Night Alibelle!

Oh according to Hersch and the Bush administration is (among other things) considering tactical nukes against Iran. Cause we, unlike Iran, can be trusted with nuclear weapons.

quotations:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.”

Cause that always worked out so well in the past.

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

On Edit - sorry to mix this with your post Fay. Cause yay on trip to Thailand and all that.

Really no need to apologise. Keep in mind that I'm presently in my 3rd year of living in the Middle East; America's foreign policy has a more immediate impact upon my day-to-day life than it does yours, I'm guessing.

I mean, Egypt is generally fine, the occasional bombing notwithstanding, but our sister school in Gaza was attacked by armed gunmen a couple of weeks ago, and everyone was evacuated. Israel had been bombing them for weeks with sonic booms, and then the US and the UK deserted the prison they'd been guarding, and Israel invaded again, and for 48 hours or so obviously Western people were being seized as hostages right, left and centre. 2 people (one of the Palestinian teachers and a Palestinian security guard) were shot while they tried to save a 50-something yr old female teacher who was being taken hostage. (She was on our school bus last week. She's okay, inasmuch as one can be.) In the event she and the other teacher who had also been siezed were released after 8 hours, when the gunmen realised that they hadn't managed to get Americans.

...And you know, this bit just breaks my heart. The gunmen found out they'd got a Canadian and an Australian and went from Scary Badass Mo'fos to being all desperately apologetic "We love your country! Welcome to Gaza! Ahlan Wes Ahlan!" and offering to share their food. Because they're basically hospitable and friendly people...who are so utterly frustrated at the way they are being fucked over by Israel, and so helpless to change what is being done to them, that they see random Americans as symbols of evil rather than as people. But once they realised that they weren't Americans, they started seeing them as people again. Argh.All the teachers were evacuated straight from the school to Israel, from where some of them just went home and others came to Cairo.

But mostly it's okay here in Egypt. Granted my friends were in the hotel at Taba a couple of years ago, and came within a couple of minutes of being killed in the bombing (their room and all its contents was utterly destroyed, and the friends they were staying there WERE killed). That was terrible. But on the whole I don't feel any more at risk of terrorist attack than I did in London, where I've come within a couple of hours of being on the spot of an IRA bomb several times. And of course now there are people pissed off about Palestine and the Iraq war trying to take out buses and tubes sometimes...

Yep. Just loving our foreign policies. Bombing the fuck out of people just naturally makes them respect us, and want to emulate our democratic process.

Or, you know. Not.

Grargh. I hate packing. Especially last minute packing, because you just know you're going to miss something absolutely vital.

Sending you packing-ma, then-- and dad-ma to Spidra, too.

I've seen studies that indicate that intense bombing campaigns pretty much solidify a nation's people against the aggressor. About the only time it ever worked 'correctly' was the atomic bombs in Japan, and then it was because it was so damn horrific.

Also, inspired by the wave of spring croppings, I cut her hair this afternoon, and she's now sporting a short layered bob

Could hair cutting be your new calling? You have a ready made clientel here on b.org.

::keeps tresses far away from Hecubus::

I went out grocery shopping and bought good healthy things. Unfortunately it ran longer than I thought, and so I've missed the start of my regular yoga class this morning....

I've seen studies that indicate that intense bombing campaigns pretty much solidify a nation's people against the aggressor.

Gee, ya think? What the fuck else do they think it's going to do? Cow people into submission, I'm guessing, huh?

Sigh, I've caught up on my threads. Time to finish my paper. I feel urggy and sore throat-y, and not very motivated.

Well, one idea with some selective bombing strategies is to cripple the infrastructure, and destroy factories and such. This has limited usefulness in a place where most of those things are already destroyed. (I seem to remember than one of the problems in reprisal-bombing Afghanistan for 9/11 woudl be that they didn't have much in the way of 3+ story buildings standing.)

Nora, you can use some of the motivation I would have used for yoga, if I'd gone....