Oh yeah. I almost forgot about this little conflict-y deal going on. After the Hamas and Hezbollah flare-ups, America at large seemingly forgot about this battle in the Middle East. But it’s still going on, and it’s still in some trouble.

Since it went into effect on Nov. 26, the Israeli army counted 16 Qassam rocket attacks. Most of them were fired during the cease-fire’s first few hours. A military source noted they make for an average of a rocket every two days. There was an attack Monday but none recorded as of 10 p.m. Tuesday.

Eep. But oddly enough…

The cease-fire is slightly different this time because it is the outcome of an understanding between Israel and the Islamic Hamas movement, noted former Minister of Planning Ghassan Khatib, now co-editor of bitterlemons.org.

It was the first time that Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, has become Israel’s political and military counterpart, he noted.

If the cease-fire doesn’t hold, things are going to get much, much worse in the Middle East. But I do find it interesting, perhaps more than a little encouraging, that Hamas is co-operating with Israel. I honestly believe that when they talked of Israel’s destruction, it wasn’t in the sense of dropping a bomb and destroying them in fire, but rather the political removal of the state. As they’re in power now, they have to play diplomacy and be a little more level-headed.

Interesting, that. It’s easy to be radical when you aren’t in power. I wonder what that says about blogger folk like myself. It also tells me that blogging while I’m sitting in the pub sipping an admittedly delicious IPA isn’t the best idea.

Okay, so here we have Tony Snow clarifying Bush’s position on whether or not winning the Iraq War.

Snow said that, as far as he knows, the president has not backed away from his recent statement that the U.S. is actually “winning” in Iraq. He also suggested that Gates, elsewhere in his testimony, seemed to say that maybe we weren’t losing and we weren’t winning. And he charged that the press was being too negative about all this: “What I think is demoralizing is a constant effort to try to portray this as a losing mission,” he said.

First off, Gates said “No, sir” when asked if he thought we were winning in Iraq. Snow is trying to spin something Gates didn’t say. But I digress…

Bush is still trying to say we’re winning in Iraq. He won’t back away from that claim, and yet let’s think about what’s happened so far. He’s pushed Rumsfeld out, gotten a guy with a bleak view to replace him, and acknowledged that we need a new direction. So what’s he saying? Everything’s going great, but it’s not going great enough?
Imagine that for a moment. A football coach says the season is going great, then fires the trainer and starts talking about writing a new playbook. It would sound like he’s trying to polish a turd, wouldn’t it?