Chris At Home

• CQ sees trouble in the Lebanese government. The meeting to implement the resolution has been postponed, but they reportedly hadn't expected Israel to accept the agreement. They don't want to put troops in the south and they don't want to disarm Hezbullah. Meanwhile, Hezbullah fired 230 rockets into Israel today and Lebanon says they might act in 72 hours and Syria maintained arms shipments.
  
  This is interesting. Hezbullah won the war, but will not disarm and will not stop attacking Israel. No one except Israel can force either to occur, Hezbullah will not disarm unilaterally without losing its organization. A smart terrorist leader would stop attacks and make noise about disarming, which would force Israel to withdraw, then return to firing rockets and attacking Israeli positions. Israel could not attack Lebanon again unless there was a major provocation...rockets in Tel Aviv, for example.
  
  Luckily, Nasrallah seems to be overplaying his hand, and that might cost him his victory. It won't save the Lebanese Christian and Druze who criticized Hezbullah; they will be the first victims of the ceasefire.
  
  
• Israel is already withdrawing troops:
  

  The intention is for the forces to move back to a line north of the border with Lebanon within about 10 days, or as soon as the Lebanese Army is ready to begin entering south Lebanon. This means that the IDF will not be conducting searches for Hezbollah fighters or arms caches in the areas that it has captured over the last few days, which the army defined as "the heart of the operational campaign" against Hezbollah.
  
  Once the Lebanese Army is fully deployed in the south, together with a beefed-up UNIFIL force, the IDF troops will withdraw completely.
  ...
  Olmert and the defense chiefs also agreed that the IDF will begin withdrawing some of its forces from Lebanon immediately, but will remain in various positions that offer control over surrounding areas until these positions can be handed over to the Lebanese Army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
  
  As of Sunday night, the IDF had begun removing the first reservist units out of Lebanon. Over the coming days, the remaining forces will be gradually reduced, and in some cases, reservists will be replaced with regular army units.

  
  The Israelis expect the ceasefire to fail:
  

  The officials said the working assumption at the Prime Minister's Office was that Hizbullah would not honor the agreement and that the world would then comprehend Israel's predicament more than ever. At press time, the Lebanese cabinet had not given final approval to the cease-fire.
  
  "When Hizbullah violates the cease-fire, the world will see who the aggressor is and will understand us," a source close to Olmert said. "We will insist that the agreement be implemented. It's a good agreement for Israel and Hizbullah's opposition is proof."

  
  
• Ralph Peters has a list of lessons learned from the war.
  

  Lesson 2: The global media can overturn the verdict of the battlefield.
  
  Too many politicians and generals still don't get it. This new truth about war slapped us in the face during the First Battle of Fallujah. Now, facing a hostile global media, the Israelis are learning it.

  
  
• Toronto loves Hezbullah and dead Israelis. Washington, too. Most of the Left seems to agree.
  

  Left-wing bloggers played an important part in Lamont's victory. Here's the reaction of one of them, John Aravosis, to the red alert ordered here in response to the British arrests: "Do I sound as if I don't believe this alert? Why, yes, that would be correct. I just don't believe it. Read the article. They say the plot had an 'Al Qaeda footprint.' Ooh, are you scared yet?"
  
  What we are looking at here is cognitive dissonance. The mindset of the Left blogosphere is that there's no real terrorist threat out there. We wouldn't have any serious problem if we'd just do something different -- raise the minimum wage or reduce the number without health insurance (the first issue Lamont mentioned on election night), withdraw from Iraq or (as some Left bloggers suggest) sell out Israel.

  
  
• Dan speculates that Hezbullah intentionally put handicapped children in a building, then fired rockets from the roof to bring Israeli fire. My mind cannot believe that such evil exists, so I am hoping he is wrong. This is incredibly evil as well, but it actually happened: photos of the murder of a suspected Palestinian by a mob, then his stomping into the ground. Note the old woman.
  
  Supporting people like this is the alternative to supporting Israel. Absolutely revolting.
  
  
• Another article making a case for actively fighting Islamists which will be ignored by the public at-large:
  

  Now we are in World War IV, as Norman Podhoretz has pointed out, between what Tony Blair aptly calls Reactionary Islam and the rest of us. The first striking thing about this war is that we’ve managed to fall asleep at a relatively late stage of it.
  ...
  The only way to win is to suck the air out of jihad by driving the regimes that support it out of power or out of the terror business.
  
  Isolated jihadis can kill but they have no hope of winning. The whole point of jihad is to gain power, so the jihad will lose steam if the states that back it lose power. The U.S., U.K., France, and Germany, perhaps individually and certainly collectively, have the power to force the key rogue regime — Iran — to end its race for the bomb and support for international aggression.
  
  The current U.N. Security Council process on Iran is a good beginning, but only has a hope of becoming the basis of something real if the U.S. shows the determination to take this campaign several degrees forward. We’ve reached the limits of common-denominator diplomacy; the U.S. has to start laying markers based on what will work, not what will fly.

  
  Another excellent article:
  

  It is, indeed, "five minutes to midnight"—not just for Israel, but for the West. The time is very short now before we will have to confront Iran. The only question is how long we let events spin out of our control, and how badly we let the enemy hit us before we begin fighting back.
  
  We can't avoid this war, because Iran won't let us avoid it.
  ...
  The larger evasion is this: the left senses that a regional war is coming, that Iran is hell-bent on starting it, and that there is no way to avoid it. But all of this runs directly counter to their whole world-view. Rather than questioning that world view, they simply assert that this can't be happening. They have to believe that something, anything—no matter how implausible—will stop it from happening. If we just get everyone together and talk, and we keep tinkering with diplomatic solutions until we find something that works, surely we can find a way to avoid a regional war in the Middle East. Can't we? Please?

  
  Again:
  

  But in the early news reports in Britain the words "Islamist" or "Muslim" were hardly emphasized. Let alone "extremist" or the dread word "fascist." Instead the common code words on television were that the 24 men arrested were "British-born" and "of Pakistani origin."
  
  No mention of their Islamist ideology. Did the BBC think they might turn out to be from Pakistan's embattled Christian minority? I don't think so.
  
  In Europe the truth is so terrible that we are in denial. Perhaps it is understandable. We simply do not wish to face the fact that we really are threatened by a vast fifth column - that there are thousands of European-born people, in Britain, in France, in Holland, in Denmark, everywhere - who wish to destroy us. They are part of a wider war, what Tony Blair rightly calls an "arc of extremism" - Islamist extremism.
  ...
  And it's not just the extremist marchers. Reasonable, conventional armchair critics concentrate on the mistakes of Israel rather than the evil ideology of Hizbullah. They refuse to acknowledge that a small, decent society is now literally under the threat of death from an illegal fascistic military machine built throughout the hills, valleys, towns and villages of southern Lebanon.

  
  
• Israel sees itself as Samson, Muslims see themselves as victims:
  

  "The root of the problem lies in how the residents of the Middle East look at the world and at their situation," Kuperwasser says as he expounds upon his doctrine about Israel's neighbors. "The approach that unites all the extremist elements in the Middle East, and enjoys political clout in the Middle East - because it speaks to the guts of the masses - says they are victims. They are not responsible for their fate. The reason their situation is not good is because someone had it in for them. The perception of Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaida, Iran and Syria, and of many among the Arab public, many of the people on the street, is that these outsiders, the Israelis and the Americans, are responsible for their fate because of their ambition to exploit them. That is a philosophical conception. And therefore Israel is a threat by its very existence, even when it does not shoot. They have a deep sense of victimization."

  
  
• Green helmet guy injured in airstrike? You mean he was hanging around with Hezbullah? I am shocked, utterly shocked.
  
  
• Now I know who to blame for the ceasefire fiasco:
  

  The disagreement between Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice is over the ramifications of U.S. support for Israel's continued offensive against Lebanon. The sources said Mr. Bush believes that Israel's failure to defeat Hezbollah would encourage Iranian adventurism in neighboring Iraq. Ms. Rice has argued that the United States would be isolated both in the Middle East and Europe at a time when the administration seeks to build a consensus against Iran's nuclear weapons program.
  
  Instead, Ms. Rice believes the United States should engage Iran and Syria to pressure Hezbollah to end the war with Israel. Ms. Rice has argued that such an effort would result in a U.S. dialogue with Damascus and Tehran on Middle East stability.

  
  
• Chertoff says there are no American connections to the UK terror plot, which is tough to believe. Want even more evil? Parents planned to take their 6-month old baby on flight, using the baby's milk bottle to hold explosives to destroy the flight. Kill hundreds of people and their own baby...
  
  
• A UK flight to the US returned to London when a cellphone began ringing. A cellphone should not have been onboard and no one accepted ownership.
  
  
• Terrorists are modifying cellphones so that the calls can't be monitored. HotAir blames the NY Times. Arab cellphones buyers are suspected of plan to blow up a bridge.
  
  
• Iran is instigating attacks in Iraq because of attacks on Hezbullah.
  
  
• Newspaper calls for 3rd Intifada after Hezbullah shows Israeli weakness. Saas is proclaiming Israeli victory, unrealistically in my mind. However, I agree that any future attacks must be met with immediate and overwhelming force.
  
  
• British Muslims told to get their shit together, stop whining, stop terrorists. It's a surprise to me too. Here, go read it:
  

  WHEN will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted?
  
  When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain's foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?
  
  Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it.
  
  To stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims.

  
  
• An interview with John Bolton. I am waiting for a transcript.
  
  
• The Philippine Jihad continues, including beheading a hostage.
  
  
• Fidel is apparently still alive.
  
  
• The Sandmonkey snarks it up in a letter to Nasrallah.
  

  Every Newspaper I read in the middle-east and every arab satalite news channel, especially yours, keeps informing me of how much Israelis you are killing, how few men you are losing and how you are accomplishing what no arab country has accomplished and are winning this war against Israel, and you know how the arab media never lies and always tells the truth. What I don't understand is this: if you are winning, why stop now? I say continue fighting, until, god willing, you destroy the accursed zionist entity and liberate Jersualem. I am sure that your army of 5000 fighters and your 10000 rockets can do it. I have faith in you, especially after all the victories you have achieved, like having the israeli army inside of Lebanon again, right where you want them of course, and having your neighborhood in Beirut destroyed, which saved you all the demolition costs it would've cost you for the Hezbollah Paradise Towers project, which will provide every shia family with a luxury High-rise apartment in a premium Bierut location. It was a fantastic business decision I must say.

  
  In a serious post, he tells who Hezbullah wants released from prison and what the man did to be imprisoned.
  
  
• Ahmadinejad has a friggin' blog. With English translations. Don't expect me to link him. He was on 60 Minutes too and got some nice reviews from the Left.
  
  
• British dhimmitude.
  

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Monday that he intended to assign a "team" to investigate the Israel Defense Forces' conduct of the war in Lebanon and their preparedness before the war.

"As Defense Minister, I intend to appoint a team that will conduct an intensive, comprehensive investigation of all the events leading up to the war and during the war," Peretz said.

The female sex drive starts sputtering to a halt as soon as a woman has got her man, according to a new study.

Researchers have found that women's libido plummets so rapidly when they believe they are in a secure relationship that after just four years the proportion of 30-year-old women wanting regular sex falls below 50 per cent.

There are few things that appear able to keep a woman sexually interested, the study found, but living apart for extended periods can help.

The findings for women contrast with those for men, whose sexual appetite hardly flagged at all up to 40 years after marriage....He found that within a year of a relationship starting, female libido moved into steep decline.

Dr Klusmann's findings were, however, attacked by Irma Kurtz, the agony aunt for Cosmopolitan magazine, who said: "Of course women in their 30s with children, careers and the house to run are too busy and tired for sex, but they have a great capacity for tenderness."

• The IDF already reached the Litani with limited units.
  
  Good update on the fighting here.
  
  
• Congress opposes immediate delivery of cluster bombs to Israel.
  
  
• Nasrallah says Hezbullah will continue fighting until the IDF leaves Lebanon. The ceasefire resolution says the IDF can remain in Lebanon as long as Hezbullah is attacking. The UN will not disarm Hezbullah.
  

  1. Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbullah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;
  
  2. Upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL (The UN Interim Force in Lebanon) as authorized by paragraph 11 to deploy their forces together throughout the south and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel;

  
  The stage is set: Israel keeps attacking rocket sites and Hezbullah fighters who attack Israel, the world blames Israel for a lack of ceasefire.
  
  
• You want black depression? Here you go:
  

  Welcome to the new Middle East, a place where purposefully ordering the launching of thousands upon thousands of lethal rockets into towns and villages with the sole and exclusive goal of killing as many civilians as possible makes one a hero to the overwhelming majority of its people rather than a monster to be stoned in the street on sight. It is also a tactic that has been green lighted by the United Nations in that they have given these gleeful, murderous, rocketeers the opportunity to start their bombardment all over again just as soon as the international community loses interest and moves on to the next outrage that the world body also will be unable to do anything to stop.
  
  A true United Nations, one that would live up to one tenth of the noble sentiments contained in its charter, would have voted to join with Israel to destroy Hizbullah. In fact, their actions have now enabled the terrorists to look forward to round two in their genocidal war against the Jews.

  
  More:
  

  Hezbollah wins this big just by being legitmized. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, not a country. The resolution we are signing on to, however, addresses it as if it were a country. The resolution doesn't purport to direct any UN member nation to make Hezbollah cease firing — least of all Lebanon, the purported sovereign of this territory. Instead, it appeals to Hezbollah directly — in the same paragraph in which it addresses Israel, as if there were no difference in status between the two — and "calls on" it to stand down.

  
  Unmitigated disaster:
  

  Many sources in Washington told this writer over the weekend that the US decision to seek a cease-fire was the result of Israel's amateurish bungling of the first three weeks of the war. The Bush administration, they argued, was being blamed for the Olmert government's incompetence and so preferred to cut its losses and sue for a cease-fire.
  ...
  By handing a victory to Hizbullah, the resolution strengthens the belief of millions of supporters of jihad throughout the world that their side is winning and that they should redouble efforts to achieve their objectives of destroying Israel and running the US out of the Middle East.

  
  Our defeat:
  

  There isn't much doubt in my mind anymore-- we are going to lose this war.
  Oh, there won't be an Islamic America or the like. No, it'll all just end in hellfire-- we'll lose a few cities; the world will then lose Islam. Perhaps the survivors will get lucky, and the nuclear winter will counteract global warming.

  
  Claudia Rosett:
  

  Unfortunately, if Resolution 1701 has any effect at all, its real meaning is that we now embark on a period in which Hezbollah will seize the opportunity to regroup and reload. The feeble and compromised mix of U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army, which is the force authorized in this resolution, will fail to stop them. Iran and Syria will proceed apace with their terrorist infection and subjugation of Lebanon. The U.N. will wave around this latest piece of paper to try to prevent Israel from defending itself, or, for that matter, defending the rest of us against the “Death to Israel! Death to America!” Hezbollah agenda. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, enjoying yet another confirmation of the U.N.’s mincing impotence in the face of guns, bombs, rockets, and terror, will continue his fevered preparations to roll out the nuclear bomb.

  
  This feels like Dunkirk.
  
  Hugh Hewitt has a FAQ. It's not a happy place.
  

  1) What would happen if all the Arab nations and their terrorist proxies like Hezbollah set down their arms and gave up their ambitions to drive Israel into the sea?
  
  There would be peace in the Middle East.
  
  
  2) What would happen if Israel disbanded the IDF, junked its nuclear weapons and declared to its neighbors that she would do anything to live in peace?
  
  Israel would be annihilated, millions of its citizens killed. The term genocide could be used to describe the ensuing holocaust, but since that term has been so hopelessly debased by American academics, a new term would have to be created like super-duper-mega genocide to really capture the nature of things.

  
  
• Your foreign policy is the cause of terrorism. Not quite a threat, but almost.
  
  
• 60 Al Qaeda terrorists captured in Baghdad. Pakistan captures 17 terrorists who were involved in the UK plane bombing plot.
  
  
• Earthquake relief money channeled to the airline bombers. Islamic charities are so damned helpful!
  

The plot to commit mass murder by seizing up to 10 U.K.-U.S. airliners was well advanced long before the first Israeli strike against Hezbollah. Yet it's apparently axiomatic at Reuters, the BBC and many other British media outlets that Tony Blair is the root cause of jihad. He doesn't even have to invade anywhere anymore. He just has to "refuse to call for an immediate cease-fire" when some other fellows invade some other fellows over on the other side of the world.

Grant for the sake of argument that these reports are true -- that when the bloodthirsty Zionist warmongers attack all those marvelous Hezbollah social outreach programs it drives British subjects born and bred to plot mass murder against their fellow Britons. What does that mean?

Here's a clue, from a recent Pew poll that asked: What do you consider yourself first? A citizen of your country or a Muslim? In the United Kingdom, 7 percent of Muslims consider themselves British first, 81 percent consider themselves Muslim first.

The investigation into the suspected Al-Qaeda leader in Britain and his UK associates was considered by Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5’s director-general, to be the security service’s single most important line of inquiry.

He is suspected of being behind two “pipelines” which saw potential terrorist recruits being sent for training at camps in Pakistan and to join the “holy war” in Iraq.

The Al-Qaeda leader — who cannot be named for legal reasons— acts as a suspected hub in a network of extremist groups. These include Kashmiri and north African groups based in this country. He is linked to a second suspect also in Britain who has “played a major role in facilitating support for the Iraq jihad”.

U.S. President George Bush said the United Nations resolution to halt the fighting between Israel and Lebanon will stop Hezbollah from acting as a "state within a state" and deal a severe blow to the efforts of Syria and Iran to exert influence in the Middle East.

• Olmert backtracked again, allowing the IDF to attack up to the Litani River. 40,000 Israeli troops are available to attack the area, the origin of 70% of the rockets fired into Israel.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Olmert has accepted the latest ceasefire terms. The existing UN peacekeeping team will be enlarged to 15,000 troops to better colaborate deal with Hezbullah. I agree with Likud-nik Silvan Shalom: Israel is in a worse position now than before the war. Israel won't even get its kidnapped soldiers back.
  
  A positive opinion: Powerline says Hezbullah will not disarm, no one can force them to disarm, so the resolution is null and void. Except the world will blame Israel for on-going violence and ignore Hezbullah's breaking of the terms of the ceasefire.
  
  
• Walid Phares:
  

  For anyone who still thinks the Israeli-Lebanon war is just a border scuffle, one Middle East expert shouts a dire warning: "As soon as a cease fire occurs, the ‘Hezbollah Blitzkrieg' will crumble the ‘Lebanese Republic of Weimar' and install its own ‘Khumeinist Republic' on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The consequences of such a development are far beyond imagination for the region and the world. Hezbollah would have paved the way for Iran to create the mother of all world threats since Hitler."

  
  
• Want to know what's wrong with the current ceasefire resolution? Here. More details at the JPost. CQ says Israel has to play Beat The Clock.
  
  
• The State Department works again Israel, this time fighting to stop speedy delivery of rocket systems that can be used against rocket launchers in Lebanon.
  
  
• Wretchard: Wikipedia's official entry for Benjamin Netanyahu says it is "widely anticipated that a no-confidence vote will lead to new elections with Netanyahu becoming the next Prime Minister of Israel." Good, the sooner, the better.
  
  
• Explosives found a UK flight on Sunday? That is the unverified report. The attacks were planned for August 16th, not the 22nd as many have speculated. A plotter's martyrdom video was found.
  
  
• An NBC reporter doesn't understand why the Administration kept knowledge of the UK bombing plot secret until after the arrests. Friggin' moron...because you would have put it on the evening news, Kevin.
  
  
• Terror attacks are because of Iraq? Nope. Post her list on your favorite Lefty site.
  
  
• The Times Online calls for crushing the Islamist true believers to liberate Islam.
  

  There is no doubt that force is often needed to break the terror machines that hold whole societies hostage. Algeria could not have returned to normal political life without defeating armed Islamists. Lebanon cannot live in peace unless Hezbollah is disarmed and turned into an ordinary political party.
  
  Iraq will not know stability unless the insurgents and foreign terrorists are militarily crushed. But the war on terror has been won in several countries and can be won in others provided all those who wish to defeat Islamism remain united, resolute and patient.

  
  
• The DailyPundit isn't very, very unhappy with Bush. His actions don't come close to matching his rhetoric.
  

Anything involving Israel is a favorite with Gulf Arab states for showing to their viewers. Could this be the reason why Israel receives such a disproportionate amount of particularly negative coverage especially and increasingly ever since the early 1970’s? HonestReporting is usually unable to decide which is most biased: AP or BBC. As the BBC is often using APTN footage, the difference is minor. A significant twist to what is seen, concerns what is not seen. Footage such as the Palestinian mob joyfully lynching two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000 is held by APTN’s library: any attempt to license this film for reshow is carefully vetted. Requests for the use of “sensitive clips” are referred directly to the Library director. This is not the case with clips that paint Israel in a bad light. Likewise, the re-showing of Palestinian celebrations on 9/11 is considered “sensitive”.

The way in which raw footage such as APTN’s is compiled into a news report and sent round the world has also been analyzed. The Second Draft gives a comprehensive view of how editing can make all the difference. APTN is the gatekeeper that sits between you and the actual event. You will never see what the editors at APTN see before they compile your evening news. What do you think is cut out?

I was often a lone voice of dissent in the New York newsroom when I tried to point out to my colleagues the blatant bias in our reporting on Israel's struggle against Palestinian terrorism. My case was bolstered one day when the front page of Reuters' internal website featured a picture of our editor-in-chief, Geert Linnebank, meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Accompanying the photograph was an item boasting about how glowingly Assad spoke of Reuters, which he viewed as a great source of news on the Middle East. After that, I joked that our brochures should include the tagline, "endorsed by a Syrian dictator."

Whatever its editors' political inclinations are, there is also a practical reason why Reuters is biased against Israel. As a global news provider, Reuters has to operate in more places than just about any other news organization, with 189 bureaus serving 128 countries. Because Israel is a free society, Reuters is able to run articles critical of the government without endangering the lives of its journalists or losing its ability to work in the country. Were Reuters to start striking a critical tone against the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Arab governments, its reporters' lives would be at risk as would its ability to operate in those parts of the world. Pretty soon, it would cease to be a "global" news provider and it would struggle for a raison d'etre.