Israel Invades Lebanon 2006: Was It Cheney's Practice Drill for Iran?

Remember 2006, when Israeli bombers decimated the Beirut airport, along with a significant number of innocent civilians - men, women, children, the elderly - while Condi Rice played Head Cheerleader? Remember the news coverage that wept at an Israeli woman's shattered nerves and dented car, but barely managed a quick pan of the human debacle, the decimated infrastructure, the wailing mothers, the dead children, that was on the ground in Lebanon? Remember how Hezbollah brought the Mighty Israeli Military Machine of Legends Past to its knees? Remember how the Middle East saw Nasrallah as a hero conquering the oppressors who kill thousands because of two?

No wonder the U.S. was whistling Dixie and looking in the other direction... it was their idea! With friends like that.... what was Israel thinking??? And guess who was the sinister mastermind behind the carnage? Who else? The ominous Dick Cheney...well, sort of, as an enabler.

Adding to the growing list of war crimes committed by Dick Cheney is a report by Sy Hersh that Cheney actually planned the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. He also considers it "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack" on Iran. Ominous times, these...

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive.

Glad to hear someone of Sy Hersh's stature noticed!

The Bush Administration ... was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks.President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

According to Hersh, a middle east expert stated:

“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Note the pattern: YOU WILL BE A DEMOCRACY. But not until we demolish you first! It's crush and convert, the new Holy War, a right-wing "love-fest", sort of like their own Woodstock, except instead of rapes and orgies with women, they assault whole nations, especially middle eastern nations, whom they learned they can call "terrorist" and get away with murder... literally! Instead of drugs, they have Rovespeak, always the perfect way to disconnect reality and "turn on, tune out, drop the opposition off", preferably at the morgue.

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.”

And who else but Israel could do it? Not that Israel minded being the "workhorse" for Bushco's military designs, of course. Now, to be fair to ol' Cheney, the idea to bomb Lebanon was Israel's brainchild, and they actively pursued U.S. involvement. And they were also pretty cool with the idea of bombing Iran, an idea both parties cling to (along with their guns, presumably) to this very day. In spite of all evidence that both ideas are really bad news:

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”...If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”

Yes, it succeeded to unite the population - Shi'a, of course, but also Sunni, Christian, Druze, and others - against Israel, and in a sense, also the United States, whose pretend non-chalant "Infrastructure? What infrastructure? Civilians? What civilians? Invasion? what invasion?" didn't exactly win friends. Except among the Saudi royals and their ilk, and apparently among Sunni anti-Shia extremists in - who else? - Al-Qaeda. Both of them were remarkably friendly and sympathetic with the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as were their websites and spokespersons. Guess it's times like these that let you know who your real friends are.

Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

Yes, Cheney may not have come up with the idea of invading Lebanon, but he was one of its most passionate cheerleaders. Same is true of the always almost-impending invasion - and an air war against Iran IS an invasion - of Iran. Let's hope he's far, far away from the Oval Office before that debacle and its horrendous consequences could ever get off the ground.

Isn't it time to bury Cheney's crazy, security-bashing ideas and elect someone who won't "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"???

Another Sy Hersh Blockbuster: Cheney Planned Israel's Disastrous War on Lebanon

Remember 2006, when Israeli bombers decimated the Beirut airport, along with a significant number of innocent civilians - men, women, children, the elderly - while Condi Rice played Head Cheerleader? Remember the news coverage that wept at an Israeli woman's shattered nerves and dented car, but barely managed a quick pan of the human debacle, the decimated infrastructure, the wailing mothers, the dead children, that was on the ground in Lebanon? Remember how Hezbollah brought the Mighty Israeli Military Machine of Legends Past to its knees? Remember how the Middle East saw Nasrallah as a hero conquering the oppressors who kill thousands because of two?

No wonder the U.S. was whistling Dixie and looking in the other direction... it was their idea! With friends like that.... what was Israel thinking??? And guess who was the sinister mastermind behind the carnage? Who else? The ominous Dick Cheney...

Adding to the growing list of war crimes committed by Dick Cheney is a report by Sy Hersh that Cheney actually planned the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. He also considers it "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack" on Iran. Ominous times, these...

President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

According to Hersh, a middle east expert stated:

“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Note the pattern: YOU WILL BE A DEMOCRACY. But not until we demolish you first! It's crush and convert, the new Holy War, a right-wing "love-fest", sort of like their own Woodstock, except instead of rapes and orgies with women, they assault whole nations, especially middle eastern nations, whom they learned they can call "terrorist" and get away with murder... literally! Instead of drugs, they have Rovespeak, always the perfect way to disconnect reality and "turn on, tune out, drop the opposition off", preferably at the morgue.

A Bridge over the River of Blood

Bridgethought of the Day: There's nothing quite so difficult to get over as the brutalization of one's loved ones - except possibly the death of one's conscience...

Now is for me not the time to write anything, which is probably why I am doing it. But wherever I look, images haunt me. Lebanon. I must post something about Lebanon, especially Lebanon last summer. The absolute callousness expressed, to my horror, by Condoleeza Rice, when Israel began their aerial slaughter of the civilian population of Lebanon. Her attitude - orchestrated by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, fed by an insane Israeli "movement" that seems to have taken over what was once a national conscience, or at least claimed to be - her cold "see no evil, hear no evil" blindness ignoring the obvious in front of her and the entire world, poisoned the world's view of America. America was no longer humanitarian. America was in it for power, and to hell with human beings. It was obvious to the world that for America, it's all about P.R.

Once upon a time, there was diplomacy. There was this veneer of compassion. There were token words acknowledging human struggles, human rights, universal values. I even fantasized that Condi Rice was a part of that veneer. She was human, someone who understood suffering, oppression, struggle. And in whatever decision, whatever power-drunk moment, whatever oblivious self-congratulation, whatever neoconical delusion, she just turned around. Turned her back. No, it was not evil. Israel must defend itself. No, it's not genocide. Israelis are victims. They are victims of terrorism. We must fight terrorism. Right down to the last Arab woman and child. To hell with terrorists. In the name of 9-11. In the name of the Holocaust. Bomb the airport. Those are not families. They are Islamists harboring terrorists. We will save our own, and then we will begin the slaughter. God bless America.

But what she turned her back on was her conscience. And she is not alone. A lot of people in power here have turned their back the same way. They play the word "evil" like some kind of satanic accordion. We are not evil. They are evil. See no evil. Hear no evil. Terrorism is evil. But killing children has to be "balanced out" by the effete pretty-boy complaints of those long-suffering residents who can't even get a decent night's sleep from the Devil's Katyushas. Let them sleep, so their armies can decimate the civilian population of Lebanon in exchange for two Israeli soldiers. Yes, Condoleeza, the applause is deafening. How brave. How free.

We used to chide the Soviet Union for their "propaganda". Before that, it was the Nazis' "propaganda" that promoted their evil agenda. Every dictator had no news, only propaganda. Every authoritarian regime was dominated by propaganda. We always refer to "state-run media" or state-run propaganda machines. But we were always about news, about information, about the free exchange of ideas, about truth, about telling it like it is. "We report - you decide." We were always for the journalists, the reporters, those brave souls who risk their lives to see what's really going on and telling the world, secreting out precious truths under the noses of tyrants. We were never the purveyors of propaganda. We were never a "regime". We were never the ones to sit back and watch slaughter. We sent our troops to save the world.

So where were we when Israel systematically slaughtered Lebanese civilians and infrastructure? Wasn't it enough that they had just begun to pull themselves out of a long, devastating civil war? Are we seriously blaming "terrorism"? Are we that callous, that stupid, that blockheaded? We can't even recognize a nation of peaceful citizens who love their country and once managed to be the only place where democracy, three religions at war elsewhere, and a mixed but sophisticated population managed to peacefully coexist? We can't even tell the difference between them with their various groups, and a group such as al-Qaeda? We can't even tell the difference between civilians and military? What the hell are we doing?

Condi fell suddenly from intelligent statesman (statesperson) to P.R. tool. It was no longer possible to view her as her own person. She would always be contaminated by Bush, Cheney, and the agenda of this right-wing Israeli National Socialist regime. She would always be no more than a P.R. person, a gofer working for the power-brokers for the Marie Antoinette of the Middle East. But this Marie Antoinette has her cruel side, despite that oh-so-cultivated air. She does not say, oblivious, "Let them eat croissants." If the Palestinians want bread, she knows where to dump her excrement. She just builds a nice big wall so all those lovely Marie Antoinettes can enjoy their non-Holocaustian excesses far from the madding masses of that Arab trash. We are the Israelis. They are low, evil, base, Arab, goyim. They are to Israelis what Jews were to Hitler, et al. Something to be eliminated. So bring on the bulldozers. Bring in the settlers. The Master Race. Manifest Destiny. The Chosen Ones. A new kind of peace.

Peace without bridges.

Peace without conscience.

It has all the stability of an atom with two nuclei.