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Friday October 19, 2007
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Burning Down the House: He is the walrus



October 19, 2007
By Gabe Winant
"So, on Saturday morning, we heard that the Middle East is a gas station with antisemitism and domestic-abuse problems, and that our economy is a monster truck with a stuck gas pedal and a lost key, among other things. Neither of these points is even actually wrong, though the metaphors don’t really scan. Further, Friedman appears, theatrically dropping his voice to a whisper, to have just discovered them.--For example, he notes — I think correctly — that radical Islamic terrorism is the result of years of American-sanctioned political repression in the Islamic world. Friedman’s solution to Arab resentment of the American-backed political regime? American invasion. To sum up: Friedman is smart enough to understand that Arabs, like everyone else, want their human and civil rights, and that they’re pissed that we are complicit in denying them these rights. ---"

Ted Rudow III,MA
The Bush administration is approaching its last year in the White House. As the clock ticks toward 2008, speculation grows over whether President Bushand Vice President Dick Cheney will indeed launch a widely feared attack on Iran.
"I thought Petraeus went way beyond what Iran is doing inside Iraq today," said David Kay, a former CIA adviser and the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations. "When the White House started its anti-Iran campaign, six months ago, I thought it was all craziness. Now it does look like there is some selective smuggling by Iran, but much of it has been in response to American pressure and American threats."
Iran's not a threat to the US, just as Iraq wasn't a threat to the US. The threat is to Israel, which has always worried about any of its neighbors getting ahold of nuclear weapons.
Israel, of course, has many nuclear weapons. So Israel is egging on the US to do something about it, and is hinting that if the US doesn't stop the Iranian nuclear program, then Israel will - the same way it stopped Iraq's nuclear program years ago, by blowing up their reactor. The United States professes that it supports democracy in the Middle East, yet when there was a democratic government in Iran, the US destroyed it.

Ted Rudow III,MA