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Iraq * Lebanon, The Proxy War and "The Futility of Force"It was long overdue but better late than never. The Democratic leadership in Congress got their act together in a joint appeal for an end to the unjust war. "After months of struggling to forge a unified stance on the Iraq war, top congressional Democrats joined voices yesterday to call on President Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops by the end of the year and to "transition to a more limited mission" in the war-torn nation." The President isn't going to pay any attention to it. What matters is that the Democrats succeeded in presenting an united front.With the midterm elections three months away, and Democrats seeing public discontent over Iraq as their best chance for retaking the House or Senate, a dozen key lawmakers told Bush in a letter: "In the interests of American national security, our troops and our taxpayers, the open-ended commitment in Iraq that you have embraced cannot and should not be sustained. . . . We need to take a new direction."Aftermath of QanaNo relief in sight for the suffering Lebanese. They are caught in something much bigger than the battle between Hezbollah and Israel. While the members of UN Security Council are working to reach an agreement for cease fire it is clear that the United States is determined to extract its pound of flesh -- complete surrender by,and disarming, of Hezbollah and thereby defang Iran and Syria's power and influence in Lebanon. Experts doubt whether the Hezbollah can be completely disarmed or be forced to cease their activities. Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian:The Futility of Force - Israel is learning a lesson that the armies of other countries, including the US, have already grasped. Military force can no longer guarantee victory, certainly not in the conflict Israel and its western allies say they are engaged in - the "war on terror", as the Bush White House calls it, or the "long war", as the Pentagon now prefers.Whether you call them guerrillas, insurgents or terrorists, you cannot bomb them into submission, as the US has found to its cost in Iraq, and as Israel is discovering in Lebanon. Even Tony Blair appeared to admit this in his weekend speech to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp organisation. "My concern is that we cannot win this struggle by military means or security measures alone, or even principally by them," he said. "We have to put our ideas up against theirs."

Disinformation RulesThe disinformation war is raging but the images tell a story that no official statements can explain away. Bodies of dead children have an impact that lingers. David Clark in The Guardian: As if we didn't know it already, the conflict in Lebanon shows that truth and war don't mix. All parties to the tragedy of the Middle East resort to disinformation and historical falsification to bolster their case, but rarely has an attempt to rewrite the past occurred so soon after the fact. Israeli ministers and their supporters have justified the bombardment of Lebanon as "a matter of survival". Total war has been declared on Israel, so Israel is entitled to use the methods of total war in self-defence. This would be reasonable if it were true, but it isn't. It's completely false."Despite Israel's protestations that it is doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties, it is clear that its military strategy is aimed at maximising the suffering of the Lebanese people as a whole. This was declared quite openly on day one of the campaign, when Israel's chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, promised to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years", and confirmed again yesterday with the horrific slaughter at Qana. The approach is identical to the one taken in similar operations in 1996 and 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin admitted: "The goal of the operation is to get the southern Lebanese population to move northward, hoping that this will tell the Lebanese government something about the refugees, who may get as far north as Beirut." Populations will move like this only if they are in fear of their lives.The same applies to Gaza, where the pretence at discrimination is even thinner and Palestinian civilians are being subjected to a brutal siege and acts of violence that have no military justification. As in Lebanon, the intention is to force civilians to turn on the militias by inflicting as much pain and suffering as the Israeli government thinks it can get away with. What is this if it is not terrorism? It is certainly a war crime. So let's hear no more hypocritical utterances about the evils of terrorism from Bush and Blair. Not until they are able to speak with genuine moral authority by condemning all forms of illegal violence, irrespective of who commits them.A New Middle East Quagmire?One good thing for the Bush Administration is that in recent days attention has shifted from the mess in Iraq. News about recent casualties suffered by U.S. forces didn't receive much attention. Peter Baker writes in the Post about the bombing of Qana and "........ the prospect of a backlash resulting in a new Middle East quagmire for the United States, according to regional specialists, diplomats and former U.S. officials."Although the United States has urged Israel to use restraint, it has also strongly defended the military assaults as a reasonable response to Hezbollah rocket attacks, a position increasingly at odds with allies that see a deadly overreaction. Analysts think that if the war drags on, as appears likely, it could leave the United States more isolated than at any time since the Iraq invasion three years ago and hindered in its foreign policy goals such as shutting down Iran's nuclear program and spreading democracy around the world."The arrows are all pointing in the wrong direction," said Richard N. Haass, who was President Bush's first-term State Department policy planning director. "The biggest danger in the short run is it just increases frustration and alienation from the United States in the Arab world. Not just the Arab world, but in Europe and around the world. People will get a daily drumbeat of suffering in Lebanon and this will just drive up anti-Americanism to new heights."

How will history judge us when the bombs and rockets stop falling, when the shooting ends ? "JERUSALEM, July 30 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was forced to cancel a trip to Beirut Sunday after an Israeli airstrike killed more than 50 people, mostly women and children, in the southern Lebanese town of Qana in the bloodiest attack since the hostilities began between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia. But she did not call for an immediate ceasefire."BEIRUT, July 30 -- In an attack that the Israeli military said was aimed at destroying Hezbollah rocket launchers, Israeli warplanes blasted a group of buildings in a southern Lebanese village Sunday, killing more than 50 people, most of them women and children, according to Lebanese officials and on-scene interviews by Lebanese television reporters.Coming at a particularly sensitive point in negotiations to end the conflict, the attack on the village threw the painstaking process of building toward an agreement into turmoil. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would not hold talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice until a ceasefire is called. Comments Anonymous — 2006-07-30 I would love to comment. Why I wonder do the press and others not call for Hezbollah to simply stop firing on ISRAEL? This destruction is on HEZBOLLAH heads not our friends Israel.This gang with the yellow flag is embraced by Lebanon....so must they also embrace the destruction they bring with them.This is not the fault of USA.Israel has a govermnet of its own we have no more power over them do we have over IRAN OR SYRIA musafir — 2006-07-31 Re: "This is not the fault of the USA". Didn't we rush a supply of "smart bombs" to Israel on an emergency basis? Based on images of what some of bombs do to living creatures their use could fall under War Crimes. The U.S. is supposedly fighting a "proxy war" against Iran and Syria with Israel doing the dirty work. But at what price? One has to be naive to think that the death and destruction will be wiped off the memory of the Lebanese people. Perhaps we expect to buy their support with money for reconstruction. Look at what is happening in Iraq. We failed to buy their support.

Tony Blair, True Believer ? It is a wellknown fact that President Bush is incapable of expressing himself without a script. His weakness becomes glaring when Prime Minister Blair speaks standing next to him. But Tony Blair, who hitched himself lock, stock and barrel to the neocons' disastrous war in Iraq, is no longer in a position to redeem himself. He parrotted President Bush about the crisis in Lebanon, that Israel was right in its attacks on Lebanese civilians and destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, until public opinion at home and abroad forced him to try to persuade President Bush to agree to a prompt cease fire. Apparently, he got rolled over. The joint statement that resulted after his meeting with President Bush in Washington made it clear that Blair failed to change the Bush Administration's position if that was his objective."The resolution would also call for a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, but Bush and Blair made it clear they were not talking about the kind of immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah being promoted by other world leaders."Blair has been calling almost from the beginning of the crisis for a multinational force to help police southern Lebanon. U.S. officials -- mindful of the political difficulties the situation is creating for Blair at home -- said the prime minister has been influential in helping to convince the president that the idea makes sense as a way of helping the Lebanese government reestablish authority.At the news conference yesterday, Blair put little daylight between himself and Bush, casting Hezbollah as the instigator of the crisis and coming to the president's defense -- with a passionate plea to look at the larger stakes -- when Bush was questioned about declining U.S. clout in the world. Blair said the growing violence in the Middle East is not a function of declining U.S. influence but a global movement of Islamic radicals determined to subvert democracy in that region and elsewhere.Wider ConflictA report in the BBC mentions threat of a wider conflict:The agony of Lebanon was, like the carnage in Iraq, part of the birth pains of the New Middle East for the neo-conservative ideologues in Washington. This was Israel's contribution to the war on terror, dealing a blow to a proxy offspring of those "axis of evil" nations, Syria and Iran.This was Israel's contribution to the war on terror, dealing a blow to a proxy offspring of those "axis of evil" nations, Syria and Iran.A cease fire would be welcome news but there is no sign that it is going to happen anytime soon. We are again going to see Secretary Rice on center stage in the Middle East as she utters high sounding words. Disarming of Hezbollah is easier said than done. Few believe that it can be achieved. Does not matter. It is the Lebanese people,refugees in their own land, who deserve our support and sympathy.

Vindication or Disgrace * The Warrior Princess In A Cream Colored SuitWe have become blasé about use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes. The problem is endemic and it is almost taken for granted that the stars in professional sports use them. Yet the news about failed drug test by Floyd Landis caused shock and dismay. His victory in Tour de France made us proud and happy. We rejoiced at his superb recovery after falling behind from 1st place to 11th in the most challenging segment of the race and in his victory.Then came the shocker about the drug test. Landis appeared at a press conference in Madrid to tell his side of the story. A second test might vindicate him or it might not. Apparently, the tests are not infallible. Among the glut of reports about Floyd Landis I liked Mike Freeman's column in CBS SportsLine.com:"We know all of this. We know the sport is one test tube away from becoming the WWE and is the dirtiest one of all. We know many cyclists dabble in drugs and violate rules by toiling in technologies designed to create supermen. Only instead of capes, they don yellow jerseys.But Landis? Wasn't he supposed to be different? Wasn't he the anti-Lance Armstrong? There weren't supposed to be steroid rumors swirling around Landis as there have been around Armstrong. There was not supposed to be a smoking needle, err, gun.There is a chance a plausible explanation exists for the elevated testosterone levels allegedly discovered in the Landis sample. He might be completely innocent. His second sample could be clean. He could also be the victim of bullied blood work. The French and others have been accused by American cyclists of being sophisticated saboteurs. Armstrong has had numerous run-ins with their various cycling bodies and pernicious French media. The French, we are told, would love to be riggers of the Petri dish. They hate American cyclists so much that when one tests positive for some illicit substance, the moment is treated like Bastille Day.Please let it be that. Please let it be some legitimate mistake or conspiracy. Because how many more times can our Tour de France champions, or even our NFL and baseball heroes, go through performance enhancing drug scandals before we all become so cynical we don't care if our athletes cheat?Or have we long passed that point?"The Gloating Secretary of StateOne person who is revelling in the Lebanon crisis is Condoleezza Rice. The news clips show her obvious pleasure at being in the center of action, calling the shots, talking about "enduring" peace, which became "sustainable" peace in the Rome Conference while hapless Lebanese civilians are bearing the brunt of Israel's ceaseless pounding. She is doing what her boss wants but there can be no doubt that Condoleezza Rice is out to make her own place in history. Eugene Robinson in the Post: "Lebanon has now become Condi's war. You can argue whether legal title to the tragic mess in Iraq properly belongs to Rummy or Cheney or to the Decider himself, but as far as Lebanon is concerned, it's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who has stepped front and center to handle the crisis and show the world who's boss." Comments Anonymous — 2006-07-28 Is this the same Condi Rice who could not imagine anyone flying fuel laden jets into buildings? Wonder where she has been. The bad guys tried to do this very thing to the Eifel Tower in the early nineties but could not fly the plane and were eventually foiled by French commandoes.Maybe Condi was playing the piano when this went down?

Editorial in The Guardian : "It seems astonishing that the world is still watching rather than acting two weeks after the Lebanon war began. After the international embarrassments of the 1990s, in which Europe watched as Sarajevo's civilian population was assaulted from its surrounding hills and the UN failed to intervene to halt genocide in Rwanda, audiences in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, seeing nightly on television the carnage and despoilation of the Lebanon, rightly expect their governments to respond. And yet nothing happens.The US alliance with Israel has been a fact of international life for decades, but seldom has Washington acted so blatantly in support of the country and with such disregard for the rest of the international community. By blocking diplomatic action, the US has alienated the Arab world even further. And Britain, shamefully, has been a party to this. Washington and London argue that there is no point in calling for an immediate ceasefire because it would only be a temporary solution and what is needed is a sustainable ceasefire. This is an unusual approach to conflict. It is normal to press for a ceasefire and then try to work out peace terms. To demand a workable peace plan for the Israel-Lebanon first is the stuff of dreams. Israel and Lebanon have now been in conflict since 1982: there is no easy solution on offer.Picasso's GuernicaAnd Our Soldiers In IraqLatest number for total military fatalities: 2570. So far this month 36 soldiers have died in Iraq. Yes, the people who started the war keep saying that the numbers don't mean anything. Can that be true? Surely the numbers mean something to the families....to the friends and neighbors. To them the numbers represent real people whom they had known and loved. But do they question why they died -- not sure that many do. And that is the saving grace for the warmongers. Joshua Partlow writes in the Post about soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division: "Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120-degree heat," he said. "Then ask how morale is." ...

Thrust and Parry in RomeThe parties agreed to disagree in the 18-nation Rome meeting to find a solution to the current crisis. People in the war zone can expect their suffering to continue until the super powers find a way to reach "enduring peace" -- a phrase which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice keeps repeating. It has a bite to it and she obviously likes the sound. One can even see a smirk (shadow of G.W. Bush) in her face. "But the participating foreign ministers could not agree on the timing of a cease-fire, with the United States standing by its position that a settlement be in place for an "enduring" peace prior to a cessation of hostilities. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly disagreed at a grim-faced news conference on whether Iran and Syria should be involved in talks, with Annan saying they should, and Rice denouncing the two nations for their role in the region."After listening to the news conference, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora expressed despair. Saying his country was being "cut to pieces" by Israel, Siniora said: "We really wanted, on the one hand, to really ask the participants to provide humanitarian relief assistance, which is important, and to provide all other assistance. . . . But more, we wanted a cease-fire, an immediate cease-fire."U.S. officials briefing after the meeting played down disagreements. But others did not. Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said that "we agreed upon what we could agree upon, but that does not change the fact that the European Union has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities" while the United States has not.The Bombing of UNIFIL - Accidental or Deliberate ?Four members of UNIFIL died yesterday after repeated bombing of the UN base at Lebanon-Israeli border. "The UN general secretary, Kofi Annan, today accused the Israeli military of carrying out a sustained bombing of the UN base on the Lebanon-Israel border that culminated in the killing of four unarmed monitors.Mr Annan said he had suggested to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, that they carry out a joint investigation into the events that led to the shelling of the "well-established and well marked" Unifil (UN interim force in Lebanon) post in the town of Khiyam." According to a detailed timeline of the incident provided by an unidentified UN officer and reported by CNN, the first bomb exploded around 200 metres from the post at 1.20pm (11.20am BST) yesterday.Unifil observers then telephoned their designated contact with the Israeli military, who assured them the attacks would stop. In the following hours, nine more bombs fell close to the post, each one followed by a call to the Israeli military, the UN officer said.The main Unifil base in the town of Naqoura lost contact with the post at 7.40pm, seemingly the time when the post received a direct hit.

Signing StatementsBack in January 2006, esteemed journalist Helen Thomas compared the president with Louis XIV of France, credited for saying "L'etat, C'est Moi" (I am the State). The looming battle over signing statements used by the president to demonstrate defiance of legislations highlights his arrogance. Michael Abramowitz in the Post: "A panel of legal scholars and lawyers assembled by the American Bar Association is sharply criticizing the use of "signing statements" by President Bush that assert his right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress.In a report to be issued today, the ABA task force said that Bush has lodged more challenges to provisions of laws than all previous presidents combined. "The panel members described the development as a serious threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances, and they urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court review of such statements."The president is indicating that he will not either enforce part or the entirety of congressional bills," said ABA president Michael S. Greco, a Massachusetts attorney. "We will be close to a constitutional crisis if this issue, the president's use of signing statements, is left unchecked."Unconstitutional LoopholesThe Guardian: "The American Bar Association, an independent lawyers' organisation, issued a report on President Bush's prolific use of "signing statements" and found he was using them to create unconstitutional loopholes to laws passed by Congress.The ABA found that the president used signing statements to make more than 800 challenges to congressional legislation, 200 more than all previous US presidents put together. Signing statements have been issued since the nation's founding but they have traditionally served a ceremonial function, extolling the virtues of the legislation just signed.Forbes Magazine: "We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.It will be interesting to see how this vitally important issue plays out.

The United States In A Familiar RoleIt was not much of a secret although the details were not public. Israel's actions against Lebanon had the blessing of the Bush Administration. The Guardian (UK) has come out with the details of the "Green Light". "The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources. The Bush administration, backed by Britain, has blocked efforts for an immediate halt to the fighting initiated at the UN security council, the G8 summit in St Petersburg and the European foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels." Blair was fully aware of what was going on. Did Foreign Office Minister Howells go out on a limb ? He shows no sign of backing down from his position which is radically different than that of Tony Blair and Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett."It's clear the Americans have given the Israelis the green light. They [the Israeli attacks] will be allowed to go on longer, perhaps for another week," a senior European official said yesterday. Diplomatic sources said there was a clear time limit, partly dictated by fears that a prolonged conflict could spin out of control.US strategy in allowing Israel this freedom for a limited period has several objectives, one of which is delivering a slap to Iran and Syria, who Washington claims are directing Hizbullah and Hamas militants from behind the scenes.Blood and Oil-Stained HandsA dismal scene. In 1953, U.S. and Britain engineered a coup to topple Iran's the then prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh and installed a puppet, Reza Shah Pahlavi. Now, 53 years later the same team is involved,with Israel doing most of the dirty work, in toppling the current regime of hardline Shiaites who came into power because of the late Shah's repressive rule under which thousands of Iranians were tortured and killed. The primary reason then was oil. The present policy is based on fear that Iran would acquire nuclear weapons. And, of course, the U.S. would love to get its hands on Iran's oil. The kingmakers engaged in geopolitical gamesmanship. The failure of their grand vision in Iraq means nothing.An Arabic newspaper on the History of the Green Light.Also see Washington Post columnist David Ignatius and Fareed Zacharia's "Is the war making the world safer for Israel, America and their allies or more dangerous?"

Applause, Britain does the right thingForeign Minister Kim Howells' statement from Beirut could not be any more clear. It does not matter that Bush Administration remains oblivious to world opinion. It has shown no concern for civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan; it will not intervene to stop the carnage in Lebanon. Despite the close tie between Blair and Bush, Britain took a stand to condemn the utter disregard for suffering of Lebanese civilians.The Observer/Guardian, July 23, 2006Britain dramatically broke ranks with George Bush last night over the Lebanon crisis, publicly criticising Israel's military tactics and urging America to 'understand' the price being paid by ordinary Lebanese civilians.The remarks, made in Beirut by the Foreign Office minister, Kim Howells, were the first public criticism by this country of Israel's military campaign, and placed it at odds with Washington's strong support. The Observer can also reveal that Tony Blair voiced deep concern about the escalating violence during a private telephone conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, last week. But sources close to Blair said Olmert had replied that Israel faced a dire security threat from the Hizbollah militia and was determined to do everything necessary to defeat it.Britain's shift came as Israeli tanks and warplanes pounded targets across the border in southern Lebanon yesterday ahead of an imminently expected ground offensive to clear out nearby Hizbollah positions, which have been firing dozens of rockets onto towns and cities inside Israel.Violation of Humanitarian LawThe BBC: The UN's Jan Egeland has condemned the devastation caused by Israeli air strikes in Beirut, saying it is a violation of humanitarian law.