Fu to us foreign policy

[Arthur Dent]

arafat being out of the picture will bring about an new leader who wants peace, and prosperity for the palestinian people.

Just like killing Hitler wouldn't have led to Himmler or Eichman or one of the others from taking power? hell, the reason Germany lost WWII was becasue Hitler was a terrible military leader. If we had assasinated him, someone who actually knew what they were doing would have risen to power and the situation would have been worse.

Beware of placing all the blame on an individual. If you remove Arafat, you have to remove EVERYONE associated with him. If you do that with the Palestinians, then nobody is left with any influence. Power vacuums are dangerous things. It's why Bush didn't take out Saddam during the Gulf War.

Today in the news, it was announced that Isreal was refusing to allow the UN investigation to go forward because they felt the commission was too political without enough experts in military and counter-terrorist policy. Commission may be allowed to go forward now that a US general has been added as a full member of the commission, but not until this weekend. Stall? Cover-up? Or just stubborn pride?

And I heard on the news last night that Sharon declared there would be no talk of compromise or concessions for 18 months. Interesting.