FROM DEMOCRACY NOW:

Israeli Military Official: "Lebanon Will Be Dark For a Few Years"
The Israeli military is reportedly planning to ramp up its attacks on Lebanon by targeting more of the civilian infrastructure as well as symbols of the Lebanese government. One military official told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years."

Report: Israel Allowing Rocket Attacks to Give It "A Sort of Moral Equivalency"
On the military front, Thomas Ricks, a top reporter for the Washington Post, has said that Israel is purposely not bombing all of Hezbollah's rocket launchers. Sources have told him that the Israeli military feels that if Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at Israel it gives Israel a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

5,000 Israelis Protest in Tel Aviv Against Attacks
In Israel, over 5,000 protesters marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday to condemn the attack on Lebanon. The protest was one of the largest in Israel since the attacks on Lebanon began. Demonstrators called on Israel to negotiate with Hizbollah.

* Israeli Protester: "Hizbollah kidnapped two soldiers and Israel started a stupid war instead of talking to Hizbollah like it demanded. And we are protesting against those stupid acts. Israel is murdering people every day and we disagree."

The protesters also encouraged Israeli soldiers to disobey orders in Lebanon.

Reporter: Israeli Fighter Pilots Deliberately Missing Targets
The Observer newspaper reports that at least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed bombing targets in Lebanon because they were concerned they were being ordered to bomb civilians.

UNICEF Warns of Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
In Gaza, the aid organization UNICEF is warning the region is facing a humanitarian crisis. This is UNICEF Special Representative Dan Rohrmann.

* Dan Rohrmann: "I just returned from Gaza and the situation there is quite dramatic for the children. And It is understandable that the international media is paying attention to what goes on in Lebanon right now, because there you have a humanitarian disaster. But I can tell you that for the children in Gaza the eight hundred and forty thousand, the humanitarian crisis there is very real to them."

Palestinian Government spokesperson Ghazi Hamad accused Israel of waging a war against the people of Gaza.

* Ghazi Hamad: "What happening in Rafah is something that is critical, because we feel that there is a comprehensive war against the people, against civilians and against their buildings so we think that in the last two days we lost about 15 people in the last aggression attack"

Palestinian Cultural Activists Call for Israeli Boycott
Meanwhile over 100 Palestinian cultural activists have begun distributing a letter urging artists and filmmakers to participate in an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The letter reads in part "Like the boycott of South African art institutions during apartheid, cultural workers must speak out against the current Israeli war crimes and atrocities."

U.S. Sends 3,700 More Troops Into Baghdad
In Iraq, the U.S. is sending 3,700 more troops into Baghdad to help contain the increasing violence. An average of 100 people are dying a day in Baghdad. Last week General John Abizaid, the top US military commander in Iraq, admitted that Baghdad is now more violent than ever. The general warned that Iraq could be moving toward civil war.

The July report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, completing only about its 50th project assessment out of some almost 2,000 U.S. government projects in Iraq. And in this assessment, the first to target Bechtel, as you reported, they found gross mismanagement: a planned critical children's hospital in Basra, simply mismanaged, incomplete; a chain of subcontractors that led to no work being done, and they canceled the contract. And the fact is, as the Special Inspector General has looked more closely at each contract, more and more and more of the U.S. contracts are being canceled.

However, while the U.S. has spent about $15 billion on reconstruction in Iraq, there's a time limit. September 30th is when all un-obligated funds are going to revert back to the U.S. Treasury. So now is a time that the audits have to be completed of these projects. The bad projects have to be canceled, and the money needs to be immediately turned over to Iraqi companies.

Bechtel? Because, first of all, of their horrific war profiteering, their push that brought us into the war in Iraq, their profiting from that war, and, as I explain in my book, their utter failure in providing the services that we and the Iraqis have paid them $2.8 billion to provide. And that includes the most basic services in Iraq: water, electricity, sewage.

As the Special Inspector General reports found, in these sectors, only 50% of projects have even been completed, and in the electricity sector, a full third have not yet even begun. This means that Iraqis, for example, in Baghdad, only have eight hours of electricity a day, again, after we have spent, just in this sector alone, $3 billion. We might recall that it was just three months after the 1991 U.S. invasion of Iraq that the Iraqi companies got these services up and running right away.

Electricity in Iraq controls water and sewage. So that means that without electricity, the country doesn’t have these other services, as well. Many people across Iraq over and over again in regular public protests point to the lack of electricity as one of the key sources of unrest and the insurgency in Iraq.