Kindgo
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ISRAEL GETS READY FOR THREE-FRONT WAR
http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/68819.htm
by John Podhoretz
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February 11, 2003 -- IN the coming war, there will be three fronts. First, and most obvious, is the Iraq front, with U.S. forces attacking from land, sea and air. The second is our own home front. The nation is now on Orange Alert because intelligence intercepts and simple logic both suggest that our Islamic enemies know the best way to strike at us is through terrorism on U.S. soil.
The third front is Israel. Israel knows the drill from the last time. Saddam Hussein fired dozens of Scud missiles at the Jewish state in 1991 in a fruitless effort to turn the Gulf War into a Jewish-Arab conflict. Those strikes did miraculously little damage to people and property.
That was then. Israel is in a far more precarious position today. It must face the possibility of another Scud attack, but oddly enough, that's the least of the Jewish state's worries.
The major threat comes from the Israeli-Lebanese border, which has become a stronghold for the terrorist group Hezbollah. Armed with Katyusha rockets, Hezbollah presents a constant threat to Israel's north - a threat that has been magnified a thousand-fold ever since Israel stupidly and suicidally pulled its forces out of South Lebanon in 1999.
Before the pullout, Israel had made sure that Hezbollah's forces couldn't get within 25 miles of Israel. That security zone effectively neutralized the threat to Israeli civilians from Hezbollah's rockets.
No longer.
Here's the nightmare scenario that has many Israeli military planners and disaster specialists awake at night: The war starts. Hezbollah uses the war as an excuse to launch a rocket barrage at Israel.
What kind of rocket barrage? Well, according to some intelligence sources, Iraq moved some of its biological and chemical weapons into Syria for safekeeping. The Syrians are very close to Hezbollah (as are the Iranians). What if the Syrians, acting on Saddam's instructions, have given chemical and biological agents to Hezbollah to give those rocket attacks an extra, genocidal zing?
Once the rocket attacks start, Israel will have to respond with overwhelming force by reoccupying southern Lebanon - massively redeploying its armed forces.
That means the Israeli army will pull out of the West Bank to face the Hezbollah threat. Which will leave the West Bank wide open. Palestinian terrorists will be free once more to move about. There will be a dramatic upsurge in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks.
That will include another bunch of rocket launchings, this time from the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians have been experimenting with crude rockets called Qassams, and those Qassam experiments are the main cause of the Israeli actions on the Gaza Strip in recent weeks.
If this scenario comes to pass, Israel will find itself fighting on three fronts in the most serious threat to the state since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Some facts and inferences make the situation seem a lot less frightening:
* Weapons experts say that it's very difficult to use rockets to launch biological and chemical attacks, because the heat of the rockets and the explosion dissipate and destroy the deadly agents.
* The threat from the Scuds may not be that worrisome. In his U.N. speech last week, Colin Powell said Saddam had moved Scud missiles into western Iraq and was using palm trees to hide them from view. It's hard to believe Powell would have mentioned it - thus giving up a crucial piece of intelligence - if the Israelis (or America) hadn't already dealt with that specific threat by clandestine means.
* Israel has had time to plan for the possibility of Hezbollah rocket attacks and must already have counter-measures in place. The same is true for the terrorist threats from the West Bank and Gaza.
But a fourth fact is at work here - a fact that demonstrates once again just how good a friend George W. Bush is to the state of Israel. The president has said explicitly that Israel has the right to defend itself if attacked. Exactly the opposite happened during the Gulf War.
The United States insisted then that Israel not retaliate against Iraqi attack - and went so far as to deny Israel crucial codes that would have allowed Israeli aircraft to avoid striking American planes if the Jewish state chose to defend itself.
Now, at least, the forces hostile to Israel know that America isn't working against Israel. Rather, Bush has made it clear that he knows the Jewish state is particularly vulnerable as a result of this war - and he's not going to tie Israel's hands.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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