Condis big adventure and the rush to re-arm Israel:

The Bush administration is really doing a masterful job of conducting our foreign policy. While W. blurts out in front of an open mike that he thinks this could be all solved with one phone from Kofi Annan to Bashar al-Assad; Condi is off on a trip to Rome to work on a cease-fire she has already said she doesn't want. And she isn't going to talk to any of the parties involved in the conflict except for Israel, which already knows they have a green light to do what ever they want. While Condi is sending messages to Tel Aviv urging "restraint," Elliot Abrams, Cheney's neo-con attack dog, is telling them what the real deal is: Bombs away!

As if this entire process wasn't rediculous enough already -- crying crocodile tears for civilian casualties while at the same time urging Israel to go all the way -- now comes this story in the NYT today:

"The Bush administration 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, American officials said Friday. The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said." (That's a big surprise.)

Looks like the 23 tons of GBU-28s they dropped on southern Beirut the other day didn't get the job done. But that's ok, we send them $3 billion a year for this sort of thing, so blast away. It's a beautiful system, a real virtuous circle: They take our tax payer money and then they send it right back, not to the treasury, but into the bank accounts of Cheney's defense industry buddies. I wonder what Condi's Arab guests in Rome are going to have to say about this developement, though. It could be awkward.