My question is, who needs Condi Rice? Israel (supposedly our ally, right?) is kicking ass and taking names in Lebanon and Gaza, defeating our common enemy. Did Israel send a Foreign Minister to Afghanistan 9 days into the war there to talk to the people we're fighting? What is the point of this useless excursion? It's to find a way to halt the war before its time. It's not like Israelis want to be at war; they'll call the whole thing off when they've achieved their objective and finished the mission. So why are we butting in? And why is she going to Egypt first?

Supposedly, the goal of this exercise in futility is to get the Arabs to make Syria make Hezbollah back off. Isn't that roundabout, redundant, and precisely backwards? The Arabs don't have any say, and they're probably going to make us give them things in exchange for nothing again, as is customary. I say Israel's actions have done a world more good in Lebanon than Syria ever has, and besides, Syria's ultimate puppetmaster is Iran, which is enjoying all of this immensely, and harbors no great veneration for the opinions of the Arabs. What influence do Egypt and Jordan have on Iran? Bupkis!

Our best move is to shut the fuck up, and clap for the Israelis. We are missing a very good opportunity to shut up.

The United States appears increasingly isolated in refusing to pressure Israel, its top Middle East ally, for a ceasefire in a war that has killed hundreds of civilians, mainly in Lebanon.

Unlike the United Nations and key European allies that want a ceasefire as soon as possible, the United States stresses the need for what it calls a "durable" solution to the crisis before any ceasefire can be implemented.

The reporter here wants you to know that he, she, it, or they is/are archly disapproving of the United States' strange refusal to pressure Israel to take it easy on the genocidal terrorists resistance militants. But they can't say that outright, so they use loaded language and paint their weird little mental picture to convey the message they want to get across. "Increasingly isolated"; "what it calls a "durable" solution". I just get the feeling that reporters make terrible girlfriends/wives/boyfriends/husbands, because they're passive-aggressive, infuriating little shits who corrode your very will to live while somehow contriving to seem innocent and above it all. More than anything, they're graspingly ambitious, social-climbing little asskissers who like to lie that their low trade is a "profession". They're nothing more than malicious village gossips, as they reveal so amply day after day.