the USA, Israel, and national interest

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

hey if you told me in mid 2001 what the next ten years would look like, i'd have have cracked a few tinfoil hat jokes myself.

sometimes decisions get made for the weirdest reasons

a better show for the folks back home is this guy is killed and that's all she wrote. everyone would know it was mossad anyway. all this kerfuffle hardly burnishes their reputation for being stone cold pros.

Apart from his remaining dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjwRXicA9Gs

DO NOT WANT

lol Hamas is such a joke

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1153316.html

say wuuuuuuut

The police chief also said that travelers suspected of being Israeli will not be allowed into the United Arab Emirates even if they arrive with alternative passports.

He did not explain what procedures would be used to identify the Israeli visitors, except that the police will "develop skills" to recognize Israelis by "physical features and the way they speak."

Hamas seems like the Democratic Party to me

btw, an imposed-from-without solution is the only way.

Those new entry procedures in the UAE seem oddly similar to the sophisticated techniques for spotting subverts used at Ben Gurion airport.

crazy, paranoid israel. it's as if they'd had a large number of terrorist attacks or something!

Those new entry procedures in the UAE seem oddly similar to the sophisticated techniques for spotting subverts used at Ben Gurion airport.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, March 3, 2010 8:09 AM Bookmark

Considering that they've stopped multiple attempts to bring explosives aboard planes by people who were ethnically European, I don't think so.

He did not explain what procedures would be used to identify the Israeli visitors, except that the police will "develop skills" to recognize Israelis by "physical features and the way they speak."

you could charitably interpret this to mean the same kind of quick profiling that israeli airport security does

if you were in a charitable mood

I'm actually talking about arrivals in Ben Gurion, not departures.

Considering that they've stopped multiple attempts to bring explosives aboard planes by people who were ethnically European, I don't think so.

Eh? When, who?

interestingly, BG began being hardass after an attack by terrorists who were neither arab nor european in appearance

LOL Bibi

Also LOL Grauniad:

"This article was amended on 18 March 2010. The original text described Hagai Ben-Artzi as the husband of Binyamin Netanyahu's wife. He is her brother. This has been corrected."

ugh fuck these people

seriously can't believe how craven and cynical a stunt that is

the President is angry that Israel can't be trusted to follow international law/abide by signed agreements/follow through on promises = THE PRESIDENT HATES JEWS

yeah right