BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,hugo
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 01:46 PM

Chomsky is no apologist for any form of terrorism! He has however ,forensically pointed out the state terrorism that his own country ,the USA has been involved with for many decades.
To take a few examples:

The CIA sponsored govt of Dr Allende in Chile in 1973 which led to the deaths of thousands of opponents of the military...many more were tortured,others thrown from helicopters into the ocean ,while others fled into an uncertain exile. Thank you Mr Kissinger and Richard Nixon.

Then there was the US attack on Vietnam in which around a million Vietnamese were killed and a country destroyed..it still hasn't recovered and the USA still has not compensated the Vietnamese for the death and destruction it caused.

Then there was the US trained death squads that roamed Central America in the mid 1980s killing tens of thousands of innocent people....we are seeing similar shadowy tactics in Iraq today....courtesy of the School For th Americas which trained a generation of torturers in Georgia,USA.

Saddam Hussein was a close friend and ally of the USA for many years right up until the end of the war against Iran .

There are others almost too numerous to mention.
hugo

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Old Guy
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 12:36 PM

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/chomsky.htm

The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky
by Keith Windschuttle

"Today, Chomsky’s hypocrisy stands as the most revealing measure of the sorry depths to which the left-wing political activism he has done so much to propagate has now sunk."

Noam Chomsky was the most conspicuous American intellectual to rationalize the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The death toll, he argued, was minor compared to the list of Third World victims of the “far more extreme terrorismâ€쳌 of United States foreign policy. Despite its calculated affront to mainstream opinion, this sentiment went down very well with Chomsky’s own constituency. He has never been more popular among the academic and intellectual left than he is today.....

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Old Guy
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 12:18 PM

If "Ethnic cleansing and the indiscriminate bombing of children is wrong and a war crime.", why does Hezbollah do it? Why does Noam Chomsky condone it?

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 10:50 AM

To Old Guy
It seems to me that any whisper of criticism of Israel and the critic is painted as Osama Bin Ladin's brother by the Zionists who rush to defend Israel' actions in Lebanon and Gaza.

Some of the most trenchant critics of Israel's aggressive policies towards the Palestinians and Lebanon are Jewish...I am thinking of people like Noam Chomsky,widely regarded as one of the foremost intellectuals in the world, John Rose the British/Jewish writer and Miriam Karlin again a British/Jewish actor.

Ethnic cleansing and the indiscriminate bombing of children is wrong and a war crime.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Old Guy
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 10:36 AM

Ok let's see the truth of what LH is claiming.

Japan and Germany were occupied after WW2. Neither resulted in a long painfull occupation that bled anybody dry. In fact, how many people are driving Mercedes or Volkswagens or Hondas or Lexii?

Someone tried to flatten Lebanon and failed? Israel was trying to knock out Hezbollah rocket launchers. If they wanted it flat, it would be flat.

LH seems to have fallen prey to propaganda fed to him by MSM.

"This is the first time anyone has stood up the Israel"
This is the first time Israel has shown restraint in an armed conflict.

He admires Castro, He admires Hezbollah but I presume he doesn't want to live in Cuba or the Middle east. A very conflicted person. Like a teenager that hates his "controlling" parents but admires Rap Stars that use drugs and try to kill each other.

I am no lover of the Jews. My father hated Jews, although one of his best friends was a Jewish electrician named Eli. My Dad grew up in a time when there was an extreme bias agintst Jews. The International Jew is responsible for all of our troubles" Henry ford wrote several books condeming the International Jew and even owned an anti Jewish newspaper.

Even after this upbringing I can detect bullshit and all this stuff about how admirable Hezbollah is and how the Jews are bullies is just bullshit that liberal, idealistic jello brains want to believe.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 09:44 AM

It's not easy to flatten a place because people are surprisingly resilient, and the number of targets is almost infinite.

It has just been demonstrated in Lebanon.


Yes, a few places have been "flattened", more or less, in recent history. Hamburg. Dresden. Much of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo. Most of Stalingrad in 1942. But it ain't easy...unless you use nuclear weapons. Then it is pretty easy, but the repercussions may not be so good.

Countries normally invade other countries looking for a quick, decisive victory. What they usually find instead is a long, painful occupation that slowly bleeds them dry and finally destroys their will to remain there.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 08:09 AM

"Why is it not easy to "flatten" a place? Where has it just been demonstrated? "

Well you see, there is just this bloody possibility that Iran...

Say, let's start moving all those nice valuable archeological items out now... before they start to glow...

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 05:50 AM

Slag
The homeland that is Israel was once Palestinian...they were expelled by force and terror and quite understandably they would like their land,homes and villages etc returned to them.The last time I looked the waging of ethnic cleansing was a crime.

The plight of the Palestinian people was one of the first issues on the agenda of the then new UN in 1948 and it is still the major flashpoint in the Middle East.
ifor

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Slag
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 01:59 AM

As opposed to KoolAid? In regards to those who think Israel should be denied their homeland please reference the posting "SRO at Eden's Gate".

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,hugo
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 01:26 AM

reply to slag
Keep taking the tablets bubba!
hugo

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Old Guy
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 12:23 AM

Why is it not easy to "flatten" a place? Where has it just been demonstrated?

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 12:16 AM

Clearly, the Arab goverments at the time miscalculated tremendously and their policy was misguided and proved to be a complete failure. They underestimated the effectiveness of the fledgling Israeli military.

I doubt that anyone would make that mistake now.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 17 Aug 06 - 12:09 AM

Did Israel forcibly evict these 600,000 Arabs from their homes in 1948? Or did they leave voluntarily? This is the salient question.

Here is a collection of historical quotations from Arab leaders, relating to these Palestinian refugees:

On April 23, 1948 Jamal Husseini, acting chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee (AHC), told the UN Security Council:

"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce... They preferred to abandon their homes, belongings and everything they possessed."

On September 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, as saying:

"The fact that there are those refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously..."

On October 2, 1948, the London Economist reported, in an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa's Arabs:

"There is little doubt that the most potent of the factors [in the flight] were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit... And it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

The Jordanian daily Falastin wrote on February 19, 1949:

"The Arab states... encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."

On June 8, 1951, Habib Issa, secretary-general of the Arab League, wrote in the New York Lebanese daily al-Hoda that in 1948, Azzam Pasha, then League secretary, had...

"...assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states."

On April 9, 1953, the Jordanian daily al-Urdun quoted a refugee, Yunes Ahmed Assad, formerly of Deir Yassin, as saying:

"For the flight and fall of the other villages, it is our leaders who are responsible, because of the dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs... they instilled fear and terror into the hearts of the Arabs of Palestine until they fled, leaving their homes and property to the enemy."

Another refugee told the Jordanian daily a-Difaa on September 6, 1954: "The Arab governments told us, 'Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out, but they did not get in."

Former Prime Minister of Syria, Khaled al-Azem, in his memoirs, published in 1973, listed what he thought were the reasons for the Arab failure in 1948:

"The fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries... We brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by calling on them and pleading with them to leave their land."

In the March 1976 issue of "Falastin a-Thaura," then the official PLO journal, PLO spokesman Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen") wrote:

"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."

British Foreign Office Document #371/75342/XC/A/4991 records:

"Following a visit to refugees in Gaza, a British diplomat reported the following: 'But while they express no bitterness against the Jews... they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states: 'We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes."

For the million and a half Arabs still in Israel I guess the Israelis fucked up, or are the Arabs all in prisons? 70% of Palestine became Jordan and the arabs were welcomed as Jordanians no other Arab country accepted them and 860,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries and their property expropriated (some $30 billion by estimate)

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 11:52 PM

It's not easy to "flatten" a place. Not easy at all. That has just been demonstrated.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Old Guy
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 11:40 PM

Something tells me that the next time Hezbollah starts something they will be dead meat. The Israelis showed great restraint and they will not hesitate to flatten the place next time.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Old Guy
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 11:35 PM

"even from before the UN 'recognised the state of Israel' when the previous Arabic dwellers tried to get their 'traditional' farms back..."

Can you finish this or is your attention span too short?

Did you read the Arabs or Jews first thread? Jews were Arabs fuckhead. Muslims were Jews.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:41 PM

close - political sheep...

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Peace
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:36 PM

SHEEP!

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:34 PM

I have 'ancestral homelands' in Germany, England, Ireland and Scotland.

So now WHO's living on MY land?

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: robomatic
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:15 PM

There already is a Palestinian state. It's called Jordan.

One of the big asymmetric arguments is why it's not okay for Jews to live in their ancestral homeland among Arabs and Muslims, but in Islamic / Arab states it's okay to forbid freedom of religion to the extent of capitol punishment should a Muslim convert to another faith.

This lopsided viewpoint is typically taken as a 'given' among the Israel baiters and bashers.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:02 PM

"France was heavily involved there and nearly went bankrupt trying to prevent the Northern communist regime from taking over the South. Our involvement [in Vietnam] was NOT an attack"

... just that the 'provoking attack' by the North on the US ships in a certain Bay was later acknowledged as a 'staged' one, just like 'Germany vs certain other European Contries'....

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 08:53 PM

"Do people that fire from behind women and children classify as bullying militarist thugs?"

Well, if they are sitting in their lounge room with their families when some bullying better militarily equipped militarist expansionist thugs come over the hill... I'd say no....

but then what you say "people that fire from behind women and children"

might equally apply to the Israeli 'settlers' - even from before the UN 'recognised the state of Israel' when the previous Arabic dwellers tried to get their 'traditional' farms back...

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 08:45 PM

"The idealogies concerning Vietnam and the mideast are very different (religeous incited idealogy vs political)"

OK, just to be naughty then :-) there is not a lot of practical difference in effect between the two...

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Peace
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 06:18 PM

AND, brought to you by the folks who support Hezbollah:

"By Israel News Agency Staff

Jerusalem----February 7.....In response to Iran's best-selling newspaper announcing a competition to find the best cartoons about the Holocaust, the Israel News Agency launched an SEO - Internet search engine optimization marketing contest to prevent Iran news Websites from reaching top positions in Google"

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Peace
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 06:11 PM

"The makings of a compromise, however, emerged from all-day meetings in Beirut, the Post said, citing senior officials involved in the negotiations, and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora scheduled a Cabinet session today for what he hoped would be formal approval of the deal. Hezbollah indicated it would be willing to pull back its fighters and weapons in exchange for a promise from the Lebanese Army not to probe too carefully for underground bunkers and weapons caches, the officials said.

Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, had insisted that any disarmament of his militia -- even in the border area -- should be handled in longer-term discussions within the Lebanese government, according to government ministers. But the Lebanese Army, backed by key political leaders, refused to send troops into the just-becalmed battle zone until Hezbollah's missiles, rockets, and other weapons were taken north of the Litani River, the ministers said."

The war will restart thanks to the Hezbollah trash.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: dianavan
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 06:09 PM

Its been said before.

Israeli soldiers hide behind armored tanks.

Hezbollah hides behind the walls of their homes.

Who is more cowardly, Guest?

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,Hezbollah, killer of civilians
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 04:58 PM

Not only did the forces of Hezbollah kill Israeli civilians indiscriminately, they hid behind Lebanese civilians to do it. Such a display of Arab courage is bound to be inspirational if it is trumpeted enough. When Hitler used this technique, it was called The Big Lie.
The majority of people are not hoodwinked by these lies, but in Europe there are many leaders who are simply ignoring the facts. Meanwhile, it is turning out that as in so many cases, the Arab side and their press paritisans simply lie and fake the pictures.
I have seen an Indian movie where the Muslim terrorists kill a member of their own side in order to create a 'victim'.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 04:46 PM

Well, looks like the NYT Magazine article I had referred to earlier was right on the mark. Hezbollah, according to reportage, is now planning on financing the Lebanese civilians that suffered loss, will not disarm, is being supplied by their mentors, and, just as the article predicted, has become the de facto government in Lebanon even though it is the minority party.

Seems that the author was quite insightful and prescient---start the war for this purpose and blow smoke by saying you are to protect Lebanon from the Israelis.

Bill H

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Slag
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 04:32 PM

Little Hawk, in order to live long and prosper you have to be able to live with yourself. "To thine own self be true."

Excellent post Old Guy. FYI I was an USAF noncom '69 thru '73 and while I was never directly involved in combat I met plenty who were.

I want to pick on Guest hugo's post for a minute. It is most illustrative of what passes for logical thought by many on the far left. (All emphasis will be mine) "...the reason the left across the world was opposed to the American attack ( note singularity ) on Vietnam ( no distinction between North or South) was because it led to the killing of some one million Vietnamese people, many of them were civilians (run-on sentence)." This lack of logical reasoning doesn't even have a classification in the informal fallacies. What you have said is that the left opposed America because of something it would do in the future. That's a neat trick if you can do. The seeds of our involvement in that unfortunate land date back to WWII and earlier. France was heavily involved there and nealy went bankrupt trying to prevent the Northern communist regime from taking over the South. Our involvement was NOT an attack. It was a slow escalation of hostilities. Our initial aim (with which I personally disagree ) was to leave the country divided and let the two co-exist peacefully. But there is no peaceful co-existence with repression. The North wanted the wealth of the South, especially Saigon which had a world trade economy and a culture that reflected the same. When Russia decided to keep uping the ante with arms, munitions, aircraft, training and advisors, our leadership felt that it had to match the bet to stay in the game because the jackpot was all of Southeast Asia. Reference the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, etc. There's a lot of history there you need to know about.

"...some one million Vietnamese people, many of them were civilians (were killed). Many others were maimed or suffered in other ways.
South Vietnamese were suffering the onslaught of the so-called insurgency. As an illustration of their tactics the Viet Cong would enter a village and machete open a pregnant woman's stomach and butcher her unborn child then let her die slowly. Guns were leveled at the other villagers. Resistance was futile. This served as a threat to cooperate with the VC or else. Terrorism was their stock and trade. Talk about massacres. The VC and the Northern Regulars made no pretext of following Geneva Covention. American combatants had their heads cut off and stuck on a pole in the middle of a jungle trail with their gentalia stuff in their mouths. I saw the photos. In the meantime idotic President Johnson let the UN dictate the manner in which we "fought" the war. We could bomb here but not there (where we knew the enemy was). Our fleshettes had to be sterilized (little darts that flew out of certain anti-personnel ordinance) because if the soldier survived the attack he should'nt die of a secondary infection. Tell that to a GI who has just stepped of a pungi stick soaked in month old urine and feces. I could fill a book but YOU aren't listening. You are too busy thinking up your next argument. There was'nt just My Lai. There were other incidents that you will never hear about because the troops kept solidarity. They fought fire with fire when and where they could. Yes. People were maimed and killed. There was enough pain and death to go around. Such is the nature of war. Go and see the Black Wall in DC. Agent Orange. Yup, that was a big costly mistake. Why did it happen? Because our hands were tied by the UN, courtesy of that bastard LBJ and his ilk and our military was casting about for any loophole they could find to prosecute this ridiculous war and not run afoul of the Commander-in-Chief and his kiss-ass stance with the UN. The CIA? Well they happen to be our spy guys. What they do, they do. Every country has them and they do what they do. What can I say? It is apparently a necessary evil in an evil world playing an evil game with national survival at stake, not to mention racial, ethnic and religious survival. Abu Grab is such small potatos by contrast that it seems tame and yet wrong was done. It happens. Get out your mental scale and see how humiliating a POW stacks up to IEDs or beheadings and worse. The difference is that when our officialdom was made aware of the problem punishment was meted out and corrections were made. Have the terrorists done the same? I think not.

"Vietnam was a racist war." That is probably the most idotic statement you have made. But I understand. You on the far left love to throw that word out any chance you get because it sets all the parrots to squawking. "Racism, Racism, WaaK, Racism, Racism!" Wern't the South Vietnamese also Vietnamese??? If not what are they? Were'nt these the people we sought to defend? There are thousands of them here today. I personally help to get some of them settled into our country at the close of the war. I'm sure there are some racists some where that are against them. There always are. there always will be. Was that, is that our offical policy? Get real. It was NOT a racist war. Is any of this getting through to you? Or are YOU so full of hatred for your own that you can't see the illogicality of your statements. You need to learn how to think before you touch the keyboard.

Your last two sentences are fallacious generalizations and are obviously intended to be inflammatory. There was Imperialism in Viet Nam but it wasn't US imperialism. It was Russian. Nor do we have designs on territory in the Middle East. Re the "bosses" children; that's just plain false in all but a very few and glaring instances. This is the fallacy of the hasty generalization.

This is like explaining simple truths to, well, fill in the blank. Actually it's worse because someone who is so steeped in their ideology is never going to "GET" it. You will not listen and you do not think. Hopefully the fair minded will see the truth in what I say or at least give it honest consideration.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 03:55 PM

I doubt that they will disarm Hezbollah, Doug. I strongly doubt it.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 03:53 PM

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
tells us about America and Saddam Hussein. (It's American by the way), and how members of the current administration knew what he was doing to his own people and all about his chemical weapons.

So little less hypocrisy from the USA if you please.

And an Israeli general sold all his share portfolio within a couple of hours of the Hizbollah capturing two Israeli soldiers.

And that's not anti-semitic, it is against those who try and prosper from war. And clearly had little to do with getting prisoners released.

Probably just a coincidence of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,hugo
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 03:26 PM

All seems to be gloom and doom for the Israelis and the Zionists.They are the ones who flattened Lebanon killing hundreds of children and maiming and terorising many more...yet they seem unable to enjoy the fruits of their bombing.
In the Lebanon however ,the fighters of Hezbollah as hailed as defenders and heroes by many across the different faiths in the country.
hugo

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 03:18 PM

C.Ham:

Don't bother responding yet again to the tedious dianavan. We all know what her game is and nobody takes her seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: dianavan
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 03:11 PM

C. Ham - I am not a liar. I have pointed out that the story has changed from the original story.

I can see that another story (by the same journalist) contradicts the previous story. I have not, however, seen a retraction stating that the first story was wrong. If it was wrong, why is the Forbes article still on the net? Seems to me they would have deleted it by now or at least issued a statement of error.

It is difficult to detect the truth of the matter when propaganda is rampant.

Perhaps you can provide a source which states the inaccuracy of the first report.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: DougR
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 03:09 PM

Are you of the opinion, LH, that the Lebenese Army/UN Peace keepers will disarm Hezbollah?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 02:53 PM

Nobody will willingly disarm. That's an old, old story.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: DougR
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 02:43 PM

I think they won this round. Seems somebody failed to tell them they would have to disarm. They wouldn't do it anyway and to think they would is a bit, ah, naive. To think Lebonan's army would disarm Hezbollah is equally naive IMO.

Round two (which I predict will come within six months) may be a different story.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 01:51 PM

I keep hoping I'll get over the sick fascination that keeps me coming back to this thread... (Arrgh! Fighting desperately against the urge to join in yet again...)

Face it, folks, you'd all rather be "right" than "live long and prosper", wouldn't you? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Old Guy
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 01:24 PM

"The only people that admire bullying militarist thugs are weak cowards who, Walter Mitty like, envy the chauvinist ball clanking of others."

Do people that fire from behind women and children classify as bullying militarist thugs?

Here is a sterling example of Brave Courageous and Bold:

On October 23, 1983, around 6:20 am, a yellow Mercedes-Benz delivery truck drove to Beirut International Airport, where the 1st Battalion 8th Marines, under the U.S. 2nd Marine Division of the United States Marines, had set up its local headquarters. The truck turned onto an access road leading to the Marines' compound and circled a parking lot. The driver then accelerated and crashed through a barbed wire fence around the parking lot, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through a gate and barreled into the lobby of the Marine headquarters. The Marine sentries at the gate were forbidden from using live ammunition, for fear that a discharge might kill a civilian, so they were powerless to stop him. According to one Marine survivor, the driver was smiling as he sped past him.

The suicide bomber detonated his explosives, which were equivalent to 12,000 pounds (about 5,400kg) of TNT. The force of the explosion collapsed the four-story cinder-block building into rubble, crushing many inside.

About 20 seconds later, an identical attack occurred against the barracks of the French Third Company of the Sixth French Parachute Infantry Regiment. Another suicide bomber drove his truck down a ramp into the building's underground parking garage and detonated his bomb, leveling the headquarters.

Rescue efforts continued for days. While the rescuers were at times hindered by sniper fire, some survivors were pulled from the rubble and airlifted to the RAF hospital in Cyprus or to U.S. and German hospitals in West Germany.

The death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers. Sixty Americans were injured. In the attack on the French barracks, 58 paratroopers were killed and 15 injured. In addition, the elderly Lebanese custodian of the Marines' building was killed in the first blast. The wife and four children of a Lebanese janitor at the French building also were killed.

This was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima (2,500 in one day) of World War II. The attack remains the deadliest post-World War II attack on Americans overseas.

I wonder why those "bullying militarist thugs" were so concerned about killing civilians that they did not have live ammunition to defend themselves with.

You should have been on this ship to cheer for these "Brave Courageous and Bold" terrorists:

On October 7, 1985, four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, carrying more than 400 passengers and crew, off Egypt. The hijackers demand that Israel free 50 Palestinian prisoners. The terrorists kill a disabled American tourist, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, and throw his body overboard with his wheelchair. After a two-day drama, the hijackers surrender in exchange for a pledge of safe passage. But when an Egyptian jet tries to fly the hijackers to freedom, U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercept it and force it to land in Sicily. The terrorists are taken into custody by Italian authorities.

Oh, in case you still think Saddam had nothing to do with terrorisim or Al Quaeda:

Though he was sentenced to five life terms in Italy, and was wanted in the United States, Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking, remained a free man. He spent most of the years after the hijacking in Tunisia before moving to the Gaza Strip in April 1996, after the Palestinian Authority took control of the area as part of the peace agreement with Israel.

While in Gaza, Abbas said he was sorry for the hijacking, but the daughters of Leon Klinghoffer said that Abbas had been convicted of murder and should serve his sentence. As a result of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian interim peace agreement, however, Abbas and other PLO members were granted immunity for violent acts committed before the signing of the September 1993 Oslo agreement.

Abbas eventually made his way to Iraq where he was believed to be a conduit for Saddam Hussein's payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Abbas was captured by U.S. forces in a raid in Iraq on April 15, 2003. He died on March 9, 2004, at the age of 56 in U.S. custody in Iraq. Klinghoffer's daughters said, "Now, with his death, justice will be denied. The one consolation for us is that Abul Abbas died in captivity, not as a free man."

After reading this I suppose you would conclude that Leon Klinghoffer and the marines that died in Beirut were "bullying militarist thugs" that deserved to die at the hands of "Brave Courageous and Bold" terrorists like Hezbollah and Abbas.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: C. Ham
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 01:20 PM

What Dianavan persists in referring to as a "Forbes article" is actually an AP wire service report filed by reporter Jospeph Panossian on July 12 at 5:41 am.

AP has acknowledged that the report was erronious.

A new AP report with the correct information was filed by the same reporter later that day.

HERE IT IS AGAIN DIANAVAN

This was pointed out to Dianavan in the Gaza thread on July 26. To persist in citing incorrect information from an AP wire service story that AP has corrected after you know that the information is wrong and has been corrected BY THE SOURCE makes you a liar.

Peace has already said that he will no longer interact with you. I join him in that.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: dianavan
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 11:28 AM

Sorry, beardedbruce, it was C. Ham and robomatic that doubted the Forbes article. Here it is:

"The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them."

http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/07/12/ap2873051.html

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 10:49 AM

The idealogies concerning Vietnam and the mideast are very different (religeous incited idealogy vs political) ... in Vietnam the US was not fighting just the Vietcong (insurgents), they were also fighting the North Vietmese regular army ... the Vietnam conflict incited a well structured passionate anti-war movement in the U.S., this mideast conflict is inciting rhetoric questioning it's purpose, the anti-war movement in the U.S. regarding Iraq is pratically non- existant, lacking the passion.

There are similarities in regards to the military approach the U.S. is taking, disasterous. Similiar in that the U.S. is jumping into something they just don't get ... again disasterous.

In regards to the recent Israel/Hizbollah fiasco ... Israel is fighting for it's life against a well supplied, well equiped organization that is out to completelydestroy them (again religious ideology)

Just a few points here.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 10:16 AM

The Russians got a very good field test of their latest anti-tank missiles in the last few weeks. Most of the amour damaged was hit by modern, Russian designed anti-tank missiles, exported to Iran and Syria. The expended casing on the battle-field have this stamped on them...

These weapons need a reasonable training to be used effectivley, more than you would find in some of the regular Armies of the area.

Now, where were we on the Hezbollah are a just a bunch of ill trained, badly equipped Gurillas?

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:06 AM

"different ball game altogether, in comparison to the current mideast conflicts."

About 20 - 30 US white college kids from well off families, decided that they did not like the US murdering thousands of Vietnamese civilians, and started to do something about it. A lot of similarities between many things, actually... but you need to analyse beneath the surface...

Interesting that most of them were never able to be brought to trial, because the FBI had broken so many laws... the lessons learnt there have not been forgotten, Gitmo, and 'foreign rendering' for a start... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:06 AM

just did search here on Forbes - No luck. - Still looking for where you mentioned it...

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: GUEST,hugo
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 09:05 AM

I think there are a lot of similarities between Vietnam and events in the Middle East.

America suffered a huge blow in its defeat in Vietnam.The most technologically developed army in the world was brought low by a Third World peasant army.It has taken a whole generation for the US leaders to risk another sustained ground war......until the invasion of Iraq .

Once again the US finds itself embroiled in a war that it cannot win despite its military superiority. In Iraq million dollar tanks are being destroyed by rocket launchers and IED s costing a few hundred dollars. The cost of the war is astronomical and the American working class is paying for it with cuts to education,housing and welfare programmes etc.

In Vietnam ,faced with defeat.the US   chose to widen the war with the invasion of Cambodia and attacks on Laos.In Iraq, again faced with chaos and carnage it has chosen to give the green light to Israel to invade Lebanon [ see Seymour Hirsch's article ] as a prelude to an attack on Syria and Iran.

Vietnam radicalised US sociey and produced a massive anti war movement.......after three years of war in Iraq the majority of US citizens want the troops home . Bush who is widely seen as a liar and an incompetent.

The TV screens brought the horror of the Vietnam war directly into our homes.The media is now widely distrusted but we have seen with our own eyes the destruction and carnage delivered by the Israeli bombing of Beirut and the Shock And Awe rain of death delivered to Iraq and by God that has brought out even more people into the streets to protest at the warmongers.
hugo

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 08:56 AM

It's the memory of the Weathermen that make the US Pollies wet their pants about modern terrorists - a bunch of US white college students who just did not obey the 'rules' for normal criminals - uncatchable for about 5 years until they handed themselves in - indeed modern terrorists have a good role model on how to survive as 'sleepers' in the US, just by studying them. But they would need to have a degree of intelligence, and understand US society very well... being born there, and not living in a ghetto would be a good start - the Weathermen were mostly 'rich kids' you see...

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 08:49 AM

"Beardedbruce claims he contacted Forbes and that the statement has been retracted".


Check back- It was not I.

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: number 6
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 08:42 AM

Vietnam .... different ball game altogether, in comparison to the current mideast conflicts.

Good posts up there slag ... you pretty well said it all ... good one!

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Is Hezbollah Winning?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Aug 06 - 08:06 AM

"Anyone with a little knowledge knows that Israel has the ability to take out Lebanon and Syria in very short order were it so motivated"

And they just weren't motivated this time? In spite of boasting that they would destroy them all in a couple of weeks, that they would be at the river in a couple of days? They weren't motivated by the thought that if they failed, they would lose face worldwide?

~~~~~~~
About Vietnam: ever heard of the Weathermen? They started off by being outraged at Vietnam - they were so outraged at the murder in his bed by Police of one of the Black Panther's leaders that they went underground - the FBI never found them, they surrendered years later, except for a few who went on after the breakup of the group to commit more criminal acts with other groups - and let off lots of bombs, broke into the FBI and stole documents that revealed the plans of the FBI to murder any one who was a 'threat' including Martin Luther King.