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the G-man said:
The need of the left to consult with "our allies" on matters of our own security seems to be steeped in some sort of assumption that Europe is intellectually and/or morally superior.

But is it?

A new poll surveyed residents of nine European countries--Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain--about their attitudes toward Jews. Among the findings:


  • 35% said Jews "should stop playing the victim because of the Holocaust and persecution of 50 years ago."
  • 16.1% said it "would be better if the state of Israel did not exist and the Palestinians got their land back."
  • 40% think Jews have a "particular relationship with money."


And the poll shows that Europeans aren't exactly the experts on world affairs that the liberals want us to think:

    The people polled were asked four questions about the Middle East conflict. Nearly one-third proved clueless. Only 6.2 per cent gave correct answers.


In other words, our friends on the left want us to "seek permission" from a group that, at best, represents a constituency with no moral or intellectual superiority to our own and, at worst, is a bunch of ignorant racists.

Thanks, but no thanks.



I wonder how the same poll would run in relation to black people in the US? Or Aborigines or Asians in Australia, or Asians in Canada, for that matter.

I'm pro-Israel and pro-Zionist, but I think Israel should be subject to UN economic sanctions for what they're doing. And I also think Israel should stop playing the victim of the Holocaust (not Jews), because Israel uses it as an excuse to do what it wishes against international criticism. So you can drop me in the 35%, too.

You can be pro-Jewish, and pro-Israel, but against the anti-Palestinian policies of Israel. You can even be Jewish and against Israel's occupation of Palestine.

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Bush seems to have lied. The fact that we have not found WMD has nothing to do with it. First, the Aluminium tubes for uranium enrichment. But they can't be used for that, they are for rockets. And it seems GWB's people knew this. Second is the attempt to buy Uranium from Nigeria by Iraq. It was a total sham, and it seems to have been known as a sham by Cheney *a year* before GWB mentioned it in the State of the Union. Lastly was Powell's (I think it was him) comment about unmanned arial vehicles reaching American soil. This one is a farce of the highest order. Does Saddam have space warping technology now? These things couldn't get to Isreal easily, let alone the US.

All of this is part of a plan of misinformation, designed to scare the hell out of the American people, it seems. They are very serious charges, and unless the Administration is holding back some exhonerating evidence, they seem to be in trouble.

This leads to the second problem that the administration has, and it has nothing to do with a lack of WMD, either. That is the case for *why* we needed to invade Iraq today, right now, can't wait a second. Why couldn't we allow more time for inspections? What was the rationale for immediate threat? Saddam has been sitting there for 12 years in violation of UN mandates, in possession of WMD, etc. So why do we have to go now? The rhetoric, of course, was that Saddam was about to attack us. And that he was linked to al Qaeda.




I could not have put it better myself.

Knee-jerk Republican / Bushite defence is concerned with retrospective changes to the rationale for invasion.

Suddenly the Republicans are deeply concerned with human rights in Iraq. Oh-ho, that's why we invaded!

Absolute wank. Bush said Saddam was an immmediate threat because of WMDs. That's why Iraq was invaded. It did not have WMDs. Either Bush was lying, or most of the US intelligence agency heads shuld be sacked (yeah yeah, blame the Brits, but were was the corroborating evidence that even newspaper reports need before they publish a story, let alone politicians need to start a war?)

And if you harbour any hopes that those WMDs are out there waiting to be found, I'm sure all the chemicals, pumped by interrogators, in Saddam's body right now would have extracted the truth of their location from him, and we'd know about it by now because soldiers and cameras would be there digging them up.

The invasion of Iraq has produced some great things. Iraq has a chance of being a democratically elected country (even if the occupation is a shoddy affair). Libya has decided to join the human race, and Sudan has stopped its civil war (both Libya and Sudan were shit scared they'd be next). Iran is being nice for the first time in years. Even Syria is trying to behave. The invasion is a big stick to coerce such regimes into line.

But lets be honest about it. Iraq wasn't invaded because they were hundreds of thousands dead at the hands of Saddam's torturers. No one in Washington gave a shit about the dead and tortured, and never have.

Saddam was deposed either because there was a monumental fuck up on intelligence on WMDs, or because the Bush administration decided the Saudis couldn't be counted on after 9/11 (most of the hijackers were Saudis) and it would be good to secure strategic oil interests in the region.

Pimping my site, again.

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