Dispatch from Beirut:

[Rodeo]

Originally posted by fintstone
Heck, Speeder...why even bother to ask someone that is actually there?

That's precisely what the poll I cited did, it asked the people of Lebanon their views on Hezbollah. 87% now approve.

Hezbollah has become a hero throughout the Arab world, including our "allies" in Iraq. While our men and women die to secure Iraq, the Iraqis march carrying pictures of Nasrallah and wearing white shrouds (which signifies their willingness to die for this terrorist organization), and chanting "death to America and Israel."

When are the mouth breathers going to learn this is not WWII?

Killing one terrorist while making 10 more in the process is a zero sum game.

[Rodeo]

Originally posted by snowman
F lebanon and everyone in it. They deserve what they are getting and no crap about how peace loving they are will change my opinion. They started a war, they support a war and a war is what they will get. Tell your relatives to get the f out of the rat hole until they join the modern world.

Another brilliant geopolitical strategist heard from.

You and fint should get a room.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

I had the great honour of meeting several Lebanese nationals in school and in the military. All were good people, all were Muslim. They had zero love for Israel and about as much for hezbollah. I feel for what has happened to a once beautiful and thriving nation.

The West let them down after WWI (we promised a United Arabian Land in repayment for joining the fray against The Ottoman Turks) and we have continued to feed the fuel of insurrection and discontent. I don't have any answers, but I hate to see these continuing conflicts tearing up innocent lives. I do feel we were heading down the right path with the peace talks before Israel and hammas pulled themselves out of The Peach Process. Both parties are culpable IMHO!

[fastpat]

Originally posted by fintstone
Thanks Rodeo. We can now add the New England viewpoint to the rural South version. Heck, Speeder...why even bother to ask someone that is actually there?

This is behavior categorized as "denial" in the most classic sense. Guy hears something he doesn't want to believe, so he discounts it as untrue, delusional, or simply an opinion instead of hard, unvarnished fact.

Nearly all untreated addicts display it, what's your narcotic? Militarism I'd guess with a secondary addiction to neo-con Kool-Aid.

[stuartj]

Originally posted by fintstone
Then stop answering them yourself! Duh! I could get your version from Al Jazeera.

You'd be an awful lot better informed if you did.

[snowman]

If you kill ALL of them there won't be 10 to replace them will there?

[speeder]

Go back to your "hooked on phonics" lesson, troll.

[Howard Agency]

Originally posted by fintstone
Then stop answering them yourself! Duh! I could get your version from Al Jazeera.

Originally posted by stuartj
You'd be an awful lot better informed if you did.

I agree. al Jazeera is more accurate and less slanted than Pat. Try it.
al Jazeera

[lisa_spyder]

I promised myself I would stay away from these debates...however there are facts some seem to be overlooking, do not know or do not wish to know or plainly wish to ignore.

Lebanon historically is a Christian country. For over 100 years she has suffered the tribulations of war and outside influences well beyond her capabilities of control.

My great-grandmother was a Christian (Greek Orthodox). She and others of her era, along with all Christian Lebanese were tattooed; marked by the Ottomans...just like the Nazis did to the Jews and others...she wore a number on her wrist for all to see.

My grandfather (her son) lived with a Jew on one side and a Moslem on the other as neighbours in his Christian village - in PEACE. It was "the way"...that is until after WWII when the mid-east was carved up by the west (my, the English have things to answer for) with no real understanding or consideration. The all out losers were the Palestinians. They were truly displaced and thus flooded the borders mainly of Jordan (fact - Jordan for many many years had more Palestinian refugees than Jordanian nationals to support). These refugees also flowed to Lebanon...and the Lebanese for many years exploited them. They were not on equal footing with the Nationals, some say they were treated as second class citizens.

There has been unrest in this little jewel country of the middle east for decades...we were there in '68 for several months and my father (Lebanese born Christian) sensed the trouble then. 7 years later the civil war erupted and the country has not enjoyed real peace since.

Who is to blame for the mess then and the mess now? Point the finger wherever you like...you would all be a little right in my view.

Lebanon's weakness lies within - the Christians are not united, the Moslems are not united, there are factions and fractions everywhere. Syria wants her fertile land, Israel wants her water (fact - Israel altered the water course of the Litani river and stole the water years ago)...the Palestians will take what they can get from her until they reclaim their homeland. These are but small examples.

Lots of you lay blame at the feet of the Lebanese and their government. This is a country that was suffering a large international debt back in 1968 and has been decimated ever since. It is a country divided and therefore weakened. It is a crying shame....and an unsolvable problem so long as the fanatics have control. I believe Israel has a right to a homeland and to live in peace. But I also believe Palestine has a right to homeland and to live in peace. Most of all I believe than countries like Lebanon and Jordan have a right to their homelands and to be left in peace! Very sadly, I cannot see a solution and I despair for the land of my heritage.

Please, please understand the history and the culture before condemning either side so widely...redneck generalisations solve nothing and inflame everything. Innocent lives are being lost...a country is being decimated again...a region faces another era of war. A catastrophe that may not, or cannot, or will not be averted.

[Rodeo]

Lisa, thanks for sharing that with us!

[Rodeo]

Here's some of the human beings that you gleefuly endorse killing, Snowman, you pathetic troll.

After Bomb Kills Loved Ones, Life Turns Ghostly

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

TYRE, Lebanon, Aug. 7 — After a bomb hits, the remains of a life are modest.

Ghazi Samra, a fisherman, is feeling the new shape of his. Last month, his wife, one of his daughters and a granddaughter were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Since then, his life has shrunk to the size of one crooked city block. He tries to sleep in an apartment that is not his own. He wears his wife’s glasses, more out of a craving for closeness to her than as an aid to see. The shirt and shorts he is wearing are his brother’s. He has not felt able to return to his own apartment.

“I became a different person,” said Mr. Samra, sitting on a battered chair in a local gathering space at the intersection of two narrow stone streets. “I can’t talk with my children. I’m not wearing my own clothes.”

Across Lebanon and Israel, missiles, rockets and bombs have punched holes into families and, slowly, painstakingly, the survivors are trying to put themselves back together again. It is a quiet process that unfolds in the private space of people’s lives. It is full of ache and of empty places. It is a major consequence of war that often goes unnoticed, after the flash of bombs and the headlines that chronicle them fade away.

For Mr. Samra, who is 50, the healing is happening in a warren of narrow stone streets in the old section of this town. He begins his day with a short walk down a narrow alley to the place, several doorways down, where he passes the hours. He walks slowly, in leather sandals, usually smoking a cigarette. It is supposed to be an exercise in forgetting, but often it is the first few minutes of another day full of extremely painful memories.

Those memories began on the late afternoon of July 16, when his wife, a granddaughter and four of his children, afraid of a possible airstrike, sought shelter in the basement of a nearby building, as theirs lacked one. The building housed the main office for the city’s emergency workers, and the family felt sure it would be safe.

They were wrong. Around 5:30 p.m., missiles struck the building’s foundations and its top floors. Residents now say a Hezbollah official may have been living there. There was no response from the Israeli Defense Ministry to a request, submitted last week, for comment about the target.

Mr. Samra had been sitting with friends elsewhere. He raced to the building and frantically began to dig. He found his 5-year-old daughter, Sally, torn apart. Her torso and an arm lay separate from her legs. Another daughter, Noor, 8, was moving under the rubble. His granddaughter Lynn, not yet 2, had part of her face smashed. His wife, Alia Waabi, had died immediately.

Two other daughters, Zahra and Mirna, made it to safety, though Zahra was badly injured.

“This is my family,” he said, his face creased, sitting under the eaves of the stone houses. “Three of them are buried and three of them are in hospitals.”

After the adrenaline of the rescue and its aftermath fell away, Mr. Samra sank into blankness. He could not focus on anything. He had trouble remembering things. His vision seemed to blur.

He found it difficult to process what had happened. One thing that keeps him from mourning properly is that his wife and daughter will not be able to have a proper burial until the violence has died down. They were temporarily buried in an empty lot with dozens of others. They were assigned numbers. Alia is No. 35 and Sally is No. 67.

“They are numbers now,’’ he said. “There are no names anymore.”

He tried twice to return to his apartment, but he turned back both times. On Sunday, his friend opened it for a visitor. The rooms were still neatly composed, life suspended. Dishes were done. Laundry — tiny pink pants, a head scarf, a bra — was hanging on lines. But details showed something was wrong. The clothes were dusty from the pulverized concrete and soot of the explosion. A bowl of cucumbers and a pot of beans in the refrigerator were covered with mold.

As is often the case, the deaths felt arbitrary. On another day, Mr. Samra’s family might not have gone to the building at all. It was the first time they decided to hide. The timing of the missile strike could not have been worse. The family had eaten dinner early to be underground before dark.

This plunged Mr. Samra into guilt. He would often take his family to Cyprus in times of danger, throughout Lebanon’s fraught recent history, and briefly considered it in this case, but assumed Tyre would be safe.

Areas hit by bombs are often a jumble of incongruities. Bread spilled out into the road from a van that was hit by a missile in northern Tyre on Sunday morning. The area around the basement where Mr. Samra’s family was hit was a swirl of household items — a shampoo bottle, a high heel from a shoe, a shower curtain — mixed with ragged concrete and wire.

“Regret is killing me inside,” Mr. Samra said. “I should have taken them away.”

The rest of the family was having difficulties of its own. When 17-year-old Zahra awoke in her hospital bed, she did not know that her mother had been killed. Mr. Samra did not have the heart to tell her. Her face had been burned, and when she walked into the bathroom and looked into the mirror, she sobbed, said her brother Muhammad, who was with her.

Mr. Samra passed the afternoon watching the small neighborhood move around him. He has not returned to work. Muhammad has taken over visiting the hospitalized girls.

“My wife was my life,” he said, looking toward a television set up near the couches in the narrow alley.

“My heart aches.”

[hardflex]

Wow, this thread has two good informed sources to cut between the spinning, pontificating and positioning that goes on elsewhere. Thanks Speeder and Lisa.

[lisa_spyder]

Rodeo,

That is hard stuff to read...therein lies the real face of war.

I think this gentleman's family are Moslem (his son is named Mohammed). From what I understand of the Moslem faith, one must bury the dead within 24 hours according to custom and religion. I believe this may be the Jewish way too...think about the anguish on both sides on this ghastly war when families cannot bury their loved ones according to their faith. Horrible.

We still have some extended family in Lebanon; in the mountains and in Beirut. They won't leave...I don't understand it, but I am not there and therefore can't make a judgment call on their decisions. Some of these people have survived 30 years of on again off again war - I can't imagine anyone living through that.

After the last trip in '68 Dad made a decision not to return. He could see what lay ahead and wanted to remember his birth country as it was...the jewel of the middle east. So much was destroyed or damaged even before this latest outbreak. Temples and ruins of great significance. This is the land of the Phoenicians (my mum's family have traced their ancestry back and swear they are of royal Phoenician blood...mmmmm?!). It is steeped in ancient history and it's being destroyed. Sad times...

[snowman]

Rodeo, Total propaganda and bs. How about Israel? I guess they don't count. “My heart aches.” BS why did they start a war then?

[speeder]

Look, dude......, you won the assclown award. You can stop posting now. It was a landslide.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by speeder
Look, dude......, you won the assclown award. You can stop posting now. It was a landslide.

He's working on buttpuppet.

[Rodeo]

I hear he's on the short list for Assistant Secretary of State.




That's the sad part, Bush/Cheney has given voice to these imbeciles.

[snowman]

So youall can't handle the truth?

[fastpat]

Originally posted by snowman
So youall can't handle the truth?

If the truth were your arse, you wouldn't be able to find it with both hands.

[snowman]

I will take that as a NO.