Israel warns of "extreme action" to free a soldier captured by Palestinian militants

[George_Eller]

@mike_M

Nice updates george…Thanks

You’re welcome Mike,

Here is more on today’s news:

Wave of Rockets Launched Into Israel Claims 8 Lives
Thursday, August 03, 2006
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206815,00.html
Fox News

BOURJ AL-MULOUK, Lebanon — Hezbollah rockets fired into northern Israel killed eight civilians on Thursday as four Israeli soldiers were killed in ground operations inside Lebanon.

The Israeli casualties came as senior officials said Defense Minister Amir Peretz told top army officers to push ahead to the Litani River to secure an 18-mile buffer zone and leaflets were dropped in Beirut warning residents of three Shiite neighborhoods to flee.

In the town of Acre, three adults and a child were killed when a rocket hit a group of people standing on their balcony, Mayor Shimon Lankry told Israel’s Channel 2 Television. In Maalot, three people were killed when a rocket struck a car, police said.

Since the fighting started, 67 Israelis have been killed, 40 of them soldiers slain in fighting and 27 of them civilians killed in rocket attacks.

More than 180 rockets, which cannot be guided like missiles, were fired across the border, with almost 100 of them being launched within one half-hour period, according to Israeli police. The barrage came a day after Hezbollah launched a record 210 rockets into Israel.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah threatened in a televised speech Thursday to attack Tel Aviv if Beirut proper was hit by Israeli rockets. (Full story)

Earlier, Hezbollah said it won’t agree to a cease-fire until Israeli troops leave Lebanon.

“Declaring a cease-fire is not the concern of the people of Lebanon as long as there is one Israeli soldier on Lebanese soil — even one meter [into Lebanon],” Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahal said in a live interview with Al-Jazeera television.

Three Israeli soldiers were killed when an anti-tank rocket hit their tank in Rajmil, the IDF said. Another soldier was killed and four wounded in heavy fighting near the town of Ayt a-Shab, according to the IDF.

In Lebanon, an Israeli missile slammed into a house in a border village early Thursday, killing a family of three, and airstrikes across the country’s south wounded at least six people, Lebanese security officials said.

Another Lebanese woman was killed when a missile hit her house near the Christian town of Marjayoun, they said. The first missile attack occurred in the village of Taibeh, less than five kilometers from the Israeli border.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said more than 900 people had been killed and 3,000 injured in the fighting, though did not say whether the new figure — up from 548 confirmed dead — included those missing.

More than 1 million people — a quarter of Lebanon’s population — had been displaced, he said, adding the fighting “is taking an enormous toll on human life and infrastructure, and has totally ravaged our country and shattered our economy.”

Diplomacy Efforts in Progress

On the diplomatic front, France circulated a revised U.N. resolution calling for an immediate halt to Israeli-Hezbollah fighting and spelling out conditions for a permanent cease-fire.

The new draft reiterates France and other nations’ call “for an immediate cessation of hostilities,” and emphasizes “a lasting solution to the current crisis between Israel and Lebanon.”

The conditions include: release of the two Israeli soldiers whose abduction sparked the current fighting; “settlement of the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel;” and marking the international borders of Lebanon, including in the disputed area known as Chebaa Farms.

On Thursday, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi condemned the U.N. Security Council for not having the “moral courage to condemn Israel” as he opened an emergency session of the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur. (Full story)

In Amman, Jordan, King Abdullah II lashed out at his U.S. and Israeli allies, saying in newspaper interviews Thursday that he was “enraged” by the war on Lebanon and that prolonged fighting has “weakened” moderates in the Mideast. (Full story)

Iran, which backs Hezbollah’s actions in Lebanon, said the only solution Iranian solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, state-media reported. (Full story)

The group Human Rights Watch and news organizations initially reported 54 or more civilian deaths in an Israeli airstrike on the southern Lebanese village of Qana, based on figures provided by Lebanese officials. But a re-examination of the incident Thursday indicated only 28 people died.

Human Rights Watch said it had discovered the discrepancy as part of a larger investigation of all civilian deaths in Lebanon. The bombardment of Qana and pictures of dead children pulled from the wreckage led to an international uproar and caused Israel to order a two-day cutback in airstrikes.

[b]Three weeks into the conflict, six Israeli brigades or roughly 10,000 troops were locked in fighting with hundreds of Hezbollah guerrillas.

The Israeli army said its soldiers had taken up positions in or near 11 towns and villages across south Lebanon as they try to carve out a Hezbollah-free zone up to the Litani river ahead of what it hopes will be a speedy deployment of a multinational force there.

Most of the villages are close to the Israel-Lebanon border; the one deepest inside Lebanon, Majdel Zoun, is about four miles from the frontier. However, many tanks pushed even further north, controlling open areas from higher ground, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.[/b]

Lebanese security officials said a missile crashed into a two-story house in the border village of Taibeh, killing a couple and their daughter.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television reported that guerrillas also clashed with Israeli troops in the village, less than three miles from the border, destroying a tank and two bulldozers and injuring its crew members. The Israeli army said a tank had been lightly hit in clashes but that there were no casualties or serious damage.

In the first air raids on the Lebanese capital in almost a week, witnesses said at least four missiles hit the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh, a Shiite Muslim sector that has been repeatedly shelled by Israel since fighting began three weeks ago.

Lebanese television said the attacks targeted several buildings in a Hezbollah compound of Dahieh’s al-Ruweis neighborhood. The compound, which includes a center for religious teaching, has been attacked in earlier raids and sustained sizable damage.

In the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, fighter jets struck an ambulance working for a local Muslim group, Lebanese security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with the press.

Israeli warplanes also fired more than a dozen missiles at roads and suspected guerrilla hideouts in the southeastern town of Rashaya, Lebanese security officials said. They said the attacks were part of Israel’s strategy to destroy Lebanese infrastructure so that people would not travel from one village to the other.

Other strikes hit targets near Lebanon’s northern border with Syria overnight, Lebanese radio said. It was the second attack in the area in 24 hours, after a bridge linking the zone to the northern port of Tripoli was destroyed Wednesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[George_Eller]

Israel is following Monty, not Patton
James Lewis
The American Thinker
July 24th, 2006
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5699

While General George S. Patton was winning public laurels for fast armored strikes against German forces in WWII, Field Marshall Montgomery ran a parallel British army that made haste slowly. Patton is often considered the most brilliant US Army commander of the time, but Monty had his reasons. Today, the Israelis may be using a Monty strategy, because it makes more sense.

One difference between Patton and Montgomery is obvious: Patton was an American, backed with the limitless resources of the US homeland. The United States came into the war in 1942, while the Brits had barely managed to save their army at Dunkirk, retreating from continental Europe. Throughout the war Britain was in desperate straits militarily and economically. Moreover the British armed forces had fought for two generations, barely surviving World War I. The British Empire was clearly breaking apart. They could not afford high-risk gambles.

Forget more sophisticated arguments. Doing high-risk armored thrusts made sense for Patton (though Eisenhower kept him on a short leash). It never made any sense for Monty. Nobody at Whitehall was going to thank him for winning a battle and losing his army.

Israel is in a Montgomery position today. For sixty years, they have been fighting ever new ranks of deadly enemies. Israel is not a culture that celebrates death in battle. Yet they have won, time and again, by being smarter and tougher than the opposition, finding weak spots in enemy tactics and strategy, and only then hitting with local superiority until the enemy finally broke and fled. That is why they are now safe from attack from Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. But they are not safe from Iran, which has never been bloodied in battle with Israel.

Today the IDF is facing an Iranian proxy guerrila army that is very well trained, supplied, and dug in. They are clever enough, and ruthless, and bloodthirsty. They know how to play the media for maximum propaganda advantage.

Iran’s martyrdom cult is the first one faced by Western armed forces since Imperial Japan. For Khomeiniacs, dying in battle is celebrated as a path to Paradise, while on the Hamas side, the family sometimes performs a joyful wedding when their shahid succeeds in suicide-murder against Jews.

Meanwhile, the international media are tilting the playing field so that mere survival for Hezbollah will be counted as a victory for the suiciders, and a major defeat for Israel.

Israelis are therefore in the position of sane soldiers fighting crazies on a tilted playing field. But unlike the heroic US Marines against the Japanese at Iwo Jima, this is not a one-time battle with a lot of resources on the side of sanity and civilization. It is an ongoing generational war of attrition, in which the sheer capacity to sustain morale counts as much as anything else.

So a Field-Marshall Montgomery strategy makes a lot of sense. Never give the enemy the initiative, even tactically. Bring all your strengths to bear, and none of the enemy’s. Don’t treat this as a football game; it’s better to survive and fight again than to look good to the media.

What we are seeing today looks like constant probing. Every other day we hear that yes, the IDF will attack on the ground, in strength, or no, they won’t. The IDF command may not know yet. There is a lot of tactical fighting going on, with special ops (five of whom just lost their lives), a lot of probing behind enemy lines, massive artillery and air strikes, and attempts to drive away civilians, so Hezbollah won’t have children to hide behind and turn into involuntary martyrs. A lot more is going on behind the scenes than we will ever know.

The international Left is therefore trying to rush the endgame, with slanted horror stories. In some cases even friendly commentators are insisting that the IDF has to fight this battle in their way. But if the Israels are smart and self-confident they will take their time. They are unbelievably lucky to have George Bush in the White House and Condi Rice at State, with a real and sympathetic understanding of the Israeli position. They are playing for time and giving sustained diplomatic support. That’s the only thing the civilized world can do right now.

Wildlife biologists in Africa have discovered that most lion hunts don’t succeed against herds of wildebeest. The reason is simple. It’s better for a lion pack to go hungry than for one hunting lion to be injured. Fighting animals cannot afford injuries, because that is tantamount to dying. Therefore they calculate weaknesses and strike only when ready. This is not a flashy George Patton strategy, but a hunter’s survival game.

History has thrust a lot of unwanted wars on Israel, and they’d better be good at both winning and surviving. This will not be their last battle, and Phyrric victories are not victories at all.

James Lewis

[George_Eller]

Israel’s Strategy: Better a Poor Patton than the Full Monty
Glen Tschirgi
The American Thinker
July 28th, 2006
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5710

Recently, James Lewis posited that Israel’s should the use the tactics of Gen. Bernard Montgomery rather than General George S. Patton in the current fight against the Islamofascists.

In order to evaluate which tactics would be better suited to the current conflict in Lebanon - and first admitting that I am neither a military historian by trade nor privy to inside information on the fighting beyond what can be gleaned from news and trusted websites - we must decide whether the situation confronting the two storied generals of World War II bore any resemblance to the situation facing Israel now and, assuming that a worthwhile comparison can be made, which of the tactics would be more effective.

For the sake of easier analysis I confine the time period to post-D-Day, from June 1944 through August, 1944. Surprisingly, there are a number of similarities between the fight in northern France and Lebanon.

After managing to just barely gain a toehold in northern France, the Allies had to break out against an extremely well-trained, battle-hardened and well-equipped German army. If not for the interference of Adolph Hitler in Rommel’s defensive plans, the Germans had superior Panzer divisions that could have thrown the Allies back into the sea if committed soon enough in the invasion. This was not a beaten foe by any means. The Germans were, however, suffering from a certain degree of shock and trying to pull back to defensible positions.

While Gen. Montgomery slugged away in the northern sector of the beachhead and favored putting all available resources behind a push through the Low Countries into Germany, General Patton favored exploiting the Allies’ air superiority and mobility of tank columns by circumventing known, enemy defenses, cutting off the enemy’s supply lines from the rear and allowing the slower, infantry and artillery columns to mop up the defenders.

Clearly Hezbollah is not the German Army of 1944. Hezbollah is a militia on steroids, not an Army per se. But there are significant similarities: Hezbollah, like the Germans, has taken a very defensive posture in Lebanon, having spent the last six years creating vast bunker systems, tunnels and minefields. Like the Germans, Hezbollah has no doubt trained for just such an invasion, knowing that, sooner or later, the Israelis will have to commit ground troops to have any hope of dislodging them.

Hezbollah is fighting on familiar ground, a sort of home field advantage. While the Germans were not defending home soil yet, they had occupied France for a full four years—plenty of time to get intimately familiar with the battlespace—and knew that a defeat in France meant an open door to their homeland. And like the Germans, Hezbollah has relatively short supply lines. Hezbollah, although not a formally-recognized nation state like Germany, bears many of the earmarks of a modern state with its own taxation system, schools, local government, police and courts, and Hezbollah enjoys the express support of Syria and Iran as well as at least some part of the Lebanese government.

The critical similarity between France of 1944 and Lebanon of 2006 is that both the Germans and Hezbollah have chosen fixed, heavily fortified, defensive positions. Israel and the Allies, in turn, both faced a difficult choice in how to best overcome this enemy. Clearly, Gen. Patton had the better approach.

As pointed out by Victor Davis Hanson in The Soul of Battle, General Patton adopted the same tactics as General William T. Sherman: be ruthless in battle but not foolhardy. Do not throw away the lives of your men by frontal assaults against fixed, defensive positions. Whereas Montgomery and the other Allied command (including Eisenhower) favored a bloody war of attrition where infantry were asked to assault fixed, German positions with horrific loss of life, Patton refused to allow his army to be savaged and slowed down by static, German defenses. Instead, he used the mobility of his flimsy but numerous Sherman tanks to outflank defensive lines and instill panic in the surrounded enemy. American planes could then be used effectively to decimate the German columns as they fled from their hidden, fortified positions and attempted to escape Patton’s trap.

Contrary to what Lewis asserts in his article, Patton’s strategy did not depend upon “limitless resources of the US homeland.” Quite the opposite. Patton was the black sheep of Allied generals, reviled by Eisenhower and Patton’s army was routinely starved for precious gasoline and ammunition even as they captured huge portions of territory along with thousands of trapped German forces. By August, 1944, there were chronic shortages of gasoline which forced Patton to literally beg, borrow and steal wherever he could to keep the tanks running. The statistics on what Patton accomplished as compared with the meager resources he was given are staggering. There is no question that the German General Staff feared Patton far more than any other Allied general for the very reason that he was the only one who saw that rapid advance, encirclement and ruthless destruction of the enemy could end the war quickly. Adopting Patton’s strategy, therefore, is neither “flashy” nor prone to high casualties nor does it require abundant resources as Lewis suggests.

Interestingly, Lewis asserts that Montgomery could not/would not attempt high-risk operations that might win a battle but lose an army. History shows otherwise. Operation Market Garden, a risky venture if there ever was one, was entirely Montgomery’s brain-child and he persuaded Eisenhower to commit all the spare resources of the Allies to its success. Operation Market Garden was akin to ‘betting the farm’ as its failure meant that no further offensive operations could be conducted for quite some time thereafter. At the end of the day, Montgomery managed to lose significant numbers of troops, supplies and armor in a daring but misguided attempt to break the German lines in the Low Countries.

Turning to the situation in Lebanon, Patton’s strategy of rapid advance, encirclement and then decimation of the enemy is a far better choice. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Lewis is correct that the Israelis have limited resources, Israel can hardly afford the slow, ponderous approach of a Montgomery. In reality, Israel is not strapped for resources—they have the clear backing of the United States for as much materiel as they need. It is public knowledge, thanks to the usual weasels at The New York Times, that the U.S. is rushing shipments of satellite-guided munitions to Israel even now.

The one resource Israel does lack, however, is time. And this factor heavily favors the Patton approach.

Israel has clear advantages, like the Allies in France of 1944, of air superiority and mobility, particularly armor and helicopters. Patton would not “probe” defenses as Lewis suggests but go around those defenses. In Pattonesque fashion , Israel should use its armor and air assets to cut off Hezbollah from any hope of re-supply, perhaps by positioning strong, blocking forces at the Litani River and strategic points along the border with Syria. Once Hezbollah units are completely cut off from re-supply of even water and food, they will be forced to leave their well-prepared defenses in an effort to break out of the encirclement. The vulnerability to encirclement is the classic weakness of static, defensive positions. And when Hezbollah comes out from hiding, the IAF will be ready and waiting with devastating results.

There is a risk that some might raise to this strategy. By positioning its forces on the Litani and the Syrian border, it might be argued that Israel would be exposing its forces to attack from the front and rear if the Lebanese Army and/ or the Syrian Army tries to come to the aid of Hezbollah. Similar objections were raised to Patton’s tactics, even as he showed he could reach the Rhine by September, 1944.

The truth then (as now) is that there were no forces in Germany capable of stopping Patton, had he been given the gasoline and ammunition to continue pushing east into Germany. In the same way, apart from Hezbollah, there simply isn’t a force willing and able to threaten the Israeli army in either Lebanon or Syria. And should Syria have any thoughts in this regard, they could be told quite bluntly by Secretary Rice that any attack by Syria on Israel would be punished with overwhelming American airstrikes against Syria as well as immediate retaliation by the Israelis.

(It is an insane reality that Syria cannot be attacked without more than the existing provocation of supplying Hezbollah with missiles being fired into Israel. In order to permanently dismember Hezbollah, regime change must occur in Syria. So, in a very sad sense, Israel must, in fact, tempt Syria to attack in order to provide Israel with the necessary justification for bringing down the Assad regime.)

In sum, Israel needs a relatively quick and complete victory over Hezbollah, so complete that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Hezbollah is finished as a fighting force. Israel cannot afford to take a Montgomery-like, incremental approach. Unless Syria blunders into this conflict in some unpredictably stupid fashion, the clock is ticking and Israel cannot spend months or even weeks inching slowly north against lethal, Hezbollah defenses. Instead, Israel must encircle Hezbollah fighters and force them to attempt a break out where Israel can bring superior firepower to bear. Anything less than this is defeat and that is the “full monty” truth.

Glen Tschirgi

[George_Eller]

Hezbollah’s Iwo Jima Delusion
Michael Lopez-Calderon
The American Thinker
August 1st, 2006

http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5720

Recent dueling essays on The American Thinker have debated whether Israel is following the tactics of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at the expense of Gen. George S. Patton’s methods. James Lewis argued that indeed the IDF’s approach was more Monty than Patton whereas Glen Tschirgi countered that Israel would be better advised to choose a lesser Patton over the “full Monty.”

Unfortunately, though both writers make impressive arguments, the appropriate analogy is not found in the Europe Theater of Operations during World War II but rather the Pacific. Hezbollah’s predicament comes closer to the Japanese forces at Iwo Jima than the German Army in Normandy and Western Europe. And as such, Israel’s strategy in part calls for trapping the Hezbollah terrorist forces in their entrenched, fortified positions where Israel will cut them off from re-supply and then tear apart piece-by-piece.

The formerly Hezbollah-controlled, fortified hilltop Lebanese border town of Maroun al-Ras was the scene of intense fighting between Hezbollah terrorist-guerrillas and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF claims Maroun al-Ras is under its control, though accounts of subduing nearby Bint Jbeil proved premature. Apparently, hundreds of Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbeil were holed up in fortified bunkers, and have reentered the town via an elaborate series of interconnected tunnels, or hid amongst the few remaining civilians in the initial days of fighting.

The pro-Iranian, Lebanese Shiite terrorist organization has turned a number of southern Lebanese hillsides and towns into fortified death-traps. It has spent the better part of the past six years since the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon turning several hilltop towns into an Iwo Jima-like maze of fortified bunkers, spider holes, pill-boxes, sniper dens, fields of anti-tank mines and IEDs, and interconnected tunnels.

An Israeli Army commander, Siman Tov said Hezbollah guerrillas in Maroun al-Ras were

“fighting from tunnels, some equipped with above-ground cameras. They are armed with … sophisticated weapons … including longer-range antitank missiles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. ‘Here we’re dealing with missiles, a little army.’”

Hezbollah’s strategy appears geared for a massive Israeli armor and infantry incursion up to and perhaps beyond the Litani River.

Hezbollah was counting on a twofold IDF tactic of digging out the entrenched fighters in a costly war of attrition while also moving rapidly into Lebanon, leaving its lines of communications vulnerable to guerrilla ambushes in the rear. The Israelis thus far have not taken the bait.

Hezbollah apparently banked on Israel falling for a “rope-the-dope” strategy. Instead, it is Hezbollah that is trapped, like the Japanese Imperial Army on Iwo Jima, in a delusion of its own making.

Although the initial Israeli incursions into Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon have been cautious, painfully slow, and unfortunately costly, a deeper analysis reveals that this is the IDF’s plan unfolding. One observant writer has noted that the Israeli strategy is more Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and less Gen. George S. Patton. Some inside and outside of Israel question this strategy; critics contend that the IDF risks losing the initiative while simultaneously and unwittingly boosting Hezbollah’s fighting-prowess image in the Arab world. The Washington Post reports

“Israeli news outlets, which had largely lined up behind the army’s conduct of the war, have begun to ask why an army that once defeated the armies of several Arab neighbors in six days was finding it so difficult to push one militia off Israel’s border.”

Indeed, the first week of the IDF’s limited ground offensive delivered what appeared to be mixed results.

A total of five elite commandos were killed when Hezbollah “ambushed the ambushers” in the first two Israeli ground operations. Since then and as of this writing, several Israeli-manufactured Merkava tanks have been heavily damaged, one completely destroyed with the loss of its four-man crew. Two Apache helicopters have collided, killing a pilot and hurting three others. A third, an Apache Longbow, crashed, killing both pilots. Nine Israel soldiers were killed in fighting on Wednesday, July 26, bringing the total to 33 Israeli soldiers killed in the past two weeks. Even more troubling is the fact that Israel has suffered these losses even though it had barely entered Lebanon, its deepest penetration thus far being no more than three miles. The current incursion into, underway as this article goes to press may well produce more casualties.

Many fear that Israel’s difficulties in the current fighting signal a sea-change in the IDF’s fortunes. These drawbacks might give credence to Hezbollah’s charge that IDF military supremacy is a myth. The critics and doom-and-gloom pessimists ought to take a deep breath and appreciate the Israeli strategy.

It is Hezbollah that has been outsmarted here, though uninformed, mainstream reporting of the initial results obscure this fact. For in banking on a massive Israeli offensive, Hezbollah apparently posted a sizeable force in the Lebanese border towns that are being picked apart one by one by the IDF. Already there are IDF reports of as many as 230 Hezbollah terrorists killed in Maroun al-Ras and Bint Jbeil. The Bint Jbeil meat-grinder, where Hezbollah appeared determined to make an ill-advised last stand, has done its work.

The IDF and the Israeli Air Force (IAF) have destroyed an estimated 1,300 Hezbollah missiles that range from the Katyushas to Farj-3s, Farj5s, and Zelzal-2s. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has expended an estimated 2,000 missiles and has little to show for it. Israeli military officials report soldiers have found and destroyed Katyusha rocket launchers, antitank missile launchers and large caches of ammunition. Few launchers are reported available. Like the Japanese at Iwo Jima, Hezbollah has stored enormous quantities of ammunition in the Lebanese border towns, perhaps planning to wage a hit-and-run guerrilla war on Israel’s supply convoys as the IDF repeats the 1982 invasion. But Israel’s been there, done that, and she is not going to make the same mistake twice. “‘This battle against Hezbollah is going to last,’ Avi Dichter, Israel’s public security minister” informed reporters. “‘We’re not in any hurry.’”

Over whatever time remains before the conflict is forced to end, the IDF will take apart the Hezbollah terrorist-guerrillas that made the ultimate error of remaining in fixed positions. It is Hezbollah that is stoked in the passions and delusions of over-confidence. If Hezbollah takes comfort from fighting in fixed positions, they need only brush up on Napoleon, who said “the army that remains in its forts is beaten.” Or perhaps read up on how General Kuribayashi Tadamichi’s Japanese force of 21,000 at Iwo Jima was reduced by the United States Marines to just over 120 POWs (an additional 900 wounded were captured).

IDF Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsch, commander of the Galilee Division, summed up Israel’s piecemeal, probing strikes:

“When you fight a regular army, it’s different from fighting guerrillas. They are using everything they have extensively. They have been preparing for this for many years, and we are taking action to dismantle all of that. The government has given me plenty of time, and I intend to use it as long as it takes.”

Israel’s government called up an additional 30,000 reservists, and is heading into Lebanon right now. Israel will chip away, using her superior firepower, soldiers, and leadership to render Hezbollah a defeated Islamist terrorist group.

Quietly, confidently, and assured that they are both fighting for their homeland and backed by more than eighty percent of the Israeli public, the Israeli citizen-soldier will win the day.

Michael Lopez-Calderon

[George_Eller]

Missiles neutralizing Israeli tanks
By BENJAMIN HARVEY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 4, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060804/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_fighting_hezbollah_s_missiles;_ylt=ApgakRgcSYZh14Zn5OwL0Lqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ

JERUSALEM - Hezbollah’s sophisticated anti-tank missiles are perhaps the guerrilla group’s deadliest weapon in Lebanon fighting, with their ability to pierce Israel’s most advanced tanks.

Experts say this is further evidence that Israel is facing a well-equipped army in this war, not a ragtag militia.

Hezbollah has fired Russian-made Metis-M anti-tank missiles and owns European-made Milan missiles, the army confirmed on Friday.

In the last two days alone, these missiles have killed seven soldiers and damaged three Israeli-made Merkava tanks — mountains of steel that are vaunted as symbols of Israel’s military might, the army said. Israeli media say most of the 44 soldiers killed in four weeks of fighting were hit by anti-tank missiles.

“They (Hezbollah guerrillas) have some of the most advanced anti-tank missiles in the world,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior military intelligence officer who retired earlier this summer.

“This is not a militia, it’s an infantry brigade with all the support units,” Kuperwasser said.

Israel contends that Hezbollah gets almost all of its weaponry from Syria and by extension Iran, including its anti-tank missiles.

That’s why cutting off the supply chain is essential — and why fighting Hezbollah after it has spent six years building up its arsenal is proving so painful to Israel, officials say.

Israel’s Merkava tanks boast massive amounts of armor and lumber and resemble fortresses on tracks. They are built for crew survival, according to Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-based military think tank.

Hezbollah celebrates when it destroys one.

“A Zionist armored force tried to advance toward the village of Chihine. The holy warriors confronted it and destroyed two Merkava tanks,” the group proclaimed on television Thursday.

The Israeli army confirmed two attacks on Merkava tanks that day — one that killed three soldiers and the other killing one. The three soldiers who were killed on Friday were also killed by anti-tank missiles, the army said.

It would not say whether the missiles disabled the tanks.

“To the best of my understanding, they (Hezbollah) are as well-equipped as any standing unit in the Syrian or Iranian armies,” said Eran Lerman, a retired army colonel and now director of the Israel/Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee. “This is not a rat-pack guerrilla, this is an organized militia.”

Besides the anti-tank missiles, Hezbollah is also known to have a powerful rocket-propelled grenade known as the RPG29. These weapons are also smuggled through Syria, an Israeli security official said, and were previously used by Palestinian militants in Gaza to damage tanks.

On Friday, Jane’s Defense Weekly, a defense industry magazine, reported that Hezbollah asked Iran for “a constant supply of weapons” to support its operations against Israel.

The report cited Western diplomatic sources as saying that Iranian authorities promised Hezbollah a steady supply of weapons “for the next stage of the confrontation.”

Top Israeli intelligence officials say they have seen Iranian Revolutionary Guard soldiers on the ground with Hezbollah troops. They say that permission to fire Hezbollah’s longer-range missiles, such as those could reach Tel Aviv, would likely require Iranian go-ahead.

[George_Eller]

Hizbollah Versus Israel
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htwin/articles/20060806.aspx
August 6, 2006:

Take a close look at Hizbollah, it’s tactics and its prospects, and you realize that their terrorism campaign against Israel is doomed to failure. Yet that is rarely reported in the media. No matter. Here we’ll explain it all for you.

Terrorism is the weapon of the weak. It’s a weapon that is more likely to fail, than succeed. But if you have really determined bunch of weaklings, willing to gamble all for the cause, terrorism is the way to go. Thus, we have several Moslem (mostly Arab) groups, and even entire countries, trying to use terrorism to destroy Israel. Half a century ago, these countries tried using war, with armies and such, but this was a spectacular and expensive failure. Terrorism was another matter. It was a lot cheaper, and the Soviet Union, until its demise in 1991, was willing to share some of the costs (as long as all the targets were enemies of the Soviet Union, which eventually included Israel.)

But after four decades of anti-Israeli terrorism, there is nothing to show for it but a long string of failures, and an Israel that is more powerful than ever. Since the media has to report news (exciting stuff, real or imagined), rather than what really happened (which is what history books are for, most of the time), you don’t hear much about this development. Kind of boring. Terrorists keep trying, playing the media with great effectiveness, but consistently failing in their stated objective. So let’s take a look at what is really happening.

During the 20th century. Arabs waged many terror campaigns against Jews in the Middle East. All these failed, a development spotlighted by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Starting in 2000, the Palestinians began a terror campaign against Israel, in an effort to get a better deal for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The terrorists used lots of suicide bombers, plus guns and knives. Before the terrorists were defeated in 2005, nearly 5,000 people were killed (80 percent of the Palestinians.) Israel found the terrorists weak spot (their support and leadership system), and went after it. By 2005, the Israeli efforts had so disrupted the terrorist operations that hardly any suicide bombers were getting through. Some still did, but so infrequently that it wasn’t newsworthy. For the terrorists, these infrequent successes (and the many failed attempts) actually hurt the terrorists, because it showed that their efforts were in vain and wasted.

Terrorism is still popular among Palestinians, because, while it doesn’t work against Israelis, it does work against Palestinians. The most recent Palestinian elections, earlier this year, saw one inept terrorist group (Fatah) defeated (more for being corrupt than anything else), by another terrorist group (Hamas) that promised cleaner government and more effective terrorism. Hamas has delivered neither, and is now in big political trouble.

Which brings us to those terrorists in the north, Hizbollah. Founded in the 1980s, to funnel Iranian aid to fellow Shias fighting in Lebanon’s civil war, Hizbollah cast about for new work when a 1990 peace deal ended the civil war. Iran, then and now, was run by a religious dictatorship, composed of Islamic conservatives that wanted Israel destroyed. Iran also liked the idea of having a client (Hizbollah) running its own state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon. Iran didn’t really care what the rest of Lebanese thought of all this, because those other Lebanese were all Christians, Sunni Moslems, Druze and worse.

In 1982, Israel had invaded Lebanon, in order to drive out Palestinian terrorists who were making raids across the Lebanese border into northern Israel. With the civil war going on, no one was really watching the border, except the Israelis. The 1982 war was unpopular in Israel, because the Palestinian terrorists were not doing that much damage. Moreover, the Israeli operations lasted three years, and left over 1,200 Israeli soldiers dead. The Palestinian terrorist were forced to flee (to a North African sanctuary), but they were replaced by Hizbollah. The Israeli solution for that was to take control of a band of terrain 10-15 kilometers north of their border with Lebanon. While this kept terrorist attacks away from northern Israel, it exposed Israeli soldiers to constant attacks from Hizbollah terrorists. While much of the fighting in south Lebanon was done by pro-Israeli Lebanese, there were still Israeli casualties (50-100 a year, plus 100-150 for Israel’s Lebanese allies). Finally, in 2000, Israel just up and withdrew from southern Lebanon. The understanding was that this gesture would give the UN, Syria, Lebanon and Hizbollah an opportunity to bring peace to southern Lebanon. The UN approved such a deal in 2004, but Hizbollah ignored it, and the Lebanese government refused to enforce it. It didn’t work. The Syrian army stayed, Hizbollah refused to disarm and the UN wrung it hands and looked distressed. UN peacekeepers on the border quickly became corrupted or intimidated by Hizbollah.

The way in which Hizbollah, Lebanon and the UN exploited Israel’s 2000 gesture, has turned Israeli population against any more such deals that rely on trusting Hizbollah or the UN. Actually, not even the Lebanese trust Hizbollah any more. Most Lebanese believe that Hizbollah set off the current round of fighting because of a pending attempt, by the Lebanese government, to disarm Hizbollah. This is called a “diversionary attack,” the intention being to divert the Lebanese from their plans to disarm Hizbollah. Being disarmed would be catastrophic for the Hizbollah leadership, because many of these guys were deep into criminal scams, and collaboration with the hated Syrian army of occupation. Most Lebanese would like to see a little justice here, and the Hizbollah brass, quite naturally, would rather skip that sort of thing altogether.

But going to war with Israel, as any historian of Arab-Israeli relations can tell you, is a losing proposition. The Israelis are famously not stupid, and take any attack on them as a threat to their very existence. These are not the kind of people you want to fight a war with. But Hizbollah thought they had no other choice (there weren’t even many options), and now has to stick it out and hope for the best. Hope won’t do them much good. While the Hizbollah rocket arsenal is a new touch, it’s not like the Israelis have not dealt with new terrorist tricks before. While journalists are keen to figure out what the Israelis are up to, many of the Israeli counter-terror innovations only work if they are kept under wraps for as long as possible. Pundits love this, because they can spout whatever they want, secure in the knowledge that few people will remember that they were way off the mark.

But if you pay close attention, you can figure out who is going to win, and how they are going to do it. The Israelis are hitting Hizbollah where they are vulnerable, but are not broadcasting the target list ahead of time, for obvious reasons. Just like a few years ago, months of seemingly ineffective efforts will suddenly produce results. That has happened before, terrorist victories have not.

[George_Eller]

From the Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20060807.aspx

August 4, 2006:

While press reports have covered the evacuation of large numbers of Americans and other Westerners in Lebanon, there has been little or no attention paid to the plight of perhaps 140-160 thousand foreign workers in the country. Workers from Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia are particularly numerous, ranging from 20,000-50,000, and have little or no prospect of leaving the country.

August 5, 2006:

The fighting in Gaza has killed about 170 Palestinians in the last five weeks, as Israel pressures Hamas to give up an Israeli soldier they captured on June 25th. Hamas insists on a prisoner swap, Israel refuses. The Palestinian economy has been badly hurt, since last March, when most foreign aid was cut off in response to Hamas insisting that Israel must be destroyed. Lack of media attention, because of events in Lebanon, is hurting Hamas more than the constant Israeli raids, and an empty treasury.

August 6, 2006:

A Hizbollah rocket landed among a group of Israeli soldiers getting ready to move into Lebanon, killing a dozen of them. The soldiers were in a parking lot outside one the several border towns that have been getting hit with terrorist rockets for decades. The civilians have learned how to adapt, but the nearly 20,000 soldiers on the border are there to go into harms way. A longer range rocket landed in the city of Haifa, killing three civilians.

[George_Eller]

The Fools Errand
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20060807.aspx

August 7, 2006:

Arab media continue to revel in their victory over Israel. Hizbollah has not been smashed, Lebanese civilians continue to get killed, as do Israelis. In Arab eyes, this is winning. Which explains why the Arab world has fallen behind the rest of the planet in almost every measure (economically, politically, education, science). Attempts to stop the fighting are doomed to failure because too many Arabs see Israel’s destruction as the primary goal. While disarming Hizbollah would be in the best interests of Israelis, and the majority of Lebanese (those who are not Shia), that is not possible now because Hizbollah has been declared Islamic heroes for killing Israelis. Diplomacy is difficult when dealing with a culture of death, suicide and people on a mission from God.

The basic problem is this. Hizbollah, a Islamic radical group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and supported by Iranian money and weapons, has become the chief military and economic support of the Shia minority in Lebanon. That’s over a million Shia, living throughout southern and central Lebanon, including parts of the capital, Beirut. Hizbollah draws on the Shia community for gunmen, and rocket launching teams. Negotiation with Hizbollah is pointless, as these terrorists know that any ceasefire is just a pause in their campaign to destroy Israel. Peace is not on Hizbollah’s agenda. Iran’s leaders publicly endorse Hizbollah’s plans for Israel, and dismiss world condemnation of this call to genocide.

Increasing Israeli combat patrols in south Lebanon are trying to hunt down and destroy the rockets that have been hidden in the area over the last six years, and kill the teams of Hizbollah men who take the rockets out and launch them. Israeli aircraft are still hitting trucks moving down with additional supplies of rockets. Israel estimates that it has destroyed several thousand rockets, and nearly 3,000 have been fired into Israel. Thus about half of Hizbollah’s rocket supply is gone. Israeli commanders still believe the ground patrols can catch and kill all the rocket launch teams. But as long as several hundred thousand Lebanese civilians remain in southern Lebanon, this is going to be difficult. The other option is to drive the entire Lebanese population out of southern Lebanon. But it would still take a week, or more, to hunt down the rocket launching crews that would stay behind. So, unless the Lebanese government suddenly develops a backbone, at least another month of combat can be expected.

Israel is expanding the economic and government targets it is hitting throughout Lebanon. Quiet negotiations continue with the non-Shia factions in Lebanon, trying to get everyone to send the Lebanese army into the border zone and take control. The non-Shia factions fear that will mean civil war. Israel points out that, as long as Hizbollah has its own army, the civil war, that officially ended in 1990, is still on, and the Lebanese government is losing, having surrendered large parts of the country to this Iranian backed faction. Israel has put the Lebanese government in a dilemma. Either the government disarms Hizbollah, or Israeli air power will continue taking the country’s infrastructure apart. The Israelis hold the Lebanese government responsible for this mess, as the Lebanese kept putting off dealing with Hizbollah until it was too late. Well, almost too late. There is one more chance for the Lebanese to take on Hizbollah, perhaps in the context of a UN organized ceasefire. Hizbollah can’t be ignored any more, for as long as these Shia terrorists exist, Lebanon burns.

Hizbollah does want some kind of ceasefire, because they are running out of resources (rocket and launch teams) faster than Israel is running out of anything (troops, money, jet fuel, smart bombs, etc). In the end, Hizbollah is a low budget operation up against the wealthiest and most powerful economy in the region. Trying to destroy Israel is a Fools Errand. But as long as the fools have rockets and suicidal volunteers, they will keep trying.

[George_Eller]

Claim: Hezbo command center untouched in Syrian town
James Lewis
The American Thinker
August 8, 2006

http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=5787

Israel has not been able to break up Hiz b’allah’s command and control, or even to lower the pace of rockets raining down on Haifa and the North of Israel. Now DEBKA.com claims one reason is that Hezbo command and control is not located in Lebanon at all.

The command which coordinates the pace of those attacks is located at the Anjar base of the Syrian Army’s 10th Division opposite the Lebanese town of Az Zabdani. It is manned by Iranian and Hizballah officers, who take their orders from a Syrian military intelligence center in Damascus to which Iranian Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers are attached. It is headed by a general from one of Syria’s surface missile brigades. This joint command is provided with the most up-to-date intelligence and electronic data available to Syria on targets in Israel and IDF movements. The timing and tempo of Hizballah rocket strikes are set according to that information.

To keep the rockets coming without interruption, the joint Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian command is also responsible with keeping Hizballah supplied with an inflow of rockets and launchers. They use smuggling rings to slip the supplies into Lebanon by mule and donkey which ply the 5,000-7,000 feet mountain paths that straddle the Syrian-Lebanese frontier.

A senior Israeli officer told DEBKAfile: We can go on bombing Lebanon for many weeks, but that will not stop the rockets.

We can’t be sure this report is true. But it makes sense because of the failure (so far) to impede Hezbollah’s rain of rockets. If Israel has known about the Anjar command center, a political decision must have been taken to leave it alone for fear of bringing in Syria and perhaps Iran. Israel’s government is said to fear knocking out the Assad government, because Syria could be taken over by an even worse regime.

The result of such an Israeli decision is to leave a safe haven for Hezbollah supply, command and control. This is the Vietnam failure: US Presidents were reluctant to mine and blockade North Vietnamese ports for fear of involving China. Hezbo seems to be following a Vietcong strategy, by mining, tunneling, bunkering, and holding a safe supply chain that cannot be attacked. We now know that the Vietcong were constantly supplied with fresh soldiers from the North Vietnamese Army, who simply took off their uniforms and suddenly became guerrillas.

There is evidence for Iranian, Syrian, North Korean and Chinese expertise being supplied for Hiz b’allah. This is a major test for Israel, but it is also a serious test for the United States. Israel mirrors American combat ethics, emphasis on the value of human life, reluctance to harm civilians, as well as US arms, planes, and civilian control of the military. As in Vietnam, the Western model may be in danger of failing. If it does, this same pattern of attack will be repeated in Iraq and elsewhere.

Although news reports are always spotty, we know that the IAF has been bombing South Lebanon for four weeks. The Hezbos have not broken. This is from the UK Times:

The Israeli military has saturation air coverage over southern Lebanon with missile-firing reconnaissance drones, Apache helicopter gunships and F16 fighter-bombers. It is attacking its Hezbollah enemy with multiple airstrikes and heavy artillery bombardments from land and sea as well as raids by Israeli special forces units.

Yet Hezbollah squads are still firing dozens of rockets a day into Israel from locations lying just a few hundred yards from the border and within full view of the Israeli military.

One such position lies between the villages of Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab. The rocky, uninhabited hillside and deep ravine of 12 square miles is covered in a dense undergrowth of juniper bushes and scrub oak where Hezbollah over the past three years has established an unseen, but clearly formidable, military infrastructure of weapons depots, tunnels and bunkers. [....]

Even seasoned UN observers, whose headquarters is at the foot of the hill, are baffled at how the guerrillas have managed to survive the onslaught and keep up a steady rate of rocket fire. “We simply have no idea how they have been able to fire rockets for so long from more or less the same location and the Israelis have not been able to stop them,” said a senior officer for United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

One possibility is that the Naqoura bunker complex has simply been bypassed by Israeli ground forces. However, it seems at least equally likely that the government of Israel has tied the hands of the IDF, as the US did in Vietnam.

Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post expects a heated national debate after the Hezbo war is over, with respected military officers speaking out against the Olmert government. She points out that an earlier debate along those lines led to the resignation of Golda Meir’s government and the rise of Likud.

The IDF cannot afford to fail. Israel had a traumatic experience trying to hold Lebanese territory before it retreated in 2000. But the only choices today may be to either expand the war and hit Syrian command centers for Hezbollah, with the danger that Iran will enter the war; or to take Lebanese territory up to the Litani river, and hold it against guerrila attacks. None of the choices are attractive.

Ultimately, Tehran is protecting its nuclear ambitions. If Hezbollah cannot be defeated in Lebanon, Iran will increase the number of its long-range missiles pointing at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem under the nominal control of the Hezbos. Any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will elicit an immediate counter-attack on Israel’s civilian population.

It is in the interest of the West for the Hezbos to be severely degraded. If that cannot be accomplished, Iranian nukes might as well be taken as a given. The implications for the control of the world’s oil supply and for the war on terror are frightening to contemplate.

James Lewis

[George_Eller]

Hizbollah Broadcasts Hacked Repeatedly
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20060807.aspx

August 7, 2006:

Israel has been hacking into Hizbollah radio and TV broadcasts, and inserting messages that point out mistakes Hizbollah has made, or lies Hizbollah has been pushing, or simply ridiculing the Islamic radicals. Israeli Information War teams have also spammed Lebanese cell phone users with anti-Hizbollah voice mail and text messages. This campaign began the last week of July, and appears to be continuing.

This sort of thing confirms to the Arabs that the Israelis are evil, in league with the devil and thus in possession of some kind of magic. Other Arab pundits point out that Arab countries need to increase their spending on education, so that Arab geeks can hack Israeli communications. But the magic angle tends to be more popular with editors and government censors.

Hizbollah Photo Scam Revealed
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20060808.aspx

August 8, 2006:

News service Reuters has taken 920 photos, supplied by one of its freelancers (Adnan Hajj) in Lebanon, from its database, after several online communities (people on discussion groups associated with blogs) noted that one, than several more, of Haij’s photos had been altered. The alterations made the damage, by Israeli bombs, look worse, or made it look like there had been a bombing when there wasn’t. Haij told Reuters that he had altered some photos to “remove dust.” Reuters did not believe him.

Arab journalists, and Islamic terror groups, have played the media like this in the past. During the recent Palestinian terror campaign against Israel, there were several attempts to foist fake Israeli " atrocities" on the media. Some Arab and Moslem media accepted these scams, but the fakery was pretty blatant, and most media eventually rejected it. The prime example of this was the purported “Jenin Massacre.”

The mass media is particularly susceptible to these scams, and quick to accept “proof” from shadowy Arab “journalists.” These “plants” of false stories is an ancient trick. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union created an intelligence organization whose sole job was to create and circulate useful lies. Many of these successful and some remain in wide circulation. For example, there’s the one about AIDS being a CIA experiment gone wrong (or right, depending on the version you encounter.)

But it’s not just fake photos you have to worry about. Lebanese reporting of civilian causalities has also been suspect for some time. The Lebanese don’t report any dead Hizbollah, only that, “nearly a thousand civilians have been killed.” Independent reports mention dozens of armed Hizbollah fighters being killed in some of these Israeli smart bomb or missile attacks. Thus it’s more likely that the Lebanese death toll is not only smaller than reported, but composed mostly of Hizbollah fighters.

Aerial photos show that nearly all the Israeli strikes have been very precise, with targets selected to avoid civilian casualties. Now we have the Haij photos, some of which indicate staged casualties. Examination of photos from Qana, where an Israeli smart bomb was alleged to have killed over fifty women and children, indicates that the dead bodies had been dead for some time already, and were brought to Quana so they could be brought out of a bombed building.

This isn’t news, it’s lies. But it’s also war, and sometimes the lies work.

[George_Eller]

Lasers Over Lebanon
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htada/articles/20060808.aspx

August 8, 2006:

Many Israelis are complaining that development of a, laser based anti-missile system, called THEL, which was recently cancelled, could have been used to stop some of the Hizbollah rockets coming out of Lebanon. Meanwhile, the American partner in THEL development is now offering a smaller version, Skyguard, for protecting commercial aircraft from portable anti-aircraft missiles. The manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, originally developed THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) for combat situations. Tests last year showed THEL was able to knock down barrages of incoming mortar shells.

Israel was a partner in the development of THEL, which was originally supposed to enter service in 2007. When THEL was cancelled earlier this year, the laser still needed work, but the THEL radar was already in good shape. In 2004, Israel used the THEL radar to detect incoming Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza, and this provided an opportunity to operate the radar under combat conditions.

The THEL system was designed to knock down larger, and better made, rockets than the home made Palestinian Kassam rockets. In other words, THEL would have been very useful knocking down the factory made rockets Hizbollah has been firing at Israel over the last few weeks.

The THEL laser and radar system can track up to sixty targets (mortar and artillery shells, rockets) at a time and fire on and destroy these projectiles at a range of up to five kilometers. THEL can destroy about a dozen targets a minute, at a cost of some $3,000 per shot. Each THEL system (radar and laser) could thus cover about ten kilometers of border. Most Hizbollah rockets were fired in groups of a dozen or more, so THEL, if it was in the right place, could zap about half of them. Of course, given how difficult THEL was to move, Hizbollah would endeavor to fire their rockets over some other stretch of border. The Israel-Lebanon border is 79 kilometers long.

It took nine years, and over a half a billion dollars, for American and Israeli engineers to get as far as they did (one working prototype system) with THEL. Aside from the systems size and cost, there’s also the problem of lasers being weakened by clouds, fog, mist or even artificial smoke. For that reason, there’s not a lot of enthusiasm for proceeding right now on such a bulky and expensive system for use against small rockets. But by the end of the decade, a smaller, and cheaper, version will be more attractive, and more likely to be purchased.

THEL is a bulky system, and not really mobile. Each system requires half a dozen or more large tractor trailer trucks to carry the radar, fuel supplies and laser. A new version, the MTHEL (Mobile Tactical High-Energy Laser) was designed (using three tractor-trailers) and was tested. Engineers believe that MTHEL could be ready for battlefield use in about six years, at a cost of another billion dollars. In another few years, engineers believe they could create a MTHEL that could fit in a hummer.

The costs of THEL and MTHEL were so high, that both the American and Israeli governments pulled their support earlier this year. The manufacturer put some of their own money into the project and came up with Skyguard. This is basically THEL, which is actually suited for defending an airport against someone using portable anti-aircraft missiles (like Stinger, or the Russian made SA-7) to attack aircraft landing or taking off. Skyguard would be cheaper than equipping thousands of aircraft with individual anti-missile systems. But first, THEL has to prove that it is reliable enough to stay on-line 24/7 (or nearly so), and act effectively if there is ever an attack. No one has yet tried using these missiles in the United States, but it has happened elsewhere, especially in Africa.

The first Skyguard system would cost about $150 million, with subsequent ones costing about 70 percent less. Skyguard will also be able to handle rockets, artillery projectiles, mortars, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles. In other words, if you had a billion dollars to spare, you might be able to get a Skyguard system to defend northern Israel from rockets fired from Lebanon. Maybe. THEL is another example of technology that got out of the lab before it was ready to survive in the wild.

[George_Eller]

Iranian UAVs Over Israel
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20060809.aspx

August 9, 2006:

For the third time in the last two years, Lebanese based terrorist group Hizbollah flew an Iranian UAV into Israel. This time, on August 7th, Israeli F-16s caught the UAV some ten kilometers off the coast, and shot it down. During the previous incidents, the Hizbollah UAVs were able to fly into Israel for a short time (less than 20 minutes), they get away safely before Israeli air or ground forces could do anything about it.

Hizbollah call their UAV “Mirsad 1”, but it appears to be an Iranian Ababil. The Iranians have been developing UAVs for nearly a decade. Their Ababil is a 183 pound UAV with a ten foot wing span, a payload of about 80 pounds, a cruising speed of 290 kilometers an hour and an endurance of 90 minutes. The Ababil is known to operate as far as 150 kilometers from its ground controller. but it also has a guidance system that allows it to fly a pre-programmed route and then return to the control by its ground controllers for a landing (which is by parachute). The Ababil can carry a variety of day and night still and video cameras. There are many inexpensive and very capable cameras available on the open market, as is the equipment needed to transmit video and pictures back to the ground.

When the Hizbollah UAVs first appeared, the Israelis feared that the low flying Ababils could come south carrying a load of nerve gas, or even just explosives. Using GPS guidance, such a UAV could hit targets very accurately. Moreover, there’s nothing exotic about UAV technology, at least for something like the Ababil. It was no surprise that Iran began using home made UAVs in the late 1990s. After all, they had received some UAVs from the United States in the 1970s (Firebee target drones.) The Israelis immediately tagged Iran as the supplier of the Hizbollah drone, because Iran has long supplied that terrorist organization with cash, weapons and equipment for decades. Now Israel has many components of the shot down UAV, which will make it possible to make a positive identification.

[George_Eller]

Hizbollah Goes Long
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20060809.aspx

August 9, 2006:

In Lebanon, Hizbollah found an interesting, if expensive, way to minimize the advantages Israeli infantry possess. The Israeli troops are much better trained, disciplined and led than the Hizbollah gunmen, so Hizbollah trained their fighters to try and stay away from Israeli infantry, and instead use ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles) to fire at the Israelis from a long distance. This tactic has worked quite well, accounting for most of the Israeli casualties. Hizbollah has even hit a few tanks, but most of the ATGMs they are using are not powerful enough to do much damage to the Israeli Merkava tank. Other armored vehicles, and trucks, are much more vulnerable. Usually, however, the missiles are just fired at where the Israeli infantry are, in houses or trenches.

Hizbollah was known to have received several thousand ATGMs over the years. Many of them are elderly, like the Russian Sagger. This is a 1960s design. It’s a 24 pound missile, with a range of 3,000 meters, that must be carefully “driven” to its target via a joy stick controller. Requires a lot of practice to do right. The warhead is not very effective against tanks, but can do a lot of damage to buildings. Iran also sent some elderly TOW missiles, dating from the 1970s. These are too heavy to haul around. Lighter systems have proved more useful.

The French made MILAN ATGM, a 1970s design, has a 35 pound launch unit, firing a 16 pound, wire guided missile, with a maximum range of 2,000 meters. The Syrians got MILAN from France, and passed them on to Hizbollah. A similar Russian system, the 9M111 Fagot, has a 25 pound missile fired from a 24 pound launch unit. An even more modern Russian system, the Kornet E, is a laser guided missile with a range of 5,000 meters. The launcher has a thermal sight for use at night or in fog. The missile’s warhead can penetrate 1200 mm of armor, which means that the front and side armor of the Israeli Merkava tank would be vulnerable. The missile weighs 18 pounds and the launcher 42 pounds. The system was introduced in 1994 and has been sold to Syria (who apparently passed them on to Hizbollah).

The Israelis quickly adapted to this Hizbollah tactic. The missiles are hidden all over southern Lebanon (buried, or tucked away in caves or buildings.) The Israelis have learned to get their snipers out, with their night vision equipment, to keep an eye on the most likely approach routes to the best firing positions. Hizbollah has been taking heavier losses than the Israelis, but neither Hizbollah, nor the Israelis want to talk about it. For Hizbollah, it’s embarrassing to admit that, even with long range weapons, the Israelis nail their guys. For the Israelis, they don’t want Hizbollah to know about new tricks, before those new ideas can be used at bit to find and kill the Hizbollah ATGM teams.

[George_Eller]

Will Islamo-fascism follow anarchism’s path?
by Austin Bay
http://www.strategypage.com/onpoint/articles/200672614227.asp

July 26, 2006

Hezbollah and other Islamo-fascist terrorists concluded long ago that “if it bleeds it leads” doesn’t simply apply to the sensation-hungry media. Islamo-fascist mass murderers maintain public bloodletting (their enemy’s and their own) is a victory in itself.

We know “big bloodletting” means big headlines. But for Hezbollah’s philosophes, mass bloodletting serves another purpose: It is a demonstration of terrorist commitment and moral will.

Islamo-fascist “death cult” terrorists are convinced their forceful willpower (when combined with actions demonstrating millenarian certitude) ultimately guarantees defeat of liberal Western couch potatoes and sheep.

The Islamo-fascists aren’t the first international mass murder movement to deserve the moniker of “death cult.” In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, trans-national anarchists touted “politics of the bomb” and “propaganda by deed.”

The anarchists spilled blood – over a seven-year period (1894-1901) they killed a French president, a Spanish prime minister, an Italian king and a U.S. president (William McKinley). However, they failed to ignite a global revolution that they claimed would produce an earthly paradise of justice once the ancien regimes disappeared in flames. The anarchists believed their own propaganda, and by doing so misjudged the enormous strengths of liberal capitalist democracies. They totally underestimated the United States.

Unfortunately, the anarchists’ agitprop techniques inform contemporary terrorists, and the dregs of its half-baked philosophies continue to deform a few lost corners of human culture. A romantic notion of anarchist violence energizes much of the radical-chic rhetoric emanating from American college campuses, providing pseudo-intellectual tropes for anti-Americanism and “anti-globalization.”

These are the rear-guard actions of a dead-end ideology posing as the avant-garde.

We’ll all be better off when Islamo-fascism follows anarchism’s path. Pray for the day when the proponents of Hezbollahism and Bin Ladenism are mere academic crackpots.

But defeating Islamo-fascism means men and women who love their own liberty enough to defend it (wherever they live on this often tortured planet of ours) must once again display more spine than the killers.

Defeating death cults entails persevering despite loss of life and heinous outrage.

At the moment, the world’s most critical demonstration of the will to persevere and destroy terrorism is Israel’s confrontation with Hezbollah in northern Israel and southern Lebanon.

During the 1990s, Hezbollah (with Iranian and Syrian support) fought a grinding guerrilla war against Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon. Under international pressure to withdraw as a prelude to a peace deal, Israel pulled out. Hezbollah touted Israel’s withdrawal as a loss of Israeli will to fight.

But Hezbollah’s Iranian masters never thought the U.S. would be in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iraqi election of January 2005 ignited Lebanon’s “Beirut Spring” pro-democracy rallies. Those rallies shook even the most willful tyrants in Tehran and Syria. The appeal of liberal democracy brought couch potatoes and sheep into the streets – indicating they weren’t couch potatoes.

Which is why I know this Israel-Hezbollah war is no accident. Tyrants and terrorists must dash the hopes of couch potatoes and sheep. The will of the tyrants and terrorists cannot be successfully mocked and challenged, or it’s over for the tyrants and terrorists. And, oh yes, Iran’s holy quest for a nuclear weapon cannot be thwarted, either.

But tyrants and terrorists’ willpower and warfare are being challenged. Over the last two weeks, criticism of Israel from the usual amen corners has been conspicuously circumspect. It appears U.S.-led diplomatic efforts designed to give Israel the time to defeat Hezbollah are working.

Let’s hope Condi Rice can buy Israel a couple of months. Israel indicates it intends to destroy, bunker by bunker, Iran’s investment in Hezbollah. The Israelis are killing Hezbollah’s fighters – and letting the sensation-hungry media document their deaths.

Hezbollah can proclaim a victory-in-death, but like the claims of its global anarchist antecedents, the bloody tout will be desperately hollow.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

[George_Eller]

Payback Time for the Lebanese Shia
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20060810.aspx

August 10, 2006:

Hizbollah has no incentive to broadcast the extent of its injuries in the current war. The losses have been substantial. For example, Syrians have noted an enormous exodus of Lebanese Shia into Syria. Some 10-15 percent of Lebanon’s Shia appear to have fled the areas of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, for refuge in Syria. They are not just getting away from Israeli bombs, but the rising possibility of another round of civil war with Lebanese Sunnis, Druze and Christians. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, and for nearly two decades, other Lebanese have been on the receiving end of that terror. There are payback issues in play. Before Hizbollah attacked Israel, these issues were being worked out, but the deal involved Hizbollah disarming and giving up control of southern Lebanon. The Hizbollah militants didn’t go for this, partly because they feared retaliation from Lebanese families they had terrorized (via murder, kidnappings or worse) over the last two decades. Better that all of Lebanon should suffer, than a few hundred Hizbollah thugs should pay for their crimes. The Lebanese know this, the Israelis know this, the international media ignores it. But it’s these grudges that will destroy Hizbollah in the end. The Shia fleeing to Syria fear their fellow Lebanese more than they fear the Israelis.

Hizbollah doesn’t have a large “army.” Only a few thousand trained and trustworthy gunmen. About 20 percent of these have been killed or wounded so far. About half of the 70,000 man army is Shia, a consequence of depending on Syria to help form and train the army. That’s one reason why most Lebanese don’t trust their own army, and why the Israelis don’t accept the Lebanese offer to send 15,000 of their soldiers into southern Lebanon to take over from Hizbollah. While the Shia Lebanese soldiers aren’t all Hizbollah members, those that are Shia know that Hizbollah can reach their family members. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, and good at that sort of thing.

While no Lebanese want another round of civil war, if it did happen, it would be everyone against the Hizbollah led Shia. The result would be up to half the Shia population exiled in Syria, and Shia power in Lebanon broken for a long, long time. The Shia sect (Alawites) that runs Syria wouldn’t mind a few hundred thousand Shia refugees in their midst, as Shia are only about ten percent of Syria’s population. The Sunni Arabs who are the majority of Syrians might mind. Iran would come through with lots of money to make it all better, and keep the Shia in charge of Syria.

Israeli troops advancing into southern Lebanon are finding a lot of late model Russian weapons. Especially abundant are recently manufactured Russian anti-tank missiles. Three post-Cold War Russian missile systems have been found in large numbers. These include the 9M111 Fagot, which has a 25 pound missile fired from a 24 pound launch unit for up to 2,000 meters. Then there is the 9M133 Kornet, a replacement for the 9M111. This is laser guided missile with a range of 5,000 meters. The launcher has a thermal sight for use at night or in fog. The missile’s warhead can penetrate 1200 mm of armor, which means that the front and side armor of the Israeli Merkava tank are vulnerable. The missile weighs 18 pounds and the launcher 42 pounds. Then there is the 9M131 Metis 2, which is a 30 pound missile, with a 1,500 meter range. It is fired from a 35 pound control unit, that has a thermal sight. Missiles and launch units have been found in bombed out buildings. The 9M131 can be fired from inside buildings. The missiles are used to take long range shots at Israeli infantry, as Hizbollah knows that, up close, their gunmen tend to lose quickly, and with heavy casualties, to the better trained Israelis. Russia has been selling these new missile systems to Syria and Iran, and this is the first real combat test of these systems. A few Israeli tanks have been hit, but most of the missiles have been fired at Israeli infantry, causing over a hundred casualties. Israel won’t release details of these operations until after the war is over, but has admitted that most of their casualties in southern Lebanon have come from these Russian missiles.

Israel is moving sufficient troops, to the Lebanese border, to clear an area about 20 kilometers north of the border. This would severely limit the ability of Hizbollah to fire 122mm rockets into Israel. The Israelis would systematically clear civilians and Hizbollah fighters out of the area. Hizbollah has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in assets (buildings, vehicles and equipment). The Israelis are holding off on the “20 Kilometer Zone” operation to see if the UN can work out a ceasefire deal. That would have to include a force of “trustworthy” (Western) peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon. There would have to be peacekeepers who could, like the Israelis, fight Hizbollah, and not be intimidated, or bribed by Hizbollah, as has been the case with the current UN peacekeeper force. Hizbollah refuses to accept this more robust force, and Israel will accept nothing less.

Although Israel has lost about fifty soldiers killed so far, this is a much lower loss rate than in previous wars. Better technology, weapons and medical care have all combined to reduce the casualty rate.

[George_Eller]

Israel Takes Hold of Key Lebanon Town, Vows ‘Painful’ Expansion
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207679,00.html

Thursday, August 10, 2006

IBL EL-SAQI, Lebanon — Israeli forces took control of the strategic southern hub of Marjayoun on Thursday and warned that its fight against Hezbollah could grow wider and more severe if diplomacy fails.

Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, said the military would use “all of the tools” to cripple the Islamic guerrillas if attempts for a cease-fire pact collapse at the United Nations.

Israel’s leaders have authorized a major new ground offensive going deeper into Lebanon, but held off to give international negotiators more time. There were clear signals, however, that Israel was already setting its sights on Lebanon’s capital and beyond.

In Beirut, Israeli warplanes blanketed downtown with leaflets that threatened a “painful and strong” response to Hezbollah attacks and warned residents to evacuate three southern suburbs. Other warnings dropped from planes said any trucks on a key northern highway to Syria would be considered targets for attack.

Earlier, missiles from Israeli helicopter gunships blasted the top of a historic lighthouse in central Beirut in an apparent attempt to knock out a broadcast antenna for Lebanese state television.

The seizure of the southern town of Marjayoun and nearby areas overnight appeared to be an attempt to consolidate bases in southern Lebanon before any possible push northward. It gives Israel an important foothold for any deeper drives into the country.

Marjayoun — a mostly Christian city about five miles from the Israeli border — was used as the command center for the Israeli army and its allied Lebanese militia during an 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. The high ground around Marjayoun, including the village of Blatt, overlook the Litani River valley, one of the staging sites for the relentless Hezbollah rocket assault on northern Israel.

Israel suffered its worst one-day military losses on Wednesday, with 15 soldiers killed, most in other areas of the south away from the Marjayoun area.

Taking command of Marjayoun was not considered a key battlefield victory since the city gives little support to Hezbollah. But reaching the site required passing through Hezbollah country, the scene of fierce fighting.

Hezbollah claimed it destroyed 13 Israeli tanks. Israel did not immediately give a tally of its losses.

Israeli gunners used their new vantage points as payback: pounding Hezbollah-led areas such as the plain around the nearby town of Khiam, which has been used as a rocket site for the militants.

Still, Hezbollah was defiant. It fired 110 rockets into northern Israel by mid-afternoon, including one that hit Haifa, Israeli police said. An Arab Israeli mother and her young daughter were killed in the village of Deir al-Assad. Lebanese officials reported at least four civilian deaths Thursday.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned in a television address that Israeli Arabs in Haifa should flee for their own safety and threatened more strikes on the port city, already hit repeatedly by Hezbollah rockets.

More than 800 people in Lebanon and Israel have died since fighting erupted.

In Ibl el-Saqi, a village about two miles east of Marjayoun, the mayor said nearly all residents had fled to the north.

“They all left this morning. There was very intense shelling last night,” said Riad Abou Samra.

But it seemed fewer and fewer areas of Lebanon were safe from the threat of Israeli attacks, including the relatively untouched heart of Beirut.

The leaflets that fluttered down over Beirut Thursday said “the Israeli Defense Forces intend to expand their operations in Beirut.” They said the decision came after statements from “the leader of the gang” — an apparent reference to Nasrallah’s television address.

Israel also extended its warnings to areas north of Beirut. Leaflets said trucks “of any kind” would face attack after 8 p.m. along the northern coast road to Syria.

A round-the-clock road curfew has been in force across southern Lebanon since early Tuesday.

Israeli warplanes pounded a coastal highway junction connecting three major southern cities — Sidon, Tyre and Nabatiyeh. The junction already had been nearly cut off in a strike on July 12 — the first day of fighting — which spared only a single lane. It was not clear if the road was completely severed in Thursday’s hits.

The strike at the historic lighthouse, built early last century during French colonial rule, was the first in central Beirut since a warning Aug. 3 by Nasrallah that such a move would bring retaliation against Tel Aviv.

The capture of Marjayoun came just hours before a senior Israeli official, Rafi Eitan, announced an expansion of the ground offensive would be delayed to give diplomats at the United Nations time for cease-fire deal. Lebanon and its Arab allies demand Israel withdraw its forces as part of any cease-fire.

The planned offensive would thrust toward the Litani River valley, 18 miles north of the border — aimed at crippling Hezbollah before a possible cease-fire.

The offensive is expected to last a month and eliminate 70 to 80 percent of Hezbollah’s short-range rocket launchers, but not its long-range launchers, senior military officials said.

However, Trade Minister Eli Yishai, who abstained in Wednesday’s vote, said the assessment is too optimistic. “I think it will take a lot longer,” he said.

Israel is now waiting to see whether Arab and Western diplomats can find a solution to end the monthlong conflict.

“There are diplomatic considerations. There is still a chance that an international force will arrive in the area. We have no interest in being in south Lebanon. We have an interest in peace on our borders,” Eitan told Israel Radio.

The U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, met three times Thursday with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, whose aides reported no progress on negotiations to find a cease-fire.

Aug. 9: Israeli soldiers clear their weapons after returning from southern Lebanon.

Aug. 10: Israeli soldier speaks to his men as they gather near the Lebanese border.

[George_Eller]

Pictures That Don’t Tell the Story
[i]Strategy Page[/b]
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20060812.aspx

August 12, 2006:

As the scandal around Photoshopped and staged war-in- Lebanon photos used by various mainstream media outlets continues, it is becoming more obvious that what happens in newsrooms is having an effect on the war. Hizbollah, unable to defeat Israel via conventional means, resorted to the use of the Western media – which usually has very few restraints – to increase diplomatic and political pressure on Israel.

However, while Hizbollah’s increasing ability to get staged photographs transmitted by the AP and Reuters, may be able to influence world opinion, such tactics will not be so effective at forcing a premature halt to the Israeli bombing campaign. For example, several blogs are highlighting a video posted on YouTube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vPAkc5CLgc), which shows a purported Lebanese aid worker directing camera shots, saying, “Keep on filming” and “Better images must be shot” – and then removing a victim from an ambulance for a second take. The aid worker is seen ensuring that the camera catches the dead boy’s face. Not only does this show that the pictures published in late July were staged, they also apparently were in violation of Islamic laws concerning treatment of dead bodies (see http://muttaqun.com/funerals.html).

Other photographs have been provided with misleading captions. In one such case, a dead girl was being carried away from somewhere – allegedly the victim of an Israeli air raid. A correction was later issued – revealing that she was not a casualty of war, but had instead died in an accident on a playground. The corrected caption never got the treatment that the original photo did.

Despite the video and other signs that photos have been faked or staged, the AP still stands by them. This despite cases where, in multiple cases, the same people or items have appeared in photos taken in multiple areas. The AP’s obstinacy is only the latest case of the media giving the terrorist efforts to spin the war a boost. Part of this may be due to coercion of reporters (CNN in fact, admitted that they slanted coverage from Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power to avoid losing access to that country).

Israel may have been fought to a draw in this round of fighting. But the real big losers are the mainstream media outlets that have been caught using the staged and doctored photographs. An eventual loser may be all Arabs, as people will begin to note the proven lies in this round of the conflict, and remember the other other media lies put out by the Palestinians recently, and passed on by the mainstream media. Such staged events are nothing new. They were uncovered in the 1990s during the Bosnia fighting. But Arabs take these deceptions to another level, and don’t seem fazed at all when they are caught at it. – Harold C. Hutchison (haroldc.hutchison@gmail.com)

SEE ALSO:

Video clips regarding the war in Lebanon:

Reuters Screws Up Royally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjBCBGclEI

Hezbollywood - CNN admits staging of photos by Hezbollah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXy6q4cH4pw

CNN’s Anderson Cooper outs Hezbollywood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT5gDjg1coc

A Lebanese telling the truth about Israel and Hizbollah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi6oKTbPo8Q

Why We Fight - Israel, Hizbollah and Samir Kuntar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGFpdtaigPg

Israel : IDF soldiers in Lebanon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYmYxi8mJLI

Brothers in arms IDF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wahd2piIr4Q&mode=related&search=kamerit%20hebrew%20superman%20idf

Israel / Lebanon / IDF various video clips
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=israel+lebanon+idf&search=Search

Hizbollah / Lebanon various video clips
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=hizbollah&search_sort=relevance&search_category=0&page=2

Hezbollah / Lebanon various video clips
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_sort=relevance&search_query=HEZBOLLAH&search=Search

[George_Eller]

Captured Hizbollah Speak Freely
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20060812.aspx

August 12, 2006:

Israeli operations in Lebanon over the last month has resulted in over a hundred Hizbollah operatives being captured alive, and the ability to interview Lebanese who used to work with the Israelis, or are just willing to talk (because they are Druze or Christian, both of whom are a minority in southern Lebanon, and not well treated by the majority Shia.) Interrogations of these Hizbollah prisoners, reveals nothing dramatically new. For example, the prisoners made it clear that Hizbollah never considered Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 anything but a victory for Hizbollah. Back in the 1980s, the Israelis had established a security zone in southern Lebanon, where they hired Lebanese security personnel to help keep terrorists from moving in, via Lebanon, to fire rockets into Israel, or try and enter to carry out terrorist attacks. Hizbollah, like it’s patron and paymaster Iran, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Hizbollah kept attacking the security zone, in the guise of “liberating occupied Lebanese territory.” While Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon as a peace gesture to Lebanon (and Israeli voters, who were unhappy with the Israeli soldiers getting killed and wounded), it was with the understanding that Lebanon would do what everyone knew most Lebanese wanted, disarm Hizbollah. That didn’t happen. Not enough Lebanese politicians were willing to risk another round of civil war to disarm Hizbollah, especially 30,000 Syrian troops inside Lebanon. But since the Lebanese were able to get the Syrian soldiers sent back home last year, the pressure has increased on Hizbollah to stop being outlaws.

As the Israeli troops pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, many pro-Israeli Lebanese went with them, fearful of Hizbollah terror. These Lebanese were right, as Lebanon backed down when Hizbollah gunmen quickly swarmed all over the former Israeli security zone. However, Hizbollah did back off itself, when pressured by the Lebanese government and the UN, and agreed not to launch terror attacks into Israel. At that time, that would have brought the Israeli troops right back into southern Lebanon.

But the recently captured Hizbollah gunmen, including at least one who took part in the July kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in northern Israel, described how, ever since 2000, Hizbollah has been training more fighters, building bunkers and moving weapons into southern Lebanon. While much of this was visible to outsiders, no one know exactly what Hizbollah was up to. Attacking Israel made no sense, as Israel has far more military power than Hizbollah. While Hizbollah could win some kind of “pretend” (propaganda) victory by attacking Israel, before long, Hizbollah would be severely damaged, possibly even destroyed. And a weakened Hizbollah was an organization more vulnerable to attack by the majority of Lebanese (who were not Shia) who resented this autonomous Shia terrorist organization controlling the southern portion of their country.

The prisoner interrogations made it clear that Iran was very much involved with Hizbollah, including training Hizbollah people in Iran. Convoys of Hizbollah trainees drove to Syria, boarded aircraft at military airbases, and flew off to Iran. Back in Lebanon, Hizbollah run schools that stressed religious instruction, and hatred of Israel and other non-Moslem states. While Hizbollah has lots of weapons and money, it apparently believes its greatest power is the hatred and dedication generated by its members. Not very practical, but pretty terrifying. In the end, however, the Islamic extremism of Hizbollah was seen as alien by most Lebanese (who were never noted for their religious fanaticism). The fact that Iran and Syria were propping up Hizbollah was not popular either. Now, the last straw appears to be Hizbollah going to war with Israel, and bring a rain of smart bombs on Lebanon. The Hizbollah prisoners know that their hero status in Lebanon will be short lived, and that eventually the Lebanese Shia community, the backbone of Hizbollah support, will be called to account. For that reason, many Hizbollah employees are sending their families to Syria, an exile that may prove permanent.

SEE ALSO:

Interrogation of Hezbollah Terrorist by the IDF (video clip)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRsSxHRbPEM

[George_Eller]

Ahmadinejad Seen As a Loser Back Home
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iran/articles/20060812.aspx

August 12, 2006:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has not had a good year, his first year as president of Iran. While he has attracted enormous amounts of international media and diplomatic attention for of his outspoken calls for the destruction of Israel, at home he is considered a failure. While often described as a reformer, able administrator and pragmatist, he has not used those skills as president, to the same extent he did while mayor of Tehran. This has disappointed a lot of people. Instead of reform, Ahmadinejad has concentrated on developing nuclear weapons, and cracking down on political reformers. Ahmadinejad wants nuclear weapons, and he wants Israel and the United States destroyed. He does not want any Iranian opposition to the dictatorship of the clerics. While technically a democracy, you cannot run for office unless you are approved by a committee of senior clerics (the Council of Guardians). Ahmadinejad has shut down more opposition and reformist media, and put more reformers in jail. Ahmadinejad believes in free speech for himself, but not for anyone who disagrees with him.

Ahmadinejad was able to play his nuclear weapons campaign so that it appealed to Iranian nationalism. But opinion polls indicate that that has had only a limited impact. Overall, Iranians are angry at Ahmadinejad for not doing anything to get the economy going. Despite the rising price of oil, Iran’s big export, most Iranians are still poor. Iranians blame this on incompetence and corruption among the religious leaders that dominate the government. The nuclear weapons program is now perceived as another example of incompetence. Ahmadinejad’s battle with the UN, over inspections of the Iranian nuclear program, are moving towards the imposition of international economic sanctions. These will hurt all Iranians. The poor will get poorer, and the religious leaders will still have their fancy cars and big houses.

The Hizbollah war in Lebanon is also unpopular. Iranians have now been reminded that $250 million of their money goes to Hizbollah each year. That amount will probably increase, to repair the damage done by Israeli smart bombs. While Ahmadinejad makes a lot of noise about destroying Israel, the jokes in Iran are more about how Israeli smart bombs are picking the pockets of Iranians.

Ahmadinejad has not done much for morale in the armed forces either. While new Russian weapons are appreciated, there are still not enough spare parts, much less upgrades, for all the older American and European equipment. Iran builds a lot of its own weapons now, but these are all low-tech knock-offs of, for the most part, simple Russian stuff. Iranian engineers and scientists are, at least in private, not proud of this, and know they could do better without all these embargoes and restrictions. If only that idiot Ahmadinejad would shut up, if only the clerics would allow free elections. If only.

August 7, 2006:

The U.S. has applied sanctions to seven Indian Russian, North Korean and Cuban forms for supplying banned weapons technology to Iran. The sanctions make it more difficult for these companies to do business internationally.

August 5, 2006:

Britain has repeated its charges, based on additional evidence, that Iran is running terrorist training camps, and some of the graduates have been staging attacks against British troops in southern Iraq. The British have captured some of the camp graduates.

[George_Eller]

Slowly Sliding Into Ceasefire Mode
Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20060813.aspx

August 11, 2006:

Israel has moved about 30,000 troops to the Lebanese border, and these appear ready to move into Lebanon. The plan is apparently to advance to the Litani river, creating a “Hizbollah free” zone about 20 kilometers deep. This would keep most of the 122mm rockets from reaching northern Israel. The longer range Hizbollah rockets are harder to hide or move around, and Israeli air power has apparently destroyed most of them.

The UN passed a ceasefire resolution that Lebanon, Hizbollah and Israel all agreed to, sort of. The devil is in the details.

August 12, 2006:

Over 20,000 Israeli troops crossed into Lebanon all along the border. This was not a blitzkrieg, but a largely infantry operations. The Israelis expect to reach the Litani river in a few days, and then spend a week or two clearing out Hizbollah people and weapons from the area. Hizbollah is unable to stop the Israelis, and is hoping to inflict a lot of casualties, then pitch that as a victory. Today, Israeli troops suffered about a hundred casualties, but only a few Hizbollah rockets landed in northern Israel. Hizbollah casualties were not announced, but they were probably heavy. The Israelis are known to be surrounding and fighting pockets of Hizbollah fighters. The Israelis also had dozens of transport helicopters bringing in troops and supplies. Hizbollah apparently brought down one of those choppers with a Russian anti-tank missile.

Although Arabs comprise about 20 percent of the Israeli population, about half the Israeli civilians killed by Hizbollah rockets have been Israeli Arabs. That’s because most Israeli Arabs live in northern Israel. Hizbollah has broadcast warnings to Israeli Arabs, warning them to flee northern Israel. But Israeli Arabs have not left the area in any greater numbers than other Israelis. So far, the Hizbollah rockets have killed 38 Israeli civilians, and wounded over 200. Lebanese and Hizbollah losses are uncertain, because Hizbollah has been caught faking civilian losses for journalists, and keeping quiet about their own military losses. Hizbollah has also been caught trying to pass off dead fighters as civilians. It appears that over 500 Lebanese have been killed in the last two months of fighting. but it is uncertain how many of those are Hizbollah personnel. Israel has been using mostly smart bombs and guided missiles, but Hizbollah has been using civilians as human shields.

August 13, 2006:

The UN says the ceasefire will go into effect tomorrow morning, but no one in southern Lebanon believes that. The ceasefire calls for all Israeli troops to leave Lebanon, to be replaced by European peacekeepers.

The 30,000 Israeli troops who moved into Lebanon have already reached the Litani river. There’s lots of fighting going on between the Litani river and the Israeli border. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Hizbollah personnel are trapped in southern Lebanon, along with many weapons, including thousands of rockets. The presence of all those Israeli troops has sharply reduced the number of rockets Hizbollah can launch. Until last week, some 200 rockets a day were being launched into northern Israel. Although fewer of them were hitting anything of note, the number of rockets launched dropped to about 60 yesterday, and even fewer today.

The Israeli troops are apparently going to stay in Lebanon until foreign (European) peacekeepers show up. The understanding is that the European troops will keep Hizbollah out of the area. That will be hard to do, and things will probably become interesting and exciting as Hizbollah tries to play the European peacekeepers the way they did the UN “observer” troops, for over a decade. The UN “observer” force was totally compromised by Hizbollah, which used coercion, bribes and outright terror to subdue the UN force. Israel expects the new UN force to show more spine when dealing with Hizbollah. That remains to be seen.

Still to be resolved is the fate of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah back on July 12th. Hizbollah thought they could get Israel to exchange hundreds of Hizbollah personnel held in Israeli prisons, for the two Israeli soldiers. Doing this would be enormously unpopular in Israel, but getting the two soldiers back is important also. Israel is making a major intelligence effort to locate the two soldiers, with an idea towards using commandoes to grab them back.