Yourish.com

Next time you read about the “humiliation” of checkpoints to the palestinians, remember this:

IDF soldiers found 800 grams of explosive materials and three combat vests inside of a Palestinian vehicle in the course of routine inspections at a checkpoint between Nablus and Tulkarm Monday night, the army said.

Four bottles that held the explosives were destroyed by sappers in a controlled detonation, the army said. The four Palestinians traveling in the vehicle were handed over to the Israel Security Services for questioning.

Hm. “Humiliation” vs. the free transport of arms and armor to murder Israelis. That’s a tough choice, but I think I can make it.

“Humiliate” the suckers. Every time.

Reuters says that Mahmoud Abbas condemned yesterday’s suicide bombing. Here is what they call a condemnation:

“My position regarding this operation is that I do not accept it and I reject and condemn it. There was no need at all, and it does not benefit us at all. I do not think that this operation in particular will impact the calm between us and the Israelis in the Gaza Strip,” Abbas said.

Oh, look. He used the word “condemn.” He did not use the words “bombing,” “murder,” “kill,” “civilians,” “attack,” or even “Israelis.”

I call bullshit on Reuters. I also call bullshit on Israel’s worse-than-useless Defense Minister.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz told parliament on Monday that Israel would protect its citizens while doing everything to maintain the ceasefire.

So, what has Peretz done?

The defense establishment will boost operations along the border with Egypt in order to prevent further terror attacks in the area, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Tuesday.

During a tour in Eilat and a visit to the scene of Monday’s suicide bombing, Peretz said, “We will increase the activity along the fence, deal with the traffic routes, boost operations along the routes and reexamine all existing measures, in order to address the current threats and target the terror infrastructure.”

The defense minister pledged to act “decisively” against what he described as “a very serious action.”

Oooh, they must be shaking in their sandals, those terrorists.

So what’s that decisive action being taken?

Bombing a smuggling tunnel.

IAF aircraft bombed a tunnel leading from the Gaza Strip into Israel early Tuesday, in what appeared to be Israel’s first response to Monday’s suicide bombing in Eilat.

No casualties were reported.

That’ll show ‘em.

Omri writes that perhaps the IDF should stand back and let the palestinians kill each other. But I’m with the not-gonna-happen school of thought. Every time the chance for full-blown civil war, somehow, just when it’s about to become really interesting, the terrorists remember that their primary mission in life is to kill Jews. And none of the really big terrorist masterminds are being killed. It’s just the footsoldiers.

The IDF needs to go back to killing and capturing the big guns in Hamas. The only thing the terrorists understand is the strong arm.

Carnival of the Cats #149 is over at the place most people think of first when catblogging: Mind Of Mog! Mog is going through some tough times and doctor-enforced downtime, so you might want to take a moment to hit her PayPal tipjar.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Catmodel of the Week…

It’s Willie, who can be found at Sleeping Mommy.

Folks who want a shot at being a Catmodel of the Week need to be a part of the banner at Carnival of the Cats. Just send me a 4 by 3 photo of your cat and your weblog link and I’ll add your cat to the banner.

Who knows… you may just see them here as a Catmodel of the Week!

The Bush Administration has authorized our troops to kill or capture Iranians in Iraq.

The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The “catch and release” policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go.

Last summer, however, senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran’s regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing. The country’s nuclear work was advancing, U.S. allies were resisting robust sanctions against the Tehran government, and Iran was aggravating sectarian violence in Iraq.

“There were no costs for the Iranians,” said one senior administration official. “They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back.”

Now there is.

And, of course, the caveats:

The wide-ranging plan has several influential skeptics in the intelligence community, at the State Department and at the Defense Department who said that they worry it could push the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington into the center of a chaotic Iraq war.

[...] Two officials said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, though a supporter of the strategy, is concerned about the potential for errors, as well as the ramifications of a military confrontation between U.S. and Iranian troops on the Iraqi battlefield.

Once again, if the Iranians are advising our enemy on more and better ways to kill our soldiers, they are already at war with us. It boggles the mind that the world cannot recognize the proxy armies of Iran spread throughout the Middle East: Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel. Iran pays the salaries of Hamas, Hezbullah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran is responsible for the death of thousands, including hundreds of American soldiers in Lebanon (and thank you, George Bush, for finally stating that in your State of the Union speech on Tuesday).

How is it that America has lost the ability to identify her enemies? Even when Iran holds conferences calling for the end of America, we still have pundits claiming that’s just rhetoric.

I think not. Take a look at the posts I’ve written about Iran today, and read the articles linked, and you will see a disturbing pattern. Iran has been at war with Israel for decades, and is now expanding that war to include the United States. Let’s stop pretending it doesn’t exist.

Suddenly, the news media are discovering that Iran is meddling in Iraq. Who knew? (Well, we did, but then, our opinions don’t count because we believe the war in Iraq was necessary.)

When Fadhil Abbas determined that his mother’s astigmatism required surgery, they did not consider treatment in his home town of Najaf, in southern Iraq. Instead they joined a four-taxi convoy of ailing Iraqis headed to Iran.

For more than two weeks last fall, Abbas, his sister and his mother were treated to free hotels, trips to the zoo and religious shrines, and his mother’s $1,300 eye surgery at a hospital in Tehran, all courtesy of the offices of Moqtada al-Sadr, Iraq’s ascendant Shiite Muslim cleric. Abbas returned to Najaf glowing over the technical prowess of Iran.

[...] Iran has dispatched 56 diplomats to staff its embassy in Baghdad and consulates in Basra and Karbala. It maintains informal liaison offices in the Kurdish cities of Sulaymaniyah and Irbil, the latter of which was raided Jan. 11 by U.S. troops, who arrested five Iranians. Each day, Iran provides 1,000 tons of cooking gas, about 20 percent of the Iraqi demand, and 2 million liters of kerosene. Iran exports electricity through Iraq’s Diyala province and plans to quadruple the amount with new projects, Iraqi officials say.

Iran has also extended a $1 billion line of credit to Iraq to help fund reconstruction and rebuilding. When Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and his delegation of ministers visited Iran in November, he asked for more help and said Iraq “would like to expand our relations in every field with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“The economic power between the two countries, it’s enormous,” said Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Iran’s ambassador to Iraq. “We can help them in technical issues and engineering. We have a lot of experience in building roads and airports.”

Iran is looking to become a superpower in the Middle East. Iran is also working on expanding its influence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine may need to be reinstated here.

I’m starting to see echoes of the Soviet Union, but on a much, much smaller scale. However, a nuclear-armed Iran would tip the scales in its favor. As to that, North Korea is apparently helping Iran perfect its nukes.

Everywhere you turn, it seems, Iran is there, stirring up trouble. I have a bad feeling about this.

Nobel Prize Laureate Israel Aumann, the game theorist, spoke at the Herzliya conference. Here’s the part of his speech that speaks directly to Zionism, and the threat of “post-Zionism”:

… and now a few words about a third threat, which is perhaps the greatest of all. It does not come from Iran, nor from terrorist groups, nor from any external source. It comes from within us. “We have met the enemy, and it is us.” Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, your humble servant makes his living from game theory—among other things, very serious games: games of life and death and of existence and annihilation. The name of the game in game theory is motivation, incentives. Earlier, we discussed the motivations of those standing on the opposite side. Motivating ourselves is the most important thing, and the thing we are losing the most. Without motivation, we will not endure. What are we doing here? Why are we here? What are we aspiring to here? We are here because we are Jewish, we are Zionist, because of our ancient bond to this land; we aspire to realize our 2000-year-old hope of becoming a free nation in our land, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem. Without this profound understanding, we will not endure. We will simply no longer be here; Post-Zionism will finish us off. About half a year ago in Petra, Jordan, the prime minister said that we are tired. He was right. He was elected by the nation, and he expresses the sentiments of the nation. We are like a mountain-climber that gets caught in a snowstorm; the night falls, he is cold and tired, and he wants to sleep. If he falls asleep, he will freeze to death. We are in terminal danger because we are tired. I will allow myself to say a few unpopular, unfashionable words: our panicked lunging for peace is working against us. It brings us farther away from peace, and endangers our very existence. I think it was Churchill who said, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” The preparation includes material preparation, a fantastic army, effective tools of war, but above all, we are talking about spiritual preparation, about spiritual readiness to go to war.

Roadmaps, capitulation, gestures, disengagements, convergences, deportations, and so forth do not bring peace. On the contrary, they bring war, just as we saw last summer. These things send a clear signal to our “cousins” that we are tired, that we no longer have spiritual strength, that we have no time, that we are calling for a time-out. They only whet their appetites. It only encourages them to pressure us more, to demand more, and not to give up on anything. These things stem from simple theoretical considerations and also from straight thinking. But it’s not just theory: it has been proven and re-proven in the field over thousands of years. I returned today from a trip to India, where we heard about historical stories that illustrate the same. Capitulations bring about war; determination and readiness bring about peace. Ladies and gentlemen, we must tell our cousins that we are staying here. We are not moving. We have time; we have patience; we have stamina. Understand this and internalize it. And we must not simply say it to our cousins but feel it within ourselves. This and only this will bring peace. We can really live in peace and unity and cooperation with our cousins. But only after they understand and internalize that the Zionist state will be here forever.