There is another way. And it has a proven track record of success;

Oh, you spineless neo-conservatives may object; “human rights” this and “we fought in vain” that. But if you give Saddam just a few weeks of death squads, rape rooms, human shredders, and secret informants, the insurgent problem will go away. Neocons may flap their gums about solving the problems of the Middle East through such comically unlikely neo-Wilsonian concepts as “democracy” and “liberalism” and “winning hearts and minds,” but Saddam knows what the sniveling neocons dare not admit: that there’s nothing wrong with the Middle East that enough poison gas won’t fix. Restore Saddam to power, give him some strongly-worded suggestions and some well-written oil contracts, and he’ll have Baghdad orderly and humming in a matter of days. Iran? He wrote the book on savage wars of attrition against the Iranian menace. And he’ll create Iraqi jobs by the score! Those mass graves won’t dig themselves.

MIchael Totten;

Tomorrow I’m going to Israel to get as close to this monster as I can without getting myself killed. (To friends and family who worry about me: I promise not to embed with the IDF and ride into Lebanon on a tank.)

If you have some spare change, you can hit his Paypal button to help pay the bills.

Disporportionate? Only if you wish the extermination of Israel.

AT FIRST light they filtered from the undergrowth, camouflaged, laden with captured hunting rifles and crested Lebanese scimitars, and high-fiving with relief at still being alive.
After nearly a week of vicious ditch-to-ditch fighting with Hezbollah fighters in the village of Taibeh, hundreds of exhausted Israeli soldiers slipped back across the border early yesterday after the hardest fighting they had ever experienced.
As they trudged across the brow of a hill in broken single file they were indistinguishable in their battle fatigues and green face paint — some even black out their teeth in Hezbollahland — and all were drunk on adrenalin. “I was hoping to go in and kill Hezbollonim. I killed three,” one shouted as he embraced colleagues from the Nahal Brigade.
As soon as they reached the outskirts of an Israeli hilltop town, which cannot be named for security reasons, they stopped and cleared their M16 automatic rifles in unison — the last task before they could relax. Some then reached inside their huge battlepacks for their mobile phones to call families and girlfriends. Others collapsed with exhaustion, washing away their fear with bottles of cola and lungfuls of cigarette smoke. A few grabbed newspapers to find out how their war was going. “What is happening in other places? What is happening in Gaza?” one asked The Times.

Iran admitted on Friday it has supplied Hezbollah with long-range Zelzal-2 missiles.
“This war is different”;

So if you are saying now that I was wrong when I believed that it would be possible to ensure far fewer casualties and far more quiet after leaving Lebanon, you’re right. I was wrong. I’m afraid of those who are incapable of saying ‘I was wrong’ in the first person. I lived on the border, in Malkiya, and I saw the small tobacco plots of the farmers in southern Lebanon, and I believed that prosperity on both sides of the border would ensure quiet. That Nasrallah would aspire for his people to have a good life. In that I was wrong. I was definitely wrong.

It’s a quote from an Israeli “peace’ activist. The article is fairly long. Do click and read the rest.

Ynet News;

After repeated Israeli efforts to destroy Hizbullah’s al-Manar television station have failed, an IDF intelligence unit succeeded this week in hacking the station’s live broadcasts, planting Israeli PR messages in the transmissions..
The al-Manar channel regularly airs juicy propaganda against Israel, including reports of “heroic” and “successful” operations by Hizbullah fighters against IDF special forces.
However, this weekend the IDF prepared a surprise for the Lebanese and Arab viewers of the channel: The broadcast was interrupted and caricatures of Nasrallah appeared on the screen, accompanied by captions reading: “Your days are numbered” and “Nasrallah, your time is up. Soon you won’t be with us anymore.”

(Via a reader who spotted it in the comments at Tim Blair)

Herald Sun (Australia)

The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.
Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.
The photographs, from the Christian area of Wadi Chahrour in the east of Beirut, were taken by a visiting journalist and smuggled out by a friend.

Related;

There is an unexplained gap of about seven hours between the one Israeli air strike that hit the Qana building housing the civilians, which took place around 1 A.M. Sunday, and the first report that the building had collapsed, said the chief of staff of the Israel Air Force, Brigadier General Amir Eshel. Speaking at a press conference at the Kirya military complex in Tel Aviv last night, Eshel said that of three Israeli air strikes on Qana early Sunday, only the first strike hit the building in which the civilians were staying. The other two hit areas at least 400 meters away.
“I can’t say whether the house collapsed at 12 A.M. or at 8 A.M.,” said Eshel. “According to foreign press reports, and this is one of the reports we are relying on, the house collapsed at 8 A.M. We do not have testimony regarding the time of the collapse. If the house collapsed at 12 A.M., it is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it.”
Eshel and Major General Gadi Eisencott, who heads the Operations Directorate in the General Staff, said Hezbollah had set up headquarters in Qana and that militants fired about 150 Katyusha rockets at parts of northern Israel, including Haifa and the Galilee panhandle, from Qana. Some of the rockets, the army said, were fired from the built-up areas of the village.
In the second IAF strike on Qana, which took place at around 2:30 A.M. Sunday, IAF planes bombed two targets located about 500 meters from the building that collapsed, and in the third strike, at around 7:30 A.M., three targets were bombed 460 meters away from the building, Eshel said. He told reporters that an analysis of photographs of the strikes, taken by cameras installed in the warplanes, showed that the four bombs dropped during the second and third strikes hit the intended targets, and that an IAF plane sent on a photo sortie in the afternoon confirmed that the intended targets had been hit.
The IDF has not released the aerial photographs, which Eshel said were being processed.
Addressing the possibility that the building may have collapsed because the IAF bombing triggered a delayed explosion of weapons stored inside, Eshel said: “I don’t want to get into conspiracy theories. We will work diligently and collect every detail, so as to understand what happened there. I hope that we will know in the end, but I’m not sure. It’s possible that we will never know what exactly happened there.”
The IDF screened a video yesterday showing rocket launches from Qana, and said it chose the objectives in the village by analyzing the locations from which Hezbollah had fired rockets on Israel. However, the house that was hit had no direct connection to the rocket-launching cells. Nonetheless, IAF officials said that immediately after firing rockets at Israel, some Hezbollah cells hide in civilian houses in built-up areas in southern Lebanon.

Both items via Drudge.

And hand out candy.

Israellycool is liveblogging the Israel-Hezbollah war and mentions this brief item;

4:00PM: It has been revealed that the Shin Bet arrested a Canadian-Israeli geographer by the name of Professor Razi Salakh, 18 days ago, on suspicion of spying on behalf of the Hizbullah.
Razi was apprehended as he photographed military installations in the North

I can’t find anything through google on Salakh, but I didn’t look very long, etiher.

Elder Of Ziyon;

Since 1978, the UN has had UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) set up. And since 1978, they have not lifted a single finger to stop rocket attacks towards Israel.
Since then, they have not lifted a finger to stop Hizbollah from building a full army under their noses.
Since then, they have not lifted a finger when Hizbollah built military posts right next to UNIFIL posts.

Jed Babbin; The U.N.’s years-long record on the Israel-Lebanon border makes mockery of the term “peacekeeping.” On page 155 of my book, “Inside the Asylum,” is a picture of a U.N. outpost on that border. The U.N. flag and the Hezbollah flag fly side by side. Observers told me the U.N. and Hezbollah personnel share water and telephones, and that the U.N. presence serves as a shield against Israeli strikes against the terrorists.

Why our forces continue to be sent to serve on behalf of the criminal fiasco that is today’s United Nations is a question I hope someone in the Canadian government is asking.
More – FOX News Sunday, Chris Wallace interview with John Bolton;

BOLTON: Well, the U.N. force that’s there now really does not have the mandate to do it, and here’s an interesting little fact. That force is called the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon. It was sent there on an interim basis in 1978, 28 years ago. So it’s been a long interim and I think, sadly, has not been successful.
That’s one reason why we need to look at the long-term possibilities of a sustained solution here, not another 28-year-long interim force, but to take the circumstances we find and see if we can’t build the foundations for a really lasting peace this time.

And now, the stagnation and inaction that defines the United Nations has cost the lives of four observers, including an as yet unidentified Canadian.
More – “If a space alien from a distant planet were to land at the UN…”
(H/t Revnant Dream in the comments.)

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In a July 24 Aljazeera interview, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah suggests the Lebanese government knew of Hezbollah’s plans – and gave the green light;

Interviewer: “Did you inform them that you were about to abduct Israeli soldiers?”
Hassan Nasrallah: “I told them that we must resolve the issue of the prisoners, and that the only way to resolve it is by abducting Israeli soldiers.”
Interviewer: “Did you say this clearly?”
Hassan Nasrallah: “Yes, and nobody said to me: ‘No, you are not allowed to abduct Israeli soldiers.’ Even if they had told me not to… I’m not defending myself here. I said that we would abduct Israeli soldiers, in meetings with some of the main political leaders in the country. I don’t want to mention names now, but when the time comes to settle accounts, I will. They asked: ‘If this happens, will the issue of the prisoners be over and done with?’ I said that it was logical that it would. And I’m telling you, our estimation was not mistaken. I’m not exaggerating. Anywhere in the world – show me a country, show me an army, show me a war, in which two soldiers, or even civilian hostages, were abducted, and a war was waged against a country – and all for two soldiers. This has never happened throughout history, and even Israel has never done such a thing.”

Well, it’s happening now. The portrayal of Lebanon as innocent bystander has always been a stretch – Hezbollah has operated in Lebanon with impunity for years and has a good deal of popular support. As it is with the Palestinian territories – sometimes people get the government they deserve.
Via Ed Morrissey, who also has links to video.
Update: This seems to back up the Nasrullah interview:

A senior Hezbollah official said Tuesday the guerrilla group did not expect Israel to react so strongly to its capture of two Israeli soldiers.
Mahmoud Komati, deputy chief of Hezbollah’s political arm, also told The Associated Press in an interview that his group will not lay down arms.

Here we go…

“The truth is _ let me say this clearly _ we didn’t even expect (this) response…. that (Israel) would exploit this operation for this big war against us,” said Komati. He said Hezbollah had expected “the usual, limited response” from Israel to the July 12 cross-border raid, in which three Israelis were killed.
In the past, he said, Israeli responses to Hezbollah actions included sending commandos into Lebanon to seize Hezbollah officials or briefly targeting specific Hezbollah strongholds.

Hezbollah the victim. Who didn’t see that coming?

He said the Shiite group had anticipated there would be negotiations on exchanging the Israeli soldiers for three Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, with Germany acting as a mediator as it did before.

Guess they anticipated wrong. Tough break.
Fox News Breaking: One of Top Three Hezbollah Leaders Killed in Southern Lebanon

David Kopel;

On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah terrorists entered Israel, attacked three Israeli soldiers on Mount Dov, and abducted them Lebanon. The kidnapping was witnessed by several dozen UNIFIL soldiers who stood idle. One of the soldier witnesses described the kidnapping: the terrorists set of an explosive which stunned the Israeli soldiers. Clad in UN uniforms, the terrorists called out, “Come, come, we’ll help you.”
The Israeli soldiers approached the men in UN uniforms. Then, a Hezbollah bomb detonated—-apparently prematurely. It wounded the disguised Hezbollah commander, and three Israeli soldiers.
Two other terrorists in U.N. uniforms dragged their Hezbollah commander and the three wounded soldiers into a getaway car.
According an Indian solider in UNIFIL who witnessed the kidnapping, “By this stage, there was a big commotion and dozens of UN soldiers from the Indian brigade came around.” The witness stated that the brigade knew that the kidnappers in UN uniform were Hezbollah. One soldiers said that the brigade should arrest the Hezbollah, but the brigade did nothing.
According to the Indian soldier, the UNFIL brigade in the area “could have prevented the kidnapping.”
“I’m very sorry about what happened, because we saw what happened,” he said. Hezbollah “were wearing our uniforms and it was too bad we didn’t stop them.”
It appears that at least four of the UNIFIL “peacekeepers,” all from India, has received bribes from Hezbollah in order to assist the kidnapping by helping them get to the kidnapping spot and find the Israeli soldiers. Some of the bribery involved alcohol and Lebanese women.
The Indian brigade later had a bitter internal argument, as some members complained that the brigade had betrayed its peacekeeping mandate. An Indian government investigation sternly criticized the brigade’s conduct.
There is evidence of far greater payments by Hezbollah to the UNIFIL Indian brigade, including hundreds of thousands of dollars for assistance in the kidnapping and cover-up.
The UN cover-up began almost immediately.

Read the whole thing – historical perspective for when the wailing begins.

Haaretz;

All groups in Gaza, including Hamas, would now accept a cease-fire deal with Israel which would include releasing Gilad Shalit, according to the Palestinian Agriculture Minister, who also heads the coordinating committee of Palestinian organizations there.
Ibrahim Al-Naja said the factions were ready to stop the Qassam rocket fire if Israel’s ceased all military moves against the Palestinian factions in Gaza. They are also ready to release Shalit in exchange for guaranteeing the future release of Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas leaders did not confirm this report on Monday, but if it is true, then this is the first time that Hamas has indicated its acceptance of the Egyptian proposal to solve the crisis.

We’ll see, I guess.

Ahmadinejad seeks advice on the problem of “Zionism” – from the Germans.