the USA, Israel, and national interest

i hate that dumbasses keep calling people anti-semites since whenever someone does something actually anti-semitic now, i have to deal with, "Oh my god, you're just saying that because you're a paranoid Zionist who will say anything to win an argument," when sometimes saying that Jews are Nazis is actually an anti-Semitic thing to say.

yeah, it seems like getting concerned about the "legality" of this (vs the ruthlessness) is like thinking that tax evasion is really why capone deserved jailtime

yeah i agree with you but the problem is that the law is kind of your only lever against things like covert assassination

that or ninjas

...and the israeli body politic has concluded that covert assassination is your only lever against rockets hitting the suburbs.

(note i am making no judgment here about the quality of that conclusion, nor the exact location of those suburbs...)

yeah i agree with you but the problem is that the law is kind of your only lever against things like covert assassination

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, February 16, 2010 6:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

as opposed to blatant assassination? again, it's not like the dubai police were going to do israel a solid and bring him in.

http://www.google.com/mapdata?CxWF_-ABHf7iDwIg____________AQwthf_gATX-4g8CQI4CSLkBUgJJTJABBMoBAmVu

yup, sderot is not a settlement

can't believe andrew sullivan wants to assassinate the jews

luckily leon wieseltier will stand up for jews on the internet

I was in sderot about a month ago...there's a good falafel place

Sderot hasn't been a settlement since 1951...

are you arguing with someone

goole, i think? i assumed he was being sarcastic but maybe i misread him

ha yes i got my geography confused for a second, don't mind me.

and no, i was not being sarcastic. the physical and political relationship of hamas/gaza to sderot is not the same thing as the settlement issue.

so i'm kinda confused what you meant here:

...and the israeli body politic has concluded that covert assassination is your only lever against rockets hitting the suburbs.

(note i am making no judgment here about the quality of that conclusion, nor the exact location of those suburbs...)

What point are you trying to make?

i was only responding to this:

yeah i agree with you but the problem is that the law is kind of your only lever against things like covert assassination

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:08 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

by trying to point out that, at some level, The Law flows from the will (or the ideology, at least) of the people who live under it.

i honestly don't know what israeli law says about the state killing people outside its borders. and yes i'd bet UAE law doesn't legally allow this kind of shit within its borders either. i just don't know about leaning on the law as an arbiter of what is right, or forward-thinking. as often as not, the legal structures, or the "people's will", will be against what i'd consider the best course of action. but what do i know.

note also i'm running on a lot of coffee and no lunch yet so i'm not really making sense to myself atm

oh, ok. i agree with that.

the law not always being the platonic ideal thing. not the coffee thing

ok forget about the international hit squads, we have a bigger problem now

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/navistian.jpg

hit squad video was so dope -- cancel bourne 4 imo

So my wife was in Israel recently and apparently the street view is that this was probably not Mossad b/c too sloppy and not their style. Take that with a grain of salt of course, but included in that view is a relative who works in intelligence, but take that with a grain of salt too, obv.

The fact that the passports were copied from people living in Israel seems like something you would not do if you were Mossad

Yeah, that was one of the big telling details according to the people my wife talked to.

is that really so damning? who else could it have been?

could be a factional thing. a hamas guy may or may not have been involved iirc. that doesn't rule out mossad involvement.

"in Israel recently and apparently the street view is that this was probably not Mossad"

quite the opposite

If Hamas wanted to get rid of him for whatever reason, wouldn't they try to pin it on the Mossad?

i guess i find the idea that "this was sloppy, could not have been mossad" a little too credulous of a spook agency's non-sloppiness.

the cia has a whole bunch of dumb shit on its record, and they're supposedly "the best". moral value notwithstanding, just dumb shit. not everything goes off like bourne.

the political leadership matters too, e.g. under cheney the dumb and brutish elements of the CIA got the run of the joint and ppl with scruples and/or their shit together were forced to lay low. israel's current foreign minster is a racist criminal and the PM is one of the worst public figures in the free world imo. i mean, why not?

two of the people arrested over it are connected to the PA. so hamas is blaming fatah. and vice versa.

oh ha didn't know that. hilarious! aside from the torturing a guy to death part.

the cia has a whole bunch of dumb shit on its record, and they're supposedly "the best".

I thought the conventional wisdom was that Americans are the worst at everything except SIGINT.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3851801,00.html

i mean, the word is still that the mossad dunnit. just with a lil help.

i guess i find the idea that "this was sloppy, could not have been mossad" a little too credulous of a spook agency's non-sloppiness

no that's very true

plus is it WASN'T mossad how the hell would the hitmen have gotten access to the passports in the first place?

two of the people arrested over it are connected to the PA

i would imagine there are plenty of people "connected" to the PA who are connected specifically in order to further israel's interests

I thought the conventional wisdom was that Americans are the worst at everything except SIGINT.

― scratch paper (lukas), Monday, February 22, 2010 12:13 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and HOCKEY

No one with half a brain thinks this was anyone other than Mossad. All of the commentators in the Israeli media I've seen quoted are working on this basis. It fits exactly the kind of thing that Mossad is famous for - barrelling in and killing people and then being surprised when anyone kicks up about it.

However, that's not to say they did not have informants and turncoats providing them with intelligence.

i also imagine that each and every word that comes out about this is the product of furious spin designed to cover someone's ass and/or fuck shit up for someone else

listen to enough radio dramatizations of john lecarre and you start basically assuming that your sister is working for the russians until proven otherwise

It fits exactly the kind of thing that Mossad is famous for - barrelling in and killing people and then being surprised when anyone kicks up about it.

p sure mossad is famous-er for not really giving 1x fuck if people kick up about it.

(not really sure if ex-fatah guys count as "turncoats" in this context, vicar.)

"each and every word" yeah, i doubt it will be possible for your avg news-reading citizen to get an accurate account of wtf happened here. which is kind of the point, but then, if acts like this are meant to "send a message", well, to whom? and what's the message anyway?

the act wasn't *just* to send a message

right, i'm skipping a few sentences -- the act was to kill the guy. but ALSO to be shown doing it, right? assuming for a minute that the "sloppiness" was in fact purposeful.

it's the most interesting story in the news right now - isn't it a good reason for itself?

why the hell would they want to be thought of as sloppy? maybe to lure hamas into complacency. no, apply occam's razor or whatever. they fucked up. if they wanted to make a show of it, they could have done something more spectacular, no?

xpost

a show for the folks at home maybe? or going off my cheney-thinking from earlier, letting some of the brighter young things within the intelligence services off the leash a little?

you guys have good imagination