I’m tired of Tig getting all the publicity around here. Just because he poses for more photos than I do doesn’t mean that he gets to be the Number One Cat. Okay, so he’s the alpha, but that’s still not a one. It’s a letter, right? In a human thing?

It’s my turn, and I’m taking over the blog. Stupid Tig can’t type. But I can. I watched my mommy very carefully when she thought I was sleeping.

It’s my turn.

I’m prettier than Tig, and smarter, and much slimmer. So stop drooling over that big dope and pay some attention to me.

There’s something really wrong with the temperature being 99 F. in the shade at 4:45 p.m.

Too hot.

Even Tig thinks so. He’s spent the bulk of the day indoors, and yesterday, he took one look around outside and came back in and spent the day sleeping in my bedroom, where it is a much more reasonable temperature.

I’m going out to forage for dinner. No cooking for me tonight.

The Qana disaster is a tragedy where right or wrong doesn’t mean a lot. Innocent lives are taken, and a person cannot be but silent for some time before coming forth with his/her opinion of that human catastrophe.

But of course, some didn’t wish to remain silent, or ponder the events or consequences. The outcry in the mass media was deafening, the shrill vitriol coming from the Israel-haters who hitherto were only armed with “disproportionate response” buzzword to resort to, suddenly got themselves a fresh and shiny tragedy to abuse to their little hearts’ content.

Of course, the stammering and mumbling IAF briefing did not help. The pitiful excuses of the sort used by the IAF Chief of Staff, like the Hezbollah munitions that exploded in the building or the delayed collapse of the building (7 hours after the air strike), do not add credibility to the IDF in general and IAF in particular, nor do the idle speculations like those in the Bloggers raise questions about Kana article in JP.

The IAF must own up to the tragic reality, show empathy and humility: these children, women and elderly were killed by our bomb. Everyone, from the pilot that pressed the bomb release button to the IDF CoS, will have to live with the moral weight and personal part played in this tragedy.

It would be grossly unjust to assign sole guilt to the IDF. We cannot ignore the gross miscalculation these murderous bastards took in starting this war, as we cannot ignore the fact that they used Kafr Qana, indeed that building as a launch site for Katyushas with blatant disregard for those innocent lives. This is what a Lebanese source has to say about the real cause of the tragedy:

Knowing very well that Israel will not have the heart to bombard civil targets, militants of Hezbollah installed a rockets launching base on the roof of building in Qana and piled crippled children in the firm intention to provoke an attack by Israeli aviation and to create a new situation, using the massacre of these innocents against the negotiations initiative .

(Translation mostly by Google).

For uncounted years our military is put in a lose-lose situation perfectly expressed by the following picture:

We protect our homes but do not use our homes for protection - unlike the adversary. And the inevitable result of hostilities, where our adversary is totally indifferent to the fate of the innocents and abuses their tragic deaths for political gains in a totally brazen way, results in more and more civilian deaths. Israel’s adversaries seem to thrive in a death cult culture, where innocents can be assigned a fate of martyrdom without consent, just to provide more and more PR material for Hezbollah.

Fortunately, many people see through this bloody murderous PR ruse, employed by fanatics hiding behind this brand of Islam: Here is what a Russian journalist Dmitry Sidorov has to say about this:

More than fifty Lebanese that have died in Kafr Qana were sacrificed by Hezbulla to unite the Arab street, part of the Eropean community and, of course, the leaders of UN against Israel and to press Washington into withdrawing its support from Jerusalem.

Thank deity for sanity that will eventually prevail, I hope.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

You know, I’ve been typing my fingers to the bone keeping people up to date on the war in Lebanon, and my traffic has increased about 50%. But in the last day, I’ve seen a sharp upswing of about another 50%. Why?

Because Steve H. says he’s lusting after me. First at Moxie’s, now at his place.

Mind you, I’m not exactly complaining. A temporary upswing in traffic often brings a permanent bunch of new readers, in numbers depending on the link.

But it never fails—let another blogger mention me in the least bit sexually, and everyone runs over to see what’s the deal.

I still get hits—every day—from Outside the Beltway’s Blog Chix Pix post. Every. Single. Day. And that post is nearly three years old.

This just goes to show you: Human beings never truly advance out of the high school stage. We just pretend that we did.

The UN is trying to impose a cease-fire in Lebanon. But there’s a problem: A cease-fire needs to have bilateral agreement.

Who is going to agree to a cease-fire on the Hezbullah side?

The battle is not between Lebanon and Israel, so Lebanon’s government is unable to sign off on any agreement.

Is the UN in contact with Nasrallah? With anyone who has authority in Hezbullah?

And when has a terrorist group ever stuck to an agreement they’ve made?

What a waste of time and effort.

But I’m sure it makes the UN and the EU feel better.

Gerard Vanderleun:

To see the Bloody Shirt, as the Hezbollah in Lebanon drag their children from the rubble and parade them before the world, is to want all replaced with the Rainbow Flag immediately — no matter who must suffer, no matter how many Jews must die in that distant country where, “After all the Israelis aren’t so much Jewish as they are Zionist oppressors who, if they just gave up a little more, would be left in peace. I mean, look at that. Children are dying every minute there. Have you no compassion, sir? Have you, at long last, no compassion?”

Have I no compassion?

That was a fair question the first time it was posed to me, oh, several decades back. I think I had a lot of compassion back then. I must have had oodles. I must have been soaking in it. At least that’s what I conclude when I read the things I wrote and remember the things I did. For awhile, every cause on Earth, every injustice from Cape Horn to Belfast called upon my bottomless well of compassion. The church burnings and bombings in the South during the Civil Rights struggle. The napalmed girl on the road in Vietnam. The carnage of apartheid. And, of course, the 50 years of ceaseless exposure of their dead by the Palestinians.

The Palestinians, and by extension their rollicking sidekicks around the Muslim world, are the masters of dead-child porn. Looking at the recent releases from this sick culture is like watching a very unfunny Monty Python clip from the Holy Grail movie where the cart is pulled through the city with the chant, “Bring out your dead!”

Over 190 rockets landed in Israel today. The ones fired by Hezbullah, that is. One landed in Jenin. That would be way farther than any rocket to date. The palestinian reaction?

The Fatah member related that local residents cheered when they heard the rocket fall and saw the resulting flames. “Even if it were to fall on our heads, it wouldn’t have spoiled our joy. All of us here are praying for Hizbullah’s success and victory,” he said.

Oh, yeah, these people want peace.

The rockets killed a man in Nahariya. Shrapnel, actually. And by the way, the scumbags in Hezbullah add ball bearings to their rockets to increase the damage. Of course, you won’t hear a peep about this from the people screaming “MASSACRE!” at Israel for Qana.

Oh, this’ll work: European leaders are going to talk to Syria and Iran to stop Hezbullah. Pardon my while I laugh hysterically. How stupid can the EU get? It is in Syria and Iran’s best interests to keep this fight going, and Hezbullah supplied with weapons. Syria has been smuggling weapons to Hezbullah even as the IAF is destroying them.

BRUSSELS - European governments are reaching out to Hezbollah’s foreign backers, Iran and Syria, in an attempt to engage them in a solution to the Lebanon war by recognizing their importance for regional stability.

While the United States, Israel’s main backer, is unwilling to talk at a senior level to either country - seen as “rogue states” in Washington - European foreign ministers have no such taboo if dialogue can help extinguish fires in the Middle East.

But beyond making Syrian and Iranian leaders feel respected, it is not clear what the Europeans can offer to persuade Damascus or Tehran to lean on Hezbollah guerrillas to stop firing missiles into Israel or accept eventual disarmament.

It’s very clear to me. They can’t.

According to new intelligence obtained by the defense establishment, Syrian President Bashar Assad, alongside senior military officials, is directly involved in the attempts to smuggle weapons and rockets to Hizbullah in Lebanon.

In addition, the extent of Iran’s intimate involvement in Hizbullah attacks is also starting to emerge. According to the defense establishment, the reason Hizbullah has not fired long-range Iranian-made Fajr missiles at Israel is due to Teheran’s opposition. Israel now understands that without direct orders from the ayatollahs, Hizbullah is not allowed to use Iranian missiles in attacks against Israel.

Rockets are still falling on the southern front, also on an everyday basis. One man was hurt in Ashkelon today. Sure, Ehud, talk about more concessions now. Now’s the time, you moron. When rockets are being launched from evacuated settlements, yes indeed, talk about more concessions to the terrorists. Meryl’s prediction: When the war is over, the Olmert government falls the second it tries to withdraw from any more settlements.

And anyone thinking of a unilateral cease-fire can think again. Not gonna happen. And that operation deep into Hezbullahland?

“The objective of the covert operation was to demonstrate that we can operate deep inside Lebanon and wherever we want,” Halutz said, rejecting Lebanese reports that IDF commandos had dropped out of helicopters in Baalbek to specifically abduct senior Hizbullah member Muhammad Yazbek. “We weren’t there to obtain something specific.”

Halutz added that during the late night operation, IDF commandos had captured “loads of intelligence information” on Hizbullah. The operation, he said, was part of the IDF general plan of action against Hizbullah, which included not only ground operations in southern Lebanon, where thousands of troops and reservists were currently taking up positions in villages, but also deep incursions into Lebanon like the one Tuesday night at Baalbek, 200 kilometers from the northern Israeli border.

Here’s hoping they got Syrian and Iranian fingerprints to show to the UN. Not that it would make much of a difference, but still—evidence is good.

I’ve just realized that the news is being delivered with a bit less snark lately. I will work harder to bring back the snark. Here’s one for you:

“Does this mustache make me look like a dork?”—Syrian Dorktator Baby Assad

Create your own caption in the comments.

Michael Totten is subbing for Instapundit these days, and spreading his panic over Lebanon on that site. He pointed to three articles that say Israel is losing the war: Ralph Peters, Brett Stephens (former editor of the Jerusalem Post), and National Review. The fact that Totten now quotes Aziz Poonawalla, whom I have debated in the past (if that can be the word for it; I debated, he lied and pretended he didn’t) has made whatever credibility Totten had left go out my personal window.

The upshot of the three pieces mentioned (not including Aziz’s, I have absolutely zero respect for his opinion and won’t bother reading it) is that Israel is losing the war because she refuses to fully engage a large-scale ground invasion.

Let me once again state that I am in no way a military analyst. I simply read a lot and then give you my opinion (or not) on what I have read. Tonight, I found several articles in the Israeli press of great interest. First, this one on how long the IDF is prepared to stay in Lebanon.

While the IDF needs until the end of the week to deal Hizbullah a fatal blow, the military is prepared to remain in southern Lebanon for as long as it takes, even several months, until a multinational force takes control of the territory, IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday.

“The IDF knows how to operate for as long as it takes even if it means remaining in the territory for a long time,” Kaplinsky told the Post during a visit to a military base along the northern border. The general said the IDF was currently working according to an operational plan in which IDF troops would push their way through southern Lebanon until the Litani River, some 40 kilometers from the border with Israel. But if necessary, he said, the IDF was prepared to travel even further northward.

Note that there are now five IDF divisions operating in Lebanon. The Israeli Knesset just okayed a call-up for three more divisions.

Also today, CNN was speculating on whether the IDF intends to catch Hezbullah in a pincer movement by sending ground forces north of the Litani river, and then having them drive south as other ground forces drive Hezbullah north. That’s what this JPost article says:

The IDF, a high-ranking source in the Northern Command said Tuesday, needed at least one more week to clear the area south of the Litani River of Hizbullah guerillas. The troops on the ground, he said, would not spend more than one-to-two days inside the Hizbullah strongholds and would operate at a faster pace than in the past.

“We will sweep through the area in an effort to exterminate the Hizbullah presence in the villages,” the officer said, expressing hope that the objective would be achieved before the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire, expected to happen by the end of the week.

Signifying, however, that the IDF might also try to send troops north of the Litani, IAF fighter jets dropped tens of thousands of leaflets over villages north of the river on Tuesday calling on the residents to flee further north in anticipation of IDF operations in the area.

IRIS Blog points out another JPost article that says the IDF is forming a three-pronged attack that intends to wipe out Hezbullah.

There was also this: A successful insertion of special forces yesterday into a hospital deep inside Hezbullah territory to retrieve Hezbullah members, presumably for a prisoner swap:

After several hours of intense fighting in and around a hospital in the eastern Lebanon town of Baalbek, IDF commando forces on Wednesday morning took a number of Hizbullah officials captive.

Reportedly, an IAF helicopter dropped special forces soldiers at the hospital late Tuesday night. Heavy shooting with Hizbullah operatives on the premises ensued.

After inspecting the identification of everyone in the hospital, the IDF soldiers proceeded to arrest several people described in a CNN report as Hizbullah officials, who were later transported back into Israel. The officials names and positions in the organization were not revealed.

No IDF soldiers were wounded in the operation, an army spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post.

This report is in direct contradiction to Hezbullah reports (naturally) that said the IDF was pinned down and in trouble. But stop a moment and realize: The IDF inserted a group of commandos into enemy territory, who then captured Hezbullah members and brought them back alive—from deep inside the Bekaa Valley. There were no Israeli casualties.

The IDF is warning more villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate.

None of these stories seem to me to be reports of an army about to lose a war. None of them seems to me to be stories about Israel not working to eliminate Hezbullah. Eight divisions are a lot of soldiers to be sending into a ground war that people still think is a bunch of pinpoint invasions.

Once again, I am not a military analyst, and I don’t play one on TV—but I think that Olmert and the IDF are playing to win. The operation has barely begun. It takes time to plan an all-out assault, and the IDF knows they have to utterly defeat Hezbullah, or they will be in the exact same place a few years down the line—or worse, because Iran may have nukes by then.

This is a war that Israel cannot afford to lose. The naysayers, including Totten, are forgetting that. I will withhold judgment until the dust settles. In the meantime, I pray for the safety and victory of the IDF forces, and the swift and utter defeat of the terrorists in Hezbullah.

In the meantime, Chazak v’amatz: Be strong and be brave.

And feel free to take and distribute Sarah’s image.