White House and al-Qaida agree on one thing ... no ceasefire!

Both George Bush and Osama bin Laden spoke through their #2's-in-Command today, stating that they would not accept a cease fire between the Hezbollah and Israel. Condoleezza Rice, speaking for the Administration and Ayman al Zawahiri, speaking for the al-Qaida, made it abundantly clear that they are in support of Lebanon and Israel, respectively, for the long haul ... and it's likely to be just that.

Bush (through Condi) has made it clear that a cease fire can only follow the complete defanging of the Hezbollah and a cutoff of both money and supplies to Hezbollah or any group that might replace Hezbollah in its opposition to Israel -- from either Syria and/or Iran (the "sponsor states" of Hezbollah, according to the Bush Administration).

Al-Qaida, for its part, has stated (through al Zawahiri) that "the war with Israel does not depend on ceasefires ... it is a Jihad for God's sake and will last until religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq."

Condoleezza Rice did not specifically mention Spain, but Bush has mentioned God on several occasions.

Al Zawahiri said that he thought that the world cared more about Israelis than Palestinians. He said, "the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel's prisons do not move anything while three Israeli prisoners have shaken the world."

Note: We (you, me, the rest of America) may blame Bill Clinton for improprieties in the White House, but he managed to maintain an uneasy Middle East peace throughout his tour of duty during the 1990s -- the only decade since the birth of the new state of Israel in 1948 during which there was no Arab-Israeli war.

And it should be noted (why, I don't know) that Ayman al Zawahiri didn't mention Bill Clinton even once during his televised address shown to the world earlier today. But what he did say -- and this is significant -- was that "... Muslims everywhere ... fight and become martyrs in the war against the Zionists [aka 'Israel'] and the crusaders [aka 'the US']."

In the broader sense, our activities in Iraq have united the Sunnis and Shiites in a common cause and further, we have created a land mass route for supplies and Jihadists from Iran through southern Iraq, Syria and Southern Lebanon ... to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories -- not exactly what was planned when we created that exciting evening of "Shock and Awe" and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

What next?