Displacement

In his latest Salon piece, Juan Cole fretted about the potentiality of a "forced transfer" of Shiites in southern Lebanon, purportedly to rollback Hezbollah.

"Ethically," Cole wrote, this action would be "monstrous, involving war crimes on a vast scale insofar as it targets a civilian population for forcible relocation. And practically, any such plan is doomed to abject failure."

No matter. Lo and behold, Cole's crystal ball was working. Via today's Washington Post:

Using local radio stations and other media, Israel warned the roughly 300,000 Lebanese civilians who live south of the Litani River, which runs about 25 miles north of Israel's border with Lebanon, to abandon their homes. Israeli officials, meanwhile, indicated that a large ground offensive could follow as rocket fire continued into Israel's Galilee region, although at a diminished rate.

During a tour of northern Israel, where more than 850 rockets have rained down since Hezbollah gunmen captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the radical Shiite Muslim militia "must not think that we would recoil from using all kinds of military measures against it."

"We have no intention of occupying Lebanon, but we also have no intention of retreating from any military measures needed," Peretz said. The comments left open the possibility that Israel could move forces into southern Lebanon, the restive, Shiite-dominated region it has occupied before. Israeli military officials have raised the need to clear Hezbollah forces from a 12-mile-wide swath inside the Lebanese border to increase the distance between the group's increasingly long-range arsenal and the Israeli cities in the firing line.

Feel free to add this to the pile. There's plenty more to come, too.