:
Wed Aug 16 -

Lebanon:
WINNERS & LOSERS -

Everybody's got an opinion... Some people are even saying that Hizbollah won. At best, I think, it was a mixed victory: Israel won some and Hizbollah won some.

But the more important issue is: who lost. I believe that the State of Lebanon was a casualty of this conflict. An article today by John Kifner seems to validate that. The S.O.L., for all practical purposes, has been supplanted by the Hibollah organization.

*Hezbollah was not a state within a state, a professor said, but "a state within a nonstate, actually."

"It was a coup d'état," said a political analyst aligned with the democratic reform bloc.*

There is no State of Lebanon
anymore except on paper.

:: A Vaccum: IHT ::

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