Is the a Joke?

Quick Note: Coffee didn't kick in, sorry for the title, should have been "Is this a Joke", but will not change it due to it screwing up trackbacks sent out.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Saturday that an early-morning Israeli raid against Hezbollah in eastern Lebanon violated the 6-day-old cease-fire brokered by the United Nations.

HELLO?!?!

So is Hezbollah not disarming.
So is Lebanon NOT disarming Hezbollah.
So is the UN playing hot potato with disarming this terrorist group.

An Israeli officer was killed, and two soldiers wounded, when Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold deep in Lebanon, resulting in a fierce gunbattle.

Israel said the raid was launched to stop arms smuggling from Iran and Syria to the militant Shiite fighters, while Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Saniora called the operation a "flagrant violation" of the U.N. truce.

The Israeli's are not going to risk going in that deep to hit a Hezbollah stronghold without some damn good intel, and that intel is telling them that Hezbollah is re-arming.

Which is EXACTLY why they called for a cease-fire, so they could re-group and re-arm.

Who didn't see THIS coming?

But let's blame Israel for Hezbollah NOT disarming though.

There were no signs of further clashes, but the flare-up underlined worries about the fragility of the cease-fire as the U.N. pleaded for nations to send troops to an international force in southern Lebanon that is to separate Israeli and Hezbollah fighters.

A contingent of 49 French soldiers landed in the south Saturday, providing the first reinforcements for the 2,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL that has been stationed in the region for years. About 200 more were expected next week.

They were the first additions to what is intended to grow into a 15,000-soldier U.N. force to police the truce with an equal number of Lebanese soldiers. France leads UNIFIL and already had 200 soldiers in Lebanon before the reinforcements.

But with Europe moving slowly to provide more troops, Israel warned it would continue to act on its own to enforce an arms embargo on the Lebanese guerrilla group until the Lebanese army and an expanded U.N. peacekeeping force are in place.

"If the Syrians and Iran continue to arm Hezbollah in violation of the resolution, Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle of the arms embargo," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "Once the Lebanese army and the international forces are active ... then such Israeli activity will become superfluous."

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Do you think the UN troops observers (troops would mean they might expect to do some fighting - and I don't see that at all) will lift one finger while Hezbollah re-arms itself once they establish "control" of the area?

Once the UN is there, Hezbollah will have free reign to re-arm as much as they would like, and just as they are doing now, if Israel tries to stop them they are being blamed for "breaking the cease-fire".

Lebanese political forces seeking to disarm Hizbullah have not been able to prepare themselves for a new round of talks with the Shiite group and the Lebanese army is too weak to impose an arms embargo on Hizbulah.

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Unfortunately that isn't quite true.
The Lebanese forces have flat out stated they will not disarm Hezbollah and the same with the UN.

Perhaps they expect Hezbollah to willingly give up their arms. Yeah right.
If the above is any indication, they are re-arming and re-organizing to attack Israel again. Why else would they be re-arming from Syria? Especially if the Lebanese army and UN forces observers are suppose to move into the south to take over?

Hizbullah and its Iranian and Syrian patrons feel that with the international community is determined to monitor the Lebanese-Syrian border to curtail arms smuggling from Syria and have intensified their efforts to rearm the group in the short time left before international observers deploy along the border.

The efforts focus on replenishing Hizbullah's secret arms storage depots with antitank and antiaircraft missiles, and long-range missiles.

Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been dispatched to Syria and Lebanon to rehabilitate Hizbullah.

A rehabilitated Hizbullah can undermine the Lebanese army and the beefed up UN peacekeeping force observers and prepare the group for a second round of fighting with Israel.

Why the sudden push to re-arm Hezbollah BEFORE the UN forces observers get there?

It has already been established that the Iranian guard has been fighting in Southern Lebanon and training Hezbollah.

Got to love the word "rehabilitate" Hezbollah.
I almost choked on my coffee when I read that.

In all this brokered castration of Israel, because I see no win in this for them at all, where does the fate of the Israeli soldiers that have been kidnapped lay?

You would think that would be priority one in the cease-fire is getting them returned safely, and then the disarming of Hezbollah and removing them from Israel's borders.

Omert may find his days are numbered as this whole thing falls apart, since a majority of the Israeli army and citizens are fed up and frustrated with his performance during this.

At noon yesterday 160 brigade soldiers signed a request to take part in the demonstration that would call on the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz. However, their release was put off until today, preventing them from reaching the protest.

They wanted to protest not only the army's moves in Lebanon but the decisions of their commanders, whom they accuse of sending them needlessly to their death.

"They sent us into a village they knew 15 Hezbollah fighters were holed up in at mid-day, we were like sitting ducks, it was total insanity. Two of our comrades were killed because of that. We are being used as though we were in the Chinese army, where it doesn't matter how many are killed," he said.

A few dozen demonstrators arrived at Rabin Square yesterday to take part in the protest that had been organized on Internet sites.

They called for Olmert's resignation and blasted halting the war before its goals were achieved.

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If this is true then Olmert needs to go before this escalates into the next round of Israel vs Hezbollah, and I can guarantee you this is not over with. Nothing has been accomplished.

JERUSALEM, Aug. 18 -- Sgt. Lior Rahamin's Israeli reserve unit had not trained in two years. When its members were called up for the Lebanon war, they didn't have straps for their guns, spare ammunition, flak jackets or more than one good radio. There were other shortages: Twice their operations were canceled because they had no water to take; once they went two days without food.

"Hezbollah didn't surprise us. We were surprised by the Israel Defense Forces," said Rahamin, 30, a paratrooper who was wounded fighting in Lebanon in 1997 and who volunteered to go with his unit again. The next time they call, he said, "we will not show up."

From the failure to get food and water to the troops, to complaints of an uncertain war plan and overconfident generals, the Lebanon war is fast being viewed within Israel as a major stumble. Military and political leaders already are trading blame; some are expected to lose their posts. Officers say the mistakes show weakness in the military, the Israel Defense Forces, known as the IDF. Many Israelis worry that the failure of the military to squash the Hezbollah militia will make their country more vulnerable to other enemies.

"For four weeks we failed to defend ourselves against daily bombardments against our cities. This is a failure that never happened before," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud Party member and former chairman of parliament's defense committee. "This is going to send a bad message."

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This will sound bad, but it sounds like life under Liberalism to me.
What will happen to the US military and it's readiness if the Liberals / Anti-war factions take over?

Read the above, because I have a bad feeling that is exactly what we will face also if that is allowed to occur.

The complaints that have emerged as Israel's soldiers return from the field have heightened the country's concerns about the state of its army and the judgment of its leaders.

"If we would have gone in with more foot soldiers, we would have done more," said Avi Hubara, 40, a schoolteacher and reservist who volunteered to go to Lebanon to fight. "But the politicians were scared to make decisions. It was a failure. We got people killed. There was lots of friendly fire. We did not hurt the capability of the Hezbollah. We did not return the kidnapped soldiers. We did not win."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense minister, Amir Peretz, have little military experience and are now the target of scathing criticism for faults in the operation. The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is demanding a judicial investigation of the conduct of the war. Public opinion of the government and military leaders has plunged in the polls, and the returning soldiers are glum.

"Led Astray," said a headline in the Haaretz newspaper. "Why We Didn't Win," the largest-circulation daily, Yediot Aharonoth, pondered in bold type. There is much blame for the military, as well as for political leaders. The returning reserve soldiers tell of confusion, contradictory orders and missing supplies and equipment.

"We were getting ready to board the bus in Lebanon with faces painted for combat, but they called us back," said Sgt. Yuval Drori, 30, a reservist who works at a software company. "Another time we were at the border, with bullets in the chambers, but they canceled again. The mission changed every 30 minutes. There was a great sense of a big mess."

"In the last six years, there hadn't been any preparation" for putting soldiers into combat, said a retired major general, Shaul Givoli, director of the Council for Peace and Security near Tel Aviv. "Even the rations had expired."

Sounds like there was very little communication, alot of confusion and not much planning going into this by the upper enchelon.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this cease-fire will be enough to give the Israeli themselves a chance to turn this all around. I have a feeling they will need to remove Olmert from his position and get alot more organized, and put more boots going into Lebanon next time.

Many Israelis see a more ominous consequence of Israel's missteps. The failure of Israel to silence Hezbollah, followed by the claims of triumph from the militia, Syria and Iran may leave the perception of weakness, they feel.

"The only lesson Israel's enemies can possibly have been learning is that after decades of defeat and frustration, they have found the means to effect the demise of the Jewish state. They need only acquire greater rocket and missile capabilities," the editor of the Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz, wrote Friday. "It was brought about by a level of arrogance and complacency probably unparalleled since the" victory in the 1967 war led to Israel being caught unprepared for a surprise attack in 1973, he said.

Writing in the Haaretz newspaper this week, columnist Reuven Pedatzur agreed. "The IDF's failure is eroding our national security's most important asset -- the belligerent image of this country, led by a vast, strong and advanced army capable of dealing our enemies a decisive blow if they even try to bother us," he wrote.

"In Damascus, Gaza, Tehran and Cairo, too, people are looking with amazement at the IDF that could not bring a tiny guerrilla organization to its knees for more than a month," he said. "What happened to this mighty army?"

And they are probably not wrong when they say this will be a very bad perception of the Israeli Army now. This is more than a sign of weakness, it is a sign of incompentence of Israeli leaders and military management.

This will only embolden Hezbollah, Syria and Iran as Israeli soldiers and it's citizens have lost confidence in their leaders, the managment of the military and the protection of Israel.


Others Blogging this issue:
Atlas Shrugs with"France, the Appeaser"

Karol Sheinin, Guest Blogging for Michelle Malkin, with "I fear the cease-fire"

Allah at Hotair with "Ceasefire fallout: All the wrong lessons"

Old War Dogs with "Ceasefire fallout: All the wrong lessons"

Big Lizards with "Israeli Commando Raid: the Case of the Curious Omission"

Stop the ACLU with "Kofi Annan Needs To Read The Agreement"