Shlonkom Bakazay?

Qana Massacre video
Warning: Strong images

Let the Israeli and American government save face, but this war must be over right now.
It cannot continue after Qana. We'll really know the idiots and psychopaths have come home to roost on Capitol Hill, if after 48 hours there is resumption of air attacks on Lebanon.

The Empire Leaves Beirut to Burn
by Robert Fisk

In the year 551, the magnificent, wealthy city of Berytus -- headquarters of the imperial East Mediterranean Roman fleet -- was struck by a massive earthquake. Then, the sea withdrew several miles and the survivors, ancestors of the present-day Lebanese, walked out on the sands to loot the long-sunken merchant ships revealed in front of them.

That was when a tidal wall higher than a tsunami returned to kill them all. So savagely was the old Beirut damaged that the Emperor Justinian sent gold from Constantinople as compensation to every family left alive.

Some cities seem forever doomed. When the Crusaders arrived at Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered everyone in the city. In World War I, Ottoman Beirut suffered a terrible famine; the Turkish army had commandeered all the grain, and the Allied powers blockaded the coast. I still have some ancient postcards I bought here 30 years ago of sticklike children standing in an orphanage, naked and abandoned.

An American woman living in Beirut in 1916 described how she "passed women and children lying by the roadside with closed eyes and ghastly, pale faces. It was a common thing to find people searching the garbage heaps for orange peel, old bones or other refuse, and eating them greedily when found. Everywhere women could be seen seeking eatable weeds among the grass along the roads ... "

How does this happen to Beirut? For 30 years, I've watched this place die and rise from the grave and die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace.

I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.

They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-colored skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis -- in some of their cruelest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside -- tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties -- 240 in all of Lebanon at the start of last week -- with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hezbollah.

I walked through the deserted city center of Beirut last week and it reminded more than ever of a film lot, a place of dreams too beautiful to last, a phoenix from the ashes of civil war whose plumage was so brightly colored that it blinded its own people. This part of the city -- once a Dresden of ruins -- was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister who was murdered a mile away last year.

The wreckage of that bomb blast, an awful precursor to the present war in which his inheritance is being vandalized by the Israelis, still stands beside the Mediterranean, waiting for the last U.N. investigator to look for clues.

At the empty Etoile restaurant -- where Hariri once dined with Jacques Chirac -- I sat on the pavement and watched the parliamentary guard still patrolling the facade of the French-built emporium that houses what is left of Lebanon's democracy. So many of these streets were built by Parisians under the French mandate, and they have been exquisitely restored, their mock Arabian doorways bejeweled with marble Roman columns dug from the ancient Via Maxima a few meters away.

Hariri loved this place and, taking Chirac for a beer one day, he caught sight of me sitting at a table. "Ah, Robert, come over here," he roared and turned to Chirac like a cat that was about to eat a canary. "I want to introduce you, Jacques, to the reporter who said I couldn't rebuild Beirut!"

Now it is being unbuilt. The Martyr Rafiq Hariri International Airport has been attacked several times by the Israelis, its glistening halls and shopping malls vibrating to the missiles that thunder into the runways and fuel depots. Hariri's wonderful transnational highway viaduct has been broken by Israeli bombers. Most of his motorway bridges have been destroyed. The Roman-style lighthouse has been smashed by a missile from an Apache helicopter. This small jewel of a restaurant in the center of Beirut has been spared. So far.

It is the slums of Haret Hreik and Ghobeiri and Shiyah that have been leveled and "rubble-ized" and pounded to dust, sending a quarter of a million Shiite Muslims to seek sanctuary in schools and abandoned parks across the city. Here, indeed, was the headquarters of Hezbollah, another of those "centers of world terror" that the West keeps discovering in Muslim lands. Here lived Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Party of God's leader, a ruthless, caustic, calculating man; and Sayad Mohamed Fadlallah, among the wisest and most eloquent of clerics; and many of Hezbollah's top military planners -- including, no doubt, the men who planned over many months the capture of the two Israeli soldiers 10 days ago.

But did the tens of thousands of poor who live here deserve this act of mass punishment? For a country that boasts of its pinpoint accuracy -- a doubtful notion in any case, but that's not the issue -- what does this act of destruction tell us about Israel? Or about ourselves?

In a modern building in an undamaged part of Beirut, I come, quite by chance, across a well-known and prominent Hezbollah figure, open-neck white shirt, dark suit, clean shoes. "We will go on if we have to for days or weeks or months or ... " And he counts these awful statistics off on the fingers of his left hand. "Believe me, we have bigger surprises still to come for the Israelis -- much bigger, you will see. Then we will get our prisoners and it will take just a few small concessions."

I walk outside, feeling as if I have been beaten over the head. Over the wall opposite there is purple bougainvillea and white jasmine and a swamp of gardenias. The Lebanese love flowers, and Beirut is draped in trees and bushes that smell like paradise.

As for the huddled masses from the bombed-out southern slums of Haret Hreik, I found hundreds yesterday, sitting under trees and lying on the parched grass beside an ancient fountain donated by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid. How empires fall.

Across the Mediterranean, two helicopters from the USS Iwo Jima could be seen, heading through the mist and smoke toward the U.S. embassy bunker complex at Awkar to evacuate more citizens of the American Empire. There was not a word from that same empire to help the people lying in the park, to offer them food or medical aid.

Across them all has spread a dark gray smoke that works its way through the entire city, the fires of oil terminals and burning buildings turning into a cocktail of sulphurous air that moves below our doors and through our windows. I smell it when I wake. Half the people of Beirut are coughing in this filth, breathing their own destruction as they contemplate their dead.

The anger that any human soul should feel at such suffering and loss was expressed so well by Lebanon's greatest poet, the mystic Khalil Gibran, when he wrote of the half million Lebanese who died in the 1916 famine, most of them residents of Beirut:

My people died of hunger, and he who
Did not perish from starvation was
Butchered with the sword;
They perished from hunger
In a land rich with milk and honey.
They died because the vipers and
Sons of vipers spat out poison into
The space where the Holy Cedars and
The roses and the jasmine breathe
Their fragrance.

And the sword continues to cut its way through Beirut. When part of an aircraft came streaking out of the sky over the eastern suburbs at the weekend, I raced to the scene to find a partly decapitated driver in his car and three Lebanese soldiers from the army's logistics unit. These are the tough, brave non-combat soldiers of Kfar Chim who have been mending power and water lines these past six days to keep Beirut alive.

I knew one of them. "Hello, Robert. Be quick because I think the Israelis will bomb again, but we'll show you everything we can." And they took me through the fires to show me what they could of the wreckage, standing around to protect me.

A few hours later, the Israelis did come back, as the men of the small logistics unit were going to bed, and they bombed the barracks and killed 10 soldiers, including those three kind men who looked after me amid the fires of Kfar Chim.

And why? Be sure -- the Israelis know what they are hitting. That's why they killed nine soldiers near Tripoli when they bombed the military radio antennas. But a logistics unit? Men whose sole job was to mend electricity lines? Then it dawns on me. Beirut is to die. It is to be starved of electricity now that the power station in Jiyeh is on fire. No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive. So those men had to be liquidated.

Beirutis are tough people and are not easily moved. But at the end of last week, many of them were overcome by a photograph in their daily papers of a small girl, discarded like a broken flower in a field near Ter Harfa, her feet curled up, her hand resting on her torn blue pajamas, her eyes -- beneath long, soft hair -- closed, turned away from the camera. She had been another "terrorist" target of Israel and several people, myself among them, saw a frightening similarity between this picture and the photograph of a Polish girl lying dead in a field beside her weeping sister in 1939.

I go home and flick through my files, old pictures of the Israeli invasion of 1982. There are more photographs of dead children, of broken bridges. Yes, how easily we forget these earlier slaughters. Up to 1,700 Palestinians were butchered at Sabra and Chatila by Israel's proxy Christian militia allies in 1982 while Israeli troops, as they later testified to Israel's own court of inquiry, watched the killings. I stopped counting the corpses when I reached 100. Many of the women had been raped before being knifed or shot.

Yet when I was fleeing the bombing of Ghobeiri with my driver, Abed, a week before last, we swept right past the entrance of the camp, the very spot where I saw the first murdered Palestinians. And we did not think of them. We did not remember them. They were dead in Beirut and we were trying to stay alive in Beirut, as I have been trying to stay alive here for 30 years.

I am back on the seacoast when my mobile phone rings. It is an Israeli woman calling me from the United States, the author of a fine novel about the Palestinians. "Robert, please take care," she says. "I am so, so sorry about what is being done to the Lebanese. It is unforgivable. I pray for the Lebanese people, and the Palestinians, and the Israelis." I thank her for her thoughtfulness and the graceful, generous way she condemned this slaughter.

Then, on my balcony -- a glance to check the location of the Israeli gunboat far out in the sea-smog -- I find older clippings. This is from an English paper in 1840, when Beirut was a great Ottoman city. "Beyrouth" was the dateline. "Anarchy is now the order of the day, our properties and personal safety are endangered, no satisfaction can be obtained, and crimes are committed with impunity. Several Europeans have quitted their houses and suspended their affairs, in order to find protection in more peaceable countries."

On my dining-room wall, I remember, there is a hand-painted lithograph of French troops arriving in Beirut in 1842 to protect the Christian Maronites from the Druze. They are camping in the Jardin des Pins, which will later become the site of the French embassy where, only a few hours ago, I saw French men and women registering for their evacuation. Outside the window, I hear again the whisper of Israeli jets, hidden behind the smoke that drifts 20 miles out to sea.

Fairouz, the most popular Lebanese singer, was to perform at this year's Baalbek festival, cancelled like all Lebanon's festivals. One of her most popular songs is dedicated to her native city:

To Beirut -- peace to Beirut with all my heart
And kisses -- to the sea and clouds,
To the rock of a city that looks like an old sailor's face.
From the soul of her people she makes wine,
From their sweat, she makes bread and jasmine.
So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?

Robert Fisk, who writes for The Independent of Britain, has lived in Beirut 30 years.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

###

This is another really important jab at American collusion with Israel in filling the fresh mass graves in Lebanon. Thanks again B.

I suppose we can call this the cradle-to-grave approach to Middle East diplomacy:

As Toll Rises, Lebanese Resort to Mass Graves

This what I don't like about President Bush -- the way he flip flops. First he was against mass graves, and now he's helping fill them:

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, U.S. officials said Friday.

No doubt for use in "precision" strikes such as this one:



I mean, where's the clarity here?

Twelve days in, and even Ralph Peters thinks the Israelis are losing:

"Israel is losing this war. For a lifelong Israel supporter, that's a painful thing to write. But it's true. And the situation's worsening each day."

...

it's clear from many other sources that things aren't going so well with Operation Midwife:

The Israeli Army -- which dashed across the Sinai in two days in 1967, and surrounded an entire Egyptian army in 1973, has spent the past three days trying to secure Maroun al-Ras, a village about 500 meters inside Lebanon.
Securing that modest objective (and it may not be secure even yet) has cost the Israelis at least 20 soldiers KIA.

The number of rockets falling on northern Israel has been reduced only minimally, if at all, and Israeli civilians are still dying, despite 11 days of bombing and round-the-clock Israeli air cover over southern Lebanon.

U.S. military sources say that IDF claims to have destroyed a significant percentage of Hizbollah's missiles are significantly "overstated."

Jane's Weekly reports that Hizbollah has emulated the Viet Cong and honeycombed the border area with underground tunnels and command posts that are virtually impervious to artillery fire and the Israeli Air Force's existing stock of bombs. (It looks like those "precision" munitions the Pentagon is rushing to the front may be bunker busters.)

...

It hardly matters at this point. The main thing is that yet another bold neocon gambit seems to have fallen flat on its face -- leaving the realist cleaning crew to sweep up the pieces.

The problem is that a cease fire agreement that doesn't result in the complete, verifiable disarming of Hizbollah (which hardly seems likely at this point) would give a truly enormous boost to the group's status and prestige. It would amount to a virtual recognition of Hizbollah as a sovereign entity. (A prisoner swap to retrieve the two Israeli POWs would give it an even bigger boost.) A cease fire deal without disarmament would also leave Israel vulnerable to the group's rockets, if and when a bigger war with Iran and/or Syria breaks out.

To read a complete version of this concise entry, click here.

Big up yo'self Billmon!

Install an Israeli puppet in Lebanon? Perhaps perhaps...but there is no way this could become a reality now. Right now it's sex with sandpaper condoms...not gonna work and don't feel good at all. Lube it up ye gentlemen of war!

THE REAL aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government.

That was the aim of Ariel Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed. But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have never really given up on it.

As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the U.S.

As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite.

That's the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.

ON THE eve of the 1982 invasion, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told Ariel Sharon that, before starting it, it was necessary to have a "clear provocation," which would be accepted by the world.

The provocation indeed took place--exactly at the appropriate time--when Abu-Nidal's terror gang tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London . This had no connection with Lebanon , and even less with the PLO (the enemy of Abu-Nidal), but it served its purpose.

This time, the necessary provocation has been provided by the capture of the two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. Everyone knows that they cannot be freed except through an exchange of prisoners. But the huge military campaign that has been ready to go for months was sold to the Israeli and international public as a rescue operation.

(Strangely enough, the very same thing happened two weeks earlier in the Gaza Strip. Hamas and its partners captured a soldier, which provided the excuse for a massive operation that had been prepared for a long time and whose aim is to destroy the Palestinian government.)

THE DECLARED aim of the Lebanon operation is to push Hizbullah away from the border, so as to make it impossible for them to capture more soldiers and to launch rockets at Israeli towns. The invasion of the Gaza strip is also officially aimed at getting Ashkelon and Sderot out of the range of the Qassams.

That resembles the 1982 "Operation Peace for Gallilee." Then, the public and the Knesset were told that the aim of the war was to "push the Katyushas 40 km away from the border."

That was a deliberate lie. For 11 months before the war, not a single Katyusha rocket (nor a single shot) had been fired over the border. From the beginning, the aim of the operation was to reach Beirut and install a Quisling dictator. As I have recounted more than once, Sharon himself told me so nine months before the war, and I duly published it at the time, with his consent (but unattributed).

Of course, the present operation also has several secondary aims, which do not include the freeing of the prisoners. Everybody understands that that cannot be achieved by military means. But it is probably possible to destroy some of the thousands of missiles that Hizbullah has accumulated over the years. For this end, the army chiefs are ready to endanger the inhabitants of the Israeli towns that are exposed to the rockets. They believe that that is worthwhile, like an exchange of chess figures.

Another secondary aim is to rehabilitate the "deterrent power" of the army. That is a codeword for the restoration of the army's injured pride that has suffered a severe blow from the daring military actions of Hamas in the south and Hizbullah in the north.

OFFICIALLY, THE Israeli government demands that the Government of Lebanon disarm Hizbullah and remove it from the border region.

That is clearly impossible under the present Lebanese regime, a delicate fabric of ethno-religious communities. The slightest shock can bring the whole structure crashing down and throw the state into total anarchy--especially after the Americans succeeded in driving out the Syrian army, the only element that has for years provided some stability.

The idea of installing a Quisling in Lebanon is nothing new. In 1955, David Ben-Gurion proposed taking a "Christian officer" and installing him as dictator. Moshe Sharet showed that this idea was based on complete ignorance of Lebanese affairs and torpedoed it. But 27 years later, Ariel Sharon tried to put it into effect nevertheless. Bashir Gemayel was indeed installed as president, only to be murdered soon afterwards. His brother, Amin, succeeded him and signed a peace agreement with Israel , but was driven out of office. (The same brother is now publicly supporting the Israeli operation.)

The calculation now is that if the Israeli Air Force rains heavy enough blows on the Lebanese population--paralysing the sea--and airports, destroying the infrastructure, bombarding residential neighborhoods, cutting the Beirut-Damascus highroad, etc., the public will get furious with Hizbullah and pressure the Lebanese government into fulfilling Israel 's demands. Since the present government cannot even dream of doing so, a dictatorship will be set up with Israel 's support.

That is the military logic. I have my doubts. It can be assumed that most Lebanese will react as any other people on earth would: with fury and hatred towards the invader. That happened in 1982, when the Shiites in the south of Lebanon , until then as docile as a doormat, stood up against the Israeli occupiers and created the Hizbullah, which has become the strongest force in the country. If the Lebanese elite now becomes tainted as collaborators with Israel , it will be swept off the map. (By the way, have the Qassams and Katyushas caused the Israeli population to exert pressure on our government to give up? Quite the contrary.)

The American policy is full of contradictions. President Bush wants "regime change" in the Middle East , but the present Lebanese regime has only recently been set up by under American pressure. In the meantime, Bush has succeeded only in breaking up Iraq and causing a civil war (as foretold here). He may get the same in Lebanon , if he does not stop the Israeli army in time. Moreover, a devastating blow against Hizbullah may arouse fury not only in Iran , but also among the Shiites in Iraq , on whose support all of Bush's plans for a pro-American regime are built.

So what's the answer? Not by accident, Hizbullah has carried out its soldier-snatching raid at a time when the Palestinians are crying out for succor. The Palestinian cause is popular all over the Arab word. By showing that they are a friend in need, when all other Arabs are failing dismally, Hizbullah hopes to increase its popularity. If an Israeli-Palestinian agreement had been achieved by now, Hizbullah would be no more than a local Lebanese phenomenon, irrelevant to our situation.

LESS THAN three months after its formation, the Olmert-Peretz government has succeeded in plunging Israel into a two-front war, whose aims are unrealistic and whose results cannot be foreseen.

If Olmert hopes to be seen as Mister Macho-Macho, a Sharon # 2, he will be disappointed. The same goes for the desperate attempts of Peretz to be taken seriously as an imposing Mister Security. Everybody understands that this campaign--both in Gaza and in Lebanon --has been planned by the army and dictated by the army. The man who makes the decisions in Israel now is Dan Halutz. It is no accident that the job in Lebanon has been turned over to the Air Force.

The public is not enthusiastic about the war. It is resigned to it, in stoic fatalism, because it is being told that there is no alternative. And indeed, who can be against it? Who does not want to liberate the "kidnapped soldiers"? Who does not want to remove the Katyushas and rehabilitate deterrence? No politician dares to criticize the operation (except the Arab MKs, who are ignored by the Jewish public). In the media, the generals reign supreme, and not only those in uniform. There is almost no former general who is not being invited by the media to comment, explain and justify, all speaking in one voice.

(As an illustration: Israel 's most popular TV channel invited me to an interview about the war, after hearing that I had taken part in an anti-war demonstration. I was quite surprised. But not for long--an hour before the broadcast, an apologetic talk-show host called and said that there had been a terrible mistake--they really meant to invite Professor Shlomo Avineri, a former Director General of the Foreign Office who can be counted on to justify any act of the government, whatever it may be, in lofty academic language.)

"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent. Or, rather: when the guns roar, the brain ceases to function.

AND JUST a small thought: when the State of Israel was founded in the middle of a cruel war, a poster was plastered on the walls: "All the country--a front! All the people--an army!"

Fifty-eight years have passed, and the same slogan is still as valid as it was then. What does that say about generations of statesmen and generals?



July 21, 2006

The cracks are opening

Israel can gain nothing more from this war than a bloody reputation. It is the right time to stop

Gideon Levy
Monday July 24, 2006
The Guardian

This war must be stopped immediately. From the start it was unnecessary, even if its excuse was justified. Every day raises its price, taking a toll in blood that gives Israel nothing in return. This is a good time to stop because both sides can claim they won: Israel harmed Hizbullah and Hizbullah harmed Israel. History shows that no situation is better for reaching an arrangement.
Israel went into the campaign on justified grounds and foul means. It claims it has declared war on Hizbullah but, in practice, it is destroying Lebanon. It has got most of what it could have out of this war. The aerial "target bank" has mostly been covered. The airforce could continue to sow destruction in the residential neighbourhoods and empty offices, dropping bombs on real or imagined bunkers, and kill innocent Lebanese, but nothing good will come of it.
Those who want to restore Israel's deterrent capabilities have succeeded. Hizbullah and the rest of its enemies now know that Israel reacts with enormous force to any provocation. An international agreement could be achieved now, and it won't be possible to achieve a better deal in the future.
Israel's other goals - returning the captured soldiers and the elimination of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah - will be more difficult to achieve if the war goes on for weeks and months. The Israeli Defence Force is asking for "two more weeks"; in two weeks it will ask for "another two weeks". A decisive victory is not in the offing.
On the other hand, the price is skyrocketing. Every day increases international criticism of Israel - not only in the streets of the Arab world, but also in the west. Not only hundreds of thousands of Lebanese but tens of thousands of westerners fleeing from Lebanon are contributing to the depiction of Israel as a violent, crude and destructive state.
The fact that George Bush and Tony Blair are cheering Israel might be consolation for Ehud Olmert and the media in Israel, but it is not enough to persuade millions of TV viewers who see the destruction and devastation, most of which are not shown in Israel. The world sees entire neighbourhoods destroyed, thousands of refugees fleeing in panic, and hundreds of civilians dead and wounded, including many children. A lethal summer will exact a much greater price. Slowly, the cracks will open and Israel's citizens will begin to ask why we are dying and what we are killing for.
We've been here before, more than once. Wars began with national approval and ended with a great crisis. When it becomes apparent that the airforce is not enough, the ground invasion will intensify. The cliche about the Lebanese quagmire will be revalidated, and when soldiers are killed, the protests will rise and divide society.
Now Israel is hoping for the elimination of Nasrallah. It is worth reminding ourselves of the dozens of people Israel assassinated in Lebanon and the territories, from Sheikh Abbas Musawi to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, each replaced by someone new - usually more talented and dangerous than the predecessor. The goals of war should not be dictated by dark impulses, even if they come in response to the wishes and demands of the mob. The other desired goal, the return of the prisoners, will only be achieved through negotiations. Israel could have done that before the war.
Continuing the war guarantees a heavy price without any guarantee of reward. Israel must cease and desist. The president of the US can push us to continue the war, the prime minister of Britain can cheer us, but in Israel and Lebanon the blood is being spilt, the horror is intensifying, the price is rising, and it is all for naught.

· Gideon Levy is a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz; this is an edited version of his latest article

Jon Stewart explains the logic behind Israeli attacks.

Thanks Norm

And here's some pictures of what's going on, thanks Chris.

Destroying Lebanon like they are doing (and sanctioning), is like shooting Bruce Lee down with an F16. Don'tch ya think? There's no honor in it. No honor at all...for making all Lebanese people suffer for the crimes of few.



View this Bruce Lee interview.

Got bombs? Drop em'
Got guns and planes? Fly em' crash em'
kill kill kill, make the meditterranean ill

What is the meaning of assymetric warfare?
Who are the cowards participating in these crimes?

First, I am not a fan of Hizbullah. But lets examine the laws of assymetric warfare.

Hizbullah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanese-Israel border.
Of course, then, Lebanon deserves to be destroyed...the entire population
must suffer. It's only a natural reaction, right?

No! That's a perfect example of assymetric warfare.

When you're sittin real pretty, and you know you'll be winning
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you're bombin' the city, and you kill fifty or sixty
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you have no soul, and blindly bomb buildings whole
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you blame an entire population for something they didn't do
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you destroy a country again, for no reason...only to sin.
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you bomb a minibus, filled with civilians
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you bomb Lebanon, while Bush roots you on
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

That was fun

The cowards of assymetric warfare will limp with damaged souls for destroying Lebanon again and for driving Lebanon back into Syria's hands.

Bush you're just an idiot for standing by like you are.
So, many regrets...you should have.

And once again, Lebanon is the arena for the battles of others.

Stop the destruction of rural Eskimo-America!

Eskimos Face Hard Times After Iraq Call-Up

Monday June 19, 2006 7:31 PM

By MARY PEMBERTON

Associated Press Writer

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Military families across America often endure hardship when a loved one ships out. But there are not many places in the U.S. where those left behind have to chop ice out of the tundra for drinking water and make sure the freezer is well-stocked with walrus and seal meat.

The first major call-up of National Guard reservists from rural Alaska since World War II could mean sacrifice and upheaval for Eskimo villages that practice subsistence hunting and gathering in some of the most remote and unforgiving spots in the nation.

Eric Phillip's job in the small Yup'ik Eskimo village of Kongiganak in southwestern Alaska is to hunt walrus, seal, mink, otter, geese, ducks and other animals to provide food for his immediate family and other relatives. With Phillip shipping out, his wife and their two young sons will be moving to the city of Bethel, about 70 miles away.

``Out here it is harder for them to live alone,'' Phillip said. ``In the village we don't have water. We have to go to the tundra and chop ice for water and melt it, and we don't have flush toilets. It is hard for a single parent to live around here in the village.''

Similar stories are being told in Eskimo villages across the vast state, in places with names like Alakanuk, Emmonak and Manokotak, as 670 soldiers from some of the most hard-to-reach places in the nation head to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Six men headed to Iraq are from Scammon Bay, a Yup'ik Eskimo village of about 520 people in western Alaska where residents rely mostly on subsistence hunting and fishing. Families left behind will now rely more on each other, another time-honored tradition in rural Alaska. The village will take care of them.

``Everybody shares food really well out here. It is a custom,'' said Darlene Cholok, whose husband, Thomas, is one of those going to Iraq. ``Our community is so close-knit and everyone is practically related in some way that there is a lot of support.''

While Alaska's National Guard does an excellent job of helping its military families, it will be particularly tough for these soldiers and their families, because they live in such inaccessible areas, said Pete Mulcahy, executive director of Armed Services YMCA of Alaska. That makes it more difficult to arrange help for them, he said.

``These guys have a bigger challenge,'' he said. ``Even a remote village in Texas is still on the road grid.''

Amy Chikigak of the Yup'ik Eskimo village of Alakanuk is preparing to say goodbye to her husband, Vernon. She said she is not worried about food. Their freezers are full of seal, whale, fish, geese, swans and berries. The village store also is pretty well-stocked.

``We have vegetables and stuff like that, mashed potatoes for our fried moose,'' she said. ``We have macaroni and cheese, and that always helps, too.''

She and the three children, ages 12, 9 and 7, are going to remain in the village. If she runs short of anything, her mother and father and brothers will provide, she said.

Chikigak is more concerned about learning how to use the chainsaw to cut wood to heat the steam bath. She also wants to be able to run the boat so she can take the children on summer picnics: ``I will have to force myself to learn and I will still panic.''

Before leaving for Iraq and Afghanistan, the troops will get three months of training, which will include getting used to hot weather at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

Maj. Stephen Wilson, who returned from a one-year stint in Iraq in 2005 and is overseeing the deployment of seven soldiers from Barrow, 340 miles north of the Arctic Circle, said the Alaskans should do well once they adjust to the 120-degree heat in Iraq. In Barrow - the northernmost city in the United States - the temperature doesn't get much higher than the low 50s in the summer, and often drops below freezing at night.

Maj. Mike Haller, a Guard spokesman in Anchorage, said about 35 percent of the approximately 4,000 National Guard members in Alaska are Native, well above their 19 percent share of the state's population.

Being in the National Guard is a rite of passage for many young Alaska Natives, Haller said, a tradition that started during World War II when Alaska was still a territory. In that war, the state's National Guard troops fought in both Europe and the Pacific, and some were stationed in Alaska's Aleutian Islands to guard against the Japanese.

Besides honor and tradition, service in the Guard brings in money that comes in handy in the villages, where jobs are hard to come by and food and other goods are expensive.

As for the dangers that await the troops in the Mideast, Staff Sgt. William F. Brown, the leader of the Barrow troop and 29-year guard veteran, said he has faced fear before and beaten it.

Brown recounted a whaling trip about 10 years ago when a polar bear came within about 30 feet. Brown was about to grab his gun when the whaling captain told him to relax.

``He said, `Don't show no fear, don't be scared. They're like dogs, they pick up your scent and take advantage of your fear,''' Brown said. The polar bear ``just stood up, sniffed and walked away. Ever since then I've been teaching myself not to be scared, to show no fear.''

Whether or not he's a ghost, I am hella-happy that Zarqawi has finally reached the burning cinders of hell. And I don't venture far in saying that who ever pulled the trigger that made this a reality is a hero just as much as Watada. He's a symbol that deserved to perish. For he caused the misery of thousands of innocent Iraqis and their families. That this current illegal war is what brought Zarqawi and his ilk into Iraq in the first place...many people will choose to omit in their proclamations of success regarding this matter. I'm just happy he's dead. Please understand this exception I make...because I'm not one to wish death on many.

Also, the fact that it came on the heels of the announcement (or rumorS) that the defense and interior ministry posts had been filled does not seem to be a coincidence. It's similar in scope as what happened in Italy a few months back when Bernardo Provenzano (notorious mob boss) was captured just when Prodi's center left government wrestled power from the clutches of the most legitimate mob boss in history, Silvio Berlusconi.

Sure, it's not quite the most precise and prescient analogy, but it's damn close.

I am in agreement with Chris Allbritton's assessment that there must have been some back room maneuvering which could be cause of celebration.

Anyway, I just wanted to shout-out these few words and go along my way.

Exactly where is the protest against the war coming from these days?

Yes, from a commissioned officer himself...

I salute you Lt. Watada for standing up for what you believe in. You are an American Hero.

Sometimes, you read something and agree with it so much that you yourself could have said it. This is the case with Professor Cole's latest installment at Informed Comment. Here it is quoted in full...

Critique of US Policy in Iraq

Bush Administration policies in Iraq have largely been a failure. It has created a failed state in that country, which is in flames and seething with new religious and ethnic nationalist passions of a sort never before seen on this scale in modern Iraqi history. The severe instability in Iraq threatens the peace and security of the entire region, and could easily ignite a regional guerrilla war that might well affect petroleum exports from the Oil Gulf and hence the health of the world economy.

The relatively small number of US fighting troops that the US has in Iraq, some 60,000 to 70,000, cannot possibly hope to provide security to a country of 26 million under such conditions of ethnic and political civil war. The much smaller British presence in Basra appears not to have been effective in halting that city's spiral down into insecurity, with tribal and militia grudge fights and assassinations having become common.

The inauguration of a new Iraqi government was marred by the enormous amount of time it took to form it (5 months!), by open US imperial intervention in the choice of prime minister and in other negotiations, by the walk-out of over two dozen parliamentarians from both the Shiite (Virtue Party) and Sunni (National Dialogue Front and Iraqi Accord Front) parties, and by the failure of the new prime minister to name three key cabinet ministers central to the country's security-- Defense, Interior, and National Security. The Iraqi government is among the more corrupt in the world, working by bribes and a party spoils system.

The new parliament is virtually hung, and Prime Minister al-Maliki governs as a minority prime minister, being able to count on less than 115 MPs from his own party, in a parliament with 275 members. He is therefore hostage to the Kurds, who want to move Iraq in the direction of having a very weak central government, a degree of provincial autonomy unknown in any other country in the world, and who want to unilaterally annex a fourth province, oil-rich Kirkuk, to their regional confederacy, despite the violent opposition of Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arab populations to being Kurdicized.

The Bush administration reconstruction project in Iraq has largely failed. In part, it was foiled by sophisticated guerrilla sabotage, so that billions have had to be diverted from actual reconstruction to security. And nor has security been achieved. In part, it was foiled by a degree of corruption, cupidity, embezzlement, lawlessness and fraud that is unparalleled in US history since the Gilded Age. And in part is has been foiled by a US insistence on making most often unqualified US corporations the immediate recipient and major beneficiary of funds, so that Iraqi concerns get much less lucrative sub-contracts and relatively little of the money benefitted the Iraqi economy directly.

Military engagements between Sunni Arab guerrillas and US troops of some seriousness have been fought at Ramadi in the past week, though little noticed by the mainstream US press. Fallujah is dangerous again. Neighborhoods of the capital, Baghdad are blown up every day. A nighttime hot civil war produces some number of corpses daily, sometimes dozens, to the extent that morning corpse patrol has become a central duty of Iraqi police. A lot of us suspect that some units of the police themselves are involved in these kidnappings and killings, so that often they know just where to look for the corpses.

The main US military tactic still appears to be search and destroy, a way of proceeding guaranteed to extend the scope and popularity of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. The guerrillas appear more well-organized, determined, and effective than ever, and no lasting and effective progress appears to have been made in counter-insurgency anywhere in the Sunni Arab heartland. The human toll of the war has been deeply depressing. The number of Iraqi dead in the war and its aftermath (killed in political violence by any side) cannot be estimated, but certainly is over 100,000 and could easily be more. The 30,000 figure often cited comes from counts of reports of deaths in Western wire services, which are demonstrably a fraction of the true total. None of the nearly 1,000 Iraqis assassinated in Basra during the past month, possibly with police involvement, appears in such statistics.

The US has lost over 2400 troops dead, and the number of wounded in action is over 17,000, some significant proportion of them seriously wounded, with long-term disabilities. Some Iraq War vets are suffering mental problems and were discharged because of them under circumstances that make it difficult for them to get VA care. Some Iraq War vets are showing up homeless in US cities already. Meanwhile, Halliburton is back from the brink of bankruptcy. US troops have fought bravely in unfamiliar terrain, and have often done unheralded community developoment work. Their enemies have included ex-Baathist serial murderers and Salafi Jihadi terrorists. Their sacrifices for the sake of removing Saddam and his regime, and attempting to stabilize Iraq, must be honored. But some of their enemies have been honorable resistance fighters, as recognized by the present Iraqi government itself, and US troops have had the profound misfortune of being ordered into an illegal war and then becoming caught up in a series of guerrilla wars for local autonomy, of a sort that no imperial power has been able to win since about 1960.

There is no evidence of the new Iraqi army and security forces proving themselves effective against the guerrillas. The security forces with the possible exception of the new army are heavily infiltrated by partisan militias. A recent news article quoted an approving US officer as saying that Iraqi troops in Baqubah fought a guerrilla attack right down to the point where the troops ran out of ammunition. These were almost certainly Shiite and/or Kurdish troops fighting Sunni guerrillas, so this was actually another battle in the Civil War. No wonder they fought to the bitter end. But what I take away from this anecdote is that the guerrillas have more ammunition than do the poor s.o.b.'s in the Iraqi army, and I don't see that as a good sign. A unified military is almost impossible to achieve in conditions of civil war, in any case. Lebanon had an army when the civil war broke out there in the mid-1970s, but President Elias Sarkis was unable to commit it, for fear it would split along ethnic lines. The same problems now exist in Iraq, and are unlikely to be resolved for some years, if ever.

Iraq cannot be stabilized without the active help of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the neighboring countries. But the Bush administration has actively attempted to alienate Iran and Syria, threatening them with regime change or military attack, and guaranteeing that they would be hostile to US success and continued presence in Iraq. The US has also alienated Turkey by allowing the violent leftist Kurdish guerrilla movement, the PKK, to base itself in northern Iraq and to attack Turkey and Iran from that safe haven. The US has alienated Saudi Arabia in a whole host of ways, from insinuations that the Wahhabi form of Islam is in an unqualified way a source of terrorism, to US insensitivity to Saudi fears of the rise of a Shiite Crescent.

Bush administration ineptitude, ignorance, and often stupidity is matched by some regional players. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud El Faisal came to the US in fall of 2005 and castigated the US for allowing Iraq to fall into the hands of the Iranians (i.e. pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiites), provoking a severe diplomatic tiff between Baghdad and Riyadh. Instead of being helpful to a fellow Arab country, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt alienated the Shiite south of Iraq by saying that Arab Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. After these incidents, which enraged the Iraqi Shiites, the prospect for a fruitful role in Iraq for the Arab League have receded substantially, since Shiite Iraqis cannot see it as an honest broker.

The Bush Administration trumpets that a defeat of "al-Qaeda" in Iraq would be decisive for defeating terrorism in the world at large. But Bush and his policies led to there being anything like an effective Islamic radical terrorism in Iraq in the first place. The tiny Ansar al-Islam group that operated in the north before 2003 had been hunted by the Baath security and only survived because of the US no-fly zone that prevented Iraqi armor from being deployed against it. Bush has not shown any particular ability to put this genie, which he unleashed, back in the bottle. His war in Iraq has been an enormous boon to the international Salafi Jihadi movement, encouraging angry youths from all over the world to join it to fight to the US. Bush by his aggressive and inept policies is creating the phenomenon he says he is fighting, and so can never defeat it.

The prospect lies before us of years, perhaps decades of instability in the Gulf and eastern reaches of the Middle East. There is a danger of it doubling and tripling our gasoline prices. There is a danger of it forming a matrix and a school for anti-US terrorism for years to come. Are people in Fallujah, Tal Afar and Ramadi really ever going to forgive us? And there is no guarantee of the Shiites remaining US allies for very long, either. Many, of course, already have conceived a new hatred of America as a result of over-reaction of green National Guardsmen, who often have killed innocent civilians in the south, and as a result of iron fist policies when US troops were fighting the Mahdi Army.

The Bush administration has pushed us all out onto a tightrope in Iraq, 60 feet up and without a net.

God save the American empire for delivering such a wonderful gift as the new and highly competent Iraqi government. I mean, I'm breathless at the effective transition in the last 5 months, from the concrete accomplishments of election to formation of our new democracy.

I'm sure now that we've got a taste of democracy in the last few years, we'll quickly see an end to everything bad happening in Iraq. Of course, we couldn't say how long this would be...but looking at how fast our newly elected lists formed the government (a mere 5 months!!!) I believe within another 12 years or so, we'll have functioning institutions and concerts in the park. I can't wait. But I know I'll have to...

It won't be long!

And I know I have you, Viceroy Khalilzad, to thank for this :D

God bless Iraq being included in the neo-imperialist (and neo-liberal) project I'd like to call Pax Americana. You can plunder our oil fields, but you'll never take away the intoxicating feeling of freedom via elections. Screw running water, give me a ballot.

Ballots for the pawns of empire! Ballots for the pawns of empire!
Yipeeee yeaaaaaa! yipeeeee yoooooooo!

And I'd like to add one more thing. Because I know I have this platform to express important ideas and discuss pressing issues. And I must use it responsibly. So...Please world, pay attention to what is happening in Africa. Air drop some ballots of love on Darfur! Stop the madness! I can't stand those poor people dying there any longer. A travesty, I tell ya.

Good night and happiness to all...

First in

Big UP to Thought Riot...
Reminds me of myself when I first started blogging at the Agora.
[via Where Date Palms Grow - which is another great new blog]

I'm back and feeling good. We've had a new addition to the family. I'm a proud uncle once more! I believe Najma's sister had a baby recently too. So congratulations to her and all her family too!

peace out,
lim

Q: What do Mother Teresa and Bernardo Provenzano have in common?


Take a deep breath. And count to ten.

Time to go Joe: Joe Leiberman's a mole.
Russ Feingold points out that Democrats don't have balls. And we all already knew Barbara Boxer has more balls than all other democrats on the hill combined.
Hillary is one sketchy biatch for bunking with Rupert Murdoch.
Fundamentalism 101: Fundamentalists don't speak to other fundamentalists.
David Blaine is a dickhead.
Fatal Irony: The Dead Sea is dying. I'm glad I visited it this past winter.
The most consistent thing in life with death: Iraq. Sadly, yes.
And it seems Lebanon ain't never gonna change. What a bunch of tools.

A: They both have black and white pictures of when they were young on the internet.