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CBS has an “explainer” up, Hezbollah’s Rocket Science, talking about the weapons being used by Hezbollah.

Just as the SCUDs used by Saddam in the first Gulf War and the missiles of North Korea are variants on the World War II V-2 weapon, the rockets of the Hezbollah are essentially the World War II Katyusha‘s of the Soviet Army.

This is leading to a problem: over-sophistication of weapons. We have air-to-air missiles that cost more than the aircraft they are being used to destroy. The Patriot missile system would bankrupt the country that used it against the ballistic rockets of Hezbollah.

We received major damage to one of our newest naval vessels when it struck a World War I era mine during the first Gulf War. The old, unsophisticated weapons don’t provide the signals or “clues” that modern defensive systems use to detect them.

Most guerrilla forces use the Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947 [AK-47] and the Ruchnoy Protivotankoviy Granatomet-7 [RPG-7, 1961] which are simple, effective and can be built by a village blacksmith. Hezbollah is able to deal with Israeli armor, so technology doesn’t seem to be effective against a dedicated infantry.

It looks like the billions being spent on a few high-tech weapons systems are not going to be of much benefit.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid [D-Reality] admits the obvious: Iraq devolves into ‘civil war’.

I guess the Shi’ia will be the Black and the Sunni the Green based on traditional battle flags. The Kurds will probably have the Turks to deal with and will try to stay out of the problems occurring in the southern two-thirds of the country.

The theme music for today is Paint It Black, a favorite from another war in a different time and place.

The potty-mouthed pervert stamped his feet and said “NO!” to a bill passed by his rubber-stamp Congress. It was stage-managed as always. Republicans in tight races got to vote for legislation that was popular with real people and he had a hissy fit for the benefit of the FundaMENTALS.

Real people like Jack, Steve, Charles, and Nancy Reagan can give you real reasons for funding this research, and PMP says that his god [based on the advice so far, I have to assume this is a personal god, not associated with any known organized religion or system of ethical thought] told him to say “NO!”.

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Michael has pictures of his vacation. Few of us ever see something like this; fewer still have a camera and actually get a picture when they do.

Go, look, enjoy before the repo guys tow the area away to cover the Shrubbery’s overdrawn checks on the national wealth.

The Lebanese are reporting over 300 deaths due to Israeli actions so far, of which 8 are members of Hezbollah.

The Israelis are reporting 29 deaths, of which 14 are members of the Israeli military.

The Israelis still have the 3 Hezbollah members in custody and Hezbollah still has the two Israeli soldiers.

Lebanon hasn’t fully complied with UN Security Council Resolution 1559 of September 02, 2004.

Israel hasn’t fully complied with UN Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948 or UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967.

So what did the Shrubbery learn from the failure that was the evacuation of the New Orleans Convention Center?

Apparently nothing: In the USA Today article, Slow U.S. evacuation plans leave thousands stranded, we learn that an American embassy in a country in which there had been evacuations before, had no plan to deal with the problem.

The Detroit News article, Lebanon rescue plan: Cruise ship, informs us that they decided to rely on a cruise ship that could carry 750 to start ferrying people to Cyprus, but they don’t know when that will happen: “Americans have been told to wait for a phone call and that they can’t board the ship unless they’ve signed a contract agreeing to pay the U.S. government back for the price of their evacuation.”

This is dependent on a working telephone system, which is not a given in a country that is being bombed, and the ability to find somewhere safe to wait. It has been my experience that food and fuel have a tendency to become in short supply during daily bombing and it is usually better to stage people prior to evacuations so that things can be dealt with quickly.

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DJHLights as a truly disturbing post up about the what we are doing to the minds of our children.

This is why the haters win so often.

If you want a concrete, real world example of what the stem cell issue is all about Jack knows.

I’m not interested in bad interpretations of ancient works that people are unable or unwilling to read in the original language. If you haven’t read it in the original language, you haven’t read it.

Basing decisions on a willful ignorance of science, is not ethical, it is just ignorant. I heard all of this garbage back in the day about organ donations, and before that it was blood donations and vaccines. Every one of those things was portrayed as anti-religious and unethical, oh, you don’t want to know about what was said in the South about the possibility of “race mixing”. People, who could have been saved, died because of these attitudes, and that is not ethical.

Good thoughts, vibrations, prayers, etc. would be appreciated for Andante of Collective Sigh who is finally having her eye surgery.

She will be off-line for a week or so.

Tropical Depression 2 with the possibility of becoming Tropical Storm Beryl has formed southeast of the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

People on the coast might want to keep an eye on the weather for the next few days.

Update at 4:30CDT: Tropical Storm Beryl: 33.3°N 73.3°W winds of 40 Mph moving North

Via Sideshow the Guardian explains the background of Juan Cole’s remark: “They could have traded 3 Hizbullah members in their custody for the 2 Israeli soldiers.”

From the Guardian article, The framing of Hizbullah:

The prisoners Hizbullah wants released are hostages who were taken on Lebanese soil. In the successful prisoner exchange in 2004, Israel held on to three Lebanese detainees as bargaining chips and to keep the battle front with Hizbullah open. These detentions have become a cause celebre in Lebanon.

Nothing is simple in the Middle East.

Now I understand. Now what’s happening makes sense.

Juan Cole cuts through the rhetoric to the heart of the Israeli demands:

1. The return of two captured Israeli soldiers held by Hizbullah

2. A withdrawal of Hizbullah to the Litani River, 30 mi. or so north of the Israeli border deeper into Lebanon.

3. Cessation of rocket attacks on Israel

It is worth noting that if this is what Israel wants, two of the three could have been gotten without reducing the entire country of Lebanon to rubble. They could have traded 3 Hizbullah members in their custody for the 2 Israeli soldiers. And, if they hadn’t gone wild bombing everything in sight it is unlikely Hizbullah would have shelled them on this scale in the first place.

As for the demand that Hizbullah withdraw (presumably this means its paramilitary fighters) to the Litani, that talking point will inspire the profoundest fear in the Lebanese that Israel is essentially attempting to move its border north and make the Litany the new border, thus staking a clear claim on the waters of the river, which Israelis have coveted since 1948. It is a non-starter politically, though whether it can be attained with violence is yet to be seen.

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Melanie & Company at Just a Bump in the Beltway have moved.

Their new address is: www.beltwaybump.com

New host, new URI, new software.

As she explains it is the result of trackback spam causing the old site to exceed its bandwidth, at which point her host just shut down the site, as opposed to contacting someone about the problem [and possibly making making money in bandwidth charges].

It’s a whole new look.

In his post, Blood Discount, Billmon mentions the difference he has noticed the coverage of the conflict by the American media when it comes to casualties in Israel and those in Lebanon.

The BBC reports:

More than 127 Lebanese have died since clashes with Israel began last week. At least were 23 killed in air raids in southern Lebanon on Sunday.

[snip…]

Twelve Israeli civilians have been killed by Hezbollah rockets since fighting began on Wednesday, including the eight killed in Haifa.

[snip…]

At least 16 died in Israeli air strikes on Sunday the city of Tyre, while attacks on a border village killed at least seven, including five with Canadian and Lebanese citizenship.

The strikes came hours after the Haifa rocket attack, which killed eight members of a train repair crew.

Correspondents say the large death-count in a strike on Israel’s third-largest city has rattled the whole country.

Israel’s death toll from the fighting stands at 24 overall.

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