Knee-jerk idiocy

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that the fighting in Lebanon would end when two Israeli soldiers were freed, rocket attacks stopped and the Lebanese army deployed along the border. These are the conditions he insists must be met before Israel can agree to a ceasefire. Olmert must think the international community to be fools.

Let's take just one of his stipulated conditions - that the Lebanese army be deployed along the southern border.

Olmert's IDF has bombed several Lebanese military bases throughout the week. They bombed at least two bases and possibly a third last Friday, two on Monday and two more on Tuesday, one was bombed repeatedly including during an attempted rescue operation by the Lebanese military to extract soldiers trapped in the rubble. Assorted other less well defined military targets have been hit as well. Such as a squad of soldiers in a fishing port in the far North or radar installations. All this in the name of purportedly fighting Hezbollah.

Does PM Olmert seriously believe that these are actions conducive to his alleged goals?

Then there is the fact that, as the Lebanese Embassy in Washington DC puts it, the South "has become virtually cut off from the rest of the country after the major roads and bridges leading to it were bombed."

How does PM Olmert expect the Lebanese military to get there?

The PR coming out of the Israeli government is that they are only deliberately targeting Hezbollah and related targets. If that's true then they clearly consider the Lebanese military to be Hezbollah related. Which begs the question of why would Olmert insist that an entity which he is deliberately and actively targeting as ostensibly part of the enemy move closer to Israel with a military force?