Middle East Continued Again...

[BlackCat]

Actually, I belive you - only swedes, danes and norwegians can drink rød ålborg and act sensible

[Pekka]

So, what you're trying to say CO, is that Scandinavians in general have put on some decent force when it comes to otherwise-pussed-out-UN?

This sounds good. We need to give UN a better reputation as ready to kill people.

[Chemical Ollie]

Drunk tank raids against artillery positions that are targeting UN

Shooting Mullahs calling for morning prayer

Supercitizen volonteering for UN service

Ted Striker

[Pekka]

Yah well.. like said, it'll take a long time when the wheels of bureocracy have decided if I'm able to go or not. But I have volunteered now so.. we'll see.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
I also happen to back my arguments up with cast iron analysis of why I think I do - most of the retards on Poly are usually of the "I think X is correct because it is" blind faith in their 'beliefs' in favour of solid proof.

You wouldn't know **** if you fell in it.

[SlowwHand]

Israel calls up reserves, diplomatic divide widens

By Lin Noueihed
14 minutes ago

BEIRUT (Reuters) -
Israel called up 15,000 reserve soldiers but ruled out a full-scale invasion of Lebanon against Hizbollah, as diplomatic divisions appeared to widen on Friday over how to end the 17-day-old conflict.

President Bush meets British Prime Minister
Tony Blair in Washington amid mounting calls from across the world for an immediate ceasefire as humanitarian conditions in Lebanon worsen and the civilian death toll rises.

Bush, blaming the conflict on Hizbollah and its main allies
Iran and
Syria, has distanced himself from the calls. He said on Thursday he wanted an end to the violence as soon as possible but not a "fake peace" that would only delay further fighting.

Blair, a close ally of Bush, has sided with Washington over the conflict just as he did over
Iraq, putting Britain at odds with European allies. France and
European Union president Finland made clear on Thursday they wanted an immediate truce.

U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who visited Beirut and Jerusalem this week, said she would return to the region if she believed she could clinch a lasting peace in Lebanon.

Israel decided on Thursday to pursue air strikes and limited ground incursions to halt rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns by Hizbollah guerrillas rather than mount a full-scale invasion of Lebanon.

"We are preparing reserves who will be ready until an order is given (to deploy)," Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz told a news conference at which the major call-up was announced.

Israeli warplanes hammered parts of Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley on Friday.

Lebanese Health Minister Mohammad Khalifeh said up to 600 people had been killed in the conflict, around a third of them still buried beneath rubble with rescue workers unable to remove the bodies while under fire.

Bodies still lie in the streets in some isolated Lebanese border villages, where fighting has trapped terrified civilians, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

At least 445 people, most civilians, have been confirmed killed in Lebanon, according to a Reuters tally. Fifty-one Israelis, including 18 civilians, have been killed since the conflict was triggered on July 12 when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.

HEAVIEST LOSS

Israel decided against a major expansion of the ground war a day after nine Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon, the army's heaviest one-day loss in the conflict.

The Jewish state does not want to get bogged down in southern Lebanon only six years after it pulled troops out after a two-decade presence.

The United States has effectively given Israel the green light to pursue its offensive by refusing to call for an immediate truce or to allow the
U.N. Security Council to do so.

"My goal is ... to hopefully end this as quickly as possible and at the same time making sure there is a lasting peace, not a fake peace," Bush told reporters in Washington.

France said it was disappointed an international conference in Rome on Wednesday had failed to call for an immediate end to hostilities and urged U.N. Security Council foreign ministers to meet next week to work on a ceasefire resolution.

EU president Finland said Israel might have drawn the wrong conclusion from the Rome conference by believing it had been allowed to continue its offensive against Hizbollah.

Dozens of Hizbollah rockets landed in northern Israel on Thursday, wounding four people. More than 1,400 rockets have hit Israel since the conflict began.

The conflict has largely overshadowed separate fighting in the
Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces targeting gunmen killed five civilians in Gaza on Thursday, Palestinian medics said, while police at a checkpoint in Jerusalem killed a Palestinian who shot at them.

Those who killed on Thursday included a 75-year-old woman, whose house was hit by a missile or shell. A 12-year-old boy was killed by a bullet that witnesses said was fired by an Israeli tank in northern Gaza.

With anger among Arabs and Muslims mounting over Israel's offensives in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, al Qaeda declared it would not stand by and urged Muslims to fight.

"How can we remain silent while watching bombs raining on our people?" al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a video taped address broadcast on Al Jazeera.

[Dinner]

Cruelity posted this on a different site and I thought it was worth reporting. It originally came from the Canadian paper the Ottawa Citizen.

"Hezbollah was using UN post as 'shield'
Canadian wrote of militia's presence, 'necessity' of bombing
Joel Kom, with files from Steven Edwards, CanWest News Service, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, July 27, 2006
The words of a Canadian United Nations observer written just days before he was killed in an Israeli bombing of a UN post in Lebanon are evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a "shield" to fire rockets into Israel, says a former UN commander in Bosnia.

Those words, written in an e-mail dated just nine days ago, offer a possible explanation as to why the post -- which according to UN officials was clearly marked and known to Israeli forces -- was hit by Israel on Tuesday night, said retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie yesterday.

The strike hit the UN observation post in the southern Lebanese village of El Khiam, killing Canadian Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener and three others serving as unarmed UN military observers in the area.

Just last week, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener wrote an e-mail about his experiences after nine months in the area, words Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie said are an obvious allusion to Hezbollah tactics.

"What I can tell you is this," he wrote in an e-mail to CTV dated July 18. "We have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial bombing.

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

Those words, particularly the last sentence, are not-so-veiled language indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post, said Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie.

"What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)," he said.

That would mean Hezbollah was purposely setting up near the UN post, he added. It's a tactic Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie, who was the first UN commander in Sarajevo during the Bosnia civil war, said he's seen in past international missions: Aside from UN posts, fighters would set up near hospitals, mosques and orphanages.

A Canadian Forces infantry officer with the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and the only Canadian serving as a UN military observer in Lebanon, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener was no stranger to fighting nearby.

The UN post, he wrote in the e-mail, afforded a view of the "Hezbollah static positions in and around our patrol Base."

"It appears that the lion's share of fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah has taken place in our area," he wrote, noting later it was too dangerous to venture out on patrols.

The e-mail appears to contradict the UN's claim there had been no Hezbollah activity in the vicinity of the strike.

The question of Hezbollah's infiltration of the area is significant because UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, speaking Tuesday just hours after the bombing, accused the Israelis of the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the base near Khiam in southern Lebanon.

A senior UN official, asked about the information contained in Maj. Hess-von Kruedener's e-mail concerning Hezbollah presence in the vicinity of the Khiam base, denied the world body had been caught in a contradiction.
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Basically the Canadian paper is saying that UN personal in the field repeatedly complained to higher that Hezbollah was using them as human shields by launching attacks and starting fire fights right next to or on top of UN posts. Even the Canadian soldier who was killed yesterday himself said that Hezbollah was deliberately right next to UN positions and was attacking Israelis hoping that either the Israelis wouldn't return fire out of fear of hitting the UN or that if the Israelis did return fire that they'd also kill the UN people. Either way it works for the terrorists.

[SlowwHand]

Sounds right.

[GePap]

The Canadain guy says Hizbullah was using areas nearby. He never says they are using his post. I call bull**** on that article.

If israel does not invade with a significant forcem thay can never cliam victory. That is why the US/Israeli strategy is bound to fail. Hizbullah will come out in the end and claim (corretly) that they deterred an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and even if they run out of rockets, they "saved" Lebanon from a new Israeli occupation. And if Israel does invade, then even if they do massive damage to Hizbullah, Hizbullah again is the vanguard of resistance to Israel.

Any way, Hizbullah is the winner in the eyes of the Arab world (if not the isolated autocratic pro-US sunni regimes.)

[SlowwHand]

Big surprise. Winner in Arab eyes. I guess it's all relative.

[GePap]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Big surprise. Winner in Arab eyes. I guess it's all relative.

If Bush wants more "democracy" in the middle east, he better care, cause if there were ever trully free elections in say Egypt the Muslim brotherhood would win the most seatsIn fact, everywhere in the Arab world save possibly Lebanon itself, which isessentially all the time on the edge of civil war, anti-American, anti-Israeli parties would win any trully free and democratic elections.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Big surprise. Winner in Arab eyes. I guess it's all relative.

Hezbollah is in fact winning, because Israel cannot degrade them as it wishes to (to win they only have to draw). That is now apparent to any rational observer. Hezbollah is not Hamas or some other armed mob: it is a well drilled irregular army. They've obviously prepared for this for a while and I imagine they would be quite happy with another Israeli ground invasion. They seem to be doing a pretty good job of luring the Israelis onto prepared ground so far.

No independent observers believe the Israeli estimates of Hezbollah fighters killed and some have even speculated that the military casualties may be close to even. I find that astonishing, but even if it is 4 or 5 to one it is still a good deal for Hezbollah.

If I were a Hezbollah tactician, I would want this to go on for quite a while yet. The Israelis should have settled for a prisoner swap. Now they look weak, and it's a diplomatic disaster to boot.

The project to diplomatically isolate the US, British and Israeli governments is well on track. The media in those countries is doing the best it can to help that along.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap
The Canadain guy says Hizbullah was using areas nearby. He never says they are using his post. I call bull**** on that article.

What part of 2 meters away do you not understand? Even the dead Canadian Major himself said that it was due to military necisity; meaning that Hezbollah were all over his position. The real evil hear is Hezbollah using the UN as human shields and the UN higher command not letting their soldiers defend themselves from such tragic abuse. If the UN were legally allowed to defend their positions from combatants who are attempting to use them as human shields or even to fire upon combatants who invade UN areas then this wouldn't have happened. Instead we have useless UN forces who accomplish nothing and who instead become tools of the terrorists.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by BeBro


Yes, indeed. And btw, I'm rather with Israel in this conflict. I just don't think it's a good idea to come up with the "it was their own fault" excuse in cases like this with the attacked UN post, as it was done in this thread. That sounds a bit too much like "that girl asked for being raped by walking around alone at night" logic for my taste. Even Israel itself doesn't put the blame on the guys in the UN post afaik.

I belive the response made is that Hezbollah continually made the UN into human shields, fired on Israeli forces from next to the UN, and generally made the UN into their *****. The Israeli choice was to just let their people be killed or to respond and stop the incoming fire. It seems to me that Hezbollah is the one who broke the rules of civilized society and that only an idiot could claim Israeli is responsible.

Clearly it was Hezbollah who created the conditions and broke the laws of war.

[Guardian]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
¨

My best buddy was the radio operator on duty when that happened. The Danish colonel leutenant was drunk and lost his temper after several days of being shelled by Serbian artillery. He walked into the radio bunker and said to my buddy: " Bengtsson, ring och väck översten!". (Bengtsson, wake up the colonel.) Then the Swedish colonel joined him at a table in the radio bunker. They shared a bottle of Ålborg and made lines and circles on a map, then at dawn, a company of Leos rolled out and shot the Serbian artillery position to ashes and gravel. Something like 8 Serbians were killed, and the Dane ended up on the cover of Time magazine.

Most of that story has been in the media, but the secret scoop I know is that the officers were drunk during the planning. Not that is matters, I get most of my best ideas when slightly drunk.

If only the UN had had more officers like those guys!