Neoconservatives Happy About Lebanon

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Let’s take stock. Who’s pleased with the way things are going in the Middle East? After the IDF allegedly killed at least 57 Lebanese civilians in Qana over the weekend, including 37 children, a lot of people in Lebanon certainly aren’t very pleased. The citizens of Bint Jbeil don’t seem pleased that their city has been bombed into rubble and is “no longer a place of the modern world.” On the other hand, according to the Financial Times, neoconservatives are extremely pleased with all this, and back in the Bush administration’s corner after a spate of dissatisfaction earlier this year:

Neo-conservative criticism [of the Bush administration] reached a peak after Ms Rice, secretary of state, offered conditional talks to Iran in late May on its nuclear programme. But their attacks on Mr Bush ceased after 12 July, when Israel launched its military campaign against Hizbollah.

“This is exactly the right strategy, which you could call ‘Don’t just do something, stand there [while Israel continues its military campaign]’,” said David Frum, a former speechwriter to George W. Bush, who helped draft the president’s 2002 ‘Axis of Evil’ address.

Well as long as a former speechwriter sitting comfortably at his phone far away from the carnage is pleased, things must be going well, no?

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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