A PAUSE “IN THE CAUSE”
IS RUMMY LOSING IT?
THE EMAIL BARRAGE CONTINUES

I was looking for signs of political life as I drove through the heat bowl of the Hudson Valley yesterday but it seemed like anyone with any sense had taken refuge in some air-conditioned redoubt. I did see a sign that said, “Bust the Oil Trust” along Route 32 and a bigger billboard in front of a Jewish Center in Kingston saying “We Stand With Israel.” It wasn’t clear if anyone else was standing with them, or standing at all.

On Saturday, I wrote about the change of US policy that plays itself out later today at the UN where the US and Britain have decided to pursue an international force for Southern Lebanon. Of course this will not END the war and its underlying conflict, but just move it into a new stage.

(Meanwhile in Lebanon, an angry crowd trashed UN Headquarters in Beirut to protest the international organization’s failure to bring peace after the Qana bombing.)

HEADLINE IN DAILY STAR: “HOW MANY BABIES HAVE TO DIE?”

Israel had already rejected a UN call for a cease-fire, but it is unlikely to reject a US call especially after another massacre from the air. Even the Israeli Prime Minister apologized for that while once again rationalizing his war. Here’s Juan Cole on Qana:

http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/qana-massacre-part-ii-israeli-war.html

And here is a video report on what happened:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14276.htm

This horror has done what the UN and world opinion couldn’t: lead to a suspension of bombing. CNN reported last night: “Israel agrees to suspend air operations over southern Lebanon for 48 hours to investigate strike on Qana, a U.S. State Dept. spokesman said.

My question: Is the US State Department now issuing statements for Israel? Buzzflash comments:

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorial/59

Washington Post today: “Crisis Could Undercut Bush’s Long-Term Goals”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000578.html?referrer=email

ON THE GROUND

The Daily Star of Beirut reports: “Residents flee as south Lebanon spared Israeli strikes?”

”Israel spared the battered region of south Lebanon from air attacks Monday for the first time in three weeks as exhausted residents streamed north after being trapped by the bombardments.

A NEW ENEMY

With the US giving Israel a “green light” and looking the other way while Lebanon was bombed, it is no wonder that the NY Times in its “week of reckoning” round up in the weekly war review ran this headline: “A NEW ENEMY GAINS ON THE US.” Huh?

Suddenly, the secret is out: Hezbollah has been elevated to the status of our enemy, and the Times at least says the Pentagon and their IDF proxy are not prepared to handle them.

It was significant to me at least that another Times article reached this reluctant conclusion:

“ISRAEL IS POWERFUL, YES. BUT NOT SO INVINCIBLE.”

WHO IS GIVING ORDERS?

Meanwhile Tony Karon argues that it is the US, not Israel, that is orchestrating the war on Lebanon:

”Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said a curious thing Saturday: Israel has recognized reality and is ready for a cease-fire in Lebanon, Nasrallah claimed, but it is the U.S. that insists that it fight on. And if you read the analysis of Ze’ev Schiff, the dean of Israeli military correspondents and an enthusiastic advocate of the military campaign against Hizballah, there’s a remarkable confirmation of Nasrullah’s analysis. Schiff writes:

“U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the figure leading the strategy of changing the situation in Lebanon, not Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Defense Minister Amir Peretz. She has so far managed to withstand international pressure in favor of a cease-fire, even though this will allow Hezbollah to retain its status as a militia armed by Iran and Syria. As such, she needs military cards, and unfortunately Israel has not succeeded to date in providing her with any. Besides bringing Hezbollah and Lebanon under fire, all of Israel’s military cards at this stage are in the form of two Lebanese villages near the border that have been captured by the IDF.

If the military cards Israel is holding do not improve with the continuation of the fighting, it will result in a diplomatic solution that will leave the Hezbollah rocket arsenal in southern Lebanon in its place. The diplomatic solution will necessarily be a reflection of the military realities on the ground.

http://tonykaron.com/2006/07/29/is-israel-fighting-a-proxy-war-for-washington/

Sarah Meyer’s Research on Illegal Weapons used in Lebanon:

http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2006/07/index-on-illegal-us-weapons-in-lebanon.html

MILITARY SET BACKS

Joe Dunphy monitors military assessments. He calls our attention the latest from Strator.com and adds:

”Israel seems to be experiencing a massive intelligence failure. As I noted in earlier references to Aviation Week and Space Technology articles, the very closeness of cooperation between Israel and the US leads one to the conclusion that this is also a massive intelligence failure for the US. I’ve been thinking about this for the past few days, and may soon have enough for a decent short, news analysis piece.

“The other detail that stands out, militarily, is that after two weeks of bombing and “preparatory fire,” (compared with 2-4 days in siege operations like Okinawa and Iwo Jima), Israeli ground forces have not advanced sufficiently to secure what might be considered one-day’s objectives on a division front. Some commander should have been relieved of command by now–quite possibly the Israeli air force commander.

“Press reports, subject to the usual cautions about credibility, indicate that there is a sharp difference of opinion between the Israeli Air Force generals and the Israeli Army side generals. All generals are trained to cope with plans going off track, as few war plans survive the first contact with the opposition, but this seems to indicate that the Israeli contingency plans are off the rail too, and this would make a good general worry about the capabilities of his war-planning staff.

“At this point, Israel’s military seems to have a really serious leadership problem. Whether it’s the top Israeli politicians overruling their generals, or the top Israeli generals overruling their staff, or the staff creating plans around poor intelligence, is not immediately apparent. But, as the late Lt. Col. David Hackworth would say, the likely suspects would be “the perfumed princes,” the political generals, who prefer the rear area and its comforts to the harder right of leading from the front. Very little reporting by the commercial media is focusing on this glaringly obvious problem.

“Worse, the commercial news shows are not exploring what this means to the US intelligence community. The spooks (spies) and geeks (analysts) have been ripped from being an independent analysis force, and spliced to the “seamless” overarching apparatus supposedly run by Negroponte, et. al, in between long afternoon sessions at steam baths.

RUMSFELD LIVES IN HIS OWN COUNTRY

Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek on ABC’s This Week

“(If I were running against conservatives,] I would make up a campaign commercial almost entirely of Donald Rumsfeld’s press conferences, because the man is looking — I mean, it’s not just that he seems like a bad Secretary of [Defense]. He seems literally in a parallel universe and slightly deranged. If you listen to what he said last week about Iraq, he’s living in a different world, not a different country.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/30/rumsfeld-deranged/

PERSPECTIVE BY UK JOURNALIST JOHN PILGER

The attendant propaganda - the abuse of language and eternal hypocrisy - has reached its nadir in recent weeks. An Israeli soldier belonging to an invasion force was captured and held, legitimately, as a prisoner of war. Reported as a “kidnapping”, this set off yet more slaughter of Palestinian civilians. The seizure of two Palestinian civilians two days before the capture of the soldier was of no interest. Neither was the incarceration of thousands of Palestinian hostages in Israeli prisons, and the torture of many of them, as documented by Amnesty. The kidnapped soldier story cancelled any serious inquiry into Israel’s plans to reinvade Gaza, from which it had staged a phoney withdrawal.

The fact and meaning of Hamas’s self-imposed 16-month ceasefire were lost in inanities about “recognizing Israel”, along with Israel’s state of terror in Gaza - the dropping of a 500lb bomb on a residential block, the firing of as many as 9,000 heavy artillery shells into one of the most densely populated places on earth and the nightly terrorizing with sonic booms.

“I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza,” declared the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, as children went out of their minds. In their defence, the Palestinians fired a cluster of Qassam missiles and killed eight Israelis: enough to ensure Israel’s victimhood on the BBC; even Jeremy Bowen struck a shameful “balance”, referring to “two narratives”. The historical equivalent is not far from that of the Nazi bombardment and starvation of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto. Try to imagine that described as “two narratives”.

Chris Hedges, ex-NY Times Middle East correspondent:

“Israel’s security wall has ripped a mortal gash in the lives of Palestinians living in its shadow…”

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/print/20060725_israels_wall/

A SANE VOICE IN ISRAEL

Israeli commentator Uri Avnery:

“It is the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt.

The same thing happens in the biggest gamble of all: war. The leaders that start a war and get stuck in the mud are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the mud. That is a part of the very essence of war: it is impossible to stop after a failure. Public opinion demands the promised victory. Incompetent generals need to cover up their failure. Military commentators and other armchair strategists demand a massive offensive. Cynical politicians are riding the wave. The government is carried away by the flood that they themselves have let loose.

THOSE OTHER WARS IN THE NEWS: DAILY KOS

LA Times — President Bush’s decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in violence-racked Baghdad has forced commanders to extend the tours of 3,500 soldiers and appears to eliminate prospects for significant withdrawals of American forces this year.

Just a month ago, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., came to Washington and presented Bush with a scenario in which the number of combat brigades in Iraq could be reduced from 14 to 12 by September, with two more brigades scheduled for removal by year’s end. A brigade typically comprises 3,500 soldiers.

The decision–for lack of a better word–came in response to escalating violence in the ongoing civil war between Shiite and Sunni factions. Meanwhile, in the other other war:

LFP KABUL — The top U.S. general shuttled between Pakistan and Afghanistan yesterday, trying to bring key allies in its war on terror together in fighting the resurgent Taliban.

Congressional Democrats echo Bush’s defense of Israel

WASHINGTON - While President Bush routinely faces criticism from congressional Democrats over the Iraq war and his domestic policies, there’s been little criticism over his stance on Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/15159997.htm

NEW POLL SAYS DEMS CAN RETAKE HOUSE

A new NPR poll looked at the fifty most competitive congressional districts and found 29% of respondents said they will “definitely or probably” vote to re-elect their congressman while 46% say they will “definitely or probably” vote for the challenger. “Forty of those seats are currently held by Republicans; 10 by Democrats.”

“In 2004, the total vote in these 50 districts went Republican by about 12 points. In our current survey, voters in these same districts say they would vote for the Democrat over the Republican by about six points.”

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/07/27/poll_suggests_gop_will_lose_control_of_house.html

Sen Durbin: “Bolton Filibuster Needs ONLY One More Vote

On “The Young Turks” Radio Show, Senator Dick Durbin says the Bolton bilibuster needs only one more vote to succeed.”

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001566.php

TED KENNEDY: WE WERE MISLED BY ALITO AND ROBERTS.

”… Now that the votes are in from their first term, we can see plainly the agenda that Roberts and Alito sought to conceal from the committee. Our new justices consistently voted to erode civil liberties, decrease the rights of minorities and limit environmental protections. At the same time, they voted to expand the power of the president, reduce restrictions on abusive police tactics and approve federal intrusion into issues traditionally governed by state law….”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/28/AR2006072801489_2.html

Mail & Guardian: Congo Votes

” War-weary Congolese vote in historic poll

“Millions of Congolese voted enthusiastically in their first free elections in over 40 years on Sunday, hoping to end years of war, corruption and chaos that have brought the mineral-rich African giant to its knees. United Nations officials and foreign observers said turnout was high and voting was mostly orderly and peaceful at the landmark polls.”