Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Lebanon and Congress
Hezbollah fighters have resisted the Israel incursion into southern Lebanon. 8,000 Israeli troops are reportedly involved. Hezbollah has fired about 200 rockets into Israel over the past day, killing one Israeli.
Israeli forces partially destroyed the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek in the course of fighting with Hezbollah militants. It’s unclear whether the militants were using the hospital for cover or not. It is a violation of the Geneva Conventions to fire on or destroy hospitals. It is also a violation of those conventions to use hospitals for cover or to fire from that location. Ehud Olmert denied that the hospital was a hospital, saying "there are no patients there and there is no hospital, this is a base of the Hezbollah in disguise." Hezbollah agreed that there were no patients in the hospital. That doesn’t mean the building isn’t a neutral site, though. The point of the convention against striking hospitals is to ensure that injured people can receive life-saving medical treatment. Damaging a hospital (empty or not) can prevent people from accessing that treatment.
Israel and President Bush continued to insist on a peacekeeping force being in place before a cease-fire, to the consternation of Europe and the Arab League. France has refused to send peacekeepers into a war zone still active with fighting.
On the domestic front, Preznit Drinky submitted a bill to Congress that would authorize the detainment of US citizens indefinitely and without access to civilian courts. I have no further comment.
Roy Blunt, GOP majority whip in the House, said that if he remains as majority whip no global-warming legislation will pass the House. We just don’t know enough to doing anything meaningful, he lied.
I just don’t know how to describe this one. The Washington Times has followed the lead of Powerline to condemn Rep. Dingell for failure to condemn Hezbollah, which he actually did a sentence or two after the one they quoted. Unbelievable.
I have no problem with the advice in the US 101st Airborn’s battalion headquarters in Ramadi ("be polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet"). I just think that this is an excellent example of the precarious position our troops are in.
Susan Dudley is the new head of the Office of Management and Budget.
The Swift Boat smear machine is back in gear, this time targeting John Murtha. Good Lord, look at the internal discipline in the militant military veteran group. Larry Bailey, President of the Veterans for “Truth” organization, said Murtha is being targeted because in May Murtha said the investigation into Haditha would show that Marines had killed Iraqi civilians in cold blood. Bailey said those remarks were “without any due process.” Piling on in the effort to smear Marines “without any due process,” AOL News reported today that “Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians.”
I have heard Orifice getting the noose ready for Murtha for daring to report on what his contacts inside the military were telling him: that the evidence points to cold blooded murder in Haditha. Bailey said that “We decided to get back together and put together a new organization to hold John Murtha accountable for what he said.” To watch this veterans group in action is to marvel at their arbitrary vindictiveness.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 4:53 PM 
