I think the latest poll (LATimes/Bloomberg) has shown that a minority of 48% still supports going to war with Iran if they persist on their nuclear path. Hardly only the Israel Lobby, don't you think?

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If there is any doubt that the Israeli lobby is powerful, the absence of reporting on Israel's nuclear capability is proof. Israel is estimated to have hundreds of nuclear warheads, but the corporate media conveniently neglect to mention it. Why go to war to protect a nuclear power against a nuke-less power?

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Mearsheimer and Walt, pillars of the "realist" school of international relations, argue that Washington's Middle East policy is too closely tied to Israel to serve its own national interests in the region.

They believe that the power of the Israel Lobby -- derived, among other things, from its ability to marshal financial support for Democratic as well as Republican politicians, its grassroots organisational prowess, and its ability to stigmatise critics as "anti-Semitic" (a tactic already deployed against the authors) -- is largely responsible.

These remarks highlight the fatal flaw in our political system. That is that a foreign power can influence our politicians to go against our national interest by paying money to our political parties. Equally true is that an industry or corporation can influence our politicians to go against the interests of the public by paying money to our political parties. Our government is for sale to the highest bidder.

This flaw can only be repaired by a powerful non-partisan grassroots movement to take control of both political parties. The time to do it is now. Our votes only have power before an election. After a vote is cast it has no power.

Join The Lincoln Initiative. Make government of the people, by the people, and for the people" a reality. Click on A new idea

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Fifth column is alive and well

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A great threat to peace and security for all people are the fundamentalist neo-christian zionists who are too close to the people in power in DC and they seek: "to guarantee the continuation of Israel's domination and oppression of Palestinian people."-p. 17 Challenging Christian Zionism


It is crucial to understand the difference between Jewish Zionism and Christian Zionism, for they are poles apart.

The goal of Jewish Zionism is to bring Jews from their Diaspora into Israel so that they would have peace and security.

The goal of Christian Zionism is to bring all the Jewish people to Israel in order that they be converted to Christianity or be annihilated.
Their theology reeks of anti-Semitism and heresy.

Heresy is defined as a belief or opinion opposed to official established views or doctrines.

The Christian Zionists have left behind Christ’s message of nonviolent resistance, forgiveness and love from their heretical and misunderstood reading of scripture.

Because of fundamentalism, religion has often failed at its commission: to point the way to God and to teach ethical behavior.

-excerpted April 14, 2006 WAWA BLOG:
http://www.wearewideawake.org

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Richard Perle, a mild mannered and soft-spoken psychopath is revered by the Rabid Right for his ability to promote genocide with the calm demeanor of Hannibal the Cannibal as he removes slices of a living victim’s brains to eat raw.

He is a madman. One of many in this administration and congress.

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The time has long passed when military aid to the IDF and Zionist war criminals of Israel MUST STOP. And Oh BTW why is it OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons and no other country in the Middle East? I am, for a long time now tired of the war criminals running loose in Israel killing Palestinian civilians [women, children and old people]. When is the world going to stop these Zionist IDF war criminals and their crimes against humanity?

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The time has long passed when military aid to the IDF and Zionist war criminals of Israel MUST STOP. And Oh BTW why is it OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons and no other country in the Middle East? I am, for a long time now tired of the war criminals running loose in Israel killing Palestinian civilians [women, children and old people]. When is the world going to stop these Zionist IDF war criminals and their crimes against humanity?

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The International Atomic Energy Agencies ordering Iran to cease enrichment must also be just pawns of the Israel Lobby, since they are all on the same side.

See, the Old Testament prophets were right: Jahweh is a Jew. And he's in charge of everything. So that makes him part of the Israel Lobby, too.

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We need to crush Iran. These people violated our embassy in the Carter era and that alone is enogh to more than justify making them ground zero. It has nothing to do with Israel and I believe that the special support of Israel by the US is unwise if not downright stupid. But Iran defined its nature by allowing an embassy to be attacked. So since they want nuclear power so badly we can easily give them a taste of ours.

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...of why the constitution separates religion from political entities, I don't know what is. The Jews learned from the Nazis, the Arabs learned from the British - two of the most bloodthirsty entities in history - and we, of course, in our quest to be better at empire than anyone, have bought into that "God on our side" fallacy, too. National policy based on spook stories and fairy tales. Preachers spewing hatred. Wingnuts holding prayer breakfasts before murdering children. Bigotry. And the list goes on... Tax the churches. Tax the rich. Israel and the U.S. are TERRORIST STATES.

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This administration can not be trusted with the formulation of policy regarding Iran and this is particularly so if it involves a military response. The track record is clear. We should wait for the next administration in 2009, or let the Europeans deal with the problem. If in the meantime Iran gets a bomb, so be it.

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So glad Alternet is publishing this. It's possible not to be anti-semitic while being highly critical of Israeli policy. There must be american jewish voices that are similarly critical- they need to be heard.

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Iraq was a war is an immoral one that was fabricated and executed out of lies that people have had no remorse for. America has come to a moral crossroads of which so far, they have shown no feelings for their fellow human beings.

A war, and especially a one using nuclear weapons, would be the death of peace around the world. No IAEA laws have been broken, yet the UN cowers to the power of two countries that are willing to go to war under false pretenses. Add that to the fact that the US and the UK push nuclear proliferation for India, Pakistan and Israel, all of which are not signatories of the IAEA, as well as our own massive build up of WMD against all previous agreements, a perversion of moral consistency that should be screaming from any legitimate news outlet, is dumbfounding. Have we the people of the US uncaring savages that would rejoice in our own self-righteousness as people would be slaughtered on this alter we pretend to portray as democracy, including our own, when the real business of this war is business?

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Does GloryBe have ANY that (s)he is posting on a leftist site?

I think I've read five or six different posts this morning where this idiot has gone entirely the grain of the majority of Alternet posters...

In THIS column, it was supporting an attack against Iran... (Dumb, just phenominally dumb...)

In others it was SUPPORT for throwing the kid who possessed a couple grams of pot in jail for two years, saying maybe our draconian druglaws aren't HARSH ENOUGH? What a moron... How do you not fall down a lot more?

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else noticed...

Hey, GloryBe... Nice try, but we Alternet users can see through your transparancies... Go back to NewsMax, they miss you...

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Get ready people, cause the shit's ready to hit the big fan.

www.wintersteel.com/RobertDuncanOFinioan.html

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"No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially the same," the authors argued, noting that the lobby, while predominantly Jewish, also includes prominent Christian evangelicals and non-Jewish neo-conservatives, such as Woolsey and former Education Secretary William Bennett.

For years, I have suspected that there will come a time when the United States would begin to explicitly and publicly blame Israel-interests for the consequences of its own ugly. I suspect that that time is coming soon.

This is a particular role Israel has been set up for, and it is not deviant from the larger system the U.S. is central in.

But pretending that Israel and an "Israel Lobby" is deviant from the U.S. interests hides those U.S. interests.

Evangelicals notwithstanding, "Israel" is and will be playing a role that European Jews have played in European culture for as long as we have been part of it. Standing in as the frontperson for a whole host of evils and protecting white Christian capitalism. For some reason, we think the very system that hates us will protect us if we become like just them. Riiiight.

I am a Jew by ancestry, and am opposed to the existence of the state of Israel. I am also opposed to anything that protects the deep core of the ugly -- and that is what Israel is set up to do, and what this this Israel Lobby discourse is doing.

What a horrorshow all around.

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first of all let me say that I dont think anything productive can be done about Iran by use of military force. If they get the Bomb, we will have to deal with them like we deal with Pakistan. We cannot for a multitude of reasons let the post-1979 hostility between US and Iran continue. If for no other reason, the energy markets are roiled by US-Iran tension, and that hurts the US more than Iran. The time to "fix" things in Iran was in the years the Shah ruled and we had influence. We stayed with the wrong horse too long. Let's do what we have to do to at least have a commercial relationship with Iran, like Russia does, regardless of whether they go nuclear.

As for Israel, they should not lead us into a war not in our interest. But I wouldn't be too hard on them. I mean if someone with a big weapon threatened to blow you and your family off the map, you would at the least be mad and scared. You would do something about it.

Israel is a pain quite often. Often however they express the views of normal secular Western people. We should sympathize with them without commitment to act in every case they w ant our help. Help has to be in our interest. War with Iran is not in our interest. Good relations with Iran in the longterm are more important than good relations with Israel. I know that sounds harsh, and I do wish the Israeli public well. It is in their interest that the US lead the way in the gradual reintegrton of Iran into the Western world, albeit with its own Islamic twist. We deal with Turkey and Pakistan; we can deal with Iran. We need t cool the rhetoric and see what they need from us, and assure them that we will not encourage regime change in Iran.

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This article's conspiratorial nonsense continues the recent agreement on the far right and some on the left that the US is supposedly "merely" a puppet to the Israel Lobby, or the Jewish Lobby, or the Jews, or the master and deadly forgery, the Protocols of the Elder of Zion in terms of conducting policy in the Middle East.

Like the so-called Israel Lobby paper, it is not Israel but the U.S. that has grand foreign policy designs on the Middle East. Israel plays an important role "as the local cop" but is not the final decision makers. I would give this article an "F" for logic and I would ask why does it have such a conspiratorial tone?

For just some example of hardline US and not just AIPAC support for a strike against Itan, see:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10331/
http://www.cfr.org/publication/7730/iran.html
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact

And there is much more: just Google: "Bush Administration" Iran and see for yourself.

Why has Alternet published this inflammatory and conspiratorial garbage?

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Of course the "Isreal lobby" is pushing towards conflict. They are the ones being threatend.

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