SOURCE Koreas Oh My News

Israeli missile strike killed seven members of a Palestinian family picnicking on a Gaza beach, which prompted Hamas to end its 16-month-old informal ceasefire with Israel. Hamas has repeatedly pointed to the Gaza beach incident as one of the central events that prompted its cross-border raid. Hamas also points to the capture of some of its leaders by Israel as the provocation for its raid.

Israel fired 7,000 to 9,000 heavy artillery shells into Gaza, killing and wounding scores of people.

TO ALL YOU REPUBLICAN TROOLS PUT UP OR SHUT THE F*CK UP

“Three years ago, I would have poo-pooed anyone using the word “radicals” to describe the neo-cons. No more. Any group that can so brazenly (and breezily) avoid a real reckoning with the continuing crisis in Iraq–which is descending into civil war as we speak–any movement that has the gall to suggest as some panacea that we mount significant military operations in Iran and Syria and god knows where else (with Israel in Lebanon to boot), well, their credibility is at a very low ebb indeed, and they very much need to be urgently reined in…”

Unnaceptable stop the killing of Lebanese civillians now
get to the streets and protest what a apathetic nation America is

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani was speaking on Saturday at a UN-sponsored conference on transitional justice and reconciliation in Baghdad.

“Just get your hands off Iraq and the Iraqi people and Muslim countries, and everything will be all right,” he said in a speech as the conference opened.

“What has been done in Iraq is a kind of butchery of the Iraqi people.”

He also criticised US support for Israeli attacks against Lebanon.

The two-day conference, which was originally supposed to be opened by Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, will address the issue of dealing with the crimes of previous regimes and a plan to reconcile warring factions.

The prime minister is expected to name a reconciliation committee on Saturday.

Al-Mashhadani told the audience of UN officials, foreign experts, Iraqi politicians and civil society representatives that the Iraqi people had little use for foreign advice on running the country or for foreign-sponsored conferences.

Anecdote

“If a reconciliation project is going to work it has to talk to all the people,” he said. “It must go through our Iraqi beliefs and perceptions. What we need is reconciliation between Iraqis only, there can be no third party.”

He related an anecdote about how American soldiers keep people waiting in lines at checkpoints for hours because they insist on resting their bomb-sniffing dogs.

“The sleep of American dogs is more important than people being stopped in the street for hours,” he said.

The UN representative who then opened the conference referred to al-Mashhadani’s speech as “spirited”.

More US troops

Meanwhile on Saturday, the US moved to bolster American troop strength in Baghdad to cope with the escalating violence as seven Shia workers were shot dead in west Baghdad and explosions in the heart of the capital shattered a one-day calm after a ban on private vehicles expired.

Violence resumed after a one-day
ban on Baghdad vehicles expired

The seven Shia died in a drive-by shooting at noon in the Furat neighbourhood near Baghdad airport, police Lieutenant Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said. Two other workers were wounded.

Earlier, two large explosions occurred in eastern Baghdad about 20 minutes apart at midmorning. One targeted an Iraqi police patrol, but killed a civilian. The other occurred near the Rasheed military camp, killing an American soldier.

A ban on private vehicles had kept down violence on Friday after one of the most violent weeks in the capital this year.

It expired on Friday evening, and within hours, heavy bursts of automatic weapons rang out.

A senior US defence official said the Pentagon was moving ahead with scheduled deployments to Iraq next month and was moving one battalion to Baghdad from Kuwait, where it was in reserve.

moral cretinism is alive and well in America.

But there is a question that concerns me: just how much of my tax money is going to be spent rebuilding BOTH sides once this mess is over?

Comment by Joe Sixpack — July 22, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
#

Ah, spoken like a true “Compassionate Conservative.” This question/concern of yours perfectly defines the divide between people like you and liberals.

News Bias in the Associated Press
by Peter Phillips

A new study conducted at Sonoma State University shows widespread bias in Associate Press (AP) news reports favoring US government positions.

The Fog of Cable
by Lawrence Pintak

As someone who lives and breathes Middle East politics and media, I have had the bizarre — and frustrating — experience of watching the current conflict play out on U.S. cable television, and I am reminded once again why many Americans have such a limited — and distorted — view of the world.

Yes bombs dropping on cars can burn bodies, but the pics posted at 25 above show signs of napalm use, plus remember those pictured are civilians! Killing Hezbollah soldiers is a different matter entirely!

Come on, Jay. Bombs cause fires. Burning vehicles cause dead bodies to burn and char. We used to call them “crispy critters” when I was in the service. Sick as it sounds, its true.

But there is a question that concerns me: just how much of my tax money is going to be spent rebuilding BOTH sides once this mess is over?