In case you missed
it-and I doubt it:
Olmert issues veiled threat against Syria By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 54 minutes ago
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday ignored a deadline to begin releasing Palestinian prisoners and instead issued a veiled threat against Syria, vowing to strike "those who sponsor" the militants in the Gaza Strip who seized a young Israeli soldier.
Olmert's comments signaled that a flurry of diplomacy throughout the region is still no closer to securing the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
The Palestinian militants holding Shalit angrily said they would not release any more information about him after Israel ignored their ultimatum to begin releasing hundreds of prisoners early Tuesday. But they said they would not kill the soldier, after earlier signals that he would be harmed.
Like the "official" start of many big wars, this small incident could be a tipping point. Either on purpose or by accident, I don't think this soldier is alive anymore. The Palestinians are probably crapping their pants right now, knowing Israel is willing to back up tough talk. And now the Syrians have been given their notice: if Bashar Al-Assad is smart enough to think it through, he's going to do everything in his power to avoid getting into an all out conflict that Syria will lose.
The war mongers in Israel have had enough of pretending to be willing to talk about peace and coexistance, and are eager to inflict some big doses of death and dedstruction on their enemies. Olmert is using the incident to inflame war passions. This has boiled (simmer is too weak a word) through the last seven president's efforts to reach some sort of peace accord, and none has lasted.
The Israeli military is by far the best equipped, best trained, and best led fighting force in the middle east. Jordan's King Abdullah II is smart enough to sit this one out. Egypt too. The US, Russia, China, France, all of us are standing eagerly by with arms to sell. War makes money, and the devil wants his due.
Iran though, committed to the destruction of Israel, what do you think they'll do? Who knows what the extent of their actions may be. Will they try and send fighters (men, not planes) across Iraq that will inflame the area too, drawing US troops into an open conflict with Iranian fighters in Iraqi soil? How's that for a pretense to invade Iran? They started it? If so, would the US grant Israel a safe air corridor across Iraq to Iran? Iran's nuclear ambitions will be taken care of, by proxy, for us.
The flat refusal of any involved party to consider any position but their own, combined with regional concepts of vendetta and vengance and honor, right or wrong for either side, condemn the region to massive bloodshed.
Aren't we lucky to have tens of thousands of our sons and daughters in the middle of all this?
I think we're at the front end of a lot of bloodshed. I don't pretend to know who's right or wrong here anymore, they're locked in a death struggle that defies reason. This has the potential to be bad on a scale that dwarfs our current war in Iraq to insignificance.
If this soldier is still alive, and if the militants give him back, the middle east once again could cool to a raging boil instead of total war. What a grim thing to hope for.
Slouching towards Bethlehem
W.B Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?