Posted on 03/03/2008 10:30:39 AM PST by Bahbah
cool - Thank you.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, our nation has fought a global war against violent extremists who use terrorism as their weapon of choice, and who seek to destroy our free way of life. Our enemies seek weapons of mass destruction and, if they are successful, will likely attempt to use them in their conflict with free people everywhere. Currently, the struggle is centered in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we will need to be prepared and arranged to successfully defend our nation and its interests around the globe for years to come. DOD
Our enemies include all the Muslims who dream of knocking Western Civilization off its perch atop humanity’s dung heap. Islam is fractured into any number of sects, tribes and ethnic groups, but the dream of destroying us cuts across all the fault lines. Islamic terrorists are merely the tip of a very large spear.
J. Peter Mulhern, the American Thinker, September 18
The determination behind that fight is real, the hatred is real, and the excuses for doing this are very real in the minds of those who have decided to walk that path. We can respond in two ways: Try to ignore or negotiate with people who do not want to negotiate in good faith, because what they want is our destruction, or to stand up against the darkness of those who see all of us, our way of life, our culture and our aspirations as something worth eliminating.
Either: “And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Or: “With vigilance, determination, courage, we will defeat the enemies of freedom, and we will leave behind a more peaceful world for our children and our grandchildren.” GW Bush.
Here’s where I will post news and info about the Long War. Let me know if you’re interested. Please forgive any double pings.
I am now going to look for the ping list (which I have somehow misplaced) to alert folks to the new thread.
Pinging you to the start of a new thread. Thread V had gotten quite long and we think things may be heating up, particularly in the Lebanon/Israel/Syria area.
Please let me know if you want on or off this ping list.
Thanks for the pingeroonie, Ms B!
Yes...things seem to be heating up over there.
You are quite welcome, sofa. The next 6 weeks or so could be interesting.
It’s amazing to me that the media is all but ignoring this. It’s all Barak/ Hillary all the time.
sofa, I truly believe that they want to keep the public as much in the dark as possible about how dangerous a world this really is.
Hey good lookin! Whatcha got cookin? (given the season where I live, Im making Chicken soup ;-)
Missed seeing the FRiends on the Levin thread...but was out of town for a bit. It is always nice to see FRIends on the old home thread though...THANKS BAHBAH!!! I knew we would all be meeting here again soon....perhaps this time they will get it done RIGHT!
No fear - Rice is here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rice on rescue mission in Mideast
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer
2 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on a rescue mission this week, trying to keep Palestinians and Israelis talking despite open warfare between the two sides that engulfed the Gaza Strip.
Although Israeli troops pulled out of Gaza early Monday, Palestinian leaders exited peace talks, at least temporarily, after Israel launched a major offensive against militant Palestinians who use the tiny Gaza territory controlled by the militant Hamas movement to fire rockets into Israel.
The White House blamed Hamas for causing the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians that has killed more than 100 Palestinians, roughly half of them civilians. One Israeli civilian was killed by a Hamas rocket, and two Israeli soldiers were killed.
“The Palestinians have a choice to make,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for President Bush’s National Security Council. He said it’s a choice between terrorism or a political solution that leads to a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel.
The Israeli offensive has drawn a chorus of international condemnation, with the EU, Turkey and U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon accusing Israel of using excessive force. But Johndroe would not say if the United States thought Israel was using excessive force.
“We obviously don’t want innocent civilians to lose their life,” he said. “But I think that started with these rockets that have been fired from Gaza into Israel recently, killing and injuring Israeli citizens in some of their bigger cities.”
The crisis has revealed the limitations of the Bush administration’s strategy to focus peace efforts on the U.S.-backed West Bank government while cutting off the militant government in Gaza. It also recalls Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. If the Israeli government chooses to re-enter Gaza it could put the United States in the middle of another conflict.
Gaza, and the Palestinian leadership split that underlies the crisis, is the largest potential deal-killer for Bush’s goal to sign a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian before he leaves office next January.
Thus, new urgency has been infused in Rice’s previously scheduled trip to Egypt, the Palestinian territories and Israel.
At Rice’s first stop Tuesday in Egypt, Gaza will be her main topic of conversation, according to deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey, who said the secretary would raise with Egyptian officials both the humanitarian needs of Gazans and continued smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Gaza.
Israel’s heavy military response in Gaza has inflamed anger across the Middle East and made it difficult for moderate U.S. allies in the region, principally Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to offer strong public support for the U.S.-backed peace process.
Rice spoke on Sunday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about his decision to suspend talks because of the violence, Casey said.
“We think it’s important that negotiations do resume as quickly as possible, and we believe it’s still possible for the parties to be able to achieve the basic agreement that they laid out for themselves as a goal at Annapolis,” he said.
Rice is to see Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank on Tuesday and then separately with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni during her two-day stop. There were no plans to try to bring the Israeli and Palestinian leaders together, but Rice will deliver messages between the camps as well as press the U.S. position that violence should end and talking resume.
Abbas has ruled from the West Bank since his Hamas rivals seized control of Gaza last June. But the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza has threatened to unleash a backlash against him in the West Bank. Israel, meanwhile, is under heavy internal pressure to reinvade and disarm the territory it abandoned three years ago as a step toward political accommodation with the Palestinians.
Peace talks Bush inaugurated with presidential fanfare in Annapolis, Md., last fall, have produced no public sign of a breakthrough despite weeks of regular meetings between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators.
Palestinian politicians were sounding discouraged, and Israeli leaders were tempering their optimism, even before the latest violence. U.S. officials have been lowering expectations behind the scenes that there will be the sort of detailed solution that Bush’s phrase “signed peace treaty” implies.
Bush used that wording during an upbeat visit to Israel and the West Bank in January. Before and since, other U.S. officials have used more cautious language and say they do not expect a final deal and full Palestinian statehood on Bush’s watch.
U.S. officials have told Arab and other diplomats that although the talks are supposed to confront the hardest issues in the six-decade conflict that any peace agreement could be a modest statement that leaves most questions open as a new U.S. administration takes over, Arab Mideast diplomats said last week.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with U.S. officials, two diplomats with knowledge of the process said that unless the Bush administration provides its own draft for a peace deal, the two sides are unlikely to commit to more than a vague outline this year.
That is assuming the talks resume, and that both Palestinian and Israeli leaders can buck internal political pressure against the kind of even minor concessions they would need to make for a gateway deal.
“There’s a good deal of uncertainty about what the American objective actually is,” said Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who heads the Saban Center, a Mideast think tank affiliated with the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s confusing and problematic. The United States puts out this highly symbolic and ambitious goal,” that looks increasingly out of reach, Indyk said.
With all due respect to POTUS, His selection of Rice to Foggy Bottom, in my estimation, has proved to be a DISASTER!
She is better suited to dealing with the NFL. THAT is the ONLY “football” she should have anything to do with whatsoever...
I DREAM of a day when they will send Bolton in there to “lick ass and take names” But alas.....with the vast liberal infestation of Foggy Bottom, my dream will remain just that......a dream.
lick? SORRY I meant KICK!!!!!!!!!!! TYPO from HELL!!!! LOL (sorry all—it truly was an accident)
Show me one of these thinkpieces about our so-called Mideast Peace Policy, and I can’t shake this mental image of Condy Rice in armor, riding an old, broken down horse and looking to tilt at yet another windmill......
IMO, this won't happen until we have, at least, two cities destroyed with two different islamic groups claiming reponsibility.
I could be wrong, it may only take one city being destroyed.
Gee, Johndroe, ya think!
You are right, Joe.
I hope it's not too interesting...
Well, I'm sure you've heard the old Chinese blessing/curse, "May you live in interesting times."
Only if it's the good guys thoroughly thrashing the bad guys.
Can you believe, Allegra, there are still people back here saying that Iraq is a failure and it's time to get out? Facts be damned, Iraqis be damned.
I see that little runt from Iran has been running aroung your area telling people that they don't like the Americans and want them gone. I think I know which ones want us to leave.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.