So, Israel has stepped up some troop deployment at the Lebanese border - calling up reserve units so they can eventually go into Lebanon and flush the Hezbollah units out of their tunnels and bunkers. Weird, but why do terrorists seem to dig earth so much? (No pun intended, but doesn’t Osama bin laden and his merry band of terrorist rather do the same thing?) Hezbollah militants keep firing rockets at the northern Israeli city of Haifa, numbering 11 today; I guess your options are limited when you only have small rockets to fire. Stands to reason you’re just going to keep targeting the same places, although they did manage to hit towns near the Sea of Galilee.
Condoleeza Rice, our current Secretary of State and NFL commissioner-in-training, will be en route to the Middle East for talks next week. (Side note: how being Secretary of State lends experience to being an NFL commissioner, which she has professed she wants to be, is some food for thought - but I digress.) The UN, France (ugh) and the Red Cross are demanding that Israel stand aside or allow humanitarian aid to Lebanon’s people. Apparently the Israelis intend to allow the French to do that, and specific note has been made by the UN that Beirut only has about a couple days of fuel left. Meanwhile, an increasing number of Beirut’s cabin-fevered citizens are starting to venture outdoors, and some shops have opened. Evidently, Beirut itself has become a city of refugees as many southern Lebanese are fleeing north and ending up in the city’s school, parks and hotels if they can afford them.
As far as Syria and Iran are concerned, not a peep from them and we’re entering Day 3 of media silence from the governments of those respective countries, but Iranian clerics sure are vocal.
The US expects that some 8,000 Americans will be evacuated from Lebanon by the end of this weekend. That leaves about 17,000 more, and as I suspected earlier in the week, the number of evacuees passing through Cyprus is taking a toll on the resources there.
Now, news from our sponsors.... just to lighten the plethora of Middle East news a little, perhaps focusing on Hillary Clinton’s statements about how advertisers would resort to "putting chips in kids’ brains" today might do the trick. One wonders how anyone could *possibly* think that Democrats are "misunderstood"....
Technorati Tags: Current Affairs, News, Beirut, Evacuations, Lebanon, Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria
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