Yep, at one time, Beirut was actually quite beautiful and an attractive tourist spot.
Now this is NOT nice...
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2182020&page=1
"Gorbachev: 'Americans Have a Severe Disease'"
By CLAIRE SHIPMAN
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "July 12, 2006 — Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the "iron curtain" that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Now, 15 years after a coup removed him from power and the Soviet Union dissolved, he has some stern words for the United States, whose relationship with Russia has soured lately.
"We have made some mistakes," he said, referring to recent attacks on Russia's democracy. "So what? Please don't put even more obstacles in our way. Do you really think you are smarter than we are?"
The former general secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party accused Americans of arrogance and trying to impose their way of life on other nations.
"Americans have a severe disease — worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex," he said. "You want an American style-democracy here. That will not work.""
Back on May 1, I linked to this Michael Totten post from Israel, titled Everything Could Explode at Any Moment”;
Last year I drove down from Beirut into Hezbollah-occupied Lebanon along the border with Israel. Aside from Hezbollah’s other miniature state-within-a-state in the suburbs south of Beirut, the border region is the craziest place in the country.The Lebanese government doesn’t control it and cannot police it. The army is not allowed to go down there. Soldiers I’ve talked to refer to the southern-most checkpoint before the Hezbollah-occupied zone as “the border." Psychotic road-side propaganda shows severed heads, explosions from suicide-bombs, and murderous tyrants from Iran and Syria.
Lisa Goldman and I decided to drive up there and take a look from the Israeli side.
“I should warn you,” I said in the car. “Something is wrong on the border. Something bad is going to happen.”
“Why do you say that?” she said.
I told her what I knew, what had recently happened when I tried to visit the border again from the Lebanese side just two weeks before.
[...]
"I say this to my guys every morning: Everything could explode at any moment. Just after I said it this morning a bus load of pensioners showed up on a field trip. An old woman brought us some food. It's crazy. They shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be here."
"What's happening here is very unusual," Zvika, the Israeli Defense Forces Spokesman, said. But he wouldn't tell me what, exactly, was so unusual. Shortly after I left the country, a story broke in the Daily Telegraph that explained it.
Iran has moved into South Lebanon. Intelligence agents are helping Hezbollah construct watch towers fitted with one-way bullet-proof windows right next to Israeli army positions.
Here's what one officer said:
This is now Iran's front line with Israel. The Iranians are using Hizbollah to spy on us so that they can collect information for future attacks. And there is very little we can do about it.
If all out war erupts at the Lebanese border, try to remember just who it is that Israel is fighting. It's not Lebanon.
The pictures are quite telling.
So is the "comments" section.