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Or, put another way, the Lebanon situation has exposed, once again, that US policy, under Bush, is largely whatever the Israeli government says it wants. So the long term effect of this on US-Arab relations generally, and the US ability to be constructively involved in any serious peace process, is once again under debate. [my em]
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"We went to a hospital where there were 200 children; they were beautiful, all of them, but they had cancers that the doctors couldn't even recognise. From the first Gulf War, the mothers' wombs were infected.
"As I was leaving the hospital, I said to the doctor, 'How many of these babies do you think are going to live?'
"He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'None, not one'...
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.
"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.
"The government is all in the Green Zone like the previous one and they have left the streets to the terrorists," said Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi politician. He said the situation would be made worse by the war in Lebanon because it would intensify the struggle between Iran and the US being staged in Iraq. The Iraqi crisis would now receive much reduced international attention.
The switch of American and British media attention to Lebanon and away from the rapidly deteriorating situation in Baghdad is much to the political benefit of Mr Blair and Mr Bush.
"Maliki's trip to Washington is all part of the US domestic agenda to put a good face on things for November," a European diplomat in Baghdad was quoted as saying.
A report to be released this week is expected to say that Vietnam war veterans exposed to Agent Orange and other herbicides might have damaged their DNA.
The Sunday-Star Times reported today that the report has researched the DNA of 25 Vietnam veterans and is expected to conclude that the veterans have suffered long-term genetic damage as a result of their exposure to environmental toxins in the war.
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Milestone: Coalition Forces Turn First Province Over to Iraqi Army
Ceremony attended by entire population of province and both of his camels.
Afghanistan's Cabinet Proposes Reestablishing Religious Police
U.S. Religious Police support proposal.
Blair Angrily Denies He's "Bush's Poodle"
Pees on reporter's leg.
Analysis: President Has Immunity From All Lawsuits
Not related to fellatio.
Official diplomatic relations between the two countries may be at a nadir, but young citizens on both sides are finding common ground on Internet chat boards. Says a blogger: "We have tons of things in common. We come from two of the most liberal, educated countries in the Middle East...."
Also: Read the back story on that infamous picture of Israeli girls writing on rocket shells.
The little girls shown drawing with felt markers on the tank missiles are residents of Kiryat Shmona, which is right on the border with Lebanon. And when I say "on the border," I'm not kidding; there's little more space between their town and Southern Lebanon than there is between the back gardens of neighbouring houses in a wealthy American suburb.
No, how close is it really?
Well, there's a famous story in Israel, from the time when the Israeli army occupied Southern Lebanon: a group of soldiers stationed inside southern Lebanon used their mobile phones to order pizza from Kiryat Shmona and have it delivered to the fence that separates the two countries.
The widening crisis in the Middle East took on graver proportions today when President George W. Bush indicated that if the hostilities continue, they could threaten his traditional August vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.
At a press briefing at the White House, the president said that if Hezbollah continued its rocket attacks on Israel, he would see those attacks as "an assault on my vacation itself."
"Throughout the civilized world, my summer vacation has been considered sacrosanct," Mr. Bush told reporters. "The time has come for Hezbollah to recognize my vacation's right to exist."
Elsewhere, actress Pamela Anderson and singer Kid Rock have announced plans to marry, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields
In sixty-five I was seventeen and running up one-o-one
I dont know where Im running now, Im just running on
He wore black denim trousers and motorcycle boots
And a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back
He had a hopped-up 'sickle that took off like a gun
That fool was the terror of Highway 101
Once again, the Democratic leadership is shooting itself in the foot. Every time a candidate emerges that excites the grass roots but is not controlled by the old guard, they throw their resources into defeating the fresh face to maintain the status quo. Then they wonder why they can't regain a majority in Congress. Perhaps if they let fresh faces grow the party instead of silencing them, the party might actually win back Congress.
Let the people of Connecticut decide who best represents them. If Bill Clinton wants to help the party, he should be in Tennessee campaigning for Harold Ford, in Ohio for Sherrod Brown, or in Pennsylvania for Bob Casey. He should not be meddling in Connecticut trying to stop a real Democrat from replacing the Republican candidate, Joseph Lieberman.
"What we're seeing here ... are the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one."
...I brought up the Condi Rice "birth pang" comment in passing and one of the commenters pointed out that it's actually Rapture talk, if you can believe that.
I checked it out and over at the Rapture Forum they've been talking about the "birth pangs" of Armageddon ever since 9/11.
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...Crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
reveal yourself all now to me girl while you've got the strength to speak
Cause they're waiting for you at Bellevue with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you now if only you could ask...
~Bruce Springsteen, For You
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Even Timmeh wondered if diplomacy meant to solve problems doesn't need to take place between our non-allies and us, too?
In a word, "no;" unless, of course, either Syria or Iran would like to withdraw their support from Hezbollah and Hamas, and do exactly what we say they should do.
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As USA Today noted about summer movies, the hot trend in heroines "is not the damsel in distress. It's the damsel who causes distress."
Uma, Oprah. Oprah, Condi.
The more W. and his tough, by-any-means-necessary superbabe have tried to tame the Middle East, the more inflamed the Middle East has become. Now the secretary of state is leaving, reluctantly and belatedly, to do some shuttle diplomacy that entails little diplomacy and no shuttling. It's more like air-guitar diplomacy.
Like Davy Jones, the octopus-headed creature who had to keep sailing Flying Dutchman-like without getting to land in the new "Pirates of the Caribbean," Condi had a hard time finding an Arab port in which to dock.
The Arab allies, who agreed to meet her and European envoys in Rome, clearly did not want to be used as a stalling tactic on Arab turf, with Condi miming diplomacy to buy time for Israel. Maybe, like Jack Sparrow, they can at least bring a jar of Arab turf with them.
In a twist that illustrated the growing power of Shiites and Iranians, even the Shiite Iraqi prime minister broke with the Bush stance and denounced Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Is there no honor among puppets?
W. continues to present simplicity as clarity. When will he ever learn that clarity is the last thing you're going to find in the Middle East, and that trying to superimpose it with force usually makes things worse? That's what both the Israelis and Ronald Reagan learned in the early 1980's when they tried disastrously to remake Lebanon.
The cowboy president bet the ranch on Iraq, and that war has made almost any other American action in the Arab world, and any Pax Americana that might have been created there, impossible. It's fitting that Condi is the Flying Dutchman, since Lebanon represents the shipwreck of our Middle East policy.
In the early days of his acting career, when most roles offered to Asian American actors were caricatures or stereotypes, Mako took just such a part and used it to open the doors of Hollywood and Broadway to others.
In the 1966 film "The Sand Pebbles," he played the Chinese character Po-han, who spoke pidgin English, called the white sailors in the movie "master," and treated them as such. But through the power of his acting, Mako transformed Po-han and compelled the audience to empathize and identify with the engine-room "coolie."
The portrayal earned Mako an Academy Award nomination, which he used to continue his push for more and better roles for Asian American actors.
Mako, who in 1965 co-founded East West Players, the nation's first Asian American theater company, died Friday of esophageal cancer at his home in the Ventura County town of Somis. He was 72.
... We held the day
In the palm
Of our hand
They ruled the night
And the night
Seemed to last as long as six weeks
On Parris Island ...
~Billy Joel, Goodnight Saigon
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[1lt Ryan] Edwards said patrols routinely search nearby villages and find few people left living there. But at night, Taliban forces often take control of those areas, leading coalition commanders to believe they are receiving help from locals.
Thursday's Taliban attack force was larger, better armed and better equipped than past fighters, Edwards said. The province shares a border with Pakistan on the south, and U.S. forces have been monitoring that line to prevent reinforcements from that country to Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
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Jane works overtime for "Big Flo's" for free.
Yes, free, and here, as I promised, is another irony: she considers it a perk, granted to her because of her long and faithful service and her position as a team leader.
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Special Bulletin from the Pentagon
The Pentagon announced today the formation of a new 500-man elite fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces.
These Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma,Tennessee and Texas boys will be dropped off into Iraq and have been given only the following facts about terrorists:
1. The season opened today.
2. There is no limit.
3. They taste just like chicken.
4. They don't like beer, pickups, country music or Jesus.
5. They are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dale Earnhardt.
The Pentagon expects the problem in Iraq to be over by Friday
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"The promise by Bush and Blair, in the lead up to the Iraq war, that their wars would bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East and peace to Palestine have yet again been shown to be lies, just as the anti-war movement has consistently said they were." [my em]
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The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo., on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members' funerals with signs condemning homosexuality.
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