Crossers burying border in garbage

Well, now we have the “garbage in”. Now we need to get the “garbage out”!

As if there already were not enough reasons to effectively close the border:

Cleanup crews from various agencies, volunteer groups and the Tohono O’odham Nation hauled about 250,000 pounds of trash from thousands of acres of federal, state and private land across Southern Arizona in 2002 to 2005, says the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. But that’s only a fraction of the nearly 25 million pounds of trash thought to be out there.

Illegal entrants should pick up the trash themselves, said Cindy Kolb, who helped found the group Civil Homeland Defense. “Our mothers did not pay someone to pick up our trash,” Kolb said. “We were taught to pick it up ourselves and to practice civic pride as law-abiding citizens.”

Sounds about right, but then that’s the problem, isn’t it…that bit about being “law-abiding citizens”. There’s no law-abiding, and no citizens involved in causing the problem.

Now we have the “garbage in”. Now we need to get the “garbage out”!

Doctor Charged in Drive-By Shooting

It strikes the Chief that there is more going on here than is being reported.

A doctor has been charged in the drive-by shooting of a bicyclist, who was hit in the chest and shoulder and is now recovering at the same hospital where the physician works. Dr. Wameeth Fadhli, a doctor at the University of Texas Medical Branch hospital in Galveston, was jailed Thursday on $60,000 bond after being accused of firing numerous shots at the 22-year-old man on Tuesday.

“At this point, this looks like it could have been just a random shooting, and that makes it a pretty scary crime,” Assistant District Attorney Xochitl Vandiver said.

Random victim, sure enough!

Random perp? Dr. Wameeth Fadhli? (Arabic? Iranian? Whatever.) Ohhhh-kay. As the phrase from Fox goes: “We report, you decide!”

When the devil dislikes the stink of brimstone

Here’s the latest from one of the Chief’s favorite commentators, who uses the nomme de plume of Spengler.

It’s a bit like the devil disliking the stench of sulfur, but Iran’s leaders now complain that the United States has thrown the Middle East into chaos in order to reshape the region. That is a man-bites-camel story. With the exception of the late Yasser Arafat, no one has wielded the weapon of instability with greater skill than Iran. Israel’s disproportionate response to the July 12 Hezbollah provocation changed the rules of the game in the region. Whether the players have the presence of mind to exploit the new rules remains an open question.

He goes on to spell out the current state of affairs as it impacts the various players at the current game table:

IRAN:

“Israel is pushing the region into utter chaos,” warned the July 15 editorial in the Foreign Ministry daily Tehran Times, warning that America’s backing for Israel “will harm the whole world, from exacerbation of the global security situation to undermining the world economy.”…Iran now badly wants a ceasefire so that Hezbollah can claim a draw as a victory….”Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said that the United States has thrown the region into chaos to reach its ultimate goal of the new Middle East,” again according to IRNA.

ISRAEL:

A few Israeli analysts, although evidently not the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, understand the game. “In a way, we’re playing an old Palestine Liberation Organization game, to precipitate regional instability and then try to bring in international intervention,” Israeli defense analyst Michael Oren told the New York Times on July 24. Oren, author of the standard history of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, advocates an Israeli attack on Syrian armored divisions stationed on the Lebanese border.

Asefi and Oren understand the sea-change in the Middle East better than the US or Israeli government.

USA:

Washington’s best move would be an ultimatum to Tehran with a deadline for dismantling its nuclear-weapons program, followed by aerial attacks in the event of non-compliance. Rather than engage the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Washington should take the opportunity to destabilize it. Rather than attempt to hold together its Frankenstein monster in Iraq, it should partition the country. Sunnis and Shi’ites already are fleeing mixed neighborhoods and agglomerating into sectarian strongholds, and a broader population exchange is the best formula to suppress bloodshed.

YES! What a breath of fresh air!

In other words, in pursuit of its own best interests, Washington should do precisely what the Iranian regime fears that it may do. Tehran’s paranoia, of course, runs far ahead of Washington’s limited imagination. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is skating in tighter and tighter little circles attempting to limit the war. The US demand for a 48-hour halt in Israeli bombing runs in Lebanon to which Israel acquiesced expresses the delusional hope that Sunni Arab states can be enlisted to oppose Iran and Hezbollah.

Israel, in summary, remains in denial about the failure of its withdrawal policy since 2000, and Washington remains in denial about the absurdity of its plan to stabilize the Middle East through democracy. That gives Iran considerable wiggle room to press ahead from an inherently weakened position.

There’s more where this comes from – and is well worth a look for his analysis of the current fecklessness of American policy and tactics in the present mid-east environment. (SIGH.)

Iran Foreign Minister meets with French counterpart in Beirut

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, whose country is a main backer of Hezbollah, met his French counterpart in Beirut on Monday for talks on resolving the crisis in Lebanon.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said earlier on Monday in Beirut it was important to maintain contacts with Tehran as part of efforts to resolve the crisis in Lebanon, where Hezbollah and Israel have been at war for nearly three weeks. France and Iran have called for an immediate ceasefire to halt the war between Hezbollah and Israel.

But of course…the Hisballers Hezbollah are in the process of getting their clocks cleaned – so OF COURSE a cease-fire is “needed” – anythiong to prevent an Israeli victory.

Iran is a significant, respected player in the Middle East which is playing a stabilizing role, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said earlier Monday in Beirut.

Sheesh! That’s like the Vichy regime saying that Germany was a stabilizing influence in Europe in 1941 – and apparently comes from the same perspective if not actual descendent Froggish appease-surrender DNA.

A Chief’s Eye View:

Obviously, at least to anyone with awareness greater than a knothole on the side of a tree, the war continues – and more people have gotten killed – including civilians.

Predictably enough, Israel is excoriated daily (nay, hourly!) for being so rude as to act on the two assumptions that the primary purpose of war is to kill people (the enemy) and break their things (their weapons AND infrastructure) that allow them to fight amd kill YOU. The other necessary assumption in war is that “shit happens” sometimes, and that when it does there is collateral damage and yes, unfortunately, civilians can be killed.

There has NEVER been a war where this has not occurred. In spite of the sguawking of the UN’s Kofi Onan Annan, and the MSM, Israel shows every sign pf planning to continue to get the job done.

Good for them – they’re doing the Lord’s work here, and if they can successfully de-fang His-ball and Ham-ass, they will deserve the gratitude of the rest of the non-Islamofascist world.

If doing so offends Syria and Iran with Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad Ahmadinejad, then so be it and bring ’em on!

Chief at ARRL HQ in CT last Week

Last week the Chief travelled to the HQ of the American Radio Relay League in Newington, CT. The ARRL is the national HAM radio society, and the occasion was a workshop on applying wireless technology in the classroom – and was a very worthwhile activity.

Ironically enough, the ARRL, the amateur RADIO group, had no wi-fi! Other than that, and a run in with the TSA at Sioux Falls airport that left the Chief almost feeling like a loser in a game of strip poker, it was a good trip.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad on IRINN TV

The Chief was surprised to discover that he actually agreed with Iranian President Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad Ahmadinejad on anything, even with a few qualifiers:

“In my opinion, Lebanon is the scene of an historic test, which will determine the future of humanity. Everyone must be put to the test. Everyone.”

Sounds sort of apocalyptic. He may well be right on this!

It is inconceivable for anyone who calls himself a Muslim and who heads an Islamic state to maintain relations under the table with the regime that occupied Jerusalem.

OK – clear enough – you are either with Israel or you are with the Islamofascists. The Chief concurs.

“This is a mirror that will reveal everyone’s true essence. This is not one of those ordinary tests. Not at all. It will expose everything.

A bunch of people with no honor rule some countries in the region. People are being killed before their eyes, while they play games, giving compliments to one another.

Yep – Iran and Syria are the countries. Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad has been looking in his mirror apparently.

They think they can let time go by until this issue is forgotten, and then return to the scene. No, they are mistaken.

A good case of psychological projection here!

“They even lie to those wretched people whom they have collected from around the world and brought to the occupied lands. In fact, their leaders are having a good time around the world. After all, they are not in the battlefield. They are outside the scene. They have collected a bunch of people and put them there to serve as their shields, so they can realize their colonialist, domineering goals.”

Dang! He’s spot on for describing the Islamofascist strategies and tactics again – especially his own!

World War What?

A bit more background and comment on the proposition of the war with Islamofascism as WW-III. Worth some attention and thought.

Buckley: Bush Not A True Conservative

Conservative Godfather William F. Buckley has discovered that Prez Dubya is not really a conservative:

“I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology – with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress,” Buckley says. “And in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge.

THe Chief had this figured out during the 2000 election, and saw it confirmed with the education bloat-bill deal with Kennedy early in 1981, and many subsequent actions (the McCain-Feingold Free Speech Limitation Campaign Finance Act, the pharmaceutical industry subsidy program, and others).

Why support him at all? Remember his opposition? ’nuff said.

Death of the Marine Corps – part 1, part 2, part 3

It’s a sad day when combat Marines are brigged on suspicion of war crimes based on unsubstantiated charges and complaints generated from within the Islamofascist (enemy!) community. IMO this situation is HIGHLY unsatisfactory. Euphoric Reality has a comprehensive summary of the history and current state of the circumstances of the events that took place in Hamdaniya, Iraq and the resultant planned sacrifice of 7 Marines and 1 Sailor on the Molochian Altar of Political Correctness by a feckless chain of command that has forgotten what it means to fight a WAR.

H/T to Misha at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.

The Middle East Crisis – Local, Regional, and Global; Conventional and Nuclear

MEMRI has an instructive analysis on why there is not a close correspondance between the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the current war of Israel, notwithstanding the contrary suggestion from Iranian President and Caliph-wannabe Ahm-mad-on-a-jihad Ahmadinejad.

Tech Central Station is one of the Chief’s favorite sites. It invariably has a high concentration of thoughtful analysis of a diverse set of issues. It presents what can only be considered a “target-rich environment” for secondary commentators like bloggers.

There are so many interesting pieces on deck right now that one doesn’t know where to start, so a thumbnail type digest is in order, although the items are not (in any particular order):

Call Off the Dioxin Dogs

…the recommendations of the NAS’s National Research Council (NRC) review of the EPA’s latest draft report on dioxin could — or at least should — turn the entire cancer-rating system of the EPA (and other agencies) on its head.

Ooops! Feeding gallons of stuff to rats for years is NOT equivalent to trace exposures in the environment.

Vulgar Fractions and the Double-Effect

A clear-headed analysis of the issue of so-called proportionality as it applies to the Lebanese front of WW-IV.

Lead-Free Zeppelin

The moves against removal of lead from solder: NOT a good idea by any means!

How Do You Stop Rockets From a Hijacked State?

Back to Lebanon again (and again…). Austin Bay takes the issue of Hezbollah in Lebanon to its unmitigated logical conclusions:

Israel says disarming Hezbollah is one of its objectives. But to truly achieve that goal — to stop the rockets, in any permanent way — means ending Iran’s and Syria’s ability to hijack Lebanese neighborhoods. And that means holding Iran and Syria responsible for hijacking Lebanon and supporting Hezbollah’s rain of rocket terror. Holding Iran and Syria responsible may well mean taking the war to Tehran and Damascus.

Modern Stone-Age Family?

IT seems that some moonbat group calling itself the new economics foundation or nef (sic) has developed something called the “Happy Planet Index” which purports to rate the relative happiness of the inhabitants of the various nations of the world.

Unfortunately we in the United States are cursed to live in the 150th rated country. To be happy we should move to someplace like Cuba in 6th place, Vietnam 12th, Bhutan 13th and Sri Lanka 15th. With proper promotion, perhaps this could solve the US’s illegal immigration problem. The poor Latinos/Latinas obviously don’t know what they are losing by coming up norte.

Not ready to move to Cuba yet? Neither is the Chief. He’ll just keep toughing it out in the USA.

The GOP: Drinking Itself Sober

PART of what’s wrong with the national GOP these days:

The Three Deadly Republican Spending Rationalizations are:
1) “This program will be expensive, wasteful, and corrosive to the virtues that make a free society function, but it’s popular, and we need it in order to keep the Republican majority.”
2) “This program will be expensive, wasteful, and corrosive to the virtues that make a free society function, but it’s necessary in the name of national security.”
3) “This program will be expensive and wasteful, but it will actually improve the virtues that make a free society function, because it uses the power and affluence of a large central government to subsidize independence, self-discipline, decentralization, and the rejection of the welfare state mentality.”

Fortunately, there are some solutions offered also:

For these and my other political sins, Father, I ask for the voters’ mercy. What’s that? My penance is to abolish earmarking and to make the abolition of wasteful spending an immediate legislative priority? You want me to renew the push for the elimination of superfluous federal departments in order to devolve real power to the states? And you want me to take up the fight yet again for private Social Security investment funds in lieu of compulsory participation in the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme? You actually want me to act like small government is a moral good unto itself, and not just a means to the end of a strong economy?

Thune advises distance from Bush agenda

Freshman Sen. John Thune, the Republican hero two years ago for ousting the Senate Democratic leader, said Wednesday that if he were running this year, he would distance himself from President Bush and his agenda.

“If I were running in the state this year, you obviously don’t embrace the president and his agenda,” Thune told reporters at the National Press Club. He said the Iraq war is Bush’s biggest problem. “The first thing I’d do is acknowledge that there have been mistakes made,” he said. “Our candidates have to draw and point out differences in how they would approach and win the war in Iraq and how their opponents would. The biggest thing we have going for us on that issue is that Democrats are very divided.”

“Clearly, we are facing a headwind if you look at the national political environment,” Thune said. “The president’s numbers in most places aren’t good … these are going to be tough races to win.”

Thune said Republicans should not let Democrats make the election a referendum on the president but rather highlight their differences with Democrats on issues such as the economy and national security, which he said favor Republicans. He said GOP candidates shouldn’t be afraid to point out where they differ with the president and should localize the contests.

Tough truth for the administration.

State to check on residents’ health

The health Nazis are coming!

Washington state health officials will soon start asking detailed questions about the health of some state residents – and even give them brief physical exams.

This really creeps out the Chief. It’s not so much this admittedly limited “survey”, as the precedent that it sets.

Nasrallah speaks, vows surprises

Hizbullah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, spoke for the first Thursday since the beginning of the week, saying Hizbullah’s entire infrastructure and leadership hierarchy were still intact and functional.

Darn!

“Hizbullah has so far stood fast, absorbed the strike and has retaken the initiative and made the surprises that it had promised, and there are more surprises,” he said,…

Time will tell about this. Do they have WMD’s – maybe the ones that moved to Syria from Iraq?

…warning that a Hizbullah defeat would be “a defeat for the entire Islamic nation.”

YES! And a great thing it will be!

Lebanese Army may join forces with Hizbullah

The Lebanese Minister of Defense warned Israel Thursday that if IDF ground forces are sent into southern Lebanon, Lebanese troops will fight along with the Hizbullah against Israel.

If this happens, so much for the Lebnanese Army!

Cleric tries to join evacuation

Exiled Islamist preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed tried but failed to join the naval evacuation of British nationals from Lebanon’s capital Beirut, it was reported today.

The Sun also reported that Syrian-born Bakri has written to the British embassy in Beirut, asking to be readmitted to Britain on “humanitarian grounds”.

Bakri, who settled in Britain in 1985, was banned from reentering Britain in August last year, when then home secretary Charles Clarke ruled that his presence was “not conducive to the public good”. He headed the radical al-Muhajiroun group in London until 2004, and praised the hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001 as the “magnificent 19″.

The Chief hopes that this character is left to stew in his own juice in Lebanon. With any luck the Israelis can drop a bomb on his head.

A couple of items here:

Spanish PM in scarf scandal

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has come under criticism for posing with a Palestinian scarf on his shoulders after accusing Israel of using force “abusively” to defend itself, press reports said on Thursday.

In Spain, anti-Semitism is new leftist trend

Although many experts had foretold of the imminent disappearing of European Jews, nobody expected such a virulent explosion of anti-Semitism in Spain, not even under a Leftist government.

The first signal came on Monday, 5 December, when during a dinner with the Benarroch family, Zapatero and wife began declaiming what Vidal Quadras, member of the European Parliament, described on the radio as “a tirade of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism”. By the moment the Benarroch couple had left the table to express their regrets, Zapatero was explaining his lack of surprise about the Holocaust: according to the people present, Zapatero claimed to understand the Nazis.

I wonder how he says “Sieg Heil” in Spanish?

There’s more in this article – it’s chilling to see the “progressive” socialists of Spain slipping back towards the anti-Jewish policies of Ferdinand and Isabella who expelled the Jews by royal proclamation in 1492.

Arithmetic of Pain

The Chief often disagrees with the opinions of Alan Dershowitz, the liberal Harvard law professor who has regularly appeared as a talking head commentator on various media outlets. At the same time, he is always interesting, and at times, comes up with some observations that go far beyond the usual liberal orthodoxy into the realms of reality. This is one of those times.

There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel’s military actions in Lebanon is what is “reasonable.” The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be “proportional” to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action.

OK. There’s the issue: “proportionality”.

…misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war….The laws of war and the rules of morality must adapt to these realities. An analogy to domestic criminal law is instructive: A bank robber who takes a teller hostage and fires at police from behind his human shield is guilty of murder if they, in an effort to stop the robber from shooting, accidentally kill the hostage. The same should be true of terrorists who use civilians as shields from behind whom they fire their rockets. The terrorists must be held legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the civilians, even if the direct physical cause was an Israeli rocket aimed at those targeting Israeli citizens.

This makes a lot of sense to the Chief! If this is to be the case, where does it lead:

Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism. Israel will – and should – take every precaution to minimize civilian casualties on the other side. On July 16, Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, announced there will be new “surprises,” and the Aska Martyrs Brigade said that it had developed chemical and biological weapons that could be added to its rockets. Should Israel not be allowed to pre-empt their use?

Indeed! Score one for Dr. Dershowitz!

30-year weather forecast by Japan

Japan’s science ministry hopes to harness the power of a supercomputer called the Earth Simulator to deliver forecasts 30 years into the future.

This is just crazy. There is no way there is enough detailed data to allow this to succeed with any degree of reliability, especially to the degree that is being claimed.

Now the ministry is working on refining the simulation models, which are crucial to accurate projection.

The BEST models to date can’t get things sorted out properly pertaining to issues of global warming, cooling, or whatever. This is due to there being too many variable factors with too little validly “controlled” data. (Controlled data is data that is actually comparable, due to its being collected and processed in a way that is exactly controlled for uniformity of the collection conditions.)

The project is expected to cover the whole planet, producing forecasts for areas of the globe as small as two square miles.

This is totally insane! The Chief lives in the country in South Dakota on a “quarter” – 1/4 square mile. Having watched the weather here for years as a storm spotter – the claim that a computer in Japan is going to be able to make 30-year forecasts on that sort of scale beggars the imagination.

The only thing wierder that the scope of the claims being made by these ambitious Nipponese is the unquestioning seriousness with which it is being reported.

Gag Order

The 9th Jerkit Court of Schlemiels is at it again out in La-la Land. These judges must be on some bad acid to come up with the judicial hallucinations that pass for legal decisions out there.

Recently, in a 2-1 decision, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals handed down a decision which may provide a foundation for applying preferential treatment to freedom of speech. If allowed to stand, the decision could authorize local governments to set varying limits to free expression, depending on the race, religion, or sexual orientation of the listener.

The one consolation is that of 18 decisions from this bunch of activist loser judges, 15 have been reversed on appeal to SCOTUS. (12 reversed unanimously!) One has to hope that this is another to add to that list.

Arab Majority May Not Stay Forever Silent

Yes, world, there is a silent Arab majority that believes that seventh-century Islam is not fit for 21st-century challenges. That women do not have to look like walking black tents. That men do not have to wear beards and robes, act like lunatics, and run around blowing themselves up in order to enjoy 72 virgins in paradise. And that secular laws, not Islamic Shariah, should rule our day-to-day lives.

Maybe there is some hope yet for Islam without the Islamists.

All in all, it seems that when Israel decided to go to war against the priestly mafia of Hamas and Hezbollah, it opened a whole new chapter in the Greater Middle East discourse. And Israel is finding, to its surprise, that a vast, not-so-silent majority of Arabs agrees that enough is enough. To be sure, beneath the hostility toward Sheik Nasrallah in Sunni Muslim states lies the deep and bitter heritage of a 14-century Sunni-Shiite divide, propelled to greater heights now by fears of an ascendant Shiite “arc of menace” rising out of Iran and peddled in the Sunni world by Syria.

The sooner this is settled the better.

IAF attempts to assassinate Hizbullah leadership

The IDF obtained intelligence information late Wednesday night that Hizbullah leaders possibly including Nasrallah had taken refuge inside the bunker. A wave of aircraft immediately took to the air and dropped 23 tons of explosives on the bunker.

Whether or not the IAF got the big fish, their 23 ton TNT care package is sure to get their attention.

Iran heavily invested in North Korean missile program

This is a “teaser” intro to an article on Geostrategy-Direct.com. Unfortunately you have to pay to get the whole deal, but the kernal is still clear, and points up a relationship the Chief has previously posited.

Teheran has been financing Pyongyang’s intermediate and ICBM programs for nearly a decade, Western intelligence sources said. The funding has been part of a deal in which North Korea would share missile technology and equipment with Iran. “Anytime you hear of a North Korean success, translate that directly into an Iranian success,” an intelligence source said. “You can be sure that within a few weeks, Iran will receive briefings, training and eventually production expertise from Pyongyang.”

Like the old song says: “Every picture tells a story, don’t it.”

‘Great Men’ have grating effect on Mideast

Mark Steyn once again cuts through the crap and correctly labels the Emperor, or at least the Emperor’s Envoy Plenipotentiary as having a severe sartorial deficiency in his new wardrobe:

It’s easy to fly in a guy in a suit to hold a meeting. Half the fellows inside the Beltway have Middle East “peace plans” named after them. Bush flew in himself a year or two back to announce his “road map.” Before that it was Cheney, who flew in with the Cheney plan, which was a plan to open up a road map back to the last plan, which would get us back to “Tenet,” which would get us back to “Mitchell,” which would get us back to “Wye River,” which would get us back to “Oslo,” which would get us back to Kansas.

And none of these Great Men meeting with other Great Men gets us anywhere. Some of the Great Men can’t speak for their peoples (Mubarak) or their legislatures (Abbas). And a lot of the Great Men can’t even speak for themselves: From the late Yasser Arafat to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, they say one thing in meetings with Western emissaries and something entirely different to their compatriots. And some of the Great Men we send to negotiate aren’t all that great: the wretched Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, is, in fact, a patsy for the nuclear mullahs.

The stark reality of the situation corresponds fully to the above mentioned starkness of the attire, or lack thereof.

To reprise one of my all-time favorite Iranian negotiating positions, let’s recall the perfect distillation of what Great Man diplomacy boils down to in the Middle East, as reported in the New York Times exactly a year ago: “Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Thursday.” If we don’t let Iran go nuclear, they’ll go nuclear. Negotiate that, Chuck Hagel.

REALLY! This is a powerful cluebat, that needs to be forecefully applied to the talking heads and fuzzy cogitators that are always oh so ready to keep talking forever, whether anyone is listening or not. Steyn goes on and makes a telling point about why these negotiating mind games never seem to quite work out:

The median age in Gaza is 15.8 years old. How likely is it that any of those bespoke Palestinian “moderates” who’ve been permanent fixtures on CNN and BBC Middle East discussion panels for 30 years have any meaningful sway over a population of unemployed uneducated teenage boys raised by a death cult? Israel withdrew from Gaza and, instead of getting on with a prototypical Palestinian state, Hamas turned the territory into an Islamist camp. Israel withdrew from Lebanon entirely in 2000, yet Hezbollah is now lobbing rockets at Haifa.

Why? Because in both cases these territories are now in effect Iran’s land borders with the Zionist Entity. They’re “occupied territories” but it’s not the Jews doing the occupying. So you’ve got a choice between talking with proxies or going to the source: Tehran. And, as the unending talks with the EU have demonstrated, the ayatollahs use negotiations with the civilized world as comedy relief. They don’t get Larry King’s salutes to Red Buttons and Don Knotts on Iranian TV, so entering into talks with the French foreign minister is as near to big-time laughs as the mullahs get.

These are just some of the highlights hear. Steyn, as usual, is well worth the read. Go check him out.

Elimination of Hezbollah the ultimate goal

Israel’s military operation in Lebanon is designed to cripple Hezbollah by destroying its headquarters, weapons stockpiles and supply network, and eventually eliminating the militant group, Israeli officials and analysts said yesterday. Targeting Hezbollah’s leadership is a secondary priority for the time being, they said, although Israel would not hesitate to act if it had credible intelligence regarding the whereabouts of the militia’s leaders.

“We are trying to create a new reality that would not enable Hezbollah to operate,” one Israeli official said.

Sounds like a plan!

The United States supports that goal, even as it cautions Israel to exercise restraint in carrying it out. “The root cause of the problem is Hezbollah, and that problem needs to addressed,” President Bush said yesterday.

Hear, hear!

Saudis blame Hezbollah

Saudi Arabia is blaming Hezbollah and its supporters, Iran and Syria, for provoking the Israeli attacks on the militant group’s strongholds in Lebanon, according to a statement posted on the Saudi Embassy Web site.

Although the statement does not specifically name Hezbollah or the governments in Damascus and Tehran, the message is a clear diplomatic denunciation of the group and its state sponsors.

So much for pan-Arab unity.

IAF foils rocket transports from Syria

Although Hizbullah has suffered a harsh blow from Israeli air force strikes…Syria was continuing to smuggle arms into Lebanon to rearm the group, IDF Operations Branch Head Major General Gadi Eisenkot said during a press briefing Tuesday….the IAF managed to intercept a number of trucks transporting rockets from Syria to Hizbullah, including trucks laden with the 20mm-diameter rockets with warheads like the one that hit the Haifa train depot Monday, claiming eight lives. Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot said he would be very surprised if official elements in Syria were unaware of these transports.

Good shooting by the IAF. The Chief concurs that the Syrian government is in this up to it’s hips, and should be held accountable.

Hizbullah preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon

The old “human shield” strategy back again.

Iran’s Hizbollah says ready to attack US, Israel

NOTE: Hezbollah operates out of Iran.

Iran’s Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide. “We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year,” said Iranian Hizbollah’s spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.

We should do all we can to grant them their wish for martyrdom – the sooner, the better.

Hizballah Wants Israel to Free Child-Killer

Among the prisoners that Hezbollah want’s released it this piece of human debris:

The Arab prisoner that Hizballah wants Israel to release in exchange for two abducted Israeli soldiers, is serving multiple life sentences for killing a four-year-old girl with a rifle butt.

Samir Kuntar is one of only two or three Lebanese prisoners still held by Israel, and Hizballah said its July 12 assault is aimed at winning his freedom.

The only liberation this character should get is liberation from life.

United States to Israel: you have one more week to blast Hizbullah

The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources.

If we have a “hard” time limit on this operation, it needs to ignored at need by the Israelis. If there is such a thing, it smacks of the typical Rovian/State Dept. weenie sort of approach.

What’s to say? There’s a huge amount of coverage and commentary from a multitude of sites on-line (and off-line for that matter if you’re into paper media).

It’s really pretty simple as far as the Chief is concerned:
• Israel good, Hamas & Hezbollah bad.
• When you get attacked, defend yourself.
• If you have to fight a war, fight to win (by killing the enemy, and breaking his things).
• The axis of evil is real, and is really an axis. It may be possible to solve this problem in Beijing.

Admittedly that last one IS a bit more complicated. The terrs are getting their support from Iran and Syria. Iran gets missile technology from North Korea; and NK in turn gets components for missiles from Russia and the ChiComs.

At the very least, Syria nad Iran will need to be dealt with before this situation gets resolved. (The plot thickens.)

How would the ChiComs like it if their continued dissemination of missile tech to the middle east (and NK for that matter!) cost them full participation in their much-vaunted 2008 Olympic games? Just a thought.

Ted Nugent Quote of the Month

As the world appears to be possibly shuffling in bemusement towards a possible appointment at har Meggido, the Chief appreciated a lighter comment from the irrepresible and unashamedly conservative rocker and hunting enthusiast Ted Nugent. The original source wasn’t part of the post, but it’s definintely all Nugent in its flavor.

H/T to South Dakota Politics. Enjoy:

Ted Nugent was being interviewed by a British journalist. The journalist asked: “What do you think the last thought is in the mind of a deer before you shoot it ? Is it, `Are you my friend?` or is it `Are you the one who killed my brother?'”

Nugent replied: “Deer aren’t capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, ‘What am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away. They are very much like the French.”

Rock on!

Two border incidents with different Presidential responses:

Why The Sheriff Won’t Patrol The Border

Captain’s Quarters has a posting regarding the Mexican border which includes this report from Austin:

Trevino said the shooting appeared to have started in Tamaulipas, at a riverside ranch owned by a family from Donna. He said two brothers said they were with their father at the ranch when vehicles full of armed men drove into the ranch and opened fire on the house, killing a ranch hand and taking their father hostage. The brothers said they hid for several hours in their cornfield before swimming across the river, which, at that point, is only 30 to 40 yards wide. They called their mother from a cell phone, and she called 911.

On the other hand Mr. Prez – when Islamoterrs crossed the border from Lebanon attacked an Israeli patrol and kidnapped two soldiers, Israel essentially has gone to war with Hezbollah to attempt to recover them.

The Prezidential response was to state that Israel had acted properly to defend itself, with a caveat that excessive collateral damage should be avoided.

HEY PREZ! If it’s OK for Israel, why isn’t it OK for the US? Where’s General Blackjack Pershing when we REALLY need him? Even Woodrow Wilson (not exactly a sabre-rattler) recognized the need for a forceful response to border raids in 1916, hence the Pershing expeditionary force.