|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Interested
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
|
 Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:00 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
I'm a little puzzled.  First I read this....
| Big_Bird wrote: |
The above article is a fascinating account of the US-Israeli/Lebanon war. Yeah yeah, you're going to complain (well, some of you at least) Bush said Israel won the war. Well read this article and make up your own mind. It's my own feeling that no-one truly wins a war...
Gopher, if you want to join the discussion, stick to discussing the article rather than your thoughts on Big_Bird. I'm not interested in reading your musings on why I've chosen to post it. |
And then I read this....
| Gopher wrote: |
(1) It is already well established why you post what you post here;
(2) Others have seen your ill-tempered, confrontational attitude for what it is; and
(3) Nobody "wins" any war. You are too focused on your mission to undermine the U.S. (and, by extension, Israeli) position in world affairs to see this, however. |
 Am I missing something? Please explain!  |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 8:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Interested wrote: |
| I'm a little puzzled.... |
Of course you are puzzled.
Read the title. Start with that. And see disengenuous tactical disclaimers for what they are. 
Last edited by Gopher on Sat Oct 14, 2006 10:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 10:18 pm Post subject: Re: How Hezbollah Defeated Israel |
|
|
| bucheon bum wrote: |
Junior, if that is indeed the case, I'm sure you can come up with something to back up such a claim. |
| Gopher wrote: |
| In any case, how do you know this, Junior? |
What did you do in the war, UNIFIL?
You broadcast Israeli troop movements.
by Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Wekly Standard
09/04/2006, Volume 011, Issue 47
DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.
Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.
This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time. But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N. source. The Israeli press--always eager to push the envelope--did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics. Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops,
provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did. A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N.
Inquiries made of various Israeli military and government representatives and analysts yielded near unanimous agreement that at least some of UNIFIL's postings, in the words of one retired senior military analyst, "could have exposed Israeli soldiers to grave danger." These analysts, including a current high ranking military official, noted that the same intelligence would not have been provided by the U.N. about Israel's enemies.
Sure enough, a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever.
Compare the vague "various locations" language with this UNIFIL posting from July 25:
Yesterday and during last night, the IDF moved significant reinforcements, including a number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and infantry, to the area of Marun Al Ras inside Lebanese territory. The IDF advanced from that area north toward Bint Jubayl, and south towards Yarun.
Or with the posting on July 24, in which UNIFIL revealed that the IDF stationed between Marun Al Ras and Bint Jubayl were "significantly reinforced during the night and this morning with a number of tanks and armored personnel carriers."
This partiality is inconsistent not only with UNIFIL's mission but also with its own stated policies. In a telling incident just a few years back, UNIFIL vigorously insisted on its "neutral ity"--at Israel's expense.
On October 7, 2000, three IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah just yards from a UNIFIL shelter and dragged across the border into Lebanon, where they disappeared. The U.N. was thought to have videotaped the incident or its immediate aftermath. Rather than help Israel rescue its kidnapped soldiers by providing this evidence, however, the U.N. obstructed the Israeli investigation.
For months the Israeli government pleaded with the U.N. to turn over any videotape that might shed light on the location and condition of its missing men. And for nine months the U.N. stonewalled, insisting first that no such tape existed, then that just one tape existed, and eventually conceding that there were two more tapes. During those nine months, clips from the videotapes were shown on Syrian and Lebanese television.
Explaining their eventual about-face, U.N. officials said the decision had been made by the on-site commanders that it was not their responsibility to provide the material to Israel; indeed, that to do so would violate the peacekeeping mandate, which required "full impartiality and objectivity." The U.N. report on the incident was adamant that its force had "to ensure that military and other sensitive information remains in their domain and is not passed to parties to a conflict."
Stymied in its efforts to recover the men while they were still alive, Israel ultimately agreed to an exchange in January 2004: It released 429 Arab prisoners and detainees, among them convicted terrorists, and the bodies of 60 Lebanese decedents and members of Hezbollah, in exchange
for the bodies of the three soldiers. Blame for the deaths of those three Israelis can be laid, at least in part, at the feet of the U.N., which went to the wall defending its inviolable pledge never to share military intelligence about one party with another.
UNIFIL has just done what it then vowed it could never do. Once again, it has acted to shield one side in the conflict and to harm the other. Why is this permitted? For that matter, how did the U.N. obtain such detailed and timely military intelligence in the first place, before broadcasting it for Israel's enemies to see?
http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/622bqwjn.asp?pg=2 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 4:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
| canuckistan wrote: |
| Where is that corporal Shalit anyways? |
Corporal Shalit was taken by Palestinian militants, not Lebanese militants. There were two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah - Ehud Goldwasser (like Goldwater) and Eldad Regev. If you mean what is going with the negotiations between Cairo and the Palestinians and Israel regarding releasing Shalit, he is still not released. There will eventually be talks for the release of some Hamas people and perhaps FATAH's Marwan Barghouti in exchange.
Back to Hezbollah, were they victorious? The answer is yes and no.
They lost and they gained. They appear to have gained outside of Lebanon in the eyes of many Arabs who live outside of Lebanon and some Lebanese from the South.
However, the war gave room for the Lebanese government to move to the South. It pushed for Hezbollah to no longer have their weapons out in public. They received fierce criticism in Lebanon, and the Lebanese military is getting more weaponry and money, because an excuse Hezbollah has used for staying armed is that there is no other strong force to protect the Lebanese. And the devastation unleashed on Lebanon showed that the war can escalate outside of the South, which Hezbollah did not count on happening. Hezbollah also was in a Lebanon where the prime minister was begging for a cease-fire. So if Hezbollah had a partial victory, it was because their leader was trying to save the people of his country.
As far as Israel, they rushed into a conflict without proper planning between the ground forces and the air force. They knew that Hezbollah upgraded, and they underestimated how lethal Hezbollah would be with said weapons. However, Hezbollah lost more men and a leader though Israel lost over 100 soldiers.
U.S. neo-conservatives were disappointed in Israel. They wanted them to teach Hezbollah a lesson to send a certain message to Iran. As Jim Baker said what is needed in the region is some kind of engagement rather than inflaming one another. This administration expects people to behave in a certain perfect way that they want. Being a perfectionist is not healthy in politics. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 4:55 am Post subject: |
|
|
| canuckistan wrote: |
| Where is that corporal Shalit anyways? |
Corporal Shalit was taken by Palestinian militants, not Lebanese militants. There were two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah - Ehud Goldwasser (like Goldwater) and Eldad Regev. If you mean what is going with the negotiations between Cairo and the Palestinians and Israel regarding releasing Shalit, he is still not released. There will eventually be talks for the release of some Hamas people and perhaps FATAH's Marwan Barghouti in exchange.
Back to Hezbollah, were they victorious? The answer is yes and no.
They lost and they gained. They appear to have gained outside of Lebanon in the eyes of many Arabs who live outside of Lebanon and some Lebanese from the South.
However, the war gave room for the Lebanese government to move to the South. It pushed for Hezbollah to no longer have their weapons out in public. They received fierce criticism in Lebanon, and the Lebanese military is getting more weaponry and money, because an excuse Hezbollah has used for staying armed is that there is no other strong force to protect the Lebanese. And the devastation unleashed on Lebanon showed that the war can escalate outside of the South, which Hezbollah did not count on happening. Hezbollah also was in a Lebanon where the prime minister was begging for a cease-fire. So if Hezbollah had a partial victory, it was because their leader was trying to save the people of his country.
As far as Israel, they rushed into a conflict without proper planning between the ground forces and the air force. They knew that Hezbollah upgraded, and they underestimated how lethal Hezbollah would be with said weapons. However, Hezbollah lost more men and a leader though Israel lost over 100 soldiers.
U.S. neo-conservatives were disappointed in Israel. They wanted them to teach Hezbollah a lesson to send a certain message to Iran. As Jim Baker said what is needed in the region is some kind of engagement rather than inflaming one another. This administration expects people to behave in a certain perfect way that they want. Being a perfectionist is not healthy in politics. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 11:36 am Post subject: Re: How Hezbollah Defeated Israel |
|
|
| Junior wrote: |
DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
|
what I got from the article was that
1. The UN Force did "assist" Hezbollah, however it was not intentional.
2. Hezballah was a lot better at hiding its actions and movements than Israel (probably since it was a guerrilla force vs. a standard military).
3. Isreal's military needs to invest more heavily in technology so it can bring down sites such as the UNIFIL site that provided such info.
I'd say that article supports the Asia Time's article on intelligence: hizballah's intelligence was superior to Israel's. Yes, UNIFIL contributed to it, but that was just one of many factors.
Thanks for providing the link. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
