Difference between revisions of "Violence in the Middle East"

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*Saad Eddin Ibrahim, [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082200978_pf.html Op-Ed: "The 'New Middle East' Bush Is Resisting,"] ''Washington Post'', August 23, 2006.
 
*Saad Eddin Ibrahim, [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082200978_pf.html Op-Ed: "The 'New Middle East' Bush Is Resisting,"] ''Washington Post'', August 23, 2006.
 
*Jane Arraf, [http://onthescene.msnbc.com/baghdad/2006/10/calling_bob_in_.html#posts "Calling Bob in Baghdad,"] ''Blogging Baghdad''/MSNBC, October 10, 2006: "I'm more puzzled by comments that the violence isn't any worse than any American city. Really? [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15204665/ In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day?] In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?"
 
*Jane Arraf, [http://onthescene.msnbc.com/baghdad/2006/10/calling_bob_in_.html#posts "Calling Bob in Baghdad,"] ''Blogging Baghdad''/MSNBC, October 10, 2006: "I'm more puzzled by comments that the violence isn't any worse than any American city. Really? [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15204665/ In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day?] In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?"
 +
*[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101000156.html "110 Bodies Found in Baghdad in 24 Hours,"] Reuters (''Washington Post''), October 11, 2006.
  
 
==Related SourceWatch Resources==
 
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Revision as of 12:21, 12 October 2006

"Here we have a Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who gazes at the rubble of Lebanon, 300,000 refugees being strafed with Israel's cluster bombs, and squeaks happily that we are 'witnessing the birth pangs of a new Middle East," Alexander Cockburn wrote July 31, 2006, in CounterPunch.

"Here we have a president, G. Bush, who urges Vladimir Putin to commence in Russia the same 'institutional change' that is making Iraq a beacon of freedom and free expression. Not long after Bush extended this ludicrous invitation the UN relayed from Iraq's Ministry of Health Iraq's real casualty rate, which was running at least 100 a day, now probably twice that number.

"Iraq's morgues reported receipts of 3,149 dead bodies in June [2006]; over 14,000 since the beginning of the year. Senior Iraqis in the government confide that break-up of Iraq into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish enclaves, each protected by its own militias, is now inevitable. Iraq as a viable country has been utterly destroyed, with even vaster carnage coming up over the horizon, and here's the numbskull President touting it as an advertisement for American nation-building at its best, and inviting its prime minister to Washington to proclaim Iraq's approaching renaissance, all in sync with the U.S. 2006 election campaigns," Cockburn wrote.

Ending the Violence: "Dealing with the Devil"

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on the brink of handing President Bush the worst diplomatic disaster of his presidency," Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote August 7, 2006, in the National Review Online. "She is poised to agree to two United Nations resolutions that will tie the hands of both Israel and the United States in the war on terror and, in particular, inhibit future action on its number one state sponsor—Iran."

"The catastrophe," Bayefsky said, "is the brainchild of Secretary General Kofi Annan, who has effectively turned the United Nations into the political wing of Hezbollah. Rice and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns are working furiously," she wrote, "to satisfy a timetable dictated by Annan, not by the interests of the United States."

"There will be only one sure result of this move," Bayefsky concludes, "the empowerment of terrorists whose ultimate target is the United States and all democratic values. Secretary Rice’s belief that there is a serious convergence between the United Nations agenda and American foreign-policy needs in the age of terrorism is a profound error in judgment for which democratic societies everywhere will be forced to pay a heavy price."

Lebanon: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

"Once again Lebanon is paying the price for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Raja Kamal wrote July 19, 2006, in the Chicago Tribune.

"For the last 40 years, Lebanon has been the battleground for numerous regional power brokers. Syria, Israel, Iran, the Palestinians and their proxies have used Lebanon to score political points and send messages. Meanwhile, Lebanon continues to bleed. The latest sad escalation is yet another blow to fragile Lebanon that has only recently started to recover from a lengthy civil war and the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the popular former prime minister.

"The current dispute, triggered by Hezbollah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, illustrates the explosive nature in the region. The response of Israel, as the record would indicate, was swift and disproportionately forceful," Kamal wrote.

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