Kathryn: That USA Today headline (“MIDEAST NEARS REGIONAL WAR”) makes no sense. A regional war would involve mass mobilizations in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. It would involve the air forces of those nations making bombing runs over Israeli units. It would involve tank battles and the mining of harbors. None of that is going to happen. The Arab nations will not mobilize for war against Israel. Been there, done that, got whupped. When Hezbollah runs out of rockets–a thing the IDF seems to have made sure of–things will calm down to the usual raiding and sniping, with small, brief IDF sorties in response. Just what’s been going on the past 30 years, in other words. It’s hard to see how this will ever change. The only thing one can imagine is Iran getting nukes and doing something really, really stupid with them. (Stupid, because they’d get nuked right back, and surely know it.) I fully expect to leave this world, at a ripe old age (DV), with newspaper headlines saying the same thing they were saying when I came in: FIGHTING FLARES UP IN MIDEAST.