The New York Times reports that today that the U.S. is " rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon."

Under the fold: the appearance of being an honest broker

From NYT's David S. Cloud and Helene Cooper:

The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran's efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah. [Italics added.]

If we're supplying munitions to the Israelis in the middle of a shooting war, we don't appear to be aiding them, we are aiding them.  And such actions don't threaten to anger Arab governments, they're a sure bet to anger Arab governments.  

As to efforts on Iran's part to resupply Hezbollah, the source of that story appears to be Israel's Haaretz newspaper.  Propaganda, you think?  

Did Cloud and Cooper do any double-checking on this story, or did they just echo what their sources in the administration fed them?

Let's Take Sides and Say We Didn't

I won't make any judgments on whether or not we should be supporting Israel in this war, but you can't pitch in on one side--which we have done--and pretend that you're still neutral.  

But that's precisely the kind of Rovewellian poppycock we're trying to pull.  Condi Rice will be on her way to the region tomorrow to try to broker some kind of ceasefire.  How in the world does she expect to be viewed as an honest broker when her country clearly favors one of the belligerents over the other?  Maybe she'll try to tell everybody she didn't know about American sending Israel more bombs.  That would be about as credible as anything else she can say.  

Just when I think the Bush administration's conduct of foreign policy can't get one bit less cognizant, it proves me wrong.  The best way to describe the kind of diplomacy we're conducting right now is "negotiating into a fan," and the blowback will smell to high heaven.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.