Discussing Liberally Salt Lake City

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This section traditionally contains our promotional short quiz(es) and its/their suggested answers.

As well as any comments (vs. Reference Materials which go in a separate section so labelled).

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Accordingly, there is posted here the scope of our Dec 13 Zoom meeting, as explained in our Nov 18 weekly e-mail, which inter alia said –

The Samson Option book description on its dust jacket ends with –

“The message of The Samson Option is stark: The next Middle East war might very well be nuclear.”

Of course the title’s reference to Samson, a Biblical character who destroyed his enemies while committing suicide, analogizes to both –

(1) the 1973 Israeli policy when faced with imminent annihilation, of firing its nukes before “turning out the lights,” and

(2) what Israel may soon feel forced to do vis-à-vis Iran.

Accordingly, our Dec 13 meeting will focus on the entire imbroglio – including the U.N.’s original 1948 “Two State Solution” based on the U.N.’s careful year-long assessment of who owned what land (Palestine’s population, per the U.N. assessment, was only 58.3% Muslim) - which Israel accepted and was immediately invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.

Our Nov 18 weekly e-mail says that of course, Seymour Hersh’s 1991 prophecy did not occur in “the next Middle East War” which got underway before his book was even published – America’s 1991 invasion of Iraq FROM THE ISLAMIC HOLY GROUND OF SAUDI ARABIA which, as we have studied many times, radicalized Osama bin Laden and resulted, inter alia, in his issuing FIVE FATWĀS --

(1) In August 1996, he issued a fatwā entitled “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.”

(2) In February 1998, he issued a fatwā entitled “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.”

(3) In December 1998, he issued a fatwā entitled “The Nuclear Bomb of Islam.”

(4) In 2002, nine months after 9/11, he issued a fatwā requiring all of his followers to nuke 4 million Americans -- a fatwā about which the Founding Dean of Harvard U’s Kennedy School of Government, Graham Allison, wrote a famous book entitled “Nuclear Terrorism” about how to deal with the fatwā. [NB: His prescription for all of the world’s nuclear powers to “lock down” every iota of fissile material and to prevent any non-nuclear powers, such as Iran, from enriching fissile material, was widely criticized as impractical and, in any event, has not been implemented.]

(5) By 2005, Osama had issued a revised fatwā requiring all of his followers to nuke 10 million Americans -- as was painfully clear from Tim Russert’s 5/29/2005 Meet the Press interview about how to deal with the fatwā with former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman 1987-1995), U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN and then-current Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman) and Messrs. Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton (Chair and Co-Chair of The 9/11 Commission) -- during which they essentially recommended following Dean Graham Allison’s prescription which, as previously noted, was NOT done.