Hezbollah Fires Long Range Rockets

Hezbollah has launched longer range rockets into Israel, hitting some 90 kilometers inside the border, the deepest penetration yet. The terrorists claim these were Khaibar 1 rockets.

Two or three rockets landed in the region of Hadera for the first time on Friday night marking the southernmost point Hizbullah has fired so far in the conflict, some 90 km south of the Lebanese border. Four locals suffered from shock.

Northern police district chief Dan Ronnen said that the fact that long-range rockets carry dozens of kilograms of explosives could account for the many reports of explosions heard in communities in the region.

Hizbullah confirmed on al-Manar that it fired a barrage of Khaibar 1 rockets at Hadera on Friday night.

The group said that it was a response to the "vicious crime" perpetrated by the IAF earlier in the day near the Lebanese-Syrian border in which 28 people were killed. (ed note: not the 56 the MSM claimed)

The Home Front Command reminded those living south of Haifa that they do not need to stay in shelters or fortified rooms but rather know where one is and take into account that a warning siren would give residents about one minute to seek shelter.

See A Blog For All for a very good roundup of the war news of the day.

See A Blog For All for a very good roundup of the war news of the day.

Huge Dividends

….those who condemn Israel have sent precisely the opposite message. They have told every terrorist group around the world that the use of human shields will pay huge dividends, thereby providing them with a powerful weapon that endangers innocents everywhere.

The concluding paragraph of a opinion piece written by Moshe Yaalon, a retired lieutenant general of the Israeli defense forces. He describes exactly what is wrong with the outcry over every action Israel takes while critics give a pass to the terrorists. You are giving a weapon to those terrorists every single time you do that. Every time.

The rules of war boil down to one central principle: the need to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Those who condemned Israel for what happened at Qana, rather than placing the blame for this unfortunate tragedy squarely on Hezbollah and its state sponsors, have rewarded those for whom this moral principle is meaningless and have condemned a state in which this principle has always guided military and political decision making.

Faced with enemies who openly call for its destruction and victimized by unremitting wars and terrorism since well before it was born, Israel has risked the lives of its citizens and its soldiers to abide by this principle in a way that is unprecedented in the history of nations.

Here is but one of countless examples: In 2003, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, our intelligence services discovered the location of a meeting of the senior leadership of Hamas, an organization pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish state and responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israel.

We knew that a one-ton bomb would destroy the three-story building and kill the Hamas leadership. But we also knew that such a bomb would endanger about 40 families who lived in the vicinity. We decided to use a smaller bomb that would destroy only the top floor of the building. As it turned out, the Hamas leaders were meeting on the ground floor. They lived to terrorize another day.

Imagine for a moment that the United States had advance knowledge of the meeting place of al-Qaeda's senior leadership. Does anyone believe that there would be a debate about what size bomb to use, much less that any leader would authorize insufficient force to do the job?

So while it is legitimate to question whether Israel should go to such extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties, it is preposterous to argue that Israel uses excessive force. Even more absurd was the shameful statement last week that Israel appeared to have deliberately targeted U.N. officials — a statement fit for a knave or a fool, not for the secretary general of the United Nations. Rather than lead the fight against those who target civilians and use them as human shields, Secretary General Kofi Annan has strengthened them.

Intent does matter in this. The advocates of moral relativism are giving a victory to the terrorists and inviting more, and worse, terror. Read it again:

….those who condemn Israel have sent precisely the opposite message. They have told every terrorist group around the world that the use of human shields will pay huge dividends, thereby providing them with a powerful weapon that endangers innocents everywhere.

The next innocent may be someone you care about. Take the weapon away from the terrorists - start denouncing them.

Big Dig Tunnel Ready To Reopen

The section of tunnel where a woman was killed in Boston's Big Dig is ready to reopen as soon as it is cleared by Federal inspectors. Repairs have been completed to the roof panels and ventilation fans have been shored up.

BOSTON - Safety repairs to a portion of the Big Dig tunnel where a motorist was killed by falling ceiling panels have been completed and the section will reopen once federal authorities give the OK, Gov. Mitt Romney said Friday.

Romney gave no estimate when federal authorities would finish their review, but said they were aware of the urgency of addressing traffic congestion that would be partially relieved once the so-called "Ramp A" is reopened, providing a key link to Logan International Airport.

However, the Republican governor told a news conference he was open to making any changes that the Federal Highway Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general may recommend to ensure the ramp is safe.

"If so, those will be made. If not, we'll be ready to roll," Romney said.

Phone messages to the Federal Highway Administration and Department of Transportation's inspector general were not immediately returned Friday.

Other sections of the project remain closed with no projection on when they will reopen.

What Not To Get

Got somebody in the family that's just impossible to buy gifts for? My late father-in-law was like that. We could never figure out what to get him on his birthday. One thing I'd not recommend getting someone:

Impaled.

NORTHAMPTON, Pa. - Enjoying a relaxing 54th birthday in the yard, Mike Colwell went to move the sprinkler, backing up momentarily to avoid the spray, toward a horseshoe pit with a 1-inch-thick rusty steel stake.

"My two heels hit the back wall of the pit. The next thing I know, this thing just tore through me," Colwell said.

As he fell on the stake, it pierced into his buttocks, fractured his pelvis, and came within a millimeter of his iliac artery, which carries blood to the body's lower extremities.

"I just felt something tearing right through my leg for 5 or 6 inches. I don't know how else to describe it. I just knew I had to concentrate on staying awake and not pull myself off the stake," he said.

Colwell yelled, and his wife, Linda, and daughter, Ashley, a nurse, came running. "I saw that he was impaled on this stake and bleeding. I just got on the phone and called 911," Ashley said.

Police and paramedics sawed at the stake while Colwell's son, Chris, 26, gripped it so it wouldn't cause more damage. An ambulance rushed Colwell to a waiting helicopter, which flew him to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

Colwell has had three surgeries so far and is hoping to be released from the hospital this weekend. That is one lucky guy.

Iran Pushes Harder

Jane's Defense Weekly reports that Iran will begin supplying Hezbollah with air defense missile systems. This is a rather obvious escalation of hostilities toward Israel.

In a meeting, held late last month, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia called on Tehran to "accelerate and extend the scope of weapon shipments from Iran to the Islamic Resistance, particularly advanced missiles against ground and air targets."

Hezbollah's representatives pressed for "an array of more advanced weaponry, including more advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems," Jane's said Friday.

"Iranian authorities conveyed a message to the Hezbollah leadership that their forces would continue to receive a steady supply of weapons systems,"it added.

"The details coming from the meeting reveal that they are about ensuring a constant supply of weapons to support Islamic Resistance operations against Israel," said Robin Hughes, the magazine's Middle East Editor.

"We are told the latest meeting was attended by senior representatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Qods force which is responsible for training and logistic support for Iranian-backed insurgent groups."

According to Jane's Defence Weekly, Iranian authorities have supplied the militia with Iranian-made Noor radar-guided anti-ship cruise missiles and Chinese QW-1 (Vanguard) shoulder-launched SAMs.

Next, the Iranians will begin supplying Russian systems. Does anyone still not realize that Iran is behind all the unrest in the Middle East right now?

Associations

Although the leftwing bloggers and the Lamont campaign would dearly love to pretend it never happened, the Hamsher 'blackface' incident is alive and well and living in the media. (I told you it had legs). Tom Maguire has an astonishingly complete roundup. Maguire reaches the same conclusion as I did Lamont really would have to throw Hamsher under the bus and return the money. As Maguire points out, both gestures are purely symbolic, but Lamont should have done so yesterday. It is probably too late for the to do any good at this point.

Politics is a game of associations. You are known by who you hang with. Hamsher is a real liability for Lamont. It is highly unlikely that any future candidates would welcome her endorsement at this point.

This incident is not over, no matter how the Lamont people want it to be.

Iran Admits Supplying Missiles

Iran has made the unusual step of admitting that they supplied long range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hezbollah. Up until now they have been denying that they had supplied the terror group - despite Iranian armory stamps on seized weapons.

A senior Iranian official admitted for the first time Friday that Tehran did indeed supply long-range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hezbollah.

Mohtashami Pur, a one-time ambassador to Lebanon who currently holds the title of secretary-general of the "Intifada conference," told an Iranian newspaper that Iran transferred the missiles to the Shi'ite militia, adding that the organization has his country's blessing to use the weapons in defense of Lebanon.

Pur's statements are thought to be unusual given that Tehran has thus far been reluctant to comment on the extent of its aid which it has extended to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah warned Thursday night in a televised broadcast that his organization would target Tel Aviv if Beirut was attacked by Israel.

"If our capital, Beirut, is attacked, we will attack your capital, Tel Aviv," Nasrallah threatened.

The Hezbollah leader issued his warning after Israel Air Force aircraft dropped leaflets over the Lebanese capital, calling on residents of three Shi'ite neighborhoods in southern Beirut to evacuate their homes.

Israeli security sources assessed that Nasrallah's threats are serious.

Israeli intelligence believes Nasrallah would like to end the war with a long range rocket attack on Tel Aviv as a PR coup. Description and picture of the Zelzal-2 is here. These rockets have been rumored to have been in the Bekaa since at least 2001.

Hezbollah Rocket Attacks

More than 200 rockets have hit Israel again today, with three people killed and 29 wounded.

Three people were killed and 29 wounded, including one critically and three seriously, as Hezbollah fired more than 200 Katyusha rockets into northern Israel on Friday afternoon.

Manal Azzam, a 27-year-old mother of two was killed in the Arab Druze village of Maghar in the Lower Galilee, near Tiberias, when a rocket hit an adjacent apartment. Her children sustained light wounds, and two Maghar residents sustained serious wounds in the strike. Azzam was laid to rest Friday at 7 P.M.

Two people were killed and several others were wounded when a rocket hit a restaurant in the Druze village of Majdal Krum.

Police en route to the scene of the damage in Majdal Krum encountered difficulty in reaching the wounded due to the swelling crowd of people nearby.

A resident of Sh'ar Yeshuv, adjacent to Kiryat Shmona, was critically wounded in a rocket strike Friday. One person sustained serious wounds when a Katyusha struck the village of Arab village of Bu'aineh, near Majdal Krum.

In Kiryat Shmona, which absorbed close to 60 rockets Friday, two people were moderately injured; one person was moderately hurt and 14 others were lightly wounded in Majdal Krum; three people were lightly wounded in Horfesh, and one person was lightly wounded in Safed.

In a barrage of rockets fired at Migdal Ha'emek, three people sustained injuries - one moderately and two suffered light wounds.

Friday's fatalities bring the number of people killed in Katyusha strikes since July 12 to 30.

According to the police, Hezbollah has fired 2,500 rockets at Israel in recent weeks.

Hezbollah is pulling out the stops right now.

Still More On Qana

Have you noticed all the outcry over Qana has disappeared from the MSM? David Warren has. Writing in Real Clear Politics, it's instructive to look at Qana's similarities to other "massacres".

My reader may be wondering what happened to all the coverage from Qana. As usual, when the "liberal" media begin to realize they've been had, the story disappears. But it is never properly corrected. We get a few days of blazing headlines, and round-the-dial TV coverage of an "Israeli massacre", laden with innuendos, and then — the fade-out. This will not do.

What happened at Qana was, almost certainly, what happened at Jenin in 2002, what happened on a beach in Gaza a few weeks ago, and what has happened on innumerable other occasions. The Israelis are instantaneously accused and convicted of a monstrous and perhaps intentional act of butchery, by people quite incurious about the facts. Their pathological hatred of "Zionism" is all the proof they need. These are people who seldom bother to shed even crocodile tears when Jews are blown to pieces by suicide bombers, or rockets are fired indiscriminately into their homes; but become tremendously excited when the news breaks that some Israeli retaliation may have gone wrong.

It took several months to clarify what had happened at Jenin — a staged massacre. It will take several months before something like the true story emerges, from Qana. By which time no one will be listening. (The ideologues will continue citing the original lies, regardless.) And yet in both these cases — Jenin and Qana — indications of fakery were visible from the beginning.

Go read it, it's worth taking the time.

Enormous Leftist Rally In London

There will be an enormous rally of the modern hard anti-war left in London Tomorrow. If you're a lefty you'll want to come attend.

Iran Racing The Clock?

The New York Sun is reporting that Iran is racing to resupply Hezbollah ahead of what appears to be a rapidly approaching ceasefire.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Iran is racing to resupply Hezbollah across the Syrian border ahead of a possible cease-fire being ironed out this week at the United Nations. Meanwhile, Israeli jets have begun a new bombardment of Beirut's suburbs and Hezbollah is threatening to launch a missile attack on Tel Aviv.

Israeli military and intelligence officials here say Iranian technicians were aboard a flight to Damascus on Monday with the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.

The Israel Defense Forces also says it has not been able to seal the border between Syria and Lebanon, making it possible to ferry men, small rockets, and other materiel to Hezbollah through the back roads and smuggling routes in the Bekaa Valley.

The Iranians this week began a double game in Lebanon best summed up by President Ahmadinejad's message to Muslim nations yesterday in Malaysia: "Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented."

This approach — of seeking both Israel's destruction and a temporary ceasefire — is evident in signals from Iran's Foreign Ministry to European countries. Mr. Mottaki met with his French counterpart Monday at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. The French are supporting an immediate cease-fire and have pledged to contribute troops to an international force for southern Lebanon.

This is a highly plausible scenario and would go a long way toward explaining why the IAF suddenly attacked the Northern bridges it has avoided up until today. The bottom line here is that Iran appears to be trying it's best to arrange a Hudna to rebuild strength to attack Israel yet again. Too bad the Europeans are remaining willfully blind to that fact.

Santeria Says….

Castro died on Monday. That's the word straight from Rigoberto Zamora, a babalawo of Yoruba - also known as Santeria. This is after a fact-finding ritual involving the sacrifice of two black hens and a rooster. Meanwhile it's a really bad time to be a white dove in South Florida.

MIAMI (Reuters) - The white dove looks warily at shopkeeper Oscar Osorio as he pulls it from a cage and holds it in his hands.

"I don't think he trusts me," Osorio says while he gently rubs the dove's feathers and spreads its wings for a visitor to admire. "I think he knows what's coming."

The bird has reason to be nervous, because the illness of Cuban leader Fidel Castro has moved adherents of Santeria to appeal for divine help in hastening either Castro's demise or his recovery, depending on which side of the Florida Straits they live.

Santeria is the voodooish Afro-Cuban religion that uses animal sacrifice to communicate with the gods, which makes these tough times for favorite sacrificial creatures such as chickens, goats and, in this case, doves.

As many as 3 million people in Cuba and 60,000 people in Florida are believed to be involved in Santeria, according to religious experts.

Osorio said about 20 people a day are coming into his "botanica" in Miami's Little Havana section to buy birds, powders and jewelry for rituals in which they ask the gods to please finish off Castro so they can return home.

The white doves are most popular at the moment because, as traditional symbols of peace, their significance is as much political as religious.

"People want peace for Cuba," he said.

Unfortunately for the birds, which sell for $15 each, the price of peace includes their blood and feathers.

Sometimes, said Osorio, a genial man with a round belly, his customers prefer to just clean the birds and let them fly away. "Those are the lucky ones," he said.

While Osorio disagrees with the concept of asking gods to kill someone, even if it is the hated Castro, from whom he fled a year ago, he does not question his customers' motivations.

"I need the money. I need the money," he shouted.

It certainly didn't take Mr. Osorio long to embrace capitalism. Anyway, to fill in the rest of babalawo Rigoberto Zamora's fact-finding results:

After sacrificing a couple of black hens and a rooster to satisfy the hunger of the gods, he got the word from them: Castro is already dead; he died on Monday.

"We were astonished by such good news. It made us happy because politically we are against Fidel," said Zamora, who left Cuba in 1980 and lives in the Miami neighborhood known as Little Havana.

The news from the gods was not all good. It turns out that Castro's demise will be followed by three months of intense fighting before peace is restored, he said.

Meanwhile, some practitioners of Santeria on the other side of the straights are offing doves to pray for Castro's recovery. Which would be miraculous indeed if babalawo Zamora read the fact-finding correctly.

Me, I got enough trouble with tea leaves. I'll stay away from the stronger stuff. Too messy.

Tasteless News Network

CNN should reconsider it's name in the wake of this story. The cable network has hired the estranged daughter of Fidel Castro as a commentator.  Alina Fernandez may very well be a competent reporter, she apparently hosts a radio show already. But this hiring, to me, is in poor taste. Essentially hiring the man's daughter to provide color commentary on his death watch is kind of tacky. (I've never been fond of this kind of thing, by the way. Remember Billy Carter?)

Fernandez, who was 3 when Castro took power and had sporadic contact with him, left Cuba disguised as a Spanish tourist in 1993. She moved to Miami, where she is a radio host and the author of "Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba."

Her father has temporarily handed over power to his brother Raul and remained out of the public eye after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding.

Fernandez will provide commentary and expertise about Cuba as the story about her father's health, and a potential succession of power, continues.

"At this critical point in history as a Cuban, it's important for me to draw the world's attention to the situation inside Cuba, as we reflect on its future," she said. "CNN is a global network, which can reach the largest population available.

I think TNN is already taken, though. Too bad.

Off With Her Head

One day, Henry VIII was happy as could be. He was king of all he surveyed. Then Anne Boleyn arrived and things began to unravel. She was different right from the start. Then it got even more weird. One day Henry VIII woke up and found Anne had changed completely and was challenging his throne. Dressing like a male, pretending to be what she was not. Henry was quite upset, after all, he ruled the roost! A fowl plot indeed.

A transsexual hen is causing a palace revolution in Sweden.

"Henry VIII is bloody angry. The other hens are mostly just surprised but they seem to increasingly accept him or her," the owner of the henhouse, Christel Hammar-Malmgren, told the online edition of regional daily Blekinge Laens Tidning Friday.

Hammar-Malmgren woke up one morning in July to the sound of two roosters crowing, instead of just one. To her surprise, she discovered that one of the black hens, Anne Boleyn — all of the hens are named after Henry VIII's wives — had undergone a transformation.

"She had lost most of her hen feathers and had begun growing a comb and tail," she said.

The transsexual hen joined the henhouse last year and was different from the start. She was uninterested in the usual hen chores and laid bad eggs, Hammar-Malmgren said.

She insisted however that despite the change, and unlike the hen's namesake, there were no plans to end Anne Boleyn's days prematurely.

Despite the owner's protests, we expect to hear news soon that Henry has taken classic Henry VIII action.

Murtha Caught In An Outright Lie

Poor John "The Mouth That Roared" Murtha, he got caught this time. And none other than the United States Marines exposed the lie. Murtha had told The Philadelphia Inquirer that his information about Haditha had come from General Hagee, the head of the Marine Corps. One small problem. Hagee did not brief Murtha until after Murtha made his disgraceful public remarks against the Marines.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Marine Corps briefed Rep. John Murtha on the Haditha case after the vocal war critic publicly said Marines had killed innocent civilians in that Iraqi city, the Corps said on Thursday.

A group of Marines, while suspected in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians, has not been charged, and official results from the military's investigation remain outstanding. A U.S. defense official said on Wednesday, however that evidence indicates Marines deliberately shot to death unarmed civilians.

Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is being sued by one of the accused Marines for libel. He had told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Gen. Michael Hagee had given him the information on which he based his charge that Marines killed innocent civilians.

But a spokesman for the Marine Corps said Hagee briefed Murtha on May 24 about Haditha. Murtha had made comments on the case as early as May 17.

On May 17, for example, he said at a news conference, "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

A spokeswoman for Murtha was not immediately available.

Oh, man. Is Diana Irey going to have a field day with this one. And this lawsuit will be a thing of beauty if it actually catches Murtha lying under oath!

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