Lots of news on the Israeli front today. First the French are doing what they do best……asking for a surrender:
France sent Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to Beirut on Monday to express support for Lebanon, President Jacques Chirac's office said.
The prime minister was set to meet with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to express French support for and solidarity with the Lebanese, Chirac's office said in a statement.On Friday, President Jacques Chirac said that the IDF's actions in Lebanon were "totally disproportionate" and asked whether destroying Lebanon was not the ultimate goal. …
However, Chirac said that he believed another country – likely Syria – was behind the actions of the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. "I have the feeling, if not the conviction, that Hamas and Hezbollah wouldn't have taken the initiatives alone," Chirac said.
Totally disproportionate? Israel has been attacked over and over by Hezbollah for years and when they get their soldiers taken captive they decide they have had enough. That is not disproportionate. This is what they should of done years ago since the UN is incapable of enforcing their resolutions. Typical French attitude. As Ed Morrissey noted:
It believes that force should only be used "proportionately" in times of war, which explains why they lost to Germany in 1940 despite having a larger army.
Heh.
Then the Israeli army moved troops into the Lebanon countryside:
A government spokesman said Monday afternoon that IDF ground forces had briefly entered southern Lebanon to target Hizbullah bases along the border in order to push the terrorist group out of rocket-firing range.
Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz declared that the IDF currently had much better alternatives than to launch a major ground incursion into Lebanon.
In addition, the IDF has denied Lebanese news reports that an Israeli F-16 jet was downed near Beirut. Virtually all Lebanese news agencies were showing unclear video footage of what was claimed to be the downed jet.
But the IDF denies that any of their jets are missing…..either way it appears the Israeli's have softened up the enemy enough to start limited ground action, good news.
The most idiotic news of the day is the UN stating that they want to send a peacekeeping force to the border:
In the face of the escalating violence, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday called for an international stabilization force to go to the Mideast to help end the cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and the Israeli military.
The proposed international force would be the first step in what Annan and Blair said should be a series of actions that would stop the hostilities.
"The only way we are going to get a cessation of hostilities is the deployment of an international force to stop the bombardment of Israel and get Israel to stop its attacks on Hezbollah," Blair told reporters at a news conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the end of the Group of Eight summit.
What a joke. We saw how well Kosovo and Rwanda have turned out. They run at the first sign of a fight leaving civilians to be massacred and they have the gall to say they will make it all better…..joke I'm telling you, a sad joke.
Count on the French and the UN to make us all laugh.
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The phrase “cheese eating surrender monkeys” keeps entering my brain. It must be hard to be a major player in the world who last succeed in battle in Napoleon’s heyday. Since then, and we’re talking 1914, I think I’m correct in saying that France has never won a war without British or American help.
Hey, I was at the gun store the other day and they had a great deal on some French rifles.
They’d never been fired and they’d only been dropped twice!
hardlaugh_fa