From my reading in war there are many things, among them planning, tactics and strategy.
Strategy is the overall plan, what is to be accomplished.
Tactics are, (plural) the actual methods used to accomplish the strategy. Billmon gives a profound insight into the strategic level, even psychological level, when he says,
“Israeli hawks will always be able to argue, truthfuly, that the Jewish state’s massive military power is its greatest asset, while Palestinian militants will always be able to argue, equally accurately, that their side’s extreme military weakness will make any negotiations into a not-so-veiled form of unconditional surrender.”
However the following remarks in your post address the tactical, such as what bomb on which ship on which day, how many men. I’m solely commenting on the tone, not the details … a further reading will no doubt inform and shape my thinking.
I prefer, and this is not a request but simply a criterion that motivates me, to hear the overall, the impression of what it all means, from our well-informed and loquacious former barkeep.
There are a lot of things going on right now but I’m getting used to the guns of August, or the dog days, or however we want to think about the last few summers. There has been nothing but war news, kidnappings and hurricanes reported on and commented on in these hot summer days.
Lots of wheat amongst the chaff too. I vote for wheat.

Posted by: jonku | Jul 17 2006 7:56 utc | 4

These comments are interesting and important but in my view they are centered on the epiphenomenon.
The phenomenon is a country able to wage war at no cost to itself. There is no reason for it to stop. It sees itself, like Zeno’s arrow, getting closer and closer, its goals ever more nearly within its bloody reach.
As long as Israel has its own private channnel to the US’ line of credit and as long as that line of credit is still good it will continue to expropriate Palestinian land, to foully oppress the Palestinians, and now with pretenses of a civilized society dropped at both ends of the US/Israeli Axis of Evil, to destroy whatever else it can reach in the Middle East.
If the Israeli war on the population of the Middle East is to be stopped it must be stopped at its source and its source is the relatively limitless funding enabled by its subversion of the US line of credit.
Someone said you need three things to wage war : money, money, and more money. Well the “genius” of the far-right in Israel and the United States is to have secured the US line of credit and to have religiously devoted a part of those funds to ensure the continuing subversion of those funds.
Unless and until those funds are cut off Israel will continue its ever bloodier, lunatic slaughter in the Middle East using all the means, including now the US military, at its disposal.
Not one more Nickle!
Not one more Dime!
No more money
For Israeli War Crimes!
Not one more Nickel!
Not one more Dime!
No more money
For US War Crimes.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 17 2006 10:17 utc | 6

OK – I give up – can’t copy the link. Here’s the article:

Eric Boehlert
07.14.2006
CNN’s Lebanon Problem (146 comments)
I was surprised yesterday afternoon when a Reuters article popped onto my computer screen reporting that 53 Lebanese civilians had been killed by Israeli forces, part of the suddenly chaotic two-front battle Israel’s military is fighting in the Middle East. Surprised, because I had been monitoring the day’s events on CNN and hadn’t heard much about that kind of swelling Lebanese death toll.
Thanks to CNN, I’d learned that Israeli forces had bombed Beirut International Airport and a blockade was in place to cut off Lebanon’s ports, that president Bush announced Israel had the right to defend herself, that Hezbollah had fired missiles into the seaside city of Haifa, and that an Israeli woman in Nahariya had been killed amidst the cross-border violence. But I hadn’t learned many details about the more than four dozen civilians in Lebanon being killed, a fact that struck me as central to the unfolding story.
Baffled, I made a point of watching CNN’s afternoon “Situation Room” with the network’s high-profile anchor Wolf Blitzer, who gravely intoned about the “fear of all-out war” in the Middle East. (“Mideast: Brink of War?” read the on-screen graphic.) Indeed, “The Situation Room” chewed on Middle East story almost without interruption. I watched a CNN reporter from Israel file a dispatch, and then a reporter traveling with the president, a reporter from the United Nations, a reporter from Lebanon, an in-studio discussion with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and then an interview with Republican Sen. Bill Frist. Yet during the first 40 minutes of “The Situation Room,” which devoted itself almost exclusively to the escalating Mideast chaos, there was no reference to the fact the Israeli military had killed more than 50 Lebanese civilians. (It wasn’t until halfway through the second hour of “The Situation Room” that Blitzer finally clued viewers in.)
Later, I went back and checked CNN’s reporting, via TVeyes.com, and discovered that throughout the day CNN repeatedly reported on the lone Israeli civilian causality without making any mention of the more than 50 Lebanese civilian casualties. To be exact, CNN did that at 10:31 a.m., 11:02, 12:09 p.m., 12:19, 1:00, 1:30, 1:52, 2:00, 2:17, 2:30, 2:50, and 4:04.
Note that at 12:05 p.m. CNN did report that “at least 45 Lebanese civilians have been killed in this offensive,” but that’s because the news channel was airing a feed from CNN International, which seemed to understand one of its fundamental responsibilities in covering bloody, revenge-driven political conflicts was to report civilian deaths suffered on both sides. In fact, a check of CNN Europe’s reporting yesterday afternoon showed CNN Europe routinely reported on the death of the Israeli woman and as well as death of nearly 50 Lebanese civilian. CNN’s U.S.-based anchors and reporters though, seemed mostly unable or unwilling to do the same.
Has CNN gotten to the point where it won’t report pertinent facts that are essential to putting a story in context? Facts that certainly would have helped viewers understand some of the international criticism Israel was coming under for what the European Union called a “disproportionate” military response to the conflict at hand.
At this point I don’t think it’s even controversial to suggest the Arab-Israeli conflict is told in the United States mostly through the eyes of Israelis, and that’s especially true on cable news channels. American news organizations have more resources in Israel, better sources within the Israeli government and most American viewers likely consider the Israeli’s more like ‘us.’ And if you don’t think there’s a difference on how the U.S. media cover the warring sides, then try to imagine what the press coverage would have looked like yesterday if 50 Israeli citizens had been killed by the missiles that hit Haifa.
I doubt Wolf Blitzer would have reported on that story for a solid hour and forgotten to give viewers the civilian death toll.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jul 17 2006 10:26 utc | 8

Blair, Annan call for int’l force in Lebanon; Israel expresses opposition
Israel: ‘Too soon’ Israel’s response is that it is “too soon” for that. Apparently, it is not reigned enough death and destruction on Lebanon.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 17 2006 11:06 utc | 10

Paul Craig Roberts on Fudie Sickos teaming up w/NeoNuts to push for attack on Iran:
Evangelical “Christians” are part of the propaganda show. Three thousand of them, under the lead of the Rev. John C. Hagee, are heading to Washington for a “Washington/Israel summit” to demand, needlessly, that the neocon Bush regime show “stronger support for Israel.”
It is difficult to see how Bush could show any stronger support without using the U.S. military to assist Israel in its attacks, which is, of course, what the “Christian” Rev. Hagee intends when he declares: “There’s a new Hitler in the Middle East [he doesn’t mean Bush or Olmert]. The only way he will be stopped will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran.”
Present at Rev. Hagee’s “Washington/Israel Summit” will be Israel’s former Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and Gary Bauer.
…
David Brog, former chief of staff for Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, has gone to work for Rev. Hagee. Brog, who is Jewish, says he works for Hagee’s evangelical enterprise because “we’re bringing into a pro-Israel camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice. Israel’s enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands that.”We’re Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East
So, who the hell funds the outfits that organize anti-war demos? Is it Soros, who funds mobs in Eastern Europe & on Soviet border, so he can help bring down governments there? Is he afraid of offending am. Jewish leaders? Isn’t it well past time for an investigative journalist to come up w/some answers? How about local leadership, mainstream churches, right-libertarians, etc….

Posted by: jj | Jul 17 2006 12:49 utc | 12

Uncle Scam, TOO SOON, from the Jerusalem Post:
On Sunday, senior diplomatic officials said Israel will not rule out an international presence in southern Lebanon to prevent Hizbullah from returning there after the completion of the current military operation.
(…)
However, a senior source in the Prime Minister’s Office said, “We are not even close to that point,” and that Israel wanted to see the Lebanese army deploy along Israel’s northern border.
Nevertheless, the G-8, in a statement issued Sunday on the crisis, alluded to the possibility of an international force.
“We would welcome an examination by the UN Security Council of the possibility of an international security/monitoring presence,” a G-8 statement on the current crisis said.
Diplomatic officials in Jerusalem expressed satisfaction at the statement issued in St. Petersburg, saying that for the most part it adopted Israel’s narrative that Hizbullah and Hamas were responsible for the escalation.
“The immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy and peace,” the statement read.
(my bold)
J Post

Posted by: Noirette | Jul 17 2006 16:25 utc | 14

The column by Gideon Levy Billmon is talking about appeared last week about the conflict in Gaza and was quoted in Jewschool. b correctly brings the other column about Hezbollah.

Posted by: 4jkb4ia | Jul 17 2006 19:05 utc | 16