BUSH'S POLICY OF NOT DEALING WITH "ENEMIES" HAS WASTED BOTH IRAQI AND AMERICAN LIVES

In his speech to Israel's Knesset yesterday, Bush said that those who wanted to talk to Hamas, or to Hezbollah, or to Iran, were no better than those who appeased the Nazis and Hitler.

Yet because Bush refused to engage in diplomacy with Iraq over supposed nuclear weapons, he has personally sunk the U.S. into this ever more costly war in terms of U.S. and Iraqi lives wasted.

If it were up to Bush, there would be no talking with countries perceived to be acting against the interests of the United States. The U.S. according to the gospel of Bush should solve all of its problems with war planes and missiles.

How much longer must we be the victims of Bush's deluded and simplistic foreign policy of us against them?

ISRAEL INFLICTS COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT ON PEOPLE OF GAZA - THIS IS A WAR CRIME

The news reports out of Gaza are dreadful. Israel is inflicting collective punishment against the whole population as a means to retaliate against the few who are shooting rockets from Gaza into Israel.

I thought we condemned the Nazis during the second World War for inflicting collective punishment on cities and villages where German soldiers were killed. The Nazis inflicted penalties of up to 100 for one. One German soldier's death required 100 civilians to be hanged. The Allies were no different or no less guilty of barbaric collective punishment. Consider the fire bombing of Dresden by British and American war planes. More than 40,000 German civilians killed during the span of one night as the whole city was destroyed. This too was collective punishment. And a war crime.

Now it seems to be Israel's turn to engage in this horrendous practice. Punish the whole population by stopping all shipments of food and gasoline into Gaza. Let the people suffer from lack of medicine and electricity. Cause huge bread lines and periods of power outage. Continue with such wholesale punishment until the rockets stop.

ISRAEL CUTS POWER TO GAZA - COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT IS ALWAYS WRONG

Now Israel pledges not to cause a humanitarian crisis as it reduces power and fuel to Gaza. See the story reported by the BBC. I guess Israel is just going to cause minor inconvenience when Gaza residents have electricity only a few hours a day or they suffer fuel rationing for their autos.

Someone please explain to me why this is not collective punishment? It is just as bad when a grade school teacher holds the whole class back because of the disruptions of a few. It makes no sense, and besides it is unethical. It is also immoral and illegal.

Israel cannot cut off power to a whole population because it wants to punish the acts of the few who fire rockets into Israeli cities. Unless collective punishment is moral and legal. Cutting off water and power now, what will be the next step? Kill half the population as the Romans did two thousand years ago when they wanted to get revenge for seeing their soldiers killed , or as the Nazis did in Italy after popular uprisings.

Whoever suggested cutting the power to Gaza should be dismissed from the Israeli government. And whoever went along with this immoral collective punishment should be booted out of office by Israeli voters.