The New York Times reports that today that the U.S. is “rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.”
Under the fold: the appearance of being an honest broker
From NYT’s David S. Cloud and Helene Cooper:
The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah. [Italics added.]
This paragraph contains a few interesting statements.
If we’re supplying munitions to the Israelis in the middle of a shooting war, we don’t appear to be aiding them, we are aiding them. And such actions don’t threaten to anger Arab governments, they’re a sure bet to anger Arab governments.
As to efforts on Iran’s part to resupply Hezbollah, the source of that story appears to be Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Propaganda, you think?
Did Cloud and Cooper do any double-checking on this story, or did they just echo what their sources in the administration fed them?
Let’s Take Sides and Say We Didn’t
I won’t make any judgments on whether or not we should be supporting Israel in this war, but you can’t pitch in on one side–which we have done–and pretend that you’re still neutral.
But that’s precisely the kind of Rovewellian poppycock we’re trying to pull. Condi Rice will be on her way to the region tomorrow to try to broker some kind of ceasefire. How in the world does she expect to be viewed as an honest broker when her country clearly favors one of the belligerents over the other? Maybe she’ll try to tell everybody she didn’t know about American sending Israel more bombs. That would be about as credible as anything else she can say.
Just when I think the Bush administration’s conduct of foreign policy can’t get one bit less cognizant, it proves me wrong. The best way to describe the kind of diplomacy we’re conducting right now is “negotiating into a fan,” and the blowback will smell to high heaven.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
It just makes me sicker than I already was to start the day, Jeff. I can hardly stand the news nowadays. ;o(
This kind of feces just makes my heart ache ever more so.
Thanks for all that you write. hugs..
Don’t worry. Let Bush World do what it inevitably will with all the rope it’s taking in.
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Hmmm …
Lebanon: Throw out war propagandists like the BBC, FOX, CNN etc!
The other side :: CAMERA
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Well, there’s someone who doesn’t parse words or beat around the bush(can’t get away from using the word bush apparently).
I went to bed last night hoping against hope that I would wake up to some tiny spark of good news. Instead I get hit in the face with all the headlines of the US rushing-rushing for gods sake-more bombs to Israel(but hey Iran or Syria might be helping Hizbollah-how horribly terrorist is that?)and to a transcript of Condi’s statement of finally going overseas to do what? As I’ve posted elsewhere here and at Eurotrib, Condi’s statements and answers to questions on any kind of cease-fire or diplomacy makes her sound like a blithering idiot-and what’s new for anyone in this administration. She has no freaken clue what to do or what really should be done to facilitate any kind fledging peace process in this horror show.
Oh yeah this ‘might’ anger the Arab world-as usual the news is chicken shit about factually reporting what the Arab world is truly going to think-might my ass. How else to ‘perceive’ it? How bout reporting that US bombs killing people in Lebanon may very well end up causing some terrorist attack in this country. Then again by not reporting that if something did happen we could again have the standard lie told to us that this was a completely unexpected terrorist act and what did we do to deserve this or the other standard line about ‘why do they hate us’?-cause gee whiz we’re the good guys.
If we needed any inkling how the Arab world ‘might’ perceive any of this it’s the fact that Condi isn’t welcome in any of the Arab countries and has to take her little dog/pony show to Rome instead-nice to be removed from the thick of things so to speak.
…and talk about the Middle East.
Let’s go to Alaska and talk about South America.
I’m watching White House COS Bolten talk to Russert about this. More of the same, higher and deeper.