An impeding civil war in Iraq is news? Has not this been obvious for months? Well, to all but neocons and Pentagon generals, apparently. Their stupidity and cluelessness would almost be comical were it not for all the dead bodies piled up in mounds.
Hezbollah is just NOT doing what Israel and US requests. I mean, they’re shooting back and stuff. But then, only terrorists defend their homeland from invasion, right?
Israeli attempted airborne landing in Tyre thwarted: Hezbollah
In South Lebanon, a fierce fight for every yard
Three weeks into Israel’s war with Hezbollah, its forces are still fighting along a wrinkled strip of territory that stretches 50 yards to more than three miles inside Lebanon, far short of a zone Israeli forces said would soon expand deeper inside the country all along the border.
For a little dark comedic relief, it’s always fun listening to Donald Rumsfeld’s increasingly lunatic proclamations about how things there are just peachy and getting better all the time.
Newsweek editor: Rumsfeld “Seems In a parallel universe and slightly deranged”
Baltimore Chronicle Op-Ed on Bush
Is he aware that before 1982 Hezbollah did not exist? Does he have a clue what brought it into existence? He might be inclined to think that it arose to grab Israeli soldiers across the border. But in fact it arose after Israel invaded Lebanon–despite a year of quiet on that border–in order to wipe out Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel’s earlier program to “redeem” Arab-owed land. Israel remained in southern Lebanon for 18 years. It even set up its own Christian Lebanese militia to do some of the dirty work. Israeli forces killed tens of thousands of Lebanese during the siege of Beirut and the occupation. The Israeli-sponsored militia slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians in refugee camps like cattle. Israel had its way with Lebanon, and no one could do anything about it.
Hezbollah organized to resist that illegal occupation. This is legitimate under international law, not to mention moral law. Not every Hezbollah action has been defensible, but most people would say the same about Israel. We should not lose sight of the context or the fact that the U.S. government assisted Israel in virtually every respect, especially by the provision of money and weapons.
Massive pro-Hezbollah protest in Baghdad
Estimates of the crowd by organizers ranged from 250,000 to 1 million, which would make it the biggest protest in the Middle East in support of Hezbollah since Israel launched attacks last month after the Shiite insurgency group seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. But the U.S. military said in a news release that calculations based on pictures taken from unmanned surveillance aircraft put the crowd at 14,000.
This is laughably inept propaganda from the US military. But, they need to get their stories straight. Radio Free Europe, also a government propaganda arm, put the crowd at “more than 100,000.”
But wait, the laughable ineptness gets, well, even more inept, thanks to the rube in the White House.
Ambassador claims shortly before invasion, Bush didn’t know there were two sects of Islam
Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”
Just a willfully ignorant provincial, isn’t he?
Here comes the blowback.
War may trump all other concerns in Congressional election season