August 20, 2006

When E.F. Hezbollah Speaks...

...people listen.

I guess that answers this.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:29 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 19, 2006

Photojournalism in Crisis

David D. Perlmutter in Editor and Publisher:

The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks on the people who take news pictures and on the basic premise that nonfiction news photo- and videography is possible.

I'm not sure, however, if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 18, 2006

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fisk

As the Islamic Armegeddon apparently approaches just four days hence,
I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention all the thinks I'm going to miss as a result.

Car Swarms
Sadly, this uniquely Palestinian cultural curiosity is about to expire, along with those who practice it. I never quite understood the odd fascination with retrieving bits of flesh from martyrs "liberated" of their earthly chains courtesy of the Israeli Air Force, but it was an interesting custom to view all the same. I'll have to find another pointless expression of impotent rage to fill this void in my life. Is Randi Rhodes still on the air?

"Differently-Abled" Suicide Bombers
Say what you will about their people skills and willingness to accept those of other beliefs, the various terrorist groups in the Middle East have always believed in diversity, even allowing the mentally infirm and gullible a direct shot at paradise.

If only we cared enough to extend equal opportunities across all strata and mental levels of our society, perhaps we could be as great a culture. Then again, Cynthia McKinney was elected twice, so perhaps we're doing better in this regard than I originally thought.

Sand
The price is certainly going to go up. Of course, glass will become much more economical, so it might balance out.

Arab Media
I'll be honest: they've provided me a lot of material in past weeks, and I'm going to miss their fine original craftsmanship, which was openly appreciated in our own media outlets as well. Bill Keller is going to have to find a new mentor, but no doubt he'll land on his feet on a nice marble floor. So long, Qana Chameleons, and thanks for all the Fisk.

Hummus
No, not really.

You may look at this admittedly short list and ask, "hey, what about all the things in the "Great Satan" and the "Little Satan" that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadabbracadabrajad has promised to destroy as he brings forth the holy cleansing fire of the Hidden Imam?"

And I'll look back at you with a smile on may face and say those four sweet, magic words, "North Korea-designed missiles."

I'll see you on the 23rd.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:09 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Southern Hospitality

The Lebanese Interior Minstry is outraged over a video showing Lebanese soldiers offering tea to Israeli soldiers during the invasion of Marjeyoun on August 10. The Interior Ministry is ordering the base commander, Gen. Adnan Daoud, to be placed under arrest.

Here is an account of what transpired via CNN:

There have been conflicting accounts of what happened at Marjeyoun.

In the video, two Israeli tanks roll up to the gate of the Marjeyoun garrison, where a white surrender flag flutters outside the barracks.

Inside, Lebanese soldiers hold trays with glasses of tea, which they offer to the Israelis. The encounter appears merely social.

However, it is possible that unpleasant parts of the video were deleted during editing.

This is in opposition to accounts of what happened when Israeli soldiers arrived according to several Arab media outlets.

Arab-language network Al-Jazeera has quoted Hezbollah as saying "violent battles" took place with their militants, and Arab news networks Al-Manar and Al-Arabiya reported at least two Israeli tanks were destroyed in the fighting.

Apparently, the new Arab media definition of "destroyed" has been expanded to cover the spilling of milk and sugar on army vehicles. That, or they are lying, and who would expect that from professional media organizations?

While I certainly wouldn't want American soldiers extending this amount of hospitality to foreign invaders, I can't say I blame the Lebanese. They are, after all, only following our example.

The Administration has taken the "tea and cookies" route in dealing with the invasion of illegal immigrants across our southern border for years, so perhaps this model behavior explains this exchange between the Israeli and Lebanese commanders on the scene, as captured on the video:

At one point in the video, Daoud and an Israeli soldier have the following exchange, as translated by CNN's Octavia Nasr:

Daoud: "Don't we need to tell our bosses?"

Israeli soldier: "Tell whoever you want."

Daoud: "We need to brief them on what happened."

Israeli soldier: "We briefed (U.S. President) Bush. You brief whoever you want."

Daoud: "We need to brief Bush too."

While translating democracy to Arab culture continues to be problematic of the President, at least it appears his overly friendly "southern hospitality" is finding admirers around the world.

That, or Lebanese soldiers with small arms don't feel like getting themselves killed for nothing. And after all Hezbollah has done for Lebanon...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:37 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 17, 2006

A Blip

As you know by now, a liberal Detroit judge has ruled against the NSA's terrorist communications intercept program initiated by President Bush. If you fan out across the blogosphere, everyone has an opinion on the ruling.

I'm not really up to it, so I'll go with the professionals, starting with the Volokh Conspiracy Eugene Volokh:

...the judge's opinion in today's NSA eavesdropping case seems not just ill-reasoned, but rhetorically ill-conceived. A careful, thoughtful, detailed, studiously calm and impartial-seeming opinion might have swung some higher court judges (and indirectly some Justices, if it comes to that). A seemingly angry, almost partisan-sounding opinion ("[The orders] violate the Separation of Powers ordained by the very Constitution of which this President is a creature," emphasis added, thanks to a caller for pointing this out) is unlikely to sway the other judges — especially when the opinion is rich in generalities, platitudes ("There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution"), and "obviously"'s, and poor in detailed discussion of some of the government's strongest arguments.

Dale Carpenter:

I am one of those who believes that the NSA program is not authorized by the AUMF, that it violates FISA, that FISA is a constitutional exercise of congressional power, and that therefore the NSA program is both illegal and unconstitutional. I have written so here. But I am less sure this is an issue courts should review, and even less sure that this case is one they should review.

So while the much sexier questions of executive power, the First Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment, will no doubt occupy many of us over the coming months (as they already have), I'd be willing to bet that at either the appellate court or the Supreme Court the suit will be dismissed for lack of standing.

Orin Kerr:

I've just read through the Fourth Amendment part of Judge Taylor's opinion on the NSA domestic wiretapping opinion, and, well, um, it's kind of hard to know what to make of it. There really isn't any analysis; rather, it's just a few pages of general ruminations about the Fourth Amendment (much of it incomplete and some of it simply incorrect) followed by the statement in passing that the program is "obviously" in violation of the Fourth Amendment...

It's hardly obvious that the program — or some aspect of it — violates the Fourth Amendment; that's the issue before the court, and my sense is that we really don't know enough to answer it without knowing the facts...

I can come up with explanations for why a district court judge inclined to rule against the program would put out an opinion that isn't quite ready for prime time. For example, Senator Specter's bill would take these issues away from the district court, so the choice might be to speak now or never. But at least based on the court's Fourth Amendment analysis, I suspect this opinion is important more for its political impact and its triggering of appellate review than for any analysis in the opinion itself.

Mark Levin hits many of the same points. The consensus among these legal scholars is that the judge made a very weak ruling, and seem to indicate that it will probably get tossed at a September 7 appellate court hearing.

My gut reaction? The ACLU venue-shopped to get a judge that fit their needs, and won a short-term political victory. In the long run, it won't affect the operations of the NSA program all that much, if at all.

I just can't get too excited or irate over a case that seems assured to die a quick death.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:38 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Pocketbook Jihad

Look at any of the casualty figures coming out of Lebanon in the world's major media organizations, and you'll see something very close to this:

The Lebanese death toll, meanwhile, rose to 842 when rescue workers pulled 32 bodies from the rubble in the southern town of Srifa, target of some of Israel's heaviest bombardment in the 34-day conflict. The figure was assembled from reports by security and police officials, doctors and civil defense workers, morgue attendants as well as the military.

The Israeli toll was 157, including 118 soldiers, according to its military and government.

What is missing from this death toll (which CBS News has now quietly removed from this web report) are the casualties sustained by Hezbollah.

Many people would presumably be interested in knowing the toll the war has had on Hezbollah, as Hezbollah's actions did indeed trigger this latest war. But a recalcitrant media has steadfastly refused to provide these figures.

The Israel Defense Forces, as a standard practice, makes an effort to photograph and document each Hezbollah fighter confirmed killed, and also estimates the number of unconfirmed/unclaimed Hezbollah casualties from air strikes and artillery fire. Certainly, a media that has spent a considerable amount of their time and resources ferreting out and reporting America's secret national security programs could easily access unclassified information, some of which has been published on the IDF's own web site. Even a cursory analysis of the world's media reporting out of Lebanon reveals that in photographs, on video and radio broadcasts, and in print, Hezbollah casualties are almost never reported. So why does the media choose to underreport Hezbollah's casualties?

The answer may at least partially lie in stories of Lebanese casualties that the world media does choose to report. Story after story, photo after photo, dead and distraught Lebanese civilians clog the mediastream, building a false, grim montage of a war in which primarily Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians die.

This is not the whole truth of this war, but a partial truth developed through complacency and an apparent willful disregard to report the facts on the ground. Instead of seeking and publishing the entire truth, newsrooms have decided that they will publish the stories and images framed by foreign, mostly Arab Muslim reporters, even though their own cultural interests in these events are a clear and undeniable conflict of interest precluding even a pretense of unbiased reporting.

This is beyond bias, it is a reckless and willful disregard for reporting the whole truth in favor of reporting "news" that is easier to sell in a larger world media market. The casualty statistics are there, but the media sticks to the narrative they have helped create because while honest reporting is a goal, the business of the media business is business.

If it "bleeds it leads," but only if what leads sells advertising. News consumers around the world consume the news that more closely matches their perceptions of how reality should be, and stories critical of Hezbollah, stories that show their failures and deaths, don't sell in world population featuring 1.3 billion Muslims that hope for Israel's demise, or at the very best are indifferent to their fate. It is anti-Semitism by cashflow, a pocketbook jihad that buys the media's silence.

This morning I received a comment from an IDF sergeant, stating in part:

It's not classified, but I dought[sic] you'll ever see these figures in the MSM. According to our statistics we (the IDF) have scored OVER 600 CONFIRMED enemy kills (photgrphed [sic], documented, claimed and added to the killboard, I personally scored 2 kills to add to my record) and another 800-1200 unconfirmed/unclaimed kills (this estimation includes kills form airstrikes/artillary shelling). The Hizb'Allah losses aren't counted, on the most part, against the official number of Lebanease[sic] casualties.

Hezbollah has suffered 500-600+ confirmed fatalities, and estimates are that another 800-1200 are dead; perhaps half of Hezbollah's armed forces, and yet the media chooses to ignore these readily accessed figures in favor of a more marketable Lebanese civilian body count.

The media chooses to underreport Hezbollah's casualties because it is bad for business, while it unashamedly pimps civilian corpses for profit. That is just one of the ugly realities of this war that isn't considered "all the news that's fit to print."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:00 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Murtha Lied (Confirmed)

Patterico has directly confirmed that Democratic Rep. John Murtha just flat out lied about when he was briefed about Haditha.

It appears that the DNC's retreat specialist is in trouble.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:01 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Accuracy Strikes Middle East Reporting

From the front page of today's JPost:

Take note of the headline and contrast it against the caption: "Hizbullah fighter watches IDF Wednesday."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quick Hits

Pat Dollard, the former agent who traded in the glitz of Hollywood for the grit of the Iraqi desert, is nearing completion of the feature film and follow-up cable series for Young Americans, which chronicles the lifes of Marines fighting in Al Anbar Province. He also has a "combat journal" that will be featured in Maxim magazine in November. Maxim Editor-in-Chief, Jimmy Jellinek, said the journal was, "the best thing written about the Marine Corps at war since the book 'Full Metal Jacket' was based on." That book, in case you were wondering, was Gustav Hadford's "The Short Timers."

For folks new to Confederate Yankee in the past weeks, I invite you to take a look at Ward Brewer's Beauchamp Tower Corp's "Operation Enduring Service" blog. BTC is a not-for-profit corporation focused on two awesome goals. Part of their effort is to acquire World War II-era warships and turn them into museums.

BTC recently went to Mexico to acquire the former DD-574 John Rogers, the longest-serving Fletcher-class destroyer in the world, from the Mexican Navy, where combat veteran of Iwo Jima, Guandalcanal, and raids on Japan was on active duty until 2002. Ward has some cool pictures of the aging veteran from this recent foray, and milblogger John Donovan of Argghhh! chronicled the trip as well Start here and go. John Rogers will make its way to Mobile, Alabama where it will be turned into a Maritime Museum, and will be rededicated in November.

Brewer's Operation Enduring Service also has a major humainitarian goal as well, of converting retired naval transport vessels into state-of-the-art hurricane response ships to operate throughout the Gulf states and eastern seaboard. surprisingly enough, the federal government, particularly the U.S. Maritime Adminstration, is fighting this effort tooth and nail. Why they are against donating ships (that they intent to scrap anyway) to a life-saving effort is nothing less than insane.

Speaking of insane, Patterico demolishes sockpuppet master Glenn Greenwald (again) and his inane defense of the proven and admitted photo-staging that occurred in Lebanon. Ace piles on as well, as only Ace can do.

Oh, and torture? It works. Dolts can say otherwise, but it has been around for thousands of years becuase of it's effectiveness. I can sleep at night if pulling out a few fingernails (or worse) kept several thousand airline passengers from plunging into the Atlantic from 30,000 feet. As Al Davis says, "Just win, baby."

Ideals are nice, but don't do you much good as a corpse.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 16, 2006

A Caption Too Small

Yes, I'm getting just as tired of this kind of stuff as you are (my bold):

Lebanese civil defense volunteers unload a coffin from a refrigerator outside the Hakoomy hospital in port city of Tyre, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2006. At least 842 people were killed in Lebanon during the 34-day campaign, most of them civilians. Israel suffered 157 dead _ including 118 soldiers.(AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)

According to the Associated Press "most" (by definition more than half; at least 421) of those who died were civilians. Considering AP's recent track record in Lebanon, I'm disinclined to believe their claim. Their vague figures run in opposition to what we see here from Strategy Page:

On the ground, Hizbollah lost nearly 600 of its own personnel, and billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons.

Ynet News, citing the IDF as a source three days ago, states that 530 Hezbollah members have been killed.

If the Hezbollah deaths cited by StrategyPage and Ynet are correct and the AP's overall casualty count is close to accurate, then more than 60% of those killed were Hezbollah fighters, even as Hezbollah attempted to hide behind old women and children.

However, when looking at the figures provided by the Associated Press, one would be tempted to infer that Hezbollah's attacks were more precisely targeted at Israeli military forces, as the AP points out that the majority of the Israelis killed by Hezbollah--118 of 157--were soldiers, while "most" of those killed by Israel were civilians.

But the AP conveniently leaves out the fact that half of the Israeli civilians killed were the result of 4,000 indiscriminately targeted Hezbollah rockets purposefully aimed at civilian areas. It also leaves out the glaring fact that Lebanese civilian casualties were so high precisely because Hezbollah chose to fight a war using Lebanese civilians as shields.

Israel specifically targeted precision weapons and artillery fire on infrastructure and Hezbollah targets, while Hezbollah aimed their rockets almost exclusively at Israeli population centers.

In the media war against Israel, somehow the captions are never quite big enough to fit that most basic truth.

Update: An IDF First Sergeant clarifies the situation with first-hand knowledge in the comments:

CY, this is a great post you have written here, though I feel I have to eluminate a few things.

I'm an IDF first sergeant and recently returned from Lebanon. And the way things are develping I might return there sooner then I've hoped.

Hizb'Allah casualties. The numbers you have presented are quite close to accurate, but they don't show the whole picture. It's not classified, but I dought you'll ever see these figures in the MSM. According to our statistics we (the IDF) have scored OVER 600 CONFIRMED enemy kills (photgrphed, documented, claimed and added to the killboard, I personally scored 2 kills to add to my record) and another 800-1200 unconfirmed/unclaimed kills (this estimation includes kills form airstrikes/artillary shelling). The Hizb'Allah losses aren't counted, on the most part, against the official number of Lebanease casualties. Hizb'Allah admits to loosing only 58 of it's own men and 21 more from their ally - the Amal terrorist organisation.
How much troops Hizb'Allah has really lost we'll probably never know since they're quite unlickly to release this information.

Hizb'Allah also lost a lot of weapons and equipment, and quite large amounts of equipment were captured by us.

But the operation wasn't deemed as successful since we didn't get our boys back. Also we (the soldiers) feel that some high ranking officers in the Northern Command had little idea what they where doing. Our political leadership could've should've done more - like sending us in early on/buying us more time to finish the job.

At any rate, Olmert chose to succumb to the will of Kofi Anan and his Useless Nations with their Hizb'Allah backed Associated Propaganda and al-Reuters spitting lies all over the world about disproportionate response and us indiscriminately
killing civilians.

But this isn't over by any means, this "cease fire" is just a temporary respite before all hell will break loose once again. And then we'll finish what we've started.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:57 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

"I'm Going to Die, Aren't I?"

Almost five years after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan, the release of 1,613 emergency calls made under that bright blue September sky are like ripping scars:

"Listen to me, ma'am," that operator told a panicky Melissa Doi during a 20-minute phone call. "You're not dying. You're in a bad situation, ma'am."

A portion of Doi's end of the conversation was played for jurors in April at the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" Doi asked the dispatcher.

"Ma'am, just stay calm for me, OK?" the dispatcher said. The conversation ended with the operator trying vainly to speak with Doi, a financial manager for IQ Financial Systems: "Not dead, not dead," the operator said to no response. "They sound like deep sleep."

The phone line cut out. Doi never made it out of the World Trade Center.

"Oh, my lord," said the operator, whose words to Doi were previously not made public.

At Hot Air, AllahPundit managed to listen to about 90 seconds of Doi's 24-minute call before he had enough.

I admire him for getting as far as he did.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:25 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Reality Check

While the war between Hezbollah and Israel seems to be on an increasingly temporary hiatus, the public relations battle over who actually came out ahead in this latest Arab-Israeli conflict seems to depends on whether or not you give military successes or temporary political successes more weight.

Leftist poster boy in favor of Islamic oppression, Robert Fisk:

The truth is Israel opened its attack on Lebanon by claiming the Lebanese government was responsible for Hizbollah's attack - which it clearly was not - and that its military actions would achieve the liberation of the captured soldiers.

This, the Israelis have signally failed to do. The loss of 40 soldiers in just 36 hours and the successful Hizbollah attacks against Israeli armour in Lebanon were a disaster for the Israeli army.

The fact that Syria could bellow about the "achievements" of Hizbollah while avoiding the destruction of a blade of grass inside Syria suggests a cynicism that has yet to be grasped inside the Arab world. But for now, Syria has won.

Was Lebanon's government—the same government which refuses to disarm Hezbollah—aware of Hezbollah's plan to kidnap Israeli soldiers?

Fisk says they weren't complicit.

Hasan Narallah, leader of Hezbollah, indicates otherwise (my bold):

I told them on more than one occasion that we are serious about the prisoners issue and that this can only solved through the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Of course, I used to make hints in that respect. Of course I would not be expected to tell them on the table I was going to kidnap Israeli soldiers in July. That could not be.

[Bin-Jiddu (Al-Jazeera)] You told them that you would kidnap Israeli soldiers?

[Nasrallah] I used to tell them that the prisoners' issue, which we must solve, can only be solved through the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

[Bin-Jiddu (Al-Jazeera)] Clearly?

[Nasrallah] Clearly. Nobody told me: no, you are not allowed to kidnap Israeli soldiers. I was not waiting for such a thing. Even if they told me no you are not allowed [nothing would change]. I am not being defensive. I said that we would kidnap Israeli soldiers in meetings with some of the key political leaders in the country.

To call Robert Fisk a liar would be redundant.

Is the loss of 40 soldiers in 1 1/2 days a "disaster" as Fisk states? To the family members of the soldiers it undoubtedly is, but otherwise, the lost of 40 men in a close quarters ground assault against the entrenched positions is hardly a disaster, even if the overall outcome of the battle was not the total destruction of Hezbollah in South Lebanon. "We won because we didn't all die" is hardly the most convincing victory speech for Hezbollah and their Syrian and Iranian patrons, not matter how the politics of the situation are spun.

Of course, that is just the political angle played up by Hezbollah's supporters.

Let's look at another view, based on the facts:

Hizbollah suffered a defeat. Their rocket attacks on Israel, while appearing spectacular (nearly 4,000 rockets launched), were unimpressive (39 Israelis killed, half of them Arabs). On the ground, Hizbollah lost nearly 600 of its own personnel, and billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons. Israeli losses were far less.

While Hizbollah can declare this a victory, because it fought Israel without being destroyed, this is no more a victory than that of any other Arab force that has faced Israeli troops and failed. Arabs have been trying to destroy Israel for over half a century, and Hizbollah is the latest to fail. But Hizbollah did more than fail, it scared most Moslems in the Middle East, because it demonstrated the power and violence of the Shia Arab minority. Sunni Arabs, and most Arabs are Sunnis, are very much afraid of Shia Moslems, mainly because most Iranians are Shia, not Arab, and intent on dominating the region, like Iran has done so many times in the past. Hizbollah's recent outburst made it clear that Iran, which subsidizes and arms Hizbollah, has armed power that reaches the Mediterranean. This scares Sunni Arabs because a Shia minority also continues to rule Syria (where most of the people are Sunni). The Shia majority in Iraq, which have not dominated Iraq for over three centuries, is now back in control.

Hizbollah did enjoy a victory in its recent war, but it was over Sunni Arabs, not Israel.

Two different reactions, one based in leftist cant sympathetic to terrorists, and another based on the actual physical damage and the political resonance felt throughout the region. At the end of the day, I think the Israelis came out far better in their "defeat" than did Hezbollah's military wing in their corpse-riddled "victory."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Democratic Ad Equates Illegals with Terrorists

Nuance:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Democratic political ad is under fire from Hispanics who say it unfairly compares Latino immigrants to terrorists.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sponsored a 35-second ad on its Web site that shows footage of two people scaling a border fence mixed with images of Osama Bin Laden and North Korea President Kim Jong Il.

Pedro Celis, chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, said in a statement Tuesday that the DSCC should remove the ad because it vilifies illegal Hispanic immigrants and is "appalling."

Houston City Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, a Democrat, sent a letter to DSCC Chairman Sen. Charles Schumer of New York asking that the ad be pulled. She said it could alienate Latino voters.

"To liken Latino immigrants to bazooka-toting terrorists not only undermines the positive relationship our party has with this community, but also lowers us to a despicable level as breeders of unfounded fear and hatred," Alvarado wrote.

The ad opens with the words "Security Under Bush and GOP?" It features scenes of a masked man with a bazooka, scenes from terrorist attacks and police inspecting a subway train. It also shows Osama bin Laden, Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a docked ship as it claims "4 times as many terrorist attacks in 2005."

Then comes footage of a person climbing over a corrugated metal border fence and another preparing to climb it as the words "millions more illegal immigrants" form on-screen. In the following scene, viewers see the words "North Korea has quadrupled its nuclear arsenal" with footage of a tank and North Korea President Kim Jong Il.

The ad ends with the words, "Feel safer? Vote for change."

Terrorism and illegal immigration are two hot-button issues facing America right now, but the Democrats seem unwilling or unable to realize that while there is some concern that our lackadaisical border security may enable terrorists to cross the border, illegal aliens are not terrorists. While they are an economic and social concern, illegal aliens are not actively engaged in trying to destroy America and take America lives.

That Democrats seem to view these two issues on an equal plane betrays the fact that the reality-challenged Party doesn't hold Islamic terrorists as any more of a threat to American lives than does an illegal alien's attempt to find a better life by the wrong means. With increasingly rare exceptions, Democrats are still a party incapable of admitting and coping with the very real threats of Islamic terrorism facing the Western world.

Does an entire political party unable and unwilling to address your safety with a single concrete plan to address terrorism in the five years since September 11 make you feel safer?

Me neither.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:44 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 15, 2006

Watching Zohra

Yesterday I quipped that I found Gatorade's new energy Drink "self-Propel," after discovering a series of three pictures by Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra. In those photos, a mysteriously mobile bottle of water appears and disappears beside an elderly injured woman that Bensemra said was waiting to be rescued, and was made to appear utterly alone.

The moving bottle and other suspicious elements in the photos lead me to believe that this series of photos, like so many already discovered coming from Arab Muslim stringers in Lebanon, were quite likely staged.

The curious composition of Bensemra's photos continued today, as this one was, err, unearthed in Yahoo's Photostream:

I have no doubt at all that Lebanese Red Cross members are unearthing bodies from the rubble of Israeli air strikes, and will continue to do so for days weeks, and even months to come. But the damaged structure in question would seems to offer a very narrow opening, and with two rescuers already inside the cramped space (you can see the reflective stripes on the sleeve of another rescuer further in), it would seem strange to bag a body in the narrow confines of unstable rubble, when it would be both safer and easier for the rescuers to do so in the open.

Of course that is making the assumption that this is indeed a cramped space.

Another photo, which I have enlarged and then cropped to show the relevant area, indicates that the external area of the structure in question is only several yards wide, and no more than a couple of yards high. Note the expansive open area in the left side of the frame, and edge of the structure over the shoulder of the second man from the right. This structure these men were emerging from is far too narrow to be a residential building. It seems doubtful that a normal residential dwelling would have such a narrow profile, a concrete roof, walls a foot or more thick, or space for two or more live adults to body bag the undefined deceased inside, before bringing him out.

Victim, or target? House, or bunker? Perhaps the Israelis were able to kill someone other than old women and children after all.

I cannot prove that Zohra Bensemra is complicit in staging photos in Lebanon, but at the very least I can feel comfortable of accusing Bensemra of writing misleading captions that alter the context of how the picture is viewed. A caption reading "Lebanese Red Cross personnel remove the body of a person who died during an Israeli air raid during the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hizbollah, at Tayba in south Lebanon August 15, 2006" may be entirely accurate, but a caption reading "The body of a Hezbollah fighter is removed from a bunker near Tayba" would tell quite a different story, if that is indeed what happened.

Is Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra a journalist, or propagandist? I'll leave that for you to decide, Myself, I tend to judge people by the company they choose to keep.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:08 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Complicity and Consequences

I'm currently in a quandary, trying to determine whether the United Nations cease-fire or Lebanon's implementation of it is more of a joke.

Hizbullah will not hand over its weapons to the Lebanese government but rather refrain from exhibiting them publicly, according to a new compromise that is reportedly brewing between Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The UN cease-fire resolution specifically demands the demilitarization of the area south of the Litani river. The resolution was approved by the Lebanese cabinet.

In a televised address on Monday night, Nasrallah declared that now was not the time to debate the disarmament of his guerrilla fighters, saying the issue should be done in secret sessions of the government to avoid serving Israeli interests.

"This is immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is wrong timing on the psychological and moral level particularly before the cease-fire," he said in reference to calls from critics for the guerrillas to disarm.

According to Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, "There will be no other weapons or military presence other than the army" after Lebanese troops move south of the Litani. However, he then contradicted himself by saying the army would not ask Hizbullah to hand over its weapons.

If these reports are true, and Lebanon allows Hezbollah to retain their weaponry, they are not only in breach of the cease-fire resolution, they are choosing to side with Hezbollah. Israel should now consider Prime Minister Fuad Seniora's government as an enemy regime.

At some point in the future, maybe only hours or perhaps as long as years from now, Hezbollah with take aggressive actions against Israel that will necessitate another Israeli campaign. The next campaign must not be one of a tentative nature, but one of decisiveness.

Israel must break Hezbollah.

As an "pajama general" half a world away, with no military experience, I must turn to the history books for a solution to Israel's "Hezbollah problem," and a decisive battle in the "Forgotten War" of Korea offers a possible winning strategy.

On June 25, 1950, 135,000 North Korean troops swarmed into South Korea. Within three days they had captured South Koreas capital of Seoul. The U.S. Eighth Army came to South Korea's aid, but even then, they were driven into a small pocket called the Pusan Perimeter before the combined forces were able to establish and hold a defensive line. It was a desperate land stand against the North, and the Korean Peninsula seemed that it might fall completely into communist hands.

That changed on September 15, 1950, when General Douglas MacArthur executed a brilliant "left hook," landing 70,000 men at Inchon, well behind the front, cutting North Korean supply lines. Seoul was liberated ten days later. Half of the 70,000 North Korean troops on the Pusan Perimeter were killed or captured, and the remaining 30,000 were forced to retreat out of South Korea.

Israel may have the capability too consider a similar battle plan in a future war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. While Israel lacks the amphibious forces and manpower of MacArthur, it does have enough helicopter transport capability to perform deep insertions of elite infantry and light artillery units well into Lebanon. By airmobile insertion of these forces along transportation routes from Syria to the west and placing a blocking force to the north and west of Beirut, Israel could cut off Hezbollah from it's Syrian and Iranian suppliers far more effectively than air strikes alone did in the last campaign. It would also open up a multi-front war, keeping Hezbollah off-balance and unable to concentrate firepower in any one direction.

While these airmobile forces are inserted, Israeli strike aircraft could take out cell phone towers, central telephone exchanges, and other command-and-control targets, rendering Hezbollah largely blind and isolated except for short-range communications. At the same time, Israeli reservists and heavy armored units would bypass and cut off Hezbollah strongholds in the south, which could then be targeted and destroyed one-by-one.

This is the campaign Israel should have waged, and perhaps one they may yet fight. It is important to recognize that such a campaign might trigger a conflict with not only with Hezbollah, but the Lebanese Army as well. The conflict would not doubt result in hundreds of Lebanese civilian deaths, perhaps as many or more than this last month-long campaign. The responsibility of these deaths will not only belong to Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah, but with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora and the elected Lebanese government as well. A government that sides with terrorists, becomes terrorists, and Israel should now regard Lebanon as a state-sponsor of terrorism.

Fuad Seniora has signed a deal with the devil, and however and whenever the next war between Israel and Hezbollah is waged, he will bear the blame for the deaths of hundreds or thousands of Lebanese, as assuredly as if he had pulled the trigger himself.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:06 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 14, 2006

The Show Must Go On

According to Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra, an elderly injured woman lies injured in the ruins of her house, awaiting rescue as Bensemra snaps these pictures.

Let's for a moment try to look past the staging elements that we've become accustomed to searching for over the past weeks.

Ignore for a moment the fact that a wounded elderly woman in a bombed out building is unlikely to be in the kind of physical condition needed to drag several pristine sofa pillows through the rubble and make a bed out of them. Look past the fact that she, in her weakened condition, has found a nearly spotless black blanket in the fine gray dust of a bombed out building to cover her legs against the 80 degree cold. Ignore the conveniently-placed bottled water she somehow found intact and had for the middle photo only.

Look past all this, and the total absence of any readily identifiable injury, to momentarily take Zohra Bensemra's word at face value that this is an injured, elderly woman lying in the rubble, that he seems to have stumbled across before help has arrived.

Now place yourself in Zohra Bensemra's shoes.

If you came across someone lying injured in the rubble, would you cry for assistance, seek to comfort her, or stop to determine which camera angle best captures this scene?

Would you come forward quickly and see how badly she is injured and try to render assistance, or would you compose an increasingly intimate montage of photos?

Reuters, no doubt, will offer the excuse that the photographer has the duty to capture the story, not to become part of it.

I'd like to ask Reuters when a photo-op becomes more important than basic humanity, but I'm afraid they'd be all too ready and willing with an answer.

Update: After thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided one element of these photos deserves more attention, so I updated the second photo to highlight the interesting detail.

According to the photographer's caption:

An injured Lebanese woman lies in her damaged house as she waits to be rescued during the first day of ceasefire, at Bint Jbail, east of the port city of Tyre (Soure) August 14, 2006. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra (LEBANON)

If she "waits to be rescued" alone, who, then, is moving the bottled water in the second photo out of frame in the first and third pictures? Is it Gatorade's new fitness drink, "self-Propel?"

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:27 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sockpuppet: Voice of FREEDOM!!!

Safely hidden in his hidden Brazillian jungle fortress, sockpuppet sallies forth to warn us of the evils of the BushCo Mind Control Agenda:

The Bush administration has adopted an array of tactics to control the news, from threatening journalists with criminal prosecution to paying pundits and manufacturing and distributing propaganda videos disguised as taped news segments. One such tactic, used with increasing frequency and obviousness, is that when Bush officials need to do an interview in order to address some brewing crisis, they will sit with only the most sycophantic and Bush-loving "journalists" who will shower them with praise and adoration in lieu of scrutiny and real questions.

Sockpuppet's biggest gripe seems to be that al-Reuters, al-Jazeera, and al-Franken aren't the primary means of distributing information to the world at large. By his estimation, Sean Hannity, Brit Hume and Pamela of the blog "Atlas Shrugs" are the Administration's primary media outlets to the world.

And you know what? He's right.

Sockpuppet cites ironclad evidence showing that Hume was granted an interview with President Bush in September, 2003 and just three years later an interview with Vice President Cheney in February of 2006. Such single-source media domination should not be stood for in a free society.

The blatant right wing domination of the news reared its head again on August 12 as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice dared to be interviewed by Sean Hannity, only to be followed by Pamela's hour-long interview of Ambassador John Bolten, when he obviously should have been appearing on The View or Al-Manar instead.

These developments have been a huge point of concern for White House Spokesman Tony Snow, long since cut out of the news distribution loop in favor of a mom from New York, a point he made at his last White House Press conference that a now jobless White House Press could not attend.

It is a sad day indeed when politicians are reduced to associating with extremists, as Sockpuppet notes.

A sad day indeed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:06 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 12, 2006

A Ringer in Qana?

Ah, Qana... the staged massacre that won't go away.

Bernice S. Lipkin, editor of Think Israel wrote to let me know that I was one of several bloggers cited in her newest article, The Bloggers Take on The Qana Massacre. It's worth a read if you haven't been following the story, and probably a nice way to tie everything together if you have.

Due in part to this article and Kathy Gannon's shamefully lightweight defense of AP's reporting (thinly veiled as an article about Slam Daher, AKA "Green Helmet"), I decided to revisit the Qana photostream on Yahoo!, when I noticed something that hadn't quite caught my eye before.

This photo got my attention.

A female victim is being carried out of the naturally lit, open-air basement. Her legs are covered with a white sheet and her torso with a black one, but an armed encased in a black-full length sleeve all but points at the cameraman.

And on the third finger of her left hand, what do you see?

A simple band of gold. A wedding ring?

Aren't wedding bands are Christian tradition?

The 28 named dead were all reported to belong to the same Shiite Muslim family.

Update: Could be dead wrong on this; I dont know. I figured it was better to put it out there and let folks debate it.

Update: CY reader Bruce sends me this link, which seems to indicate that the use of wedding rings in Muslim culture is a flagrant violation of their cultural norms:

The following are some of the practices that are meticulously carried out during matrimonial affairs despite the fact that they are either expressly forbidden in Shariah, or have no bases in Islam:

The engaged couple meet at a public gathering where the boy holds the girl's hand and slips a ring onto her finger whilst the two look romantically at each other. This act is void of modesty and completely [sic] foreign to Islamic culture. It is furthermore, a flagrant violation of the Quranic Law of Purdah. It is an evil innovation of the godless west , and those indulging in it should take cognizance of the Prophet's stern warning that "those who imitate others will rise on the Day of Judgement as of them".

If this is correct, then the use of wedding rings in the strictly Shiite Hezbollah-dominated culture of south Lebanon very unlikely, begging the question, "where did this body, with an apparent wedding band, come from?"

Now more than ever, I strongly suspect this body, among others, may have been "planted" at Qana.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:01 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

August 11, 2006

From the Front

Michael Totten podcasts live from the Israeli/Lebanese border as a major Israeli offensive is about to give in.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Philadelphia Daily Delusions

If I wrote the hare-brained editorial that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News today, I'd want it left unsigned as well.

A fisking, anyone?

THESE PEOPLE have no shame. Their contempt for democracy is so great they will stop at nothing to undermine it. Their adherence to fundamentalist beliefs that blinds them to reality is frightening. They must be stopped.

And that's just the Republicans.

Nothing like getting your mind-numbed partisanship out front.

Let's start with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Yesterday, Cheney bashed those who voted for Democrat Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate primary, claiming that these votes would encourage "al Qaeda types" to think that "they can break the will of the American people."

The idea is that since 18-year incumbent Joe Lieberman lost based on his support for Iraq, Americans opposing the war are waving a white flag of surrender to terrorists.

This is stunningly ignorant logic, as well as annoyingly consistent with the Bush administration's fundamentalist myth that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden - a claim by now well-discounted, most notably by a presidential commission.

Mr. Anonymous Editorialist, are you trying to tell us that Ned Lamont's cries to pull the troops home now—exactly what Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and the late Abu Musab Zarqawi have called for—is not the exact position of the world's leading terrorists?

The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how you try to shade it, the headlong retreat—or "redeployment" or whatever you want to call it—favored by the radical left is precisely what al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups desire. We know that, because they've said so, repeatedly. The only stunning ignorance displayed here is your own ignorance of the fact that both the terrorists and the Democrats agree that they want the U.S to retreat from the Middle East and stop killing terrorists.

Further, it is precisely the headlong "redeployment" that John Murtha called for from Somalia and heeded by Bill Clinton that resulted in the terror attacks of September 11.

Dead terrorists don't cause problems, and retreating from live terrorists inspires them to attempt greater acts of terror. What part of that logic are you incapable of understanding?

In addition, Mr. Anonymous Editorialist has his fingers crossed and hoped no one would actual check his facts, which would reveal that the 9/11 Commission Report did not say that Saddam's Iraq did not have ties to Osama's al Qaeda. In fact, it said something else entirely.

Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States. Whether Bin Ladin and his organization had roles in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and the thwarted Manila plot to blow up a dozen U.S. commercial aircraft in 1995 remains a matter of substantial uncertainty.

Communications between senior officers of organizations are ties, ladies and gentlemen, whether or not they cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Iraq may not have played a role in the terror attack against America on 9/11, but al Qaeda and Saddam's Iraq certainly had ties to one another dating back to 1994, as stated by then CIA Director George Tenet:

• Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
• We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade.
• Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa'ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.
• Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa'ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
• We have credible reporting that al-Qa'ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa'ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
• Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa'ida, suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.
  
  

Since the 9/11 Commission Report was issued, even more documents have shined a light on the connections between al Qaeda, their Taliban hosts, and Iraq. Mr. Anonymous Editorialist can say Iraq had no ties to al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden if he wants, but rational people looking at the still-accumulating evidence will be hard-pressed to draw that same conclusion.

But back to the editorial:

And yet the presidential fog machine has continued to belch out its Iraq-al Qaeda-link fumes to the extent that a recent poll suggests that 64 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda. More people than ever now believe, according to a new poll, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

No ties in the preceding paragraph has been walked back to "strong links" in this one. I've give this to the writer; when it comes to headlong retreat, he practices what he preaches.

It goes without saying that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction; it is a simple incontrovertible fact. He used thousands of them in his 1980-88 war with Iran, and gassed thousands of Kurds in a single four-day strike on Halabja in 1988. Iraq maintained and declared WMD stockpiles at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, and an Iraqi general says his men moved WMDs out of Iraq into Syria in the weeks before our 2003 invasion. Anonymous may discount it, but as evidence slowly accumulates, even more people will believe in Iraq's WMD capability because it did exist, and it was never fully accounted for.

Ironically, the number who believe in the al Qaeda link is almost precisely the same number of Americans - 62 percent - who believe we are bogged down in Iraq.

For Cheney - and other Republicans like GOP National Chairman Ken Mehlman - to suggest that those Americans are encouraging terrorism is reprehensible.

And yet, we have to go back to the essential fact that John Murtha's 1993 call for retreat from Somalia is directly responsible for Osama Bin Laden's decision to attack America. I certainly know it is not the Democrat's intent to encourage terrorism, but that fact—and it is a fact—remains that that is exactly what their position has done, and will continue to do.

Cheney's comments came out a day before British intelligence officials announced they had thwarted a major terrorist attack. Surely Cheney was aware of the plot and the work to thwart it, and was no doubt aware of the timing of yesterday's announcement.

To exploit a very real terror threat that could have led to major casualties, and to even indirectly implicate Americans who were exercising their democratic right by going to the polls and making a choice borders on the criminal, to say nothing of the insane.

Has Cheney completely lost it?

Mr. Anonymous has no shame. While more than eager to attack Cheney for politicizing events, he studiously avoids his own Party's attempts to politicize things as well. Should we wait until his next editorial comes out calling Teddy Kennedy or Harry Reid insane or asking if they have "completely lost it?" Probably not.

The latest terror scare is upsetting enough: It is bound to lead to havoc and chaos both domestically and internationally. It could damage the economy if fears on flying are sustained. It reopens the profound wounds of 9/11, a scab we should figure by now will never completely heal.

But the real terror is this: While our Vacationer- in-Chief and his vice president shut down dissent, and discourage questions about the way our government has directed our intelligence and military resources toward a single target in Iraq, we are no closer to understanding or dismantling the threat of al Qaeda.

They "shut down dissent," eh? I spent all this effect to fisk an overly-dramatic editorial, and the guy who wrote it will be inside a Halliburton-run concentration camp before he can even read this. Darn.

Interestingly enough, it now seems that how our President has led our intelligence and military resources may have had a direct impact in thwarting this latest attack, as the very intelligence programs that the New York Times is trying to destroy may have provided crucial intelligence. Of course, ensconced in irons in a cell somewhere near Allentown, Mr. Anonymous will never know or admit to that.

Cheney's remarks underscore just how unsophisticated our understanding of terrorism is. We have no more understanding of the global forces at work that lead so many to want to bomb and destroy innocent lives than we did five years ago.

America's latest crisis is not what happened in Connecticut; it's what was going to happen in airplanes over the Atlantic.

The immoral and ridiculous claims coming out of the Bush administration's reign of error could ultimately be responsible for the kind of casualties that al Qaeda can only dream of.

Actually, terrorism is very simple to understand. It isn't a matter of nuance. Islamists want the whole world to subscribe to their way of thinking, and those that don't, they want dead. That is why Islam partitions the world into Dar al Islam, the House of Submission for the true beleivers, and Dar al Harb, the House of War, where infidels must convert, or die. It's actually quite straightforward. Even a Sea Monkey can grasp the basic concept, even if a Philadelphia Daily News editorialist finds it too taxing.

Claims don't kill people, Mr. Anonymous Editorialist.

Terrorists do.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:11 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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