Cleaner

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesmodel, explaining why Olmert ordered the offensive to begin, while recommending that his cabinet approve the UN ceasefire resolution: “if you hand over to the Lebanese army a cleaner south Lebanon, a south Lebanon where you have Hezbollah removed from the territory, that makes their troubles a lot easier”. See, they’re like house-guests, cleaning up after themselves. Do you suppose “a cleaner south Lebanon” sounded better in the original German Hebrew?

Maybe I should take a vacation and read French novels too: I can’t think of anything to say about the unlikely news that George Bush is reading Camus’s L’Étranger (by the way, the linked AFP story gets the year of the novel wrong and notes that Bush quoted Camus once in a speech while neglecting to mention that he took the quote completely out of context). I think at the next press conference the reporters should only ask questions about the book.

Holding a contest over the weekend is usually a losing proposition, but I’ll give you a choice: 1) what French novel should Bush read next? 2) Let’s assume it was a mistake: when he picked up the book, what did Bush think The Stranger was, or who did he think Camus was?