Hawks and doves fight for control of campaign

As war begins in Afghanistan, so does the assault on the White House - to win the ear and signed orders of the military's Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush, for what Pentagon hawks call 'Operation Infinite War'.
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The Observer has learnt that two detailed proposals for warfare without limit were presented to the President this week by his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both of which were temporarily put aside but remain on hold.
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The plans put before the President during the past few days involve expanding the war beyond Afghanistan to include similar incursions by special ops forces - followed by air strikes by the bombers they would guide - into Iraq, Syria and the Beqaa Valley area of Lebanon, where the Syrian-backed Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters that harass Israel are based.

In Iraq, any site suspected of being a chemical weapons facility or proliferation plant of any threatening kind would be bombed, in an escalation of the almost weekly current harassment of Iraqi installations by British and US fighter jets.

In Syria and Lebanon, as in Afghanistan, special ops would guide air strikes, and also be called on to mount guerrilla-style raids on training camps and to carry out assassinations. While a presidential executive order - which Bush is under pressure to revoke - bans overseas assassinations, the Pentagon points out that the US can act as it pleases in self-defence. If action in Lebanon led to an Israeli reinvasion of the southern part of the country, it would be supported by the US.
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thanks to The Liberal Arts Mafia

This is an instructive article which looks at a very similar situation the French had in Algeria in the 1950s. Similar except that it was on a much smaller scale. The French fell into the trap that the Bush Hawks (see above) want to fall into on a global scale.

The Lessons of Blowback

One of the objectives of terrorism is to provoke the ruling elites of a target regime into disastrous overreaction. When it works, as it has in Israel over the past year, the results can be devastating for all sides. Who does this ultimately benefit? The terrorists.
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thanks to SmirkingChimp.com

This one comes under the heading of deja vu. I feel it is important to understand what this country has been doing to the rest of the world in order to understand why so many hate the U.S. This is not to justify the horrific act of 9-11 but to understand the root causes of 9-11. In order to solve this we need to attack the root causes and not just the symptoms. These pictures are of the World Trade Center and of another tall office building filled with civilians. The other tall building was in Yugoslavia and was attacked by the U.S.

Death on a Very Small Planet

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