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This will not please the Houthis.


This could be Biden's obamas Gulf of Tonkin.

(but, I know what you meant.)

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I got a warning for typing that once.

That said...

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What a laughably poor use of tax dollars time and equipment. How long before they're evacuating them aboard and bringing them to your town South Carolina?

How about we do the needful instead. Bring all the munitions from the boats and give them to Israel and tell them have 24hrs to use them all or...... they have to pay us!?!?! Bet we'd see some real action then.

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Israel's not taking Lebanon without help. I would suspect that we'll at least provide air support, but we'll see how things develop.

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The problem is, which side will FJB take?  After all, the polling is close in Michigan.

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It's weird how quiet the media have been about the escalation on the Lebanon border. Last year both sides were being careful to avoid escalation but that line-treading has gradually broken down and an invasion is inevitable now. The northern part of Israel is now uninhabitable due to the threat from Hezbollah, and Israel cannot accept that. They will push Hezbollah back and create a buffer zone. They will be trying to signal to Iran that they are not going to destroy Hezbollah so the Iranians don't feel the need to "use it or lose it" vis-à-vis their massive Hezbollah ballistic missile stocks.

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We need to declare war on China, Russia, NK, and Iran and get the party started.  It's coming anyway.

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While we have the most ability, we ain't ready to skin that smoke wagon.

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"The enemy gets a vote" goes the saying.  Lots of people, beyond just Ukraine's borders, didn't want Russia to invade it.  China could invade Taiwan tomorrow, two weeks from now, or two years from now, and no one may be able to stop them.  



It's coming anyway.......

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It's all related at this point so ...

Several One-Way Aerial Attack Drones attempting to Strike the U.S. Military’s Al-Tanf Garrison Base in Southern Syria have reportedly been Downed today by Air Defenses, in at least Two Separate Attacks by Iranian-Backed Forces.

OSINTdefender  (@sentdefender) June 22, 2024

The Secretary General of Al-Nujabaa Akram Al-Kaabi from Lebanon: The Iraqi Resistance will stand with Hezbollah shoulder to shoulder aganist any Israeli attack on southern Lebanon. #Iraq pic.twitter.com/u4CZDQsNSl

— Tammuz Intel (@Tammuz_Intel) June 22, 2024

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As long as Americans are not dying . Knock yourselves out.

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We need to declare war on China, Russia, NK, and Iran and get the party started.  It's coming anyway.

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The funny thing is if Americans STARTED dying at the hands of others you’d have a large segment of “True American Patriots” here freak out and want to run, hide, surrender, or “de-escalate” to “just save one life” instead of starting to cut throats.

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We need to declare war on China, Russia, NK, and Iran and get the party started.  It's coming anyway.

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Kill em all

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https://s.abcnews.com/images/International/marine-barracks-1983-attack-03-ap-rc-171023_16x9_992.jpg?w=1600
https://s.abcnews.com/images/International/marines-barracks-1983-attack-ap-rc-171023.jpg
https://s.abcnews.com/images/International/marine-barracks-1983-attack-02-ap-rc-171023.jpg
https://s.abcnews.com/images/International/marine-barracks-1983-attack-05-ap-rc-171023.jpg

Lebanon,....a 1983 walk down memory lane. ^^^

-----------------

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings

Operating under the peacetime rules of engagement, MNF peacekeepers   primarily U.S. and French forces   used minimum use of force as possible in order to avoid compromising their neutral status.[31]

Until October 23, 1983, there were ten guidelines issued for each U.S. marine member of the MNF:

When on post, mobile or foot patrol, keep loaded magazine in weapon, bolt closed, weapon on safe, no round in the chamber.

Do not chamber a round unless instructed to do so by a commissioned officer unless you must act in immediate self-defense where deadly force is authorized.

Keep ammo for crew-served weapons readily available but not loaded in the weapon. Weapons will be on safe at all times.

Call local forces to assist in self-defense effort. Notify headquarters.
Use only minimum degree of force to accomplish any mission.
Stop the use of force when it is no longer needed to accomplish the mission.
If you receive effective hostile fire, direct your fire at the source. If possible, use friendly snipers.
Respect civilian property; do not attack it unless absolutely necessary to protect friendly forces.
Protect innocent civilians from harm.
Respect and protect recognized medical agencies such as Red Cross, Red Crescent, etc.
The perimeter guards at the U.S. Marine headquarters on the morning of October 23, 1983, were in full compliance with rules 1 3 and were unable to shoot fast enough to disable or stop the bomber (see Bombings: Sunday, October 23, 1983 below).[32]

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Hezbollah supposedly has 150,000 missiles.  It would be a completely different level of war.  Even the involvement of one or two carrier groups would likely be insufficient to counter that kind of barrage. And the US missile stock/production is in a very poor position to be able to resupply our ships and support Israel in such a scenario.
Hopefully the Chinese won't try to make a move should it happen.

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The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown Jr. stated earlier today that an Israeli Invasion of Southern Lebanon and Full-Scale War with Hezbollah could potentially cause Iran to Intervene, especially if they felt that Hezbollah was being… pic.twitter.com/wpUe17S9Kc

OSINTdefender  (@sentdefender) June 24, 2024

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There were statements made by Israel about using "unprecedented weapons" in Lebanon in the event of full-scale conflict with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah certainly has enough rockets to deplete Israel's defenses.

I would assume that Israel will warn loudly and up front that any nation or group which threatens the viability of the nation of Israel will find its own viability addressed.

I would assume that Israel will not wait until Hezbollah has finished laying waste to the country.

I would guess that they will act early, as soon as it is clear that the gloves are off, against both Hezbollah and Iran.

It's going to be an interesting month.

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The precision munitions could be used to target the enemy positions launching the rockets? Maybe take out the personnel launching them?

The web [of tunnels] of staging centers and connectors is hundreds of kilometers long, well exceeding the scope of the Hamas tunnels in Gaza Beeri estimates. His 2021 paper posited a 45-kilometer “attack tunnel” in south Lebanon and featured a map depicting its route.

...identified both attack tunnels and tactical tunnels, some of which the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) discovered and destroyed in Operation Northern Shield in January 2019. The tactical tunnels are located close to villages and provide underground cover from which Hezbollah terrorists can quickly emerge to fire at targets of opportunity, rearm from subterranean weapons stores and re-emerge.i

Tunnels which provide access to and across the Lebanon-Israel border (not unlike the Hamas tunnel near the Erez border crossing into Israel) are interspersed with what Berri maintains are explosive tunnels - dug for the purpose of concealing mass explosives, ready to be detonated when the IDF maneuvers on the ground above inside Lebanon.

...the origins of the Hezbollah tunnel network go back to the 1980s...[the network's ] scale and sophistication are an order of magnitude greater than what has been found in the Gaza Strip.

“This is a huge project that spreads all over Lebanon and contains different types of tunnels..yhe difficulty of neutralizing it will be very high, at least as much as the difficulty of neutralizing the tunnels in the Gaza Strip.”

Among the notable aspects.  is North Korea’s connection with construction of the tunnel network which dates back to active cooperation with and expert advice to Hezbollah beginning in the 1990s.

The tunnels almost certainly house a good portion of Hezbollah’s stock of precision-guided missiles, located on northern Israel’s doorstep. Their launch site pads or openings for mobile truck launchers are difficult to detect from the air.

Hezbollah has a network of tunnels beneath southern Lebanon that amounts to “hundreds of kilometers” according to an Israeli thinktank.

Tal Beeri, director of research, at the Alma Research and Education Center (a northern Israel-based organization which focuses on the security challenges along Israel’s Lebanon border) told The Times of Israel earlier this week that Alma has determined that Hezbollah has a veritable “Land of Tunnels” under southern Lebanon which is larger and more sophisticated that its Gaza counterpart.

Beeri and his colleagues used open-source intelligence research to quantify the scope and character of the subterranean network. In a 2021 paper Beeri revealed that he found a “map of polygons” overlaid on southern Lebanon online, apparently posted by someone connected with the tunnel network.

“The map is marked, by an unknown party,” Beeri wrote, “with polygons [circles] indicating 36 geographic regions, towns and villages.”

He told The Times that Alma researchers suspect the polygons mark Hezbollah’s staging centers as part of a defense plan against an Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

“Each local staging center [‘defense’] possesses a network of local underground tunnels. Between all these centers, an infrastructure of regional tunnels was built, interconnected [with] them.”

The web of staging centers and connectors is hundreds of kilometers long, well exceeding the scope of the Hamas tunnels in Gaza Beeri estimates. His 2021 paper posited a 45-kilometer “attack tunnel” in south Lebanon and featured a map depicting its route.

This too, was found on the internet. Someone had marked the route Beeri explained and his team reverse-engineered the likely course of the tunnel.

“We found additional materials, including footage of pickup trucks inside a tunnel with various connecting branches,” he said in The Times article.

“That particular video we decided not to publish initially, because we didn’t have definitive proof that it was filmed in a tunnel in Lebanon. We thought it was possible that somebody was deliberately trying to mislead us. Nonetheless, in the wake of several checks that we did, including looking at the vegetation, the kinds of vehicles and the route, we think it’s extremely likely that this is inside Lebanon.”

Beeri identified both attack tunnels and tactical tunnels, some of which the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) discovered and destroyed in Operation Northern Shield in January 2019. The tactical tunnels are located close to villages and provide underground cover from which Hezbollah terrorists can quickly emerge to fire at targets of opportunity, rearm from subterranean weapons stores and re-emerge.

Tunnels which provide access to and across the Lebanon-Israel border (not unlike the Hamas tunnel near the Erez border crossing into Israel) are interspersed with what Berri maintains are explosive tunnels - dug for the purpose of concealing mass explosives, ready to be detonated when the IDF maneuvers on the ground above inside Lebanon.

Among the notable aspects of Beeri’s research is North Korea’s connection with construction of the tunnel network which dates back to active cooperation with and expert advice to Hezbollah beginning in the 1990s. As The Times observed, “North Korea has historic expertise in the digging of tunnels in mountainous and rocky areas.”

Hezbollah subsequently set up Shiite-owned companies to undertake “civilian infrastructure” projects in southern Lebanon in the 2000s. These built many additional tunnels according to the Alma research.

In addition to a variety of stores, the tunnels almost certainly house a good portion of Hezbollah’s stock of precision-guided missiles, located on northern Israel’s doorstep. Their launch site pads or openings for mobile truck launchers are difficult to detect from the air.

An added note from the Alma research is that one of the private companies mentioned above (the Mustafa Commercial and Contracting Company) apparently interacted with the United Nations Development Program as a civil construction contractor.

I queried the United Nations, specifically the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). about its knowledge of the Hezbollah tunnel network. I asked how long the organization has known of the tunnels’ existence, if it has any knowledge whether the tunnels run underneath civilian infrastructure (hospitals, schools).

I also asked whether UNIFIL knows if any of the tunnels run beneath its own compounds in southern Lebanon, adding a question as to whether it has observed Hezbollah activity near tunnel entrances or whether it has witnessed Hezbollah-launched strikes from tunnels

UNIFIL has not yet offered responses. But a series of questions to the Alma Research and Education Center were answered. In an email, Henry Zaher, Alma’s logistics coordinator, told me that the presence of the tunnels in Lebanon became public knowledge in Israel with the discovery of six Hezbollah attack tunnels in December 2018 by the IDF.

Zaher said that the origins of the Hezbollah tunnel network go back to the 1980s, pre-dating the Gaza tunnels. He also repeated Beeri’s assertion that its scale and sophistication are an order of magnitude greater than what has been found in the Gaza Strip.

“This is a huge project that spreads all over Lebanon and contains different types of tunnels,” Zaher affirmed. “The difficulty of neutralizing it will be very high, at least as much as the difficulty of neutralizing the tunnels in the Gaza Strip.”

The international community he opined has been less aware of the presence and construction of the tunnel network despite intelligence suggesting it. He also contends that the United Nations has actively ignored the construction and presence of the Hezbollah tunnels.

“Unfortunately, the United Nations is not interested in this despite the clear involvement of the North Koreans in the project,” Zaher said via email.

“And even the Hezbollah company that is responsible for their construction ‘Jahd Al Bana’ appears on the United Nations website under the entry as a provider of social services in Asia... UNIFIL did not even conduct a tour of the tunnel entrances on the Lebanese side that were discovered by Israel in December 2018.”

As Israel faces multiple fronts in addition to its military engagement with Hamas, the threat of the “Land of Tunnels” in southern Lebanon may emerge as a more obvious lever for Hamas to further harass Israeli forces and possibly, to avenge the killing of Hamas deputy leader, Saleh al-Arouri, in Beirut.

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During first gulf war in '91 we could not stop saddam from launching scud missiles into our bases and saudi.  Even with total air supremacy and satellite recce they would still pop up from hiding with their launchers and have a go.  Some of them did real damage, like the one that hit hit the troops sleeping in the warehouse.   The point is that they can hide their launchers underground , and they are hard to deal with.

The Saudi news outlet Al-Hadath reports that the Hezbollah commander killed in the Israeli strike in Tyre was Abu Ali Nasser, the head of the terror group's Aziz unit, one of three regional divisions in south Lebanon

The unit is responsible for the eastern district on the Israel-Lebanon border.

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The destruction will not be limited to southern Lebanon or northern Israel.  Both sides have the means and motive to seriously damage the other.  Lebanon is, currently, for all intents and purposes a failed state--no president, run by a warlord ( Nasrallah) and his army (Hezbollah), and full of religious and ethnic groups that hate each other.  If Israel destroys Lebanon who knows what will come of it, but it won't be good for anyone.

Assuming both sides keep the fight contained to south of the Litani and Israel kicks Hezbollah out--then what?  

Who is going to occupy that part of Lebanon to keep it demilitarized?  The UN?  Not likely, they've been around since 1978 with no success whatsoever and have cooperated with Hezbollah.  Israel?  Their MoD is saying a military occupation of Gaza, which seems more likely every day, will require 4 divisions and $5 billion a year on top of current defense spending. Committing 4 divisions to Gaza without reducing forces elsewhere will require extending military service time for conscripts from 2 to 4 years.

Will the US under the world class security team of Lloyd and General Charley Brown put troops in to keep both sides separated?  Let's hope not, occupation is a terrible idea even with good leaders.  

Israel can't occupy the zone.  Even if it could, the lessons of the last Lebanon buffer zone would be quickly relearned.  This time they won't even have the luxury of working with a junior partner like the South Lebanon Army (SLA).  Everyone saw what happened to them--asked to do the really crappy jobs from 1985-2000 then abandoned in Ehud Barak's every man for himself withdrawal.

Hezbollah has more and better tunnels than Hamas, fighters who have shot and been shot at for years, and the advantage of fighting on their home turf.  They have hundreds of thousands of rockets/missiles, many of which can hit Israel from north of the Litani.

Iran will ignore any assurances that Hezbollah won't be destroyed--they aren't idiots like our current rulers.  They will not stand idly by and watch 42 years and the billions of dollars they spent go up in smoke.

The threatened invasion has all the hallmarks of a major fiasco.  I for one hope it can be avoided.

If you have $6 burning a hole in your pocket and a Kindle, consider buying this book:Israel's Struggle with Hezbollah: A War Without End.  If you have Kindle Unlimited it's free.

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True.

I was sure putin was bluffing just because there was no upside even if he won.  Same is true for china/Taiwan. They could take Taiwan in a week and still end up worse off.

But that doesn't mean they won't.

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That's why I've never believed China will invade Taiwan; the benefits of the invasion would be outweighed by the costs.

But you never discount the fact that nations do things not because they are in their best interests, but because they can do them.  China might want to send a message to everyone that they are the Big Dog in the world now.

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As long as Americans are not dying . Knock yourselves out.