You say pohtato, I say pahtahto...
Dan Quayle aside, it seems that the clearing haze (barely clearing haze, I should say) is bringing forward the issue of just where were those Israeli soldiers when they were captured by Hizbollah?
In Israel?
In Lebanon?
From Counterpunch comes the following:
and also this:
If, as this commentary suggests, the soldiers were inside Lebanon, even one inch, there are some serious questions that need to be raised and answered. In addition, everyone who has been howling about Israel's right to defend itself, may want to reconsider their position.
To begin with, it is really hard to see how two soldiers equal more than 700 civilina lives, most of a country's infrastructure and several dead UN volunteers, not to mention a push into a next door country which has caused a massive refugee crisis.
And, then, there is the question of what were those soldiers doing in Lebanon? (if that is where they were?)
This would not be the first time a country used an incident as a pretext to start a war, especially a pretext as well-spun as this might be.
Remember The Maine? No? Maybe you should.
In Israel?
In Lebanon?
From Counterpunch comes the following:
A Lebanese government official told this writer that the first information about the soldiers' capture in southern Lebanon came from the Lebanese Army Police, a source also quoted in many media accounts. "At the beginning the Lebanese Army said it was on the Lebanese side," the official told me. The verbatim Army communique' to the Lebanese government follows: " 'At 9:03 or 9:05am in the vicinity or in front of Ayt Al Shaab village the members of the resistance have abducted two soldiers. At 9:15am the resistance shelled the position of the enemy in the occupied territories. At 10:10am the Resistance and Israeli forces clashed with each other in the area of Naqoura,' on Lebanon's side of the border."
and also this:
Newsweek's Michael Hirsh of MSNBC.com, on July 12, said: "As a result, things are blowing up so quickly it's difficult to know where to focus any longer. After the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah in Lebanon on Wednesday, which the hard-line group linked to a similar kidnapping by Hamas the week before, the mideast seemed to be closer to all-out war."Some serious spin is going on.
By July 13, the story out of MSNBC.com's Jerusalem bureau was different. In a piece titled "Crisis allows Israel to pursue strategic goals- Kidnappings give Israel excuse to neutralize Hamas, Hezbollah", Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Gutkin wrote: "Kidnappings changed everything: All that changed Wednesday, when Hezbollah guerillas crossed into Israel, seizing Goldwasser and Regev and killing eight other soldiers in the ensuing fighting.(read the rest)
If, as this commentary suggests, the soldiers were inside Lebanon, even one inch, there are some serious questions that need to be raised and answered. In addition, everyone who has been howling about Israel's right to defend itself, may want to reconsider their position.
To begin with, it is really hard to see how two soldiers equal more than 700 civilina lives, most of a country's infrastructure and several dead UN volunteers, not to mention a push into a next door country which has caused a massive refugee crisis.
And, then, there is the question of what were those soldiers doing in Lebanon? (if that is where they were?)
This would not be the first time a country used an incident as a pretext to start a war, especially a pretext as well-spun as this might be.
Remember The Maine? No? Maybe you should.
