Saturday digest

- Looks like Europe is finally ponying up, but this is just stupid:

Even with the total European commitment of between 5,600 and 6,900 troops, Annan conceded major obstacles remain for assembling and deploying international troops alongside Lebanese Army and Israeli military forces in southern Lebanon and along its border with Israel.

Annan said he is prepared to accept offers of troops from predominantly Muslim Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia despite insistence from Israel that it will not accept the presence of peacekeepers from the three countries, which do not recognize the Jewish state.

The UN leader said that in view of the difficulty in obtaining the troop commitments from Europe, he could not afford to turn down governments that were eager to fill the remaining ranks of the force.

``We don't have pools sitting in barracks you can choose and pick from," said Annan, adding that those forces could be deployed in areas where they would not come into contact with Israeli soldiers.

Given that a significant portion of the Lebanese army is sympathetic to Hezbollah (with some soldiers saying that they refuse to fire on Hezbollah), is importing "peacekeepers" from countries who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the only state combatant in this conflict a good idea? This comes as Iran, Hezbollah's sugar daddy, thumbs its nose at everyone and pretty much goes ahead with whatever they want on their nuclear program. I have to ask; am I the only one that thinks that Condi Rice may need to be served with some walking papers given her extremely limp performance as of late? (Personally, I'm about 75% of the way there towards calling for her resignation.) And if Israel really won the war (and in light of the lame "ceasefire", I don't think they did), why is Ehud Olmert in such trouble?

- Today's loony left play of the day comes to us from Venezuela, whose President, Hugo Chavez, just accused Israel's recent actions against Hezbollah to be "genocide". Chavez, a friend of Democratic Party icons Jesse Jackson, Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan, will also be travelling to Syria in the coming days to strengthen ties with that terror-sponsoring state.

I'm just sayin'.

- Speaking of Moore, he's got mainstream Democrats in his sights and is already promising defeat for the likes of Hillary unless she endorses the cut-and-run strategy after Angry Left candidate Ned Lamont won the Connecticut Democratic primary against Joe Lieberman. Moore, who reportedly stayed in bed for three days after his candidate couldn't beat supposed idiot, Texas country bumpkin and daddy's boy Dubya back in '04 (despite the Administration going to war in Afghanistan to build an oil pipeline, according to Moore's penetrating analysis), now thinks he's a kingmaker. The Clintons already know that getting into bed with the likes of these guys is the political kiss of death. Is the rest of the Democratic party going to wake up and realize that providing an alternative to the Republicans doesn't mean you have to embrace American military defeat (as Moore and the like wish for)?

- In a lengthy and well-written article, Kathryn May details some of the demographic challenges facing the Canadian public service, here. However, one of the chief barriers to recruiting more up-and-comers into executive and executive minus-1 positions is the requirement that all candidates for those posts, where you learn many of the skills required to be a leader, is that you have to read, write and speak French at a ridiculously advanced level. It seems that making this observation is off the table, but it's the damned truth, and any analysis that fails to mention that plainly obvious fact is flat out dishonest.

- Finally, if you needed another reason to give less of a shyte about the WWE, they released Kurt Angle yesterday (feedback here and here.) Truly one of the greats, the man I once impersonated on the radio (prior to Wrestlemania X-8) has obviously been breaking down over time physically. Hopefully he doesn't end up like The Dynamite Kid.