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The New York Times can be so prosaic at times. In linguistic terms at least they are the polar opposite to Bush. Here’s how they report the news that in Bush’s opinion ‘What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit’.

“President Bush urged tartly that Mr. Annan telephone President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a key sponsor of Hezbollah, “and make something happen.” In Russia for a Group of 8 summit meeting, Mr. Bush expressed his views to Mr. Blair, using a vulgarity that was caught by an open microphone.”

And maybe Annan replied with astringency, ‘go do it yourself’.

Last night on Newnight, the Israeli interior minister Avi Dichter, explained perfectly why Israel feels it has the right to act unilaterally with regard to Lebanon: “In this region, unfortunately, we don’t have superpowers, so, we have to act like the so called superpowers”.

He must be referring to that superpower template: Bomb the shit of them. Invade. Destroy infrastructure more thoroughly. Watch it descend into civil war. Leave.

In the same report Dichter said that Israel won’t take Iran’s nuclear program out. That will be left to the real superpowers. Awesome.