The DCBI is obviously the only one still functioning in this Administration.

zeppo

That’s just sick. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But you’re right.

Then again, we don’t have anyone now.

The US/Israeli plan to decimate Hezbollah by devastating Lebanon is fast rolling off the rails. With the collapse of the Rome talks today and an unwillingness of any sane country to get in the middle of a shooting gallery means no prospect of cessation of hostilities in the immediate future.

If the Cheneyites order US troops as part of the â€international force†we can be certain that Hezbollah will object and very likely so will Lebanon and the the US Arab â€allies†– Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. All this would do is inflame passions among the Arab street further and the Shia in particular.

The US/Israeli plan that with Israel’s substantial military superiority and with US tactical support of immediate jet fuel and precision munitions reinforcements they would be able to bring Hezbollah to heel is fast going awry.

First, Hezbollah is proving to be a more determined and disciplined battlefield foe than even past Arab state armies. The Israeli’s are running into substantial resistance and taking serious casualties even in capturing towns like Maroun Ras and Bint Jbail that are only a few miles from the Israeli border. It seems from reading Israeli news reports they have been capturing and subduing Maroun Ras since last Saturday. And tens of Katyusha rockets are being launched every day since Israel’s major offensive into Lebanon. Now, it would seem that to achieve Israel’s objective of destroying Hezbollah would mean a massive land invasion with tens of thousands of IDF troops. So rather than a quick victory and demonstration of the punitive nature of Israeli responses that would allow negotiations on US/Israeli terms we could have a prolonged war of attrition between the IDF and Hezbollah fighters.

On the perception front, US/Israel have already lost the Arab street and passions are getting more inflamed. This is being reflected in the response of the US aligned governments in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that initially welcomed teaching Hezbollah a lesson but now are bleating about for an immediate cease-fire. With the UK now getting upset over the use of a Scottish airport to transit US arms to Israel, how long before the Europeans, Russians and Chinese start blaming the US for the continued civilian carnage in Lebanon?

The Chenyites Middle East policy is enabling the unfolding of a serious and wider Middle East conflagration. But with the Dems caught in a vice with no ability to criticize the Chenyites current position and in fact out cheering them in their unabashed support for the Israeli response, is there any leadership available in the country to prevent the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon from spreading and consuming the entire Middle East?

Should it be any surprise that Neocon warhawks in the DOD who concocted the phoney reasons for invasion of Iraq were/are strongly connected to Israel’s powerful lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and that in 2003 they were already concocting the means to convince Bush to also attack Iran. Now some of these same madmen, aided by Gingrich and others, are again beating the wardrums to go after Iran and calling for ouster of Condi Rice because she isn’t hawkish enough.
Read the fascinating and scary story in Rolling Stone, â€Iran the Next Warâ€, about how these creeps work their black craft in the DOD and White House.

These crafty Neocon creeps are surely the ones floating the notion to deploy US troops as â€peacekeepers†in Lebanon. Iran’s Hezbollah proxies killing American soldiers in Lebanon would be just the ticket for triggering an all out US attack on Iran, the Neocon’s and Endtimes crowd wet-dream come true. Bush is such a vacuous clueless idiot Rummy and Cheney won’t have to exert much effort on him to get us into another bigtime Middle-East shooting match. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail, but if US troops are commited to Lebanon, turn loose your inner capitalist; back up the truck and load up with every oil and gas stock you can get your hands on.

I think we are seeing what one might call a ’Stalingrad moment’ in southern Lebanon. The Neocons and Likudniks who launched the attack on Lebanon thought that it would be a quick and dirty two weeks, after which a conference would be called to legitimize it. Hence the big stall. Hizbollah’s defensive (and offensive) capability caught Isreal’s command completely off guard; the larger towns in the South are mini-Stalingrads. The more they get bombed, the harder it is for Israeli troops to take them without taking significant casualties. This can turn out to be the worst kind of war of attrition for Israel.

The unknown factor in all this is whether Hizbollah can maintain its food and ammunition supply line, or to put it another way, how much they have in reserve. The US and Israeli commands are clearly counting on exhausting those supplies soon. Time will tell, as it always does, but if it takes another two weeks, whatever Israel wins will be pyrrhic. If they can’t finish this off quickly, the Saudi’s are going to weigh in with the oil arm.

Is anyone really on the side of the xenobots, Hezbollah?

It is a false choice to checkerboard the middle east with
black or white positions. There are no good guys, only less bad guys. But ’less-bad’ does not require us to excuse what is
reckless disregard for innocent life, when it is eclipsed by
deeds which have innocent slaughter as the objective. Hezbollah
miliita can die a slow and painful death without sympathy from me.

Now that the neocons have declared this is ’america’s war’ I suggest more posts on the need for those who symbolize the right wing to step up and enlist or volunteer for some kind of duty.
Otherwise ’Chickenhawk’ eruptions will increase exponentially, and will have to be served ’kosher’.

What if they held a war(s) and nobody came… except the poor people in the US military?

The dreadful hitch – how do you â€give everyone what he wants,†when the Israelis and Palestinians want the same land?

When you cut through all the baggage, Israel is fundamentally just another Middle East minority community, like Shias in Lebanon, Sunnis in Iraq, and Kurds everywhere. They operate on the premise that if have to ethnically cleanse the other guy, or he will ethnically cleanse you.

Thus the grotesque absurdity of Condi Rice going around talking about a â€lasting†peace, and all the neocon blather about â€transformation.†Not in the foreseeable future.

Peace in the Middle East is a day by day thing – each day of peace is a day people aren’t getting killed, and communal hatreds aren’t getting pumped up. As Churchill said, jaw jaw jaw is better than war war war. With time enough and luck, peace might eventually become a habit, and the tribal hatreds go the way of English v French, etc.

Not any time soon, and certainly not with the â€strategy†of fighting fire with gasoline.

http://rawstory.com/showoutart…..DPrintable

Bingo.

[John Bolton] suggested that one of the reasons why the U.S. has resisted calls for immediate cease fire in the region is that it wants to generate a â€comprehensive solutionâ€. He said â€we need to use current circumstances as a fulcrum to move towards a more stable, longer term solution.â€

(Steve Clemons, who is blogging the Bolton hearings.)

And the total bonus for the Rethugs? The Iraeli mess is guaranteed to split the Dems apart…just before an crucial election! You’d almost think this was part of their calculations.