War in The Middle East

[Armenian]

Re: War in The Middle East

For those interested in the technical aspects of modern warfare.

DEBKAfile Exclusive: American electronic warfare experts in Israel to find out how Hizballah’s Iranian systems neutralized Israeli EW

August 23, 2006, 3:18 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKA-Net-Weekly 266 first drew attention to Iran’s heavy EW investment and its successful functioning in the Lebanon War on Aug. 11, 06. This first account will be followed up in the next DNW issue out on Friday, Aug. 25.

The American EW experts are interested in four areas. 1. The Israeli EW systems’ failure to block Hizballah’s command and communications and the links between the Lebanese command and the Syria-based Iranian headquarters. 2. How Iranian technicians helped Hizballah eavesdrop on Israel’s communications networks and mobile telephones, including Israeli soldiers’ conversations from inside Lebanon. 3. How Iranian EW installed in Lebanese army coastal radar stations blocked the Barak anti-missile missiles aboard Israeli warships, allowing Hizballah to hit the Israeli corvette Hanith. 4. Why Israeli EW was unable to jam the military systems at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which hosted the underground war room out of which Hassan Nasrallah and his top commanders, including Imad Mughniyeh, functioned.

Until the watershed date of July 12, 2006, when the Hizballah triggered the Lebanon War, Israel was accounted an important world power in the development of electronic warfare systems – so much so that a symbiotic relationship evolved for the research and development of many US and Israeli electronic warfare systems, in which a mix of complementary American and Israeli devices and methods were invested. In combat against Hizballah, both were not only found wanting, but had been actively neutralized, so that none performed the functions for which they were designed. This poses both the US and Israel with a serious problem in a further round of the Lebanon war and any military clash with Iran.

DEBKAfile’s military sources add: Both intelligence services underestimated the tremendous effort Iran invested in state of the art electronic warfare gadgetry designed to disable American military operations in Iraq and IDF functions in Israel and Lebanon. Israel’s electronic warfare units were taken by surprise by the sophisticated protective mechanisms attached to Hizballah’s communications networks, which were discovered to be connected by optical fibers which are not susceptible to electronic jamming.

American and Israeli experts realize now that they overlooked the key feature of the naval exercise Iran staged in the Persian Gulf last April: Iran’s leap ahead in electronic warfare. They dismissed most the weapons systems as old-fashioned. But among them were the C-802 cruise missile and several electronic warfare systems, both of which turned up in the Lebanon war with deadly effect.

Link: http://www.debka.com/index.php

[karoaper]

Re: War in The Middle East

Whose War?


It's kind of a long article but a good one. I didn't want to copy and paste the whole thing.

Very interesting and light-shedding article. I kept googling the names Feith and Wurmser (the neocons) and came up with this site RightWeb that actually profiles major players (individuals, organizations, corporate and government) and their affiliations and connections.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/

[skhara]

Re: War in The Middle East

Whose War?


It's kind of a long article but a good one. I didn't want to copy and paste the whole thing.

[skhara]

Re: War in The Middle East

Israel: Hezbollah Used Russian Missiles

JERUSALEM Aug 18, 2006 (AP)— Israeli officials said Friday that a senior delegation went to Moscow this week to complain that Russian-made anti-tank missiles were used by Hezbollah guerrillas in their 34-day conflict with Israeli forces in Lebanon.

Asaf Shariv, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that the delegation had gone to Russia, but did not elaborate.

The anti-tank missiles proved to be one of Hezbollah's most effective weapons in combat in south Lebanon, killing many of the 118 Israeli soldiers who died in the clashes.

Israeli officials say that Iran and Syria passed the arms to Hezbollah after buying them from Russia.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said Russia maintains strict controls over its weapons sales that "makes any inaccuracy in weapons destinations impossible."

Anatoly Tsyganok, head of Russia's Military Forecasting centre, ruled out the possibility that modern anti-tank weapons had reached Hezbollah through Russia or Syria.

"Any accusations alleging Russian or Syrian deliveries of anti-tank weapons to any forces in Lebanon are unfounded. The Israeli side has not presented any evidence of this, and it is unlikely that it will," Tsyganok was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

"Most probably, such weapons, should Hezbollah militants really have any, might have been brought to Lebanon through third countries," he added.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2329653&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

[skhara]

Re: War in The Middle East

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2331110&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Mass Funerals in Southern Lebanon


By KATHY GANNON and LAUREN FRAYER

QANA, Lebanon Aug 18, 2006 (AP)— The breeze blew fine dust across graves where 29 people killed in an Israeli airstrike half of them children were buried, as the ground was opened for funerals in south Lebanon on Friday, the Muslim holy day.

Women in black robes, their heads hidden by black scarves, held pictures of the dead and threw rice and rose petals on the plywood caskets in the village of Qana, struck during the 34-day Israel-Hezbollah war. Twenty-six coffins were draped in the Lebanese flag and three in the yellow Hezbollah flag.

To the east, the Lebanese army symbolically took control of a first border village from withdrawing Israeli forces, as two soldiers drove slowly through Kfar Kila in a jeep. And in a bid to prevent more arms from reaching Hezbollah fighters, the government vowed to take over all border crossings nationwide, including 60 known smuggling routes from Syria.

At a school in south Beirut's Bourj el-Barajneh neighborhood, Hezbollah started handing out crisp $100 bills to residents who lost homes in the Israeli bombing campaign $12,000 to each claimant. The stacks of bills were pulled out of a suitcase. Hezbollah is financed by oil-rich Iran.

The Higher Relief Council, the government agency that deals with disasters, said Friday that the Lebanese government and U.N. agencies were undertaking assessments countrywide. While the government was still absent from the reconstruction effort, there were other offers of private help besides Hezbollah's direct payments.

Qana, about six miles southeast of the port city of Tyre, held the most elaborate of several funerals in southern Lebanon on Friday after residents decided it was finally safe and hospital morgues made sure all bodies could be claimed. A caravan of cars made its way from one service to the next.

"This is the day to bury our dead," said Shiite cleric Sheik Shoue Qatoon. "It was decided that we would schedule the funerals so that we could all attend them all."

During the war, bodies were taken to the Tyre morgue and later buried in a shallow mass grave when refrigerated trucks holding the corpses became too crowded. On Friday, the bodies were exhumed and taken to the home villages for burial. The coffins were marked with the names of the dead.

Funerals in northern Israeli towns proceeded throughout the fighting, though they were sometimes disrupted by rocket fire. But because of the war in Lebanon, it sometimes took more than 24 hours to bring the bodies of soldiers to Israel for burial, the army said. xxxish law requires burial within 24 hours after death.

In the Lebanese village of Srifa, 12 miles east of Tyre, more than 20 people were buried in a mass grave Friday. Airstrikes damaged a large swath in the village centre.

In Qana, the dead were buried in individual graves one beside the other.

Women broke into piercing screams as the 29 coffins were carried shoulder-high to the grave site, about a third of a mile from the two-story home blasted by an Israeli missile on July 30. World outrage caused Israel to announce a 48-hour halt in aerial attacks while it investigated the assault after Lebanese authorities initially said 56 people were killed.

Hezbollah flags were planted in the mound of earth scooped from the graves. Scores of cars paraded through Qana waving large Hezbollah flags. Banners stretched across the main street read in English: "The great Lebanon has defeated the murderers." Arabic language banners called the war dead "martyrs" and said civilian deaths in Qana "woke up the world."

The dead were all from the Shaloub and Hashem families of Qana.

Fatin Shaloub, a 23-year-old English teacher, lost several members of her family.

"I also lost five of my students," she said. "We didn't think the war would be horrible like this."

Hourra Shaloub, 12, was one of her favorite students and not just because she was a relative, Shaloub said.

"She was very, very smart. She always got top marks. I remember when I heard about the bombing and her death that I recalled her in a play three years ago. That's how I will always remember her, wearing her blue skirt and white T-shirt and singing very loudly," she said.

Throughout the day the hum of an Israeli drone could be heard. One of the pilotless planes also flew above south Beirut, according to Associated Press photographers in the area.

Israeli drones and warplanes also crisscrossed the skies above Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley on Friday night, near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, security officials said. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release information to reporters, said there had been anti-aircraft fire to drive off the aircraft but no weapons fired by the Israeli drones and jet fighters.

Standing on a platform overlooking the grave site in Qana, the Hezbollah chief in southern Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Kaouk, accused the United States of being "a partner" in Israeli attacks by supplying Israel with sophisticated weapons.

"You Americans and you in the U.S. administration are partners in committing massacres. You are partners in killing us. You are partners in destroying our country. There will be no friendship between you and us," Kaouk said.

In a televised speech, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud paid tribute to Hezbollah fighters, who he said "brought down the legend of the invincible (Israeli) army. I also salute the leader of the resistance, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who wanted this victory to be for all the Lebanese and Arab people."

President Bush acknowledged it could take time for the people of Lebanon and the world to view the war as a loss for the militant group. The State Department has designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

"The first reaction of course of Hezbollah and its supporters is to declare victory. I guess I would have done the same thing if I were them," Bush said.

"Sometimes it takes people awhile to come to the sober realization of what forces create stability and what don't," he said. "Hezbollah is a force of instability."

Near Israel's Galilee panhandle, the Lebanese army's 10th brigade set up camps within a mile of the border a key step toward taking control of the whole country for the first time since 1968 and a major demand of the U.N. resolution that ended the war on Monday.

The deployment marks the first time the Lebanese army has moved in force to a region that was held by Palestinian guerrillas in the 1970s and by Hezbollah since Israeli troops withdrew from the area in 2000.

"We are all very happy," Brig. Gen. Charles Sheikhani said. "It's our country. and this is the first time we've really been in south Lebanon."

Lebanese troops also deployed in the town of Chebaa near the Israeli-occupied and disputed Chebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims but which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. It was the first time in 38 years that the Lebanese army had been in Chebaa's Arqoub region, an area that between 1969 and 1982 was a launching pad for Palestinian attacks on Israel.

When the troops arrived in Chebaa, they were showered with rice and flower petals, and villagers also danced and slaughtered sheep. Troops also deployed in the towns of Kfar Chouba and in Khiam.

With Lebanon moving quickly to get 15,000 soldiers into the south as demanded by the U.N. cease-fire resolution, there was still no firm date for a deployment of an equal number of international peacekeepers. The United Nations had pledges of 3,500 troops for the force, with Bangladesh making the largest offer of up to 2,000 troops.

Gannon reported from Qana, Lebanon, and Frayer from Kfar Kila, Lebanon.

[skhara]

Re: War in The Middle East

Thanks Anon.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107ap_mideast_angry_soldiers.html

METULLA, Israel -- Israeli soldiers returning from the war in Lebanon say the army was slow to rescue wounded comrades and suffered from a lack of supplies so dire that they had to drink water from the canteens of dead Hezbollah guerrillas.

"We fought for nothing. We cleared houses that will be reoccupied in no time," said Ilia Marshak, a 22-year-old infantryman who spent a week in Lebanon.

Marshak said his unit was hindered by a lack of information, poor training and untested equipment. In one instance, Israeli troops occupying two houses inadvertently fired at each other because of poor communication between their commanders.

"We almost killed each other," he said. "We shot like blind people. ... We shot sheep and goats."

In a nation mythologized for decisive military victories over Arab foes, the stalemate after a 34-day war in Lebanon has surprised many.

The war was widely seen in Israel as a just response to a July 12 cross-border attack in which Hezbollah gunmen killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two. But the wartime solidarity crumbled after Israel agreed to pull its army from south Lebanon without crushing Hezbollah or rescuing the captured soldiers.

A total of 118 Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting, and the army was often caught off guard by a well-trained guerrilla force backed by Iran and Syria that used sophisticated weapons and tactics. Soldiers, for instance, complained that Hezbollah fighters sometimes disguised themselves in Israeli uniforms.

Military experts and commentators have criticized the army for relying too heavily on air power and delaying the start of ground action for too long. They say the army underestimated Hezbollah, and that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set an unrealistic goal by pledging to destroy the guerrilla group.

advertising
This week, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz appointed a former army chief to investigate the military's handling of the war.

Some of the harshest criticism has come from reservists, who form the backbone of the army. Israeli men do three years of mandatory service beginning at age 18, but continue to do reserve duty several weeks a year into their 40s.

Israeli newspapers quoted disgruntled reservists as saying they had no provisions in Lebanon, were sent into battle with outdated or faulty equipment and insufficient supplies, and received little or no training.

"I personally haven't thrown a grenade in 15 years, and I thought I'd get a chance to do so before going north," an unidentified reservist in an elite infantry brigade was quoted as telling the Maariv daily.

Israel's largest paper, Yediot Ahronot, quoted one soldier as saying thirsty troops threw chlorine tablets into filthy water in sheep and cow troughs. Another said his unit took canteens from dead guerrillas.

"When you're thirsty and have to keep fighting, you don't think a lot, and there is no time to feel disgusted," the unidentified soldier was quoted as saying.

The newspaper said helicopters were hindered from delivering food supplies or carrying out rescue operations because commanders feared the aircraft would be shot down. In some cases, soldiers bled to death because they were not rescued in time, Yediot Ahronot said.

The Israeli military said it was aware of the complaints, had tried to address them in the course of the fighting and was still looking into them. It had no comment on specific complaints.

Comrades of the two soldiers captured by Hezbollah sent a petition to the prime minister Thursday accusing the government of abandoning the men.

"We went to reserve duty with the certainty that all of Israel's citizens, and the Israeli government, believe in the same value that every combatant learns from his first day in basic training - you don't leave friends behind," the soldiers wrote. "This is a moral low point. The Israeli government has abandoned two IDF (Israeli Defense Force) combatants that it sent on a mission."

The petition was being circulated Friday; it was unclear how many soldiers had signed it.

While such sentiments aren't shared by all soldiers, even some senior commanders acknowledge the army came up short in Lebanon.

When soldier Gil Ovadia returned home, his commander made no mention of victory in an address to their battalion. Instead, the commander told them the war was over, said they did a good job, and advised that they be prepared to come back soon and fight again.

"We'll be back in Lebanon in a few months, maybe years," Ovadia said.

[Anonymouse]

Re: War in The Middle East

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine paints a bleak picture of Iraq. Have a look.

An Army of Some
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
August 20, 2006

...Officially, the Bush administration’s strategy is: Clear, hold and build. But with limited American forces to do any clearing, the war in western Iraq looks much more like hang on and hand over. Hang on against an insurgency that seems to be laying roadside bombs as quickly as they are discovered, and hand over to an Iraqi military that is still a work in progress.

The project to field a new Iraqi Army was greatly hampered by clumsy political engineering in the months following Saddam Hussein’s fall. From the start, American generals realized that they lacked the troop strength to seal the borders and control a country the size of California. They counted heavily on the cooperation of anti-Hussein Iraqi troops to carry out the task. The plan to enlist the support of Iraqi troops to control the country was approved in March 2003 by President Bush himself.

But the Iraqi Army went AWOL when faced with the rapid American push to Baghdad, and the Bush administration had to make a decision. Senior American military commanders wanted to stick with the basic plan and recall Iraqi troops to duty. Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the top American general in Iraq at the time, and the C.I.A. station chief in Baghdad began to work toward this end by meeting with current and former Iraqi generals. Those efforts were stopped, however, when L. Paul Bremer III, the senior civilian official in Iraq, issued a decree abolishing the Iraqi Army, a move that was essentially an extension of the Bush administration’s de-Baathification campaign. Bremer gave his order after consulting with Rumsfeld, but neither Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, nor Secretary of State Colin Powell was informed in advance.

Once the Iraqi military had been abolished, a new and very methodical effort to rebuild the armed forces from the ground up was begun. Three Iraqi divisions were to be trained and equipped over two years, an extraordinarily slow pace for a nation that was in chaos. (The new force was to be called the New Iraqi Corps, until American officials learned that N.I.C. sounded like a vulgar profanity in Arabic.) Meanwhile, the security situation got only worse. Most of the Iraqi officers I talked with in Iraq thought that Bremer’s decision to disband the military was a mystifying blunder. After the strength of the insurgency became apparent to Washington, the effort to rebuild the Iraqi Army and police was pursued with a new urgency. Today, an American-run organization — the Multinational Security Transition Command — is led by Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey. The training effort that was once something of an afterthought is now the Bush administration’s final card...

The full text is here

[hebrewdude]

Re: War in The Middle East

Ankara denies Turkish intelligence told Mossad about Nasrallah''s whereabouts

POL-TURKEY-MOSSAD-HEZBOLLAH
Ankara denies Turkish intelligence told Mossad about Nasrallah's whereabouts

ANKARA, Aug 16 (KUNA) -- Foreign minister Abdullah Gul on Wednesday brushed aside news reports suggesting that Turkish intelligence informed the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, about the whereabouts of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah who was allegedly hiding in the Iranian embassy in Beirut during the Israeli aggression.

Anadolu news agency quoted Gul as saying the Turkish intelligence has nothing to do with this issue.

"These allegations are absolutely baseless," asserted Gul.

News reports said that Nasrallah was hiding in the Iranian embassy. Hezbollah and Iran denied the claims. (end) tb.

bs



KUNA 161433 Aug 06NNNN

http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=896947

Things that make you go HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM................

He's still hiding somewhere.

[hebrewdude]

Re: War in The Middle East

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/750483.html

Hezbollah border-line fighters mastered Hebrew
By Amiram Barkat

Hebrew-speaking Hezbollah fighters were stationed at outposts along the border with Israel before the war broke out, according to documents retrieved by the Israel Defense Forces while destroying the organization's line of outposts.

The documents contained transcripts in Hebrew of soldiers' conversations on IDF communications networks and other subjects.

IDF soldiers who had been stationed along the Lebanese border before the war told Haaretz that Hezbollah fighters used to call out to them in Hebrew.

Advertisement

Listening to the radio

One IDF soldier, who serves in an Armored Corps brigade, cited as an example an incident that reportedly occured several weeks ago.

"We entered a forward point along the line to replace a faulty camera," said the soldier, who asked not to be identified.

"The Hezbollah men on the other side recognized us and asked us, shouting, where our company commander was. They used the company commanders' radio code name, and we understood from this that they hear and understand everything we say on the radio."

Hebrew-speaking Hezbollah fighters and Arabic speaking IDF soldiers. What else is new?

[skhara]

Re: War in The Middle East

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/750483.html

Hezbollah border-line fighters mastered Hebrew
By Amiram Barkat

Hebrew-speaking Hezbollah fighters were stationed at outposts along the border with Israel before the war broke out, according to documents retrieved by the Israel Defense Forces while destroying the organization's line of outposts.

The documents contained transcripts in Hebrew of soldiers' conversations on IDF communications networks and other subjects.

IDF soldiers who had been stationed along the Lebanese border before the war told Haaretz that Hezbollah fighters used to call out to them in Hebrew.

Advertisement

Listening to the radio

One IDF soldier, who serves in an Armored Corps brigade, cited as an example an incident that reportedly occured several weeks ago.

"We entered a forward point along the line to replace a faulty camera," said the soldier, who asked not to be identified.

"The Hezbollah men on the other side recognized us and asked us, shouting, where our company commander was. They used the company commanders' radio code name, and we understood from this that they hear and understand everything we say on the radio."