"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," the magazine quotes the consultant as saying. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."
US government officials have denied the charges, but Hersh defended his piece Sunday saying he had strong sources for the article which was thoroughly vetted by New Yorker editors.
"This White House will find a way to view what happened with the Israelis against Hezbollah as a victory, and they'll find a way to see it as a positive for any planning that is going towards Iran," he told CNN.
Look, I speculated early on that hurting Hizbollah now could provide a benefit later by crippling their ability to be used by Iran to counter-attack. Indeed, I had wondered about this potential to use terrorists based in Lebanon back before the Iraq War major combat operations phase. Iraq used Scuds to hit Israel then [CORRECTION: by "then" I meant 1991. I knew what I meant ...]; without Scuds, would Iraq try to use short-range rockets form Lebanon instead, I thought. But to speculate about an incidental benefit is a far cry from claiming it as a reason to fight.
As for going after Hizbollah bunkers and rockets as practice for Iran? Good grief that is a stretch, to say the least. Israel asking how long we'd run interference for them--a reasonable concern--is hardly reason to jump to the conclusion that this is a practice run.
Nuclear facilities and ballistic missile facilities are so different from 122mm rockets and bunkers to hide small groups of terrorists that it is silly to compare the two. Our ability to wage an air campaign is also orders of magnitude greater than Israel's. Besides, why was the initial Israeli air campaign aimed at the bridges and infrastructure of Lebanon if this was a practice for disarming Iran of nuclear weapons?
Finally, if a pre-planned strike, why was Israel so ill-prepared to begin operations from day one?
Rather than ascribing deep reasons for this campaign, why not go with the apparent: Israel had a couple soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah. The Israelis hit in the air to try to keep their men from being moved out of Lebanon. Hizbollah hit Israel's cities with rockets. Then Israel expanded the targets to go after the rockets and to pressure Lebanon to reign in Hizbollah. With the air campaign failing, small groups of troops were inserted. With rockets still falling, a couple battalions went in. Then lead elements of 4 or 5 brigades made a shallow penetration across the entire border area. Finally, a multi-division effort to push to the Litani was made as time ran out and a ceasefire went into effect. Hizbollah was hit hard enough to agree to a ceasefire and Israel was taking enough casualties to end the campaign. We were taking enough grief inside Iraq to end our interference and support a ceasefire.
Basically, Israel bloodied Hizbollah but failed to use a month of time that we helped provide to really take the terrorists apart, distracted by the allure of air power alone for too long. This was not a dry run for striking Iran.
Hersh is really claiming that was pre-planned?
