Am happy to be reminded how wrong I am should this scenario turn out to be different. I want to be wrong !.

With the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, it seems Israel has taken a very calculated move toward escalating the ME conflict and with the realisation that it can only push the stakes higher thus precipitating open warfare between Israel and the Palestinians in which Arafat will also be hit.

I am sure that it will spread to other countries but will hopefuly be limited and minimised due to the current state of preparedness of western security agencies to contain excessive revenge attacks by militant Islamic forces elsewhere in the world.

In the past 2-3 years a very high level of security monitoring of things like personal computers and traffic on the Internet & email etc:, have been put in place in most major countries around the world. The west is 'somewhat' prepared for the worst that can come out of an escalating ME conflict.

I believe Bush (or actually Cheney & advisers) are well aware of, and are party to, the game plan which in its broadest terms is to escalate the ME conflict to its fiery conculsion because all other methods have failed. The conflict just won't go away. It seems to me a strategy has been adopted that says that if Israel and Palestine can't negotiate a peace (those attempts really died when Ehud Barak failed to get a deal with Arafat at camp David), then the only way to resolve the conflict in the shorter term (not another 50 years of haemorrahging & hate & Bin Laden like attacks) is to escalate it to its worst until the hate is burnt up one way or another, in the ensuing horror of war.

One of the core 3 reasons given by Bin Laden for why he and his followers hate America and the west so much, is to do with the never ending tide of tears, fears and death in Palestine except Bin Laden can *only* see it from the Arab side. He seems to give no creedence to the many serious attempts made to broker a peace between Palestinians and Jews nor the years of siege that Israel has lived through since 1948. Repeatedly, when peace seems close, Arafat backs away at the last minute, partly because it is his nature & partly because other Arabs would turn on him like a wounded fish in a tank of piranha should he be seen by them to have in anyway given an inch. Arafat is a victim of his own success as 'leader' of Palestinians.

I have had the feeling that US, UK & Australia are privy to the intention to to burn the ME conflict out by throwing petrol on it. Assassinating Sheikh Yassin can only lead to one result, retaliation on a big scale and counter retaliation equally on a big scale. Should it pan out this way then the repubs get to survive the coming election as will John Howard here & most likely Tony Blair in the UK.

A war breaking out in the ME somewhere has seemed on the cards for a while. I think we have said as much among ourselves here over the past 18 months. Until this week it might have seemed like it was going to be Iran or Syria where it would happen (am sure Syria *will* get dragged in & US military is ready & waiting).

So my prediction now is that whilst Bush Howard & Blair look unelectable right at the moment, that they will survive on the back of an outbreak of warfare in the ME that was put in train with the calculated assassination of the spiritual leader of Hamas.

Doug Marker

Not sure what you mean ? - There are two aspects to an issue like this the moral aspect and the probability of action aspect.

After listening to the news here & also whilst following the Washinton hearings & thinking of the consequences of an escalation, I have tried to focus on probable actions.

As to the moral side of the issue, it has to be predicated on the actions being accurately predicted & that is not a given, just one person's estimate of a probability, and said I hope to be proven wrong.

I could only accurately comment on the morality if I was privvy to the detailed thinking behind the strategy. In medicine there is an old adage that with cancer, the doctor has to cut it out else it will eventually take over. If there is an intentional escalation & the motives are based on that adage. Then morally I might be inclined to go along with it. But it is a strategy fraught with dangers.

Cheers
Doug M