Republican Realists Call for Major Course Change

Junior and Dick had better listen.

They face serious consequences, and they need to realize that.

Pleading insanity won't work!

Republican Realists Call for Major Course Change:

WASHINGTON - Some of the Republican Party's most venerable foreign policy strategists are calling urgently for a major course change in U.S. policy in the Middle East, but neither the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush nor Republicans in Congress appear inclined to pay much heed.

Whether their view may change as a result of Sunday's devastating Israeli missile strike of an apartment building in Qana in south Lebanon in which more than 60 people, two-thirds of them children, were killed, remains unclear.

The attack, which further fueled already-burning outrage throughout the Arab world against Israel's nearly three-week-old military campaign and Washington's rejection of international calls for an immediate ceasefire, reportedly prompted the administration to demand that the Jewish state curtail its air strikes.

But the deaths in Qana seem unlikely to persuade Bush and his increasingly hapless secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to reconsider their basic policies, such as refusing to negotiate with Syria or Iran, or providing virtually unconditional backing for Israel's military offensives in both Lebanon and Gaza, as recommended by the former policymakers.