Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

This conclusion feeds our well-established pro-Israeli  prejudice and further justifies Olmert's program of targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders. Last Friday, Israel opened the border between Gaza and Egypt just long enough to allow 400 members of Palestinian President Abbas' Praetorian Guard to slip into Gaza, albeit unarmed. Jordan and Egypt had already sent in their arms under a program developed by US Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams (convicted of perjury) to sow discord between Palestinian factions. (See Conflicts Forum 7/01/07 and 18/11/06 Al-Ahram reports.) This elite Fateh brigade was trained in Jordan under a US-funded program. President Abbas is a leader of Fateh and successor to Yassir Arafat. They were soundly defeated by Hamas last year and have lost most of their support amongst Palestinians while retaining all of their US subsidies.

The pattern of using surrogates to do our dirty work abroad is all too familiar:

Subverting the Chilean Army under General Pinochet to foment civil war in Chile (1970s).
Arming the Contras to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua (1980s).
Arming and financing Israel to invade Lebanon and destroy Hizbullah  (2006).
Arming and financing the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to overthrow the Islamist government (2007).
Arming and contracting with the Kurdish militia (Peshmurga) to help suppress the insurgency in Mosul (2006).
Arming and training the Fateh rapid reaction force to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine (2006 - 2007).