Profound Quotes

"Neither is it that US foreign policy is cruel because American leaders are cruel. It's that our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers - (let alone American soldiers - do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to." From 'Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower' by William Blum

From "9-11, Six Years Later": "If one looks at the credentials of skeptics compared to the credentials of defenders of the official line, it is impossible to dismiss skeptics as kooks. There are many people with strong imaginations on the Internet, but serious skeptics stick to known facts, known violations of standard procedures and the laws of physics. The vast majority of the people who call skeptics "kooks" are themselves ignorant of physics and have little comprehension of the improbability that such an attack could succeed without either the complicity or complete failure of government agencies. " Paul Craig Roberts

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular? But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Amnesty: Israeli Troops Used Children as Human Shields in Gaza — News from Antiwar.com

by Jason Ditz, July 01, 2009

Amnesty International issued a 105-page report today detailing war crimes committed by the Israeli military during its 22-day military offensive against the Gaza Strip. The attack killed over 1,400 Palestinians and wounded 5,000 others. It also destroyed over 3,000 homes.

The report found that “much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects as well as indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilian objects.”

Amnesty’s investigation also managed to produce no evidence to support repeated claims from the Israeli military that the Hamas government was using civilians as human shields during the war. On the other hand they did cite an instance in which Israeli troops forced multiple families of civilians, including children, to remain in a house they turned into a sniper nest, “effectively using the families, both adults and children, as human shields and putting them at risk.”

Using civilians to shield a military target from attack is internationally recognized as a war crime, and is just one of many claims of war crimes committed by the invading forces, as detailed in this report and past ones. Yesterday Human Rights Watch also issued a report accusing Israel of war crimes over its use of drones to indiscriminately target civilians. The Israeli military publicly condemned the Human Rights Watch report, but has yet to comment on the much longer, more detailed Amnesty report.

Amnesty: Israeli Troops Used Children as Human Shields in Gaza — News from Antiwar.com.

July 2nd, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment |

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