IT WAS a stark admission of helplessness from the leader of the world's only super power.
With Israeli jets bombing Beirut airport and Hezbollah rockets landing in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, the US President was asked what he could do to stop the fighting escalating.
Standing beside the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, at a press conference in Rostock before he left for the G8 summit in St Petersburg, George Bush said: "We were headed towards the road map, things looked positive, and the terrorists stepped up. It's really sad where people are prepared to take innocent life to stop that process … in fact it's pathetic."
Israel had a right to defend itself, he said, but he was concerned about the "fragile democracy" in Lebanon.
That response was an admission his administration does not have a policy on the conflict. In fact it has not had a policy since the surprise election victory in January of Hamas in a poll that Washington had encouraged.
The so-called road map for peace is dead and the Bush Administration is paralysed...
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