Announcement

**MOBIUS** · August 13, 2006, 21:54

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The best info I've gotten is that this is not a show by Iran, though they have certainly benefitted from it. Hizbollah staged a small raid, much like the small raids they've been doing for years, mainly to grab a guy to use as bargining collateral to get some Hizbollah fighters back. They were clearly surprised with the ferocity of the Israel response, but have definately put up a stiff resistence and have acquitted themselves well. I highly doubt that either Iran nor Syria expected the Israeli response, and so probably weren't involved in the decision to stage the raid.

Israel made a major miscalculation, thinking these guys would be pushovers like the Palestinians. Israel has suffered a strategic defeat. The rest of the Middle East will no longer fear them.

How about this...?

Bush 'viewed war in Lebanon as a curtain-raiser for attack on Iran'
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 14 August 2006

The Bush administration was informed in advance and gave the "green light" to Israel's military strikes against Hizbollah with plans drawn up months before two Israeli soldiers were seized it has been claimed.

The US reportedly considered Israel's actions as a necessary prerequisite for a possible strike against Iran. A report by a leading investigative reporter says that earlier this summer Israeli officials visited Washington to brief the government on its plan to respond to any Hizbollah provocation and to "find out how much the US would bear".

The officials apparently started their inquiries with Vice-President Dick Cheney, knowing that if they secured his support, obtaining the backing of President Bush and Condoleezza Rice would be easier.

The report by Seymour Hersh quotes an unidentified US government consultant with close ties to the Israelis who says: "The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits. Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A former intelligence officer, also quoted, says: "We told Israel,'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office'."

Both Israeli and US officials say that the Israeli military operation against Hizbollah was triggered by the seizing of two Israeli soldiers, apparently to be bargained with for a possible prisoner swap. But Hersh's report, published in today's issue of The New Yorker, adds to evidence that Israel had been anticipating a Hizbollah provocation for some time and planning its response a response that was widely condemned for being disproportionate.

Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hizbollah militants was unfolding according to a plan finalised more than a year ago". The report said that a senior Israeli army officer had been briefing diplomats, journalists and think-tanks for more than a year about the plan and it quoted Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at [Israel's] Bar-Ilan University, who said: "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared." Last week the New Statesman magazine reported that Britain had also been informed in advance of the military preparations and that the Prime Minister had chosen not to try to stop them "because he did not want to".

This latest report is the first to tie the Israeli operation to a broader framework that includes a possible US strike against Iran.

Unidentified officials said a strike could "ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack". Shabtai Shavit, a national security adviser to the Knesset, said: "We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America's requirements, that's just part of a relationship between two friends. Hizbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time."

An anonymous Middle East expert claimed that while the State Department supported the plan because it believed it would help the Lebanese government assert control over the south, the White House was focussed on stripping Hizbollah of its missiles.

The expert added: "If there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hizbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the 'axis of evil', and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hizbollah as part of his interest in democratisation."

Last night the White House denied the allegations contained in Hersh's piece with a brief statement from the President describing it as "patently untrue". Mr Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, added: " The suggestion that the US and Israel planned and co-ordinated an attack on Hizbollah and did so as a prelude to an attack on Iran is just flat wrong."

The Bush administration was informed in advance and gave the "green light" to Israel's military strikes against Hizbollah with plans drawn up months before two Israeli soldiers were seized it has been claimed.

The US reportedly considered Israel's actions as a necessary prerequisite for a possible strike against Iran. A report by a leading investigative reporter says that earlier this summer Israeli officials visited Washington to brief the government on its plan to respond to any Hizbollah provocation and to "find out how much the US would bear".

The officials apparently started their inquiries with Vice-President Dick Cheney, knowing that if they secured his support, obtaining the backing of President Bush and Condoleezza Rice would be easier.

The report by Seymour Hersh quotes an unidentified US government consultant with close ties to the Israelis who says: "The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits. Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A former intelligence officer, also quoted, says: "We told Israel,'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office'."

Both Israeli and US officials say that the Israeli military operation against Hizbollah was triggered by the seizing of two Israeli soldiers, apparently to be bargained with for a possible prisoner swap. But Hersh's report, published in today's issue of The New Yorker, adds to evidence that Israel had been anticipating a Hizbollah provocation for some time and planning its response a response that was widely condemned for being disproportionate.

Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hizbollah militants was unfolding according to a plan finalised more than a year ago". The report said that a senior Israeli army officer had been briefing diplomats, journalists and think-tanks for more than a year about the plan and it quoted Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at [Israel's] Bar-Ilan University, who said: "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared." Last week the New Statesman magazine reported that Britain had also been informed in advance of the military preparations and that the Prime Minister had chosen not to try to stop them "because he did not want to".

This latest report is the first to tie the Israeli operation to a broader framework that includes a possible US strike against Iran.

Unidentified officials said a strike could "ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack". Shabtai Shavit, a national security adviser to the Knesset, said: "We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America's requirements, that's just part of a relationship between two friends. Hizbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time."

An anonymous Middle East expert claimed that while the State Department supported the plan because it believed it would help the Lebanese government assert control over the south, the White House was focussed on stripping Hizbollah of its missiles.

The expert added: "If there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hizbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the 'axis of evil', and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hizbollah as part of his interest in democratisation."

Last night the White House denied the allegations contained in Hersh's piece with a brief statement from the President describing it as "patently untrue". Mr Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, added: " The suggestion that the US and Israel planned and co-ordinated an attack on Hizbollah and did so as a prelude to an attack on Iran is just flat wrong".

Interesting...

So, in a few hours Israel will have LOST their most humiliating military campaign yet and for nought...

Right up until the very end hezbollah were inflicting higher and higher military casualties with each passing day, and on the last day of the 'official' conflict hezb launched a record number of rockets into Israel!

Nice one guys!

What an utter disgrace - thousands of civilians killed, almost a million made refugees and an entire country's infrastructure destroyed - for N-O-T-H-I-N-G!

If I were an Israeli civilian this morning, I would be calling for the immediate resignation of Olmert and his incompetent government for the international shame he has brought on your nation...

Funny, I remember saying I thought he was being led by his generals in a way Sharon never would due to his lack of major military experience?

P.S. I told you so!

**GePap** · August 13, 2006, 22:10

Originally posted by Oerdin

Yep. Israel wanted the new force to be under the chapter 7 rules of engagement since that would allow them to at least fire back if fired upon or if Hezbollah once again started using the UN as human shields. Instead, like the UNIFIL force which has been there since 1978, the "new" force will also be chapter 6 which means they're worthless lame ducks incapable of doing anything meaningful.

This is a huge mistake. UN forces under chapter 6 are completely useless and will only be used as a pawn of the terrorists which puts the lives of UN personnel in danger. Why send them if there is no realistic chance the UN forces can do anything benificial and that sending them is likely to cause harm to UN personnel? This is all political bull**** and the new group will be just as worthless as UNIFIL.

I don't understand this attitude. I have no doubts that once Israel stopping bombing, Hizbullah will stop the rocket attacks-just as they did during that brief halt in the Israeli bombing campaign a few weeks back. Attacks against the IDF while it is in Lebanon will probably continue, but I doubt highly that Hizbullah will conduct any attacks against international forces. And they still hold the two Israeli soldiers, so they still can trade for them in a prisoner exchange.

The question is what the Lebanese government will do about Hizbullah, whether the militia will simply be made part of the Lebanese army, or whether the Lebanese army will move in but not disarm Hizbullah (the international forces certainly won't). The second question will be if Syria and Iran continue the flow of sophisticated weapons.

**Seeker** · August 14, 2006, 09:24

"The longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office'."

This part smells like BS to me why would they base long-term policy around US elctions?? The whole thing sounds like something made for the US lefts consumption.

**Patroklos** · August 14, 2006, 10:58

I like how not a single source was mentioned.

Why is it when I do this in an English class it is called fiction, and when a journelist does it they call it news?

**kittenOFchaos** · August 14, 2006, 11:43

So, did Israel get back their dudes?

**lord of the mark** · August 14, 2006, 11:52

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I think Hizbollah is more than happy with the outcome. They don't need to tease Israel anymore. They are the heroes of the Arab world, even to the Christians and Druze and Bahai.

Just cause a lot of Lebanes Christians and Druze are down on Israel, doesnt mean theyre thrilled with Hezb. Now the arabs who are farther away, who are less concerned with the material consequence of the war and more with the restoration of "pride", like say, ordinary Egyptians, may be all enthused for Hezb. Thats good for Iran, I suppose, but doesnt do much for Hezbs political popularity in Lebanon.

Id say its too soon to say what the impact will be on Leb politics. Much depends on how its implemented.

I think we can all agree that its important to support the international force, and insist that it and the Leb forces do what necessary to enforce the new UNSC res, and UNSC res 1559.

**Lonestar** · August 14, 2006, 19:56

Originally posted by Datajack Franit

Hezbollah retreating by 20kms? Do you understand you will never have another chance to eradicate them?

Got them to move the Katushkas out of range.

**MOBIUS** · August 14, 2006, 19:56

Originally posted by kittenOFchaos
So, did Israel get back their dudes?

Nope, they lost. In fact they lost so badly they literally got their asses handed to them on a plate - total humiliation really...

Robert Fisk: Desert of trapped corpses testifies to Israel's failure
Published: 15 August 2006
They made a desert and called it peace. Srifa - or what was once the village of Srifa - is a place of pancaked homes, blasted walls, rubble, starving cats and trapped corpses. But it is also a place of victory for the Hizbollah, whose fighters walked amid the destruction yesterday with the air of conquering heroes. So who is to blame for this desert? The Shia militia which provoked this war - or the Israeli air force and army which has laid waste to southern Lebanon and killed so many of its people?

There was no doubt what the village mukhtar thought. As three Hizbollah men - one wounded in the arm, the other carrying two ammunition clips and a two-way radio - passed us amid the piles of broken concrete, Hussein Kamel el-Din yelled to them: "Hallo, heroes!" Then he turned to me. "You know why they are angry? Because God didn't give them the opportunity of dying."

You have to be down here with the Hizbollah amid this terrifying destruction - way south of the Litani river, in the territory from which Israel once vowed to expel them - to realise the nature of the past month of war and of its enormous political significance to the Middle East. Israel's mighty army has already retreated from the neighbouring village of Ghandoutiya after losing 40 men in just over 36 hours of fighting. It has not even managed to penetrate the smashed town of Khiam where the Hizbollah were celebrating yesterday afternoon. In Srifa, I stood with Hizbollah men looking at the empty roads to the south and could see all the way to Israel and the settlement of Mizgav Am on the other side of the frontier. This is not the way the war was supposed to have ended for Israel.

Far from humiliating Iran and Syria - which was the Israeli-American plan - these two supposedly pariah states have been left untouched and the Hizbollah's reputation lionised across the Arab world. The "opportunity" which President George Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, apparently saw in the Lebanon war has turned out to be an opportunity for America's enemies to show the weakness of Israel's army. Indeed, last night, scarcely any Israeli armour was to be seen inside Lebanon - just one solitary tank could be glimpsed outside Bint Jbeil and the Israelis had retreated even from the "safe" Christian town of Marjayoun. It is now clear that the 30,000-strong Israeli army reported to be racing north to the Litani river never existed. In fact, it is unlikely that there were yesterday more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers left in all of southern Lebanon, although they did become involved in two fire-fights during the morning, hours after the UN-ceasefire went into effect.

Down the coast road from Beirut, meanwhile, came a massive exodus of tens of thousands of Shia families, bedding piled on the roofs of their cars , many of them sporting Hizbollah flags and pictures of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's chairman, on their windscreens. At the massive traffic jams around the broken motorway bridges and craters which litter the landscape, the Hizbollah was even handing out yellow and green "victory" flags, along with official notices urging parents not to allow children to play with the thousands of unexploded bombs that now lie across the landscape. At least one Lebanese child was killed by unexploded ordnance and another 15 were wounded yesterday.

But to what are these people returning? Haj Ali Dakroub, a 42-year old construction manager, lost part of his home in Israel's 1996 bombardment of Srifa. Now his entire house has been flattened. "What is here that Israel should destroy all this?" he asked. "We don't deny that the resistance was in Srifa. It was here before and it will be here in the future. But in this house lived only my family. So why would Israel bomb it?"

Well, I did happen to notice what appeared to be the casing of a missile hanging from the balcony of a much-damaged house facing the rubble of Ali Dakroub's home. And a group of Hizbollah militiamen, one of them with a pistol tucked into his trousers, walked past us nonchalantly and disappeared into an orchard. Was this, perhaps, where they kept some of their rockets?

Mr Dakroub wasn't saying. "I am going to rebuild my home with my two sons," he insisted. "Israel may come back in 10 years and destroy it all over again and then I'll just rebuild it all over again. This was a Hizbollah victory. The Israelis were able to defeat all the Arab countries in six days in 1967 but here they could not defeat the resistance in a month. These resistance men would come out of the ground and shoot back. They are still here."

"Come out of the ground" is an expression I have heard several times these past four weeks and I am beginning to suspect that many of the thousands of guerrillas did indeed shelter in caves and basements and tunnels, only to emerge to fire their missiles or to use their infra-red rockets on the Israeli army once it made the mistake of sending troops into Lebanon on the ground. And does anyone believe that the Hizbollah will submit to their own disarmament by a new international force of UN and Lebanese troops once - if - it arrives? There was a symbolic moment yesterday when Lebanese soldiers already based in southern Lebanon joined Hizbollah men in Srifa to clear the rubble of a house in which the bodies of an entire family were believed buried. Lebanese Red Cross and civil defence personnel - representatives of the civil power which is supposed to claw back its sovereignty from the Hizbollah - joined in the search. The mukhtar, who so blatantly regarded the Hizbollah as heroes, is also a government representative. And at the entrance to this shattered village still stands a poster of Nasrallah and the Iranian President Ali Khamenei.

Far from driving the Hizbollah north across the Litani river, Israel has entrenched them in their Lebanese villages as never before.

They made a desert and called it peace. Srifa - or what was once the village of Srifa - is a place of pancaked homes, blasted walls, rubble, starving cats and trapped corpses. But it is also a place of victory for the Hizbollah, whose fighters walked amid the destruction yesterday with the air of conquering heroes. So who is to blame for this desert? The Shia militia which provoked this war - or the Israeli air force and army which has laid waste to southern Lebanon and killed so many of its people?

There was no doubt what the village mukhtar thought. As three Hizbollah men - one wounded in the arm, the other carrying two ammunition clips and a two-way radio - passed us amid the piles of broken concrete, Hussein Kamel el-Din yelled to them: "Hallo, heroes!" Then he turned to me. "You know why they are angry? Because God didn't give them the opportunity of dying."

You have to be down here with the Hizbollah amid this terrifying destruction - way south of the Litani river, in the territory from which Israel once vowed to expel them - to realise the nature of the past month of war and of its enormous political significance to the Middle East. Israel's mighty army has already retreated from the neighbouring village of Ghandoutiya after losing 40 men in just over 36 hours of fighting. It has not even managed to penetrate the smashed town of Khiam where the Hizbollah were celebrating yesterday afternoon. In Srifa, I stood with Hizbollah men looking at the empty roads to the south and could see all the way to Israel and the settlement of Mizgav Am on the other side of the frontier. This is not the way the war was supposed to have ended for Israel.

Far from humiliating Iran and Syria - which was the Israeli-American plan - these two supposedly pariah states have been left untouched and the Hizbollah's reputation lionised across the Arab world. The "opportunity" which President George Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, apparently saw in the Lebanon war has turned out to be an opportunity for America's enemies to show the weakness of Israel's army. Indeed, last night, scarcely any Israeli armour was to be seen inside Lebanon - just one solitary tank could be glimpsed outside Bint Jbeil and the Israelis had retreated even from the "safe" Christian town of Marjayoun. It is now clear that the 30,000-strong Israeli army reported to be racing north to the Litani river never existed. In fact, it is unlikely that there were yesterday more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers left in all of southern Lebanon, although they did become involved in two fire-fights during the morning, hours after the UN-ceasefire went into effect.

Down the coast road from Beirut, meanwhile, came a massive exodus of tens of thousands of Shia families, bedding piled on the roofs of their cars , many of them sporting Hizbollah flags and pictures of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's chairman, on their windscreens. At the massive traffic jams around the broken motorway bridges and craters which litter the landscape, the Hizbollah was even handing out yellow and green "victory" flags, along with official notices urging parents not to allow children to play with the thousands of unexploded bombs that now lie across the landscape. At least one Lebanese child was killed by unexploded ordnance and another 15 were wounded yesterday.
But to what are these people returning? Haj Ali Dakroub, a 42-year old construction manager, lost part of his home in Israel's 1996 bombardment of Srifa. Now his entire house has been flattened. "What is here that Israel should destroy all this?" he asked. "We don't deny that the resistance was in Srifa. It was here before and it will be here in the future. But in this house lived only my family. So why would Israel bomb it?"

Well, I did happen to notice what appeared to be the casing of a missile hanging from the balcony of a much-damaged house facing the rubble of Ali Dakroub's home. And a group of Hizbollah militiamen, one of them with a pistol tucked into his trousers, walked past us nonchalantly and disappeared into an orchard. Was this, perhaps, where they kept some of their rockets?

Mr Dakroub wasn't saying. "I am going to rebuild my home with my two sons," he insisted. "Israel may come back in 10 years and destroy it all over again and then I'll just rebuild it all over again. This was a Hizbollah victory. The Israelis were able to defeat all the Arab countries in six days in 1967 but here they could not defeat the resistance in a month. These resistance men would come out of the ground and shoot back. They are still here."

"Come out of the ground" is an expression I have heard several times these past four weeks and I am beginning to suspect that many of the thousands of guerrillas did indeed shelter in caves and basements and tunnels, only to emerge to fire their missiles or to use their infra-red rockets on the Israeli army once it made the mistake of sending troops into Lebanon on the ground. And does anyone believe that the Hizbollah will submit to their own disarmament by a new international force of UN and Lebanese troops once - if - it arrives? There was a symbolic moment yesterday when Lebanese soldiers already based in southern Lebanon joined Hizbollah men in Srifa to clear the rubble of a house in which the bodies of an entire family were believed buried. Lebanese Red Cross and civil defence personnel - representatives of the civil power which is supposed to claw back its sovereignty from the Hizbollah - joined in the search. The mukhtar, who so blatantly regarded the Hizbollah as heroes, is also a government representative. And at the entrance to this shattered village still stands a poster of Nasrallah and the Iranian President Ali Khamenei.

Far from driving the Hizbollah north across the Litani river, Israel has entrenched them in their Lebanese villages as never before.

I'm just waiting for the Pro Israeli posters attempts to try to spin this into an 'Israeli victory' considering not a single IDF aim was achieved...

**chequita guevara** · August 14, 2006, 20:05

One can only hope now that the neo-con influence on our government has been completely diminished. I really don't want to see us going to war with Iran.

**Lonestar** · August 14, 2006, 20:39

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
One can only hope now that the neo-con influence on our government has been completely diminished. I really don't want to see us going to war with Iran.

As a member of the Industrial-side of the Military/Industrial complex I have this to say:

I hope not.

**Seeker** · August 14, 2006, 23:37

Is there an opposite of the Nedaverse? The Mobius Dimension?

**Sikander** · August 15, 2006, 02:27

Originally posted by Seeker
Is there an opposite of the Nedaverse? The Mobius Dimension?

The Mobius Dimension

A space so dense that his head can't escape the gravity of his own ass.

**Gatekeeper** · August 15, 2006, 03:12

I've never been particularly enamored of dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers *or* left-wingers. I've been part of the "liberal/corporate-owned" media long enough to realize that, while both sides have their good ideas, they also seem to think it's their way or the highway for folks who don't agree 100 percent with them.

Moderates are a dying breed, and this world continues to pay a steep price for it.

Gatekeeper

**MOBIUS** · August 15, 2006, 05:59

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
One can only hope now that the neo-con influence on our government has been completely diminished. I really don't want to see us going to war with Iran.

I seriously doubt it if this article is any indication of the 'news' the US public gets...

America's one-eyed view of war: Stars, stripes, and the Star of David
There are two sides to every conflict - unless you rely on the US media for information about the battle in Lebanon. Viewers have been fed a diet of partisan coverage which treats Israel as the good guys and their Hizbollah enemy as the incarnation of evil. Andrew Gumbel reports from Los Angeles
Published: 15 August 2006

If these were normal times, the American view of the conflict in Lebanon might look something like the street scenes that have electrified the suburbs of Detroit for the past four weeks.

In Dearborn, home to the Ford Motor Company and also the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, up to 1000 people have turned out day after day to express their outrage at the Israeli military campaign and mourn the loss of civilian life in Lebanon. At one protest in late July, 15,000 people - almost half of the local Arab American population - showed up in a sea of Lebanese flags, along with anti-Israeli and anti-Bush slogans.

A few miles to the north, in the heavily Jewish suburb of Southfield, meanwhile, the Congregation Shaarey Zedek synagogue has played host to passionate counter-protests in which the US and Israeli national anthems are played back to back and demonstrators have asserted that it is Israel's survival, not Lebanon's, that is at stake here.

Such is the normal exercise of free speech in an open society, one might think. But these are not normal times. The Detroit protests have been tinged with paranoia and justifiable fear on both sides. Several Jewish institutions in the area, including two community centres and several synagogues, have hired private security guards in response to an incident in Seattle at the end of July, in which a mentally unstable 30-year-old Muslim walked into a Jewish Federation building and opened fire, killing one person and injuring five others.

On the Arab American side, many have expressed reluctance to stand up and be counted among the protesters for fear of being tinged by association with Hizbollah, which is on the United States' list of terrorist organisations. (As a result, the voices heard during the protests tend to be the more extreme ones.) They don't like to discuss their political views in any public forum, following the revelation a few months ago that the National Security Agency was wiretapping phone calls and e-mail exchanges as part of the Bush administration's war on terror.

They are even afraid to donate money to help the civilian victims of the war in Lebanon because of the intense scrutiny Islamic and Arab charities have been subjected to since the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration has denounced 40 charities worldwide as financiers of terrorism, and arrested and deported dozens of people associated with them. Consequently, while Jewish charities such as the United Jewish Communities are busy raising $300m to help families affected by the Katyusha rockets raining down on northern Israel, donations to the Lebanese victims have come in at no more than a trickle.

Outside Detroit and a handful of other cities with sizeable Arab American populations, it is hard to detect that there are two sides to the conflict at all. The Dearborn protests have received almost no attention nationally, and when they have it has usually been to denounce the participants as extremists and apologists for terrorism - either because they have voiced support for Hizbollah or because they have carried banners in which the Star of David at the centre of the Israeli flag has been replaced by a swastika.

The media, more generally, has left little doubt in the minds of a majority of American news consumers that the Israelis are the good guys, the aggrieved victims, while Hizbollah is an incarnation of the same evil responsible for bringing down the World Trade Centre, a heartless and faceless organisation whose destruction is so important it can justify all the damage Israel is inflicting on Lebanon and its civilians.

The point is not that this viewpoint is necessarily wrong. The point - and this is what distinguishes the US from every other Western country in its attitude to the conflict - is that it is presented as a foregone conclusion. Not only is there next to no debate, but debate itself is considered unnecessary and suspect.

The 24-hour cable news stations are the worst offenders. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilisation, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border. It is a rarity on any of the cable channels to see any Arab being tapped for expert opinion on the conflict. A startling amount of airtime, meanwhile, is given to the likes of Michael D Evans, an end-of-the-world Biblical "prophet" with no credentials in the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. He has shown up on MSNBC and Fox under the label "Middle East analyst". Fox's default analyst, on this and many other issues, has been the right-wing provocateur and best-selling author Ann Coulter, whose main credential is to have opined, days after 9/11, that what America should do to the Middle East is "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".

Often, the coverage has been hysterical and distasteful. In the days following the Israeli bombing of Qana, several pro-Israeli bloggers started spreading a hoax story that Hizbollah had engineered the event, or stage-managed it by placing dead babies in the rubble for the purpose of misleading reporters. Oliver North, the Reagan-era orchestrator of the Iran-Contra affair who is now a right-wing television and radio host, and Michelle Malkin, a sharp-tongued Bush administration cheerleader who runs her own weblog, appeared on Fox News to give credence to the hoax - before the Israeli army came forward to take responsibility and brought the matter to at least a partial close.

As the conflict has gone on, the media interpretation of it has only hardened. Essentially, the line touted by cable news hosts and their correspondents - closely adhering to the line adopted by the Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters - is that Hizbollah is part of a giant anti-Israeli and anti-American terror network that also includes Hamas, al-Qa'ida, the governments of Syria and Iran, and the insurgents in Iraq. Little effort is made to distinguish between these groups, or explain what their goals might be. The conflict is presented as a straight fight between good and evil, in which US interests and Israeli interests intersect almost completely. Anyone who suggests otherwise is likely to be pounced on and ripped to shreds.

When John Dingell, a Democratic congressman from Michigan with a large Arab American population in his constituency, gave an interview suggesting it was wrong for the US to take sides instead of pushing for an end to violence, he was quickly - and loudly - accused of being a Hizbollah apologist. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, accused him of failing to draw any moral distinction between Hizbollah and Israel. Rush Limbaugh, the popular conservative talk-show host, piled into him, as did the conservative newspaper The Washington Times. The Times was later forced to admit it had quoted Dingell out of context and reprinted his full words, including: " I condemn Hizbollah, as does everyone else, for the violence."

The hysteria has extended into the realm of domestic politics, especially since this is a congressional election year. Republican have sought to depict last week's primary defeat of the Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, one of the loudest cheerleaders for the Iraq war, as some sort of wacko extremist anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli stand that risks undermining national security. Vice-President Dick Cheney said Lieberman's defeat would encourage "al-Qa'ida types" to think they can break the will of Americans. The fact that the man who beat Lieberman, Ned Lamont, is an old-fashioned East Coast Wasp who was a registered Republican for much of his life is something Mr Cheney chose to overlook.

Part of the Republican strategy this year is to attack any media that either attacks them or has the temerity to report facts that contradict the official party line. Thus, when Reuters was forced to withdraw a photograph of Beirut under bombardment because one of its stringers had doctored the image to increase the black smoke, it was a chance to rip into the news agency over its efforts to be even-handed. In a typical riposte, Michelle Malkin denounced Reuters as "a news service that seems to have made its mark rubber-stamping pro-Hizbollah propaganda".

She was not the only one to take that view. Mainstream, even liberal, publications have echoed her line. Tim Rutten, the Los Angeles Times liberal media critic, denounced the "obscenely anti-Israeli tenor of most of the European and world press" in his most recent column.

It is not just the US media which tilts in a pro-Israeli direction. Congress, too, is remarkably unified in its support for the Israeli government, and politicians more generally understand that to criticise Israel is to risk jeopardising their future careers. When Antonio Villaraigosa, the up-and-coming Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, was first invited to comment on the Middle East crisis, he sounded a note so pro-Israeli that he was forced to apologise to local Muslim and Arab community leaders. There is far less public debate of Israeli policy in the US, in fact, than there is in Israel itself.

This is less a reflection of American Jewish opinion - which is more diverse than is suggested in the media - than it is a commentary on the power of pro-Israeli lobby groups like Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which bankrolls pro-Israeli congressional candidates. That, in turn, is frustrating to liberal Jews like Michael Lerner, a San Francisco rabbi who heads an anti-war community called Tikkun. Rabbi Lerner has tried to argue for years that it is in Israel's best interests to reach a peaceful settlement, and that demonising Arabs as terrorists is counter-productive and against Judaism.

Lerner is probably right to assert that he speaks for a large number of American Jews, only half of whom are affiliated with pro-Israeli lobbying organisations. Certainly, dinner party conversation in heavily Jewish cities like New York suggest misgivings about Israel's strategic aims, even if there is some consensus that Hizbollah cannot be allowed to strike with impunity.

Few, if any, of those misgivings have entered the US media. "There is no major figure in American political life who has been willing to raise the issue of the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people, or even talk about them as human beings," Lerner said. "The organised Jewish community has transformed the image of Judaism into a cheering squad for the Israeli government, whatever its policies are. That is just idolatry, and goes against all the warnings in the Bible about giving too much power to the king or the state."

How many years has it taken for the US public to finally wake up and realise that invading Iraq was such a DUMB idea...?

Indeed, you only have to look around this forum to realise that some still haven' woken from their stumbling stupor of gullibly swallowing everything the Bush govt tells them...