I don't remember seeing this posted but these were interesting articles. I would like to know what others think.
...................
In the first week or so of the Israeli assault on Lebanon, someone - perhaps it was me, I don't recall - posted an article to the list that described the scene at a Hezbollah press event conducted in a Beirut neighborhood which had been shattered by IAF bombs only hours before.
If memory serves, the article's author focused on the clueless sorts of questions Western journalists directed towards the Hezbollah spokesman (such as, "is it true you hide amongst civilians?").
There was a telling moment which received quick mention in the story, a moment that stood out in my mind. At some point during the press conference, the Hezbollah representative paused to confer with a colleague. The rep then informed the assembled reporters that everyone needed to leave the area very quickly because Israeli aircraft were on their way, no doubt to finish what they had started.
This little bit of information suggested to me that Hezbollah had cultivated the ability to track IAF movements - perhaps through some combination of observational and signals intelligence - with impressive accuracy.
Later, reading a translated story from a Lebanese news source - an account of an IDF commando raid that went terribly wrong for the Israelis when they were met, to their total surprise, by heavy resistance - my belief that Hezbollah was able to track IDF movements and deploy force to key points became stronger.
Many have downplayed the scope of Hezbollah's battlefield achievement (Ravi, for example, is convinced that an all-out assault by the IDF would have overwhelmed Hezbollah's hedgehog defensive strategy). No doubt, a good deal of this skepticism is motivated by a simple comparison of the apparent strengths of the combatants - for example, the IDF has many tanks while Hezbollah has none (as far as I know). Also, for some on the left, there's concern about seeming too supportive of Hezbollah.
Simplistic accounting overlooks the fact that information is very often as important as hardware in deciding the outcome of wars. It now appears that Hezbollah enjoyed detailed knowledge about Israeli force deployments. The IDF, on the other hand, was operating with an incomplete, inaccurate and obsolete understanding of their enemy and poured tons of ordinance against a foe that was able to watch and wait them out.
This information imbalance doomed Tel Aviv's offensive to failure, contradicting the confident predictions of rapid success (some printed on these virtual pages) and a replay of Israel's swift 1983 invasion.
..
.d.
I'm Jonathan Harker, I'm Lucy's trance Elegant count's hypnotic glance I'm the wooden mallet, the sharpened stake I'm the precautions you forgot to take
TSOL, "Silent Scream" ...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/