Was the Israel / Lebanon war just more election year terror manipulation?

[boolean]

Note: I'm not here to talk about the actual conflict or who's right and who's wrong. (For the record, I think both sides are wrong).

But now that we know that they knew about it and that it was in the planning stages for a year before it happened, I'm starting to get suspicious.

We have the U.S. pressuring British officials to make arrests in a terror plot right after Lamont wins in CT, but not before Cheney and others get a chance to hit the media with the usual pre-election "Democrat = helping terrorists" mantra.

We have a fake war against hezbollah, a "terrorist organization". We have the media pretending like it started with the kidnap of soldiers when in actuality this conflict has been going on for over 20 years.

This always happens before an election. Every fucking time, like clockwork. Terror terror terror!

[rodeodance]

1. Once again, the WH saw an opportunity and pounced on it.

[kenny blankenship]

2. I have no doubt at all that it was scheduled for this midterm year

2006, the last election that Bush gives a shit about.

It has probably been pencilled-in for 2006 waay back--even before we invaded Iraq. They anticipated back then that the mideast would be looking a lot different than it does. Maybe they even expected to control Iran in addition to Iraq, and the stepchild Afghanistan. Iraq became an unexpected quagmire, however, and the Grand Army of NeoFascist Imperialism bogged down and could not advance to the next objective. But plans are plans, and even if all the conditions for the EXTREME MAKEOVER for the mideast weren't falling out as desired, they went ahead with the plan for Lebanon-Syria: the (explicitly) Israeli phase in which the US would get involved if Syria could be goaded to attack.
This, too, was a dismal failure. Like Iraq, this phase of the Big Plan has killed many many people, sown the seeds of further violence and instability-not peace- and devastated American credibility and prestige in the region and the world community.

Let me be if not the very first to throw a handful of dirt on the stinking coffin of the NeoCons, at least among the first.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. No, of course not.

One could go into all sorts of detail about the root grudges on each side, but what it boiled down to was that the Israelis and the Arabs hated one another. American electoral politics were at most peripherally involved.

[boolean]

5. I'd love to agree with you...

But this latest conflict wasn't a knee jerk reaction. It was planned well in advance. No doubt that they hate each other, but this pattern of terror news before elections has gotten to a point of too many coincidences. I'm not big on conspiracy, but I know conspiracy exists.

Why didn't Israel hit Hezbollah LAST year? Why not in January of THIS year? Why oh why does Israel decide to hit them 3 months before the election? If this was an isolated incident, I wouldn't even bring it up.

Keith Olbermann: Nexus of politics and terror

The whole thing stinks of something rotten. Hezbollah is still there. In fact, they're rebuilding and handing out cash as I type this. What did Israel accomplish? Why did they even agree to the cease fire?

I'm starting to get sick to my stomach over this. Bush is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and it's all so he and his GOP cronies can hang on to power. Remember when Clinton bombed Iraq right before the impeachment was supposed to happen? I had no doubt he did that on purpose and he killed many innocents to save his ass and that made me just as sick to my stomach then.

TOO. MANY. COINCIDENCES.

[treestar]

4. Probably. Look at the State Department reports on Lebanon

Hezbollah had been making these rocket attacks periodically since 2000. So it was really nothing unusual. The MSM harps on things and makes perspective impossible.