Doing The Bidding Of Our “Friends” Once More

Oh, by the way, I thought you’d like to know that, while CNN offers more witless armchair prognostications on the presidential campaign and provides up-to-the minute coverage of dead supermodels, terminal baby elephants and the last words of actor John Ritter, the Times of London is reporting here that…

…US officials confirmed that the USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer, has been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean as a show of support for the troubled Western-backed Lebanese Government.

The USS Cole is accompanied by two refueling ships. But it could soon be joined by the US Navy’s Nassau battle group, consisting of six ships including amphibious troop carriers, which is scheduled to sail to the eastern Mediterranean soon.

Peachy. So it looks like we could be experiencing 1982 all over again, when we last ended up supporting an Israeli incursion into Lebanon when The Sainted Ronnie R was president.

And we all know how that turned out, don’t we? Just take a look at the pic if you need to jog your memory.

“This is an area that is important to us, the eastern Med,” said Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He played down the significance of the USS Cole’s deployment, but added: “it does signal that we’re engaged, we’re going to be in the vicinity, and that’s a very, very important part of the world.

So what happens if any of our ships end up engaged “in the vicinity”? Are we looking at “Gulf of Tonkin 2008” here? In that event, would we launch missiles into Lebanon ourselves? And how exactly would that affect our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Yes, I realize that Syria is most likely doing all it can to disrupt anything approximating democracy in Lebanon so it can continue to exert leverage on Israel. I just don’t see why we should use whatever influence we may actually have left in the world in that region in response (but for Bushco’s slavish neocon subservience to the state of Israel; yes, I know that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has offered the Golan Heights back to Syria here which was once thought to be something that would never happen, but as noted here, a peace process of a sort seems to be progressing between Israel and Syria, though how our move to send the Cole into that area can be seen as a means to help that process is something I can’t imagine).

But hey, not to worry, everyone; CNN just “reported” that a 28-inch-tall mom just gave birth to an 18-inch-tall baby, or something.

Gotta love those “bread and circuses” while the world goes to hell in a hand basket, don’t you?