Background/Insight on Israeli-Hezbollah Conflict

Whole lotta supposition goin' on, but this seems to paint a pretty realistic portrait about the Hezbollah conflict being our "gateway" into our war with Iran, which oughta take America's mind off of that messy war with Iraq, you know?

Long, but worth the read:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact

Two lateral observations: first, notice how the word "fact" appears twice in the URL - this is obviously an op-ed piece since the sources listed with all of the juicy details were anonymous or outside of any circle who would be in the know (e.g. "a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments" versus "The White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions").

Second, look out for the dieresis when you read the article - the little umlaut-looking dots over the second of consecutive vowels that let you know that the second vowel is to be pronounced as a separate syllable ("co op er ate", not "coop er ate"). It's part of the New Yorker's style guide, but this author seemed to look for opportunities to use every diacritical mark he could. I'm surprised he didn't include the most common of these, "naive." Then again, maybe I'm not.