The Middle East spirals out of control!

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The thing is that you did bomb 75% of the town and bring it down. And just so you know, since you are knowing a lot today, no Hezbollah fighter is hiding in any building, they have said that.

I'm sorry, but I find someone taking something Hezbollah says with a straight face amusing. While it might be true that they weren't in the specific buildings(after all, there's so many civilian buildings that Hezbollah likes to hide in, how can you be sure you're blowing up the right ones?) that were destroyed, taking their word for it is kind of pointless.

Is what Israel is doing right? I honestly can't say. They're trapped in a nasty mess with an enemy who does like to hide it's forces among civilians. That's standard terrorist tactics. Hell, Hezbollah is BRAGGING about Israel killing more civilians than Hezbollah soldiers/guerillas/terrorists(take your pick on what you want to call them) which tells you how much they really care about the people of Lebanon.

Doing a prisoner exchange is pointless though. That'll just encourage groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to do it again and again. So I agree with Israel's no prisoner exchange stance.

Really, Israel loses no matter what they do. Lebanon loses even more no matter what happens. In the final analysis though, Israel is going to do what's best for Israel though, not what's best for Lebanon. Just like Iran is going to do what's best for Iran, the US is going to do what's best for the US, and every other country is going to do what's best for them. Until now Lebanon saw it as being in their best interests not to have a civil war with Hezbollah. This worked in the short run but it's now costing them as Hezbollah stirred up Israel.

And I'm of the opinion that there are no real workable solutions to the whole mess in the Middle East. Although the cynic in me says that a few decades down the road a real workable solution might come up in the form of mutual nuclear annihilation at the rate everyone there is going.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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And the soldiers WERE in Lebanon. Just because the CNN says so and everyone else says otherwise, it doesn't mean the CNN is the rightful news. THey were in our territories and we had every right to do what we did. And about the shelling from day one, that's wrong info.

Hezbollah TV is NOT everyone else. You've supplied one source that's not affiliated with anti-Israeli and/or pro-Arab groups that says that the Israeli's were in Lebanon at the time. CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc, all say they were in Israeli territory during the kidnapping. The one source you did supply that wasn't a Hezbollah propaganda machine was a source that nobody knows about it's reliability because nobody watches it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Wesker

Reuters has suspended a Lebanese photgrapher for altering photos to show more smoke and destruction in the aftermath of an Israeli raid. Make you question how accurate all of the other dead baby death and destruction accounts are that are coming out of Lebanon.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...ews-TopNews-10

I'm not surprised in the least.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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First of all, Hezbollah captured the soldiers with the intent of freeing it's own troops that were captured by Israel. You can't call something like that unprovoked.

It's troops? You mean that Hezbollah is allowed troops seperate from the Lebanese government? Last I checked Hezbollah isn't allowed troops. In fact Hezbollah should only exist as a political party and not a militia. Now if Lebanon had wanted to go after Israel for it's holding of Lebanese prisoners that'd be different. But Hezbollah is not Lebanon. Yet it's dragged the entire country into a war with Israel that Lebanon can't win.

What Hezbollah is are a bunch of terrorists. Nothing else. They're specifically targetting civilians because that does the most damage to Israeli morale. Israel has no choice but to hit Lebanese civilians because Hezbollah has hidden itself among the civilians. Hezbollah has also bragged about Israel killing more civilians than Hezbollah fighters. Pretty sad protectors of the people when they're bragging about more innocents dying than their own people huh?

Hezbollah is the only militia that didn't disarm after being told to and as a result it's posing a threat to Lebanon's stability and possibly survival. All this work put into rebuilding Lebanon and all of it gone along with over a thousand lives just because Hezbollah had to show they could fight Isreal. It was a pointless war that Hezbollah began and that everyone had to suffer for both on the Lebanese and Israeli side.

Here's hoping that the Lebanese army and UN Peacekeeping force will actually disarm Hezbollah but somehow I doubt it. As I understand it, the UN has chosen to keep the peacekeepers under the stricter rules of engagement which is part of why they didn't get involved in trying to stop Hezbollah in the first place. What good are extra peacekeepers if they aren't allowed to actually do their job?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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Neither can Israel. It's funny that they're actually starting to realize this now that they've essentially levelled an entire country, killed hundreds and displaced millions of civilians. If anyone, terrorism wins this war due to the increased hatred towards Israel in the entire region.

Well Israel could win it, it's just that they're showing this amazing thing called "restraint" and not carpet bombing all of Lebanon. Here's another amazing fact, most other countries wouldn't show half the restraint that Israel has in this way. Heck, most countries wouldn't even announce what they're planning on hitting since that'd also warn their enemies that they're about to hit it. Contrary to popular belief the only real rule of war is to win. There is no way to have a war without civilian casualties and whoever thinks otherwise is deluded.

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Like somebody holds their commanding officers at gunpoint and forces them to launch airstrikes on civilian targets with supposed Hezbollah fighters. Oh please, come on. They do have a choice to risk these insane amounts of civilian casualties just like everyone else in this pointless war has a choice to stop fighting it.

Hezbollah could've stopped the war that they started at any time. Return the two kidnapped soldiers and stop firing rockets at Isreal. Israel even said it'd be over once that happened. The first shot was not fired by Israel. Nor was the second. Israel is finishing what Hezbollah started. When your enemy hides among civilians guess what happens....civilians are going to get hurt. Hezbollah could fight in the open, but it's chosen not to. For one thing it'd lose. Not to mention this way Israel hits more civilians which works in Hezbollah's favor. Hezbollah wins when Israeli civilians die. Hezbollah wins when Lebanese civilians die. Really the only way it can lose is if either Lebanon and the UN actually get their act together(unlikely) and use the Lebanese army with support from UN peacekeepers to root Hezbollah out or Israel finally runs completely out of patience and switches over to the burn all, kill all, destroy all method of warfare(thankfully, this is even less likely than the UN and Lebanon getting their act together).

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Where do you even get this from? They didn't "brag" about this and they don't need to because it's a fact. Is Israel bragging about Hezbollah bragging about their losses?

MSN article back during the second week of the war if I recall correctly. I'll see if I can find it and link it. A Hezbollah fighter said that Israel was killing more civilians than fighters and that by doing so was creating more Hezbollah fighters. Utterly unconcerned about the fact that they're doing so because Hezbollah is hiding and fighting from among the civilian buildings. Don't know about you, but that sounds like a man happy about civilian deaths since it makes more of the civilians fight alongside him.

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Good job blaming the Lebanese people for the destruction of their country. Note that Hezbollah is and remains a dwindling minority among the people of Lebanon. Is it fair to destroy an entire country because some fanatics chose to attack yours?

Don't you mean a whole lot of fanatics who the government refuses to do anything about? Fanatics who attack Israel with frequent rocket strikes and the occasional kidnapping? So yes, this is the Lebanese people's fault. They could've moved against Hezbollah, asking for aid from the UN if necessary. They chose not to. Especially if Hezbollah is the dwindling minority you say it is. And if it isn't then all the more reason for Isreal to act. Israel finally ran out of patience and is doing what the Lebanese government should've done instead. Remember when some terrorists flew an airplane into the WTC? The US went after Afghanistan with a vengeance when it chose not to do anything about the fact that it was harboring Al Queda. And Israel has been under attack far longer than the US was. Granted nothing as big as the WTC but I'll bet that they've lost a lot more people collectively than the US did, just more spread out from various rockets, suicide bombings, etc.

Basically it took a war with Israel to get the Lebanese government to finally look up and say "Hey, we can't ignore Hezbollah any longer." But as I said before, I honestly don't expect the Lebanese army or UN peacekeeping force to really try and enforce peace on the border. Things will quiet down for a bit, Hezbollah will restock and rearm, and then we'll hear about more rockets being fired into Israel and the UN and Lebanese army not doing anything about it. And if I'm wrong and they do do something, I'll be glad to be wrong. I just don't expect to be.

I was speaking idiomatically.

How is Israel going to be more prudent in choosing their targets? Hezbollah is really only attacking from civilian buildings. We've heard of at least two incidents where they fired from UN buildings or the yard in front of UN buildings(and people ask why Israel is firing on UN targets). There is no prudent targets for Israel because their enemy insists on hiding within buildings. Yes, Israel has a very powerful, well trained, and well equipped army. But that doesn't make Hezbollah incompetent or poorly equipped. Hezbollah itself is quite capable of fighting in the way it's trained to fight. Namely through traps, ambushes, and via terror.

But I do think Israel underestimated how much damage they'd have to do to civilians and thus the backlash of the world towards it to get at Hezbollah and is just now realizing how much they'd have to commit if they really want to root out Hezbollah. In the end it's not cost effective which is probably one reason they're accepting this UN peace despite not having their soldiers returned which they originally stipulated as one of the two requirements. Now the two sides will either probably do a backroom deal prisoner exchange or Hezbollah will just behead the two prisoners. Who can say other than Israel and Hezbollah?


I would like to know this from all the people saying that Israel should show more restraint. Suppose thousands of terrorists are kidnapping your soldiers, firing rockets into your cities, and supplying bombs to people who are walking into schools and cafes and blowing themselves up taking out dozens of people(all civilians) each time? The government of the country that these terrorists are sitting in refuse to do anything whatsoever about them. So what do you do? So if you're American suppose these attacks were coming from Mexico. Or if you're German suppose they were coming from France. And so on. Would you really just let them keep doing it and say "oh well"?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?