Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crimson Ghost who wrote (12245)	8/11/2006 11:19:14 AM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 22250

Crimson > the Israelis are great at dishing it out with their free US high tech weapons Ya ain't seen nuttin' yet. nytimes.com >>Israel Asks U.S. to Ship Rockets With Wide Blast By DAVID S. CLOUD WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — Israel has asked the Bush administration to speed delivery of short-range antipersonnel rockets armed with cluster munitions, which it could use to strike Hezbollah missile sites in Lebanon, two American officials said Thursday. The request for M-26 artillery rockets, which are fired in barrages and carry hundreds of grenade-like bomblets that scatter and explode over a broad area, is likely to be approved shortly, along with other arms, a senior official said. The M-26 “is a particularly deadly weapon,” Bonnie Docherty, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, who helped write a study of the United States’ use of the weapons in the 2003 Iraq invasion. “They were used widely by U.S. forces in Iraq and caused hundreds of civilian casualties.” After the Reagan administration determined in 1982 that the cluster munitions had been used by Israel against civilian areas, the delivery of the artillery shells containing the munitions to Israel was suspended. Israel was found to have violated a 1976 agreement with the United States in which it had agreed only to use cluster munitions against Arab armies and against clearly defined military targets. The moratorium on selling Israel cluster weapons was later lifted by the Reagan administration.<<

To: Crimson Ghost who wrote (12245)	8/11/2006 5:09:54 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Crimson > Kind of like a super star boxer with a glass jaw. chicagotribune.com >>Rocket casualties force Israel to rethink tactics, technology Military analysts say Israel believed, perhaps mistakenly, that it could wage a Kosovo-style air war to eliminate most of Hezbollah's launchers. They also fault the military's overreliance on high technology in an era of guerrilla threats and a political strategy of trying to keep military deaths low by using minimal ground forces. "I don't think anybody had any way to really grasp the implications of this kind of war," said Gerald Steinberg, head of the conflict management program at Bar-Ilan University. With 150 to 200 missiles landing almost daily in northern Israel, the country's primary defense has been to clear citizens from the region or send them into shelters. The relentless and indiscriminant rocket attacks--which increased despite Israeli air and ground wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon--have undermined the country's faith in both military and political leaders and are likely to force major shifts in Israeli military strategy and tactics, according to many analysts. "This war will be studied in all military academies in the world as a new kind of war, which requires new and unprecedented definitions of how to fight it and how to win it," said Yaron Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University who is one of Israel's leading political scientists. "The problem for the army and the problem for the Israeli government is the concept of military victory, which was inscribed in the minds of Israelis in wars like the Six-Day War or even the Yom Kippur War," Ezrahi said. "That is utterly irrelevant to this kind of war, to the war of a regular army against a terrorist network." One of the most significant military debates spawned by the conflict is over the investment in a state-of-the-art military that appears to be ill-equipped to combat weaponry such as Hezbollah's rockets. "Technology has taken a blow in this war," said Hillel Frisch, a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. The United States and Israel invested in developing a multibillion-dollar missile defense system after Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Israeli cities in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. But the Arrow-2 system is incapable of hitting Hezbollah's long- or short-range rockets, which are launched too close to Israel and land too quickly. Israel scuttled development of defenses against primitive rocketry, deciding the effort was too expensive and might not work, according to Frisch. Instead, Israeli aircraft, drones and surveillance systems try to spot the elusive rocket launchers, usually after rockets have been fired and the portable launchers have been driven away by Hezbollah fighters. <<