I turned my voice recorder back on, but I didn’t realize until later that it got stuck on “pause.” So I’ll have to paraphrase what he said next.

He told me that 18 days after the start of the war a large group of civilians decided it was time to leave Ain Ebel and flee to the north. They were no longer willing to stay while Israel fired back at Hezbollah’s rocket launchers. It was too dangerous, and Hezbollah insisted on staying and endangering those who lived there.

So they fled the area in a convoy of civilian vehicles. It was safer, they figured, to travel in a group than alone.

On their way out of the village, Hezbollah fighters stood on the side of the road and opened fire with machine guns on the fleeing civilians.

I was shocked, and I asked Alan to confirm this. Was it really true? Hezbollah opened fire on Lebanese civilians with machine guns? Alan confirmed this was true.

"Why?" I had an idea, but I wanted a local person to say it.

Because, Alan said, Hezbollah wanted to use the civilians of Ain Ebel as “human shields.” I did not use the phrase “human shields.” These were Alan’s own words.

“Romneycare” is modeled on the premise that the ultimate responsibility for getting health care should rest with each individual citizen, just as it does with auto insurance. For those who can’t afford health insurance, the state will help. (Massachusetts has long since made it illegal for health insurance companies to not take people with pre-existing conditions, so that’s one consideration that Romney’s team didn’t have to deal with.) For those with the means to purchase health insurance but who decline to do so and thus become free-riders when a health crisis occurs, the state offers healthy “incentives” to get themselves into an insurance program. Okay, let’s be honest – if you’ve got the means to get insured, Romneycare will make it in your interest to do so.

Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, puts all of the responsibility on the Golden State’s employers. Employers have to provide health insurance. If they don’t, they get whacked. The individual citizen is thereby infantilized, treated as if he can’t tend to his own needs.

But it’s worse than that. The Schwarzenegger plan, by putting the onus on employers, suggests to the citizenry that there will be a free ride. “Great,” the plan’s proponents imagine a typical Californian thinking. “I won’t have to pay for health insurance and I’ll still get it anyway. Whoopee!”

Fourteen members of an advisory board to Jimmy Carter's human rights organization resigned on Thursday to protest his new book, which has been attacked as unfairly critical of Israel and riddled with inaccuracies.

The resignations at the Carter Center are the latest backlash against the former president's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." The book has also drawn fire from Jewish groups and fellow Democrats, and led to the resignation last month of Kenneth Stein, a center fellow and a longtime Carter adviser.

"You have clearly abandoned your historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side," the departing members of the center's Board of Councilors told Carter in their letter of resignation.

This seems to be a rather mediocre delivery. Which is pretty good for W. Once again I've got the feeling that if Tony Blair were the US President and was giving this same speech using the exact same text, folks in living rooms across America would be standing and cheering every point.

He notes that if we announced phased withdrawals, the killings will be on a "scale unimaginable". Actually, they're not all that unimaginable. We've seen them before. When we've left before we should have. When we never went in the first place. They are all too imaginable.

8:21 - A nice finish to the speech, and a journeyman effort in delivering it tonight. Will it change minds? I don't think it will have that much effect.

POST SPEECH ANALYSIS: Bush and his team spent quite a bit of time on the address. They included several elements to bridge political differences. His assumption of responsibility for the failure to quell the violence in Baghdad is the one element that had been missing until now, and it may help take the edge off of some of the criticism.

President Bush was at his best tonight: serious, detailed, and above all, resolute.  He spoke to many audiences.

To the public weary and grieved by the death of many of the finest Americans, the president spoke of the crucial issue: "For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq."

It isn't, he explained repeatedly, just about giving Iraqis hope, but maintaining American security for all of the reasons he detailed.

The President’s Address was well presented and definitely had military “warnings” to the meddling of Iran and Syria. However, the rhetoric is not backed up by “the Surge” and instead simply has “a surge.”

This evening, there will be many conservatives that will be saying things like, “Bush is taking the gloves off, 21,500 will kick a$$*, we are going to show them now……………”

In the morning, many of my friends that are Battalion and Brigade Commanders will wake up and greet this plan with quiet. More detail will come out in the days ahead but this is not “the Surge.”

My friends will also understand that they will remain under the same politically correct Rules of Engagement with continued fear of American prosecution. The only change in the “Rules of Engagement” is that Iraqi Forces will have greater say, and may possibly solely determine on what targets to actually “engage.”

Just a round up. I'll hopefully watch the speech at Whitehouse.gov soon.

*= the filter again

Addendum: the second half is here.