Thanks for posting this. Your older post was great as well. It may have been a prank call but everything EI said was true. I would have included the U.S. as well under the heading of terrorists.

Our current administration and elected representatives keep reminding Iraqis, "We have spent BILLIONS of dollars to bring you Freedom and Democracy. No other country would have been so generous and removed your tyrinical leader. NOW, it is time for you to take responsibility for rebuilding what we have destroyed."

I have never understood how these military guys can be so stupid, dropping flyers!!! Rummy had a great idea about dropping flyers in Iraq which would have false info and somebody had to remind him, OUR people would get the same flyers and they would get false information which would be broadcast on evening news!!!

ps I guess no one or rather hardly anyone from MSM would ever think of doing anything like what EI did!!

I have never understood how these military guys can be so stupid, dropping flyers!!!

It's not that they're actually stupid it is that they are indoctrinated -- slaves of the state as it were.

'I have never understood how these military guys can be so stupid, dropping flyers!!! Rummy had a great idea about dropping flyers in Iraq '

Oh I don't know Rupa. I have often thought that if I won the lottery here I'd try to finance an air-drop of flyers to the benighted American populace in flyover country, who have been deprived of the truth these many years.

Glenn Condell
And if I do win a lottery, I will give you half of it for your endeavour and the other half I will use to drop shoes ( plane load--- the size they use to transport tanks etc ) in GWB's Crawford Ranch on behalf of Iraqis who could not throw them at him!

Rupa Shah,

Following orders is not indoctrination. Indoctrination is more like having your world view molded for you so that you see things from a particular perspective. For example the enemy is always presented as sub-human, evil, animal-like, that’s indoctrination. This makes it easier to murder them since they aren’t quite human in the eyes of the soldier.

Israel might actually try to create a humanitarian crisis

I would say that they have succeeded in a spectacular manner. 500 dead, probably a conservative number, thousands wounded, the starvation of 1.5 million people over half being children. Yes, I would hazard a guess and stick my neck way out and call this a humanitarian disaster. And the U.S. is doing anything but sitting on the sidelines as they just blocked a call for a ceasefire by the U.N.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/04/gaza-invasion-israel-troops

Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict were appearing to falter. Late on Saturday night, the US blocked the approval of a UN security council statement calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Alejandro Wolff, the US deputy ambassador, said Hamas would not agree to halt the violence and that a new statement "would not be adhered to and would have no underpinning for success, would not do credit to the council".

If Israel wanted to be “forced” into a ceasefire wouldn’t it make more sense to let the news media in who they have been keeping out? The humanitarian disaster has been going on for quite a while now. Europe ceded to the U.S. and Israel the responsibility for resolving the conflict some time ago which I would say was very bad news for the Palestinians, essentially helpless victims of the two largest terrorist states in the world.

We already know that this attack was planned six months ago and that the purpose of the so-called ceasefire was to give Israel time to prepare for the attack. In other words Israel was going to attack Gaza regardless of what happened after the ceasefire which really wasn’t a ceasefire. Even though the news media continually blames the Palestinians for rejecting treaties and truces and what-have-you it has been Israel who has been rejecting peace plans for years now. Why would this suddenly change? How plain does it need to be that Israel created the humanitarian crisis in order to goad Hamas into firing rockets into Israel so that Israel could have an excuse to invade Gaza? The crisis was created to implement invasion and murder not prevent it.

God, that's funny, thanks. And long live Palestine. With a sense of humor like that, how can they not ultimately win?

Can't believe the Israeli officer stayed on so long.

Rob, I probably should have said "Create such a gigantic crisis that even the US might be embarrassed into openly calling for a ceasefire" or something like that. I know the numbers and we both know from Lebanon 2006 that killing 1000 civilians and causing a million people to flee for their lives wasn't enough to get American politicians (including this hack from Illinois named Obama) to criticize Israel.

As for what Israel is trying to do, I don't know exactly. Sure, they are deliberately causing massive suffering and they are guilty of war crimes--no argument from me on that. The point of the article was to speculate on why exactly. State terrorists often (not always) have rational motives for their crimes. (Evil, but rational--if you rob a 7/11 it might be rational to kill the witnesses). The Israelis in the link I provided are trying to figure out what the Israeli government might do next.

Donald,

I’ve read a lot of different reasons for why Israel is slaughtering the Palestinians. I don’t buy into the most of them for it seems to me that Israel doesn’t want the Palestinians to have a state of their own. If the Palestinians have their own state Israel might have to give up more than they want to. I don’t believe the Israeli government wants to see a two state solution and would rather keep the Palestinians powerless politically. I think really it has been a war of attrition as over the last 60 or so years Israel has grabbed almost all of the Palestinian lands and this is the latest chapter in that effort. I also believe that there is a racist element in all of this as well. Also Israel is almost completely dependent on the west for its economic survival which is a lot of cash flowing their way. We know that it is pretty silly to consider the Palestinians as a real threat to Israel and the same goes for Iran. To keep the money flowing into Israel, Israel must create the illusion that they are constantly in danger of being annihilated by the Arabs. Whether any of this is completely true I cannot say for sure. But that’s how I see it for what it is worth.