The Gaza Bombshell, Vanity Fair - Elliott Abrams redux

[TacticalPeek]

The Middle East
The Gaza Bombshell

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

by David Rose April 2008

...

On January 26, 2007, abu Dan, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza, had gone to a local cemetery with his father and five others to erect a headstone for his grandmother. When they arrived, however, they found themselves surrounded by 30 armed men from Hamas’s rival, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. “They took us to a house in north Gaza,” abu Dan says. “They covered our eyes and took us to a room on the sixth floor.”

The video reveals a bare room with white walls and a black-and-white tiled floor, where abu Dan’s father is forced to sit and listen to his son’s shrieks of pain. Afterward, abu Dan says, he and two of the others were driven to a market square. “They told us they were going to kill us. They made us sit on the ground.” He rolls up the legs of his trousers to display the circular scars that are evidence of what happened next: “They shot our knees and feet—five bullets each. I spent four months in a wheelchair.”

Abu Dan had no way of knowing it, but his tormentors had a secret ally: the administration of President George W. Bush.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804?printable=true¤tPage=all

[High Plains]

1. Elliot Abrams should have faced a firing squad 20 years ago...

...for his crimes in Central America.

That he is a free man, let alone high in the Bush administration, is ridiculous.

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Smirk" - corrupt republicon homelander crony Abrams

Behold Abrams' typical republicon homelander crony mug:

[blm]

5. Well - how did they end up becoming STRONGER in the 90s to regain power?

http://consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html


It helps to have a Dem in office groomed for that position by GHWBush's longtime ally, Jackson Stephens.

Does anyone really BUY that Bill just wanted Poppy Bush to retire 'peacefully' for all his service to this nation?

[madrchsod]

3. god only knows how many years it will take to rid the world

of the stain of george bush and his enablers...

[bemildred]

4. 'Hamas using US weapons against IDF'

According to Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip, most of the gunmen who have been fighting the IDF over the past few days are members of Hamas's armed wing, Izaddin Kassam.


An IDF soldier displays weapons discovered during IDF operations in Gaza.
"At least 2,000 Hamas gunmen have been deployed in the northern Gaza Strip to take part in the fighting," the sources told The Jerusalem Post.

The sources estimated that Izaddin Kassam has at least 15,000 members divided into four brigades in the Gaza Strip.

They added that the Hamas gunmen were using many American-made arms seized from the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority security forces in June.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1204473062672&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[leveymg]

6. In Iraq, they called this the "Salvadoran Option": U.S.-trained and equipped deathsquads

Abrams had a lot to do with that, too, along with the original.

Career criminal.

[Tom Joad]

7. Most Israelis want talks with Hamas. If there are any in the Israeli govt that see

the wisdom of doing so, they are not getting any encouragement from the Bush administration. They want war, and more war.

[xchrom]

8. recommending someone in this misbegotten admin do real jail time. nt

[donkeyotay]

9. A good look at bush-rice foreign policy in action

Bush is on his "democracy" kick:

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’

Things don't turn out quite as expected, but even a former head of Mossad is willing to work with it:

Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view.

But not our honorable, deep-thinking president and his sidekick Condi:

But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official. “The administration spoke with one voice: ‘We have to squeeze these guys.’ With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead.”

What a deep commitment to freedom. Another job for the taxpayers. Now we have to outspend Iran.

[tanyev]

10. "After failing to anticipate...."

That's going to be the epitaph for this administration, isn't it? Georgie will be able to whine that he never claimed to be the Anticipator.