Ah, crap.
I have a bugger of a head cold, meaning I ache in the places where I used to think. So this has to be short, and won't tell you anything you don't already know.
Israel's war upon Lebanon would be a disproportionate response if Israel were actually responding to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers. It isn't, of course. (If it were, we may have seen a limited cross-border incursion that resembled a rescue mission, rather than these blunt-force deep attacks on Lebanese infrastructure.) Rather the war, like most wars of aggression, is a response to the pathological necessities of the aggressor's ideology.
America's Countdown: Tehran has been stuck at 20 minutes and holding for a couple of months now, derailed by Iran's rational posture regarding its nuclear ambitions and the ongoing thwarting of anything approaching even the Bush administration's benchmark for a casus belli. Israel's hawks, by smashing in the back door, are baiting Iran to action, which would goad the US to crash through the front. Israeli military claims, trumpeted by FoxNews, that the Haifa rockets were fired by Iranian Guard units, and the absurd suggestion that Hezbollah intends to transport their captured soldiers to Iran, say forcefully that this isn't about Lebanon, though for now it will be mostly the Lebanese who perish. (Interestingly, The Jerusualem Post noted yesterday that "Before the attack on Haifa, CNN reported that the US Navy ordered one of their ships that was docked at the Haifa Bay to be moved to a safer location." Though the story has since been removed.)
This is a war crime of opportunity, calculated to at last draw out Iran and draw in American arms to finish what they began in Iraq. Madness is the method, and Death was never going to take a holiday this summer.
posted by Jeff at 7:49 AM
http://rigint.blogspot.com/