Thursday, August 10, 2006

Power Line

Power Line: "According to this piece in the Jerusalem Post senior members of the Israeli Defense Force are 'fuming' over being denied the opportunity to achieve a military victory over Hezbollah. "


Okay, remind me again, when did we start believing everything an unnamed source says to a reporter?

10 comments:

Rick Ballard said...

Brigadier-General Alon Friedman, Chief of Staff of the IDF 's Northern Command is saying roughly the same thing to Ynet. This one might not belong to Olmert - apparently Bush asked him to hold off. That doesn't help the IDF much though.

gumshoe said...

Rick -

aside from not wanting the whole region to to descend into total war,why would Bush want the Israelis to hold off?

care to discuss?

or are we sitting in the calm eye of the storm for the time being?

not that anyone on YARGB needs a clue,but replacing the word "Hezb'allah" in all the news reporting with the word "Iran"
sure makes the picture a hellava lot clearer.

maybe Bush wanted to allow Reuters another week or two to eviscerate itself.

i'd vote for that.

Rick Ballard said...

gumshoe1,

Maybe the UN lack of resolution, maybe some very bad news from intelligence sources. My concern has been the impact on morale, the IDF takes fewer casualties because it is feared. It will take more as a result of the way this campaign has been conducted politically, not militarily.

Syl said...

Only 11 days 'til Aug 22. Perhaps the IDF will be needed elsewhere.

There's something in the air.

On the other hand, Olmert seems averse to IDF casualties. Have you seen some of the reservists? pot bellies, gray hair. Not that bad but a week or two a year is not good training to fight Hezbollah.

Wednesday they sent a bunch of reservists into Lebanon and immediately there were 15 dead.

The will is there, morale is good, but ufda.

Okay, the above is two scenarios.

What I really fear is that Condi blinked after Kana. That in conjunction with Olmert's jitters is a pretty bad situation. The international force will never happen in a way that disarms Hezbollah.

Or maybe I'm just depressed tonite.

chuck said...

...apparently Bush asked him to hold off.

I would treat that with a bit of skepticism. There is going to be a ton of finger pointing in Israeli politics and Bush is always a good out-of-country excuse. I can see something like Bush not wanting to bring down the Lebanese government because it needs to be part of any arrangement that brings in outside forces, but something like that is a far cry from telling the Israelis to hold in place. *That* sounds much more like the Olmert & Peretz show. Those two have been dicking around for the last thirty days. Are you telling me they couldn't do what they thought best? I suspect the problem is that Olmert & Peretz don't *know* what they think best.

Have you seen some of the reservists? pot bellies, gray hair.

I think Israel has let training and readyness slip. It's been a long time since the Yom Kippur war. I expect there will be a lot more rigor in training in the near future, including a lot of work on tactics and ground/air coordination.

Yeah, and I got hammered when I posted that observation at Roger's back when ;) It just doesn't pay to get out in front of the crowd.

I read that in a recent poll 40% of Israelis wanted to negotiate with Hizbollah. I can't find a link so I just toss that out there. Put that together with prominent writers and artists calling for a ceasefire and you begin to see that Israel has problems beyond Hizbollah. Over here Americans tend to think prominent artists and writers are, well, who cares. A sound point of view, no doubt. Israel is more cultured.

*sniff* I posted the link to this two days ago. *sniff* Nobody reads my stuff.

Rick Ballard said...

Timing is everything.

This morning (evening in Israel) Olmert says they're going forward with the invasion. True? Or an attempt to get the UN to put at least one tooth in the useless resolution that is floating around?

I put the Bush comment in because there are believeable reports that he addressed the entire cabinet via a teleconference during their last meeting. I think he wants the UN to have a chance to prove its incompetence once again.

gumshoe said...

"Wednesday they sent a bunch of reservists into Lebanon and immediately there were 15 dead."

Syl -

i note that there's no count for the dead on the Iranian/Hizzie side.
...and it's been that way
for a month now.

chuck -

"*sniff* I posted the link to this two days ago. *sniff* Nobody reads my stuff."

sorry the crowd isn't clapping quite loud enough,but i'll say thanks for your insight and posts.

the emotional roller coaster
takes us all for a ride.
your sobreity on more than one occassion has been appreciated.

and rick -

i appreciate you diligence
and insight,too.

gumshoe said...

BTW -

is some of this
conducting-war-by-blog
just a convenient means for the
jihadis to take the tempertature of the-water-the-frog-is-boiling-in.

that "loose lips" stuff was
so 20th C.,hey?

Unknown said...

I think there are a lot of rumors and finger pointing going on and American bloggers like powerline are not above doing some finger pointing of their own.

Maybe there is more going on here than we know. My guess is Israel really does not want to occupy Lebanon and is hoping that diplomacy might bring an alternative.

Charlie Martin said...

Maybe there is more going on here than we know.

Terrye, please take this as a comment on Powerline and not you when I say ...

"Duh!"

First Condi "slow walks" the whole resolution thing while Israel conducts a reconnaisance in force.

They talk about a major invasion but don't do it, while continuing to shape the battlespace and go after some major, surprisingly hardened, HB locations in South Lebanon, kill Iranians in combat, and generally make a mess of Lebanon.

When the HB and Lebanon starts crying for a cease fire (a sure sign they're being hurt) they get difficult, while Condi and Boulton deal with the French.

When the French renege, they say they're going to give diplomacy a chance to work, withdraw a token number of people... and when the resolution isn't up to spec, they make a mass attack again.