The Pennsylvania Progressive

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Monday, July 31, 2006

See it With your Own Eyes.

For those of you concerned with the goings on in the Middle East may I suggest that you take a trip to Yahoo's Hot Zone site.

Kevin Sites, an internationally recognized war correspondant, has been travelling the globe in collaboration with Yahoo to visit and report from every "hot zone" on the planet over the course of a year.

His reports from Lebanon are compelling. Watching CNN is one thing, seeing it up close and uneditted is something else. Kevin has 2 reports from Qana. If your familiar with the Bible you'll recognize the name. Jesus turned water to wine in Qana according to the Bible. Because of the attacks in Qana, Lebanon has refused to engage in further peace talks until a cease fire is reached. The attacks in Qana broke a roughly 48 hour cease fire.

The Israeli PM has apologized for the deaths of civilian women and children in Qana but his comments that they "were not sought out" fall on deaf ears in Lebanon. Mr. Sites shows us the grim reality of a U.N. backhoe, ripping what's left of a building down as they search for more bodies. Use of heavy equipment, he says, implies that officials believe nobody else will be found alive. From the looks of it, I dare say he may be right.

As if that wasn't bad enought the Israeli's killed a Lebanese soldier in his car outside Tyre. Again they apologized. Perhaps the Israelis should spend less time apologizing and more time paying attention to what it is they are doing.

Still our President refuses to call for a cease fire. All he talks about is the terrorists. Terrorists this and terrorists that. From the way George talks about terrorists, you'd think we all had one under our bed.

Meanwhile, the Syrian army has moved to a heightened state of readiness and reserves are reported to have been called up (well can you blame them?). Both Syria and Iran are said to have quiety entered the diplomatic effort in Beirut with Lebanese and French officials. Wisely Egyptians officials, except to call for a cease fire and calm, are staying as far out of this as they can.

As if all this weren't enough, today the U.N. Security Council has announced an edict against Iran and has given that country until the end of August to stop pursuing its nuclear ambitions (by the way George, there's only 1 'U' in Nuclear...I swear if I hear "nuc U ler" one more time I'm gonna scream.) The threat of unspecified economic sanctions hangs over Iran.

Now think about this for a moment, you're Iran. To the east is an American occupation force in Afganistan and operational black-op units in Pakistan and the US Navy is off the southern coast in the Indian Ocean. To your west is an American occupation force in what used to be Iraq supported by US Navy units in the Persian Gulf. Beyond that the Israelis are fighting your spiritual brothers and occupying the southern portion of Lebanon. Syria, also your ally, is poised to get involved with that conflict. Now comes the U.N. and to you they say, please give up your ambitions with regard to nuclear power because we think its really about nuclear weapons or we will impose economic sanctions on you. Having seen what "economic sanctions" against what used to be Iraq turned into, what do you think the Iranian response is going to be?

If I were them and I were working on a nuclear weapon I would rush my butt off to accelerate the project and I would take that research underground.

These actions are leading us down a very dangerous path. The U.S. is already being blamed for the offensive in Lebanon and we are not even involved in any direct action (at least I hope we're not). If it even looks like we are going to take action in Syria or Iran, I would think that every ally of any magnitude in the Muslim world will turn against us and we will truly have an unmanagable situation.

The fighting MUST stop. Hezbollah must stop kidnapping people and return the people they have captured safely and by stop raining missles down on Israel. Conversely, Israel must immediate stop the attack and allow the international community to put a multi-national peace keeping force in the field with the power to enforce it's mandate.

After 4,000 years or more of war, one would think we'd all be sick it by now. And we have the audacity to call ourselves "civilized".

Raven