J.R. Dunn, who is as well qualified as anybody to judge these things, believes that Israel really blew its opportunity to defeat Hezbollah. He thinks that Prime Minister Olmert, without direct experience of combat himself, interfered with military judgment in just the way LBJ screwed up the US military in Vietnam. Well, Mr. Dunn may turn out to be right. But we should be cautious. If I were running Israeli policy, I would draw the media into their usual story line ——— since they always repeat the same one anyway. And below the media radar I would be doing a lot of other things they will never know about. Here are some examples. As Dunn points out, Hamas has suffered some nasty blows in Gaza, since the media has been focusing like a laser beam on Hezbollah and Lebanon. A lot of the Hamas leadership is now in Israeli prisons, and several targeted assassinations have been reported of Islamic Jihad leaders. The result may be to strenghten the Fatah faction of the...(Read Full Post)