Today's blurbs

* As Condi Rice says "firm evidence" exists that last week's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv was planned by Islamic Jihad in Damascus, Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen explain how the White House and its allies are stage managing the "get Syria" movement in Counterpunch.

* Justin Raimondo addresses the burning question of whether the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon was triggered by the Iraq war and the neoconservative plan to shake up the Mid East.

* A hopeful Rami G. Khouri writes in the Daily Star that the "urgent, significant, unprecedented political reality now is that ordinary Arabs, the U.S. government, and like-minded European allies may share mutually advantageous common goals and a good reason to work together to achieve them. The imperative would seem to be for Arabs, Americans and Europeans to grab that opportunity and find a way to overcome past rancor and resentment, and instead join forces for a great transformation in the three principal issues at play here: the nature of Arab governance, the relationship of Israel with the Arabs, and the manner of American interaction with the Arab world."

* UPI's Martin Sieff says the sucide bombing in the Iraqi city of Hilla "blasted to smithereens the key operating myth of the Bush administration, still comfortably embraced by much of the American people, that the successful holding of parliamentary elections in Iraq a month ago finally turned the tide there." Sieff cautions that the bombing might be a "prelude to a tsunami of violent rage" that will sweep the country in coming months.

* In a piece written for TomDispatch, Ray McGovern warns that the American tanglement and identification with Israel may be driving it head-on into an unnecessary and potentially dangerous confrontation with Iran.

* "A land without people for a people without a land." So went the Zionist propaganda of the 19th century. Today, however, "an Israeli Jewish minority now rules over a larger number of Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River," say Michael Brown, Ali Abunimah, and Nigel Parry in an analysis of new US State Department figures from its annual human rights report.

* Eric Boehlert probes the White House's war on the press in Salon. He writes, "Recent headlines about paid-off pundits, video press releases disguised as news telecasts, and the remarkable press access granted to a right-wing pseudo-journalist working under a phony name, have led some to conclude that the White House is not simply aggressively managing the news, but is out to sabotage the press corps from within, to undermine the integrity and reputation of journalism itself."

* No Child Left Behind? Far from it, says a new UN report.

* "'You know, when I joined the Army nine years ago people would always ask me why I joined. Did I do it for college money? Did I do it for women? People never understood. I wanted to join the Army because I wanted to go shoot motherfuckers.' The room erupted in hoots and hollers. A drill sergeant said something about an Iraqi coming up to them screaming, 'Ah-la-la-la-la!' in a high-pitched voice, and how he would have to be killed. After that, all Arabs were referred to by this battle cry -- the ah-la-la-la-las. In the barracks, they played war. One recruit would come out of the shower wearing a towel on his head, screaming, 'Ah-la-la-la-la!' and the other recruits would pretend to shoot him dead." More wonderful stuff like this in Kathy Dobie's must-read Harper's article, "AWOL in America: When desertion is the only option," which I was introduced to by Paul Street.