Middle East as drunken bar fight

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Grishnash has used this metaphor before in private converstation, and now Billmon presses it into service:

This is like a scene from a bar fight, where one of the pugilists first makes sure his friends have a good strong hold of him, and then starts yelling "Let me at him!"

Ehud Olmert's office said late Friday that the expanded incursion into Lebanon would continue "for the time being," despite agreeing to a cease-fire resolution drafted by the United Nations Security Council. Senior Israel Defense Forces officers said that the IDF is "continuing forward at full power. . . "

This, of course, is 100% kosher bullshit -- nobody in their right mind would start a major offensive at "full power" knowing full well it will all have to be shut down within 48 or at most 72 hours. So it looks like the big push was just a big fraud all along -- a desperate attempt by Olmert and his bedraggled colleagues to try to kick a little dust in the eyes of their domestic constituents. But the message -- "Yeah, boy, if they had'na stopped me I would have kicked Hizbullah's ass but good -- isn't very original or at this point even slightly believable.

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