Israel has opened the gates of Hell

[Big Sarge]

Israel has launched Operation Pillar of Cloud. This could get very interesting since Hamas is an off shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

From "The Telegraph"
Hamas has said that Israeli air strike in Gaza which killed Ahmed Jabari, the head of its military wing, "has opened the gates of hell". Jabari, who is the most senior Hamas official to be killed since an Israeli invasion of Gaza four years ago, was killed in an air strike on a vehicle, in a dramatic resumption of Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian militant leaders.
Jabari has long topped Israel's most-wanted list, the Associated Press reported, and was blamed for in a string of attacks, including the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit in 2006.
His son was also reportedly killed in the targeted air strike, according to Osama Hamdan, a Hamas representative in Lebanon, talking to Al Jazeera in Doha.

[Cyber Wolf]

Are the nighttime strikes codenamed 'Pillar of Fire'?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

This could get very interesting since Hamas is an off shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood are only similar when both are also part of a popular myth called Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood have even had military conflicts since Morsi was elected president of Egypt. The "Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood" myth sounds like classic Israeli propaganda.

Now, there is a relationship, although not entirely clear, between Hamas and Salafis. That may be related to disagreements between Salafis and Muslim Botherhood. Israeli propaganda would ignore that.

[Big Sarge]

Bullshit!!! Hamas started as an off shoot of the Egyptian Brotherhood.

"Hamas: The Organizations, Goals and Tactics of a Militant Palestinian Organization":
Hamas was founded in 1987 (during the First Intifada) as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Co-founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin stated in 1987, and the Hamas Charter affirmed in 1988, that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

Open Source:
Hamas approved a 540 million dollar government budget for 2010 with up to 90% coming from "undisclosed" foreign aid which includes funding from Iran and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood according to western intelligence agencies.
Funding from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been cut so the MB can diverts funds "to support Arab Spring revolts".

[Ibby]

this shit is absolutely surreal.

Israel and Hamas basically declared war on eachother via twitter, and then Israel shut down Gaza's communications.

Originally Posted by Popular Science

Israel launched an offensive this morning on "terror sites and operatives in the Gaza strip, chief among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets."
Except that's not what the release said: it said, "terror sites and operatives in the #Gaza strip, chief among them #Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets." Because this announcement was made on Twitter.
The Israeli Defense Forces has a spokesperson, and that spokesperson has a Twitter feed, and that Twitter feed is where information from the Israelis is being disseminated.It's a mix of news ("The IDF has seriously damaged Hamas' long-range missile capabilities (40 km/25 mi range) & underground weapons storage facilities.") and argument in favor of the strike ("Israelis living near the #Gaza Strip have been living under fire for the past 12 years."). It's run extremely blandly and competently, like whoever's behind the feed was hired after proving their worth as the social media manager of Oprah Magazine. It hits all the right notes: hashtags, links to videos and articles, original photos. Hell, there's even a custom hashtag (#PillarOfDefense) created specifically for this event.
It'd be a very well-run Twitter campaign, except it's not announcing a new cellphone--it's announcing a barrage of missile strikes against a neighboring territory. Those pictures are of bombing sites. The videos are of Israeli generals explaining the bombings, or even videos of the bombings themselves. That hashtag? It's only #PillarOfDefense in English. In Hebrew, as Gawker found out, it's #PillarOfCloud--"a Biblical reference to the form God adopted in order to protect the Children of Israel and strike terror into the heart of Egyptians." And instead of Microsoft playfully interacting with Apple, or Domino's and Pizza Hut trading zingers about pizza, we have @AlQassamBrigade, the Twitter account of the Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian political party/terrorist organization Hamas, tweeting back:

[Big Sarge]

Originally Posted by tw

Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood are only similar when both are also part of a popular myth called Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda is a "popular myth??????? What the fuck have you been smoking?? I lost 5 troops to Al Qaeda forces in 2005. They sure hte hell weren't Girl Scouts making IEDs and conducting complex attacks. BTW, I spent 66 days in Hell as part of the Battle of Hit. I didn't see you there. I didn't see you helping to scoop up the remains of my bunk mate or doing a field cremation of what wasn't put in the body bag. (I can still smell it)

Now, I played nice and backed off of the stuff about Viet Nam and the Gulf of Tonkin. I did my best to extend a laurel leaf. Don't you dare try to tell me about things I have seen first hand

[Ibby]

[Trilby]

well played, Mayans.

Well played.

Maybe my apocalypse friend deserves an apology...this does indeed sound bad.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

I lost 5 troops to Al Qaeda forces in 2005. They sure hte hell weren't Girl Scouts making IEDs and conducting complex attacks.

They were insurgents. To invent myths - a bogeyman - those insurgents were respun by a propaganda machine into "Al Qaeda". The lie became so obvious that they eventually relabeled insurgents as "Al Qaeda in Iraq".

Al Qaeda was a little organization based around bin Laden. It had nothing to do with angry Shia who resented your presence and our leader's gross mismanagement.

Basic military doctrine. Phase four planning. We had six months to get the electricity, water, telephone, etc all working. Every trained military man knows that. Instead, we did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Did nothing when Bremer snuck out seven months later so as to not be killed by the insurgency he created.

That resulting insurgency was predicted even in Washington in 2003 by those who know this stuff. You were fighting insurgents. You were fighting patriotic Iraqis who were pissed. And should have been pissed. Because Bremer, Cheney, Rumsfeld, George Jr, etc completely screwed it up.

Why no insurgency in Mosul when Petraeus was there? He literally stole money to perform Phase Four planning. Odiero's Colonels finally convinced him. No phase four planning means an insurgency will rise up after six months. Well understood military doctrine that you should know.

If fighting Al Qaeda, then every mugger in America is part of the Gambino crime family. And every hamburger store is a MacDonalds. You were fighting an enemy created by Americans with zero military knowledge. You should be pissed at losing five men because of incompetence by George Jr and his extremists. They created an insurgency by violating basic military doctrine. They and the resulting insurgents (and not a mythical Al Qaeda) created those deaths.

Basic military doctrine also says only one supreme leader in country. How many did you have? A General answering to Rumsfeld. And a civilian answering the to the White House. Of course the insurgency had to be relabeled as Al Qaeda. Otherwise treasonist mismanagement would have been obvious to every soldier. But then you tell me. Was Sanchez the supreme commander in Iraq? The answer was obvious. No.

A fundamental military command violation. It also defines contempt for the American soldier. A contempt that should make everyone angry. Al Qaeda was an invention to mask the real enemy: incompetent leaders in Washington.

You should know why you lost five soldiers. And why I am so angry about it. From Thomas Ricks:

If there is any tragic figure at the top of the American effort in Iraq, it is Sanchez. ... the methodical Sanchez often appeared overwhelmed by the situation, with little grasp of the strategic problems he faced. ...
"It was my view after seeing him that Rick Sanchez was exactly in the wrong place", said Richard Armitage ... "He was much too secretive. He and Bremer, if they didn't hate each other, they could barely tolerate each other, let's put it that way. ... I came away from my first meeting with him saying that this guy didn't get it." ...
On top of that, Sanchez was placed in the middle of an extraordinary difficult and tangled command situation. In other US occupations, the command has been a four star general such as Douglas MacArthur. ... Sanchez was a three star - that is, a lieutenant general - and in fact the most junior one in the US Army.

Sanchez was promoted to three star because every general asked to take that command, instead, resigned his commission. They could not find one three or four star general who would do that job.

An active duty officer said with an degree of disgust in his voice, "In Vietnam we left Westy in. In Iraq we left Sanchez in." Neither Gen William Westmoreland nor Sanchez understood the war he was fighting, this officer said.

That should have been obvious even at your level when soldier were dying to an insurgency - relabeled Al Qaeda for propaganda purposes.

Lt Gen Kellogg was on of the senior members of the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, overseeing system for the command and control of force. "I was there for all the planning, all the execution" of the Iraq war plans and later served in Iraq. "I saw it all." But what he never saw was the real plan for Phase IV - that is, what to do after toppling Saddam Hussein's regime. "There was no real plan," Kellogg said. "The thought was you didn't need it. The assumption was that everything would be fine after the war, that they'd be happy they got rid of Saddam." ...

"there was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase. ... he said in a paper later delivered at Cornell University, there was "no single plan as of 1 May 2004 that described an executable approach to achieving the state strategic endstate for the war."

Marine Col Nicholas Reynolds, an official Corp historian, agreed that he found nothing worthy of being considered a plan. ...

The reason for this omission, said Army Col Gregory Gardner, who served on the Joint Staff and then was assigned to the Conditional Provisional Authority ... was that it was seen as unnecessary. ...

According to an internal Army War College summary:
That there would be large numbers of Iraqi security forces will and able to support the occupation ...
That the international community would pick up the slack ...
That an Iraqi government would quickly spring into being permitting a "quick handoff to Iraqi interim administration..."

Obviously that could not and also did not happen. Therein lies reason for a massive countrywide insurgency, foolish and avoidable deaths in Fallujah, and the unnecessary death of your soldiers. All directly traceable to gross incompetence at the highest levels in Washington.

Basic military doctrine even defined in "Art of War". Do not disband the Army and Police. Use them as a critically important asset. Instead Bremer's first order was "Senior Party Members are hereby removed from their positions and banned from future employment in the public sector."

He fired every competent Iraqi administrator. He created an insurgency. The CIA Station chief told Bremer, quite bluntly, what would happen.

"By nightfall, you'll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathist underground. And in six months, you will regret this." ... Bremer looked at the two. "I have my instructions."

Quess where those instructions may have come. Why did you lose five soldiers? Col Joe Anderson, one of Petraeus’s battalion commanders, later said, "All of a sudden you say these guys are not part of society ... These were guys and girls in the doctor arena, in the professor arena, that you can't do without in a running society.” Most every competent officer understands these basic military concepts.

But Bremer was not done. Next was a dissolution of the Iraqi Army and National Police. Another 300,000 to 400,000 unemployed. Were these Al Qaeda? Of course not. These were people who now had good reason to kill Americans. - the evil occupiers.

American civilian leadership demonstrated contempt for the American soldier. Over one half million Iraqis without work and without prospects. Because of American idiots, most Iraqis all but wanted to kill American soldiers within six months. As even the CIA station chief so obviously knew. Right out of basic concepts taught in “Art of War”.

Those same idiots then told you patriotic Iraqis were Al Qaeda. And obvious fabrication. So that you would not see American incompetence. Would instead blame five dead Americans on a mythical Al Qaeda.

Col King saw and heard the reaction close up on the streets of Baghdad. "When Bremer did that, the insurgency went crazy. May was the turning point" for the US occupation, he later said. "When they disbanded the military and announced we were occupiers - that was it. Every moderate, every person that had leaned towards us, was furious. One Iraqi who had saved my life in an ambush said to me, "I can't be your friend anymore."

Learn from history. Your five soldiers were victims of a lying administration that then described an insurgency as if it was bin Laden. Wacko extremists will even invent bogeyman to protect their extremist ideology. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a perfect example of lies to mask a damning truth.

Any good serviceman knows why he lost soldiers. You should have known Al Qaeda was a lie to avert blame from those who killed them. You should hold the name George Jr in contempt for the rest of your life. If infomed, you are quite angry about Bremer, orders from Washington, the subverted command structure, the intentional creation of an Iraqi insurgency traceable to ignorance in Washington, and lies routinely invented by the George Jr administration. They could not even admit why so many three and four star generals were retiring when asked to command Mission Accomplished. Any good officer material knows why your five soldiers died.

The good name of those five soldiers are now trophies directly traceable to incompentent and treasonist leadership in Washington. Their death is directly traceable to total incompentance by George Jr. Good soldiers predicted that disaster and those resulting deaths long before it happpened. Anyone with fundamental military knowledge knows exactly who turned Iraqi patriots into insurgents. And knew it was coming when Bremer, et al intentionally created a country wide insurgency in Iraq.

Why is this post so long? I am that pissed that American servicemen were uselessly massacred by a treasonist George Jr administration. No decent American should do to American soldiers what George Jr, et al did to your five men. George Jr, Cheney, et al were that evil.

[Big Sarge]

This is period is the 7th anniversary of our time at Hit. Next week will be the anniversary of Tull's & Doc's deaths. We were not fighting Shias in the Al Anbar province. I well know that our enemies were AQIZ. Our sister unit was at Haditha Dam

[Ibby]

[Ibby]

[Ibby]

Names and ages of killed people in the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza

Because we are NOT just numbers, keep following this post of the names and ages of murdered people who fell victim during the past days of Israeli attacks on Gaza since Wednesday. The number rises to 110 and still rising...

[glatt]

Why is this happening now?

NPR was saying that Hamas has been launching these rockets for years, and Israel did little, but now, for some reason, it's pummeling Gaza. What changed? Does this have anything to do with Netanyahu hating Obama's guts and Obama winning the election? Some sort of "You may have won the election, but that doesn't mean you're in charge" kind of thing? I really don't understand Israel. And how will they define victory? It's like when they went into Lebanon a couple years ago and did not remove Hezbollah from power, so even though they won every battle, Hezbollah was considered the winner since they weren't completely defeated. What will happen when Israel stops the offensive, and Hamas is still in power and still lobs occasional rockets at Israel? Is that a net loss for Israel?

[Trilby]

I'm wondering the same thing, glatt.

Seems very strange timing.

I liked The Daily Show's idea of just giving Florida to the Jews. It makes perfect sense.