Hizb'Allah's victory

Iran is helping cement Hizb'Allah's victory over Israel with money. That's the MONEY that HIZB'ALLAH is publicly USING to repair LEBANON -- in other words, to buy GOODWILL.

And Sheikh Nasrallah gave a publicly televised victory speech discussing the work that Hizb'Allah would do to repair Lebanese homes.

Sheik Nasrallah’s speech was interpreted by some as a kind of watershed in Lebanese politics, establishing his group on an equal footing with the official government.

“It was a coup d’état,” said Jad al-Akjaoui, a political analyst aligned with the democratic reform bloc. He was among the organizers of the anti-Syrian demonstrations after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri two years ago that led to international pressure to rid Lebanon of 15 years of Syrian control.

Rami G. Khouri, a columnist for The Daily Star in Beirut, wrote that Sheik Nasrallah “seemed to take on the veneer of a national leader rather than the head of one group in Lebanon’s rich mosaic of political parties.”

“In tone and content, his remarks seemed more like those of a president or a prime minister should be making while addressing the nation after a terrible month of destruction and human suffering,” Mr. Khouri wrote. “His prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.”

Defense Minister Elias Murr said Tuesday that the government would not seek to disarm Hezbollah.

“The army is not going to the south to strip the Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not,” he said, showing just how difficult reining in the militia will most likely be in the coming weeks and months. He added that “the resistance,” meaning Hezbollah, had been cooperating with the government and there was no need to confront it.

This is a complete and unmitigated disaster. Olmert's mismanagement of Israel's incursion gets worse by the day. Israeli lives will be lost because the IDF, the Mossad and the Israeli politicians failed Israel.