Apocalypse Now?

This is my first diary...

Oh, the sound of cherry popping!!

Anyway, anybody noticing that the Middle East is all of a sudden about to burst into an apocalyptic explosion of really exciting history.  I say this with heavy heart.  I think that the preznident has done a really great job up until now with the Middle East.

Okay, that was meant to be snarkilicious.  I'm just checking the wires and it looks like that place with all that much-beloved petroleum that we all so enjoy is experiencing some problems, (this, after the fact that Israel was already missing a 19 year old kid), i.e.:

1: On Thursday, ...
"...Security officials said 120 Katyusha rockets were fired at Israel, killing two people and injuring over 100...  Israel threatened a tough response to attacks on northern communities.  Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Thursday following the rocket attack on Haifa, "We expected Hizbullah to break the rules and now we are going to break them." ."  
http://www.ynetnews.com/...

2:  Preznident Bush said ...
"Israel has the right to defend herself," while on a visit to Germany.
The European Union and Russia criticized Israel's strikes in Lebanon as a dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict.
Saudi Arabia, though, blamed "elements" inside Lebanon for the violence with Israel, in unusually frank language directed at Hizbollah and its Iranian backers.
http://reuters.myway.com/...

3:  If the Bush Administration says that there isn't an apocalypse, than there must be one coming, Condoleeza Rice was...  
"Asked if there was a danger of the area slipping into war, Rice said: "I think it doesn't help to speculate about kind of apocalyptic scenarios. What we have to do is work day by day, hour by hour. That's what we're doing, and that's what a lot of others are doing."."
 http://www.haaretz.com/...

4: According to a National Israeli paper,...
" Israel faces the danger of a third front if Syria steps in to assist Hezbollah. Strategically, Israel faces an extreme foursome: Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."  http://www.haaretz.com/...

5:  The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, among a lot of others, has also been working day by day, hour by hour and said on Thursday...
"[A]n Israeli strike on Syria would be considered an attack on the whole Islamic world that would bring a "fierce response", state television reported.". "
http://www.haaretz.com/...

6: The World, sans the U.S.A, opposes the Isreali (lets see, action...umm, reaction...umm, overreaction...umm, incursion...umm, invasion...ummm,  provocation...ummm, response to Hezbollah's audacious kidnapping of Israeli troops?...) thingy.  See everybody and his uncle, except the United States.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

So, lets take stock of what's going on here.  Hamas provoked Israel because, having won an election, Hamas found itself unable to rule.  Perhaps at the behest of Iran (the apparent winner, so far, in this phase of the GWOT), Hamas kidnapped an Israeli kid in order to gain leverage in negotiating with a government that it didn't really want to negotiate with.   After Israel's harsh response to this provocation, Iran and Syria probably have decided to escalate the tension, if only to embarrass the preznident at the G8 Summit meeting.  Additionally, hiking up the price of oil on all of this uncertainty certainly helps the bottom line of Iran, as well as many friends of the preznident.

I fear for this Nation.  It has been brought low by the current administration.  I can no longer even catalogue in my mind the lies and calumny wrought by this government, so many and so often are they espoused.

"Dissent is the Highest form of Patriotism"  Tommy J.