Death to all infidel "occupiers" of this Planet.

Long live Ebollah.
Long live the reign of our dark master.

OK, go ahead kill me.

You never got back to me with your casualty spreadsheet.
But obviously, the Lebanese casualties blew out when they could actually dig through the ruins without getting strafed etc... I was talking about the numbers announced officially during the conflict.

With respect to ratios, maybe you're right and the Israelis aren't satisfied with 10 to 1. For example, they are now holding 25 members of the Palestinian parliament hostage, for the release of one IDF soldier.

As a special bonus, here's the best succinct military analysis of the conflict I've seen. It's from a friend who spent some time in Lebanon in a UN contingent in the 80s.

I think anyone who looked at the last 20 odd years of the Leb's history could have seen that the IDF were doing a helluvajob fooling themselves that they could crush the Hezbollah with a few weeks of all-out war.

There are really only 2 good roads in the whole of Southern Lebanon, one goes kind of through the middle and the other goes along the coast. You can't get a lot of armour into S.Leb if you don't have control of those roads and the hills that overlook them. And even if you do control them, getting enough people and materials into the area in-between is very difficult.

The Hezbollah were already there, they had occupied the old UN positions and camps, and the old Israeli sponsored SLA/defacto forces positions. All these positions are key, as they command the high ground between the many valleys/wadis and overlook the roads and tracks through the area. But, more than that, they had fortified the towns wherever they could.

The old positions are all easily identified and are already on a hundred maps complete with exact co-ordinates enabling the IDF to shell and bomb the shit out of them with precision. It was in the towns, where some people stayed (and fought, apparently) and where the Hezbollah took up positions with very good anti-tank weapons (Syrian supplied) that the IDF armoured thrusts were blunted.

And now, even if the peace holds (it seems the IDF is pissing on it already) it's still going to be the Hezbollah who own the area, now even more so. They have a huge support organisation that's going to be rebuilding towns, houses, schools, medical centres and roads right now as we discuss this.

The IDF can't control the Syrian border, and can't stop munitions coming into Leb. They can't dissuade hundreds of young people from joining the Hezbollah either, especially as it was so heavy handed and killed so many of their friends and family. So essentially, all that was achieved was the destruction of some rocket launchers, which are so easily replaced they don't even have to come from Syria, and the revitalisation (as if they needed it) of the Hezbollah in South Leb.

I'll state it again, I think Israel is a legitimate nation that has every right to defend itself. But I also think they took advantage of the hostage taking situation (remember that?) to create a war scenario where they could have a free hand in S.Leb against the Hezbollah, and they made a proper hames of it.