair and other government leaders -- declared that he did have those weapons, and we proceeded to war. Not only was Saddam inexplicably circuitous on these (nonexisting) weapons, he completely miscalculated the stamina and determination of his Republican Guard, which collapsed and died after three weeks' exposure to the U.S. Marines.

Saddam, of all people on Earth, must rue the day he acted, or did not act, in time to move in the direction of quiet diplomacy, which by any measurement would have been preferable to his current arrangements.

An open question: If the commander in chief has evidence satisfying to his intelligence systems (and to those of the British, the French, the Germans, and the Russians) that a dictator who has used such weapons before -- and has twice invaded neighboring countries -- has such weapons now, is there a reasonable alternative to military action? Not in the judgment of those who believe the president must act on the most cautious probabilities. If later in the day, after the fighting has ended, one learns that the weapons weren't in fact there, how does this discredit the thinking that took him to war on the assumption that they were there?

Reason fortifies the two positions: (l) that we should have gone to war, and (2) that we need not have gone to war.

The single missing component here is what was implied in President Bush's speech to the National Security Complex: that a dramatic show of U.S. military strength was necessary to fortify the U.S. presence in the world. If it is true that Qaddafi came around because of what he had seen in Iraq, that point is carried. It is strengthened further by reasoning that North Korea may have been terminally persuaded not to proceed on an apocalyptic course by reason of the fate of Saddam Hussein.

This does not vindicate the war as we have engaged in it. Knocking off Saddam Hussein was one challenge. A second was to devolve the responsibility for rebuilding Iraq politically. This we now know keenly should have been done by others, with support from the United States. This point the president will need to focus on in the days ahead.

[DVD Burner]

"Libya is dismantling its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile programs. This progress came about through quiet diplomacy between America, Britain and the Libyan government."

Libya's WMD was'nt shit.

He is contending, in effect, that if it hadn't been for our military entry into Iraq, Qaddafi might well have continued his development of nuclear weapons.

Libya was never a threat. Qaddafi was too busy with his body gaurds. (totally fine at that.) He just did'nt want to get his freak-on dsturbed by some idiot from Texas.

Saddam, of all people on Earth, must rue the day he acted, or did not act, in time to move in the direction of quiet diplomacy, which by any measurement would have been preferable to his current arrangements.

Saddam has only just begun to fuck Bush up the ass. wait till he releases all the info he and the 30 lawyers have on all the Bush, Cheney, Rummy, wolfowitz and CIA idiots. This is gonna be good . (if they let him live to tell about it.)

that a dramatic show of U.S. military strength was necessary to fortify the U.S. presence in the world. If it is true that Qaddafi came around because of what he had seen in Iraq, that point is carried. It is strengthened further by reasoning that North Korea may have been terminally persuaded not to proceed on an apocalyptic course by reason of the fate of Saddam Hussein.

Right, like the world is not on an apocalyptic course without Saddam and Qaddafi and all of the less of a threat than Bush dictators are.

I do not wish any Ill will to William F. Buckley Jr. , but when he departs this earth..........good riddens. What a fucking idiot.

That is a fact.

[DVD Burner]

and Ripley's belive it or not I actually saw the interview and Wolf Blitzer on the daily show yesterday. (that was really funny.)

[Simply Joel]

"Libya is dismantling its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile programs. This progress came about through quiet diplomacy between America, Britain and the Libyan government."

Libya's WMD was'nt shit.

He is contending, in effect, that if it hadn't been for our military entry into Iraq, Qaddafi might well have continued his development of nuclear weapons.

Libya was never a threat. Qaddafi was too busy with his body gaurds. (totally fine at that.) He just did'nt want to get his freak-on dsturbed by some idiot from Texas.

Saddam, of all people on Earth, must rue the day he acted, or did not act, in time to move in the direction of quiet diplomacy, which by any measurement would have been preferable to his current arrangements.

Saddam has only just begun to fuck Bush up the ass. wait till he releases all the info he and the 30 lawyers have on all the Bush, Cheney, Rummy, wolfowitz and CIA idiots. This is gonna be good . (if they let him live to tell about it.)

that a dramatic show of U.S. military strength was necessary to fortify the U.S. presence in the world. If it is true that Qaddafi came around because of what he had seen in Iraq, that point is carried. It is strengthened further by reasoning that North Korea may have been terminally persuaded not to proceed on an apocalyptic course by reason of the fate of Saddam Hussein.

Right, like the world is not on an apocalyptic course without Saddam and Qaddafi and all of the less of a threat than Bush dictators are.

I do not wish any Ill will to William F. Buckley Jr. , but when he departs this earth..........good riddens. What a fucking idiot.

That is a fact.

I can't bring myself to dignify your post with any more of a response than this.

[Rian Jackson]

Most places to get the hell out to are either the oppressed or the oppressors.

I'm debating between Palestine and Malta for permanent hiding places.

But one is small, the other has a bit too much attention.

Anyway, they might not even let me fly anymore.



Ah, shoot, let's just have a revolution, ok?

Hey.... let's hide in BRC! They'll NEVER find us there! Oh wait....

We keep talking about having autonomous zones, with progressive cities seceding from the US until it's like swiss cheese. Sounds like fun. And we can take their heavy military industrial complex with us and turn it into art projects. and thumb our noses and say 'neener neener neener' and then they nuke us.

[Tancorix]

This is who you should be afraid of. Very afraid. Ignoring the DPRK is a serious mistake.

[Lark]

I disagree that the Iraq war has been "a dramatic show of U.S. military strength." It appears to me that most of the media coverage was not of how successful the US military was in carrying out a focused plan, but of how many creative ways the Iraqi insurgents devised to kill US soldiers and other foreigners. Bush and Co. haven't demonstrated any military prowess worth bragging about; they alienated potential allies, prematurely annouced victory, and have drawn out insurgent violence indefinitely. Now, in a brilliant stroke of diplomacy, they handed "control" over to an ill-prepared, ill-conceived government that is meeting resistance of its own. I honestly think that Qaddafi is smarter than Bush. Qaddafi realized a long time ago that the best way to get ahead in the world in to change his ways, make amends to what extent he could, and ingratiate himself to other world leaders. Libya's turnaround has been going on for years - it's not a sudden reaction to Bush's display of power. Qaddafi has been gradual and methodical, while Bush has gone on a wild goose chase to tie up his father's loose ends. I'm not saying Qaddafi is a great guy, but in comparison to Bush, I'm not sure I would say he's a worse leader.

[Simply Joel]

This is who you should be afraid of. Very afraid. Ignoring the DPRK is a serious mistake.

Our children's children's children had better learn to speak Chinese... because they are the next economic power.

[DVD Burner]

The Iraq war was such a success that it's quiet. so quiet that they've managed to keep car-bombs and mortars from blowing up 5-10 marines a day. Yeah that's right fantastic end of combat war they are selling those that fall sucker to their (Bush Co.) games. I really am starting to have no sympathy for anyone that follows and wants to stick with Bush co. to the end. Yep Sign me up for the revolution.
I'm not afraid of this guy He's just interested in God father movies and Mickey D's.

The ones to be afraid of is Bush Co. and their stupidity. They can be out thunk you know.

(yeah that's right....... Thunk)

[DVD Burner]

This is who you should be afraid of. Very afraid. Ignoring the DPRK is a serious mistake.

Our children's children's children had better learn to speak Chinese... because they are the next economic power.

Hate to tell you this Joel......



THEY SPEAK KOREAN DAMN IT!

[Simply Joel]

Hate to tell you this Joel......
THEY SPEAK KOREAN DAMN IT!

I am fully aware of what language Koreans speak...

What I did in error... was not make a stunning transition from the photo to my thoughts on China as an upcoming economic power...

I still believe China is more of a concern than Korea...

and finally....

I don't believe you, DVDB, hate any moment of which you can tell me something, thereby enlightening the world with your typed banter.

[Simply Joel]

July 14, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New Groupthink
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

The salient news in the Senate Intelligence Committee report is this: all you have been hearing about "he lied to us" and "they cooked the books" is a lot of partisan nonsense.

The 511-page Senate report concluded this: Nobody in the White House or the Pentagon pressured the C.I.A. to change an intelligence analysis to conform to the judgment that the world would be a safer place with the monstrous Saddam overthrown.

Ah, second-guessers say, but what about "groupthink"? Before Gulf War I, the consensus held that Saddam was five to 10 years away from producing a nuclear bomb, but when we went in, we discovered that his W.M.D. were less than six months away.

The group then switched. When Saddam later obstructed U.N. inspectors — forgoing $100 billion in oil sales to keep out prying eyes — groupthinkers logically concluded that the "Butcher of Baghdad" had been hiding weapons. Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat who is privy to secret intelligence, spoke for the group in late 2002: "Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America now."

Today, as Election Day approaches, groupthink has swung back again, to this: Saddam not only had no terror weapons, but he had little or nothing to do with Al Qaeda — therefore, our liberation of Iraq was a waste of lives and money.

Consider the official pressure to get with the latest groupthink: the 9/11 commission staff assured us recently that repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda (including the presence in Baghdad and Kurdistan of the reigning terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), "did not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee chimed in, saying these contacts "did not add up to an established formal relationship." (Italics mine.)

Think about that. Do today's groupthinkers believe that Osama bin Laden would sit down with Saddam in front of the world's cameras to sign a mutual assistance pact, establishing a formal relationship? Terrorists and rogue states don't work that way. Mass killers collaborate informally, without a photo op, even secretly.

But groupthinkers march lock step in election-season judgments. In contrast, we new iconoclasts hope that when the 9/11 commissioners release their findings on the eve of the Democratic convention, they will lay out in detail specific evidence of the Baghdad-terrorist links over the years before brushing it aside as informal. Let readers, not politicians and sound-biters, judge.

And while our Monday morning quarterbacks are dumping all over our intelligence agencies as a pack of inept sheep, we in the non-group might ask, with Juvenal, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who is to watch the watchers?

The Senate Intelligence Committee, with a staff of 30 and an annual budget of $3.5 million, exists to oversee our intelligence services, to note their shortcomings and to demand that they be fixed, on pain of withholding funds.

Where has this Senate committee (and its House counterpart, Porter Goss's "Hipsie") been for the past decade? Did any of its recent members — John Edwards, for one — or any staff members have the wit to ask the C.I.A., with its $40 billion a year to spend, how many American spies we had in Iraq? (Answer: not one.) If the intelligence agencies were as badly run for years as the Senate now says, then Congressional oversight has long been bleary-eyed.

Strange, considering how the nation's interest is riveted on this week's report on our Iraqi intelligence mistakes, how little interest was shown in the Senate Intelligence Committee's extensive report on the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, which cost the lives of 17 American sailors.

The committee's staff director tells me that the 35-page document was disseminated to the intelligence community, but was never made public by Bob Graham, a Democrat who was chairman then. No reporter agitated for a copy until I just did.

If the committee was sharply critical of the C.I.A. in 2002, why wasn't the public alerted to the failures that led to the Cole bombing — and why wasn't action taken to shake up the place then?

Contrariwise, if the senators found nothing worthy of public correction at the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. at the end of the Clinton years, then political posterior-covering motivates their belated need to excoriate the agency they failed to oversee.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[DVD Burner]

I still believe China is more of a concern than Korea...

Why?
China isn’t doing anything to America accept beating them at their own game from time to time and Maybe stupid shit to their own people, but that's out of their own ignorance.
Hey,
let them learn the errors of their ways.
The problem that America has is getting themselves into other peoples shit, getting kicked in the face for doing so. Then they wonder why everyone hates them.

Leave them alone.
But Bush and the followers won’t because they don’t know any better.

[Simply Joel]

The problem that America has is getting themselves into other peoples shit, getting kicked in the face for doing so. Then they wonder why everyone hates them.

Leave them alone.

Am I getting what you are putting down here?


US policy should be one of isolation.

[stuart]

Who can dispositively argue that this analysis is wrong?

hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions.

[cowboyangel]

It made my day to hear that Donald Trump would fire Bush.

[DVD Burner]

Ted Turner For President.

Either that or like he says.......Only women for President.

[Rian Jackson]

Date:12/7/2004




For Immediate Release

On 6 July 2004 Professor Khaled Salah of An-Najah National University, along with son Muhammad, were killed by an Israeli attack unit. The Salah home was later demolished by six helicopter rockets.




A press conference by the wife and daughter of Prof.Khaled Salah

"If I am Palestinian they will kill me...If I am American they will kill me… should I be Jewish to be safe?"


"My name is Diana Khaled Salah, I am 23 years, the only daughter of Khaled Salah. He was more like a friend than a father. Last night, about one o' clock I heard a bomb explosion. I saw Israeli soldiers come into the house. My father rushed into my room. I told him, Dad, it is full of soldiers downstairs."

"Are you kidding?" he said.

"No," I answered.

'He went to look in the kitchen. He rushed back and took me from my bedroom into another room.

"Our house is open, all rooms have windows and the windows were all open. The only room with three walls is the reception room (the living room). We all huddled there, Dad, Mum, Muhammad, Ali and I. We were all in one corner of the room for three hours. Three long hours. We could hear the shooting and bombing, they were using all kinds of weapons: tanks, rockets, helicopters and M-16s. Fire was crossing our house.

"We were so afraid but Dad said an Arabic expression: Let it be the money and not children. It means better to loose money better than souls. I was crying but he tried to cheer me up saying: I didn't know that you are such a coward. Up until that moment we were all OK."

(At this point Mrs. Salah interrupts saying, He knew no fear. He was a believer man. My husband used to read holy Quran and praying. Her voice is more composed than her daughter's.).

Diana continues…

"Minutes later, shooting stopped. It was so quiet. It is over! We thought. But then the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) started shouting over loudspeakers: Open the doors! All people out of the building! Dad went to open the door but he couldn't move it. The lock of the door was damaged from the bombing so the door could not be moved. He went to his bedroom window, held his hands and called in English to the soldiers: We can't open the door. The door is damaged. I am a peaceful man. We all are peaceful people. I have children. My daughter has an American citizenship. I have an American green card, I have no weapons. Only my children are here. Come and open the door. I can't open it. Then in Arabic he shouted: Help... help… somebody come and open the door.

"Suddenly we heard shooting and my Dad's voice stopped. Mum ran in to find my Dad lying on the floor. She called to him, Khaled.. Khaled…what happened? She came back crying and told us, they killed your dad.

"At that same moment my little brother Ali and I were still in that corner. But my other brother, Muhammad, was on the floor. My Mum asked me, what's wrong with Muhammad?

"I said I don't know. I can see him there…I thought maybe he was kidding. We called to him. He didn't answer. Then we saw blood coming out of his mouth. But we could feel him breathing. Mum cried for help and tried to open the door but they started to shoot.

"I shouted, Mum don't open! Please... Please … I have no dad now… I don't want to lose you too. I don't want to be alone.

"When mum called to the soldiers for help they mocked and told her to shut up. We then called the neighbors. We thought maybe someone can open the door. One of our neighbors, a 17 year old boy, came and tried to open the door. The soldiers threatened him but he continued pull at the door. Mum was pushing from inside and the boy was pulling from the outside. Finally the door opened. We begged the Israeli soldiers to let us pull out my dad and brother's bodies, but they refused and threatened to kill us too.

At this point the mother adds:

"We were shocked when we came out of the flat and saw the huge number of soldiers. Almost every two meters there was a sniper. We are not in a war."

Finally Diana ends her testimony saying: "If I am Palestinian they will kill me...If I am an American they will kill me… should I be Jewish to be safe?"

[cowboyangel]

Rian thanks for posting this....multiply this times 10,000 and you still woulnd't have a picture of Israeli brutality in the occupied lands......more folks have to hear these things.....

[Rian Jackson]

Rian thanks for posting this....multiply this times 10,000 and you still woulnd't have a picture of Israeli brutality in the occupied lands......more folks have to hear these things.....

Sure. Mira asked specifically that we pass it on... and i could tell story upon story, but too frequently they become too much. My friend's fiance was used as a human shield a couple of days ago. He was also friends with the professor and his son.

I wrote a lot about normalization while i was over there. It's stunning, you know? That this story, one which probably should make me cry, hardly warrants a notice anymore.... But then comes the day when it's your family. (I'm sure the same is true on the Israeli side, so don't ya'll jump on me about it)

As they say, that's the life.

Maybe in 200 years....

[Lark]

July 16, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Medical Class Warfare
By PAUL KRUGMAN

If past patterns are any guide, about one in three Americans will go without health insurance for some part of the next two years. They won't, for the most part, be the persistently poor, who are usually covered by Medicaid. They will be members of working families with breadwinners who have jobs without medical benefits or who have been laid off.

Many Americans fear the loss of health insurance. Last week I described John Kerry's health plan. What's the Bush administration's plan?

First, it offers a tax credit for low- and middle-income families who don't have health coverage through employers. That credit helps them purchase health insurance. The credit would be $3,000 for a family of four with an income of $25,000; for an income of $40,000, it would fall to $1,714. Last year the average premium for families of four covered by employers was more than $9,000.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the tax credit would reduce the number of uninsured, 44 million people in 2002, by 1.8 million. So it wouldn't help a great majority of families unable to afford insurance. For comparison, an independent assessment of the Kerry plan by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University says that it would reduce the number of uninsured by 26.7 million.

The other main component of the Bush plan involves "health savings accounts." The prescription drug bill the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year had a number of provisions unrelated to Medicare. One of them allowed people who purchase insurance policies with high deductibles, generally at least $2,000 per family, to shelter income from taxes by setting up special accounts for medical expenses. This year, the administration proposed making the premiums linked to these accounts fully tax-deductible.

Although the 2005 budget presents that new deduction under the heading "Helping the uninsured," health savings accounts don't seem to have much to do with the needs of the families likely to find themselves without health insurance. For one thing, such families need more protection than a plan with a $2,000 deductible provides. Furthermore, the tax advantages of health savings accounts would be small for those families most at risk of losing health insurance, who are overwhelmingly in low tax brackets.

But for people whose income puts them in high tax brackets, these accounts are a very good deal; making the premiums deductible turns them into a great deal. In other words, health savings accounts will offer the already affluent, who don't have problems getting health insurance, yet another tax shelter. Meanwhile, health savings accounts, in the view of many experts, will actually increase the number of uninsured.

This perverse effect shouldn't be too surprising: unless they are carefully designed, medical policies often have side consequences that worsen the problems they supposedly address. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that one-third of the retirees who now have drug coverage through their former employers will lose that coverage as a result of the Bush prescription drug bill and will be forced to accept inferior coverage from Medicare.

In the case of health savings accounts, the key side consequence is a reduced incentive for companies to insure their workers. When companies provide group health insurance, healthier employees implicitly subsidize their sicker colleagues. They're willing to do this largely because the employer's contributions to health insurance are a tax-free form of compensation, but only if the same plan is offered to all employees.

Tax-free health savings accounts and premiums would provide healthier and wealthier employees an incentive to opt out, accepting higher paychecks instead, and would lead to higher insurance premiums for those who remain in traditional plans. This would cause some companies to stop providing health insurance, or raise employee contributions to a level some workers can't afford.

The difference couldn't be starker. Mr. Kerry offers a health care plan that would extend coverage to most of those now uninsured, paid for by rolling back tax cuts for those with incomes over $200,000. President Bush offers a tax credit that would extend coverage to fewer than 5 percent of the uninsured, plus a new tax break for the affluent that would actually increase the number of uninsured. As I said last week, I don't see how Mr. Bush can win this debate.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

Rian thanks for posting this....multiply this times 10,000 and you still woulnd't have a picture of Israeli brutality in the occupied lands......more folks have to hear these things.....

how about we place the number of Israelis killed by homicide/suicide bombers alongside your suggestion... then we would get a true accounting how stupid the conflict has been.... ignoring Israeli deaths due to terrorism undercuts your argument for a Palestinian state... IMHO.

have a nice terror-free weekend.

[DVD Burner]

Rian thanks for posting this....multiply this times 10,000 and you still woulnd't have a picture of Israeli brutality in the occupied lands......more folks have to hear these things.....

how about we place the number of Israelis killed by homicide/suicide bombers alongside your suggestion... then we would get a true accounting how stupid the conflict has been.... ignoring Israeli deaths due to terrorism undercuts your argument for a Palestinian state... IMHO.

have a nice terror-free weekend.

No one is ignoring the 1000 or few thousand Israelis killed by homicide/suicide bombers. It's Just that the 10's of thousands of Palistinians killed by Israelis needs to be acknowledged and Israelis need to acknowledge just how many 10's of thousand Palistinians they have killed. once they realize what they are doing then they can start to begin to understand why the Palistinians and other Arabs are fighting the way that they are.

[Rian Jackson]

Rian thanks for posting this....multiply this times 10,000 and you still woulnd't have a picture of Israeli brutality in the occupied lands......more folks have to hear these things.....

how about we place the number of Israelis killed by homicide/suicide bombers alongside your suggestion... then we would get a true accounting how stupid the conflict has been.... ignoring Israeli deaths due to terrorism undercuts your argument for a Palestinian state... IMHO.

have a nice terror-free weekend.

Number of Israelis is under 100. Number of Palestinians is over 3,000. This is only during this latest Intifada, which has seen the highest ever number of Israeli deaths at Palestinian hands ever.

I will find a recent source for you which cites exact numbers.

This, of course, does not include punitive house demolitions (thousands of palestinian homes, no Israeli homes) economic strangulation (Israelis have lost some vital tourist trade, but the Palestinian economy is in what has been called 'complete collapse' confiscated lands (Palestinians haven't forced Israelis off of any land, and whether you say the Palestinians or Israelis have the ultimate right to the area recognised as Israel, all of it has been taken from Palestinians) water rights (many Palestinians have water shortages because the water is siphoned off for Israeli gardens and pools) and wounded, for which i have no statistics but you bet your balls there is no comparison. I can find you stats from the UPMRC or red Crescent that track injuries during the first days and months of the Intifada. I think they eventually stopped because there were so many.

Of course, your only possible response to this must be 'it's not really about the numbers, is it?' I would agree. But i've already posted at length on that one.

[Rian Jackson]

You may find this aljazeera article from today quite interesting. It includes:
1)the epidemic of suicides the army has seen (it now exceeds deaths in military procedures)
2) refusenik reasoning, and
3) the death toll you requested.

before you squak, Aljazeera is actually regarded in some parts of the Arab world as giving too much time to the Western powers as a result of their habit of giving full interview time to both sides.
__________________________________________
For the first time, suicide has become the leading cause of death in the Israeli armed forces, according to an Israeli newspaper report."They are ordered to do things that go against their moral values … and when they do – because, after all, a good soldier is one who obeys orders, not one who thinks - they are left with this terrible burden which evolves into depression and eventually leads to suicide."

Last month, a number of former conscripts who had just finished their army service in the southern West Bank town of Hebron, described vividly the manner in which they mistreated and humiliated Palestinian civilians.

The group set up a photo exhibition opposite the Defence Ministry complex in Tel Aviv, featuring graphic pictures of ordinary Palestinians being tormented, often in a sadistic manner, by occupation soldiers.

The Israeli army tried unsuccessfully to prevent the exhibition on the grounds that it tarnished its image and undermined "the war on terror".

Refuseniks

In another incident, which took place earlier this week, an army reserve soldier joined the small but growing list of so-called refuseniks opposed to the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In a letter to his local recruitment officer explaining his reasons for disobeying orders to join his unit in the West Bank, Chaim Feldman accused the Israeli army of committing manifestly criminal acts against innocent Palestinians.

"My letter to you is short and concise. I have no intention of wearing the uniform of this organisation known as the Israeli Defence Forces which fires artillery shells on civilian crowds, including children and old people. I see no reason why I should join this organisation."

The "conscientious objector" described the IDF as an organisation that defends "fascist settlers breaking the law and uprooting and burning olive trees".

Feldman is likely to be tried and imprisoned for disobeying orders and desertion.

Mounting toll

To be sure, a majority of Israelis regard the refuseniks and their supporters as "traitors" and "Hamas lovers".

None the less, a growing and increasingly vocal minority of Israeli intellectuals and citizens back them, arguing that "conscientious objectors" in the armed forces represent the "the Jewish people's true moral ideal" of "not doing unto others what one wouldn't others to do unto you".

Since the outbreak of the present intifada in September 2000, the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish settlers have killed more than 3400 Palestinians, a majority of them innocent civilians, including some 640 children and minors.

Thousands of others have been injured, many of them disabled for life.

During the same period, as many 950 Israeli soldiers, settlers and civilians have been killed by armed Palestinian fighters, including human bombers.


Quoting statistics from Israeli army's rehabilitation division, the Hebrew daily Maariv said that in 2003, the number of Israeli soldiers who committed suicide was significantly higher than those killed during military incursions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A total of 43 Israeli soldiers took their own lives last year compared to 30 soldiers killed in intifada-related hostilities, said the report.

This represents a 30% increase in the number of suicides over the 2002 figure of 31.

Additionally, in 2003, 32 Israeli soldiers died of various illnesses, 27 were killed in traffic accidents or during vacation and 10 died in traffic accidents while on duty.

Nine soldiers were killed during training and practice exercises and in course of military operations. A further eight soldiers died due to other reasons.

This year's suicide figure is just as disturbing. The newspaper said 15 Israeli soldiers have killed themselves in the first six months of 2004.

Army reaction

Embarrassed by the report, the Israeli Ministry of Defence refused to comment on its content. A spokesperson said she "knew nothing of the report", adding the ministry "had nothing to do with it".

The publication of the Maariv report appears to have taken the Israeli military by surprise. An army spokesman said the fatality figures may have been leaked by unauthorised sources within the army or the Ministry of Defence.

He said the army is deliberating about the revelations.

The Israeli army denies as a matter of course any connection between army "excesses" in the occupied territories and the phenomenon of suicides among soldiers.

Army sources routinely cite more mundane reasons such as emotional crises, bullying and persecution by superiors, and psychological depression.

However, it is widely believed that a significant number of the suicide cases are connected to soldiers' traumatic experiences in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

'Terrible burden'

An Israeli peace activist, who spoke to Aljazeera.net on condition of anonymity, said she believed many of the soldiers who went on to take their own lives, simply couldn't live with the moral burden of causing avoidable and unjustified deaths in the occupied Palestinian territories.

[robbidobbs]

Wouldn't it be better (and easier to read) if we all shared our political articles as links rather than post verbatum?

Here's a good one about one guy getting off the hampster wheel...

http://www.gdtimes.com/06_10_04/a-e/ae.html/view