& this boy knows on which side his bread is buttered

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 29 2006 20:02 utc | 3

Option E for The Debacle:
Let the US do it:

U.S. Intelligence on Hizballah and Iran

My source confirmed in detail the fact that intelligence being produced for the Bush Administration by the Pentagon strongly supports the thesis that Hizballah operations are directly controlled and closely managed from Teheran. My source considers this an exaggerated picture of the real situation. He believes that this assessment contributes to an unhealthy and even dangerous mindset in Washington, leading to potentially serious miscalculations and errors of judgment by President Bush and his closest advisors at this very critical time.
[…]
I was equally upset to hear this view repeated unanimously (and identically) by a variety of people on national TV yesterday, coming from Senators McCain, Schumer, George Allen and John Warner as well as official spokespersons from State and the NSC. It was as if they were all reading from the same artfully crafted briefing sheet handed to them by some staffer who got it straight from either JINSA or the Washington Institute.
It is a dangerously one-sided point of view that furthers Israel’s long-standing objective of luring the US into a violent confrontation with Iran. The ultimate consequence could be that everyone in the USG — Democrats as well as Republicans — from the President on down — will, by such dangerously oversimplified logic and careless rhetoric, accelerate America’s momentum toward [..]
[…]
What is clear is that the failure of Israel’s blitzkrieg (and at the moment, it looks like a catastrophic failure, at least politically) will have enormous repercussions in the Middle East, just as the downfall of Louis Napoleon had in late 19th century Europe. By betting the ranch on a quick, decisive victory, the Anglo-Israeli alliance has committed both a crime and a mistake. The architects may escape punishment for the former, but I think the latter is going to come back to haunt them, and probably very soon.

Posted by: b | Jul 29 2006 20:31 utc | 5

one more quote from b’s link:
Nasrallah will, I’d guess, become increasingly more secular — less the Shiite religious cleric, and more the pan-Arab and pan-Islamic leader in a bid to become the primary champion and action hero of both Arab and Muslim nationalism. (A European friend of mine, who lived in Damascus for several years studying the Palestinian rejectionist movement based there, tells me that for the past five years or more, when he walked into any Palestinian office in Damascus, from PDFLP to Hamas, the picture he saw on the wall was that of Hassan Nasrallah, not Assad or Arafat or anyone else.)
……………………………………………………………
this is what they’re really afraid of

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 29 2006 21:01 utc | 7

blair was always murdoch’s man & will most probably do the bidding of his idiot sons
there hasn’t been an ‘elected’ figure in either u s, england or australia who does not owe a blood debt to murdoch
it is with no surprise then that blair say what he says & billmon is correct in that he is the most obsequious of servants – he pretends he is smarter than his master but he is so much less
together they have created the language with which orwell would have wondered at his capacity to prophecy. they have called the rich who screw the ^people, the inventors, the bright sparks, the engines of their recovery, they call the poor welfare cheats, scum, criminalqs – there is no better & more careful study of the world thatcher & blair have created than in the work of john pilger
it is in israel where this language has met its synthesis – a people’s mere breathing has been called terrorism, murders of innocents have been called targeted assassinations, what are in essence carpet bombings have been done “in the name of lebanon” as their defence spokesman has sd
& now we have the their defeat at bint jbeil at the hands of hezbollah called a victory
they are brutes not of this world but of a dying one

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 29 2006 21:11 utc | 9

together they have created the language with which orwell
‘Tis ironic, r’giap, that George Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair.

Posted by: Ensley | Jul 29 2006 21:56 utc | 11

The Murdoch thing goes on, but no-one is infallible. He like his onetime, once wealthier rival the late Kerry Packer, worked out long ago that, the smartest man doesn’t win, the person who owns the most chips does.
Packer used that notion to break the bank at a few casinos around the world prior to taking them over and becoming the ultimate caricature of a crass Australian bully.
Murdoch, from Adelaide, which unlike Melbourne and Sydney had a preponderance of english migrants and less celtic convicts, always considered himself to be some sort of renaissance man. Versed in the arts, and adept at political subtlety.
Murdoch could only have been so successful in the second half of the 20 century where he used is family’s wealth to pervert the Age of Man.
In another era he would have faced too much competition from fellow capitalists.
What does that say about our world? If men and women ever manage to unite again to confront the elites, they had better construct a system which prevents career decision makers from clawing their way out and over the top of the rest of the community.
Murdoch and Co haunted the elite university cloisters hunting out those who had got there by dint of egocentric toil. The type of over-achiever that has destroyed the medical profession in many nations. Those who were ‘naturally brilliant’ were of no use to Rupert because not only do things come for them too easily for them to want to betray their community just to stay ahead, they were far too smart for Murdoch who came from a long line of ego-centric over-achievers himself.
Murdoch picked his Hawkes, Blairs and Clintons very carefully. Cecil Rhodes would have applauded.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 29 2006 22:22 utc | 13

they (cnnskybbc) are really wanting to hide the reality of bint jbeil – like a blip on the screen
when it is not triumphalist – they don’t want to boradcast it
again it is like iraq – ô they like tumbling statues but the real blood of men women & children they can do without

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 29 2006 22:31 utc | 15

One option is too clear out a 50 mile buffer along the border
Another option is to carve out a piece of northern Israel equal to the value of everything that Israel has destroyed in Lebanon and give it to Lebanese settlers.

Posted by: biklett | Jul 29 2006 23:19 utc | 17

the sublime eduardo galeano July 29/30 2006
A World in Love with Death
One Country Bombed Two Countries
By EDUARDO GALEANO
One country bombed two countries. Such impunity might astound were it not business as usual. In response to the few timid protests from the international community, Israel said mistakes were made.
How much longer will horrors be called mistakes?
This slaughter of civilians began with the kidnapping of a soldier.
How much longer will the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier be allowed to justify the kidnapping of Palestinian sovereignty?
How much longer will the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers be allowed to justify the kidnapping of the entire nation of Lebanon?
For centuries the slaughter of Jews was the favorite sport of Europeans. Auschwitz was the natural culmination of an ancient river of terror, which had flowed across all of Europe.
How much longer will Palestinians and other Arabs be made to pay for crimes they didn’t commit?
Hezbollah didn’t exist when Israel razed Lebanon in earlier invasions.
How much longer will we continue to believe the story of this attacked attacker, which practices terrorism because it has the right to defend itself from terrorism?
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon: How much longer will Israel and the United States be allowed to exterminate countries with impunity?
The tortures of Abu Ghraib, which triggered a certain universal sickness, are nothing new to us in Latin America. Our militaries learned their interrogation techniques from the School of the Americas, which may no longer exist in name but lives on in effect.
How much longer will we continue to accept that torture can be legitimized?
Israel has ignored forty-six resolutions of the General Assembly and other U.N. bodies.
How much longer will Israel enjoy the privilege of selective deafness?
The United Nations makes recommendations but never decisions. When it does decide, the United States makes sure the decision is blocked. In the U.N. Security Council, <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2000.htm>the U.S. has vetoed forty resolutions condemning actions of Israel.
How much longer will the United Nations act as if it were just another name for the United States?
Since the Palestinians had their homes confiscated and their land taken from them, much blood has flowed.
How much longer will blood flow so that force can justify what law denies?
History is repeated day after day, year after year, and ten Arabs die for every one Israeli. How much longer will an Israeli life be measured as worth ten Arab lives?
In proportion to the overall population, the 50,000 civilians killed in Iraq-the majority of them women and children-are the equivalent of 800,000 Americans.
How much longer will we continue to accept, as if customary, the killing of Iraqis in a blind war that has forgotten all of its justifications?
Iran is developing nuclear energy, but the so-called international community is not concerned in the least by the fact that Israel already has 250 atomic bombs, despite the fact that the country lives permanently on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Who calibrates the universal dangerometer? Was Iran the country that dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
In the age of globalization, the right to express is less powerful than the right to apply pressure. To justify the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, war is called peace. The Israelis are patriots, and the Palestinians are terrorists, and terrorists sow universal alarm.
How much longer will the media broadcast fear instead of news?
The slaughter happening today, which is not the first and I fear will not be the last, is happening in silence. Has the world gone deaf?
How much longer will the outcry of the outraged be sounded on a bell of straw?
The bombing is killing children, more than a third of the victims.
Those who dare denounce this murder are called anti-Semites.
How much longer will the critics of state terrorism be considered anti-Semites?
How much longer will we accept this grotesque form of extortion?
Are the Jews who are horrified by what is being done in their name anti-Semites? Are there not Arab voices that defend a Palestinian homeland but condemn fundamentalist insanity?
Terrorists resemble one another: state terrorists, respectable members of government, and private terrorists, madmen acting alone or in those organized in groups hard at work since the Cold War battling communist totalitarianism. All act in the name of various gods, whether God, Allah, or Jehovah.
How much longer will we ignore that fact that all terrorists scorn human life and feed off of one another?
Isn’t it clear that in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, it is the civilians, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Israeli, who are dying?
And isn’t it clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon are the incubators of hatred, producing fanatic after fanatic after fanatic?
We are the only species of animal that specializes in mutual extermination.
We devote $2.5 billion per day to military spending. Misery and war are children of the same father.
How much longer will we accept that this world so in love with death is the only world possible?
Eduardo Galeano is the author of Memories of Fire, Open Veins of Latin America and Days and Nights of Love and War. His newest book, Voices of Time, was published in English in May

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 30 2006 0:12 utc | 19

& the observor reports with the rebuke by jack straw – blair is without any support in his own cabinet

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 30 2006 0:13 utc | 21

Billmon politely expressed irritation, the other day, at people who KNOW what is going to happen next over there.
Nobody knows.
This is like watching five whores wrestling on a waterbed with a bucket each of blood, sweat, tears, and motor oil thrown in. Jesus — the winner won’t matter — but the mess afterwards will matter a whole lot.
Bush doesn’t care. He responded to this ongoing godawful disaster today by describing it as “a moment of opportunity for broader change in the region.”
He wants more whores and more wrestling! He looks at one country in full fustercluck mode and says yeah, yeah, yeah!
He said, “Transforming countries that have suffered decades of tyranny and violence is difficult, and it will take time to achieve. But the consequences will be profound — for our country and the world. When the Middle East grows in liberty and democracy, it will also grow in peace, and that will make America and all free nations more secure.”
He wants more nations to join this wonderful change process he is nurturing along by keeping the UN and any of that ceasefire bullshit completely out of the picture. He wants this war to widen out.
He dismissed all past efforts at peace in the Middle East as merely covering over hidden resentments and enmity and letting them fester and simmer until they explode. He said, “The experience of September the 11th made it clear that we could no longer tolerate the status quo in the Middle East.”
Ahh so. No return to the status quo ante will be allowed, if Bush has his way.
This moron means it. Don’t doubt it. He means what he said, no matter how stupid , no matter how impractical or divorced from reality. He spelled out what he wants to see.
If he has his way, his solution to this Lebanon debacle is to avoid a ceasefire as long as possible, and then put American and Western targets — troops — in place to invite their bloody deaths as provocation for the wider war he wants. He wants bombing and brawling from Lahore to Lebanon, aces high, nukes wild, and the winner takes all.
He means it when he says the only solution to the thousand and one nuances of Middle Eastern rivalries, enmities, religious and ethnic hatred, national struggles, simmering resource wars, and rolling revolutions is to smash everything, conquer everything, and rule over it by lightning war and those two terrible weapons of the white man, Liberty and Democracy.
We’re gonna have a New American Century!
Everyone talks about this current reality, this major mess in Lebanon, as if Bush and Crew were going to respond to it reasonably and sanely.
They aren’t. They are already on to their next target, they are already creating our next reality.
They’ve explained all of this to us already, and Bush explained what he’s going to do again today.
That’s what we know.

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 30 2006 0:17 utc | 23

Discussions the other day about the Isreali attacks on the UN observer position alluded to the Israelis conducting a flank attack on the Hisbollah position in southern Lebanon. Basically, it pointed out that the Israelis might be considering a major push out of the northeast extension of their held territory down the length of the Litani River to the Mediterranean coast. Such an operational maneuver would cut Hisbollah military logistics lines and pocket the Hisbollah in a potential killing sack. If done properly, it would even suggest that the Israelis are trying to end this operation on some semblance of sanity, since they could then request the Lebanese government and the international community to come in and disarm the Hisbollah military without having to conduct offensive operations. Hell, they could even invite the Lebanese government to come in a identify the non-fighters to facilitate their evacuation from the zone, which would at least demonstrate they weren’t interested in just killing non-Israelis.
Also, wouldn’t the Israeli call up of 30K reservists imply that Hisbollah was fielding only some 3K fighters. That coudl be calculated from the recommended 10:1 force ratio between an organized military and unconventional forces in a non-conventional fight. The Hisbollah number seems low, which would imply the Israelis are again underestimating the force levels they need to address this problem, which they have exacerbated. Perhaps they should encourage Hisbollah to just fire off as many of the short-range rockets as they have as quickly as possible to minimize the damage to the Israeli economy because of lost workdays in northern Iraq. Most of these rockets will cause no damage and it’s the threat of their being fired which hurts the Israelis the worst. If Hisbollah wants to have the equivalent of an end of the program fireworks display at a US 4th of July festival, let’em have at it. An empty magazine will dampen Hisbollah’s response faster than anything else

Posted by: PrahaPartizan | Jul 30 2006 2:26 utc | 25

Wasn’t Blair involved with some Creationist private schools in Britain a while back? Funding them or whatever? Can’t remember.

Posted by: Ensley | Jul 30 2006 3:09 utc | 27

Neon Flux
Was flying around last week, from airport to airport, and just amazed at how
many f’g TSA government employees there are now, the multi-racial lower-paid
equivalent of all-white NASA/DHS/FEMA welfare-for-life mushrooming tax debit.
There are far more government grifters and civilian contractors than Workers,
by many estimates >55% of all paychecks are printed on government funny paper.
Mentioned to a friend it seems that there are more TSA/DEA/DHS dole-takers
(hey, what the hell do they DO?) now per taxpayer, than there are teachers
per student anymore. My friend, who is in the Department of Transportation,
said if you add in all the new DOT employees, then factor in how concrete,
steel and asphalt are 200% to 300% more expensive (and growing geometrically),
than when BushCo took office only five (G-d, it’s been that long?) years ago,
it’s no wonder there’s so few teachers anymore, there’s no tax money left for anything but PERS, employee.gov doles, more studies, more regulations, and more
multi-billion dollar highway expansion projects from sharply higher gas taxes.
A friend visiting from Europe listened to this, then described how it has been
playing out in his country, calling it the “hollowing out” of industry, as more
and more manufacturing jobs move to ASEAN, and more and more workers vie for more
and more government dole jobs, and taxes get sluffed onto property and gasoline.
He expects no retirement when his time comes, and no place affordable to live.
Then today we got the confirming news this isn’t just ad homina.
Half of local high school kids have failed a now-mandatory math exam,
required by BushCo for graduation. There was no explanation and no apology
from our school districts, only a sniveling whine that the Feds should exempt
our kids for another few years from a mandatory-pass requirement. Bush won’t.
All part of the Neo Con’s Trans National Corporate Contract On Americans.
ONE HALF of our town’s high school kids aren’t going to any graduation, but
to a 90-day boot camp in about two years, 2008, just when Der Busch make his
big Iran Putsch, strutting through his version of the October Surprise, with
a cantelope codpiece fashioned from the scrotal sac of some castrated mullah.
You only have to look at the last 18 days, and Billmon’s denial of reality,
to see where our country is heading, like a freight train towards a cliff.
BushCo chicken-hawks are coming home to roost, and we’re dying of Neon-flux.
4Q 2005 to 1Q 2006
Treasury Bill Rate
2.78% 4.50% +61.9
Consumer Price Index
193.3 199.8 +3.4 (annualized > 12%!!)
1Q 2006 to 2QA 2006
Real Gross Domestic Product
3.5% 2.5% -29% (with Defense spending!!)

Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 30 2006 5:38 utc | 29

Tony Blair Backing Creationist Schools?
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/092532.htm

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 30 2006 5:41 utc | 31

@PrahaPartizan – Basically, it pointed out that the Israelis might be considering a major push out of the northeast extension of their held territory down the length of the Litani River to the Mediterranean coast. Such an operational maneuver would cut Hisbollah military logistics lines and pocket the Hisbollah in a potential killing sack. If done properly, it would even suggest that the Israelis are trying to end this operation on some semblance of sanity, since they could then request the Lebanese government and the international community to come in and disarm the Hisbollah military without having to conduct offensive operations. Hell, they could even invite the Lebanese government to come in a identify the non-fighters to facilitate their evacuation from the zone, which would at least demonstrate they weren’t interested in just killing non-Israelis.
Also, wouldn’t the Israeli call up of 30K reservists imply that Hisbollah was fielding only some 3K fighters. That coudl be calculated from the recommended 10:1 force ratio between an organized military and unconventional forces in a non-conventional fight.
Check the map
This is not a flat country where tanks can run in a Blitzkrieg attempt like on the plains of the Ukraine. Very rough terrain with lots of mountains, no fun when you sit in a tank. The axis of attack would have to be along the road Taibe, Qantara … up to North of Tyre with open flanks south and north. To be able to hold and reenforce a second run would have to go on the west coast to Tyre.
I’d estimated a serious powerful attempt would need nine (3 for the coast ride, 5 for the cross country plus a reserve) full brigades to do the runs and have the line and flanks covered and one would still have quite some losses. This could be done of course, but not in a few days and not with any long term perspective.

Posted by: b | Jul 30 2006 7:49 utc | 33

“This is not a flat country where tanks can run in a Blitzkrieg attempt like on the plains of the Ukraine”
The elevation on bernhard’s map is not so good, but it looks like once you get beyond Qantara there are a number of choke points where the road passes through villages set in gaps between the hills, with no easy way to bypass (at least, not shown on the map).
Granted the weather conditions are different but the terrain kind of reminds me of the Ardennes. The Germans had little trouble getting through it in ’40, against minimal resistance, but ’44 was a different story — even the U.S. Army (and poor, worn out units at that) was able to slow the drive down considerably by fighting delaying actions at various choke points (St. Vith, Elsenborn, the Ourthe River crossing.) The 101st Airborne gets all the glory for Bastogne, but it was really those small unit stands that broke the momentum of the German advance and kept it from reaching the Meuse.
I assume the Israelis have enough air power to blast their through eventually, but the same could be said of an advance up the coast road to Tyre, which would give them much better communications and flank protection.
In any case, the idea of trapping a force like Hizbullah in a “killing sack” is kind of a non sequitur. Hez has been fighting, and fighting well, as light infantry at Maroun al-Ras and Bint Jbeil, but they always have the option of fading back into a guerrilla role, in which case the Israeli sack will have simply captured a lot of turf with a mixture of civilians and guerrillas waiting in ambush.
It would however be a real showboat operation, just like old times. Who knows? If the Israelis think they can do it quickly — quick enough to beat a ceasefire deadline — they just might try it. To my mind a drive into the lower Bekaa Valley would make more military sense (splitting Hez’s strongholds and making resupply from Syria more difficult) but this is a political operation aimed at carving out a theoretical buffer zone, not a serious attempt to take down Hez.

Posted by: Billmon | Jul 30 2006 18:39 utc | 35

Lebanese Army prevents Israeli helicopters from landing in Bekaa Valley

Posted by: Ensley | Jul 30 2006 20:47 utc | 37