just my 2¢

[belle]

Obama needs to bail out of Afghanistan, at the same time, cut the Israilis off at the shoelaces.

[oneinsanecane]

I understand your view on Afghanistan, but if you look at history every country that turns its back on Israel falls shortly thereafter.

[belle]

I understand your view on Afghanistan, but if you look at history every country that turns its back on Israel falls shortly thereafter.

history being since 1949. who, exactly?

[RandysRight]

I understand your view on Afghanistan, but if you look at history every country that turns its back on Israel falls shortly thereafter.

history being since 1949. who, exactly?

Since Moses

[belle]

I understand your view on Afghanistan, but if you look at history every country that turns its back on Israel falls shortly thereafter.

history being since 1949. who, exactly?

Since Moses

well, give or take 2000 years, even so. but Israel was established in 1949, 60 years ago, and has one main ally, the USA.

as Israel inflicted infinite pain on the Palestinian people, we have been subject to attack. do the math.

[oneinsanecane]

I am with Randy on this one, with Moses.

[belle]

I am with Randy on this one, with Moses.

fair enough. moses never crossed into Israel, so that is pretty much nonsense.

given his followers did, they left around 77AD. this is a migratory culture, mind you. they were gone for 2000 years.

we have been a country for 200 years.

they were GONE for 2000 years.

then, 2000 years after the diaspora, for political reasons Israel was given prime waterfront on the Mediterranean, while the occupants of 2000 years are thrown out. boosted. ejected.

and in the 60 years since, they have been subjected to Genocide, torture, and untold other ills.

According to relatives, Balawi's family came to Jordan from present day Israel, and many of his close relatives were middle class and well educated. His father, a pharmacist, runs two pharmacies in Zarqa.

he was a Doctor, who worked with the people of the West Bank. Google his history.

we need to get out.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60451U20100105

[belle]

"The agency is facing criticism for security lapses that allowed the Jordanian to detonate an explosives belt in the middle of Forward Operating Base Chapman. He apparently was not checked at the entrance of the base, American intelligence officials have acknowledged.

At the same time, few criticized the agency’s impulse to chase any credible lead about the locations of Al Qaeda’s top leaders.

“This is the C.I.A’s top priority, and when I was in Afghanistan, if any intelligence came about the possible whereabouts of Zawahri or bin Laden, you dropped everything to run it to ground,” said a former senior C.I.A. officer. “Everyone would have wanted to be on the team that caught Zawahri. That’s the kind of thing that makes careers.”

The White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.

The failed operation with the Jordanian agent comes amid new criticism about the quality of American intelligence collection in Afghanistan.

On Monday, the top American military intelligence officer in Afghanistan published a report calling the information gathered in the country “only marginally relevant” to counterinsurgency efforts and concluding that little of the information gathered in the field is useful for analysts working in Washington and Kabul.

“The problem is that these analysts — the core of them bright, enthusiastic and hungry — are starved for information from the field, so starved, in fact, that many say their jobs feel more like fortune-telling than serious detective work,” concludes the report, written partly by Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

General Flynn reserved the bulk of his criticism for military intelligence officers. However, the report raises overall questions about the quality of the intelligence collection and analysis in Afghanistan by America’s military and civilian spy agencies.

The general has ordered an overhaul to the American military’s intelligence apparatus in the country. For its part, the C.I.A. is expanding its network of remote firebases in the southern and eastern parts of the country and expects to bolster its ranks in Afghanistan by 25 percent over the next 18 months."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/world/06intel.html

Balawi was recruited by Jordanian intelligence to try to infiltrate al Qaeda and the Taliban in large part because of his past association with Islamists, a former intelligence official said, citing Balawi's previous involvement in a pro-al Qaeda websites and blogs.

U.S. and Jordanian spy agencies thought that Balawi had been successfully "de-radicalized," and he was allowed to enter the CIA base without security checks because he had produced information about al Qaeda without incident for months, the former official said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60451U20100105

it goes on and on. these guys are clueless.

[RJLeeb]

Putting religious issues aside, it is my understanding that Israel was an important ally during the Cold War. 

Some of that information (the why's and what for's) is coming to light now, but one thing is for sure.  Our relationship with Israel is changing.  Depending on who you ask, the first Bush Admin was either a mediocre ally of Israel or indifferent.

This is an interesting article from 1990 that talks about the difference between the Reagan and elder Bush Admins.
http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp97.htm

Granted, I think 9/11 has changed our relationship with Israel.  But I think that Israel is starting to realize that their dependency on the U.S. is a double edged sword. 

Though GWB did say at one point that "Israel has a right to defend itself", he also put great pressure on Israel not to do anything.  To many Israelis, GWB seemed to endorse one policy in public but urge another policy be adopted behind closed doors.

Obama's Admin seems to have a similar policy to Bush (GW).

From: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124649366875483207.html
At the suggestion of Mr. Obama's Jewish supporters -- including me -- the candidate visited the beleaguered town of Sderot, which had borne the brunt of thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas. Standing in front of the rocket shells, Mr. Obama declared: "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." This heartfelt statement sealed the deal for many supporters of Israel.

Now, some of them apparently have voters' remorse. According to Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, "President Obama's strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes." I hear the same thing from rank-and-file supporters of Israel who voted for Mr. Obama.

I think our policy toward Israel has been slowly changing since the end of the Cold War.  I don't think the WOT has really had as much influence on the relationship as originally thought.

As I said before, Israel's dependency on us also happens to be much of what keeps them in check.  There are pros and cons to this (cons would include the yearly 3 billion dollar price tag), but there it is.  Just thought I'd throw that out there for consideration.

[oneinsanecane]

I look at Israel as a people, not so much as a country. There history goes back alot further than 1949.

[srvfan]

Obama needs to bail out of Afghanistan, at the same time, cut the Israilis off at the shoelaces.

along with the U.N., Korea, Phillipines, the European military bases, and all the other foreign aid

right?

[Chill]

A group of Israeli army officers has cancelled a visit to Britain because London was unable to guarantee they would not be arrested for alleged war crimes under universal jurisdiction provisions, Israeli officials said yesterday.

Four officers, including a major, a lieutenant colonel and a colonel had been due to visit last week at the invitation of the British Army.

An Israeli official declined to specify the purpose of the visit but said that Israeli officers are invited to Britain "to assist in defensive technology in the military arena".

The incident has fuelled Israeli anger at the British Government for not yet following through on promised changes to the law so that Israeli officers and officials do not run the risk of arrest on UK soil. There have been several incidents in which visiting Israelis have been vulnerable to arrest.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/israeli-army-officers-fear-arrest-in-uk-1858995.html

[belle]

religion has nothing to do with it. it is a political situation, and our people are being attacked because of it. the brutal occupation of the West Bank, and military action against Gaza led directly to the CIA deaths in Khost, for example.

Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley are members of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Rowley, a FBI special agent for almost 24 years, was legal counsel to the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. She came to national attention in June 2002, when she testified before Congress about serious lapses before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. She now writes and speaks on ethical decision-making and on balancing civil liberties with the need for effective investigation.

McGovern, a former Army infantry/intelligence officer, and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his CIA career he served under nine Directors of Central Intelligence and in all four of the CIA’s chief directorates.     

"A  more helpful answer would address the question as to how we might best minimize their prospects for success. And to do this, sorry to say, there is no getting around the necessity to address the root causes of terrorism or, in the vernacular, “why they hate us.”
 
If we don’t go beyond self-exculpatory sloganeering in attempting to answer that key question, any “counter terrorism apparatus” is doomed to failure. Honest appraisals would tread on delicate territory, but any intelligence agency worth its salt must be willing/able to address it.
 
Delicate? Take, for example, what Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the “mastermind” of 9/11, said was his main motive. Here’s what the 9/11 Commission Report wrote on page 147. You will not find it reported in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM):
 
“By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed…from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”
 
http://www.truthout.org/1050912

[srvfan]

that's why we should consider ending all foreign aid, for everyone we help someone else gets pissed at us whether it's "interfering" in the israeli/palestine situation or helping one group while ignoring another, i.e. bosnia instead of darfur

the US gov't shouldn't be a charitable organization, if individual citizens or groups wish to financially support Israel then they should be able to, if they would prefer to aid refugees in Darfur then they should be able to.

Either help them all, which is impossible and impractical or help none

and get out of the U.N. while we're at it

[RJLeeb]

Belle,

I see the point you are making about KSM, but don't you think that the radicals would find other reasons to oppose the U.S.?  Some radicals see the U.S. as an impediment to the world's conversion to Islam.  That would remain true no matter what our foreign policy is...so long as we remain a predominantly Christian nation.

I don't think it is fair to say religion has nothing to do with it.  Religion has a lot to do with it because some of the radicals are using religion to compel others to do their bidding for some political end.  So I'd say it is a bit of both.  Note that I said radicals...not all Muslims.  

Did you happen to catch that thing on NatGeo last night called Inside the Koran?  Its main focus was that of women's rights but it also addressed how some of the different interpretations of the Koran.  It was all stuff I've already read about, but I thought they did a pretty good job.

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