A veiw from within

I received this forward from friends, and thought that I should share these insights with you all.

Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006

Dear All,

As I woke up this morning I found out to my surprise that new visitors had arrived to Lebanon: the US Marines were setting foot on that very Lebanese soil they left 24 years ago when their barracks were bombed and they suffered many casualties.
Hope this time things end up differently, for everybody.. Last time around our war didn’t end until 1990, 8 years after the marines left, supposedly never to come back..
My mum, who as you may have gathered has quite some humour, is convinced they’ve come from Iraq simply because it’s getting too hot in the desert

On a less optimistic note, I leave you with an old quote from Robert Fisk, the Independent’s war correspondent in the Middle East (and elsewhere)
(Again, hoping that what was very telling back then is no longer relevant)

“[…] another great army would soon be corrupted. Lebanon’s revenge was to welcome all her invaders and then kiss them to death. The longer they stayed, the longer they needed to stay; and each day, every hour, their presence would be imperceptibly debased and perverted and poisoned.
Those great hot, balmy fields across the Bekaa concealed from all who went there the dangerous, moist centre of this garden of earthly delights. It was like being bitten by a beautiful dragonfly whose wings were of such splendour that the victim did not even feel the nip in the flesh. Later, the skin would itch and the stranger would scratch at the irritation, trying to remember where he had acquired so strange a mark. Much later, the flesh would swell up and give pain, and, very often, it would prove fatal.”

Robert Fisk
Pity the Nation. Lebanon at war


Take care
Pascale