Weekly news dump
For the third week on the trot, the press has cut a swathe through the Amazon to keep us upto date with the middle east slaughter house situation.
The Observer's Peter Beaumont gives us his harrowing, on the spot report as people flee in panic from southern villages before the arrival of the invading hordes.
Another article, this time from the comment section, draws interesting parallels from past Israeli/Lebanese/Syrian threesomes : "Israel will not win security by crushing Lebanon" .
This, then, must be why the Israeli war machine is pressuring her favorite ally to hurry up with the merchandise : U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis. In typical Ü.S lawmaker fashion we learn that "The new American arms shipment to Israel has not been announced publicly, and the officials who described the administration’s decision to rush the munitions to Israel would discuss it only after being promised anonymity".
Christopher Dickey, over at Newsweek , meanwhile, likens the Israeli tactics to those of NATO during the Balkan campaign :
NATO’s 1999 campaign against Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was the apotheosis of stand-off warfare: 78 days of bombing, 38,000 sorties, a completely one-sided airborne apocalypse meant to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
Yet thanks to precision-guided munitions, the civilian death count was held to about 500, even as the attacks devastated the economic and industrial infrastructure of rump-state Yugoslavia. The Kosovars were saved, Milosevic soon fell—and not a single American soldier died.
You can see why Israeli commanders might want to emulate the model. “The analogy is as close as historical analogies get,” historian Martin Van Creveld of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University told me over the phone. “I can think of no campaign that is closer.”
He closes off with a few words from Martin Van Creveld :
“We don’t know if this (an israeli ground invasion) is permanent, temporary, how far into Lebanon it will go,” he said.
It’s also not clear whether it will lead to a long-term occupation, which the Israeli government would like to avoid.
“It may create a situation where the whole southern part of Lebanon will be turned into a dusty strip where no one can go,” he said, a free-fire zone where more than 500,000 people once lived.
Hellooo; that figure of 500,000 rings a bell.
In the face of growing unease, the stiff upper lip of one of the founder members of the "Coalition of the bribed and cowed" has finally quivered with Kim Howells and Toerag Bliar chorusing "steady on old chap"
Compare and contrast : Tony Blair voiced deep concern about the escalating violence during a private telephone conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, last week and :President Bush used his weekly radio address to place the blame for the crisis squarely on Hizbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers.
From worse to badder.
In a tit-for-tat response to the Ü.S refusal last week to allow Russia to join the WTO, Shrub's other favorite bogey man, Vladimir Putin has decided to go for the weak spot : Oil. Nowegian gas companies will take precedence over americaïn owned ones as the scramble for the rights to exploit the Berents sea begins : 'They don't go around with their noses in the air. They work objectively, very professionally' (Putin).
In another show of not toeing the line, this time on Iran, Russia is pulling away from the Paris agreement, saying that it wants a "less legally binding agreement".
The Bush administration is not popular at the United Nations, where it is often perceived as disdainful of diplomacy, and its policies as heedless of the effects on others and single-minded in the willful assertion of American interests. - The Scary Walrus is about to be re-confirmed .
Since Scary Walrus and Iraqinam go together like bacon and eggs, a horse and carriage, milk and cornflakes etc etc .. here's my last little effort for the day : In Iraq, Military Forgot the Lessons of Vietnam
The Observer's Peter Beaumont gives us his harrowing, on the spot report as people flee in panic from southern villages before the arrival of the invading hordes.
Another article, this time from the comment section, draws interesting parallels from past Israeli/Lebanese/Syrian threesomes : "Israel will not win security by crushing Lebanon" .
This, then, must be why the Israeli war machine is pressuring her favorite ally to hurry up with the merchandise : U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis. In typical Ü.S lawmaker fashion we learn that "The new American arms shipment to Israel has not been announced publicly, and the officials who described the administration’s decision to rush the munitions to Israel would discuss it only after being promised anonymity".
Christopher Dickey, over at Newsweek , meanwhile, likens the Israeli tactics to those of NATO during the Balkan campaign :
NATO’s 1999 campaign against Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was the apotheosis of stand-off warfare: 78 days of bombing, 38,000 sorties, a completely one-sided airborne apocalypse meant to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
Yet thanks to precision-guided munitions, the civilian death count was held to about 500, even as the attacks devastated the economic and industrial infrastructure of rump-state Yugoslavia. The Kosovars were saved, Milosevic soon fell—and not a single American soldier died.
You can see why Israeli commanders might want to emulate the model. “The analogy is as close as historical analogies get,” historian Martin Van Creveld of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University told me over the phone. “I can think of no campaign that is closer.”
He closes off with a few words from Martin Van Creveld :
“We don’t know if this (an israeli ground invasion) is permanent, temporary, how far into Lebanon it will go,” he said.
It’s also not clear whether it will lead to a long-term occupation, which the Israeli government would like to avoid.
“It may create a situation where the whole southern part of Lebanon will be turned into a dusty strip where no one can go,” he said, a free-fire zone where more than 500,000 people once lived.
Hellooo; that figure of 500,000 rings a bell.
In the face of growing unease, the stiff upper lip of one of the founder members of the "Coalition of the bribed and cowed" has finally quivered with Kim Howells and Toerag Bliar chorusing "steady on old chap"
Compare and contrast : Tony Blair voiced deep concern about the escalating violence during a private telephone conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, last week and :President Bush used his weekly radio address to place the blame for the crisis squarely on Hizbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers.
From worse to badder.
In a tit-for-tat response to the Ü.S refusal last week to allow Russia to join the WTO, Shrub's other favorite bogey man, Vladimir Putin has decided to go for the weak spot : Oil. Nowegian gas companies will take precedence over americaïn owned ones as the scramble for the rights to exploit the Berents sea begins : 'They don't go around with their noses in the air. They work objectively, very professionally' (Putin).
In another show of not toeing the line, this time on Iran, Russia is pulling away from the Paris agreement, saying that it wants a "less legally binding agreement".
The Bush administration is not popular at the United Nations, where it is often perceived as disdainful of diplomacy, and its policies as heedless of the effects on others and single-minded in the willful assertion of American interests. - The Scary Walrus is about to be re-confirmed .
Since Scary Walrus and Iraqinam go together like bacon and eggs, a horse and carriage, milk and cornflakes etc etc .. here's my last little effort for the day : In Iraq, Military Forgot the Lessons of Vietnam
posted by Damiel | 10:47 AM
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