Chris At Home

It's a ceasefire, right? The IDF will withdraw in a 1-2 weeks.

• 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!
  

Mark Steyn:

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.

Stolen from somewhere a few days ago...sorry, Photoshopper.


Update: Brits think they caught the Al Qaeda leader for UK, fear a second phase of attacks is imminent.

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”.

Need a laugh?

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.