Both sides are to blame!

Israeli PM Olmert has laid out conditions under which he will call off the IDF's attacks on Lebanon. Among them is the demand that the Lebanese military occupy southern Lebanon to prevent cross-border attacks by Hezbollah.

Having deliberately bombed two Lebanese military bases and possibly a third, repeatedly bombed Lebanese airports including the country's only international airport, bombed bridges and major roads all over the country... how exactly does Olmert expect the already relatively weak Lebanese military to get to the southern border in the first place???

This is all very reminiscent of how past Israeli governments have systematically bombed Palestinian Authority facilities, including police stations, and then turned around and demanded that the very infrastructure which they'd just systematically dismantled with heavy explosives somehow exert itself to control the heavily armed terrorist groups operating from within Palestinian territory.

One can only conclude that having the Lebanese military even attempt to stop the cycle of violence in the south isn't really one of Israel's goals. And if that isn't one of their actual goals then Olmert's other conditions are equally suspect.

Frankly, it seems to me that Russian President Vladmir Putin is the only world leader with the balls to state the stunningly obvious - that recovering the two kidnapped IDF soldiers clearly is not Israel's only goal or even it's primary goal. The evidence speaks for itself.