An editorial in today's Dar al hayat (Lebanon) underlines my comments yesterday about ignoring Iraqi casualties. Excerpt:

"If our lives were worthless, I hold the neo-conservatives entirely responsible for the blood of every American victim in Iraq ever since war started and right until today. Why would a young man from abroad die in Baghdad or anywhere else? What goal has he served? Who benefited from his death?"

The piece goes on, unfortunately, to put all the blame for our catastrophic middle east policies on the Israeli Likud Party. I believe that those who do this are really missing the point. This war and the future wars so eagerly anticipated by The Cheney Gang are about USX control of planetary resources. Period. Any talk about religion or freedom is propogandist smoke.

Perhaps this thoughtful WaPo op-ed piece by Yoel Esteron will help us look more realistically. Excerpt:

"The Bush administration, with its avid support of Israel, is also helping the Sharon government to sit on its hands and do nothing to promote a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

and

"But fury and despair are bad advisers. Without political dialogue and the creation of hope for the Palestinians' national aspirations, only bombs will talk."

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- - Kucinich Watch - -

WaPo and The Concord (NH) Monitor are having a series of on-line "conversations with the candidates." Dennis Kucinich will be on-line tomorrow (Tuesday, 11/4).

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Elsewhere in WaPo, Rummy waxes lame. As usual, on the problem of "reducing the creation of new terrorists", he asks rhetorical questions with his own built-in "solutions." Excerpt:

"Asked for the solution, he noted that with the dissolution of the United States Information Agency and its merger into the State Department, the country is "not organized, trained or equipped" to fight a war of ideas overseas. "What has to change in our country, organizationally, overt, covert, either one, so that we can have a higher confidence that we're reducing the number of people who [become terrorists]?" he asked."

and

"Saying the United States is not organized to handle the problem, Rumsfeld said, 'We need to find ways to make sure we're winning the battle of ideas and that we're reducing the number of terrorists . . . that are being taught to go out and murder and kill innocent men, women and children.'"

The problem, you twit, is that we're not gonna win some "war of ideas." And as long as we think and act like "it's our way or the highway," there are gonna be peoples that hate us. Even Chalabi knows that.

Finally, Linda McQuaig, in yesterday's Toronto Star, takes up the gauntlet in The War Against Cognitive Dissonance.


Be at peace.