Plan B

Ooops. Sorry about that food warehouse

Risks Escalate as Israel Fights a Ground War

By GREG MYRE
Published: August 5, 2006

JERUSALEM, Aug. 4 — After resisting a major ground offensive for three weeks, Israel now has an estimated 10,000 troops in southern Lebanon trying to build a buffer zone free of Hezbollah, and the risks are already evident. Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in two days of brutal battles on territory the guerrillas know far better than the Israelis.

The plan of the country’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, an air force man, to destroy Hezbollah from the air has proved wanting, and now, nervously, Israel is sending the country’s young men into the forbidding hills of southern Lebanon, where its forces battled Hezbollah for 18 years before pulling out in May 2000.

“We certainly hope that some international resolution will come before another 18 years passes,” Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan said.

In the past few days the troops have crossed the border by the thousands — with seven brigades, including reserve units, totaling around 10,000 troops — now in Lebanon, according to army radio and other Israeli news reports.

“In the first days, we concentrated very much on the air campaign,” said General Nehushtan, who declined to comment on the reported figures on ground troops in Lebanon. “Now we want to clear Hezbollah from all areas near the border. Our plan is to push north on a much larger scale.”

Making the rubble bounce doesn't seem to work, and if the iDF thinks they can get to the Litani River, God bless them, but it's not happening. The IDF and their defenders are trying to explain away civilian deaths and failing.

When people talk about World War Three, I laugh, partly because it would be like World War Seven, but in reality, it would be an especially messy regional war which would destroy the US Army.

The neocons, emboldened by their failure in Iraq, now want to spread that failure to Iran, excspt at the end of it, it would be Iran ascendent.

But the miscaluclation that Hezbollah would collapse with some bombs and seeing the tanks of the IDF was well, insane logic.

The IDF is in a jam. They cannot hold Lebanon up to the Litani River. Because Hezbollah has prepared the ground. They can't even stop the rockets from landing
in Haifa. When will people notice that the Israeli claims are mostly bullshit and for them to stop Hezbollah would take more men and time than they can afford.

And I doubt they've even run into the defenses Hezbollah has in depth. They keep tossing men and and they still can't control thr towns. Shades of the Pacific War.