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Interesting thoughts from Belmont
These musings do make the Israeli strategy a bit more rational. To wit:
what is the most important component of Hezbollah’s power in the south? Again the answer is easy. It is the Hezbollah cadres themselves. Hezbollah’s most precious possession isn’t Katyushas, long-range rockets, night vision goggles or antitank missiles or electronic equipment. It is the trained core of its military force. Equipment can be replaced but Hezbollah’s cadres represent an expensive, almost irreplaceable investment. In them resides the organizational knowledge of Nasrallah’s organization. It embodies man-decades of operational experience against Israel. Rockets can be replaced. The stars of Hezbollah’s operational force are less expendable.
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The Hezbollah are doing the single most stupid thing imaginable for a guerilla organization. They are fighting to keep territory. Oh, I know that this will be justified in terms of “inflicting casualties” on the Israelis. But the Hez are probably losing 10 for every Israeli lost. A bad bargain for Israel you say? No. A bad bargain for Hezbollah to trade their terrorist elite for highly trained but nevertheless conventional infantry.That was why Spartacus’ revolt against the Romans failed as well.
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Quick round up
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Things that have vanished from the media
- Bush’s approval ratings – these used to be big news, now they’re nowhere to be seen. If they had improved the usual retinue of hacks would have been vocal about that.
- Japan – there’s very little news this country
- Massacre at Beslan/Chechnya in general – it’s just disappeared, no post-mortem investigation, no obvious revenge attacks by the Russians, nada
- Conflict in Kashmir
- Outsourcing to India
- Former VP candidate John Edwards
- Genetically modified foods
- The South Central LA farm where Daryl Hannah was arrested
- UPDATE: Also, Bird Flu
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Cool C#/AJAX things
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More Silver Comet News
Paulding.com (an odd mix of local newspaper and blog) has more news. They claim the body was found approximately here.
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At long last
The College Stories book is out. I don’t think my story made it in.
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Scary
First Michelle and Luke get their car broken into, and now this. I ride the Silver Comet at least a couple of times a month, and some other, probably more dangerous routes as well. I think the Comet is the only route where one would stay missing though. From Today’s AJC
Woman missing from Silver Comet Trail
Searchers are combing the Silver Comet biking trail in Cobb County today for a missing Sandy Springs woman last seen Monday afternoon.Two helicopters and about 100 family, friends and law enforcement officials are hunting for Jennifer Ewing, 54, who left from home in a Honda minivan with her red bike about 2 p.m. Monday to ride the trail.
The helicopters are equipped with infrared radar, a heat-seeking tool that allows searchers to see through dense woods and differentiate bodies on the ground, said Georgia State Trooper Larry Schnall.
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Jennifer Ewing makes the outing on the 50-mile wooded path through Cobb and Paulding Counties about four days a week, said Smyrna police Sgt. Robert Harvey.
Update: Police have found a body along the trail, somewhere in Paulding Country.
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It’s a small world
McKinney opponent Hank Johnson appears on Winds of Change, a very good blog I read periodically. I will be voting for him in the runoff. I wonder if this guest blogging thing will be the new craze.
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Random thoughts on Lebanon
It’s been quite a while now and I haven’t seen any reports of actual conflict between the IDF and the Lebanese military, which would tend to suggest that they’re staying out of it altogether.
For all of the talk of cease fires and peace keeping forces, who would actually do it? The US is busy in Iraq, and the last time we tried that it didn’t work out too well anyway. Most of the available European forces (small in number to start with) are with NATO in Afghanistan. Assuming that part of some eventual deal involves “peace keepers” (technically more peace keepers, there have been a number of ineffectual UN troops there for years.) where would they come from? The Arab countries? China, Russia or India perhaps?
Or will that be a negotiating ploy used to delay a cease fire until the IDF weakens Hezbollah to the point where the Lebanese military takes over, which might be a very long time.
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Two links and new word
- Gentleman’s Emporium – for that cool 1879 look.
- More comic covers! From wired
The new word is MacGanized. It’s the organization of Mac users. Rather than be organized, they just know people who are organized who find stuff for them. Quite common.