CNN anders

In het programma 'Reliable Sources', uitgezonden op 6 augustus 2006, 10 uur (local time) neemt anchorman Howard Kurtz contact op met Thomas Ricks, Pentagon verslaggever voor The Washington Times, met opvallend nieuws:

KURTZ: Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

RICKS: I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

Dus, als ik het goed begrijp, is Israël zo blij met de aanvallen van Hezbollah op haar burgers, om een solide excuus te hebben voor haar geweld in Libanon, dat ze een paar lanceerbases met rust laten...

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