DEBKA Story: Bush Administration Wanted Israel To Strike Hezbollah Inside Lebanon In Latest Crisis

I often use DEBKA here as a source of stories and articles and there are some that view DEBKA as more of a political gossip piece but I have found their stories over the past year to be almost 95% accurate. This time, I don't know. If this story is true, it is truly amazing. I'm going to excerpt here from the story at DEBKA so you can see just HOW amazing:

Sunday night, May 11, the Israeli army was poised to strike Hizballah. The Shiite militia was winding up its takeover of West Beirut and battling pro-government forces in the North. When he opened the regular cabinet meeting Sunday, May 11, prime minister Ehud Olmert had already received the go-ahead from Washington for a military strike to halt the Hizballah advance. The message said that President George W. Bush would not call off his visit to Israel to attend its 60th anniversary celebrations and would arrive as planned Wednesday, May 14 - even if the Israeli army was still fighting in Lebanon and Hizballah struck back against Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion airport.

Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Lvini, the only ministers in the picture, decided not to intervene in Lebanon’s civil conflict.

The plan outlined in Washington was for the Israeli Air force to bombard Hizballah’s positions in the South, the West and southern Beirut. This would give the pro-government Christian, Sunni and Druze forces the opening for a counter-attack. Israeli tanks would simultaneously drive into the South and head towards Beirut in two columns.

I know...wow. And it's not just that Washington's plan of attacking Hezbollah was not adopted by the Israelis and the Bush people got upset - the Bush people on the trip with him to Israel SCOLDED the Israelis for not attacking. See here:

Hadley in particular bluntly blamed Israel for the downfall of the pro-Western government bloc in Beirut and its surrender to the pro-Iranian, Pro-Syrian Hizballah. If Israeli forces had struck Hizballah gunmen wile on the move, he said, Hassan Nasrallah would not have seized Beirut and brought the pro-government militias to their knees.

IDF generals who were present at these conversations reported they have never seen American officials so angry or outspoken. Israel’s original blunder, they said, was its intelligence misreading of Hizballah’s first belligerent moves on May 4. At that point, Israel’s government military heads decided not to interfere, after judging those moves to be unthreatening.

The more and more I read of this article, the more I tend to believe it. Anyone worth their salt in critiquing Israeli actions in the Middle East will tell you that Olmert has been a disaster of strength and will in the region. Olmert has gone into Lebanon when he shouldn't and has not gone when he should. He has let Hamas get away with everything in the past six months, he has let Hezbollah not only rearm but let them basically dismantle the allied government of Lebanon.

The final reason why I think this story is true is this: it fits with what the Bush administration has said time and time again about the pro-West government of Lebanon - it is obvious from the past that the U.S. would want the Lebanese government protected from Hezbollah.

Israel blew it like they have been blowing it for over 3 years now. And what is the worst part of this whole mess is that Iran and Syria and Hezbollah and Hamas and Fatah have all witnessed the ineptness and dove-like actions of Olmert and it WILL set up the big assault on Israel this summer.

Israel’s Missed Boat in Lebanon

DEBKAfile’s US and military sources disclose the arguments Washington marshaled to persuade Israel to go ahead: Hizballah, after its electronic trackers had learned from the Israel army’s communication and telephone networks that not a single troop or tank was on the move, took the calculated risk of transferring more than 5,000 armed men from the South to secure the capture of West Beirut.
This presented a rare moment to take Hizballah by surprise, Washington maintained. The plan outlined in Washington was for the Israeli Air force to bombard Hizballah’s positions in the South, the West and southern Beirut. This would give the pro-government Christian, Sunni and Druze forces the opening for a counter-attack. Israeli tanks would simultaneously drive into the South and head towards Beirut in two columns.
1. The western column would take the Tyre-Sidon-Damour-Beirut coastal highway.
2. The eastern column would press north through Nabatiya, Jezzine, Ain Zchalta and Alei.
Sunday night, Olmert called Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora and his allies, the Sunni majority leader Saad Hariri, head of the mainline Druze party Walid Jumblatt and Christian Phalanges chief Samir Geagea and informed them there would be no Israeli strike against Hizballah. Jerusalem would not come to their aid.
According to American sources, the pro-Western front in Beirut collapsed then and there, leaving Hizballah a free path to victory. The recriminations from Washington sharpened day by day and peaked with President Bush’s arrival in Israel.
Our sources report that, behind the protestations of undying American friendship and camaraderie shown in public by the US president, prime minister and Shimon Peres, Bush and his senior aides bitterly reprimanded Israel for its passivity in taking up the military challenge and crushing an avowed enemy in Lebanon.