War Is Boring

Israel threatens to bomb Iran. Iran, not coincidentally, reminds the world that it still flies F-14 fighters after more than 30 years of sanctions. Meanwhile, an American is sanctioned for illegally providing F-14 parts to Iran.

by PETER VINE Libya As the war in Libya reaches its conclusion around Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, rather embarrassing questions are starting to be asked about the role of mercenaries. Until now the focus has been on Gadhafi importing so-called “African” mercenaries from the Central African Republic and Chad, but now a Bosnian-Croat has [...]

Sarah Glidden has a new comics-journalism piece up at Cartoon Movement.

For the third time this year, Iran is claiming it shot down an American robot warplane trying to snoop on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. “An unmanned U.S. spy plane flying over the holy city of Qom near the uranium enrichment Fordu site was shot down by the Revolutionary Guards’ air-defense units,” lawmaker Ali Aghazadeh Dafsari told Iranian state television.

In the final days of the war in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Israeli commanders were desperate. Nimble teams of well-trained Hezbollah insurgents had shocked the high-tech Israeli army. So far, nearly a hundred Israeli troops had died in complex ambushes requiring the kinds of careful coordination that no one had expected of a guerrilla army.

On Sunday, a flotilla of “humanitarians” challenged the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. Israeli warships intercepted and boarded the civilian vessels. When the crew of one ship attacked Israeli commandos rappelling down from a helicopter, the Israelis opened fire, killing nine. The diplomatic fallout is severe and ongoing.

“At least nine people have been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says.” This according to the BBC. “Israel says its soldiers were shot at and attacked with bars and knives; the activists say Israeli troops came on board shooting.”