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Why the Peaceful Majority of Muslims Are Not Irrelevant : "A few years ago, FrontPageMag.com columnist Paul Marek wrote an article titled “Why the Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant.” His thesis was that even if the majority of Muslims abhor violence, it doesn’t matter because “the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.... The hard quantifiable fact is, that the ‘peaceful majority’ is the ‘silent majority’ and it is cowed and extraneous.” For Marek, the upshot is this: “We must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.” He’s wrong. No, he’s worse than wrong, because his position could be used to justify mass murder. Marek and those who have applauded his column point out that most Germans and Japanese during World War II were not warmongers, but warmongers controlled policymaking. The implication is that the United States was right to regard the peaceful majority as nonexistent. That’s exactly what the Allies did. Under Franklin R...

FT.com / World - US military trained Georgian commandos By Charles Clover in Moscow and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington Published: September 5 2008 18:49 | Last updated: September 5 2008 18:49 The US military provided combat training to 80 Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia’s army assault in South Ossetia in August. The revelation, based on recruitment documents and interviews with US military trainers obtained by the Financial Times, could add fuel to accusations by Vlad­imir Putin, Russian prime minister, last month that the US had “orchestrated” the war in the Georgian enclave. The training was provided by senior US soldiers and two military contractors. There is no evidence that the contractors or the Pentagon, which hired them, knew that the commandos they were training were likely be used in the assault on South Ossetia.