The Daily Background

Hat tip to Hotpotatomash for finding this video

Respected veteran investigative journalist Symour Hersh, who writes for The New Yorker these days appeared on CNN’s Late Edition yesterday with Wolf Blitzer to discuss his new article which reports that the Israeli war on Hezbollah was planned in advance just waiting for a provocation from the militant group, and was being used as an experiment by the White House and Israel to see how well bombing an entrenched enemy would be.

The idea is that the White House counselled Israel on what tactics they should use and they’re using it as sort of a trial run for the tactics they’d like to use against Iran at some point.

You can read Hersh’s new article “Watching Lebanon: Washington’s interests in Israel’s war” over at The New Yorker’s website. If you’re a bit daunted by the idea of reading the 4,867 word article, you can check out Raw Story’s summarization. The video above is a great summary though. Hersh writes:

Several current and former officials involved in the Middle East told me that Israel viewed the soldiers’ kidnapping as the opportune moment to begin its planned military campaign against Hezbollah. “Hezbollah, like clockwork, was instigating something small every month or two”

This really goes along with what I was saying yesterday, about how the relatively small provocation led to a huge war which was totally and entirely disproportionate:

This war never should have happened over two kidnapped Israeli soldiers who had illegally been carrying out secret operations in Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah did not start attacking Israeli civilians until the Israeli military started attacking Lebanese civilians after the kidnappings. No two soldiers could possibly be worth killing 1,000 people, wounding thousands, causing catastrophic damage to civilian infrastructure like airports power-plants roadways and hospitals, and creating one million refugees. Period.

Well said, me. You know, the more you think about it, the more Hersh’s points make sense… Only time will tell of course. We’ll see what the reaction to this potentially bombshell article is.

Filed under: Middle East Crisis, Iran Related, Z-TDB Blog