pretend you care about the dying children

* digby:

"Jesus. They don't even know how to fake it anymore. Isn't it at least smart to pretend you care about the dying children?

I guess not. These lunatics are still laboring under the false belief that the world is impressed by their macho trash talk and will capitulate just because George W. Bush says boo.
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As with their last epic failure, Vietnam, they believe their hands have been tied by a bunch of liberal generals and a pansy-ass populace who refuse to let them fight the way they need to fight. They see the Israelis as their personal Rottweilers and they want to let them off the chain.

The Israelis should ask themselves if they really want to do George W. Bush's dirty work for him. I continue to suspect they did not expect that the US would give them the green light on this (it is insane, after all) and now they have no face saving way out. America did not do its job and now things are deteriorating beyond anyone's control.

But, you know, we didn't want to waste time with a cease fire that might not last longer than nine or ten months. Hey, all those kids might as well die today as next year, right?"

* fisk :

"And across them all has spread a dark grey smoke that works its way through the entire city, the fires of oil terminals and burning buildings turning into a cocktail of sulphurous air that moves below our doors and through our windows. I smell it when I wake in the morning. Half the people of Beirut are coughing in this filth, breathing their own destruction as they contemplate their dead.
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And why? Be sure - the Israelis know what they are hitting. That's why they killed nine soldiers near Tripoli when they bombed the military radio antennas. But a logistics unit? Men whose sole job was to mend electricity lines? And then it dawns on me. Beirut is to die. It is to be starved of electricity now that the power station in Jiyeh is on fire. No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive. So those poor men had to be liquidated."

* nyt:

"Asked about the allied ambassadors’ broad criticisms, Mr. Bolton said, “What I object to as a matter of tactics is compromising with ourselves before we compromise with our opponents, and by compromising with ourselves, I mean compromising with our friends, too.”
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Asked about the allied ambassadors’ broad criticisms, Mr. Bolton said, “What I object to as a matter of tactics is compromising with ourselves before we compromise with our opponents, and by compromising with ourselves, I mean compromising with our friends, too.”"