Tuesday, August 15, 2006

How will Lebanon put 15,000 soldiers in the south?

On paper, the Lebanese army might look sorta impressive. Buncha tanks, a few fighter bombers, some artillery, that sorta thing.

Problem is, none of that stuff works. The tanks and fighter bombers are in storage for lack of spare parts, the artillery, well, nobody knows how to work it and they don't have any ammo for it if they did (it's a mixture of British, American, and Soviet-era artillery, no common calibres), and their "paper" strength of 40,000 is actually closer to 10,000. So basically we're talking about a "military" that is pretty much the U.S. Border Patrol + U.S. Coast Guard, spending most of their time patrolling the borders for drug smugglers in light pickup trucks, a few choppers for patrolling the more rugged areas, a few coast guard cutters for sea rescue and to intervene with smugglers, that sorta thing.

Nevertheless, I have no doubt that Lebanon will deploy 15,000 soldiers to southern Lebanon shortly. They're already there, in fact, and have been there for the past month. They're just waiting for their new uniforms.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

PS: this kinda crap is why Israel lost the PR war. As tech-savvy Lebanese newspapers and Beirut-based reporters headed south and splashed pictures of dead women and children killed by Israeli bombs across the world, the IDF's response to the press was to beat them and steal their cameras. Real swift, dudes! Way to win friends and influence people!

7 comments:

  1. Humans have fought each other forever, and it seems that they will continue to do so, forever.

    Some days I just have to say "Ah fuck it", and view it as some bad form of population control. It's better than letting it all drive me too nuts.

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  2. Well, y'know, if Israel had just gone after Hizballah rather than bombing Lebanon back to the steam age, I would have felt the same way. But when they started blowing up gas stations, ports, bridges, etc. in areas of the country completely away from anywhere that Hizballah had ever existed, killing hundreds of civilians in the process... well...

    -BT

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  3. It's like it says on Gods coffee cup. I'm surrounded by fuckin' idiots.

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  4. Excelent points Badtux

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  5. You know killing a bunch of civilians is a wonderful way to make terrorist.

    Bad Tux I am starting to think that the the Bush administration wants to make as many terrorist as possible to keep this war on terror going.

    Then they can make lots of money via halliburton. BTW Cheney was very involved in the Israeli offensive. I go look for the article for you.

    Ole Blue - Please get the conpiracies out of my head! ;-)

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  6. It sounds like they took notes from the shock and awing of Iraq.

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