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29
Jun
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by QuestionGirl • 6:24 am
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Yesterday I posted this, regarding Bush’s comments that he hopes Iraq will be like Israel. Juan Cole agrees……..
‘ In Israel, Bush said, “terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.” ‘
These words may be the stupidest ones ever uttered by a US president. Given their likely impact on the US war effort in the Middle East, they are downright criminal.
The US political elite just doesn’t get it. Israel is not popular in the Middle East, and it isn’t because Middle Easterners are bigots. It is because Israel is coded as the last European colonial presence in the region, an heir to French Algeria, British Egypt, and Dutch Indonesia– and because the Israelis pugnaciously continue to try to colonize neighboring bits of territory. (This enmity is not inevitable or eternal; in 2002 the Arab League offered full recognition of Israel in return for its going back to 1967 borders, but the Israeli government turned down the offer.) But for the purposes of this analysis it does not really matter why Israel is unpopular. Let us just stipulate that it is. Why would you associate American Iraq with such an unpopular project, if you were trying to do public diplomacy in the region? Bush had just announced a new push to get the American message out to the Muslim world, the day before.
Let’s just take the analogy seriously for a moment. Israel proper is a democracy of sorts, though its 1 million Arab citizens are in a second class position. But it rules over several million stateless Palestinians who lack even the pretence of self-rule. It is hard to characterize a country as a democracy when it has millions of disenfranchised subjects. Bush manages to only think about Jewish Israelis in the above analogy, wiping out millions of other residents of geographical Palestine who don’t get to participate in ‘democracy’ or exercise popular sovereignty.
Filed: Bush
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29
Jun
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by QuestionGirl • 6:06 am
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From YahooNews:
BAGHDAD - Five American soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a coordinated attack in southern Baghdad involving a roadside bomb and rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. military announced Friday.
The soldiers were on a combat patrol when a roadside bomb exploded near them on Thursday, the military said in a statement. Shortly after the blast, insurgents attacked with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, it said.
Filed: Iraq
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29
Jun
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by QuestionGirl • 6:01 am
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This week’s hero, Army Captain Darrell C. Lewis, died in Afghanistan. R.I.P.
By Clarence Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Darrell C. Lewis had long astounded his family. He navigated one of Southeast Washington’s toughest neighborhoods before earning a scholarship to a private high school and another for college.
After graduating from Wittenberg University, he joined the Army as an officer, rising to captain. From the start, his mother knew he had made the right choice.
“You can’t express it in words; it was in his face,” Hannah Lewis said last night. “Being in the military was the happiest I’ve ever seen my child.”
Lewis, 31, was killed Saturday in Vashir City, Afghanistan, when his unit was attacked by insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms, the Department of Defense said yesterday. He had been in Afghanistan since February.
Lewis was raised in the Linda Pollin housing complex in Southeast, in an area known for drugs and violence. But his family described a natural leader who used an inquisitive mind to chase his dreams.
Continue reading at the Washington Post
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29
Jun
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by QuestionGirl • 2:29 am
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Sounds like this Dick, errrrrr Richard, left wife #2 for his secretary, scammed 2.6 billion, and bribed the state Governor…… and then decided he was going to become a tv preacher. A humble man of God. ha!
Richard Scrushy, the rehabilitation king turned TV preacher, is trading his 92-foot yacht for a jailhouse bunk.
The former HealthSouth Corp. chief executive — cleared in a landmark corporate fraud trial in Birmingham but convicted on unrelated federal bribery charges in Montgomery — was sentenced Thursday night to nearly seven years in prison.
Scrushy’s third wife, Leslie, a former HealthSouth secretary, cried as U.S. marshals took him into custody in the courtroom. The millionaire with nine children was not allowed to speak to his family when led away.
The term was imposed two years after Scrushy beat federal charges in Birmingham that he presided over a $2.6 billion accounting fraud at HealthSouth, a sweeping acquittal in sharp contrast to high-profile corporate convictions won against Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc. and Tyco International Ltd. executives.
After losing the case involving false earnings reports at the rehabilitation company Scrushy founded, federal prosecutors targeted his dealings in 1999 with then-Gov. Don Siegelman, who was also convicted and sentenced to seven years and four months in prison.
So Scrushy — the brash guy from small-town Alabama who mostly recently has cast himself as a minister trying to save lost souls — is being sent far away from his big boat, the Chez Soiree, and his estate in metro Birmingham, where HealthSouth is based.
More at BusinessWeek
