E Pluribus Unum

On almost any issue Howard Dean makes George Bush look like Forrest Gump. Well, almost everyone makes George Bush look like Forrest Gump.

And it may be smart partisan politics, Dean may even believe what he's saying and Maliki may even be an anti-Semite (or he may simply believe, rightly, that Israel has been a bad actor). But any way I look at it, the last thing we need right now is more demagoguery on Israel.

Oh, like there wasn't enough already.

Does that mean, "Bring it on?"

Maliki said that Israel went too far. Shep said it too. Does that mean Howard Dean should be running around calling people like Shep anti-semites because they believe Israel's response was disproportionate?

Good people disagree all the time, some of them are castigating Israel for the massive civilian death toll, doesn't make them anti-semites.

Howard Dean is a bad joke and just because you are a bit sensitive to the Israeli situation doesn't mean you should be applauding this kind of rhetoric.

He could have complained about Maliki's lack of disgust with Hezbollah without automatically jumping on the "anti-semite" bandwagon.

I too think that Maliki should have at least called Hezbollah on the carpet for starting this mess but I can't imagine what his consequences might have been if he did. We won't go headless for speaking our minds, he might.

"Howard Dean is a bad joke and just because you are a bit sensitive to the Israeli situation doesn't mean you should be applauding this kind of rhetoric."

I'd give one of the precious few remaining years of my life to have had Howard Dean in charge of US foreign policy (or domestic policy for that matter) for the least six years. And even as he hoists Republicans on their own militarism-baiting petards, he is letting his partisanship (anti-Republican or pro-Israeli) get in the way of doing what is right.

Rose:

Good people disagree all the time, some of them are castigating Israel for the massive civilian death toll, doesn't make them anti-semites.

al-Maliki is a US puppet, handpicked after we've paid $450 billion and over 20 thousand American casualties. I think we have the right to tell him to sit down and shut his fucking piehole.

I too think that Maliki should have at least called Hezbollah on the carpet for starting this mess

You're dreaming. al-Maliki is an Iranian stooge, a Hezbollah apologist. We knew that from day One. We propped him up the same way we propped up Saddam. And we'll end up kicking his ass out just like Saddam.

What a collossal freaking waste of time and money and lives.

al-Maliki is a US puppet, handpicked after we've paid $450 billion and over 20 thousand American casualties. I think we have the right to tell him to sit down and shut his fucking piehole.

Some puppet, eh? If he were a puppet he'd be out there tsk-tsking Hezbollah wouldn't he?

We don't have a right to tell him anything. If we had a right to tell people what to do based on the money and lives we spend helping them, we'd be in control of the entire fucking planet. Dude, we can't even get the French to shut the fuck up and we lost way more lives freeing them.

Some puppet, eh? If he were a puppet he'd be out there tsk-tsking Hezbollah wouldn't he?

Maliki's mouthing off shows what a pussy George Bush is.

It's just another sign that Bush has bungled YET ANOTHER aspect of the war.

I've lost count. The whole thing is a fiasco and Maliki is just one more sign.

We don't have a right to tell him anything. If we had a right to tell people what to do based on the money and lives we spend helping them, we'd be in control of the entire fucking planet. Dude, we can't even get the French to shut the fuck up and we lost way more lives freeing them.

This is how you do it:

In 1966, upon being told that Charles DeGaulle had taken France out of NATO and that all U.S. troops must be evacuated off of French soil, President Lyndon Johnson told Secretary of State Dean Rusk, "Ask him about the cemeteries Dean!" So at end of the meeting Rusk did ask DeGaulle if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil also included the 60,000+ soldiers buried in France from World War I and World War II.

Now...do you think Bush has the balls to do that with Maliki? Apparently not.

We still had troops in France 20 years after WWII? Wow, I can't believe the Liberals put up with that...

Hey, maning a post outside Marseille wasn't exactly hardship duty. Besides, it was this administration who closed the Istres air force base on the Riviera

I think that it's time for a trade-off. If we finish those permanent bases in Iraq (and a couple of forts in Southern Lebanon for that matter) it's time the French started picking up part of their burden for making the world safe. I think it's time for out-of-the-box thinking.