By way of deception

via damien

"CNN Reliable Sources Transcript - Today

"By way of deception thou shalt do war"

Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well."

damien:

"I see that Israel has purposely bypassed pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon in order to obtain some PR advantage. And that "as of noon Sunday, since July 12, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has carried out 6,800 missions". So it really is true that Israel is cowering under an unprovoked rocket onslaught.

Other news bits of interest: it has recently become public that on 22 Oct 2005 Iran was caught trying to smuggle uranium from the Congo. That's a pity. It would have gone well with the 18 nuclear-capable cruise missiles smuggled to Iran and China four years ago by Ukrainian weapons dealers."

oy.