Israel Sends Ground Troops Into Gaza

A tough battle in a densely packed area lays ahead. According to Olmert, it will not be over real soon:

GAZA — Israeli troops advanced into Gaza on Sunday under cover of heavy air, tank and artillery fire after opening a ground war against the militant group Hamas on Saturday night.

Witnesses said the Israeli forces had punched across Gaza, bisecting its northern and southern parts, and had taken over certain strategic areas, including what the military has described as rocket launching sites.

The ground campaign came after a week of intense airstrikes. Israel’s stated goal was to destroy the infrastructure of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza’s government, and to significantly decrease the threat to southern Israel from Palestinian rocket fire.

In a telephone briefing for a group of foreign correspondents, a senior Israeli military official said that Israeli troops would hold the areas they have taken inside Gaza at least for the duration of the operation to prevent militants from returning to fire rockets from there.

Smart for PR purposes as the reason to attack was to prevent rockets from being launched into neighboring towns like Sderot.

Tactically, this is going to be tough for the IDF; Hamas members will hide among the civilian population much as al-Qaeda and the Fedayeen did in Iraq. It seems the Israeli's have something that we did not however, excellent intelligence. I would venture that intel collection has been ongoing since they vacated Gaza in 2005 and judging by the accuracy of hits on senior Hamas leaders, it appears the Mossad has been pretty successful.

Allah asks some important questions:

Question: Are we to infer from the timing that Obama greenlit the operation? I remember people like John Bolton speculating months ago that the IAF would make a run on Iran sometime between the election and the inauguration, partly to avoid putting the new president on the spot and partly to eliminate the possibility that he’d stop them from acting once in office. This ain’t Iran, but the principle still applies. Did The One sign off on this, or did Israel act now precisely so that he wouldn’t have to?

Isn’t this operation destined to be finished by Inauguration Day or very shortly thereafter? Obama’s not going to complicate his peace plans by tolerating a long Israeli incursion right out of the chute. They’re on the clock.

I wrote that President Bush had increased attacks on al-Qaeda in the case Obama was elected. Could the same thing be happening here? Israel as a nation is not quite sure how Obama will view them and given the latest poll, it doesn't appear that they can count on many Dems to go to bat for them. So they invade now and kind of take Obama off the hook since he's not been inaugurated but also in case he has misgivings about the operation, they won't be stopped or have weapons withheld.

Bush seems more than ready to let the IDF do what they can to eliminate Hamas over the next several weeks going so far as to stop Arab nations from halting the operation:

The U.N. Security Council ended emergency consultations that began late Saturday without reaching an agreement on the situation in the Gaza Strip.

France's U.N. ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said there were "strong convergences" among the council's 15 members about the need for a fully respected ceasefire.

But diplomats said the U.S. blocked Libya's attempt to call for an immediate halt to the fighting.

Exit thought: How long until we see Nasrallah and his Hezbollah goons start making some noise to try to relieve some of the pressure on Gaza?

More updates here and here.

Update: You can never underestimate the venom of liberals when it comes to Israel defending their citizens from rocket attacks.

Update: Hamas terrorists are taking out Fatah to preclude them from filling the power void. Yeah, they should have their own country.

Update: There's a lot of good commentary on this around the blogosphere. This would be among them.

President Bush Ratcheting Up Fight Against al-Qaeda

I've been saying since spring that President Bush has stepped up his efforts to neutralize al-Qaeda in the belief that an Obama administration would curtail or shut down offensive operations that have kept us from being attacked again and repeatedly.

The New Republic has the story and Bush seems to have been even more aggressive than I'd hoped:

...In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush's personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the "Chicago Way," an allusion to Sean Connery's famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

The new order could pave the way for direct action in Kenya, Mali, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen--all places where the American intelligence believe al Qaeda has a significant presence, but can no longer count on the indigenous security services to act. In the parlance of the Cold War, Petraeus will now have the authority to fight a regional "dirty war." When queried about the order from July, deputy spokesman for the National Security Council Ben Chang offered no comment.

Of course, TNR looks at this as a bad thing but I look at it as a President who has done everything within his power to keep the nation safe continuing to do just that. Obama will most-certainly reduce our presence in Iraq and in spite of his blustery rhetoric will cut back in Afghanistan as well. These are the central fronts in the War on Terror and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Should Obama win, he will rescind this order the first day and our military will be hamstrung if they receive actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda, al-Quds or Hezbollah movements against US interests.

To the liberal left, the only thing that will matter on January 20, 2009 is the immediate restructuring of our domestic policies. Foreign policy will get in the way of the Great Society II and will have to take a back seat.

I'm sure that al-Qaeda and others who wish to harm us will take notice and Iran will continue their quest to become the regional power unabated.

Debate Review. Update: Biden a Slacker?

I tend to be on the side that says Palin did good but not great. She stuck to her talking points entirely too much when she had some great opportunities to hammer Biden hard.

In the first minute of the debate answering the lead-off question, Biden said this with regard to the current financial quagmire:

I think it's neither the best or worst of Washington, but it's evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had. As a consequence, you've seen what's happened on Wall Street.

If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don't think you needed any more evidence than what you see now.

So the Congress has been put -- Democrats and Republicans have been put in a very difficult spot. But Barack Obama laid out four basic criteria for any kind of rescue plan here.

He, first of all, said there has to be oversight. We're not going to write any check to anybody unless there's oversight for the -- of the secretary of Treasury.

Palin should have said something to this effect: How can Senator Obama be trusted to lay out any plans to get us through this when he took the second most money from Fannie Mae behind only another Democrat; Senator Dodd? Your own party, Senator Biden, said in 2003 that Fannie and Freddie were in good shape while Senator McCain was prescient enough to see this disaster brewing back in 2005 and earlier.

A response like that would have put Biden on the defensive immediately and got the country paying attention more deeply than they did. I was a lost opportunity.

Second she mainly stuck to talking points and canned responses, which was to be expected but c'mon, let's interject something besides McCain talking points. Another lost opportunity was when Biden said this:

Here's what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won.

When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

This is pure and utter BS and Biden knows it. A group that became Hezbollah attacked the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 with backing from Iran. They grew stronger throughout the 1990's and have become the dominant party in Lebanon. When exactly did we kick them out and when exactly did Biden or Obama say to "move NATO forces in there"? Whe they were kicked out, where exactly did Hezbollah go to? Also, I'd like to see one example of Obama's prescience on Hamas winning in "the West Bank" or even Biden mentioning it. The fact that Hamas rules in Gaza and Fatah still controls the West Bank must have escaped Biden. Charles fact checks the hell out of Biden on this one and the proof of his out and out lie is damning. These were such bald-faced lies that it should have been whacked out of the damn park by Palin if she had more insight into the events that shape the world. More on this at Wizbang!

Biden looked old and wasn't especially sharp. He talked like a politician and was good for a lie here and a senior moment there, about what one expects from the Delaware Senator.

Don't get me wrong now, Palin won it but did she do enough to convert Independents? I don't really believe so.

Update: A ratings bonanza! I would bet many who watched say "you betcha" and liked what Palin had to say. We'll see in the next few days.

Update: Joe Biden only lied fourteen times last night. For Biden, that's a slacker effort.

Chertoff: Hezbollah Makes al-Qaeda Look "Minor League"

The left will just call this blustering and lash out that Chertoff in particular and the Bush administration in general is making Hezbollah seem worse than they are but the DHS Secretary does make a salient point:

JERUSALEM — Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff warned Thursday that the radical Islamic group Hezbollah "makes Al Qaeda look like a minor league team," and poses the greatest threat to national security.

"Someone described Hezbollah like the A-team of terrorists in terms of capabilities, in terms of range of weapons they have, in terms of internal discipline," Chertoff told FOX News. "To be honest, they make Al Qaeda look like a minor league team.

"They have been more disciplined, and they've been in some senses more restrained in the kinds of attacks they carry out ... in recent years, but that's not something we can take for granted," he warned.

Left unsaid by Chertoff is that the reason al-Qaeda is a lesser foe is solely because our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have decimated them. Hezbollah by contrast has been relatively unscathed by the GWOT with the exception of the Israeli offensive in the recent past that didn't go so well for the army carrying the Star of David. They've been allowed to grow and gain political clout thanks to backing by Syria and Iran and have become the most-dangerous terror group on the planet.

Many don't recall but it was those Arabs of Palestinian descent that created modern terrorism. Nasrallah and his followers have that knowledge, a gaggle of money and a strong presence in the political process of Lebanon. A deadly combo no matter what prism it's viewed through.

Exit question: Now that Hezbollah has 37 seats in the Lebanese parliament and has veto authority, would any attack on US interests be considered an attack by Lebanon?