--By CNN's Ben Wedeman

The unmistakable stench of decomposing human flesh hit me as I entered the shrapnel-scarred house on a hillside overlooking the southern Lebanese village of Aitaroun. The village was in ruins, having been pounded by Israeli artillery for days.

Many of the inhabitants of Aitaroun had fled. But not the man in this house, whose name I didn’t know. He had died in his living room—from precisely what I can’t say—several days before. The floor was shiny with dried blood; broken glass from the shattered windows crunched under our shoes.

Cameraman Joe Duran and I had come to Aitaroun during a brief lull in Israel’s campaign against Hizballah in the summer of 2006.

The war began on July 12th when Hizballah guerrillas crossed the Lebanese-Israeli border and ambushed an Israeli patrol, killing three soldiers and abducting two others, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. The Israeli government now believes Goldwasser and Regev are dead.


Hizballah demanded Israel release several Lebanese nationals in Israeli prisons (including Samir Qantar, who in 1979 as a member of the Arab Liberation Front had taken part in a particularly grisly attack on Israeli civilians in the town of Nahariya,) plus an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for the two Israeli soldiers.

Israel refused, and chose the military option, launching a campaign of punishing air raids across Lebanon with the stated goal of winning the freedom of the two soldiers and, in the process, of teaching Hizballah a lesson it would never forget.

At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared: “We will not give in to blackmail and will not negotiate with terrorists when it comes to the lives of Israel Defence Forces soldiers.”

But this Sunday, the Israeli cabinet, led by Ehud Olmert, voted 22 to 3 in favour of a German-brokered exchange deal. In the end, the deal wasn’t dramatically different from what Hizballah proposed in the first place.

So what was the Lebanon war about? Was it about the abducted soldiers or was it, as many believe, part of a US-inspired plan to crush Hizballah and send a stern warning to its main backer, Iran?

This we do know: it left more than 1200 Lebanese and nearly 160 Israelis dead. Thousands more were wounded. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless. Lebanon’s economy was severely damaged. The war caused billions of dollars of damage on both sides.

When the fighting came to an end on August 14th, the two Israeli soldiers (dead or alive, we don't know) were still in Hizballah’s hands. Hizballah was still intact and is today arguably stronger than ever before.

Lebanese suffered, Israelis suffered. The only ones who certainly benefited from the whole sad, grisly, gruesome, horrifying affair were the corporations who manufacture the weapons and the ammunition.

That war is almost always an utter and total waste is obvious. Well, it should be obvious, but it isn’t. And here I’m talking about real war, not the war you see on tided-up, blood-and-guts-free TV news or the absurd version that passes for a depiction of war in the movies. I mean what you see when you’re in a war zone—the seemingly random, mindless destruction (smart bombs aren’t as smart as the brochures and the spokesmen confidently claim,) the mangled and mutilated bodies, the terrified, angry, traumatised people, the women and children and the old who don’t take part in the fighting but who always are the ones who suffer the most.

It was people like these who are on my mind when I think of what a complete waste the Lebanon war was.

On another day during the war in south Lebanon, also in Aitaroun, I was with another cameraman, the tall and laconic veteran Brian Puchiati. We had made our way to the village with a group of journalists, and walked, stunned speechless, by the extent of the destruction. Houses transformed into rubble. Dead animals rotting in the street and the fields. Huge craters everywhere.

We arrived at an intersection, when an old woman stuck their head out of a door. She saw we were clearly not soldiers and called back inside.

Moments later dozens of people emerged from the doorway. They were pale, their eyes reflected a horror and numbness I’ve seen in other war zones. They came out into the street first furtively, then frantically.

“Get us out of here,” a woman pleaded to me. “Please, get us out of here.”

I asked another of those who streamed out of the doorway what he had seen, what he had experienced. He was short on details, but long on shock.

“It was unbearable, unbearable,” the man, Ahmed Bassam, told me. He was going straight to Beirut, to get as far away as possible from his nightmares.

I didn’t cover the war from Israel, but I’m sure my colleagues who were there witnessed scenes of trauma, devastation and desperation.

The Lebanon war in 2006 was a waste. Regardless of what its aims were, regardless of all that was said by Israel, by Hizballah, or whomever, it was a waste.