World War III

When war first erupted a month ago in Lebanon, Newt Gingrich, a man whose first name is surprisingly descriptive, was the first public figure to toss around the idea of World War III. In today's Washington Post, Richard Holbrooke, Clinton's UN Ambassador (who oddly dated Diane Sawyer in the 70s) echoes this prediction. He writes:

Two full-blown crises, in Lebanon and Iraq, are merging into a single emergency. A chain reaction could spread quickly almost anywhere between Cairo and Bombay. Turkey is talking openly of invading northern Iraq to deal with Kurdish terrorists based there. Syria could easily get pulled into the war in southern Lebanon. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are under pressure from jihadists to support Hezbollah... This combination of combustible elements poses the greatest threat to global stability since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, history's only nuclear superpower confrontation.

Puts you in the mood to finally dust off those rations and refurbish the bomb shelter, don't it?

The Guns of August (Washington Post)