Painting the roses red

So Condi is off to paint the roses red for George in the Middle East.
She's not actually going to do anything there to stop the war.
She's just going to talk a lot of Christian Fundamentalist code about birth pangs for a new Middle East -- you know, the one George Bush thinks is rising from the ashes of Iraq -- and chatter about the mytical pan-Arab coalition that George wants her to create:

. . . Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, who is due to travel to Israel tomorrow and then to Rome on Wednesday for talks with United Nations, European and Arab officials, has said she will not call for an immediate ceasefire.
'She's not going to come home with a ceasefire but stronger ties to the Arab world,' said a senior official. 'It's going to allow us to say that America isn't going to put up with this and we have Arab friends that are against you terrorists. What we want is our Arab allies standing against [Shia] Hezbollah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this. We're going to say to Hezbollah and the terrorist groups, 'This will not stand.'
'That is the way to bring real change to the Middle East. If you just have a ceasefire then, sooner or later, they go back to fighting.'
The 'Arab umbrella' policy is accompanied by largely uncritical support for Israel. . .

Let a smile be your umbrella, Beruit.
And don't miss Billmon's take on the Orwellian implications of all this.