-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_8.html
>>>If this is true, then there is even more justification for depriving them of their
"toys". Heck, we can't let them city folks loose with something as American as
fireworks no more (they blowd them's fingers off); so why give others BIGGER
fireworks that they can't use? A<>E<>R <<<
}}}>Begin
U.S. questions Israeli military capability after latest offensive
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, April 18, 2002
WASHINGTON � The United States is questioning Israel's military capability in
wake of what some analysts term the failed offensive against Palestinian insurgents
in the West Bank.
The analysts, who include U.S. government consultants, asserted that Israel's
military was unprepared for the intensity of Palestinian resistance. They said the
advance of Israeli troops in West Bank cities was slow in contrast to the lightning
capture of the area in the 1967.
The result appears to be a bloody stalemate that is leading an increasing number of
U.S. officials to conclude that the best solution is the deployment of a U.S.-led
international peacekeeping force, Middle East Newsline reported. The officials said
even President George Bush is slowly coming to that realization.
"Civilian casualties and collateral are relatively high, IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]
discipline has often been poor and trigger happy, and contact between the IDF and
ordinary Palestinians has been alienating," Anthony Cordesman, a former senior
Pentagon official and now senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said in an analysis. "No one seems cowed or deterred."
Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, that the Israeli
military appears to be "a little bit stretched at the present given the circumstances
in
the Middle East." Krepinevich said the Israelis are focusing on their urban warfare
capabilities, a move that he recommended the United States to follow.
Senior officials and military commanders have not publicly commented on the Israeli
operation in the West Bank. Gen. Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command,
which covers most of the Middle East, said his staff has not studied the Israeli
military campaign against the PA.
"My people, my staff, and I have not done the study on the approach being used by
Israel in terms of this current ongoing operation," Franks told a briefing for foreign
reporters last week. "I have pretty good familiarity with what's going on in Operation
Enduring Freedom, but I don't have the same degree of familiarity with the approach
being taken inside Israel, and so I just can't comment on it."
But analysts interviewed by the U.S. media agreed that the Israeli operation ranged
from merely ineffective to outright failure. They said Bush gave the Israelis a week
until he assessed that the military would be stuck in a long campaign.
"I think Bush got it right. Seven, eight days, hit them hard, you cannot sustain these
kind of suicide bombings," Fareek Zakaria, a leading Middle East analyst and writer
at Newsweek, said. "But now it is at a point where Israel is in deep danger of creating
more problems than its solving."
But some analysts said the Israeli military operation has been underestimated. Col.
Nitsan Alon, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said
in
a report that the Israeli military made inroads in the war against the Palestinian
insurgency.
"The IDF operations have succeeded in inflicting fairly serious direct damage to
terrorist infrastructure," Alon said.
"On the level of material, large amounts of weapons and ammunition were captured,
including: dozens of explosive devices; several ready-to-use suicide explosive
devices and electronic devices for detonating them; over a dozen workshops for the
manufacture of explosives; several thousand rifles and hand-held guns, including
hundreds of sniper rifles, dozens of telescopic sights, and night-vision equipment;
dozens of antitank rocket-propelled-grenade launchers; several mortars; and dozens
of heavy machine guns."
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