Bumper sticker: If I had known how much fun grandkids would be, I would have had them first.

I babysat Mike (2 in October) and Robyn (3 in January) Saturday night. Zoe and I had a great time playing with them. They spent the night and Jenny and Katie picked them up Sunday morning. There are not many things more special than making a child laugh.

Iraq

THE IRAQ HAWKS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Generals and admirals have been among the most outspoken critics of Chalabi's proposals. In his years of planning at CENTCOM, General Zinni concluded, according to a Clinton Administration official, that a prudent and successful invasion of Iraq would involve the commitment of two corps—at least six combat divisions, or approximately a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers—as well as the ability to fly bombing missions from nearby airfields. In an essay published last year in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Zinni, who was on the eve of retirement, wrote about what it would take to "drive a stake" through the heart of someone like Saddam:

"You must have the political will—and that means the will of the administration, the Congress, and the American people. All must be united in a desire for action. Instead, however, we try to get results on the cheap. There are congressmen today who want to fund the Iraqi Liberation Act, and let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up an expedition. We'll equip a thousand fighters and arm them with ninety-seven million dollars' worth of AK-47s and insert them into Iraq. And what will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely."
[read more]

Israel/Palestine

Ha'aretz is an Israeli paper that seems to have some touch with reality about the war against the Palestinians. Reccomended reading. The next three links are to Ha'aretz articles.

Amid violence as usual, a policy debate: enshrining sovereignty or the march of folly?

In a step that harkened back to the first intifada, years before the first formal contacts between Israel and Yasser Arafar's PLO, Jerusalem police Monday briefly detained moderate Sari Nusseibeh, Palestinian officialdom's cultured, controversial point man in the holy city, after banning a holiday reception Nusseibeh was to hold for diplomats and local clerics and dignitaries.

The detentions came less than a day after Arafat broadcast to Palestinians a closely-watched appeal for a halt to suicide bombings, mortar and other attacks on Israelis.

But it was violence as usual scant hours later, as IDF troops in the West Bank killed a senior Hamas commander in Hebron and shot dead a Palestinian naval policeman in Nablus, Palestinian mortar squads shelled Gaza Strip settlements, and in a foretaste of further violence, Islamic militants openly rejected the PA chairman's dramatic truce call.
[read more]

When the occupation moves right into your living room
About 15 IDF troops took up positions inside the home of Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti last week. The family was herded into one room, while the soldiers kept guard in the rest of the flat

Around 15 soldiers stayed in the house, Barghouti estimates. Three or four kept guard, while the rest slept well. "Of course it's comfortable," she said, "instead of sleeping in tents outside, they have a ready-made, comfortable apartment. We, on the other hand, couldn't sleep all night. But our experience is just one part of everything else that's going on here. And the question is not food, or the personal discomfort. This is just one example of the fact that the army can come into any Palestinian house at any time and hold it as its own. Our right of ownership is not recognized under occupation."

On Friday morning, the IDF allowed Fadwa Barghouti to come out of her apartment and be interviewed by Ha'aretz. A visit to the apartment was not allowed. Barghouti was given a special promise that she would be permitted to return to her home, thus confirming her version of events that the family members were forbidden from leaving the house if they had any intention of coming back when the IDF took over. "We allowed them to leave the apartment," one soldier told Ha'aretz, "but not to return," Barghouti said, completing the soldier's sentence.

For Fadwa Barghouti, this interview was her first chance to stretch her legs outside her house. She sat on a rock, opposite the soldiers. "Even if they arrested Marwan, or assassinated him, what would they achieve? What have they achieved with all their assassinations and bombings? Only escalation [in violence]," she said.

She points at the soldiers guarding her house and asks rhetorically, "Why do they think that Barghouti has become what they call `the leader of the intifada?' After years of doing everything to convince his people that Oslo was the only way to independence and a state? Because he was left with nothing to convince them with, not even himself, with all the settlement building, the division of the territories into areas A, B and C, the withdrawals that never came and an army that remained all over the place.

"Marwan was elected, not appointed," she continued, "but even if he tells the people who elected him to stop the struggle, they will not listen to him. They will only listen if he can promise that something will come out of it: a plan for a full pullback to the 1967 lines."
[read more]

Some current misconceptions

Some current developments are being interpreted in Israel in an exaggerated and mistaken manner - namely the criticism of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat for continuing Palestinian terrorist actions, and the understanding Washington is showing for the responses of the Israel Defense Forces.

Politicians and most media commentators enthusiastically express satisfaction over what they see as a golden opportunity for Israel to operate with near total freedom in the conflict with the Palestinians.

This is simply not true, despite many media reports suggesting operational coordination between Israel and the United States in attempts to remove Arafat from the political stage. What is true, however, is that Washington does believe Arafat is deliberately misleading not only Israel but everyone else who demands that he fight terrorism. It also believes he is jeopardizing the stability of the Middle East.

However, there are also those in Washington who suggest that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has no political plan to lead Israel and the Palestinians toward a peace treaty - neither a comprehensive, nor even a partial one.
[read more]

U.S. Should Reconsider Aid to Israel

We, as Americans, should be ashamed of ourselves for being partners in a state policy that forces an entire population to exist as a diaspora -- a stateless people scattered about as if they are nothing.

The United States should have nothing to do with this policy of human dispossession. It is against everything we believe in, including the written tenets of our Constitution.

Let me try a little raw truth in discussing this mess. I was in Israel in 1999 when Ehud Barak defeated Benjamin Netanyahu in the election for prime minister. Shortly before the election, Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Ha'aretz newspaper, asked Barak what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.

Barak's response, the most honest one he could give, angered most Israeli Jews. I was among journalists at the press conference when Barak said: "I would have joined a terrorist organization."

Remember, Barak is not a lover of Arabs. He is one of Israel's most decorated generals, a man who killed Arabs as a duty.

But even Barak knows the score: You cannot dispossess a people and then attempt to govern them by occupying their land, by forcing them to subsist in refugee camps, by blocking roadways to their jobs, by refusing to let them get medical attention, by cutting them off from their universities, by discounting their humanity.