Cat Fight Down Under

A tae kwon do match instead of a soccer game has broken out down under:

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will today investigate ugly scenes involving North Korean players after they lost their Women's Asian Cup semi-final in Adelaide last night. Trouble erupted deep in stoppage time when North Korean players thought they had equalised against China but the goal was disallowed for an off-side infringement.

Play continued but at the final whistle, and as the Chinese started to celebrate their 1-0 win, frustrations among the North Koreans boiled over with four or five surrounding Italian referee Anna De Toni and one appearing to push her. Television footage also showed a player seemingly aiming a kick which missed De Toni as she and her assistants were escorted from the ground by security guards. Korean players were also seen throwing plastic bottles which had been thrown onto the ground.

You can check out the video of the fight by clicking here. Well I guess I would be upset too, if losing meant the possibility of being entered into a forced labor camp.

Lebanon Speculation

Wretchard of The Belmont Club speculates on what how the current fight in Lebanon came out, Israel’s information operation and what may be the deception plan at its core, and similar fascinating insights. His initial post here, and a postscript http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/07/postscript-to-pulp-fiction.html.

Here’s a taste, but go read the whole thing:

From this observation I'm going to say that despite the received wisdom of the newspapers to the contrary, the fighting at Maroun al-Ras and Bint Jbeil have been and continue to be an unmitigated defeat for the Hezbollah. The Hezbollah are doing the single most stupid thing imaginable for a guerilla organization. They are fighting to keep territory. Oh, I know that this will be justified in terms of "inflicting casualties" on the Israelis. But the Hez are probably losing 10 for every Israeli lost. A bad bargain for Israel you say? No. A bad bargain for Hezbollah to trade their terrorist elite for highly trained but nevertheless conventional infantry. Guerillas should trade 1 for 10, not 10 for 1.

Reduced to its essentials, the IDF strategy may be ridiculously simple: fix the Hezbollah force in Southern Lebanon while detaching its command structure from the field by simultaneously striking Beirut. One of the great mysteries, upon which newpaper accounts shed no light, is why the IDF should so furiously pulverize Hezbollah's enclaves in southern Beirut, blockade the port and disable the airport. The object isn't to shut down Lebanon. It is to momentarily disorient the Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, so that in a moment of absentmindedness, the Hezbollah forces in Southern Lebanon will do what comes most naturally: commit themselves against the IDF.

(H/T Rich Lowry at The Corner, Cross-posted at Dadmanly)

And in Other Shamelessly Self Promoting News

I'll be the guest of Pundit Review Radio --WRKO Boston--, this sunday at 9:20pm EST.

I'll be on right after Blackfive, who is an impossibly tough act to follow.

You can listen live here.

Shameless Self Promotion

My article on academics vs. ROTC is up at National Review.

News of Afghanistan is back

Go read it or else!

Did we just lose Ralph?

Ralph has turned the nob to 11 again, and came up with one of the worse Courses of Action I have seen in print by a sober person.

We should be drawing up contingency plans to move a reinforced division and adequate airpower to the Kurdish provinces in the north, to withdraw the remainder of our forces to the south, and then to let Iraq's Sunni Arabs and Shias go at it.

Tough Night

I've had a tough "technical" evening. For starters, I published the post below instead of saving a working draft, so you may have seen the draft version. Good thing Mrs. G is otherwise occupied, or she would be assigning push-ups. Yikes. I'll try not to embarass the milblog family in the future.

So, to lighten things up a bit.... Yesterday, I stumbled across the blog of a soldier who is about to finish his tour of duty in Iraq. He lists a few things he's going to miss about the place. Being an Army wife, this one caught my eye:

Knowing that if the (bleep) hit the fan, every US Army soldier and Marine here would protect every Air Force and Navy schmuck.

Admit it - you laughed. But come to think of it, now I'm in jeopardy of being assigned push-ups by Greyhawk, being Air Force and all. I think I'll just get off of the computer now. I've done enough damage this evening...

1:09 a.m. - Challenges continue. While trying to update the post that originally appeared below, I wiped out most of the extended entry portion. I will reconstruct and republish, if my password isn't yanked. For now, I really am leaving the computer...