Posts from — August 2006

With the exception of whatever they used against that Israeli ship, Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israel. They have no guidance systems. They are aimed like artillery pieces with the direction they are pointed, the angle at which they are fired, and time their rocket engines last determining where they hit. They are affected by weather. They are not precision guided weapons.

Israel is using a variety of weapons, but most of them have guidance systems. Whether they are powered [missiles], or unpowered [smart bombs] almost all are hitting exactly what the individual who fired them intended.

The Israel aircraft may also be firing rockets, but those are used in “line of sight” attacks against a specific target.

Pierre has a post up on the problem in Iraq: Dude, Here’s Your Civil War. In it he points to his column, Bush’s Iraq war: Icarus on crack, that was published in the Daytona Beach News-Journal on March 26, 2003.

Another example disproving the “conventional wisdom” that everyone thought Iraq had WMDs, or that the war would be a good idea. I’m still waiting for someone to point me to a French or Russian official saying there were WMDs in Iraq in 2003.

Jo Fish came across a US offer to train the Lebanese military. After seeing what the Iraqi military looks like, I think Lebanon would probably not buy into the program.

If they accept US equipment, they get US strings, and I doubt the US would continue to supply Lebanon with materiel during a conflict in the same manner as Israel has been supplied. Lebanon should stay with their “homeboys”: Hezbollah seems to be winning its war.

With the French spearheading the UN effort to do something about the Lebanon crisis, the Israelis need to contemplate what life will be like next door to La Légion étrangère, the obvious choice for a non-peacekeeping, “you get to shoot people” mission along the border. These guys are rather well known for their loose “rules of engagement”, generally following the advice of Abbé Arnaud-Amaury of Citeaux.

It’s Nap Time

Just the right size!

[Editor: When you’re a kitten 4X6 is the perfect size.]

Friday Ark

Via Culture Ghost a Flash version of Bush’s information age.

Yes, that underhanded commie lover, Hugo Chavez, has hatched a truly despicable plot: Venezuela’s chocolate revolution.

That’s right he has stolen 10 million from the freedom loving oil companies and has used it to convince Venezuelan farmers to grow organic cocoa beans for world-class chocolatiers.

Is there any addiction he won’t feed?

This does justify his purchase of the Su-30s: to protect the cocoa fields.

HaloScan has been ignoring me most of the night.

Firefox has just issued its second patch in a week and is up to version 1.5.0.6.

Anne Zook at Peevish is burned out.

Oliver Willis has been having problems and is running a very simple template at the moment.

It may be time to flush the “tubes”.

Oh, there’s a new version of WordPress available, but I’m going to wait for someone else to crash and burn installing it before I make an attempt.

Update: I forgot to add Vestal Vespa to the file of those that have moved on to other things.

A couple of days ago the Pensacola Beach Blogger recommended the blog of Daytona Beach News-Journal columnist, Pierre Tristam. I read Candide’s Notebooks and liked it.

I have been questioning the story of the original battle of the current round of the Israel-Lebanon War, and Holden picked up on it with Mom, He Hit Me First!.

Pierre’s post, A Premeditated War-Planned in 2005 adds more evidence that makes me doubt the official version even more by pointing to an article published before the incident.

Mideast Democracy: One Violent Group Finds It Works Fine is an article by Karby Legett in the Wall Street Journal on July 10, 2006 that indicates that Israel had put the border on “high alert” in anticipation of a possible Hezbollah attack. The WSJ is not exactly known as a hotbed of bleeding heart liberal haters of Israel, so I assume they are reflecting information from the Israeli government.

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Flag of Florida

Not the Flag of Florida

Castro’s not dead. His sister says so. His sister is tied into the LOLB [Little Old Ladies in Black] network, so she’s getting better information than the Calle Ocho crowd.

[I’ve always felt the LOLB had the confessional bugged and they go to the first mass to pick up the tapes.]

School started today in Santa Rosa county, and starts tomorrow in Okaloosa county [my county].  Got to get ready for those tests.

From the BBC report:Israel hit by Hezbollah barrage

Hezbollah fighters have launched more than 230 rockets from Lebanon, the biggest single-day barrage since the conflict began, Israeli officials say.

One person was killed and dozens injured as some rockets landed up to 70km inside Israel, the deepest so far.

The upsurge came as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel had destroyed Hezbollah’s infrastructure.

Mr Olmert insisted there would be no ceasefire until an international force was deployed in southern Lebanon.

“I said I’d be ready to enter a ceasefire when the international forces, not will be ready, but will be deployed,” Mr. Olmert said of the timetable for a halt to the violence.

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CNN: Army Guard ‘in dire situation’

Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum spoke to a group defense reporters after Army officials, analysts and members of Congress disclosed that two-thirds of the active Army’s brigades are not ready for war.

The budget won’t allow the military to complete the personnel training and equipment repairs and replacement that must be done when units return home after deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan, they say.

“I am further behind or in an even more dire situation than the active Army, but we both have the same symptoms, I just have a higher fever,” Blum said.

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This is the video I mentioned in the ceiling fan comments.

Can you say “cat fit”…