US obsessed by July war

The US and Israel keep reminding us that they beat Hizbollah in the July 2006 war. Still all the news emerging from the Pentagon confirms what even the most simple minded Israeli politician knows—they lost, and lost bad.

So take a look at the row raging inside the US military, reported here in the Washington Post:

Soon after the fighting ended, some military officers began to warn that the short, bloody and relatively conventional battle foreshadowed how future enemies of the United States might fight.

Since then, the Defense Department has dispatched as many as a dozen teams to interview Israeli officers who fought against Hezbollah. The Army and Marine Corps have sponsored a series of multimillion-dollar war games to test how U.S. forces might fare against a similar foe.

U.S. military experts were stunned by the destruction that Hezbollah forces, using sophisticated antitank guided missiles, were able to wreak on Israeli armor columns.

Unlike the guerrilla forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, who employed mostly hit-and-run tactics, the Hezbollah fighters held their ground against Israeli forces in battles that stretched as long as 12 hours.

They were able to eavesdrop on Israeli communications and even struck an Israeli ship with a cruise missile.