Before I start, an old Navy buddy sent me the following image with the following statement: Don't know why but I thought of you when I saw this. HA!
Thanks a lot, buddy!
He says that this is the new Border Patrol uniform.
Martha Ezzard is one of the many liberals on the editorial staff of the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation. She says she was once a Republican, but is now a Dimocrat because the Republicans want to force women to have babies and they also want to destroy the environment. Martha, on the other hand, only wants to destroy Israel. In Tuesday's AJC, she penned this column.
Middle East peace calls for bold steps
President Bush's motives in Iraq may be suspect, but you have to give him this: Once he decided that toppling Saddam Hussein was the goal, he went after the dictator with an almost ferocious single-mindedness. He was never deterred nor even distracted.
Yep! No blowjobs in the Oval Office like our former First Scumbag.
If the president now decides to push through his Middle East road map to peace, he might accomplish something far more significant to our national security.
And that would be... ?
If he is to succeed, though, he will have to take two steps he hasn't been willing to take: He must deal firmly with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to demand that Israel retreat from recent settlements in Palestinian territories; and he must tell the Defense Department to butt out of diplomacy in the Middle East.
Hmmmm. There seems to be sumpin' missing here. What about the Palestinians? Don't they have to promise to do sumpin'? Maybe she'll bring that up later.
Why would Bush make such a dramatic turn? He is clearly more comfortable with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his cadre of pro-Sharon hawks than he is with Secretary of State Colin Powell and his moderate advisers. Rumsfeld now has two strikes against him, though: His department's military intelligence on weapons of mass destruction hasn't panned out,
Yep! Those pesky WMD's. Y'know, the ones that Saddam had over four years to hide. Let's not talk about all the horrors we have already discovered. But, remember, Martha is a liberal and as such the glass is always half empty.
and his installation of retired Lt. Gen, Jay Garner as civil administrator in Iraq has been such a disaster that the entire team is being replaced. The State Department's Paul Bremer III, a counterterrorism veteran, replaces Garner this week.
A disaster? It's not like they were there for a whole year. Geez Martha! Just because the war only took three weeks do you expect us to rebuild Iraq in three weeks? Get a grip!
Though some Defense Department advisers -- namely Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle -- are blind to it, American success in forging a free postwar Iraq is directly related to whether Bush comes through on his commitment to help create a Palestinian state. America's Arab enemies have convinced even moderates in the region that Bush and Sharon speak with one voice.
An Arab moderate. Is that an oxymoron? No Martha, you're missing what is going on here. We are tired of the bullshit from the Palestinians that Israel has to make all the concessions and they get to make promises that they never keep. Ya want an example? Howza 'bout Article 19 of the PLO Charter.
Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right to self-determination.
As part of the Oslo Accords, Article 19 was supposed to be removed and the Palestinians were supposed to recognize Israel's right to exist. Never happened.
The peace plan Bush is pushing offers security to Israel that Sharon's policies have failed to realize. Israeli retribution for Palestinian suicide bombings has only inspired more suicide bombers. The question, of course, is whether Bush is willing to spend some of the political capital he has amassed at home with the pro-Israel lobby, now chummy with the GOP's Christian Right.
Y'see in Martha's world, if the Israeli's do nothing about the suicide bombings, they will magically stop. This only occurs in Magical Liberal Land. And the Israelis are not so much retaliating, as they are trying to take out the terrorist infrastructure. Unlike the Palestinians, the Israeli's are not trying to kill women, children, and the elderly. In many cases, by trying to prevent harm to civilians, they have put themselves in harm's way.
It may be that if the additional 2,000 American experts sent to Iraq to uncover weapons of mass destruction don't come up with anything, Bush will be eager to shift the focus to the peace process. Thanks to a group of former CIA agents (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), the credibility of the information on weapons of mass destruction that Powell presented to the United Nations as the basis for going to war is coming under increasing scrutiny.
The everchanging liberal argument. First, Iraq would be a quagmire with lots of American casualties. Then, it was many civilian casualties. Now, it's WMD's. If we do find WMD's, which I believe we will, it will be back to "Where's Osama?" If we do not find WMD's the war was still justified. By cutting off economic support for the Palestinian terrorists, maybe the Palestinians will finally realize that their goal of the obliteration of Israel cannot be attained and they will finally negotiate in good faith.
What Martha and the other liberals can't get through their heads is that Arafat walked away from the best deal the Palestinians will ever get and started the current uprising. It's not the Israelis who need to be leaned on. It's the Palestinians. By taking out Iraq, I'm hoping that Bush has showed the Arab world that Israel is here to stay and it's time to quit fucking around and make peace. They cannot use the oil weapon against us, because we have Iraq and its oil. And to people like Jay Bookman of the AJC who keep writing about the imaginary American Empire, when we do fix the problems in the Middle East, if we can, we'll leave Iraq to the Iraqis and go home, unless we elect a Dimocrat president who will promptly fuck up everything.
The ex-agents, who claim the CIA's checks on information sources were ignored by Rumsfeld and Co., sent letters to key members of Congress. And Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has written to the White House to demand answers; he appears ready to call for a congressional investigation to uncover the origin of the possibly false intelligence.
Yeah. Let's get Henry Waxman involved. I wonder if he will be able to tear himself away from his investigation of Bush's trip to the Abraham Lincoln? And Henry, keep your goddam head down! I'm sick of looking up your fucking nose!
Recently, news leaked out that even the scouring of Taji produced nothing suspicious. This was the only specific location Powell offered in his U.N. presentation on chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.
What about the mobile labs that they are still checking out? And Jesus, how long has the war been over? You liberals have been trying to eradicate poverty since the 60's. How come you haven't done that yet? Just damn, Martha! Give it some time fer chrissakes!
In his speech at the University of South Carolina last weekend, Bush set forth his first substantive vision of a transformed Middle East -- a free-trade zone, an Israeli pullback of settlements, an autonomous Palestinian state. If he could focus on the road map to peace with the same dogged determination that he gave regime change in Iraq, Bush could make it happen.
And if we could get a little cooperation from the Palestinians it might work. They need to do three things.
1. Recognize Israel's right to exist.
2. Stop the suicide bombings.
3. Give up the right of return.
Unfortunately, they have showed over and over again that they are not willing to do any of those three things so why is everything Israel's fault?
No other president has had quite the opportunity Bush has to change the dynamics of the Middle East. It's about risking political capital to leave a legacy far more important than the military victory in Iraq.
And he is willing to risk it. He took a big risk with the war with Iraq which all you liberals said would be a disaster. He's taking a big risk with the Roadmap to Peace.
Now if only the Palestinians would cooperate.
I won't hold my breath.
Posted by denny at May 14, 2003 08:48 PM