Israel and Lebanon, again...

[Duncan]

Yes, Israel and Lebanon have apparently not settled their differences after all, and now projectiles are floating in both directions over the two countries.

Actually, though, it's more about Israel vs. Hezbollah rather than Lebanon as a whole. Regardless, neither side seems to care much about the specifics, with both preferring to fire first and ask questions later.

Comments, questions, clarification and outright opinions will no doubt follow...

(One final note, too: Anyone else noticed that Iraq, Iran and North Korea have all fallen completely off the radar in the wake of this crisis?)

[DaMutt]

Well of course.. this is fresh meat for the media hounds. My concern lies more with what's going on as a big picture. Iran back Hezbollah. This is an Iranian statement. Isreal will not be controlled by anyone, not even the US. If Iran pushes them too far, they will go after them and since our work in Iraq, that buffer no longer exists. If war happens between Iran and Israel/US, what will Pakistan's reaction be? And then India? Both these countries have nuclear arms. I feel very much that our actions in Iraq have stirred this hornets nest. Bush complete disregard and lack ofunderstand on the political front could lead to something quite terrible. It's a wait and see situation now.

[Duncan]

Of course, it always helps when our very own "cowboy diplomat" does things like the following:

Bush was talking privately to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a lunch at the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg about an upsurge of violence in the Middle East, not realizing a microphone was recording what he said.

"I think Condi (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) is going to go pretty soon," Bush said.

Blair replied: "Right, that's all that matters, it will take some time to get that together."

The two leaders also referred to an offer by Blair to help. Blair said Rice has "got to succeed" if she goes out to the region.

Bush replied: "What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this ****." Shortly afterwards Blair noticed the microphone and hastily switched it off, but not before the recording had reached news media.[/b]

Now, I realize that they didn't know about the hot microphone. That's not really an excuse, though, as it speaks exactly to what Bush's real state of mind is about events in the world. Terrorist acts aren't just some "****" that can be easily cleaned up by putting two entities together and making them play nice for a while. (We can see how well that's worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which has improved much beyond having held some form of democratic elections.)

The larger point, though, is that the President's actions and words represent us as a nation. And we couldn't look much more inept or ignorant than we do right now.

[DaMutt]

I don't blame Bush entirely. He's just a dancing monkey with strings leading right to Cheney's hands. He's the brains ambition and power in this admin and he'll most likely duck out when the whole things starts imploding. I can proudly say I never voted for him and spoke against him the first time around. I am one of the few religious Texan's that can make that claim. I've been around through his "governorship" and have seen what he did with his businesses. (The Texas governorship is a highly limited office holding as we don't like to see too much power in one place).
Like my friend said the other day, Why didn't we give the Jewish nation Hawaii and call it good?

[michaeltroysmith@canoemail.com]

Hawaii? Are you mad? Give them somewhere cold like Alaska

[dmeetro]

WHo said US has to give them anything its none of our bisness if they fight, it wa never our buisness to give them land thats not ours in the first place anyways. The whole thing is not unexpected at all there have been fighting over israel ever since they got the land.