"It's clear many more innocent Lebanese are being prepared for slaughter"

[bigtree]

def. brain
Sunday, July 30, 2006

Fisk: The truth of Blair's 'urgent diplomacy'

Independent

{snips}

. . . As I write this near the village of Blat, which has its own little list of civilian dead, it's quite clear that many more innocent Lebanese are being prepared for the slaughter - and will indeed die in the coming days.

What was it Condoleezza Rice said? That "a hasty ceasefire would not be a good thing"? What was Blair's pathetic excuse at the G8 summit? That it was much better to have a ceasefire that would last than one which might break down? Yes, I entirely understand. Blair and his masters - we shall give Rice a generic title to avoid the obvious - regard ceasefires not as a humanitarian step to alleviate and prevent suffering but as a weapon, as a means to a political end.

Let the war last longer and the suffering grow greater - let compassion be postponed - and the Lebanese (and, most laughably, the Hizbollah) will eventually sink to their knees and accept the West's ridiculous demands. And one of those famous American "opportunities" for change - ie for humbling Iran - will have been created.


But Blair and Bush want to send a combat force into southern Lebanon. Well, I shall be there, I suppose, to watch its swift destruction in an orgy of car and suicide bombings by the same organisation that yesterday fired another new longer-than-ever range missile that landed near Afula in Israel.

The Lebanese government - democratically elected and hailed by a US administration which threw roses at its prime minister after the US state department claimed a "cedar revolution" - has just caught the Americans off guard, producing a peace package to which the Hizbollah has reluctantly agreed, starting with an immediate ceasefire. Can Washington ignore the decision of a democratic government? Of course it can. It is encouraging Israel to continue its destruction of the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza and the West Bank.

So stand by for an "increase" in the "urgency" of diplomacy - and for more women with their skin torn open by cluster bombs.

http://deficientbrain.blogspot.com/2006/07/fisk-truth-of-blairs-urgent-diplomacy_30.html

[whistle]

1. So much for Condi Rice's meeting with Olmert tonight in Jerusalem

...to convince Israel to agree to a cease-fire. Was there ever any doubt that Cheney wants this war to accelerate into total chaos?

[LibertyorDeath]

2. Fisk is brilliant

Thanks for this.

[magellan]

7. Is that Robert Fisk? (nt)

[mom cat]

3. Kick to the greatest page!

[tnlefty]

4. I have no words.

:kick:

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Condi is allowing a carpet

of bombs to selectively fall on someone's home turf to intimidate some international tycoon into a deal.

[MsMagnificent]

6. " Blair and Bush want to send a combat force into southern Lebanon"

As long as said combat force doesn't come from them! :crazy:
So who's it going to come from? Who's going to volunteer to be their willing servant to sacrifice their own people for B & B's brave, bright idea? :sarcasm:

Nobody, that's who.

I realize that wasn't the most important point of this post & article, but the hypocrisy
--on top of all their other hypocrisies-- just disgusts me to no end.

K & R

[elehhhhna]

8. SWned Bush's pals. Start w/ Enron guys. Coalition of the SKilling.

[QuestionAll...]

10. who... Blackwater?

doesn't sound that ridiculous now, does it...

[theanarch]

12. The French, actually...

...as a former protectorate, the French feel an obligation to their once-colony; yet, according to PM Chirac, forces will be deployed only AFTER a ceasefire is in effect. I can pretty much guarantee that Israel, acting through the US, will veto the plan, as the French have no intention of doing Israel's dirty work for them vis a vis Hezbollah. Israel wants a NATO force to fight Hezbollah for them...period.

[bigtree]

9. Damn, wasn't he right on target?

Hard to beat firsthand knowledge

[bigtree]

11. Fisk: Under fire in Beirut

In his second weekly dispatch from the front line, our veteran war reporter confesses he was so scared after one attack that he could not put pen to paper

By Robert Fisk

07/30/06 "The Independent" -- -- To Sidon. Ed Cody has found a cool, 120-mile-an-hour driver called Hassan - he has a black Mercedes which I nickname "Death Car" (because that will be the fate of anyone who gets in our way) and we zip down the coast road and turn east into the hills at Naameh, where the Israelis have just blown the bridge.

Thirty years ago, Cody was an Associated Press correspondent in Beirut and taught me how to cover wars. "Get in the car, drive to the battle and find out what the arseholes are doing," he used to say. Cody is from Oregon, a slim, brilliant, highly subversive journalist who is now Beijing correspondent for the Washington Post. A great guy to travel with, eyes sharp for F-16s, brave without being a poseur, fluent in Arabic, he understands the dirty war we are watching and thrives on cynicism.

"Look," he says, pointing to a blown-up highway interchange. "It's a terrorist bridge! And if you take the road to Zahle, you'll find a burned out terrorist flour and grain lorry!" If the world became a better place, I fear Cody would contemplate suicide.

Sidon is full of Shia refugees, and I hunt down Ghena Hariri, daughter of Sidon's MP and niece of murdered ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri. She is a Georgetown graduate and reckons three more Hizbollah buildings will be bombed in her city. The Israelis have just bombed a Hizbollah mosque. Cody and I mosey over to take a look at the crushed cupola, and the local Lebanese "Squad 112" - a kind of paramilitary police - arrive to shoo us away.

We race back to Beirut, joining the coastal highway south of the city. It is a bleak, desolate, empty road and we watch the sky, detouring round the airport, the air filled with smoke from burning oil tanks and the vibration of another massive Israeli bomb on the southern suburbs just as we pass . . .

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14271.htm