@Uncle – those were nuclear soil testing devices and were not export restricted. Any bigger company in ground compacting/road building business uses these. The article is pure “lets bomb Iran” propaganda.

Posted by: b | Jul 23 2006 12:03 utc | 4

I figured as much b, but always enjoy the sound board. Thank-you.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2006 12:23 utc | 6

this is also time to remember the target assassination – at the time of the terrorist bombing of the king david hotel – that of the humanitarian envoy – count folk benadotte – a man who rescued european jewry in the last days of ww2

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 23 2006 13:32 utc | 8

Harper’s Silverstein interviews a former State Deartment ME expert:

6. Will there be any negative consequences resulting from the administration’s relatively passive diplomacy?
Very much so. As I have noted, the Israelis have embarked on a campaign that will most likely make matters worse over the long term. This crisis will further erode U.S. credibility in the Middle East—and beyond. Despite clearly siding with Israel, Washington used to be regarded as a party quite often useful for intercession with the Israelis, but in this case the Bush Administration has seemingly given Israel a blank check to do whatever it wants for as long as it wants. With respect to another extremely serious consequence of not working to bring this carnage to an early end, Lebanon already has absorbed billions of dollars of damage. By the end of the crisis, the cost of rebuilding Lebanon will be incredibly high and the rebuilding effort quite prolonged, leaving most Lebanese, aside perhaps from the hard-core Christian right, considerably more hostile to Israel—and the United States—than ever before. In this respect, I find scenes of devastated Lebanese urban areas not only appalling, but frightening.

Posted by: b | Jul 23 2006 14:04 utc | 10

This all is just so depressing. From this point things can just become worse – not better. There is simply no any hope on a horizon because there is no alternative in USA that we can hope will suddenly win next election and change policy.
This is “Czechoslovakia” and again world is not prepared for almighty fascists and is acting the same way like then, with fear and submissively. Again, incredibly smart diplomats have to listen to this fascistic incredible crap of Rise and to nod in silence and even to make pacts in fear and hope that this way their countries will be saved. This kind of evil will not stop there. It will spread. God help us all!

Posted by: vbo | Jul 23 2006 15:09 utc | 12

Thanks for finding the Haaretz article on the KD Hotel. It was really good.

Posted by: Ms. Manners | Jul 23 2006 15:42 utc | 14

The Israeli chief of staff is an Air Force puke and a right winger. Olmert and Perez have no militray experience. The outcome is a “Bomber Harris” total air terror strategy.
Pat Lang

At the strategic level, the IDF under Halutz is following classic “Air Power” theory which holds that crushing the “Will of the People” is the correct objective in compelling the acceptance of one’s own “will” by an adversary or neutral. With that objective in mind, all of the target country is considered to be one, giant target set. Industry, ports, bridges, hospitals, roads, you name it. It is all “fair game.” In this case the notion is to force the Lebanese government and army to accept a role as the northern jaw in a vise that will crush Hizballah and subsequently to hold south Lebanon against Hizballah. Since Lebanon is a melange of ethnic and religious communities of which Shia LEBANESE are a major element and since many Lebanese Shia are supporters of Hizballah, the prospect of getting the Lebanese government to do this is “nil.” As for the Lebanese Army, the US attempted for two years (1982-84) to re-structure and re-train the Lebanese Army to make it a “national” non-sectarian force only to learn when this army was committed to battle in 1984 against Druze and Christian forces, that it simply fell apart. The US then abandoned the effort. Nothing much has changed in Lebanon since then.

Posted by: b | Jul 23 2006 16:55 utc | 16

An OpEd by Rami Khouri. The guy seems to be smart.

Almost every part of Bush’s statement is either wrong or a consequence of bad foreign policy decisions by the US and Israel, who operate as a single entity for all practical purposes on the issue at hand. The first and most important problem with Bush’s thoughts is to characterize Hizbullah’s actions with a profanity. Many people, including myself, criticize Hizbullah for certain aspects of its policies. But history will no doubt record that its actions before this month to liberate South Lebanon from Israeli occupation have largely been supported by most Lebanese and Arabs, and have been seen as legitimate by most of the world.
…
We now have two Arab countries that Bush has trumpeted as models and vanguards of America’s policy of promoting freedom and democratic change: Iraq and Lebanon. Neither is a very comforting sight today. Not many Arabs will sign up for Bush’s democracy and freedom plan if this is what they will expect to happen to their countries.
…
Hizbullah sees itself as a deterrent to Israeli threats against Lebanon, and the main means of maintaining the integrity of Lebanon. Many will now question this self-image after its kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers triggered the destruction of much of Lebanon.
The real irony in Bush’s statement is that he wants others to pressure Syria to pressure Hizbullah to change its policies – at a moment when the central pillar of Washington’s Middle East policies appears to be a refusal to speak to some of the most important political groups in the region. The US has no relations or known contacts with Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, and is not on speaking terms with Syria, which it has mildly sanctioned.
Bush ignores at his own peril the fact that Islamist political sentiments and resistance movements are the fastest growing sector of national life in the Middle East. For the US to be squarely opposed to and unable to speak with this large part of the public spectrum is foolish enough; it is even more reflective of amateur American foreign policy-making that Washington’s policies in the region are an important contributor to the expansion of such Islamist sentiments and organizations.
Another irony is that Bush fails to grasp that Hizbullah’s rise to prominence in the past quarter century in many ways represents a reaction to the three principal causes of mass dissatisfaction, anger, fear and humiliation among Arab populations: ineffective and autocratic Arab governments, an aggressive and predatory Israel, and a US that supports both of these tormentors of ordinary Arabs. If these underlying problems are not addressed and resolved, groups like Hizbullah will continue to emerge organically from the Middle Eastern soil, regardless of what happens to Hizbullah in the coming weeks.

Posted by: b | Jul 23 2006 18:25 utc | 18

Haniyya sounds alarm over threat to entire region posed by Israeli assaults

In the evening, Israeli forces blew up a government building in this West Bank city on Friday, killing one person, Palestinian security officials said.
Ahmad Anab, a 38-year-old local resident whose house is adjacent to the local muqataa compound, was killed outside his home from the force of explosives detonated by the Israeli army, a medical source said.
A Palestinian security official confirmed that for the third straight day, Israeli forces were working at destroying the muqataa.
“Three bulldozers are destroying it night and day and reducing the buildings to dust,” he said.
“The police building, local Interior Ministry and preventive security building have been entirely destroyed,” he added.
Adel Illah al-Atiri, director general of the local Interior Ministry in Nablus, told AFP that the ministry’s archives dating back to 1918 had been destroyed.
An Israeli military source claimed the object of the operation was to flush out wanted gunmen, “some of whom are connected to Hizbullah.”
…
Ground troops on Friday were operating in southern Gaza and the Karni area, east of Gaza City, under the pretext of looking for tunnels and explosives, having withdrawn overnight from the Maghazi refugee camp after a bloody two-day incursion.
A local official from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said 16 hectares of fields, mostly olive groves, were ravaged in the operation and that around 10 homes had been damaged by tanks and bulldozers.
“It’s like a tsunami. Eight dunums [0.8 hectares] of olive trees belonging to me have been destroyed,” said local resident Abdel-Rahim Saeed.
Some people in the camp of 22,000 were trapped in their houses by embankments the Israelis built as tank emplacements, residents said, adding 15 Palestinians detained for questioning were released before the troops pulled out.
The Israeli military confirmed that the incursion was over, but Israeli forces would continue operating there and in other places in the coming days in its campaign against Gaza militants.
Military officials told The Associated Press the army is adopting a new policy of attacking homes in civilian areas where weapons are suspected to be hidden.

Posted by: b | Jul 23 2006 18:39 utc | 20

The end of this week may see a “cessation in hostilities”, as the diplomats like to refer that state of affairs when weapons, energy, public sanction and most of all a ‘coherent way forward’ conspire together to drain the momentum from an aggressors’ onslaught.
Despite protestations since forever by both the US and Israel that outside interference in the affairs of Israel is intolerable, it seems that just like the “yes we will – – no we won’t invade Lebanon with big, no maybe small, groupings of ground forces” dance from Olmert last week which spluttered along dependant on Israeli infantry success or rather lack of success, a similar dance is now being played over an ‘International Peace-Keeping Force’.
We are now being told that an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon is now seen as a way out of the mess Olmert has created. Well maybe we’re not being told Olmert has created a mess.
According to Reuters, this week begins with addle-brained Olmert and blustering John Bolton resigning themselves to the inevitable.
Of course reading Reuters on this can be a challenge since their POV depends upon the market they serve. Whatever bias toward zionism Rupert Murdoch may have in his media outlets will never be permitted get in the way of his capacity to make a profit.
Israel has been a very useful source of particular labour skills. For example the hacking piracy operations Murdoch ran on competitors from his Israel based NDS Corporation. While Israel was useful as a handy refuge from Amerikan commercial hegemony enforcement, Rupert would never endanger his capacity to make a quid from every nation on this planet by not being all things to all men.
Bearing that in mind there are at least three ‘takes’, slants, or angles Reuters is running on the international peacekeeping force to Lebanon story.
The US Reuters take has an emphasis on blustering Bolton’s opinion. The inside the beltway bully attempts passing off this tale of his failure to stand-over the United Nations diplomats in the same way he stood over the ethically and ideologically devoid careerists in the US State Dept. Bolton uses a diversion so bereft of any basis in reality that only the spineless and supine, pillow biting sissy, that is the US domestic media would ‘swallow’ it.
The issue of US support for Israel’s position of denying access to ‘outsiders’ is forgotten as the rethugs attempt to sell the result as a win because US soldiers won’t be there!
“U.S. lawmakers said that NATO was an option though U.S. troops should not be a part of that force.
“It would not be a good idea for the United States troops to be in Lebanon,” Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said . . .”
The notion of the rest of the world ,much less the ME, and in particular Lebanon agreeing to a result which puts the aggressor’s puppeteer into Lebanon as a ‘peace-keeper’ to referee their proxy, Israel, is so off the wall it’s laughable.
It is with such blatant ‘porkys’* amerikans become deluded.
The Nato bent that Bolton blathers is missing in the other Reuters markets. If there were forces from Nato countries there, the notion of them operating under the US dominated Nato chain of command would be unacceptable for the Lebanese. As well one would imagine that even the ‘new’ Nato clients er sorry ‘members’ wouldn’t be lining up for a gig that could result in them becoming US controlled cannon-fodder in a warzone with no US forces at risk.
The Reuters South Pacific version quotes maladroit Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert intimating that any experienced troops would do, provided of course that they were whitefellas and stayed away from Israel:
“Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a final decision has yet to be made but that any new force should be made up of European Union members, have combat experience and take control of Lebanon’s border crossings with Syria.” Whaa?
How does putting a bunch of troops on the Syrian border prevent Israel from dropping by Southern Lebanese farming villages from time to time and killing everyone?
Obviously this was an ambit claim but I do find the whitefella bit to be pretty revealing. Israel obviously caught a lot more from their former association with apartheid South Africa than a nuclear testing ground.
Meanwhile perfidious Albion . The UK Reuters site struggles to put dubya’s punk Bliar into the picture and fails miserably:
“(French Foreign Minister) Douste-Blazy, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells all had meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials.”
Close geographic and communications contact with the rest of Europe doesn’t allow Reuters UK to risk the cognitive dissonance thay may arise from UK and European Reuters being caught at complete contradiction about facts. That could cause a drop in sales of their articles. Confused customers are rarely loyal customers.
So the end of the Reuters UK story has a piece that was sorely missing from the US Reuters ‘take’:
“German and British ministers both said they did not think their countries would send troops for any expanded force in south Lebanon.”
Israel is fortunate to enjoy the biased approach to international journalism as practiced by conglomerates such as Reuters. Stories are spun in a way least likely to alarm or antagonize Europeans and Amerikans.
By spinning and crawling in the way Reuters has, some major Israeli military reverses that occurred last week have remained unreported, dismissed as rumour or ‘enemy propaganda’, despite any physical evidence.
A thousand years ago when these murderous and unceasing ‘border’ conflicts were played out in Europe, a leader such as Ehud who was great at starting fights but hopeless at ending them with a better outcome than that which prevailed beforehand would have copped a nickname such as “Ethelred the fart’ which intimated the contempt he was held in.
Given Israeli propensity for such conflicts in the 21st century, Ehud the schlemiel seems apt.
*pork pies = lies.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 23 2006 23:41 utc | 22

“Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a final decision has yet to be made but that any new force should be made up of European Union members, have combat experience and take control of Lebanon’s border crossings with Syria.” Whaa?
How does putting a bunch of troops on the Syrian border prevent Israel from dropping by Southern Lebanese farming villages from time to time and killing everyone?
It prevents Israel from carrying out their threat to “seal” the border w/Syria – ie. draw them into a wider war – in the name of preventing more weapons from being smuggled in to Hezbollah.

Posted by: jj | Jul 24 2006 18:17 utc | 24