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August 13, 2006

Bad News For You And Me

I've always believed flying will remain extremely safe even as other parts of society fall apart. The people who run the world fly all the time, and they'll exert as much pressure as they possibly can to protect their own precious selves.

However, this assumption of mine may no longer be tenable if enough of them make the transition to private jets. Thus, this picture of the Berlin Tempelhof airport on the day of the World Cup final makes me nervous.

(Thanks to sk in comments for pointing this out.)

Posted at August 13, 2006 01:38 PM | TrackBack
Comments

The GOP slogan for 2008:

A Cessna in every man's runway.

And the lowly people? Let them go Greyhound!

Posted by: donescobar at August 13, 2006 02:04 PM

No need to worry, Bush is making flying safer than ever if you are a pelican.

Speaking of the friendly skies here is another clear advantage of flying.

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

http://noquarter.typepad.com/

That is right, a demo war, something new and exciting in today's new and exciting world. No need for a full fledged war we can have demo wars.

So as you can clearly see Lebanon is just over reacting. This is just a dry run for Iran. Whew, and I thought we should worry about this.

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060821fa_fact


Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.” The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,” the consultant said.

The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon’s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)

The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)

Posted by: rob payne at August 13, 2006 03:04 PM

Notice for all those fools who keep making excuses for poor, poor Condi Rice that she was on board for this from the get go. Fuck Condi Rice.

Posted by: rob payne at August 13, 2006 03:06 PM

Mr. Payne is correct. Fuck Condi Rice. She is, like most Bush appointees, limited in her destructive power only by her manifest incompetence. Sadly, there does not appear to be a single voice of sanity in the entire Administration, at least so far as foreign affairs are concerned. It's Revenge of the Nerds time, for real.

Posted by: Guest at August 13, 2006 03:10 PM

I would, but then I'd end up blowing my income on phone cards calling her all the time, wanting her to move in with me. She would end selling my sheephearders wagon and my horses and I'd be back living under the bridge again. That's the way it always goes. I was going to be a pimp one time, but I kept falling in love.

Posted by: Mike Meyer at August 13, 2006 03:26 PM