Israel purposefully permitting Hezbullah to fire rockets ??

".....SHOW: CNN RELIABLE SOURCES 
August 6, 2006 Sunday
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT 
Host: Howard Kurtz, media critic, Washington Post
Guest: Thomas Ricks, Washington Post 


KURTZ: And joining us now here Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for "The 
Washington Post" and author of the new book "Fiasco: The American Military 
Adventure in Iraq." Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, 
including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going 
to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing 
armies shooting at each other?! 


THOMAS RICKS: I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part 
of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going 
on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left 
pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being 
rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their 
operations in Lebanon. 


KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed 
Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, 
because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war 
here? 


RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me. 


KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on 
your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see 
your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of 
perceptions here. 


RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you 
know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.  
...."

Not sure how much credence can be put on the above report .If it came from Al 
Jazeera i would doubt its reliability  but it stems from CNN , scarcely an 
anti- Israeli network and Washington Post journalists , hardly pro-Hezbullah. 

I was shocked by the cold-hearted and calculated strategy being described but 
it explains the seeming failure of almost a month of constant Israeli 
air-attacks to suppress the continuing ability of Hezbullah to launch counter 
-attacks . 

alan johnstone , edinburgh br 


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