The Middle East Continues...

[RGBVideo]

you missed my latest reply, dannubis

Originally posted by Ming
Sighh... I think a few people need to CHILL!

Enough with the personal crap. Discuss the topic, not the posters!

Yes. I'm sorry, Ming.

Like I said, I won't continue it anymore.

[dannubis]

nm

[germanos]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Because they started out with over 10,000.

Hopefully they'll run out or get shut down in a few weeks. Then at least Israel can return to normal.

Yeah. Run out appears to be most likely scenario.

After three weeks of bombing it's pretty amazing the amount of rockets launched is rising EVERY BLOODY DAY.

But the Israeli's prefer bridges and Hezbollah offices to blow up.

The longer this goes on, the more I get a feeling there's something fishy going on.

[Kuciwalker]

After three weeks of bombing it's pretty amazing the amount of rockets launched is rising EVERY BLOODY DAY.

Not when you consider that the vast majority are Katyusha's, which will fit in your closet. Hard to notice those from the air. The Israelis say they've gotten most of the bigger, long-range missiles.

[Ecthy]

Re: the topic I was discussing was DU shells, not Middle East

Originally posted by VJ
I'm trying to escape this sinking ****hole you proudly refer to as "Europe", guys.

Thank you for the brain drain.

[MOBIUS]

Israel: The Pariah State

Even I cannot believe the crimes Israel is capable of...

Sorry but everything the nation of Israel stands for makes me sick to my stomach...

This isn't a battle against Hizbullah - this is the systematic and murderous destruction of an innocent nation!

Really, I never thought even I would be stunned speechless by the barbarity of this country - I guess I was wrong!

I honestly can't see what this sort of mindless and indesciminate violence is going to achieve!?

The only losers in this madness will be Israel, and maybe the US and the United Puppetdom of Blairland...

[Datajack Franit]

MOBIUS, do something good for the human kind and put a shoe in your mouth the next time you feel the need to connect to the Internet to post this trash

[GePap]

I keep reading in Israeli papers how most Lebanese hate HIzbullah and cheer on Israel. Is the Israeli press that deluded about what the people of Lebanon actually think of them and this crisis?

Here is Israel winning Lebanese hearts and minds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/world/middleeast/04cnd-mideast.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=b6a015c92509919d&hp&ex=1154750400&partner=homepage

Israel Extends Strikes North of Beirut, Hitting Village
By JOHN KIFNER
Published: August 4, 2006

HALAT, Lebanon, Aug. 4—Israel unleashed airstrikes across Lebanon Friday, severing the last major road link to the outside world and killing more than 30 people.

The bombs destroyed four bridges along the main north-south highway in what had been the largely untouched Christian heartland north of Beirut and far from Hezbollah territory. With the road from Beirut to Damascus already cut at several points, this was the only practical way to bring in relief and other supplies from Syria, tightening the sense of siege here.

At the steep gorge here cut by the Fidar River, which runs down the mountains to the Mediterranean, dozens of Maronite Catholic residents gathered to stare in stunned silence at a 200-yard stretch of four-lane highway blasted into rubble. The supports for the bridges rose like cliffs at either end.

“Where are the Katyushas of the Hezbollah here?” asked Joseph Abihana, referring to a type of rocket that has been fired at Israel from the southern part of Lebanon. He said he was awakened by four bomb blasts. “We are used to being a safe area here, but now there is no safety. I blame the Israelis.”

The airstrikes began in the early morning hours, hitting familiar targets in Hezbollah’s southern Beirut strongholds of Haret Hreik and Bir Abed, already largely flattened, and in the sprawling slum known as Dahieh on the southern edge of the city. They spread for the first time to the little port and fishing village of Uzai near the Beirut airport.

In the Bekaa Valley, hard against the Syrian border, an airstrike killed at least 28 seasonal farm workers loading fruit and vegetables into a refrigerated truck. Ali Yaghi, the head of the rescue service in the tiny village of Qaa, told reporters that others may be buried in the rubble. Israel has frequently fired upon vehicles it suspected of carrying fighters or weapons, but these have also included water drilling rigs, convoys of medical supplies and minivans of fleeing civilians.

Fierce ground fighting continued in the south on the 24th day of the war, with Israel bringing more artillery to the border to pound the hillside villages and Hezbollah hiding places. Israel also called up more reserves to bolster the roughly 10,000 troops already in Lebanon. The Israeli army said two soldiers and an officer were killed today when they were struck by an anti-tank rocket.

The Israeli army said it has established positions in about 11 southern villages, but in more than three weeks of fighting it has met stiff resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas. Amid criticism in Israel that the prosecution of the war has been too slow, military officials were reportedly gearing up for a harder push, with a goal of securing a wide buffer zone and the possibility of at least temporarily occupying the port city of Tyre.

Throughout the night, dozens of air raids shook villages in the vicinities of Tyre and Nabitiyeh behind the front lines.

But Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets into Israel remained intact. By nightfall, Israeli officials said, 195 rockets had landed, killing at least four people. The Israeli police said that 2,500 rockets had been fired into Israel since the war began.

The wave of bombings was yet another crippling blow to Lebanon’s infrastructure, painstakingly rebuilt over the past decade after years of civil war. Lebanese officials say 71 bridges have been destroyed — including elaborate overpasses on the Damascus road — and estimate the damage at $2 billion and rising. Nearly a quarter of the population of four million has been displaced, they say, with many finding temporary shelter in schools. There has been widespread damage to homes and businesses in the south and in the Shiite neighborhoods of Beirut.

On Friday, the war came home to the Christian heartland, a place as different as night and day from the poor and pious Shiite strongholds of Hezbollah. As the steep mountains rise up from the sea, the landscape is often lush and spectacular. Several of the bridges hit Friday were near the major resort area around Jounieh, site of the Casino Du Liban, which is famous for its floor shows.

While many Lebanese Christians have long distrusted Hezbollah and other Muslims and Druse (there were, after all, 15 years of civil war along sectarian lines), and many criticized the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 that touched off the conflict, comments Friday indicated that the damage Israel has inflicted on Lebanon has shifted that equation.

“Public opinion is 100 percent against Israel from this area,” said Camille Chamoun, scion of one of the three major Christian families who mounted militias against the Muslim and Palestinian forces during the civil war and whose faction was aligned with Israel during its 1982 invasion.

“This is just an excuse to hit more of our infrastructure,” said Manal Azzi, a 26-year-old health worker who lives next to the destroyed bridge.

“I’m here speaking as a Christian,” she went on. “Israel is our main invader and has been for the last 50 years. Right now we’re getting more civilian casualties, so we’ll have another war in 10, 15 years.

“They talk about a new Middle East. To serve who? Israel and the United States. Israel is itself a terrorist state backed up by the United States.”

Residents in Quzai, adjacent to the Hezbollah stronghold of Haret Hreik just south of Beirut, awoke Friday to the shattered remains of a fishing fleet decimated in an especially heavy bombardment that killed one Lebanese soldier in a guard post nearby.

Pieces of boat hulls, engines and shrapnel were scattered throughout the field, and were flung several blocks away, injuring one person. Nearby, a Hezbollah-funded youth center was decimated in the early morning attacks that rattled nerves and signaled a widening of bombing outside Haret Hreik, where most of the bombing has occurred.

Decades ago, this neighborhood was lined with luxurious beaches and resorts. But during the civil war, it was populated by refugees who built shanty towns and houses that have remained here ever since.

More than 400 fishing boats and trawlers, most of them moored in a dock, others stored in a nearby field, were destroyed in the bombings in an hour-long barrage by helicopters, aircraft and warships off the shore, residents said.

“The planes came from above, and then we heard ships shooting too,” said Jihad al Hoss, who lived across the road. “They hit 30 or 35 rounds into the area. But what fault is it of the fishermen in all this?”

Parts of outboard motors were scattered everywhere, and the smell of diesel fuel and motor oil pervaded the area, which is just across from a runway at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International airport. Fishermen rushed into the area to inspect their boats, warning others who arrived at the scene to turn away to avoid being disappointed.

“They’ve destroyed our homes, and now they’ve destroyed our livelihood,” said Fadel Alami, who dove into the water to salvage parts from his wooden fishing trawler. He managed to recover the registration booklet for the boat and pieces of a sonar device, but, he said, the rest is all gone.

“We still have our dignity, and Seyed Hassan will help us get the rest back,” he said, speaking of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

A Christian woman who gave her name as Um Claude, wearing a black cloak and looking downtrodden, rushed to her home, which overlooked the docks. She scrambled to remove clothes and belongings, ordering her son to help her. All the windows had been shattered, and the top floor of the house was riddled with shrapnel.

She had escaped the house the night before as planes began circling overhead, she said, and stayed with relatives in another part of town. Her son, who only gave his name as Claude, climbed over a fence to help his mother.

“Why are you crying mom?,” he asked as she came up the stairs. “We have to be steadfast.”

“How can I not cry, just look around you,” she said. “But we have to persevere. Hassan Nasrallah will change this.”

[DinoDoc]

I'm still at a loss to explain why they didn't launch a ground campaign with air support rather than relying on a strategic air campaign concept that has been discredited time and again. What the hell are the Israelis good for if they screw up an opportunity such as this to damage an Iranian proxy when we go out on such a limb for them?

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I'm still at a loss to explain why they didn't launch a ground campaign with air support rather than relying on a strategic air campaign concept that has been discredited time and again. What the hell are the Israelis good for if they screw up an opportunity such as this to damage an Iranian proxy when we go out on such a limb for them?

They bought into the myth of air power, and they were loath to have to re-occupy Southern Lebanon, which would have been the result of any massive ground campaign.

[DinoDoc]

When has air power alone ever worked? And why launch an opperation with such wide ranging goals if you lacked the will to see it through?

[GePap]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
When has air power alone ever worked?

Wrong question.

The effectiveness of airpower is based on the aims you seek to achieve. It worked vs. Osarik, but then of course the goal there was the simple elimination of a single compound/target.

Any time your aim is political or deals with securing ground air power alone will fail.

[Kuciwalker]

I'm still at a loss to explain why they didn't launch a ground campaign with air support rather than relying on a strategic air campaign concept that has been discredited time and again.

They are launching a ground campaign, if you didn't notice. I suppose the air campaign was preparation a la Gulf I.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

They are launching a ground campaign, if you didn't notice. I suppose the air campaign was preparation a la Gulf I.

You suppose wrong.

The government set out to win with air power alone, they did not mobilize more reserves until well after the air campaign began, and it has only been in the last two weeks that the Israeli government has began to expand the role of ground forces, based on the failure of air power to achieve what they wanted to achieve.

[Kuciwalker]

How does anything that you said prove that they weren't planning a ground offensive originally?