2-Feb-12: Quote of the day: What our neighbors are capable of doing

The web has hundreds of photos like this one: a terrorist group
fires a rocket from a densely populated neighborhood
of Gaza City into Israel on January 8, 2009. [Source]. Two hundred
thousand more rockets are in place and ready to be fired
as soon as the order is given. 

There's a mind-numbing effect that sometimes follows from knowing the dimensions of an authentic life-and-death problem. What, to illustrate, will ordinary people living from the borders of Israel make of the disclosure today that  200,000 missiles are aimed at Israel by our terrorist enemies?

That's the serious, realistic and professional assessment given by the head of Israel's military intelligence, Major General Aviv Kochavi today in a formal address to the Herzliya Conference and quoted in Haaretz. APF quotes him saying:

"One in every 10 houses in south Lebanon is a storage facility for missiles or rockets or a launch pad for devices that are increasingly accurate and destructive. From Lebanon, Syria and of course from Iran, they can hit the heart of our cities, and the whole region of Tel Aviv is within their reach."

How do you even go about visualizing 200,000 rockets?

Turning to the threat from the east that tops the list of security concerns here, Kochavi said the IDF believes Iran already has more than 4 tons of low-grade enriched uranium and 100 kilograms of uranium enriched at 20%. Once this supply is enriched to the 90% level, the Iranians will have sufficient to produce 4 nuclear bombs. And then? "They will need a year from when the order is given," Kochavi is quoted saying, "to produce a weapon."