Yes, Carol, that really was my point. There is a conspiracy of silence regarding Israel, and it is maintained through fear. Great fear. The kind of fear that was typical of the McCarthy era. "See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil."

Lurker - Oh, I was not suggesting war as a solution. Not at all. The only war I have regarded as a useful "solution" to anything since, well, 1960 let's say was:

Vietnam's invasion and bringing down of the Khymer Rouge in Kampuchea. Those maniacs simply had to go, and Kampuchea has been far better off without them, and the Vietnamese handed power back to the locals who are now running things far more sanely than the Khymer Rouge did, that's for sure!

And that's about it. The first Gulf War could have been avoided simply by the USA telling Saddam not to do it before he got started. He asked them, and their ambassador basically gave him the green light to go ahead and invade. Therefore, I'm skeptical about the whole thing. It stinks.

As for Kosovo, I'm sort of neutral on that one. It's a tangled mess there. It's a damned shame that Tito's Yugoslavia was ever allowed to fall apart, as it was a country with great strengths and possibilities for progress.

- LH