Yeah well now there have been several days of rioting, a greenhouse worker in Israel has been killed by a rocket from Gaza and several really ugly articles with accompanying antisemitic invective in the comment threads have been appearing in the MSM.

I think we're doomed.

Speaking as a Democrat, we should not have to choose between supporting what we believe to be a good domestic policy and possible serious harm to Israel, which in turn jeopardizes Jews everywhere.

I am especially upset by the Petraeus comments and think they're close to a blood libel.

On that score since when does the military go around doing the job of ambassadors?

Dammit. I knew I was about the Iraq war in the first place. Saddam or no Saddam we should NOT have gotten involved with that, we had the turkey contained; and it's been nothing but downhill for Israel, our own economy and countless Arab and Central Asian civilians since.

OK fire away.

OK missing word. I meant to say I was RIGHT about the Iraq war. In the first place.

I do not appreciate being blamed for that or for the problems confronting our military and I do not like seeing antisemitic comments on CNN either:

http://www.newser.com/story/83490/cnns-screen-crawl-gets-anti-semitic.html

Here's a real nasty from Salon too - this is all in the wake of The Huge Apartment War:

http://www.salon.com/news/2010/03/17/ml_israel_ancient_ruins

Now - they excerpted that from Ha'aretz, cutting out all the important parts - and gave it provocative title.

Oh btw: here's Petraeus, the power of whome they hope will change American opinion about Israel:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/17/bacevich_on_petraeus_israel

Swell.

Sophia, did saddam husseins iraq ever have WMDs???

Yes they did; we sold them some. Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons and also gas with which he murdered tens of thousands of people including Kurds and I believe he also killed some people with WMD's during the war with Iran.

We know for sure that Saddam Hussein had WMD's because guess what - we provided them.

And the goal of that was what exactly? Over a million people were killed in the Iran/Iraq war alone, which Saddam started, and he then invaded Kuwait in addition to the violent suppression of his own people.

There are rumors that the Reagan Administration was so angry with Israel for Osirak that we shipped Saddam some chemical weapons as a consolation prize but this is disputed by the Republicans.

Regardless after Gulf War I Saddam's teeth were largely pulled and inspections began.

UN inspections found no WMD's, we were overflying and had constant satellite surveillance and the Israelis are believed to have told the WH that they'd been moved to Syria already. I don't know if the Syrians have the WMD's or not obviously, I believe they have chemical weapons though and Ha'aretz has eluded to their possible possession by Hassan Nasrallah. So, that story has some plausibility.

And, once we'd attacked and invaded we didn't find any WMD's either.

Worst of all the attack on Saddam unleashed holy terror against the Iraqi people and it took precious resources away from the attempt to capture Bin Ladin, break up the al Qaeda/Taliban dominance in Afghanistan and start rebuilding that country which had effectively been destroyed by the Soviets, in which we were not completely innocent either.

HOPEFULLY some good will have come from this in the form of a more open government and maybe even safety and peace in Iraq and I hope it's not too late to salvage Afghanistan though it sure is too late for millions of Afghan people and now Pakistan is in trouble.

But simply regarding Iraq I worry that the minute we leave there all hell will break loose again.

Plus, we have gone broke on these damn wars which may well have caused more rather than less extremism. We didn't even get any decent oil concessions out of this whole disaster. And how many thousands upon thousands of people have been killed? Meanwhile our economy is down the tubes and we have been ignoring global disasters like the near-extinction of tuna and the deleterious effects of pollution on our planet.

Our industries have been neglected, our jobs have gone overseas, our infrastructure is crumbling and people are struggling to stay afloat.

So don't get me started.

The only thing worse than this war was supporting and arming Saddam Hussein in the first place.

What WMD did we give them? And I don't believe that Reagan story for a second.

We were their patron, Sol, we armed and supported Saddam Hussein. We helped keep him power for

It's possible they were able to create some weaponry on their own.

Whether we actually helped them acquire these weapons is open to debate. However, it's public record that the Reagan Administration did not react aggressively against them even on a diplomatic level:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

I meant to finish my sentence, we helped keep him in power for many years.

Prior to our heavy armament of Saddam Hussein we had been heavily arming the Shah.

Then there was Iran/Contra, the full aspects of which will never be known because the details wound up in the shredder.

My final thought on this matter (at least for now).

In light of all the above, not to mention Afghanistan, blaming Israel for trouble in the ME is libelous as well as absurd.

OK from Fox:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60702,00.html

There's more on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/11/20/sbm.documents/

There's a lot more information out there but it will take time to track down the original articles.

Nevertheless it is notable that the Reagan Admistration recognized the PLO and began a proArab tilt under Schultz, after Haig was dismissed.

But we didn't give them WMD.

Sol, I think there are apparently some formerly secret documents, now released, that indicate we did.

This includes sarin gas and biologicals.

I'll try to track this down.

For certain, European allies of ours did sell such items to Saddam.

And the fact remains: we continued to support Saddam even after he'd used WMD's. And, after Israel bombed the reactor the Reagan Administration cut off their airplanes and recognized the PLO. Of course this was also during the Lebanese Civil War.

Saddam, our client, was virulently anti-Israel as you know.

The whole thing is a tangled web.

I suppose this is the redeeming factor of the Iraq war - he's now gone. Hooray.

But, I wonder if the new Iraqi government will be any less hostile to Israel?