The votes keep coming in -- it's now "an illusion" 31 versus "a new Middle East" 3

As of this morning, all of Europe (excepting Tony Blair in the UK), all of the Middle East (excepting Israel) and all of the Western Hemisphere (excepting the Republican Party in the US) regards the recent conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah/Lebanon as a defeat for humanity itself. Syrian President Bashar Assad (above left and no friend to peace, despite his "promised" agreements with the US at the moment) did manage to state a prophetic thought, "The Middle East that they [the Americans] aspire to has become an illusion."

For our part, Condoleezza Rice sees the "new Middle East" resulting from Israel's decisive victory over the rubble it left in Lebanon as "durable" and where "extremists have no influence."

I'm no lover of butchers like Assad, but I surely give his statement on Sunday a higher grade for logic than Condoleezza Rice's (on the same day) when it comes to the future of the Middle East that we are creating with our failed policies.

Sadly -- and scary in every way -- was a statement made on Sunday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he "declared" Lebanon a winner in the conflict (there are no winner or losers in such a war, dummy!) and went on to call the battles, "God's promise." He went on to punctuate this scary and untrue statement with, "God's promises have come true." [Actually, all of God's promises do come true, so in that sense, he is correct ... but only accidentally!]

But scariest of all was a remark made by an Iranian cleric who regarded Hezbollah's "success" (hardly a success, in any honest evaluation) in firing those innacurate rockets against Israel as a "warning" that Iran's 2000-kilometer (about 1200 miles) missiles would strike Tel Aviv if Israel "makes one iota of aggression against Iran." This was run on the Iranian state-run television and adds to the wild statements made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejerk -- and my modicum of concern over what comes after August 22, 2006.

What adds to the weirdness of all of all that is going on is that the Ahmadinejerk's Administration is ordinarily looked on by the Iranian people in much the same way that the Bush Administration is looked on by the American people (33% approval rating at last count).

[Note: Let's not forget that the kind of anger from Muslims throughout the Middle East that we see today all started when we invaded Iraq back in March of 2003 -- at a time that we already had north and south no-fly zones, extremely tight sanctions, inspections, etc. that didn't even allow Saddam Hussein to travel freely out of his own country. Muslims look on Saudi Arabia and Iraq ... and Jerusalem, unfortunately ... as "holy ground."]