L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

13 August 2006 Blog Home : August 2006 : Permalink

War Reporting Done Right

Michael Totten has photos of the results of Hezbollah's indiscriminate rocket fire and an excellent article about what he saw at Israel-Lebanon border. Go read it and while you are there drop a little into his tip jar.

There are many many good things to read, but I particularly like this bit:

Everyone in the world knew Nasrallah would declare victory no matter what if he was not in a cage and if he still had a pulse. The Arab bar for military victory is set pathetically low. All you have to do is survive. You “win” even if your country is torn to pieces. The very idea of a Pyrrhic victory doesn’t occur to people who start unwinnable wars with the state of Israel.

“Look at Nasrallah today,” Michael said. “In 2000 he did his victory dance in Bint Jbail. He can’t do that this time. His command and control south of Beirut is completely gone. We killed 550 Hezbollah fighters south of the Litani out of an active force of 1250. Nasrallah claimed South Lebanon would be the graveyard of the IDF. But we only lost one tenth of one percent of our soldiers in South Lebanon. The only thing that went according to his plan was their ability to keep firing rockets. If he has enough victories like this one, he’s dead.”

Apart from anything else this is one of the few places where I have seen a number put on the number of Hezbollah fighters dead. Given that the Israelis are sure to have missed those that have been killed by bomb strikes around the place (and which get counted as "civilian"), I think it is likely that Hezbollah have lost in total in the order of 1000 trained fighters - as opposed to reservists. This is a significant hit.


I despise l'Escroc and Vile Pin