Will Cheney Use the Memorial Day "Holiday" To Launch New Wars?

May 26 (LPAC)--As the long holiday weekend in the U.S. began today, the Anglo-Americans in Iraq and the Israelis in Gaza and the West Bank, were carrying out similar military strikes designed to wipe out key Islamic leaders.

In Gaza, continuing a week-long air offensive, waves of Israeli airstrikes on Saturday killed five militants of Hamas, and "flattened" a guardhouse outside of the home of Prime Minister Esmail Haniya, the Hamas Prime Minister in the unity government. In the West Bank, the Israelis captured the Palestinian Minister of State, Wasfi Kabha, from Hamas. In the past several days, more than 30 Hamas elected officials and humanitarian organization leaders have been arrested.

But the main Israeli attack is military.

In Iraq, the U.S./British offensive centered on Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who emerged in public this week, and his Mahdi Army. In the town of Basra, in southern Iraq, after a combined British/Iraqi force killed a Mahdi commander, on Saturday, the militiamen launched an assault on a British base, reports Prof. Juan Cole, an Iraq expert, based at the University of Michigan. When the militiamen were not subdued in the firefight, the British, who are "hanging on in Basra by their fingernails," according to Cole, called in air strikes, and reportedly killed at least 8 Shi'ite civilians.

These two battle fronts, combined with the fighting in Lebanon constitute a serious danger that the Cheney-ac war party will use the opportunity for further escalations.