sorry about the delayed response chris

Submitted by bos (United Kingdom), Dec 19, 2007 at 08:32

My apologies, I did assume that when you said 'possibly a member' that you meant a member of the military wing. He certainly wasnt a member of the media/propoganda branch of the Party. As you say they are incredibly disciplined and he would not have admitted a flaw in the Party line, which is very clear and utterly uncompromising in its call for the destruction of Israel.

You are also correct in your assessment of there military profesionalism. This was engendered in them by the Iranians who started training them before the Party of God had even been so named. The Iranian army also contains extremely disciplined and profesional units, this does not change the fact that history shows a massively widespread willingness to welcome death in conflict amongst these troops. the Quran tells muslim warriors not to throw there lives away, but makes it clear that death in Jihad is a blessing.

The pragmatic realism of those who indoctrinate and train the troops of Hizballah, does not change the apocolyptic expectation of the shia fundamentalist world view and at this stage of the game I do not understand how there are still people who express some interest or knowledge of the subject yet fail to recognise the very basics of the opposaitions world view.

I did notice that their Pr Videos (I have a small collection which I obtained in lebanon from Hizballah members) portray them as competent and disciplined but there emphasis always seemed to me to be on Courage, discipline, the inevitability of victory, the glory of martrydom and a contempt for the humanity of the enemy.

I feelo you also underestimate the qualities of other Arab armies, the Jordanians have always had very competent and disciplined regiments and in 1973 both the egyptians and Syrians showed massive improvements in discipline and organisation, the failure to recognise this is part of teh Pr campaign to portray Israel as an unassailable bully boy inventing false threats to its security.

I also dont think the NSa, CIA or Mossad for that matter rely on polite requests to ISP's in arab countries.

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