I heard the speech, SharonA. It was a bullshit ploy to buy time for the Israeli's to complete the military reoccupation of the West Bank.

Again, you won't find a call from Bush for an IMMEDIATE end to the current IDF military operations and an IMMEDIATE withdrawal of IDF forces from the West Bank in the Bush transcript. Because his so called "action" on the crisis was to take no action at all. Sending Powell with no framework on how to implement UN Res 1402 is a guarantee he will fail to produce any meaningful resolution of the current crisis.

If Bush wanted an IMMEDIATE resolution of this crisis, he would have called for an IMMEDIATE end to Israeli military action and a withdrawal of IDF troops from the West Bank last Thursday.

The fact of the matter is, the US is giving both support and direction to Ariel Sharon through back channels, to set up a military occupation of the West Bank (and possibly Lebanon and Syria), to allow the US to use the IDF in the US' war on terrorism as a surrogate power.

Let us not forget, Israel is the 4th largest military power in the world. When you combine the 4th largest with the largest, with no resistance from #2 & #3, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want to anybody.

As we are seeing happen right now to the Palestinians.