embassile

Hezbollah leader said to be hiding in Iranian Embassy
Intelligence reports indicate the leader of Hezbollah is hiding in a foreign mission in Beirut, possibly the Iranian Embassy, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
Israeli military and intelligence forces are continuing to hunt for Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, who fled his headquarters in Beirut shortly before Israeli jets bombed the building last week.
"We think he is in an embassy," said one U.S. official with access to the intelligence reports, while Israeli intelligence speculates Sheik Nasrallah is hiding in the Iranian Embassy.
If confirmed, the reports could lead to an Israeli air strike on the embassy, possibly leading to a widening of the conflict, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Foreign embassies are sovereign territory and an attack on an embassy could be considered an act of war.

As an initial reaction, I have no problem with the IDF reducing any embassy harboring a terrorist leader to rubble, even our own. If some internationalist utopian is hiding Nasrallah in the US embassy, send a tactical team in to dispatch them both. And if he's in the Iranian embassy, flatten the whole block.
However, it might be prudent to have a few IDF snipers stationed on the buildings surrounding the Iranian embassy watching the windows. A quick shot at Nasrallah walking by an unobstructed window would be clean and less likely to lead to Iranian escalation. Not that I'm opposed to Iranian escalation. I'd just as soon have the whole region swept up into the war, make it official, and turn them all to glass. But there are practical considerations, of course.

healthy nuts

According to a New York Times article on a University of Chicago study, people are healthier than ever. Despite rampant obesity, smoking, drugs, and general bad behavior, people are living longer, and with less chronic illnesses than in any generation in human history. So the next time you hear some utopian whining about banning trans-fats, tobacco, sunbathing, wheat, or just plain fun, you can tell them to shut their unfortunately healthy mouths. Let freedom ring!

improperganda

Sometimes I need to be reminded why I no longer watch network news. Last night at my parents' house after the local news ended, they left on NBC Nightly News for a while (read: until I changed it). The first ten minutes were a summary of recent events in the current Israel-Hezbollah Front of WW3, except a large portion of it was dedicated to journalistic wailing and gnashing of teeth over the civilian casualties in Lebanon. They went the entire segment without putting this unfortunate toll in context - the context of Hezbollah storing and firing rockets at Israel from Lebanese homes and businesses. It's not Israel's fault that Lebanese homes are being destroyed and "innocent" people killed; maybe the Lebanese "civilians" shouldn't let Hezbollah fire rockets from their houses. Israel is only firing back at precise locations where rockets were fired from, so if that happens to be someone's house or business, then too fucking bad. It's Hezbollah's problem, not Israel's.
This type of context-free journalism is what disgusts me about network news and most other leftist media outlets. It leads people to conclusions about world and domestic events that are at best not the whole truth and at worst utter fabrications.

World War III

Is this really World War III, or is it World War IV? Has it even started yet, and if so, when exactly did it start?
You might say that World War III was really the Cold War in which we battled Russia on various indirect fronts around the world from Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, and other Soviet satellites. In that case, what we see now is World War IV.
Regardless which war this is, when did it start? It started in some sense with the Islamist Coup in Iran in 1979. Probably the more ovious consensus would be September 11, 2001, our generation's Pearl Harbor. At least that is when this war officially began for us; when we finally decided that we would fight back.
I'm sure some people still don't think that we're in World War III (or IV). Despite the fact that they are wrong, I will give them the benefit of the doubt that the major combat operations have not yet begun. We had the Battle of 9/11, and opened two small fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but other that prolonged anti-terrorist counter-intelligence operations, there has been very little World War II style epic ground operations. That will come if Iran and North Korea ever get directly involved other than sending weapons and money to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Well, I say bring it. Yes our military may be a bit busy at the moment, yes it will be extremely messy, but yes we will get to truly see who are allies and enemies are in the world, and we will finally deal with these problems that have been brewing for decades. Our children and grandchildren will thank us.