True, rockets weren't involved in Berlin, but the spirit is much the same.  Gaza has no airport whatsoever.  Gaza International was ripped up by the IDF in 2001.  The bulk of their border is with Israel, considered a hostile enemy.  They have no port, just a tiny marina.  Egypt's border is tiny, and their attitude is cold toward Gaza.  The only way in and out is through one Egyptian and five Israeli portals. 

Like Berlin, Gaza is cut off from it's supporters and peers.  The 400k people who live there, are essentially trapped in an area about the same size as Queens, NY.  It's well documented that Hamas and their kind fight dirty, and trapped rats are doubly dangerous.

The 'Palestinians' voted Hamas into faux-power because Hamas positions itself as their only hope (sound familiar?).  Blowing up schools (even if they are bomb factories!), shutting off power, water, sewer, communications, etc, drives the populace straight into the hands of Hamas.  This is where the 'they're all guilty because they voted for Hamas' argument looses all credibility.  Gazans have no choice, they're backed into a corner (literally).

If Israel had limited their action to cutting the smuggeling tunnels and targeting 'Hamas', they'd have tons of support.  All Hamas has to do is parade some children's coffins through the street and the World comes a cryin'.  The IDF is handing Hamas all the propaganda material they need.  It's a huge relations blunder.  It upsets me to see Israel make such rookie mistakes.

cool -- can you imagine how much trouble Obama is going to be in WHEN the next Islamo-terrorist outrage occurs with Panetta in charge of the CIA?

I assume even this media won't be able to ignore so many dead bodies in the US -- or an Embassy somewhere. 

"Mr President, can you explain how the CIA missed this? What did Mr Panetta know and when di8d he know it?

What a shame many Americans are going to have to die to expose the incompetence of this nomination. Though I have a feeling, enough Democrats are worried enough to make his confirmation no slam-dunk.

"The nature of an ideology is not determined by majority vote—but by logic... The logic of environmentalism leads to a society without technology... even if various environmentalists would deny this." Ayn Rand, 1971

 in response to what Joe Klein said (See Brent Baker's ealier post on Klein) here:

..when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention -- the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime -- did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency...

Son-of-a-gun. Seems as if he had rather broad support for that view - ask Obama's AG, Holder.

Eric Holder, Obama's choice for Attorney General, in a CNN interview in January, 2002 (as recalled by the WSJ) - my bold:

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

 

So - Will Holder change his mind now that the media expects it of him? 

gary (;~>

....Holder agrees with the Bush Administration's postion that al-Qaeda/Taliban prisoners should not be beneficiaries of Geneva Convention protections. 

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohammed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

 http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kerry-picket/2008/11/24/2002-video-flashback-eric-holder-terrorist-detainees-dont-fall-under-g

It will be interesting to how Panetta reconciles his belief that torture is unacceptable under any circumstances with his agency's increasing proficiency at picking off terrorist leaders in Pakistan--does he tell his folks not to pull the trigger or does he let them continue to pick them using the "logic" that taking them out is better than capturing them and getting intel from them?