ALEXANDRIA, Va. --- Media Research Center President
Brent Bozell today challenged CBS News to apologize to the American people for its false and misleading reporting on President Bush's National Guard service, as well as to come clean with the public and expose the people who forged documents that falsely cast Bush in a negative light.

     "Until CBS atones for its complicity in this character assassination attempt of President Bush, the letters `CBS' will stand for `Can't Believe Squat.' With every Watergate-like denial, the integrity of CBS News continues to crumble," Bozell said.

Evidence Against CBS News Has Continued To Mount

• As CNSNews.com first reported, and NBC,
  Washington Post, Fox News Channel and others have repeated, independent experts say CBS's "memos" appear to have been produced by a modern word processor, not a 1970s typewriter.
  
  
  
  


• Both CNN and the Washington Times have quoted other independent experts who declared that the signatures on the documents could well be forgeries.
  
  
  
  


• The Los Angeles Times found Major General Bobby Hodges - who CBS claimed to be its key source - who revealed he had never seen the documents, had only had them read to him, and upon seeing them declared they were fakes.
  
  
  
  


• Both Jerry Killian's widow and son have stated publicly he would not have written these memos. CBS refused to put Killian's son on the air after interviewing him, and also refused to interview others whom Killian recommended because they were "Bush supporters."
  
  
  
  


• The CBS News story did not disclose that one of its key sources, former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, is a major fundraiser for the Kerry campaign and that he has raised the campaign $500,000. Nor did the accusations that Barnes is not telling the truth - coming from his own daughter, no less! - ever see the light of day on CBS.
  
  
  
  


• The Dallas Morning News reported over the weekend that the commander who supposedly was blamed for pressuring a subordinate to "sugar coat" Bush's record had retired 18 months before he was said to have applied such pressure.

     "The CBS story is a hoax and a fraud, and a cheap and sloppy one at that.. It boggles the mind that Dan Rather and CBS continue to defend it. Dan Rather and CBS need to be reminded that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. Just ask Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton," Bozell said.

Posted by Tim at 3:30 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 3:32 PM EDT

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Ask yourself: What do a Russian ten-year-old, a poor black farmer in Darfur, an elderly pensioner in Israel, a stockbroker in New York, and a U.N. aid worker in Afghanistan have in common? In the last three years, they have all died in similar ways: Unarmed and civilian, they were murdered by a common cowardly method fueled by a fascist ideology.

The recent slaughters in Russia were the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back of excusing or explaining away radical Islamic terror. If the Estonians can break away from post-Soviet oppression and free themselves from Russian authoritarianism without slaughtering schoolchildren and blowing up airplanes, then the Chechens can as well -- but only if they wish to create democracy rather than an Islamic fascist state.

But there is something else going on here besides the cloak of so-called Chechen nationalism. The perversion not of religion per se, but of Islam; the singular method of suicide bombing rarely found elsewhere; the frequent resort to the unique grotesquery of beheading; the now-common display of abject incompetence on the battlefield coupled with craven slaughter of the noncombatant and civilian aid worker. At some point, the leaders of the Western world (if there are any left besides George W. Bush and Tony Blair) are going to look at all this madness worldwide and come to the bitter conclusion that there is a disgusting pattern: Not every Muslim is a fascist terrorist, but almost every fascist terrorist is a Muslim. Killers are not screaming "Hail Mary" when they machine gun children in the back, slit the throat of airline stewardesses, or blow pregnant women up on buses across the globe. And they are not the subjects of condemnatory fatwas in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Their grievance is not really Russian imperialism, or the 5 to 10 percent of the West Bank under dispute, or black African encroachment on Arab land, or purported French insensitivity to legitimate Islamic pride, much less an American "crusade" to harm Muslims.

All these issues and the hundreds of others -- from the right to build a reactor in Iran to the desire for a semi-autonomous Chechnya -- in theory could be discussed, argued about, and adjudicated through democratic dialogue.

But that is impossible. For you see, the real problem is the democratic dialogue itself-- unknown in the Arab Middle East and much of the Islamic world, and a hindrance to both sharia and the pan-Arabist thug with epaulettes and sunglasses. Yet consensual government alone is the key to ending failed statist economies, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, state- controlled media, and tribalism. It alone might stop the self-induced misery and with it the tedious scapegoating of "the Jews and America."

Much of the Islamic Middle East continues to blame others for its own induced catastrophe, apparently unaware -- thanks to the lever of oil it didn't discover, doesn't know how to develop, and uses to intensify rather than alleviate its poverty -- that its entire culture is becoming an international pariah. Islamic young men on European flights are looked at with distrust; they are not welcome in Russia. China wants none of them. They are wary of visiting India. Australia learned from Bali. The whole world is watching -- in disgust.

In short, the suicide bomber, the improvised explosive device, the car bomb, the televised beheading, the wacko fatwa, the sleazy propaganda streamer on the Internet, the new cult of death -- all cowardly and lethal phenomena -- these are now the innovations that the world associates with the Middle East in lieu of gene research, car production, or computer breakthroughs.

***

Some insist that this war is only against a few "crazy" extremists and that it cannot be won by force. That is half true. In fact, millions of young Middle Easterners are watching Islamic fascists to learn whether to applaud or condemn them -- and that decision in places like Najaf, Fallujah, Kandahar, Madrid, Grozny, and Ramallah sadly hinges as much on resolute force as it does on "sensitive" understanding. There are millions we must help, but there are also thousands of wannabe Osama bin Ladens and Mohammed Attas who have neither minds nor hearts that anyone would want to win over.

In a war against such killers, it is the proverbial "Them or Us." Islamic fascists are not crazy -- however crazy they sound -- but evil, as their evil work confirms. We do not need more lectures about the impossibility of winning a postmodern conflict, about al Qaeda's not following the laws of Clausewitz or being immune to our way of war. In fact, we can and have defeated them. Keep doing that and the "hearts and minds" of others in the region, whom we are already helping, will mysteriously prove more open to dialogue.

Fail again like we did on September 11 -- and the entire United States Treasury could not buy the good will of an Islamic Street once more gone mad with delight for having felled the Great Satan.

Posted by Tim at 7:58 PM EDT

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Yesterday's post featured Planned Parenthood Golden Gate's black T-shirt declaring "WARNING: PRESIDENT BUSH IS HAZARDOUS TO WOMEN'S HEALTH"--today, I give you the white version. Since it's the PP affiliate's best-selling item, naturally they're offering some variety. Besides, the red on white is a nice metaphor for the blood of the innocents.

What nerve of Planned Parenthood, a tax-exempt organization barred from taking a position on a candidate, to mount a nationwide campaign to oust President Bush--especially when his administration alloted it a record $254.4 million for the fiscal year ending June 2003.

After I wrote yesterday about PP's blatantly flouting tax laws, a reader phoned the IRS to complain. The IRS representative was very interested--especially when the reader said that PP had already been the subject of a similar complaint from a California law firm.

Apparently, the IRS looks very unkindly upon organizations that continue to flout the law while a complaint against them is under investigation.

This abuse by a pro-abortion nonprofit is an important issue, because pro-abortion groups keep a close eye on pro-life nonprofits such as Priests for Life, to the point that they can't even appear to endorse or oppose a candidate. On a similar note, Planned Parenthood begins its manifesto "Vision for 2025" by deriding "people who count themselves among the religious right" for trying to "control the polical agenda." For that organization to then act as a law unto itself, thinking that it can break the rules with impunity, is hypocrisy. Add to that the fact that it's soaking us taxpayers to the tune of over a quarter-billion a year, and we have good reason to demand an end to its tax-exempt status.

Posted by Tim at 12:37 PM EDT

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The third anniversary of Sept. 11 is upon us. We remain at war -- and the media remain in denial.

How many times have you picked up a newspaper and read about terrorist attacks perpetrated not by Muslim terrorists, but by generic "militants" or "guerrillas" or "rebels" or, as Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes noted the Pakistan Times called them, "activists"?

Contrast the media whitewashing of our Islamofascist enemies with the press coverage of the Waco, Texas, siege in 1993 -- which constantly reminded us that David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers were members of a "peculiar religious sect" (New York Times, March 3, 1993) and "a group of religious zealots with a known propensity for violence" (Washington Post, March 2, 1993) who were steeped in a "culture of Christian extremism" (San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 1993).

A Nexis search of the terms "Branch Davidian" and "religious" and "cult" in The New York Times for the year 1993 yielded 151 hits. The vast majority of these references were in headlines and news articles, as opposed to editorials, letters or book reviews. A Nexis search of the terms "al Qaeda" and "religious" and "cult" in The New York Times for the year 2004 yielded just one article -- a magazine piece in March.

The mainstream media pounded President Bush for trying to explain that the War on Terror is unwinnable in a conventional sense. The mainstream press itself proves the president's point every time its reporters disguise the deadly fanatical nature of our opponents in this global war. How are we to win a war against blood-spattered enemies whom our own free press continues to protect through politically correct sanitization?

It wasn't no-name militants or wayward guerrillas who have butchered, beheaded and slaughtered thousands of innocents over the last three years alone.

Posted by Tim at 4:18 PM EDT

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The news from Iran is grim. This Islamic dictatorship--the biggest source of terrorist training and financing in the world and the nation that's doing all it can to stir up trouble in already combustible Iraq--is clearly on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power. The clerical fascists running the country have dropped just about all pretense of their atomic programs being energy-related only. Tehran announced in July that it had resumed making the centrifuges needed to produce highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient for nuclear bombs. It is, in essence, tearing up last fall's agreement with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency to keep its nuclear program transparent and to do nothing that could be construed as developing nuclear weapons.

Iran, more than Iraq or the reorganization of our intelligence agencies, is the crisis flashpoint in our war against Islamic fanaticism. What to do? John Kerry's advisers and many Bush Administration officials think we should deal directly with Iran. The Europeans would support us. The goal: to persuade Iran--through cash, trade agreements (its economy is a mess) and pats on the back--to halt its nuclear arms program. These so-called realists in this instance are the dreamers, the fantasizers.

Why wouldn't Iran go nuclear? Our ten-year dawdle over North Korea's nuclear adventurism hammers home to Tehran's corrupt, totalitarian-minded thugs this inescapable conclusion: Nukes mean respect, mean security--and they grant blackmail power to shake down billions in booty from the U.S. and other Western moneybags.

The implications of a nuclearized Iran are appalling. Fanatics in Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere will be emboldened to undermine existing governments. Israel may well feel the need to strike, just as it did against Iraq's nuclear facility in 1981.

The all-too-real possibility of a violent Israeli reaction--Israel has long considered Iran's black- robed fascists to be its ultimate enemy--may be the only possible deterrent to Iran's final nuclearization. But that's not likely, given that the mullahs have probably dispersed their nuclear capabilities around the country. Iran, moreover, is not defenseless; it has missiles that can hit Israel.

Posted by Tim at 11:46 AM EDT

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According to The New York Times, when the terrorists took over the Russian elementary school, they shouted "Allahu akbar" ("Allah is the greatest").

Does this surprise you, dear reader? Does it shock you that the people who deliberately attacked a school and then systematically shot and blew up little children did so in the name of Islam?

Unfortunately, the question is rhetorical. Having targeted little children for death, there is no atrocity, no barbarity, no act of evil that the human race cannot imagine fanatical Muslims committing.

. . .

First, is there anything in Islam or in the way Islam is now taught and practiced that dulls the conscience and thereby enables many religious Muslims to engage in or support atrocities that other groups, religious and secular, find inconceivable?

Second, the laudable condemnations of Islamic terror made by the Islamic Center notwithstanding, why are there virtually no public demonstrations of Muslims against the unspeakable evils committed by its adherents?

And while posing questions, here are two for liberals: Why are almost the only people asking these questions aloud conservative and religious? Where are you when it comes to acknowledging evil?

Yes, some people do shoot children, and good people have a right to ask why.

Posted by Tim at 3:00 PM EDT

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Election Day is fast approaching -- and as those running for office seek to secure your votes, there's an important message you can send them.

This year, I'm voting my values.

Don't underestimate the importance of this simple statement: Candidates need to know that when they look to line up your support, you're going to be looking past the slick advertisements and election-year promises and focusing instead on how their values line up with yours. And that's going to be the criteria on which you cast your ballot.

We've made it easy for you to send this message, loud and clear, to a whole host of people who need to hear it: your congressman and senators, your governor, your state elected officials -- and Ed Gillespie and Terry McAuliffe, the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic National Committees.

We've even composed the simple message for you to send: "I'm voting this year, and I'm voting my values." (If you'd like to change that message and compose your own, just delete what we've written and write type out your own thoughts.)

To send this message -- which will take no more than a few keystrokes -- visit the CitizenLink Action Center at the link below.

http://capwiz.com/fof/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=6294521

Posted by Tim at 2:28 PM EDT

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Clergy Urged to Preach on Voting Values

Focus on the Family and Prison Fellowship are asking pastors to set aside Sundays in September and October to preach about the importance of taking part in November's election.
Focus on the Family has earmarked Sept. 12 as iVoteValues Sunday, encouraging preachers across the country to urge their congregations to register to vote and to vote their values at the ballot box.

And Focus isn't the only pro-family group stressing the importance of voting to churchgoers: Prison Fellowship has launched what it's calling the National Preaching Initiative.

"Christians can't be content to be the silent majority any longer," explained Peter Brandt, senior director of government and public policy at Focus on the Family. "Statistics have shown, in election after election, that believers have stayed home in alarmingly high numbers and that's got to stop if we are to have even a sliver of hope of returning righteousness to government.

"We have a civic and spiritual duty not only to vote, but to be careful to spend those votes on the candidates whose values most closely align with our own."

In that light, Brandt said, it is crucial for pastors and church leaders to educate their congregations about the values that matter to God.

"Some pastors have avoided addressing these topics from the pulpit because they don't think it's appropriate, while others worry that it might cost them their nonprofit status," he said. "Our goal is to show them that civic responsibility is an appropriate topic for a Sunday morning and to assure them that it's perfectly OK to talk about it."

To help pastors to prepare for iVoteValues Sunday, Focus' iVoteValues.org Web site offers sermon outlines and a detailed explanation of what topics can be addressed in church without running afoul of the law. Visitors to the site can also request a Voter Impact Toolkit, which contains promotional posters for churches, a stand-up easel with voter registration forms and a voter resource guide and a letter from Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family.

Prison Fellowship is also offering sermon outlines for pastors who take part in the National Preaching Initiative -- a project that urges clergy to dedicate four Sundays in September and October to preaching on marriage, sexual intimacy, God's natural order and our role as citizens.

Michael Snyder, senior vice president of Prison Fellowship and head of the Christian worldview group the Wilberforce Forum, said it is time that the church and Christians got back to the basics.
"The church as a whole no longer understands even the very basics about Gods design for living and in terms of God's design," he explained. "We have four simple elements that apply to everyone, whether you're a believer or not."

The message of the sample sermons is, first, that the church needs to understand what marriage really is and that the counterfeits that exist today do not amount to marriage. Second, that sexual intimacy is only meant to be expressed in the safety and bonds of marriage. Third, that through sexual intimacy in marriage comes children and therefore a family. And finally, that family is the institution that God created to raise healthy, productive citizens for the benefit of society as a whole.

The importance of that message, Snyder said, cannot be overemphasized.

"Frankly, the church has just as much sexual sin as the rest of society and it is very sad because in effect, it paralyzes the body of Christ from wanting to engage (in the battle for our culture,)" he said. "In essence we want the church to take the log out of its own eye before we start trying to correct the very bad vision of those who have an agenda on the other side."

In addition to the four sample sermons, the National Preaching Initiative Web site offers information about the Federal Marriage Amendment, research materials and articles from Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson's "Breakpoint Commentary."

Posted by Tim at 1:54 PM EDT

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Of all the ugly human traits, ingratitude -- the refusal to acknowledge the good that has been done for us -- is probably the ugliest.

Yet its awfulness is only exceeded by its ubiquity. In fact, it is ingratitude that characterizes much of the world's -- including many Americans' -- attitude toward the United States.

Think about it. Without America:

The world would collapse into economic and moral chaos. Cruelty and economic depression would dominate the planet. Vast unemployment and social dislocation would ensue, followed by various forms of secular and religious totalitarianism.

No one would stop the Chinese from conquering Taiwan.

No one would come to Israel's aid when Iran and other Muslim states attempted to destroy that country.

No one would come to South Korea's aid as North Korea invaded and probably prevailed over South Korea, making it a formidable Stalinist force in East Asia.

Japan would rearm and probably seek nuclear weapons to counter emboldened Korea and China.

Russia would probably recommence imposing its will on its neighbors.

Islamic terrorism would increase exponentially -- everywhere, including inside Europe -- as its only real opposition disappeared.

It is American idealism coupled with its dominant economic and military power that alone prevents evil from drowning the world. The many fools of the Left who devote their lives to curbing American power -- from those who manage editorial pages and the news media, to the academics who warn generations of students against American power, to leftist billionaires like George Soros -- do not understand this.

The world's nations should be thanking God or whatever they believe in for America. Instead, most of them celebrate the United Nations, which actually abets evil and increases human suffering.

. . .

One great lesson of American history is that one does good in this world because it is right to do good, not because the recipients will be grateful. We Americans must therefore never judge the rightness of our actions on how much gratitude or censure we receive. So long as we remain the most blessed country on earth, it is our duty to do as much good as we can. In fact, if we don't, we will cease to be blessed.

But the ingrates still deserve the contempt of decent people.

Posted by Tim at 11:45 AM EDT

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Protect America's Churches!

Can you imagine sitting in church and your pastor preaches on the sanctity of life and the importance of maintaining marriage as one woman and one man and the following week your church is contacted by the IRS and told that it will lose its tax-exempt status and has to close its doors? Unfortunately, this is a possibility and without your help could become a reality for America's churches.

H.R. 235 is legislation sponsored by Representative Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) to end this assault on religious freedom and free speech. His bill would restore free speech to America's churches by clarifying an area of tax law that is currently used to bully churches into silence on political issues. Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code states that churches can not participate in political speech or else their tax-exempt status may be revoked. This law violates our Constitutional right to freedom of speech and freedom of worship. This law gives the IRS an easy lever with which to bully churches that try to put their faith into practice.

Posted by Tim at 9:43 AM EDT

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The next four years will be the most dangerous in the nation's history because the 9/11 attacks were pinpricks compared to a clear and almost present menace. This year's pre-eminent question, beside which all others pale, is: Which candidate can best cope with the threat of nuclear terror?

. . .

The only serious impediment to creating a nuclear weapon is acquisition of fissionable material - - highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium. In 1993, U.S. officials used ordinary bolt cutters to snip off the padlock that was the only security at an abandoned Soviet-era facility containing enough HEU for 20 nuclear weapons. In 2002, enough fissile material for three weapons was recovered from a laboratory in a Belgrade suburb. Often an underpaid guard and a chain-link fence are the only security at the more than 130 nuclear reactors and other facilities using HEU in 40 countries.

Allison says that at least four times between 1992 and 1999 weapons-useable materials were stolen from Russian research institutes but recovered. How many thefts have not been reported? The U.S. Cold War arsenal included Special Atomic Demolition Munitions that could be carried in a backpack. The Soviet arsenal often mimicked America's. Russia denies that ``suitcase" nuclear weapons exist, so it denies reports that at least 80 are missing. Soviet military forces deployed 22,000 tactical nuclear warheads -- without individual identification numbers. Who thinks all have been accounted for? Russia probably has 2 million pounds of weapons-useable material -- enough for 80,000 weapons.

In December 1994, Czech police seized more than eight pounds of HEU in a parked car on a side street. A senior al Qaeda aide's proclaimed goal of killing 4 million Americans would require 1,400 9/11s, or one 10-kiloton nuclear explosion -- from a softball-sized lump of fissionable material -- in four large American cities.

Of the 7 million seaborne cargo containers that arrive at U.S. ports each year, fewer than 5 percent are inspected. Fewer than 10 percent of arriving noncommercial private vessels are inspected. Given that 21,000 pounds of cocaine and marijuana are smuggled into the country each day, how hard would it be to smuggle a softball-sized lump of HEU on one of the 30,000 trucks, 6,500 rail cars or 50,000 cargo containers that arrive every day?

Intelligent people can differ about all that Allison says. But campaign time is becoming scarce for intelligent differing about how to prevent some American Ground Zero from becoming so poisoned by radiation that no one will be able to come within four miles of it.

Posted by Tim at 11:20 AM EDT

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Loophole exploited by the 9/11 hijackers remains open

If al Qaeda wants to strike on U.S. soil before the elections, it still has available to it a gaping loophole it exploited pre-9/11: Saudis' easy access to U.S. visas.

Despite supposed reforms implemented by the U.S. State Department, current statistics--obtained exclusively by this columnist--reveal that nearly 90% of all Saudi visa applicants get approved. To put this in perspective, applicants in most other Arab nations--the ones that didn't send us 15 of 19 9/11 hijackers--are refused visas three to five times more often than Saudis. (State refused multiple requests for comment.)

. . .

State has made some progress, such as doubling the number of names on the watchlist and breathing more life into pre-9/11 programs to identify non-watchlisted individuals who should be barred from the U.S.

What State has neglected to do, however, is enforce the law in Saudi Arabia.

Because of a provision in the law known as 214(b), all applicants are presumed ineligible for a visa until they establish their eligibility. This is supposed to be a high bar to clear, and in most countries, it is. Just not for Saudis. That's why nearly 90% who apply still get approved.

Eight of KSM's 27 handpicked operatives were prevented from entering the United States because of 214(b). Yet the same law that kept out almost one-third of the original 9/11 cell was not applied in Saudi Arabia--and it still isn't today.

If State wanted to get tough on Saudi visa applicants, they would have unfettered discretion to do so. Denials made by a consular officer are not appealable, which means a visa could be denied simply because a Saudi is young, single, and unemployed--the profile of the person least likely to qualify under 214(b) and the most likely to be a terrorist.

State, however, has shown no willingness to put security first. It vehemently opposed Congressional attempts to tighten Saudis' access to visas, and it only closed Visa Express under duress. Late last year--as originally reported here this January--the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh sent a cable to Washington advocating a re-loosening of restrictions on Saudi visas.

With 15 of the 19 hijackers and continued al Qaeda bombings and beheadings, the question must be asked: what additional evidence does State need before deciding to enforce the law?

Posted by Tim at 1:43 PM EDT

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Twenty Facts About Israel and the Middle East

The world's attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are confronted daily with scenes of carnage and destruction. Can we understand such violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with a solid grounding in the facts of the matter-facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they were learned.

...In sum, a fair and balanced portrayal of the Middle East will reveal that one nation stands far above the others in its commitment to human rights and democracy as well as in its commitment to peace and mutual security. That nation is Israel.

A Middle East History Primer

What is the crime of the Jews that they should not have been welcomed into this unpromising desert -- a tiny sliver of the Turkish Empire -- from the very beginning? What is the crime of the Jews that their infant state should have been attacked by five Arab armies on the day of its creation? What is the crime of the Jews that these Arab states should have continued their war for fifty years without a peace in sight? What is the crime of the Jews that these Arabs should make Jewish women and children the targets of their suicide bombers, and that their leader should call for millions of "martyrs" to plow into the heart of the Jewish sliver to blow up its inhabitants once and for all?

Their crime is that they are Jews....

Posted by Tim at 12:57 PM EDT

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