Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

[Undertoad]

The airport is open.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The airport is open.

And that says Israel did not attack it 15 times?

[Ibby]

No, it means they didnt carpet bomb it out of existance, and allowed them to open it back up.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Ibram

No, it means they didnt carpet bomb it out of existance, and allowed them to open it back up.

Name one plane or one weapon in Israel that can do carpet bombing? In short, none exist. Israel attacked Lebanon's airport (not Hezbollah's airport) at least 15 times with fighter bombers. Therefore it took a few days to clear the rubble, probably get some new fuel sources (because Israel attacked Lebanon's jet fuel facilities - Hezbollah has no jet planes but Lebanon does), and get an 'airport that does not threaten Israel' reopened.

Didn't they just ask for them?

[Ibby]

Did I say they COULD carpet bomb it? No. I said they didn't.

[Undertoad]

US prohibits flight of Iranian missiles to Syria

• July 15: Three days after the war began, a source tipped off U.S. intelligence about an imminent shipment of missiles from Iran to Hezbollah.

• July 19: A spy satellite photographed Iranian crews loading three missile launchers and eight crates, each normally used to carry a Chinese-designed C-802 Noor missile, aboard a transport plane at Mehrabad air base near Tehran. Israel says Hezbollah fired a C-802, a precision-guided anti-ship cruise missile, at an Israeli warship off Lebanon's coast on July 14.

• July 20: The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane left for Damascus, but Iraqi air-traffic controllers denied it permission to enter Iraq's airspace. The Iranian flight crew then requested permission to fly over Turkey. Turkish controllers granted permission — but only if the plane would land for an inspection. The plane returned to Tehran, where the military cargo was unloaded.

• July 22: The plane flew humanitarian aid to Damascus after stopping for inspection in Turkey.

Originally Posted by tw

Israel expected to drive out Hezbollah in two weeks. Massive military equipment from that airport and carried south was not going to resupply Hezbollah.

Riiight, because there are no Hezbollah in Beirut, so nobody would be available to transfer the weapons to trucks.

Closer to the coastal war zone: Damascus or Beirut?

Well maybe they only had aluminum tubes in those crates.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

"Illegal invasions of Cambodia, Laos..."

Communist propaganda trope alert. The Gulf of Tonkin was not, of course, an invasion, but a skirmish. Something put a hole in the C. Turner Joy, and I doubt any and all conspiracy theories about it. Communists shoot at Americans so routinely it's practically a stereotype.

"Murdering Maronites and Druze?" First I've heard of it. Nah, tw, you'll prostitute your integrity to any imaginable degree, just because you don't believe democracies are an improvement over nondemocracies. That is why your brain is sick, and you exhibit your symptoms in all your posts. You live in a democracy, you jerk.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Actually, any ground-attack platform can carpet-bomb. It's a mere matter of piling enough explosives densely enough onto a target position. Submunition weapons, which are to carpet bombing what a throw rug is to wall-to-wall, are a more weapon-efficient tool for carpet bombing, and you can find references to trying to clear unexploded submunitions out of the battle areas in today's newspapers -- an AP wire, for instance, headlined "Explosives pose danger to refugees returning to south Lebanon."

[Hippikos]

The Gulf of Tonkin was not, of course, an invasion, but a skirmish.

The Gulf of Tonkin was a hoax...

Carpet bombs are old fashioned, it´s cluster bombs today.

[DanaC]

N-Ireland somehow found a way out of the quigmire. Not by bombing Ireland or the UK, but by negotiation, even if that means that one need to talk to (former) terrorists..

I agreed with most of what you said, but in fairness, I really don't think we'd have gone to the table had they not lobbed the odd bomb in our direction.

I remember every Christmas we'd get a tad worried on the mainland. The IRA usually phoned through warnings to give a chance for evacuation, but occassionally things went wrong. Several times, when I was working in a shopping centre we were evacuated due to bomb threats (false). It was damnably inconvenient and hurt the Christmas trade quite badly.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Hippikos, one thing I do as a matter of policy is disbelieve conspiracy theories, especially conspiracy theories wrt wars between the United States and the unfreeworlders.

Conspiracy theory by nature is never the simplest nor the most coherent explanation of events. It's a product of frustrated romanticism, and habitually attributes to ongoing malice what is more simply accounted for by, well, stupidity. Remember that in politics, sometimes all that is presented is a choice of blunders.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Occam's Razor can't always be applied, especially in the Middle east. It's way more complicated than white hats/black hats. Just ask a painter how many whites and blacks there are, to get a feel for it.

[DanaC]

unfreeworlders

Approaching Unfreeworld. Raise shields and open a communications channel!

[Hippikos]

The theory lies in the revelation that LBJ said to McNamara "When we got through with all the firing, we concluded maybe they hadn't fired at all." Kind of Swift Boat Lies avant la lettre.

Remember that in politics, sometimes all that is presented is a choice of blunders.

Which is painfully visible in the ME currently .