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clueless .....

‘In the long run, we're not safer because we're still operating on the assumption that we're hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world.

There's our military presence in Islamic countries, the perception that we control the Muslim world’s oil production, our support for Israel and for countries that oppress Muslims such as China, Russia, and India, and our own support for Arab tyrannies.

The deal we made with Qadaffi in Libya looks like hypocrisy: we'll make peace with a brutal dictator if it gets us oil.

President Bush is right when he says all people aspire to freedom but he doesn't recognize that people have different definitions of democracy. Publicly promoting democracy while supporting tyranny may be the most damaging thing we do. From the standpoint of democracy, Saudi Arabia looks much worse than Iran. We use the term “Islamofascism” - but we're supporting it in Saudi Arabia, with Mubarak in Egypt, and even Jordan is a police state.

We don't have a strategy because we don't have a clue about what motivates our enemies.’

Six Questions For Michael Scheuer On National Security

to fascist friends...

From Al Jazeera

US support for Israel condemned

Wednesday 23 August 2006, 22:53 Makka Time, 19:53 GMT
A Kuwaiti company has taken out a [http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8A53DA1A-FC22-4ADA-ACE1-EB8F95AA64A7.htm|full page advertisement] in an American newspaper criticising US support for Israel in the war with Hezbollah.
Photographs of wounded and crying children - identified as Lebanese casualties "from the Israeli bombing August 2006" - covered most of Wednesday's advertisement by the Al Kharafi Group.
"We think there is a misunderstanding in determining who deserves to be accused of being a Fascist," said the text addressing George Bush, the US president.
Bush recently used the word "fascists" to describe Muslim terror suspects.
"We are telling President Bush, with all due respect ..., look what is happening to the poor children in Lebanon," said Nasser al-Kharafi, president of the group that is one of the largest contractors in the Arab world.

read more at al Jazeera

Bringing troops home

From the Washington Post
A Plan to Hold Iraq Together

By Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Thursday, August 24, 2006; Page A21

Four months ago, in an opinion piece with Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, I laid out a detailed plan to keep Iraq together, protect America's interests and bring our troops home. Many experts here and in Iraq embraced our ideas. Since then, circumstances in Iraq have made the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/23/AR2006082301419.html|plan] even more on target -- and urgent -- than when we first proposed it.
The new, central reality in Iraq is that violence between Shiites and Sunnis has surpassed the insurgency and foreign terrorists as the main security threat. Our leading civilian and military experts on Iraq -- Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gens. George Casey, Peter Pace and John Abizaid -- have all acknowledged that fact.
...
At best, the course we're on has no end in sight. At worst, it leads to a terrible civil war and possibly a regional war. This plan offers a way to bring our troops home, protect our security interests and preserve Iraq as a unified country. Those who reject this plan out of hand must answer one simple question: What is your alternative?

read more at the Washington Post
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Gus: A sensible plan to mop up the mess our little Bonsai has made in Iraq, but the tantrum-kid does not like other people fixing the things he breaks nor does he like people wipe the poo-dirt he's been fingering on the walls of the world... See what tantrum's coming next? The limited nuclear strike? Who knows, the thing for sure is that the US president-infant wants to out-tantrum all the other kids on the block...