American oil companies are not permitted to hunt for oil on the continental shelf adjacent to the Florida coast, but Canadian companies are already pumping 19,000 barrels a day 90 miles from Key West, and Communist Cuba is now exploring for oil even closer, aided by Canada, Spain, and China.

Washington Times

The Australian reports: Addressing an audience of schoolchildren in Brisbane, Australia, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams, suffused with indignation at the violence in the Middle East, confessed, “Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.”

NY Sun:

The bodies of Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers killed by the Israeli army in Lebanon have been transported to Syria and flown to Tehran, senior Lebanese political sources said.

Israeli and Egyptian security officials confirmed the news, which follows a report that first appeared in The New York Sun, that Iranian forces posted to southern Lebanon have been aiding Hezbollah terrorists in their attacks against Israel, including helping to fire rockets into Israeli population centers.

The Lebanese sources said between six and nine dead Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers were brought in trucks last week into Syria for a flight back to Iran. They said the bodies were transported along with the tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians fleeing to Syria…

Israeli officials said Iranian Revolutionary Guards directed the firing two weeks ago of a radar-guided C—802 missile that hit an Israeli navy vessel off the coast of Lebanon, killing four soldiers. Israel says Iran acquired the missile from China.

The officials said the Iranian soldiers’ duties include keeping custody of long-range missiles within Hezbollah’s arsenal, including Zalzal rockets that are said to have a range of 125 miles, placing Tel Aviv within firing range.

(Subscription-barrier) Roll Call reports:

The FBI is close to finishing a series of interviews with the top Congressional leaders and other key Members in both chambers as part of its wide-ranging criminal probe of alleged leaks of the previously classified domestic surveillance program.

Raw Story adds

(FBI) agents and Justice Department officials are investigating whether any of the 15 current and former Members briefed earlier this decade about the National Security Agency spying program were a source for a New York Times report about the issue last December.

There are also indications from at least one Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), that the FBI is asking Members about comments of theirs that appeared in other publications regarding the NSA program.

The interviews, which came about after extensive negotiations this spring between the Justice Department and the counsels for the House and Senate, are taking place in Members’ Congressional offices, usually with two FBI agents and one Justice Department lawyer in attendance. Members are also permitted to have a House or Senate counsel on hand if they wished.

The Telegraph reports:

A gang of youths who tried to ruin a pensioners’ open-air concert were beaten back and fled when faced by a “Dad’s Army” armed with walking sticks.

More than 30 youngsters, aged between 18 and 25, yelled obscenities at the brass band and kicked footballs at the conductor while terrorising the 300-strong elderly audience, which included Second World War veterans.

But a battalion of 20 pensioners, moved by a rendition of the theme from The Great Escape, rose from their deck chairs and formed a front line of attack. Wielding walking sticks, they advanced towards the enemy.

The youths lost ground and eventually turned on their heels and fled.

China Confidential reports that

a delegation of visiting Iranians observed the tests, which seem to have been conducted as part of a simulated response to a US air attack. The long-range Taepondong-2 missile that plunged intact into the Sea of Japan–after staying aloft for nearly two minutes and not 40 seconds as initially reported by the US–was meant to simulate a nuclear weapon strike on US allies–probably Japan–or assets. Two or three intermediate-range ballistic missiles were also fired, as China Confidential reported yesterday, in addition to three or four short-range missiles.

US, Japanese, and Israeli analysts believe the Iranian contingent–which traveled to North Korea via Beijing–included scientists, technicians, and 10 or more Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers, including members of the elite Partisans of the Mahdi group. Sources say the Iranians paid for the tests and were keen to observe the results as Tehran’s strategic and tactical missile system was built by North Koreans, using Chinese designs. Iran’s Islamist leadership is apparently convinced that the US intends to attack it–directly or through Israel.

Sources say the Iranians and their North Korean hosts were satisfied with the test results. Contrary to media reports, the exercise was successful.

In a later posting, CR argues that Kim Jong-Il is attempting to play the nuclear card, as Fidel Castro did in 1962, to extort a permanent non-invasion pledge from the United States.

Tom Tilley and Sam the dog

Reading of the death of Dr. Jacqueline Perry, last September, in a bear attack, Waterloo, Ontario resident Tom Tilley resolved to arm himself with a six inch hunting knife. Perry’s husband had tried unsuccessfully to drive off the bear which was attacking his wife, futilely stabbing at it with a Swiss Army knife.

(Since this was Canada, nobody even thought of carrying a gun.)

Tilley’s decision to carry the knife proved providential. Last week, during a 12-day canoe trip, Tilley found himself being stalked by an aggressive black bear near Abbey Lake (in the vicinity of Wawa, Ontario)

When the bear blocked Tilley’s path, and began advancing menacingly, Sam, his Staffordshire terrier, came out from behind his master, and placed himself between Tilley and the bear.

The bear grabbed the dog in his jaws, but thinking to himself “‘You’re not going to kill my dog,” the horrified Tilley drew his knife, and advanced to the attack. Tilley leaped onto the bear’s back, and began stabbing. Though bitten on the hand, Tom Tilley killed that bear.

The wounded man was able to drag his canoe over a short portage and crossed a nearby lake where he was able to find some American campers equipped with a satellite phone. They summoned a float plane for an emergency medical evacuation.

Kitchener-Waterloo Record

Jacqueline Perry attack

Wikipedia has a incomplete list of fatal North American bear attacks. There have been a dozen people killed by black bears since the year 2000.

Deep thinker Arthur Silber notes the delivery of US precision-guided ordinance to Israel, wags his finger in our national face, and declares: They hate us because we kill them.

Digby throws one of his typical preschooler-style temper tantrums:

The Bush administration are monsters. That is not hyperbole. There can be no other explanation as to why the secretary of state, the person in charge of American diplomacy, would be so crude and stupid.

From Maureen Dowd:
Condi doesn’t want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran — “Syria knows what it needs to do,’’ she says with asperity — and she doesn’t want a cease-fire. She wants “a sustainable cease-fire,’’ which means she wants to give the Israelis more time to decimate Hezbollah bunkers with the precision-guided bombs that the Bush administration is racing to deliver.

“I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do,” she said.

Keep more civilians from being killed? Or at least keep America from being even more despised in the Middle East and around the globe?

Jesus. They don’t even know how to fake it anymore. Isn’t it at least smart to pretend you care about the dying children?

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We obviously are providing Israel with precision-guided ordinance precisely so that Israel may protect her own people by eliminating well-deserving Hezbollah terrorists (and Iranians), while injuring as few Lebanese non-combatants as possible. Would it be better for Israel to employ undiscriminating wide area munitions, and simply carpet bomb everything in Lebanon? Or is Israel simply obliged to surrender at once?

Pouting Spooks pal Dana Priest yesterday reported the sad tale of Christine Axsmith, former internal blogger on the classified Intelligence Community intranet, who claims to have been fired by her employer, CIA contractor, BAE Systems, for posting on July 19th on her blog that “Waterboarding is Torture, and Torture is Wrong.”

The lady claims to have “recreated” the offending post here, on a newer public blog.

———————————–

From my perspective, it would be agreeable to think that hard-as-nails Intel community contractor supervisers compete to see how many bounces they can get tossing out onto the parking lot each and every employee venturing to post liberal bromides on-line, but who are we kidding? Real government officials these days go a lot farther than editorializing. Some disclose highly classified national security programs for publication, while others conduct major disinformation operations intended to bring down an elected administration, all without meaningful consequence.

How likely is it that anyone would treat the sentimental vaporings of this dim middle-aged female as grounds for anything more than a dismissive snort?

———————————–

Nonetheless, Dana Priest’s little story is getting its share of play:

Laura Rosen

NY Times

Wonkette

Alleged Mossad-mouthpiece Depkafile reports:

Syria placed its army on war preparedness, pointed Scuds at Israel from Thursday, July 20, the day Tehran took control of Lebanon War… sources add Syrian fighter pilots are sitting in their cockpits.

These orders went out from Syrian president Bashar Assad July 20 when Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Tehran’s direct military intervention in the conflict was accompanied by an Iranian weapons airlift which began landing Wednesday, July 19, at the Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf.

Assad acted on the assumption that Israel, whose air force and ground forces are already hammering the cross-border supply routes north of the Litani River to block the passage of Iranian hardware to Hizballah, will soon decide to go for Iranian military operations in Damascus and Abu Ad Duhur.

Gen. Safavi has set up two forward command posts which coordinate war operations with Hizballah chief of staff Ibrahim Akil.

One center is working out of a cellar of the Iranian embassy in Beirut to regulate Hizballah rocket fire against Israel and direct the groups of 3 or 4 RG officers taking part in every Hizballah face-to-face engagement with Israeli ground troops in the south.

The second, housed in the basement of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, is in charge of communications, intelligence and getting hardware into Lebanon.

The deliveries were made to the Abu Ad Duhur airfield because it belongs to the joint Iranian-Syrian Scud missile factory which employs a large number of Iranian
engineers and technicians.

(Last sentence edited for clarity -JDZ:)
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hizballah in Lebanon (has received) some of the Iranian arms notwithstanding intense Israeli cutoff operations and (predict that) their impact will probably be palpable in the coming days.

Hat tip to Tom Bevan and Frank Dobbs.

Guns and Hooks

The Museum of Idaho (in Idaho Falls) will feature an exhibition titled Guns of the West & Rocky Mountain Fly Fishing running from July 14, 2006 to January 27th, 2007.

Over a dozen major collections are represented, illustrating 500 years of firearms history, and the considerably shorter, but still fascinating, history of Western fly fishing.

I’m told there are more than 20 linear feet of antique fly rods on display. Not to be missed.