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Inside Hizballah, Big Miscalculations

[Washington Post] Anthony Shadid - In speeches and iconography, Hizballah has cast the war as a "divine victory." But a reconstruction of the period before and soon after Hizballah's seizure of the Israeli soldiers reveals a series of miscalculations on the part of the movement that defies its carefully cultivated reputation for planning and caution. Hizballah's leadership sometimes waited days to evacuate the poor, densely populated neighborhood in southern Beirut that is its stronghold. Only as Israeli warplanes began reducing the headquarters to rubble did they realize the scope of what the Israeli military intended. Hizballah fighters were still planning to train in Iran the very month that the soldiers were seized; Hizballah leaders in Beirut had assured Lebanese officials of a relatively uneventful summer.
2006-10-09 01:00:00
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