White House spokesman Tony Snow Monday confirmed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is on a feeding tube as the result of a hunger strike.

When it comes to hunger strikes, I guess practice makes perfect..

Snow told the daily press briefing Saddam agreed to be put on a feeding tube but said he did not know whether the procedure was performed at the detention facility where Saddam is being held or whether the former Iraqi leader had been hospitalized.

[Insert Terri Schiavo joke here]

UPI - WH confirms Saddam on feeding tube

Strategic Forecasting's series of special reports on the Israel/Lebanon crisis continue to be the best source of insight into the big picture. I strongly suggest reading all of them. It helps put all the information coming from the other TV and written coverage into perspective.

We are now in the period preceding major conventional operations. Israel is in the process of sealing the Lebanese coast. They have disrupted Lebanese telecommunications, although they have not completely collapsed the structure. Israeli aircraft are attacking Hezbollah's infrastructure and road system. In the meantime, Hezbollah, aware it is going to be hit hard, is in a use-it or-lose-it scenario, firing what projectiles it can into Israel.

The Israeli strategy appears to be designed to do two things. First, the Israelis are trying to prevent any supplies from entering Lebanon, including reinforcements. That is why they are attacking all coastal maritime facilities. Second, they are degrading the roads in Lebanon. That will keep reinforcements from reaching Hezbollah fighters engaged in the south. As important, it will prevent the withdrawal and redeployment of heavy equipment deployed by Hezbollah in the south, particularly their rockets, missiles and launchers. The Israelis are preparing the battlefield to prevent a Hezbollah retreat or maneuver.

Hezbollah's strategy has been imposed on it. It seems committed to standing and fighting. The rate of fire they are maintaining into Israel is clearly based on an expectation that Israel will be attacking. The rocketry guarantees the Israelis will attack. Hezbollah has been reported to have anti-tank and anti-air weapons. The Israelis will use airmobile tactics to surround and isolate Hezbollah concentrations, but in the end, they will have to go in, engage and defeat Hezbollah tactically. Hezbollah obviously knows this, but there is no sign of disintegration on its part. At the very least, Hezbollah is projecting an appetite for combat. Sources in Beirut, who have been reliable to this point, say Hezbollah has weapons that have not yet been seen, such as anti-aircraft missiles, and that these will be used shortly. Whatever the truth of this, Hezbollah does not seem to think its situation is hopeless.

The uncertain question is Syria. No matter how effectively Israel seals the Lebanese coast, so long as the Syrian frontier is open, Hezbollah might get supplies from there, and might be able to retreat there. So far, there has been only one reported airstrike on a Syrian target. Both Israel and Syria were quick to deny this.

What is interesting is that it was the Syrians who insisted very publicly that no such attack took place. The Syrians are clearly trying to avoid a situation in which they are locked into a confrontation with Israel. Israel might well think this is the time to have it out with Syria as well, but Syria is trying very hard not t... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]

Stratfor has released another special report on the crisis in the Middle East. Reading this and the other recent special report provides more insight into the situation than watching double-digit hours of TV news.

Hezbollah's decision to increase operations against Israel was not taken lightly. The leadership of Hezbollah has not so much moderated over the years as it has aged. The group's leaders have also, with age, become comfortable and in many cases wealthy. They are at least part of the Lebanese political process, and in some real sense part of the Lebanese establishment. These are men with a radical past and of radical mind-set, but they are older, comfortable and less adventurous than 20 years ago. Therefore, the question is: Why are they increasing tensions with Israel and inviting an invasion that threatens their very lives? There are three things to look at: the situation among the Palestinians, the situation in Lebanon and the situation in the Islamic world. But first we must consider the situation in Hezbollah itself.

There is a generation gap in Hezbollah. Hezbollah began as a Shiite radical group inspired by the Iranian Islamic Revolution. In that context, Hezbollah represented a militant, nonsecular alternative to the Nasserite Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other groups that took their bearing from Pan-Arabism rather than Islam. Hezbollah split the Shiite community in Lebanon -- which was against Sunnis and Christians -- but most of all, engaged the Israelis. It made a powerful claim that the Palestinian movement had no future while it remained fundamentally secular and while its religious alternatives derived from the conservative Arab monarchies. More than anyone, it was Hezbollah that introduced Islamist suicide bombings.

Hezbollah had a split personality, however; it was supported by two very different states. Iran was radically Islamist. Syria, much closer and a major power in Lebanon, was secular and socialist. They shared an anti-Zionist ideology, but beyond that, not much. Moreover, the Syrians viewed the Palestinian claim for a state with a jaundiced eye. Palestine was, from their point of view, part of the Ottoman Empire's Syrian province, divided by the British and French. Syria wanted to destroy Israel, but not necessarily to create a Palestinian state.

From Syria's point of view, the real issue was the future of Lebanon, which it wanted to reabsorb into Syria, or at the very least economically exploit. The Syrians intervened in Lebanon against the Palestine Liberation Organization and on the side of some Christian elements. Their goal was much less ideological than political and economic. They saw Hezbollah as a tool in their fight with Yasser Arafat and for domination of Syria.

Hezbollah strategically was aligned with Iran. Tactically, it ha... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]

The following is a Stratfor special report on the situation in the Middle East:

Israel lives with three realities: geographic, demographic and cultural. Geographically, it is at a permanent disadvantage, lacking strategic depth. It does enjoy the advantage of interior lines -- the ability to move forces rapidly from one front to another. Demographically, it is on the whole outnumbered, although it can achieve local superiority in numbers by choosing the time and place of war. Its greatest advantage is cultural. It has a far greater mastery of the technology and culture of war than its neighbors.

Two of the realities cannot be changed. Nothing can be done about geography or demography. Culture can be changed. It is not inherently the case that Israel will have a technological or operational advantage over its neighbors. The great inherent fear of Israel is that the Arabs will equal or surpass Israeli prowess culturally and therefore militarily. If that were to happen, then all three realities would turn against Israel and Israel might well be at risk.

That is why the capture of Israeli troops, first one in the south, then two in the north, has galvanized Israel. The kidnappings represent a level of Arab tactical prowess that previously was the Israeli domain. They also represent a level of tactical slackness on the Israeli side that was previously the Arab domain. These events hardly represent a fundamental shift in the balance of power. Nevertheless, for a country that depends on its cultural superiority, any tremor in this variable reverberates dramatically. Hamas and Hezbollah have struck the core Israeli nerve. Israel cannot ignore it.

Embedded in Israel's demographic problem is this: Israel has national security requirements that outstrip its manpower base. It can field a sufficient army, but its industrial base cannot supply all of the weapons needed to fight high-intensity conflicts. This means it is always dependent on an outside source for its industrial base and must align its policies with that source. At first this was the Soviets, then France and finally the United States. Israel broke with the Soviets and France when their political demands became too intense. It was after 1967 that it entered into a patron-client relationship with the United States. This relationship is its strength and its weakness. It gives the Israelis the systems they need for national security, but since U.S. and Israeli interests diverge, the relationship constrains Israel's range of action.

During the Cold War, the United States relied on Israel for a critical geopolitical function. The fundamental U.S. interest was Turkey, which controlled the Bosporus and kept the Soviet fleet under control in the Mediterranean. The emergence of Soviet influence in Syria and Iraq -- which was not driven by U.S. support for Israel since the United States did not provide all that much support comp... [ Read More (1.2k in body) ]

Thanks to our super-secret source for telling us about this ABC feed that got posted, with a camera trained on the President Bush during Colbert's video skit during last week's White House correspondents' dinner.

You can watch his level of amusement drop like his poll numbers.

The president is not amused

John Allen Muhammad introduced himself to jurors as a distraught father who was only in Maryland in October 2002 to search for the children he lost in a custody dispute _ not to become the Washington-area sniper.

"I woke up this morning knowing that I needed to come into this court room and fight for my life to survive or I will die," Muhammad, acting as his own lawyer, said Thursday in opening statements at his trial for six Maryland killings. "It's that simple, people."

During his 20-minute statement, Muhammad quoted Plato and referred to his military training. He likened his case to the betrayal of Jesus, and asked jurors to judge him wisely. He said he would rely on "quantum physics, immaterial evidence and material evidence" to prove his case.

I'm at a loss for words.. I just got the mental image of this guy sitting in a bare jail cell, thinking about OJ and Michael Jackson, while trying to remember scenes from Oliver Stone's JFK.

Chron.com | D.C. Sniper Introduces Himself to Jurors

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Interesting.. Plame was working on Iran nuclear proliferation at the time the Bush Administration outed her.

The Raw Story | MSNBC confirms: Outed CIA agent was working on Iran

Two Atlanta-area men in federal custody as part of a terrorism probe discussed possible locations for a U.S. attack, including military bases and oil refineries, according court documents unsealed Friday.

The U.S. attorney's office in Atlanta on Thursday unsealed an indictment against Georgia Tech student Syed Ahmed, 21.

Ehsanul Sadequee, 19, was arrested this week in Bangladesh and handed over to the FBI. He is expected to be arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on a charge of making false statements during an interview with an FBI agent.

The FBI affidavit also says agents found two CD-ROMs in the lining of Sadequee's suitcase when he was leaving the United States. One disc contained pornography and the other was encrypted with a code the FBI was unable to crack, according to the affidavit.

Nothing about any direct ties to Al'Q or other groups. Homegrown but influenced and inspired? Worrisome, as that's been predicted.

CNN.com - FBI: Georgia men talked of U.S. terror plan

Watergate veteran and Vanity Fair contributor calls for bipartisan hearings investigating the Bush presidency. Should Republicans on the Hill take the high road and save themselves come November?

Carl Bernstein is not pulling any punches.

I was lucky enough to attend a speech by Bernstein a few weeks ago. The topic was on the use of anonymous sources, and the audience was mostly journalism students. He went into his dissatisfaction with the current administration at points, but not in any great length or depth. You could tell he had much to say on the subject, but he did not feel it was the right time to unleash. This is Carl Bernstein unleashing. There is a reason this man is one of the great heros of journalism, and it extends far beyond the work he did with Bob Woodward.

That being said, this article notes at the bottom that he has written a biography of Hillary Clinton which will be coming out next year. If I had to venture a guess, he is going to get attacked as an ideologue pining for a Clinton run in 2008. I don't think that is a fair assessment, but its likely to be widely accepted.

Bernstein: Senate Hearings on Bush, Now

"The question of how economics is taught in France, both at the bottom and at the top of the educational pyramid, is at the heart of the current crisis," said Jean-Pierre Boisivon, director of the Enterprise Institute, a company-financed institute that sponsors the internship program for economics teachers that Scache took part in.

This is the most intelligent analysis of the protests in France that I've seen thus far. The students are doing exactly what they have been taught to do.

Economics, French-style - Europe - International Herald Tribune