CNN Reliable Sources Transcript - Today

"By way of deception thou shalt do war"

Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

Hizbullah rockets cannot be fired from buildings (ie the one bombed in Qana)

(...) The type of missiles being fired by Hizbullah at Israeli cities cannot be fired from within houses, mosques, hospitals or even UN facilities as has been suggested by the IDF. Due to the massive "back-blast" caused by the rocket launchers of these missiles, they can only be fired from open ground. To fire them from within a building would result in the instant death of the missile crew and probable destruction of the missile before launch. Most of the missiles are truck-mounted and are fired - on open ground - from the backs of flat-bedded trucks or larger four-wheel-drive vehicles.

When fired, these missiles generate an enormous flare of light, heat and sound energy - a heat and light signature which is readily detected by IDF target-acquisition systems. Accurate retaliatory fire can be directed at Hizbullah launch sites by IDF aircraft and ground artillery in seconds. Such a reaction would be considered by international military norms to be proportionate and within the general "rules of engagement". (...) Read more here.

Author Tom Clonan is The Irish Times security analyst. (h/t whatreallyhappened.com)

Gaza: scare tactics leading to new refugee crisis?

Disturbing reports from Khalid Amayre in Egyptian paper Al Ahram (in English, this time):

In its blitz on unprotected Gazans, Israel has introduced a new tactic which takes the form of a telephone call to Gazan families from the Israeli Shin Bet (domestic intelligence agency) warning that them that they must leave their homes or be bombed within 20 minutes. Predictably, the manifestly sadistic tactic has terrorised the entire population, many left wondering if a given call is genuine or a hoax.

Some families, convinced by such calls, have left their homes at two o'clock in the morning only to see them bombed directly by Israeli F-16 fighters. Others have abandoned their homes and seen them stand untouched. So fearful are they that they refuse to return in case bombings are merely delayed.

In 1948 they sent a band of rowdies to scare Palestinians out of their villages; the ones who left are still waiting to be allowed to return.

In Lebanon Israel justifies its mass killings by saying "we told them to get out". But where can they go from Gaza? Into Israel? Hollow laugh. Anyone taking that route gets shot.

Who is pushing whom into the sea?

Israel imposes the tactics of military rule on some Arab cities inside its borders

Here's another story with Hebrew-only confirmation: Israeli policemen chased children into their homes at gunpoint in the Israeli city of Umm Al Fahm. They conducted searches in these homes. Gunshots were heard - nothing explaining them. No warrants, no warning, no kidding.

Back to English sources, Amir Oren reports in Haaretz about the pummelling of Gaza - 12,000 bombs hit it in the past three weeks.

And more in English - Israel has locked the folks in Occupied Territories into check-point-surrounded ghettoes, and now keeps them in their homes until Saturday, and points guns at Palestinian children with Israeli citizenship.

Who is driving the policy? What are they trying to achieve with the point-guns-at-children tactic?

Breaking: Venezuala Recalls Ambassador from Tel-Aviv

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Les Enragés Scoop Reuters

Link in Hebrew - Chavez seems to disagree with the whole idea of heading into Lebanon and bombing infrastructure and civilians. He announced the recall in a televised speech. I've found no corroboration beyond this Ynet report.

Also, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, threatened that if Israel strikes Beirut, he'll send missiles to Tel-Aviv. So far, he has lived up to everything he has said he would do. If he does direct his firepower towards, I hope the missile does not hit any civilians - Tel Aviv is full of (many, many) military installations. Civilians should just NOT be hurt in wars.

Especially pointless wars.

Update: plenty of corroboration now. Here's one item from Reuters... gratifyingly, posted after ours.
The Unruly Mob Scoops Reuters!

Let's hope that US and Israeli Generals read Sun Tzu's 'Art of War'

China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday told Chinese nationals to leave Israel due to fighting on the Lebanese border, the government's main news agency reported. "The conflict between Lebanon and Israel is increasing, so Chinese citizens in Israel should get as far from the battle area as possible," the notice said, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Pushing, shoving, conniving towards an ineluctable need for war

RawStory features Sidney Blumenthal's disturbing assertion that the White House wants a 'four-front war'

The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

According to this national security insider, "the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a 'cleansing war' with Syria and Iran," with the full admission that their current guidebook, written originally for the Israeli Likud Prime Minister to use inside Israel, is: "a 1996 neocon manifesto against the Middle East peace process [entitled] A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm"

A 20th C foreign nation's screed now dictates policy in 21st C America?

Blumenthal's tagline ought to send chills up the back of any reasonably intelligent average American: Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot,because it begs the harrowing question of what happens to the 135,000 troops at the center of this "ring of fire" who are now its bull's eye.

Losing Relevance

Journalist and historian Tom Segev wonders in this English article whether IDF spokeswoman Miri Regev or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the more annoying, and decries the fact that Israel has adopted the moral values of Hezbollah: Whatever they are doing to the residents of northern Israel, we can also do to the citizens of Lebanon, and even more. Many Israelis tended to look at the Qana incident primarily as a media disaster and not as something that imposed on them any ethical responsibility.

Having identified the collapse of the U.S. as a leader in morality and justice, he recommends that Israel turn to Europe, which understands that even if the United States conquers Tehran, [Israel] will still have to live with the Palestinians. - while the U.S., driven by the NeoCons and their delusional map of the world, apparently does not.

How badly have we lost relevance as a world leader when even in Israel our foreign policy appears immoral and unpractical?