Tom Ricks, military reporter for the Washington Post, accused Israel Tuesday of intentionally failing to destroy a number of rocket launchers in south Lebanon, to maintain a moral defense to its striking civilian of targets in Lebanon.
Ricks, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and recently published his new book "Fiasco" on the failure of the American war in Iraq, made the comments during an interview on CNN.
Ricks, who was hosted on the Howard Kurtz's weekly media review show on the CNN news network, said: "Civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some US military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hizbullah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon."
Shocked by the prominent commentator's accusation, interviewer Howard Kurtz replied, "hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hizbullah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?"
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