Al Qaida in a race against Iran?

There is an apparent rift among al Qaida over Hezbollah.

31 July (AKI) - Al-Qaeda representatives in Saudi Arabia are refusing to toe the line with the group's leadership in supporting the Lebanese Shiite group, Hezbollah... "Support for Hezbollah, and its eventual victory would cause enormous problems for our relationship with the people," according to the latest [online] issue of "The Voice of Jihad".
Such views appear sharply at odds with those expressed by al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who in an appeal televised by ... al-Jazeera last week, called on Sunni Muslims to help their Shiite brother from Hezbollah fight the Israelis.

Al Qaida is Sunni and hostile to Shiites, as evidenced by Zawahiri's backing of Zarqawi. Hezbollah is Shiite, so Zawahiri's support for them requires some explanation.

Zawahiri may see this as a race against Iran. If Iran gets the bomb, that's a big ace in its hand when it comes to a Sunni-Shia showdown over who gets to control the holy sites. If Israel falls before Iran gets nukes, then the Sunni can maintain a numerical advantage in ensuing sectarian warfare. Thus, support for Hezbollah is tactical and does not contradict al Qaida's overall anti-Shiite strategic stance. If so, al Qaida is under pressure to make things happen before Iran gains military nuclear capability.

The use of an evacuated hospital

On the 2nd, CNN reported on an Israeli raid on a Lebanese hospital being used as a Hezbollah post:

Israel's military released video Wednesday that it said proved a hospital it raided overnight in Lebanon was a Hezbollah headquarters. Hezbollah disputed the account.
Israeli special forces raided the hospital near Baalbeck, snatching five militants and killing 10 others, Israel's army said.
Hezbollah, however, said Israel arrested five civilians who were not members of the Islamic militia.
Israeli video of the scene appeared to show weapons that Israeli soldiers discovered during a search of the hospital...

There's one thing wrong with the Hezbollah denial above: it was apparently contradicted by an earlier Hezbollah claim. From the 1st:

Hezbollah denied the claim, saying “the citizens kidnapped in Baalbek are normal civilians”. A statement broadcast by Hezbollah’s Al Manar television said: “The Resistance announces that it has foiled an Israeli landing operation in Baalbek and denies that the enemy has captured any of its members.”
A Hezbollah spokesman had earlier said that Israeli troops were surrounded after attacking Dar Al Hikmeh Hospital, which is run by the rebel group, about two kilometres southwest of Baalbek.
The spokesman said all patients had been evacuated from the hospital on July 12, when Hezbollah fighters captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

If all patients were evacuated weeks ago, what was the hospital being used for?

Fingerprinting the world

The EU is drafting plans to fingerprint all children. From July 30:

Under laws being drawn up behind closed doors by the European Commission's 'Article Six' committee, which is composed of representatives of the European Union's 25 member states, all children will have to attend a finger-printing centre to obtain an EU passport by June 2009 at the latest.

The apparent reason they are not considering requiring prints from children younger than six is biological; children's prints have not fully developed before that age. It's still unclear how far the resulting data will eventually be shared between member countries.

Meanwhile, the US will expand its fingerprinting program to cover all resident aliens. From July 27:

[Over 11 million] legal permanent residents will soon have to be fingerprinted and photographed before reentering the United States by sea or air, in a significant expansion of a long-stalled border security program, officials announced...

At the bottom of the piece, we are warned to expect full ten-finger print databases to deployed in a few years on a global scale.

The Homeland Security system now collects two fingerprints from each person, but officials hope to pilot a 10-print system next year and deploy it in 2008 or 2009. The smaller system cannot tap into an FBI fingerprint database or include enough data to accurately identify individuals in the entire population, Mocny said. The European Union, Britain and Japan now are looking at fingerprint requirements for their border systems.

It follows that, given the scope of the draft EU rules, technical requirements will force them to require the full ten prints from children.