Israel planned to make war on Lebanon for at least a year. Their strategy of mass bombing of civilian men, women and children and the Lebanon infrastructure and claiming they were after Hezbollah is just their justification. The captured Israeli soldiers are a convenient excuse which Israel and the U.S. use to justify this mass bombing and invasion. Any opposition to U.S.-Israeli rule in the middle east is demonised by their propaganda machines, so that they can justify further aggression.

The Bush Administration is blocking peace attempts and supporting diplomatically and militarily, Israel's aggression. It is part of a joint U.S.-Israel strategy "for a new middle east" as Codelezza Rice proclaims during her supporting visit to Israel. It is basically part of the Neocon effort to start wars in order to achieve their power objectives. They like to whitewash this by calling it "creative chaos"...."introducing democracy to the oppressed"..."building a new middle east"..and other propaganda terms that will appeal to the publics in so-called 'free and democratic' countries.

The professional war and enemy makers are much more sophisticated than in the days of the "cold war". The communists have been defeated, so we are led to believe, and the neocons newly created enemies are the Muslims. As the U.S., Israeli, and perhaps UK offensive is stepped up to include aggression against Syria and Iran, this trend will become evermore obvious, entrenched and self-fulfilling. No doubt the aggressors will begin to get more opposition or retaliation from those they attack. If this opposition is slow to materialise, the aggressors will simply increase the brutality of their assaults. The Israelis in Lebanon are an example of this strategy in action.

Any opposition to this aggression will be trumpeted as "proof" of Muslim terrorism etc, and used to justify any further aggression, no matter how extreme. The Neocon calculation is that the populations will rally round their leaders in the U.S., UK, Israel, and NATO countries and support their leaders 'just war' efforts against the 'terrorist' enemy'. An essential element of this strategy is mass media support, by endlessly repeating the lies and war propaganda.

It seems quite easy for dedicated powerful men and women (don't forget Condi Rice) to start wars, and has been ever since the birth of mankind. Wars have been the history of our species. Starting wars has never been so easy. With the neocon strategy and ambitions the whole world has become a war theatre. Bear in mind that the warmakers are highly intelligent, well trained and schooled and utterly unscrupulous. In Iraq alone, they have killed over 250,000 people and it is all based on a series of flagrant lies, distortions and blatant war propaganda. So many people are now involved and implicated that it has become like a huge growing snowball that has a seemingly unstoppable momentum until it eventually shatters. With the enormous arsenals of nuclear weapons, what shatters is our world. The Bush Administration and it's allies couldn't even contemplate such a huge exercise in deception unless they had the support of the mass media. Like many people, I'm still puzzled at the extent of this support.

Unfortunately, burying one's head in the sand and denying the obvious, is not a good solution. Time does eventually run out, as the following article indicates.

People who prefer a better future for mankind had best become active and make this concern a central part of their lives - much like football and other sports are a central part of many people's lives. Or is that asking too much?

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War on Lebanon Planned for at least a Year
The Bush Administration's Grand Strategy and the Birth Pangs of Terror

By Juan Cole, July 23, 2006

Israeli war planes hit the cities of Sidon, south Beirut and Baalbak on Saturday and Israeli ground troops fought a hard battle to take over the village of Maroun al-Ras, said to be a Hizbullah rocket-launching site. The Israeli bombing of Sidon hit a religious complex linked to Hizbullah. The BBC reports that 'The UN's Jan Egeland said half a million people needed assistance - and the number was likely to increase. One-third of the recent Lebanese casualties, he said, appeared to be children. '

Matthew Kalman reveals that Israel's wideranging assault on Lebanon has been planned in a general way for years, and a specific plan has been in the works for over a year. The "Three Week War" was shown to Washington think tanks and officials last year on powerpoint by a senior Israeli army officer:

"More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail."
The Israelis tend to launch their wars of choice in the summer, in part because they know that European and American universities will be the primary nodes of popular opposition, and the universities are out in the summer. This war has nothing to do with captured Israeli soldiers. It is a long-planned war to increase Israel's ascendency over Hizbullah and its patrons.

But since Hizbullah's short-range katyushas can only hit targets 3-4 miles away, and were mainly being fired at the occupied Shebaa Farms, why worry about it so much?

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