The collateral deaths from a 500 pound PGM are nauseating. Yes, it may hit the exact grid reference intended, but ascertaining both presence before and confirmation after requires additional assets. How exactly is this supposed to bring the FARC into the political process? This is the kind of thing that results in sleeper cell dormancies and new recruits from relatives. The FARC eventually has little choice but to join the process, or be exterminated (which it seems happens anyway) and must rely on a Manchurian candidate to ensure survival of the theologies, or go out i a blaze of glory with an act of increased devastation.

Something funny about the 6km helicopter insertion. Have you ever spent the night in a jungle? You know, where you can hear a twig snap 100 yards away? Jungles aren’t quiet like walking down a dirt road in Tikrit, or even trekking over the hills outside Qalat. The most telling sign that something changed in the jungle is when everything gets quiet. When you sit still for long enough, all the fauna start making the night noises again, and when you move, they all shut up.

What is a helicopter 6km away with a 3 hour foot patrol to target through jungle in the night? Loud. Not only does every person within about 20km of the flight path hear it traveling overhead, the heliports would logically be watched. The whole, call me if you see anything leave at night and you earn $50. Fail to call me and I decapitate your wife thing.

It is nearly inconceivable that a helo insertion would work for this with only a 6km offset. I would put smart money on expecting failure to justify testing PGM area weapons for efficacy to shift fire to Pakistan.

I suspect Hezbollah, having moved toward fully accepting the political process (reminds me of the Philippines – where the U.S. claimed victory over the “insurgents” through a hearts and minds campaign that saw every insurgent issue given in to, and their leader walking out of the woods with the group becoming a political party) has found the cocaine trade with the U.S. more lucrative than fighting Israel, although as a political platform, anti-occupation has to rank high on the posters.

If the military elite in the U.S. can’t find a threat, what sort of job security is there these days?