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Israel Dropping Leaflets on Sidon

And we should all know what comes after leaflets by now, shouldnt we?

From Reuters:

Snip.

The Israeli army announced its intentions as a senior U.S. official was meeting Lebanese leaders on a possible deal to end Israel's 25-day-old war with Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch said after meeting Prime Minister Fouad Siniora that the solution lay in a "lasting political framework backed by an international force".

( My reaction?: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

An Israeli army spokesman said leaflets dropped on Sidon, whose normal population of 100,000 has been swollen by refugees from war zones further south, had warned all residents to leave.

"We dropped leaflets warning residents to leave because the army will attack Hizbollah rocket launching sites in Sidon," he said. Other army officials confirmed the warning had been given.

A local official in Sidon, who asked not to be named, said Hizbollah's Shi'ite guerrillas were not present in the mainly Sunni Muslim city. One resident said he had seen a leaflet that warned people to leave, but that did not mention Sidon by name.

End Snip...

Sidon, for those of you still not looking at a map of Lebanon, is well to the north of the "Litani Line".

As far as todays announcement of an agreement between France and the US, since neither the US or France has combatants in the war it seems to have about as much weight in the situation as a pronouncement on the future of space travel by Brazil and Chile. This isnt the Cold War, so the rules have changed. No one in Washington is thinking that the Soviets are going to come in and take over the area and outside of various contracts for Oil and refineries with some of the combatants, the Russians couldnt care less one way or the other how the war is going.

No one is worried about a brushfire starting a bigger war between superpowers resulting in world wide nuclear war.

And no one, anywhere, gives a damn about what France has to say.

That is, unless of course you believe that France has some pull with Iran which has up to this day been hidden from us by some dark diplomatic process and methodology. I find the idea that France is going to pick up the phone and turn off the "Iranian spigot of hate" to be laughable. Almost as laughible as the idea that if Israel doesnt do what we ask that we would stop supporting them.

So the war goes on and Israel continues to moves north.

Iran on the other hand has promised to send Surface to Air missiles to Hezbollah. Not right now of course but "...in the coming months".

Ah. Thats nice, dontcha think? Hey pal, I know youre in big trouble right now, but I promise to help you in the future. Oh, and I'm not sending any of my jets or anything, just a few second hand shoulder launched SA-7's. No Theater-wide Air Defence systems, no "committment to protect Hezbollah from the air", just a few more ineffective second rate old Soviet boom-boom sticks.

With friends like that...

I wonder if there will be anyone left at Hezbollah HQ to receive them when ( or if!) they arrive.

Posted @ August 05, 2006 01:27 PM | Current Affairs

Comments

Frank,
Reading your blog of late has made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I don't know who or what you know, but it seems, from where I'm sitting, that you've made some of the most accurate predictions of events in the mid-east since Hezzbollah made their grand mis-calculation.

I hope that your latest prediction is correct or at least far closer to correct than most everything else I've been reading, which seems to be to the effect that Olmert squandered his opportunity to take Hezzbollah out and that a truce is imminent.

From my viewpoint, Hezzbollah must be effectively destroyed now because the next time, they will have greater stockpiles of longer range missiles, more launchers and better air defence. Anything less than a crushing defeat will be seen as a victory and serve to encourage more of the same.

Great writing, keep on it!

Posted by: TIm P at August 5, 2006 03:00 PM

Well thanks man. I appreciate that. I dont think my predictions are all that accurate. My only here purpose is to get people to understand that most media outlets use a very cookie cutter approach to news and in many cases the story they report is written long before the story starts.

Rather than talk about the facts as they are,they lay a template over the top of the information they find that presents to them with an image of what they really want to see happen. I do the same thing, but unlike most of the media these days, I just happen to want to see Israel win, so my stuff "looks" out of place to people who follow the media reporting.

However - If you know Israelis, and you know history( going way back to Alexander, the romans and the crusades up to modern times ), you can guess where things are going to go next to a great deal more accuracy than you can by wanting to pretend that this time - unlike all the other times in 10,000 years of human history, that diplomats can stop a war with the slash of a pen, that peace will just magically break out because the french and the americans say so, and hezbollah and israelis will then will walk together in brotherhood.

or...

The war will go on until capitulation of one side or the other occurs.

I'm betting that hezbollah breaks long before the Israelis. Does that make me biased? well yeah, but I think history will back me up, so Im ok with that.

Posted by: frank martin at August 5, 2006 04:14 PM