That is exactly what Israel is doing now

Post #263,580 by bluke 8/3/06 10:04:44 AM Reply	That is exactly what Israel is doing now What if the airport was being used to resupply the enemy with katyushas? How many Iraqi civilians have been killed by US forces in Iraq? A heck of a lot more then Israel has killed in Lebanon.
Post #263,582 by Simon_Jester 8/3/06 10:10:41 AM Reply	Air support != air attack and taking an airport (and holding it) is different that bombing it. And...for you information, I do *NOT* support my country's attacking of civilians. Although our marines are about to be blasted for killing civilians, I personally hold their leadership responsible for those actions. There's a difference between targetting civilians and invading. Your ground troops should've been in Lebanon a while ago.
Post #263,583 by bluke 8/3/06 10:13:43 AM Reply	What kind of air support can you give ... against people hiding in a civilian building? What about bombing rocket launchers? command posts? Do you really think Israel should have tried to capture Beirut airport? Do you think that is feasible?
Post #263,636 by Simon_Jester 8/3/06 1:51:59 PM Reply	Probably not.... I mean the US moved in on Grenada with overwhelming force, taking the airport and other items and getting their civilians out. I don't think Israel has the manpower, experience or will to do anything similar to take over a mere airport.
Post #263,588 by bepatient 8/3/06 10:28:45 AM Reply	A huge what-if that Israel NEVER EVEN ATTEMPTED to prove. Instead, it disabled the airport and kept innocent civilians and foreign nationals from escaping safely. Lebanon is a vacation spot...and it is regional holidays. Thousands of foreign nationals were trapped by this action...with NO PROOF of resupply by air. Add insult...it then bombed the main highway out of the country every night...making escape that way potential sucicide as well. This was, at the time, justified as "keeping the enemy contained"...an enemy you know say is entrenched for 6 years and not leaving. Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}
Post #263,590 by bluke 8/3/06 10:31:38 AM Reply	How do you think the katyushas got to Lebanon? Last I checked Hezbollah didn't make them.
Post #263,600 by bepatient 8/3/06 11:10:31 AM Reply	Last time anyone checked...and your own admission they are already there, have been for years...hidden in civilian homes. No proof was ever offered that the supply lines are current...and that there is an active resupply program in place...ESPECIALLY an active resupply program using a civilian airport. Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}
Post #263,605 by bluke 8/3/06 11:22:00 AM Reply	Don't be ridiculous You think that at some point they said we have enough missiles? Do you think that once the war started they wouldn't want to be resupplied? What other airport would you have them use?
Post #263,620 by bepatient 8/3/06 11:45:08 AM Reply	Prove it. You can't. Your government can't. Tracking flights from Iran to Beirut, or from Syria to Beirut is SIMPLE. There is no evidence that this is how they arrived. Your assertion of me being "ridiculous" nothwithstanding. Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}
Post #263,631 by bluke 8/3/06 1:07:25 PM Reply	Why did Israel bomb the Beirut airport [link\|http://dailynightly.msnbc.com/2006/07/why_did_israel_.html\|Why did Israel bomb the Beirut airport] Analysts say there are two possible reasons and they are not mutually exclusive. Israel wants to keep Iranian arms from getting in and Israeli captives from being flown out. Beirut Airport has long been key to Iran's supply of all kinds of material to Hezbollah. Iran's Revolutionary Guard has supplied Hezbollah with more than $1 billion of supplies over the past 25 years, say U.S. intelligence officials, as much as $150 million a year during tense times. The majority of it is flown in on an Iranian 747 cargo jet that unloads at Beirut Airport, where Hezbollah agents pick it up and drive it to the Bekkah valley south of the Lebanese capital. Anti-aircraft batteries, Katyusha rockets, armored vehicles, small arms, anti-tank missiles, etc. have all been sent. Beirut is the only airport in Lebanon capable of handling that 747. The initial deployment was in 1982 with planes bringing in supplies as needed. By the 1990s the flights had fallen to a quarterly routine. With Hezbollah under fire in Israel, now would be a time to resupply. [link\|http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060723/31rockets.htm\|Hell From the Heavens] At dawn on January 31 this year, Lebanese Army troops stopped a suspicious convoy of 12 trucks trying to cross the border from Syria. Inside, they found tons of unauthorized ammunition, rockets, and other weapons. The convoy's final destination: the arms caches of Hezbollah, the radical Islamic political movement whose militia controls wide swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon. A series of phone calls followed, reportedly reaching the Lebanese prime minister's office, until, finally, the convoy was allowed on its way. The incident was but a glimpse of a vast supply train running from Iranian arms factories and Syrian warehouses to Hezbollah, whose burgeoning arsenal has prompted Israel's offensive into Lebanon this month.
Post #263,633 by bepatient 8/3/06 1:19:56 PM Reply	Interesting. You give a link that 1) identifies THE SPECIFIC PLANE...and then offer another link that shows the resupply IS BY GROUND!!! And my point is...IF RESUPPLY IS BY AIR IT WOULD BE EASY TO DETERMINE...which is obviously the case since they already know it is an Iranian 747. Not exactly hard to pick that out of a crowd...and not exactly something that radar wouldn't see. And no reason to bomb the airport. You know its an iranian 747...shoot it down. Or, send in a tactical squad when you see the plane land...blow it up with PROOF that its there and carrying arms. Both better solutions that would WIN support for Israel, not lose it. Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}
Post #263,639 by bluke 8/3/06 1:59:35 PM 8/3/06 2:13:14 PM Reply	Your amazing, everthing is so easy In real life these things are not so easy. Do you know where Beirut airport is in relation to the border? How many people are guarding the airport? Yeah it sounds easy send in a tactical team, but it is not. How do you ensure that they get out? Remeber his was on the first day of the fighting. I can just imagine what people like you would have said if Israel had shot down an Iranian airliner besides the fact that it might have set off a regional war. But, who cares about all that, the armchair general here has declared that it is easy so he must be right. After all, it worked in Rambo, or some other war movie. Unfortunately real war is not like a movie and is not so simple. Edited by bluke Aug. 3, 2006, 02:06:06 PM EDT Edited by bluke Aug. 3, 2006, 02:13:14 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #263,660 by bepatient 8/3/06 4:48:54 PM Reply	Yes. 50 miles from the border over open water to an airport with the main runway that sits in the ocean. Very well within range of the helicopter gunships that we sold you. Did I say it would have been EASIER than bombing. No. However, as far as targets go, Beirut Airport is pretty painless. And again, it was attacked, over and over again, based on an assertion with no proof. It would have been better to send gunships and get proof. Israeli firepower could easily handle ground defense of the airport (if it is what they claim it to be). As for armchair generaling...you are doing a fine job of this also...passing on the party line in justification of targeting civilians. Does this criticism of Israeli tactics in any way endorse Hezbollah? No. They are equally culpable of targetting civilians. But we have always been told that Israel was above this. It does not currently seem to be the case...and there seems to be no interest in demonstrating anything different. Well, shooting down a cargo plane that is carrying arms into a conflict zone isn't likely to be thought of poorly. If its known enough to be published...its known enough to be acted upon. Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}
Post #263,742 by Another Scott 8/4/06 7:50:06 AM Reply	On the other hand... [link\|http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=asaKdKEgFBC8&refer=worldwide_news\|Bloomberg]: Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Many of the rockets Hezbollah is firing into Israel are made in Iran, demonstrating the Islamic republic's success in copying Chinese and Russian technology to build its own weapons industry. The Shiite Muslim group's arsenal includes Iranian-built portable Katyusha rockets, Israeli Reserve Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser said. Hezbollah struck an Israeli ship on July 14 with an Iranian-made C802 Noor guided missile. The militia also has Iran's Zelzal rocket, with a range of 120 miles, enough to reach Tel Aviv from south Lebanon, said Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general who ran Israel's National Defense College. [...] To supply Hezbollah, Iran flies arms to Syria, where they're loaded on trucks and shipped into Lebanon under Syrian supervision, said Yiftah Shapir, editor of the ``Middle East Military Balance,'' an annual survey published by Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. [...] The Zelzal, which means ``earthquake'' in Arabic, contains a 600-kilogram (1,322-pound) warhead, said Doug Richardson, editor of Jane's Missiles and Rockets, published in Coulsdon, England. That compares with the 90- and 175-kilogram warheads on the shorter-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, which Hezbollah also has, Richardson said. The Fajr-5 is based on China's WS-1, according to a Web site run by the Federation of American Scientists. [...] Hezbollah funds itself with direct transfers from Iran, and by creating front companies for currency counterfeiting, cigarette smuggling and other illegal activities, according to U.S. Treasury and State Department officials. Iran's subsidy to Hezbollah is about $300 million a year, with $100 million for social programs such as schools and the rest for military purposes, said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. [...] Another large part of Hezbollah's funding comes from Latin America, said Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of ``Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It'' (Bonus Books, 2003). Hezbollah is involved in drug trafficking through an agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and makes counterfeit goods, including DVDs, in the ``tri-border area,'' where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet, she said. Neither Hezbollah nor the Palestinian group Hamas would be able to launch missiles, train people or provide ``the so-called social security to buy the loyalty of the population if they didn't have money,'' said Ehrenfeld, who is also director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy, a non-profit group. ``If we were able to stop that money, this wouldn't happen.'' [...] A 220-millimeter rocket that ripped through the roof of a Haifa rail yard July 16 and killed eight workers was Syrian-made, according Israel's bomb disposal unit. Syria's ambassador to the U.K., Sami Khiyami, said his country isn't supplying arms to Hezbollah. ``The only thing Syria is doing, it is telling the international community we have a constructive role to play but the aggression has to stop,'' he said. [...] Emphasis added. Why was the airport bombed again? :-/ Hmm. 120 miles. That means that Hezbollah would need to be driven out of a swath from the border to [link\|https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/le.html\|Batro\ufffdn] or so. I hope you guys are understanding what you're in for.... :-( Cheers, Scott. (Who hopes the UN gets off its butt and does something soon, but isn't optimistic about that.)

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