…this disturbing piece by Joe Galloway, senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder, is yet another reminder why the US has to look at what is going on in Lebanon within a wider context:

“As Israel attacks deeper into Lebanon and the civil war in Iraq grows ever more dangerous and unpredictable, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist on the Middle East this week raised a new, interesting and chilling point to consider. Retired Army Col. Patrick Lang asked who’s at greatest risk if either Lebanon or Iraq spirals out of control and the Shiite militias in Iraq, who up to this point have been told to leave American forces alone, decide to act against the 130,000 U.S. troops occupying Iraq. However invincible the military of the world’s only superpower might seem, every army has its weak spot. Historically, it centers on logistics, the supply line tail that wags the dog…The lifeline for American forces in Iraq is a 400-plus-mile main supply route that runs from Kuwait through Shia-dominated and Iranian-infiltrated southern Iraq to Baghdad and points north and west. Along that route, trucks and tankers driven by third-country nationals – Turks, Pakistanis and others – haul 95 percent of the beans and bullets for our troops and 100 percent of the fuel that our tanks and Bradleys and Humvees gulp at staggering rates. That route runs through the heart of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim south, an area now thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and under the sway of well-armed Shiite militiamen and Iraqi police who are often indistinguishable from the militiamen and sometimes the same people.”

Hat-tip: Michael Yon