Report: U.S. rushes precision-guided bombs to Israel

NEW YORK — The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah, The New York Times revealed on Saturday, July22 .

Citing US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Times said the decision to ship the weapons quickly came after relatively little debate within the administration.

The arms shipment has not been announced publicly. The officials who described the administration's decision to rush the munitions included employees of two government agencies, one of whom described the shipment as just one example of a broad array of armaments that the United States has long provided Israel, the Times said.

The munitions are actually part of a multimillion-dollar arms-sale package approved last year which Israel is able to tap when it needs to, the officials told the paper.

But some US military officers said the request for expedited delivery was unusual and indicated that Israel has many targets it plans to hit in Lebanon.

Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel, the newspaper said, and they would not say whether the munitions were being shipped by cargo aircraft or some other means.

An Israeli army spokesman said Saturday that Israel will pursue its war on Hizbullah with more military incursions into south Lebanon, but will not unleash a full-scale invasion "for the moment."

"It will probably widen, but we are still looking at limited operations," he said. "We're not talking about massive forces going inside at this point."

Israel has been building up its forces at the border and has called up3 , 000reserves.

Thousands of Lebanese civilians have fled north fearing Israel will invade and expand an11 -day-old bombardment of Lebanon which has killed 345 people, mostly civilians.

Lebanese families packed into cars and pickup trucks and clogged roads to the north after Israeli planes dropped leaflets on Friday warning residents of south Lebanon to flee for safety beyond the Litani river, about 20 km ( 13miles) from the border.

Foreigners have also flooded out of the country. Ships and aircraft worked through the night scooping more tired and scared people from Lebanon and bringing them to Cyprus and Turkey.

"False Promise"

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will go to the Middle East on Sunday, July23 , while resisting international pressure for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hizbullah.

Some US analysts doubt Rice's prospects for stopping 10 days of fighting because of her reluctance to talk to key players — Hizbullah and its backers, Iran and Syria.

Resisting calls from the United Nations, Europe and the Arab world, she said an immediate cease-fire would produce a "false promise" that would allow Hizbullah to re-emerge in the future to attack Israel, the top US ally in the region.

"An immediate cease-fire without political conditions does not make sense," she said.

"If you simply look for a cease-fire ... we will be back here in six months again," she added. "What I won't do is go to some place and try to get a cease-fire that I know isn't going to last."

As part of a political solution, Rice said there would be a need for a "robust" international force inside Lebanon but added that the United States was still discussing with its partners what its mandate would be.

US troops were not anticipated in any expanded international peace force for Lebanon, she said.

The Bush administration faced some pressure at home to do more to try to end the violence in the Middle East as US Senate Democratic leaders called on the president to immediately appoint a special envoy to the Middle East.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a letter to Bush that they were "surprised" that Rice plans only a brief stop in the region.

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said Friday he had formally asked the Israeli and Lebanese governments a day earlier to guarantee safe passage routes by land, air and sea into and out of Lebanon.

More than500 , 000people, over a third of them children, had been touched in Lebanon by the conflict and more than 100 , 000Lebanese were now in Syria, most of whom needed assistance, Egeland told the UN Security Council.

http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2006-07/22/01.shtml

Providing weapons to attack civilians is a war crime and the Democrat-Republicans who endorsed Israel's attack on Lebanon and Gaza are by definition war criminals. Now that we have defined the twin parties of capitalism, we must turn to those who vote for them, especially those who vote Democrat and claim to be some kind of progressive, or for the workingclass, or for peace, or for the enviroment, or for gay rights and women's right to abortion, all worthy causes, and ask them why they continue to vote for these war criminals? This is where the problem is. Senator Feinstein and her gang, a worthy effort but the fact remains neither she nor her upper middle class supporters will change as they all benefit from the capitalist system that makes these war possible as they are all about maximizing profits. When people get done picketing Senator Feinstein and her gang, you will have to go to the workingclass communities and hand out leaflets describing:
(1) How much money we taxpayers are giving to Israel, namely $6 billion a year, to murder,maim and torture anyone who stands in the way of oil profits and US imperialism;
(2) How long this has been going on: 58 years
(3) What we could do with that money here at home to solve our social problems;
(4) Who supports giving this money: The Democratic and Republican parties
(5) Who opposes giving this money: The Peace & Freedom and Green Parties
(6) The definition of war crimes and who is committing them: Democrats & Republicans
The question on the leaflet must be: Do you support war criminals or are you for peace? If you are for peace, you must never vote for any Democrat or Republican at any level of office. Otherwise, life can only get worse.
So long as the capitalist politicians believe they will continue to be reelected, or they can commit election fraud, they will continue to do whatever they can to maximize the profits the capitalist class, to which many belong, including Feinstein. 70-year-old Feinstein is in fact a war profiteer and will never change on Israel, and neither will Boxer, Pelosi and all the rest of them. The problem is not these worthless capitalist politicians; it is those who routinely vote for the Democrats in every single election like robots, and receive nothing but grief in return.

Well her in San Francisco it is a warm sunny day , every body going about there Sunday like any-other Sunday , and in the mean-time our government is helping kill evey-day people , the young the old - any and every body dies at the us hands . People spend a lot of time looking good her in San Francisco , even on a day off , siting at coffee shop talking about how good they look , about small little things - nothing really - So I snaped a little bit and tured to a much of good looking people and asked what the Hezbollah is and not one person could tell me , not a one , but I need get a lot of funny looks , that was nice . So her it is . The Hezbollah - Arabic - meaning - party of god . It is a Lebanese Shia Islamist group & political party , with a military arm and a civilan arm ,founded in 1982 to fight - Isreli Defense forces & who occupied souther lobanon until the year 2000 - in short - . of course this will probably fall on deff ears and blind eyes , and that my point , And yes I do mean to generalize - When will people relize they can't just live there lives any more , when we Americans wake up , and not just protest and do nothing more but wake up - (ie) grow up , so in closeing with the collective Americans lack of action the blood of all Lebanese people is on all Americans hands not just our governments .