Michael,

It seems to me that Israel is held to a bizarre double standard. They are under constant attack from terrorist organizations that sit on their boarders. Would the U.S. sit by if a terrorist group in Tijuana launched rockets in to San Diego daily? Would the U.S. knuckle under to world pressure to prematurely stop defending itself against that group before they were neutralized? And,,, as a child growing up in Britain do you remember anyone pressuring Churchill to stop bombing Germany because innocent civilians were also dieing? Innocent German women and children died because of Hitler, not because of Churchill. Yet Israel is held to a bizarre double standard that expects them to accept an armed enemy entrenched on their boarder that is dedicated to their destruction.

Israel needs the support of the world, not its condemnation.

Stay well Michael – We need you more than ever.

Early stages of World War III ? Could be.

One of the things about war is, you never end up where you thought you would, even when you win. The USA won in Iraq, but now may wish it hadn't. Will Israel one day feel the same way about its invasion of Lebanon?

Sometimes the triggering event for a war is clear and overwhelming, like Pearl Harbor. Other times the event itself is inconsequential, like the otherwise unremarkable boiler explosion that sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor but which nonetheless triggered the Spanish-American War. Sometimes the justifying event for a war is fabricated, as we now know the alleged attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin were.

It is clear to me that Israel planned the invasion of Lebanon many months before the kidnappings that it used to justify the invasion. There are many moving parts to an invasion of that size, and all the pieces could not be put in place in the short time interval between the kidnappings and the invasion. Kidnappings similar to the ones that triggered the invasion had occurred along the border before. Most of those were resolved by an exchange of prisoners after much acrimonious debate and secret negotiations. Why then the massive Israeli response to the kidnappings at this time? We will probably never know the answer.

I suspect a link to the detrimental effect that continued war reporting from Iraq was having on the US administration's polls. With the shift of media focus from Iraq to Lebanon, USA mainstream media coverage of the continuing carnage in Iraq is down 80%. There is an election looming in the USA, and the Republicans, the ruling party, are in trouble. If the opposition party, the Democrats, win control of either or both houses, committee chairmanships and subpoena power will pass to them. Until now, the Republicans have had control of both houses, the executive branch, and the judiciary. They have been able to do pretty much what they wanted without concern about answering questions under oath. It could be that the timing of the Israeli attack, although perhaps not the objective, was a favor repaid to the current US administration that has been so supportive of Israel. If the pot in the Middle East breaks into a full boil before November, USA voters will be unlikely to award control of congress to the minority party, and Republican political objectives will have been met.

The current Israeli government, which was formed not long ago, needed to establish its war-making credibility with its own electorate, too. US and Israeli warhawks are very close to one another and in fact some served in both governments. One, Franklin, recently pled guilty to espionage charges in the USA for coordinating a little too closely with his Israeli counterparts. Israeli and American warhawks regard one another as brothers-at-arms, and they hold peaceniks in both countries in great distain.

I think it interesting that Israel's IDF is now forming up for a larger invasion designed to penetrate much deeper into Lebanon. Earlier Israeli talk of a cease fire now appears to have been just misdirection. The IDF recently carried out a commando raid tantalizingly close to the Syrian border. Syria will view that raid and the expansion of the invasion as provocative, and that could be just what Israel intends. The Israeli/USA objective may be to draw Syrian troops into Lebanon thus draw Syria into open warfare with Israel and the USA.

High USA administration officials have said, "off the record", that they consider the current Israeli/Hezbollah conflict as a US client-state, or proxy, war with Iran. The USA and Israel have made no secret of their desire to engage Iran in a war. If they are able to draw first Lebanon, then Syria, and eventually Iran, into a war, then, yes, this could very well be the start of WW III.

One wonders if the Israeli attack that produced all those dead babies, the pictures of which play over and over again on al Jazeera, was really an accident? GPS, which I assume the IDF has mastered, is accurate to less than ten feet in three dimensions. No better way to inflame Arab and Persian passions and expand the war than to kill a bunch of babies. On TV.

Indonesia suggested today that war between the West and worldwide Islam has now started in the Middle East. In spite of Muslim terrorist attacks there, Indonesia's strain of Islam is generally milder than Middle Eastern ones. But world war leaves no room for fence-sitters, and Indonesia may feel that it has to throw in with its Arab and Persian brothers against the West, which must now appear to Indonesians the aggressors against Lebanon. Israel and The USA may finally unify all the quarreling branches of Islam against a common cause. Would that make George Bush the new Saladin?

Yes , this is looking like a world war in the making more every day.