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Rantings of a Sandmonkey

Be forewarned: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not, please sod off

Monday, June 27, 2005

Lahoud is reaching..

According to Pro- Syria Lahoud, Israel and islamic extremists are behind the Lebanon assassinations. Ok, I will repeat that one more time: Israel and Islamic extremists are working together and are behind the assassinations of the prominent Lebanese figures. Now, please refrain from laughing! Or try to anyway.

13 Comments:

At 6/27/2005 06:05:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Israel and (Muslim) extremist groups are seeking to sow chaos and fear in Arab societies, including Lebanon."

He never said anything about them collaborating just that they were the two biggest threats.

Karim Elsahy

 
At 6/27/2005 06:44:00 AM, Blogger The Sandmonkey said...

Kimo,

I wanted to show you the part where this was insinuated, but for some reason the link to the article isn;t sending me to it. Maybe the website is having difficulties.

The point is, he is saying that about lebanon in the context of relating it to the wave of bombings Lebanon has been epxeriencing recently, which is trageting anti-syrian politicians and journalists. Historically speaking however, the killing of anti-syrian politicians has always been Syria Niche. The Pro-Syria Lahoud, who everyone wants gone but the syrians, is trying to blame other people (Israel, islamic extremism)and not Syria for what's going on in Lebanon.

You know the islamists aren;t behind this, and i am sorry, but if you blame Israel for the murder of anti syrian people, well, that's just..ehh..well..i wouldn;t call it stupid because it's typical, but you get the meaning.

As far a sthe biggest threat to the Lbeanese society's stability, you can ask any lebanese person, and they will tell you its the syrian Mukhabarat, and not Israel or the Islamists (they come right after Syria if anything).This is a cheap stunt and a feeble attempt to divert attention and maybe tap into the arab conspiracy theory crowds instead of concentrating on Syria and its regime, which what the lebanese- and rightly so- have been doing.

 
At 6/27/2005 06:47:00 AM, Blogger The Sandmonkey said...

Ok, the article is working again, here it is:

"BEIRUT: Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said Israel and Islamic extremists within Lebanon had the most to benefit from the recent spate of assassinations in the country, which have claimed the lives of two prominent anti-Syrian figures in the past month. Speaking over the weekend, Lahoud urged the Lebanese to identify those he called "Lebanon's enemies." "

Israel + Ilsamist extreemist= Lebanon Real enemies

Syria= Not an eemy at all. Poor thing. Gets a bad reputation for nothing. It's just a concindence that the ones that are dying are the Anti-syria crowd. Yes, that must be it!

 
At 6/27/2005 11:23:00 AM, Blogger Catherine said...

The thing is that many Syrians kind of feel threatened them selves and defend their country/ regim..Actually,( to understand this remeber the racist shouts some Lebanese had, "tut tut souria 3ama tmout" )by trying to say impossible that Syria did this. And well..Actually..Many do really beleive that it can't be Syria, they can't be THAT stupid, they don't want suicide..FUnny but when you pressure the regime like this, with Iraq right next to you, many defend the "poor" regime!
TO understand that you have to know how long we have been brainwashed, (Rotten state controlled media).
And..Also..Just say the world Israel and you know how people react. A brave Syrian journalist once said, if there were no Israel, they would have created it!
Anyway..If there is any conspiracy, it might be Rifaat, the president's greedy animal oncle.

 
At 6/27/2005 03:25:00 PM, Blogger Kat said...

I believe if there was no Israel, these states would be killing themselves anyway.

As a history buff, it did not escape me that Arafat and the Palestinian contingent that had sough refuge in Jordan tried to overthrow the government and declare Jordan or a large part of it as "Palestine".

In which case, we all know that when the territory was created through the "mandate" that is actually true.

If I recall history correctly it was the bedouin tribes of the desert in East Jordan that remained loyal to Hussein and fought off the "revolution".

And, that is just one small part of the story. With Syria insisting on holding Lebanon, if there was a Palestine without Israel, I imagine that it would have come under direct control of either Egypt or Syria by now.

Simply put, Israel today contains a wide swath of land attached to the Mediterranean Sea. Ports of entry and access. Plus, it's right near the Suez canal.

It doesn't take much imagination to know that these folks would be looking for their own interests, just like any other country and land bound countries wouldn't be any less interested in the area if it was Palestine.

It is just fortunate for a number of their folks that there is this "other enemy" or they would be at war with each other a lot more over the decades. Maybe even now.

 
At 6/27/2005 06:43:00 PM, Blogger AK said...

yes ok

isreal and islamic extremists working together after all they have a lot in common like.....

just one of those conspiracy theories

 
At 6/27/2005 07:39:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Amazing. Does this kind of thinking come from lack of oxygen, or is it some kind of vitamin deficiency?

 
At 6/27/2005 09:35:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know why anyone would be suprised. Bin Laden and Zarquaqwi are both American agents working to disgrace Islam. Clearly the Jews would be behind that effort.

 
At 6/28/2005 03:28:00 AM, Blogger The Sandmonkey said...

LOL a7na ben3od fe ba3d ya O?

Mashy..

I have a question for you, Do you know what are the three top intellegince agencies in the world are? I ofetn wanderd about that myself, and it took someone applying to the US foreigns ervice to tell me:Israel is #1 and the US is #3, but do you know who # 3 is?

That's right, Syria.

I was astonished by it, as you are too probably. How could the Syrian intelligence agency be better then the US one? Well, apparently it has a lot to do with funding, and The Israelis and the syrians fund the shit out of their intellgence agencies.

So yeah, one might call that sophistcated.

However, let's look at it from another angle, shall we?

Who was in control of lebanon and its security situation?

Syria.

The attack on Harriri was so sophistcated and included a lot of high tech equipment, who would be able to get this in Lebanon and execute such a plan?

Hmm, I dunno, could it be possible to do this whole elaborate assassination, with the bombings afterwards, all under syrian intellgence's noses with them having aboslutely nothing to do with it?

Let me think.. ehh... NO!

As for the Israel thing, honestly, i don't think they need to plot anything against us. We pretty much are experts in the art of screwing ourselves over. I sometimes joke that if the Israelis really wanted Egypt destoryed, that the smartest thing they did was sign a peace treaty with us. Having them as our enemy in times of war gave us a sense of purpose and determination. We had an enemy to fight after all, a score to settle, which ensured that we don't end up being Apathethic (like we are now). But the moment there was peace, well, there was no external enemy to fight, only the internal ones (Ignorance, poverty, corruption), and they were a lot stronger then Israel ever was.

Catherine is right, if we didn't have Israel we would've invented it.

You know what's Sharon's probable reaction to that was happening? Probably laughing his ass off at the stupid arab gyoms who keep fighting and eating eachother. I doubt he hardly thought it was intersting though. Amusing probably, Hilarious possible, but there is nothing Interesting about it!

As for the donations thing, its unfortunately still low. I have a feeling i have kinda screwed myself when i put it in 10 dollar increments. Put again, its an optional thing. So people can do what they want and i am cool with it.

Thanks for what you've tried to imply by that remark though. If i actually cared i would've probably found it offensive. But since i actually like you as a person, it just makes me slightly sad!

Oh well!

 
At 6/28/2005 03:30:00 AM, Blogger The Sandmonkey said...

correction, Syria is #2!
its 1)Israel, 2) Syria, and 3) the US.

 
At 6/28/2005 06:19:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Um one more time buddy..
Syria has a better intellegince agency than the US?

Man dont say stuff like this unless you can back it, besides if Syria put 100% of its budget into its intellegince agencies it would still be much less than CIA funding.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federation of American Scientists, the CIA announced on March 20 that the intelligence budget total for Fiscal Year 1998 is $26.7 billion. (this is not including budget for the other intelligence agencies: Defence, Justice, Homeland, Energy, Research, Treasury, not to mention the NSA and FBI.)

(Syrian) capital expenditures of $4.67 billion (2004 est.) That is the total Syrian Budget for 2004 buddy. Total as in every penny they spent on everything.

Hard sell.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/foia/intel98.html
http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sy.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Community

 
At 6/28/2005 07:33:00 AM, Blogger The Sandmonkey said...

Kimo, 3 things:

1)The article you mentioned specifies total intelligence budget, this could very well include the other 14 intellgence appartuses in the USA, especially after the reconsalidation that the US intelligence community is going through.

2)Size of syrian budget is not indicative of anything my friend, especially that there is very little disclosure done in the syrian budget, and all that is reproted isn;t always all that is spent. Take Israel for example: $ 52.11 billion is it's total expenditure, which means that the US Intellgence budget would = half of its expenditures. Yet the Israeli Intelligence is still ranked the first worldwide. But that's a moot point. My point on funding was as a percetage of expenditures. Huge chunks of the Syrian government money,likewise the israeli, goes into the intelligence community. The US Intelligence budget is only big comparitvly because it's Budget in general is Big ($2.3 trillion).

3) The size or amount of money spent on Intelligence doesn;t mean it's used efficiently or effectively. The CIA is notorious for in-fighting, ineffeciency and increasingly messed up deprtmental structure. There is an excellent Book on the topic called "Inside the CIA" that would show you how it's exactly run and if i recall correctly, it's where this ranking was mentioned.

But thanks for trying to keep me honest. I appreciate it!

;)

 
At 6/28/2005 09:02:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"1)The article you mentioned specifies total intelligence budget, this could very well include the other 14 intellgence appartuses in the USA, especially after the reconsalidation that the US intelligence community is going through."

No. The article I mentioned specifies the CIA's budget in 1998 (also 7 years before the reshuffle. Also the CIA recives it's budget independant of the Defence (which controls most other dept financing)

2. The percentage of the budget used is irrelavent. Its all about the $ baby, not how big a sacrifice it was to get it. So as you said the US spends trillions; syria billions. So how is there even a comparison.

3. I think I'm just getting annoying and I'm sure you get the point. I love debating but not when I have to write it out and wait a couple hours.

Did you get my email buddy? Sent it out to a bunch of bloggers like 10 days ago.

 

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