. May 26, 2006 SouthAmerica: Today I did watch for about 30 minutes George W. Bush and Tony Blair giving the same old bullshit about the Iraq War. It seems to me that they have no idea, and no understanding that Iraq is in the middle of a nasty sectarian civil war and there is nothing they can do about it. Tony Blair talks about the Iraqis as if they were a big happy family, and there were these bad terrorists who disturb the peace in Iraq. They seem to me as two fools completely clueless about what is happening in Iraq â trying to give a pep talk to the American people on how democracy will flourish in Iraq. They staged some election, and took over 5 months for these new fools to form some kind of government to govern the Green Zone in Baghdad. First George Bush gives a speech about what Tony Blair told him regarding his latest trip to Iraq â and Blair is standing right next to him. It looked silly â George was passing all this information as if he had spoken to Tony Blair on the telephone and now he was telling to the American people the detail of their private telephone conversation. Tony Blair said that all these elected official (from the newly formed government of the Green Zone) â it did not matter from which group they represented â they asked him for the occupation forces to stay in Iraq. Sure they did. Without the protection of the occupation forces all members of this new Green Zone government would be killed in no time. They need the occupation forces to keep them alive. Their bullshit when on and onâ¦. Tony and George looked to me as two Pathetic people trying to convince the world that they are right and the rest of the world is wrong. When these two started talking about terrorism â they look even more stupid â any group that has a beef against any government or occupation force around the world has become a terrorist group since 9/11. And they did try to imply during their speech that terrorism, or insurgency, or freedom fighters, or some other name used for that purpose â it does not work. I guess Tony Blair forgot how a terrorist group led by Menachem Begin kicked the British armyâs ass out of Palestine during a period of 3 years from 1945 to 1948. Begin went from world class terrorist leader to Prime Minister of a Israel and to winner of the Peace Nobel Prize. That is an example of how a person such as Osama Bin Ladden can be tagged a terrorist today and in the future he can become a leader of a country and even qualify to win a Peace Nobel Price. (Today Osama Bin Ladden is already regarded as a legend in the Arab world â can the Peace Nobel Prize be far behind?) If Menachem Begin won the Peace Nobel Prize â and Yasser Arafat also received a Peace Nobel Prize, he was another person considered being a terrorist at one point during his professional career â should we be surprised if Osama Bin Ladden also wins in the future a Peace Nobel Prize? Here is some information regarding Menechem Begin the former terrorist and Prime Minister of Israel. ********* Menachem Begin â received the âNobel Peace Prizeâ on December 10, 1978. Menachem Wolfovitch Begin (August 16, 1913 â March 9, 1992) head of the Irgun (1944 to 1948), a terrorist group whose fight against British rule was one of the main reasons for their withdrawal from Palestine. Begin became the 6th Prime Minister of Israel in May 1977, being the first member of the right-wing Likud Party to form a government in Israel. Though revered by many Israelis, Beginâs legacy remains highly controversial and divisive. Suffering eight consecutive defeats in the years preceding his premiership, Begin became to embody the opposition to the Ashkenazi Mapai-led establishment. His electoral victory in 1977 not only brought to an end three decades of Labor Party political hegemony, but also symbolised a new social realignment in which hitherto marginalized communities gained public recognition. However the extent to which this symbolic change was translated into government policy remains highly debateable. Despite having established himself as a fervent conservative ideologist, Beginâs first significant achievement as Prime Minister was to negotiate the Camp David Accords with President Sadat of Egypt, agreeing on the full withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the Sinai Peninsula and its return to Egypt in 1978. Yet in the years to follow, especially during his second term in office from 1981, Beginâs government was to reclaim a nationalist agenda, promoting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, and launching a limited invasion into southern Lebanon in 1982, which quickly escalated into full-fledged war. As Israeli military involvement in Lebanon deepened, Begin grew increasingly depressed and reticent, losing grip on the IDFâs operation in Lebanon and the instable economy which was gradually spiralling into hyperinflation. Mounting public pressure, exacerbated by the death of his wife Aliza in November 1982, increased his withdrawal from public life, until his resignation in September 1983. ******** Forcing the British out of Palestine Begin quickly made a name for himself as a fierce critic of mainstream Zionist leadership as being too cooperative with British âcolonialismâ, and as a proponent of guerrilla tactics against the British as a necessary means to achieve independence. (Just like the insurgents in Iraq today are fighting against US/British foreign occupation forces) In 1942 he joined the Irgun (Etzel), a terrorist militant Zionist group which had split from the Jewish military organization, the Haganah, in 1931. In 1944 Begin assumed the organization's leadership, determined to force the British government to remove its troops entirely from Palestine. Claiming that the British have reneged on their original promise of the Balfour Declaration, and that the White Paper of 1939 restricting Jewish immigration was an escalation of their pro-Arab policy, he decided to break with the Haganah, which continued to cooperate militarily with the British as long as they were fighting Nazi Germany. Soon after he assumed command, a formal 'Declaration of Revolt' was publicized, and armed attacks against British forces were initiated. Begin issued a call to arms and from 1945-1948 the Irgun launched an all-out armed rebellion, perpetrating hundreds of attacks against British installations and posts. For several months in 1945-1946, the Irgunâs activities were coordinated within the framework of the Hebrew Resistance Movement under the direction of the Haganah, however this fragile partnership collapsed following the Irgunâs bombing of the British administrative and military headquarters at the luxurious King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people, including British officers and troops as well as Arab and Jewish civilians. (Just as any other terrorist group in the world) The Irgun under Beginâs leadership continued to carry out military operations such as the break in to Acre Prison, and the hanging of two British sergeants, causing the British to suspend any further executions of Irgun prisoners. Growing numbers of British forces were deployed to quell the Jewish uprising, yet Begin managed to elude captivity, at times disguised as a Rabbi. The Jewish Agency, headed by David Ben-Gurion, did not take kindly to the Irgunâs independent agenda, regarding it a defiance of the Agencyâs authority as the representative body of the Jewish community in Palestine. Ben-Gurion openly denounced the Irgun as the âenemy of the Jewish Peopleâ, accusing it of sabotaging the political campaign for independence. In 1944, and again in 1947, the Haganah actively persecuted and handed over Irgun members to the British authorities in what is known as the Hunting Season; Beginâs instruction to his men to refrain from violent resistance prevented it from deteriorating into an armed intra-Jewish conflict. In November 1947, the UN adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, and Britain announced its plans to fully withdraw from Palestine by May 1948. Begin, once again in opposition to mainstream Zionist leadership, rejected the plan. In the years following the establishment of the State of Israel, the Irgunâs contribution to precipitating British withdrawal became a contested historic debate, as different factions were vying for predominance over the forming narrative of Israeli independence. Begin resented his portrayal as a belligerent dissident and what he perceived to be a politically motivated belittlement of the Irgunâs vital role in Israelâs struggle for independence. ******* Bombing Iraq's nuclear reactor Begin took the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic threats of Saddam Hussein very seriously and therefore took aim at Iraq. Israel attempted to negotiate with France so as to not provide Iraq with the nuclear reactor at Osiraq, but to no avail. In 1981 Begin ordered the bombing and destruction of Iraq's Tammuz nuclear reactor by the Israeli Air Force in a successful long-range operation called Operation Opera. Soon after, Begin enunciated what came to be known as the Begin doctrine: "On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the people of Israel." Many foreign governments, including the United States, condemned the operation, and the United Nations Security Council passed a unanimous resolution 487 condemning it. The Israeli left-wing opposition criticized it also at the time, but mainly for its timing relative to elections only three weeks later. .