Hezbollah Has Fired 3,333 Rockets
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James Joyner | Wednesday, August 9, 2006 |
Hezbollah passed a symmetrical and staggering number this morning, firing its 3333th rocket at Israeli civilians.
Hezbollah guerrillas fired more 100 rockets at Israeli towns on Wednesday — raising the total since the start of the conflict to 3,333 — including several medium-range missiles that landed near the West Bank town of Jenin and south of the Israeli city of Afula, police said. By mid-afternoon, the guerrillas had fired 132 rockets, but no casualties were immediately reported, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld
That a terrorist group could amass such an arsenal is stunning. It’s a good reminder that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the era of state-sponsored terrorism is still with us, despite the success of relative independents like al Qaeda.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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That a terrorist group could amass such an arsenal is stunning.
It helps to have two nations supplying you with weapons, while the rest of the world condemns your opponent.
It is funny how you hear about groups breaking into military installations looking for weapons that are being shipped from the US to Israel, while not hearing about groups doing the same, looking for weapons shipped from Iran & Syria to Hezbollah. Maybe the UN peacekeepers should be doing that?
It should be noted, since the press hasn't gone into much detail, that the majority of the rockets fired by Hezbollah are not "missiles", but rather rocket-propelled artillery. Basically instead of using a cannon and a charge to fire their shells, they use rockets. This is important because having 3,333 artillery shells doesn't seem like quite the arsenal as having 3,333 missiles.
Also these shells don't have any kind of accuracy, you can aim them in the general direction of a city, but you have no idea where they'll land. Keeping that in mind, I'm surprised Hezbollah is firing them anywhere close to Palestinian areas like Jenin. Let one stray shell kill some poor Palestinian boy, that should end Hezbollah's Arab support.
Will we get an update when it reaches 4,444?
And they're still not even getting one casualty per rocket.
As I've said before, tactically these rockets are absolutely useless. Their only value lies in the "fear factor" they provide.
Hezbollah is actually 3 wings: a social services wing, a military wing, and a terrorist wing. The military wing is what amassed these rockets. The conventional terrorist wing has been largely dormant so far.
erg: By that logic, Israel is divided into thousands of wings. Only the military wing has been bombing Lebanon.
James,
That makes sense doesn't it? You wouldn't blame a police officer in the States for killing babies in Iraq.
My point isn't so much to assign blame (all groups report to Nasrallah) as to emphasize that we have here a genuine above ground militia, so its not surprising they have sophisticated weaponry.
I have a question regarding the whole idea of a immediate cease fire. Why is it Israel who is supposed to 'prove their good intentions.' Why can't Hezbollah stop launching rockets first?
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