August 01, 2006

Hezbopology

Catch the fever!

Thanks to a tip from reader Euzious and Laura Rozen's fine War and Piece blog, and in a bit of redemption after a day-and-a-half of Israeli-coordinated counterattacks from trolls spewing right wing talking points in support of the IDF, it now turns out that the IDF's justification for bombing Qana and the killings of dozens of women and children were lies. Haaretz reported today that as the government investigates what happened, the Air Force has changed its story:

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.
The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.
The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.

In other words, hitting that building was “in the plan”, and not done in response to a recent attack.

Israeli forces actually had the temerity to fire on a position known to have fired rockets in the past, but not on the day of attack. Steve Soto of The Left Coaster of course ignores that the site was used to store munitions just 24 hours prior to that. Apparently, the new Liberal Rules of War imposes a shot clock.

But Soto is just getting warmed up:

As for those right wing talking points about Hezbollah bringing the building down hours after the IDF attack, that appears to be a lie also:

The IDF account and those of survivors present contradictory versions of the Qana deaths. The IDF said that there is an unexplained gap of about seven hours between the IAF strike and the first report that the building had collapsed. Residents' accounts say only 10 minutes went by between the strike and the collapse.
The survivors say rescue teams arrived only in the morning, as night conditions made the rescue mission difficult. The Red Cross in Tyre received a call for help only in the morning, explaining their late arrival.
Sami Yazbek, chief of the Tyre department of the Red Cross, said his office received a call only at 7 A.M. The ambulances were further slowed by the bombed roads leading to Qana.
The media first heard of the bombing at 8 A.M. The foreign press quoted Lebanese sources explaining the late announcement, saying the electricity and phones in the village of Qana were almost entirely cut-off by IAF attacks.
[snip]
The IAF admits the village was struck three times between Saturday night and Sunday morning. Two bombs were dropped on the building in the first strike. Channel 10, however, said on Monday that the initial investigation shows the bombs did not immediately explode, and an explosion in the early morning caused the casualties.

In other words, you can't trust a thing the IDF says, or any crap from the pro-Israeli right wing talking points.

So we have a named IDF Air Force Brigadier General named Amir Eshel stating that the building did not collapse for seven hours after the attack, and to counter, we have unnamed "civilains" who admit to being literally-related to the terrorists in their midst, dictating a more favorable timeline, despite the fact that the call to the Red Cross seems to more closely correspond with the Israeli account.

Who earns your trust, anonymous Hezbollah supporters, or named senior officials of the IDF and the Red Cross?

For Hezbollah apologists like this, hugging the enemy is second nature.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:38 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Qana's Unresolved Questions

Yesterday's attempt to analyze the Israeli air strike on Qana, subsequent building collapse seven hours later, the Hezbollah propaganda campaign that resulted, and the media's seeming inability to ask hard questions about the events led to a flurry of analysis in the blogosphere yesterday.

I asked questions here and here, first questioning why the media obediently provided Hezbollah's point of view while ignoring the timeline presented by the IDF, then progressing on to note apparent discrepancies in the macabre media filed day Hezbollah provided as it paraded around the bodies of dead children for a scandal-hungry media's eager consumption.

Blog EU Referendum cast heavy suspicion on Hezbollah's stage management of the event, astutely noting the presence of an individual tagged "Green Helmet" who's apparent role in Hezbollah in brandishing the corpses of dead children for the world media's cameras extends back a decade.

Dan Riehl of Riehl World View notes with suspicion that refrigerated trucks from Tyre arrived before the media was allowed near the scene of the Qana strike, and suggests that bodies from the Tyre morgue may have been added to the Qana body count that the Lebanese Red Cross officially stated was roughly half that, of the widely reported 54-58, at 28.

Predictably, Hezbollah's defenders labeled those questioning the version of events provided by Hezbollah to a carefully controlled media contingent as conspiracy theorists for noting the apparent discrepancies in the story Hezbollah provided the world.

Air Force Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel officailly questioned why the building collapsed seven hours after the IDF air strike, and senior IDF officers explicitly noted the possibility of a "Hezbollah-planted explosive device."

Why did the world media so readily accept Hezbollah's claim that it was Israel's air strike that brought the building down? Why have they investigated the officially noted discrepancies in the timing of the collapse?

As asked here on Confederate Yankee, why were the bodies Hezbollah said were recovered from the scene seemingly inconsistent with the dead and injured of other collapsed buildings? The same forces of nature occur in every building collapse, regardless of whether the collapse is intentional (implosion or explosion) or unintentional (faulty construction, etc). Buildings of concrete such as the one in Qana generally produce a substantial amount of fine concrete dust that blankets nearby surfaces to such an extent that it almost appears to be volcanic ash, especially when explosives are involved in their demolition.

We saw examples of such dust on survivors form the World Trade Center collapse.

We see the same thick dust coming from small buildings that collapsed because of earthquakes 75 years ago.

And almost all of us have witnessed the massive clouds of dust released in the television broadcasts of the hundreds of controlled demolition of buildings around the world.

Irrefutably, building collapses release a massive amount of dust into the air. This is even more apparent—or is at least is much more documented in the media—that buildings that are collapsed by explosives.

And yet, when we look at the bodies of those reputedly recovered from the building in Qana, only a handful of those are covered in the heavy layer of concrete dust. If all of these bodies were recovered from the same basement or shelter as Hezbollah claims, then why are the bodies so unevenly coated? Why do some appear all but free of dust at all?

I have little doubt in my mind that the baby brandished by Hezbollah's "Green Helmet" is indeed a building collapse victim because of the thick layer of dust on the body.

But what of so many of the other bodies that Hezbollah claims were pulled from the same basement bomb shelter?

Note that these bodies—whose rigor mortis within two hours of the buildings collapse I've already questioned—are remarkably clean in comparison.

I do not doubt that women and children died in Qana. The Lebanese Red Cross officially stated that 28 were recovered from the rubble. But do I question who died, and how many actually perished.

"Pallywood" has a long and well-documented history of falsifying tragedies, from the questionable death of Muhammed al-Durrah to the Jenin Massacre, where many of the same sources that are unquestionably buying into Hezbolla's Qana story reported a masacre they were later forced to admit never occurred.

Qana has every possibility of being another Jenin.

Will the world listen this time?

* * *

Perhaps even more important than the possible (if not probable) Hezbollah exaggeration of the Qana dead is the story of why these women and children died in the first place.

Hezbollah has made the decision to embed every aspect of it's military apparatus within the civilian population of southern Lebanon, placing ammunition stores, command and control facilities, rocket launching sites and Hezbollah barracks within residential neighborhoods, hiding under the skirts, as it were, of Lebanese housewives and their children.

As Ed Morrissey notes today in the Washington Examiner:

We want to see civilians spared the horrors of war, and we push combatants to take all possible steps to achieve that end. The Geneva Conventions have that explicit mandate, and the world should remain constantly — and consistently — vigilant.

Unfortunately, the global community has failed miserably at this task, and this war not only highlights that failure, but springs from it. While the world holds Israel to this standard, things become curiously silent when it's time to hold Hezbollah responsible for its conduct of war. Hardly a word has escaped from the U.N. or Europe on the 2,500 missiles that have rained down upon Israeli civilians, deliberately targeted by Hezbollah. Those attacks have displaced more than 300,000 civilians, a fact the global community and the mainstream media ignore.

Those who argue that Israel has occasionally violated the Geneva Conventions in its attacks casually ignore the blatant violations of Hezbollah, whose combatants wear no uniform, deliberately hide in civilian populations and fire weapons from residential areas. Hezbollah conducts none of its operations within the rules of war — and yet world leaders and the media never mention it.

Why? Because no one expects terrorists to follow the rules. This is the soft nihilism of low expectations.

The villagers in the areas surrounding Qana were warned by the IDF to leave five days earlier. More than 150 Katyusha had been fired out of Qana against Israeli civilians (which no one in the media seems to want to talk about) including missiles fired from outside that very building the night of the Israeli air strike.

Israel has taken every reasonable precaution it can to prevent civilian deaths, but the battlefield Hezbollah has chosen makes civilians deaths all but impossible to avoid.

Hezbollah has killed their own yet again, and it is to the world's shame that this continues almost without complaint.

Low expectations, indeed.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:28 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Closure

Former Hollywood agent and current documentary filmmaker Pat Dollard finds gives Iraq war widow Julie Shumney and her three children something no one else could.

Closure.

Just when Julie Shumney had accepted that advanced DNA testing couldn't provide answers to a mystery surrounding her husband's cremated remains, the Mesquite woman received hope for a different kind of closure.

Documentary filmmaker Pat Dollard contacted her last week and told her that he has footage of the last two weeks of Marine 1st Lt. Dustin Shumney's life. The final glimpses of the Marine were caught not long before he boarded a helicopter that went down in Iraq in January 2005.

"This is what I had been hoping for for the whole past year and a half, and the kids, too," Mrs. Shumney said in anticipation of watching the images with her children, Jordan, 13, Mallory, 10, and Conner, 5.

Though it probably won't answer the questions Mrs. Shumney has about her husband's remains, the widow said the documentary, scheduled for release within three months, could help the family say goodbye.

"It's really going to help a lot," she said.

"Conner can watch this when he gets older, and I think it will trigger a lot of memories for him. The last time he saw his Daddy, he was 2."

Pat Dollard is completing work on Young Americans, an Iraq War documentary filmed entirely by Dollard and the Marines he embedded himself with in Iraq.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:55 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 31, 2006

Ultimate Gun Blogger

If it ever makes it as a Weblog Awards category, John Donovan of Argghhh! wins, without a doubt.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:46 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Were the Qana Bodies Staged?

These questions and others are beginning to mount as the discrepancies in Hezbollah's versions of events start to fall apart:

On the morning of July 30, according to the IDF, the air force came in three waves. In the first, between midnight and one in the morning, there was a strike at or near the building that eventually collapsed. There was a second strike at other targets far from the collapse building several hours later, and a third strike at around 7:30 in the morning. There too the nearest hit was some 460 meters away, according to the IDF. But first reports of a building collapse came only around 8 am.

Thus there was an unexplained 7 to 8 hour gap between the time of the helicopter strike and the building collapse. Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters, in a press briefing, told journalists that "the attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear."

Gen. Eshel appeared genuinely mystified by the gap in time. He "I'm saying this very carefully, because at this time I don't have a clue as to what the explanation could be for this gap," he added.

The army's only explanation was that somehow there was unexploded Hezbollah ordnance in the building that only detonated much later.
"It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there, Brigadier General Eshel said.

Eshel reported that as recently as two days ago, military intelligence reported the building area had been used by the terrorists for storage or firing of weapons. It was a bad place to cram dozens of women and children.

There are other mysteries. The roof of the building was intact. Journalist Ben Wedeman of CNN noted that there was a larger crater next to the building, but observed that the building appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike.

Why would the civilians who had supposedly taken shelter in the basement of the building not leave after the post-midnight attack? They just went back to sleep and had the bad luck to wait for the building to collapse in the morning?

What we do know is that sometime after dawn a call went hour to journalists and rescue workers to come to the scene. And come they did.

While Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.

Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until the morning and only after the camera crews came. The absence of a real rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking. There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted.

There was little blood, CNN's Wedeman noted: all the victims, he concluded, appeared to have died while as they were sleeping — sleeping, apparently, through thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue workers equipped with cameras were removing the bodies from the same opening in the collapsed structure. Journalists were not allowed near the collapsed building.

Rescue workers filmed as they went carried the victims on the stretchers, occasionally flipping up the blankets so that cameras could show the faces and bodies of the dead.

But Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide bombings and Hezbollah rocket attack could not help but notice that these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen gray. Their limbs appeared to have stiffened, from rigor mortis. Neither were effects that would have resulted from an Israeli attack hours before. These were bodies that looked like they had been dead for days.

Viewers can judge for themselves. But the accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario would be a setup in which the time between the initial Israeli bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would have been used to "plant" bodies killed in previous fighting — reports in previous days indicated that nearby Tyre was used as a temporary morgue — place them in the basement, and then engineer a "controlled demolition" to fake another Israeli attack.

The well-documented use by Palestinians of this kind of faked footage — from the alleged shooting of Mohammed Dura in Gaza, scenes from Jenin of "dead" victims falling off gurneys and then climbing back on — have merited the creation of a new film genre called "Palliwood."

Assuredly, Hezbollah's supporters will accuse those questioning the Qana attacks as conspiracy theorists, so I simply advise that viewers view the evidence with their own eyes, and draw their own conclusions from there.

The photographic evidence below the fold includes images of the dead, and is not for the squeamish.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:14 PM | Comments (320) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Disinformation is an old variety of stagecraft, to be sure, but possible explanations must be examined; if we don't, you can be sure Hezbollah and its apologists certainly will:

1) absence of dust on rescuers could be explained away be claiming erroneous initial information - those individuals were not digging, merely taking bodies as they were handed out.

2) lack of visible injury is again due to erroneous initial information - the victims were not crushed, but were trapped in a void and asphyxiated. A weak explanation, to be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it offered up and quickly accepted.

The stronger, and to this layman, irrefutable, evidence rests in the obvious appearance of rigor mortis and the absence of concrete dust - will Hezbollah claim they brushed it all off?

Posted by: Michael J. Tierney at July 31, 2006 12:53 PM (FVH+W)

2 Your thoughts?

Posted by: Ken Clark at July 31, 2006 01:15 PM (uDGO+)

3 What do you think?

Posted by: Dov Chernok at July 31, 2006 01:17 PM (uDGO+)

4 Michael,

I tend to agree, but the only way we will ever know is by getting a forensics team from a reliable, unbiased source. I think that in today's world we really need this now. But how you find a group that is totally unbiased I do not know. Maybe one way to go is a group that collects, analyzes, and then reports on the data with back-up analysis by two or three other groups. 'Course then you end up with the problem of consensus.....

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 01:21 PM (ybfXM)

5 I'd certainly like to hear someone in the main-stream media at least make the observation that several victims appeared to have fully-involved rigor mortis, which is at odds with the timeline presented by Hezbollah. FOXNews would be the most likely to do so, of course, but the other outlets seem to do whatever they can to ignore FNS.

Unfortunately, I think Specter is correct - the only way we would ever know would be if an team of forensics folks could be permitted into the area, and I know better than to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. The best we can expect is for doubt to be cast upon Hezbollah's version of events.

Posted by: Michael J. Tierney at July 31, 2006 01:42 PM (FVH+W)

6 Regarding the little boy whose body shows signs of discoloration. I would say that is lividity except it appears on the backs of his arms and hands, but on the FRONT of his face. Also, the demarkation of the facial discoloration is an oddly straight line at mid-face.

If this is lividity, the only explanation I can think of for such a pattern is that he died in some sort of twisted, hanging position.

Any ideas?

Posted by: grayp at July 31, 2006 01:45 PM (6GMCi)

7 It looked an awful lot like a shoadow to me, based on where the lines fell. Though, there was something odd about the face.

Posted by: GWB at July 31, 2006 01:52 PM (8Pv/P)

8 WOW - You people are pathetic, and obvioulsy have too much time on your hands. Just enjoy your little echo chamber.

Let me guess: the UN observers' deaths were faked too!

Posted by: KC at July 31, 2006 02:13 PM (xYKkE)

9 Morons:

Here's the link to the video from which the images above were cherry picked.

Oh, but wait, there's always the fact that Israel "warned" the villagers to evacuate!

What a bunch of wannabe CSI right nutters.

Posted by: KC at July 31, 2006 02:16 PM (xYKkE)

10 KC,

So what's your explanation of the time gap? Nice of you to visit and call everybody names though. Typical of someone who has nothing to add to a conversation though.

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 02:34 PM (ybfXM)

11 Not sure if this has been flagged yet, but is it me, or does that pacifier connected to childs shirt by a plastic chain look too clean?


smitty

Posted by: smitty at July 31, 2006 02:42 PM (EM0BX)

12 KC,

Whether the images were cherry-picked or not, the fact remains that several of these victims appear to have been dead for a significantly longer time than is being asserted by Hezbollah. The issue goes to credibility - how many Hezbollah-presented images are factual, and how many are not what they seem?

Posted by: Michael J. Tierney at July 31, 2006 02:44 PM (FVH+W)

13 smitty,

If you go pore through the photo archives of Yahoo!, you'll note that the pacifier was added quite some time after the body was recovered and the first pictures of this child were taken.

Hezbollah thought it looked more dramatic with the pacifier added after the fact, and who will call them on it, when they've apparently faked so many bodies to begin with?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at July 31, 2006 02:47 PM (g5Nba)

14 This entire incident is amazing to contemplate. Here's a suggestion: since they are going to be condemned anyway, Israel should just go flatten the place. But the place should be Syria, and Hellfire One should be be right on top of tinpot peahead tyrant, Bashar Assad. Bush was tremendous in the first months after 9/11, the notion that Assad is walking around instead of reclining in a box, after all the misery he's contributed to, is bad news and a very very very bad commentary on Bush's war fighting creds. Thanks for reading, Dick Laresch, Jersey City, NJ

Posted by: Dick Laresch - Jersey City, NJ at July 31, 2006 02:52 PM (id36S)

15
I linked from
Dirka dirka Mohammed Dura, was Qana staged?

Posted by: Bill Faith at July 31, 2006 02:57 PM (n7SaI)

16 You'll be saying that they didn't die next? Get this, maybe, just maybe Brigadier Eshel came out with all this tripe for people like you.

You laugh at the 9/11 conspiracy theorists (and rightly so), but then you promote wacky theories about the murders of those men, women and (mostly) childen in Qana, just because you can't bring yourself to actually say that the Israelis are committing war crimes!

And maybe you should also consider that the munitions dropped on these poor innocents originate from your own country. Be proud of yourself. And how you think. You haven't been indocrinated by the evangelical right or AIPAC have you? In fact, you think along the same lines as the radical islamists. Namely justifying the unjustifiable and supporting those who god would actually send to hell for their lack of morality and cruelty towards their fellow man.

Posted by: wanker at July 31, 2006 03:05 PM (GAbKA)

17 Oh. Ok. Ahem. I'll go ahead and point out that the attacks of 911 were perpetrated by our own government, in league with the Mossad (just a branch of our own government, if you only look at funding), and those aliens from the X Files.

Did you see how those steel framed buildings collapsed in a pancake fashion?

Where was the wreckage on the lawn of the Pentagon?


"Nothing to add to the conversation..."

Yeah, that about sums it up. One can't add "nothing" to "nothing".

Oh - and I like the notion that the images you have shown are "Hezbollah images".

Simply pathetic. Ban me or something, because I really do have better things to do than waste my time here with a bunch of unemployed people.

Posted by: KC at July 31, 2006 03:05 PM (xYKkE)

18 Its terrible how those people from those countries have no real Scruples or Morals...and would place already dead corpses of little children..that just tells me the mentatlity of those people

Posted by: Diana Mccord at July 31, 2006 03:14 PM (dnW3a)

19 The IDF most certainly has imagery of the site after the strike. Imagery taken before the 7:30am strike might also show the site of the earlier one. Images are generally taken before, during, and after action in order to spot, destroy, and critique.

The area would probably have been under UAV surveillance too searching for any additional missile launches.

The point is, Israel should know if that building went down in the 1am strike and have proof of that. They probably also have evidence of the status of the building from 1am to 7:30 am too.

If the building went up from a demolition charge or something as accidental as a gas leak from a ruptured line, Irael should have some evidence somewhere if they were surveilling the area.

Posted by: crosspatch at July 31, 2006 03:18 PM (b53q9)

20 you make me sick!! what in the world do you think is going to happen even if it was proven that the Israelis intentionally killed those people?? NOT A DAMN THING.
so shut up and atleast give those little children the right to die in peace without making up a story to justify their death.

Posted by: tobias at July 31, 2006 03:28 PM (QVfbC)

21 you make me sick!! what in the world do you think is going to happen even if it was proven that the Israelis intentionally killed those people?? NOT A DAMN THING.
so shut up and atleast give those little children the right to rest in peace without making up a story to justify their death.

Posted by: tobias at July 31, 2006 03:28 PM (QVfbC)

22 I think this post should be Exhibit A of how wish-it-were-truism can triumph over common sense.

For example, much of the post seems to operate on the assumption that when a building collapses, the entire weight of the WHOLE BUILDING (or at least "thousands of pounds") must necessarily fall on EVERY victim. Which, of course, is not true, depending on where the victim was located at the crucial time, and how the debris fell.

And trying to compare the collapse of this building with that of the WTC just adds to the silliness of the post.

Please, guys. Why not use a more realistic point of comparison -- like the collapse of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma? Bodies were recovered there intact, and often without signs of external bleeding.

And why do you assume that people carrying bodies should also be covered with dust? Isn't it possible that some people were carrying bodies away while OTHER people were digging through the rubble?

And why do you assume that everyone perished immediately? Given their location in the building, they may have survived for several hours.

By the way, I see concrete dust on EVERY victim in the photos above.

Take off the tin foil hats.

Posted by: K Ashford at July 31, 2006 03:36 PM (mO+Pe)

23 Well obviously! And did you know the moon landing was staged? Psst! Pass it on!

Posted by: blogenfreude at July 31, 2006 03:38 PM (kKMmn)

24 Also, the Red Cross on one of the rescuers has some kerning issues.

Seriously, take off the tin foil hats.

Posted by: K Ashford at July 31, 2006 03:39 PM (mO+Pe)

25 Obviously, the whole battle is being staged for our entertainment purposes only. Israel is not really blowing the crap out of Lebanon. It is really a conspiracy!!! (sarcasm added.) The 300 Lebanese civilians are all playing dead posium, when infact, they are out drinking and partying.

Posted by: john at July 31, 2006 03:48 PM (byen+)

26 Tell me, are you just ignorant or stupid? No doubt when more atrocities are commmitted you'll be coming up with ever more fanciful ideas for not blaming the IDF. I feel for people like you I really do. Why don't you just crawl back up Malkin's c**t where you belong.

Posted by: areyoustupid at July 31, 2006 03:48 PM (GAbKA)

27 Anyone doubt that Syria is cruising for a serious beating? Only question is, when will GW grow some onions to visit that beating on peapod Bashar Assad's waiting head. Real or fake, innocent civilian deaths are ALL on the Great Enabler, Assad. What a great morning it would be to wake up and hear an "errant" bomb found that cowardly fraud. See how fast he starts screaming when we announce we're tracking his movements. If this war ends with Assad still walking around upright, it's a stone loss for Israel and the U.S. I think it will be....Thanks for reading, Dick Laresch, Jersey City, NJ

Posted by: Dick Laresch at July 31, 2006 04:07 PM (id36S)

28 Well...well...well....here we go with the rude statements from areyoustupid - good one. Wow. You sure made everyone wake up with your high school level rhetoric.

Kay - If you saw the photos of the people from WTC they were covered in dust. Not a little here and there. It was the people in the area, the rescuers, the bodies - virtually everything. So that theory doesn't hold water. I don't think that answers the questions though. Like I said originally - the only way to tell is to send a forensics team that would be respected and trusted by all. Then we would know. But that won't happen. Right now Hezbollah controls every piece of information that actually comes from the site. Tell me that you aren't at least suspicious of this.

It is a shame that children have died - however it was. Innocents should not be subjected to warfare no matter what, wouldn't you agree? I do not think that Hezbollah killed people to "seed" into the building. That I would believe is even beyond them.

I still can't figure out the timing between the attack and the collapse. I suspect that Israel's time frame is correct in this due to the ability to gather intelligence from the battlefield. If the people died from asphyxiation due to partial collapse that might explain some of it, but still doesn't explain the lack of dust. That is why I say forensics is the solution.

But for those of you who complain about this, remember that Hezbollah has chosen to use innocent human shields to protect themselves and their weapons caches. The other thing to remember is that for years Hezbollah has been firing rockets and RPGs and whatever they could into Israel, killing innocents. Where was your outrage then?

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 04:14 PM (ybfXM)

29 I guess the other thing I don't get is all of these people who pop up and claim the evil about war. War is NOT BLOODLESS. People get killed - even innocents. Why don't people understand this simple concept?

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 04:18 PM (ybfXM)

30 wanker:
And maybe you should also consider that the munitions dropped on these poor innocents originate from your own country. Be proud of yourself.

I am. Very.

good nic, btw.

Posted by: grayp at July 31, 2006 04:32 PM (6GMCi)

31 If your story about "timing discrepancies" were true, why wouldn't we hear that from official sources in Israel?

But we don't. What we actually hear is words of condolence and apology from Olmert:

"I am sorry from bottom of heart for all deaths of children or women in Qana," he said. "We did not search them out ... they were not our enemies and we did not look for them."

Posted by: AndyS at July 31, 2006 04:34 PM (rU6Aj)

32 Considering none of us are on the ground it is a bit hard to comment with any confidence as we can only read or hear about it, but I would imagine the pressure wave from these rather large guided weapons would be enough to cause severe internal hemorrhaging to anybody within close proximity.

Also many of these tactical guided bombs are packed with a ton or more of depleted uranium to ensure they deliver their warhead into protected targets for maximum impact, buildings are generally surprisingly resilient to direct hits, requiring several for complete demolition.

BTW this window seems to be too narrow, maybe it is my font settings, sometimes have trouble with apps also.

Posted by: Captain Obvious at July 31, 2006 04:40 PM (WywHA)

33 It seems to me there is a consistent timeline.

1) IDF hits the building at 1:00 am. Civilians sleeping in the building are killed, mostly by overpressure (few visible injuries).

The bodies are not recovered immediately in the dark during ongoing IDF attacks in the area.

2) Building collapses around 8:00 am. Maybe it was weakened and a nearby hit dropped it, maybe some other munition finally "cooked off."

Building collapse is not as complete as WTC, does not create the same volume of dust coverage.

3) Rescuers dig out victims showing rigor mortis (some 7 hours after death).

4) The rescue activity is also a political activity. Some of the rescuers dig out the victims, others carry the victims out for pictures. The carriers are photogenic and fairly clean.

It is still possible that extra bodies were planted.

It appears that some of the "rescuers" are as concerned with the photo opportunity as they are with the rescue effort.

It is certain that weapons were stored in, and launched near, a building that housed civilians. This is a war crime.

Posted by: Sam at July 31, 2006 05:21 PM (6GFTi)

34 So tell me sam...does a group that thinks it is ok to send rockets and grenades into israel for years have any sense of "moral sense?" That is one of the questions that people have to answer here. Is Hezbollah just an innocent, moral group that was attacked with no provocation? When those of you who condemn Israel get around to answering that question honestly we can talk about the rest of the stuff that Hezbollah's actions have caused. Not rocket science here.

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 05:36 PM (ybfXM)

35 Obvious, you are dumb as a box of rocks. As I told you before on another thread, there is no deleted uranium in any bomb in the IDF inventory. DUis used in cannons as anti-aromor penetrators, not bombs.

Back to Alex Jones with you, moron.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at July 31, 2006 06:17 PM (psJM2)

36 Ridiculous! WTC was attacked by some whackos, and Charlie Sheen is a Hollywood idiot. These people got a big bomb dropped on them and they died Next.

Posted by: Johnny at July 31, 2006 06:23 PM (Vtwo9)

37 Check out the excellent deobfuscation of the news coverage in this horrific incident here. It takes a look at the photos from different photographers/new orgs with the related time stamps for the photos. The staging becomes obvious.

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 07:00 PM (ybfXM)

38 And maybe you should also consider that the munitions dropped on these poor innocents originate from your own country. Be proud of yourself.

"We must be the great arsenal of democracy."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt December 29,1940

http://tinyurl.com/ok83m

Tob

Posted by: toby928 at July 31, 2006 07:15 PM (PD1tk)

39 I have several friends in media and law enforcement. You wouldn't believe how much stuff is left out of local news stories to make things "appear" a certain way...Call it..."I didn't lie, but I didn't tell you everything" type of reporting....Both the media and law enforcement in many cases were to blame in many instances.

Did some facts get distorted in this story?...Probably. Hell...this whole cluster f#ck in the Middle East has been one distortion of the truth, one lie after another....

Let's dispose of conspiracy theories from the Drudge Report. We've got enough B.S. to filter thru as is.

Posted by: Johnny at July 31, 2006 07:39 PM (Vtwo9)

40 The dead baby's "handler" was not wearing gloves earlier in the day when parading the body. Twelve hours later - while still parading that body around - he has gloves on. I can only conclude that the poor baby's dead body was not holding up well to the wear and tear in that heat.

Nothing is too gruesome for a Pallywood-style photo op.

Posted by: Redhead Infidel at July 31, 2006 07:39 PM (wNM0z)

41 Will some of you be more convinced by seeing the same child rescued over and over for the cameras? Please see EU Referendum

You who condemn Israel are playing into the terrorists' hands. They staged these pictures because they fully understand that Americans have no stomach for war. Show them pictures of dead children and they turn heel and run.

What about all the dead Israelis from suicide bombers over the years?

Posted by: Katablog.com at July 31, 2006 08:02 PM (3xaMi)

42 I am pro-Israel but I feel very strongly that this is a "fog of war" problem.

The building fell during or shortly after the midnight strike. Rescue personnel were not called in properly until the morning.

This is not hard to believe in a war zone. Communications are cut off, there's little light available, etc.

This is confirmed by people interviewed on the ground, and also the rigor mortis in the bodies.

The main person (perhaps the only person) suggesting that the building fell at 8AM is the one Air Force Brig. Gen'l. He is probably confused by the fact that there were Israeli sorties in the morning which stuck other nearby buildings. He probably heard that the first report on the downed residential building came in the morning, and assumed that was when it probably happened, connecting it with the morning sorties.

Now, Hezbollah may have waited until morning to notify rescue workers because it would be easier to get the crew of media in and shooting good video in the daylight hours.

But by now, if there was more evidence of foolery, we would be hearing more about it from the Israeli side, because they will have reviewed the tapes and the much greater amount of information they have on hand.

Fog of war!

Posted by: Undertoad at July 31, 2006 08:09 PM (EfKZZ)

43 To KC & the rest of the Sunshine Band:

Nothing about this post exonerates Israel in any way. Their claim is that they are intent on destroying Hezb assets after warning people to get out of the way. If that's legitimate then it's not their fault if people are still in the buildings. When they resume bombing they’ll have to follow the same modus operandi & it could happen again if civilians are kept in harm’s way. (If Hezb is such a charitable outfit you’d think they might have used their resources to help people move.)

Hezb benefits from the massacre because of the outcry. It’s worth observing that our media craves news that demonizes “naughty Israel,” as do the EU and the UN. Remember Jenin as just one example. Look for stories on what Israel is going through with rocket attacks. There’s very little, although it explains fully why Israel needs to do something about Hezb. It's all one way reporting and to hell with Somalia, Congo, Iran. This media is ripe to be fed stories. Why do you think Hezb wouldn’t do it if they thought it would work?

Posted by: greenmamba at July 31, 2006 08:26 PM (TfFBt)

44 It is always a sad fact that innocents get killed in war. It is even sadder when those innocents are children.

It is well known that Hezbollah hides among the civilian population and has no qualms about using not only them but UN observers as shields.

I can't say if this was staged by Hezbollah, but the the lack of dust, visible injuries, blood and the stiffening of the bodies does raise some doubts.

As for the timeline, the IDF spokesman did come out and say the building was still standing after the earlier raids. They just didn't provide and video as proof.

I have heard many condemn Israel for attacking the Lebanese infrastructure. Since Hezbollah is using the same infrastructure, i.e. cell phone towers, this makes them legal targets.

Posted by: lonnie at July 31, 2006 08:29 PM (bx5cp)

45 I wonder if Israel has video from the jet fighter...perhaps we will see that after their investigation, and it will show if the building collapsed from bombs or not.

It's shameful that the media accepted these obviously staged pictures. Of course, until the blog world began, this was SOP.

Posted by: Pat at July 31, 2006 08:51 PM (jAFLw)

46 It is SOP to undermine anything the US or one of it's allies does in any of the conflicts. That is the problem with the media. They will believe anything hook, line, and sinker as long as it makes Bush look bad.

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 09:06 PM (ybfXM)

47 Everyone who says Israel is wrong needs to go read Sanctuary (both parts). Once you've read and understood that essay, come back here and we can discuss the situation intelligently.

Posted by: The Monster at July 31, 2006 09:20 PM (tw5mW)

48 I do not put it past hizbollah to fake human shield casualties. I mean, in theory, its easier to fake the death of inncoents that to forcibly submit them to make the sacrifice, no?

Isn't the main advantage of human shelids demonizing Israel? So they just fake the deaths in a chaotic environment where they control the cameras and get the same results - by recycling already dead civilians.

And the covered bodies all look like adult males -highly doubtful that they are civilians.

Posted by: Marc McCall at July 31, 2006 09:27 PM (5gT4z)

49 I've posted this elsewhere, but: Where are the survivors? Where are the injured? A partially-collapsed three-storey building, and no-one survived? No sign of fire, nor are the bodies damaged as would be expected by a severe collapse, nor were the victims left for days before rescue to die of asphyxiation or thirst, and yet everyone in the building was killed.

You would expect some number of deaths in this situation. But 100% fatality?

I thought at first that this was just a terrible case of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the more information emerges, the more it smells.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 31, 2006 09:28 PM (FRalS)

50 First of all, I hate seeing or hearing about dying or dead kids. It sickens me. I am a father and I have no idea what I would do. I know I would hate who ever did this.

And that is the question. Who did it? It really is not clear cut.

Note, I am not a patholgist or a forensics person. Not my field. I looked up some forensics texts. Rigor Mortis can set in starting in as little as 10 minutes. Usually longer though, several hours, and it takes about 12-18 hours for full onset if I read the text correctly.

But thats not the major evidence. Putrefication seems to give a better indicator of time of death, usually something like 24+ hours afterwords. This is when the bodies own enzymes start to denature the proteins. They break it down. Intestinal flora spread widely, as the blood no longer can coagulate. The body begins digesting itself.

Skin has a greyish-brown webbing after complete, with pustules and other nasty things. These bodies appeared to be full onset RM, and mostly not into Putrefication, but heading there rapidly. You would expect some large error bars on the timing.

I did not see massive blunt force trauma. One might expect that in a building collapse some number of the dead would show evidence of such trauma. In the first days of the this war they showed a genuinely greiving person holding up a child who had been cut in half.

That was abominable. And I think hezbullah is a quick study.

Building collapses. What is going to kill you. 1) suffocation, something impeding oxygen intake. 2) blunt force trauma. Something crushing a vital organ. 3) Myocardial Infarction. You bleed out from a wound and your heart basically arrests.

None of those kids looked like they were crushed. Which is not what you expect when a multi story house collapses upon you.

They didn't look like they bled out. Lots of pink skin, some of it grey.

Well, that leaves suffocation. Was oxygen displaced? What would displace it in a wide open area? Was it consumed? Could have been in a raging fire. None of the kids looked charred. Which you would expect in that case. Smoke inhalation. Would sear the lungs, kids would drown in the fluids filling their lungs. Possible, but you need the fire bit going, and from the rubble, and the absence of char marks on the rubble or the kids, this suggests something else.

The grey pallor suggests death 12-18 hours or more before. Full onset RM suggests something 6-12. You still need body core temp, which is useless after about 10 hours anyway, to determine TOD.

Given when they removed bodies, the what they showed, cherry picked or not, suggests that there is far more going on here, than the simple conclusion that they wish you to come to.

This appears to have been an exquisitely stage managed, made-for-tv-audience gruesome display. The more I see and here about it, the less makes sense. Especially given that Israel can account for all the missles/bombs striking other buildings. And not this one.

Posted by: Kranky at July 31, 2006 09:44 PM (KkAAv)

51 video from the scene.
http://www.wa3ad.org/video/other/majzarat_qana2006.wmv
bodies are covered with dust.

Posted by: gagarin at July 31, 2006 09:54 PM (ly5Bh)

52 Confederate Yankee has badly damaged his credibility with this nonsense. Obviously if even a shred of this were true, Israel would be making a big deal out of it, not apologizing. You've now given the 911 conspiracy nuts free license to peddle their nonsense. You can do better than this.

Posted by: richard at July 31, 2006 09:55 PM (tG1eq)

53 Three storey concrete building collapses, and none of the bodies shows evidence of being crushed amid cement dust! Sounds like 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not'. I say 'Not!'

When 60 Israelis citizens are blown up on a bus, or in a market or cafe, the world yawns. But let a single Palestinian child be caught in the crossfire of a firefight, and the whole globe is on fire, outraged at the CRUELTY! The world devalues Jews, and desperately wants to believe in Israeli atrocities.

Posted by: M.Capulus at July 31, 2006 09:56 PM (L3PuM)

54 Here are the differences between this and the WTC conspiracy theories:

1. This incident is suspected to be staged by a group whom everybody objectively knows (or should know) has no respect for human life, or the dead, by virtue of human shields and indiscriminate firing of rockets on civilian areas.

2. There are real, legitimate questions about this incident that haven't been addressed, at least not *yet*. I'm sure that if they were answered with facts, as opposed to ad-hominem attacks, this "conspiracy theory" would disappear very quickly.

3. Terrorist groups in the middle-east are well-known for their propaganda and manipulation of the media. Refer to the various "Pallywood" movies and photos, as well as the Reuters journalist who just last week admitted that a Hezbollah operative told him exactly where to go and what to write. And in fact this bears a remarkable resemblance to typical Pallywood.

4. The "death count" according to Hezbollah is almost twice as high as originally reported, and evidence indicates that Hezbollah and the UN have already been exaggerating (or liberally estimating) the death toll in Lebanon.

5. Unlike 9/11, there was not a single survivor. Does this strike no one as odd?

6. No one is actually claiming that there was a conspiracy to kill these people. They may in fact be casualties of war - the only question being asked is whether they were all killed at the same time, in the same place, several hours after the bombs actually hit. The incident may not have been completely staged, but it could have been significantly exaggerated.

7. No one, so far, has actually insisted upon the idea of it being staged or claimed that as fact. They are simply suspicious of this "story", as they were of Jenin, and are waiting for some forensic confirmation (there are thousands of documents pertaining to 9/11, and there would have to be millions of people in on the "conspiracy" for them all to be fake).

8. The "theorists" in this case are the ones who are *not* foaming at the mouth and barking hysterically at everyone who disagrees.

Posted by: Aaron at July 31, 2006 10:10 PM (1xiB4)

55 Groups like Hizballah have staged incidents before.

People like KC ignore such facts of these terror groups.

Moreover, to squash any serious debate on incidents such as these, KC and his ilk resort to attempting to shame or otherwise disparage not only the discussion, but the participants as well, all the while not giving any cogent rebuttles to the points brought up.

Folks like KC are not on the up and up and are not willing to engage is serious debate.

Posted by: TexasDude at July 31, 2006 10:11 PM (QCF+S)

56 Well, what do you know? Green Helmet Man has once again taken a little visit to the morgue in Tyre and arrived just in time for a rather typical Arab PR blitz.

The building collapsed six hours after it was hit by the IDF? Severe rigor mortis in individuals who have supposedly been dead for less than an hour? No blood, no crushed limbs, ribs, no evidence at all of blunt force trauma? And wouldn't you know? Green Helmet Man is once again parading around the corpses of children just like in 1996?

This little event was staged by the same fascist animals who blow up pizza parlors full of old people.

Posted by: Nine at July 31, 2006 10:25 PM (MQlUS)

57 The dead baby's Binky seems to be fresh, not dust covered and almost new.

Posted by: sharon Lynne at July 31, 2006 10:36 PM (i1+rx)

58 CY,

Sometimes you are just amazing. I'm going to let the topic of this post slide, simply because you make such amazing jumps in logic without any real facts (looking at pictures is your evidence?) it is just too funny to be taken seriously by anyone with an ouce of credibility.

The following though is pretty typical of your well honed ability to spout complete fabrications without any facts to back it up:

CY wrote: there is no deleted uranium in any bomb in the IDF inventory. DUis used in cannons as anti-aromor penetrators, not bombs.

What makes this quote by you so amazingly stupid is the fact that the US has rush delivered 100 GBU-28 "bunker buster" bombs, which use - yes, depleted uranuim - was all over the news just this past week.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/22/MNGTRK3SDG1.DTL

Don't you pay attention?

Fact: the 100 GBU-28 is a depleted uranium bomb. The delivery by the US was completed on the 25th of July. The deal was actually approved a year ago, but the Israeli's postponed delivery.

Oh yeah. It gets better. I can let it slide that maybe just maybe you simply missed that story. Fair enough.

Did you know that Israel does indeed have a large supply of GBU-24 "bunker buster", bombs which also use DU? No. Obviously you didn't. But, your lack of knowledge didn't stop you from stating you DID know it as fact did it? Amazing.

Strategy.com knows the facts:

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20060723.aspx

The relevant quote: To that end, Israeli orders for American deep penetrators (bunker buster bombs) have been speeded up, and those bombs are being delivered now. Israel already had several hundred of the GBU-24 penetrators, but last year ordered a hundred of the larger (2.5 ton) GBU-28. The GBU-28 can penetrate 100 feet of earth, or 20 feet of concrete. The lighter GBU-24 can manage less than half that.

Here's the facts on the GBU-24:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-24.htm

And, here's an overview of bunker bunsters in general:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster.htm

A nice quote:

The GBU-27/GBU-24 (aka BLU-109) is nearly identical to the GBU-28, except that it weighs only 2,000 pounds (900 kg). It is less expensive to manufacture, and a bomber can carry more of them on each mission.

To make bunker busters that can go even deeper, designers have three choices:

* They can make the weapon heavier. More weight gives the bomb more kinetic energy when it hits the target.

* They can make the weapon smaller in diameter. The smaller cross-sectional area means that the bomb has to move less material (earth or concrete) "out of the way" as it penetrates.

* They can make the bomb faster to increase its kinetic energy. The only practical way to do this is to add some sort of large rocket engine that fires right before impact.

One way to make a bunker buster heavier while maintaining a narrow cross-sectional area is to use a metal that is heavier than steel. Lead is heavier, but it is so soft that it is useless in a penetrator -- lead would deform or disintegrate when the bomb hits the target.

One material that is both extremely strong and extremely dense is depleted uranium. DU is the material of choice for penetrating weapons because of these properties. For example, the M829 is an armor-piercing "dart" fired from the cannon of an M1 tank. These 10-pound (4.5-kg) darts are 2 feet (61 cm) long, approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter and leave the barrel of the tank's cannon traveling at over 1 mile (1.6 km) per second. The dart has so much kinetic energy and is so strong that it is able to pierce the strongest armor plating.

Depleted uranium is a by-product of the nuclear power industry. Natural uranium from a mine contains two isotopes: U-235 and U-238. The U-235 is what is needed to produce nuclear power (see How Nuclear Power Plants Work for details), so the uranium is refined to extract the U-235 and create "enriched uranium." The U-238 that is left over is known as "depleted uranium."

Whether of not the DU bombs that Isreal HAS IN ITS INVENTORY have been used in the recent attack is a matter yet to be clarified. But, stating outright that Israel has no DU bombs in its inventory is just plain wrong.

Which is pretty much par for the coarse for you isn't it?

Good job!

Posted by: David (SNAFU Principle) at July 31, 2006 10:37 PM (lwQfV)

59 Unfortunately the Muslim terrorists are very good at manipulating a supportive media and are winning the propaganda fight. This will not discourage the Israelis from destroying the Iranian fascists in Lebanon. They will methodically pick apart these scum and the tragedy of war is that people die. The Lebanese government is too scared or is supportive of Nasrallah and his gang of murderers. Many of the Christians and moderates in Lebanon have been run off or already killed by the Islamic extremists. Lebanon suffers while Nasrallah and the Mullahs enjoy the havoc they have created.

Posted by: Geo11 at July 31, 2006 10:37 PM (Bt0gt)

60 "richard" -

Confederate Yankee has badly damaged his credibility with this nonsense. Obviously if even a shred of this were true, Israel would be making a big deal out of it, not apologizing. You've now given the 911 conspiracy nuts free license to peddle their nonsense.

No.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 31, 2006 10:40 PM (FRalS)

61 I think Richard has the same mindset as I do, as I was comparing WTC theorist to this recent story. Any findings will likely be speculative at best. CY, you've opened Pandora's box to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that likes to run wild with their imaginations, which is 90 percent of the problem.

Why so coy on the funding of those ship restorations, as I have asked twice and received no answer? Your friend mentioned corporate money, but is there more to that story?

Posted by: Johnny at July 31, 2006 10:44 PM (Vtwo9)

62 Fact: the 100 GBU-28 is a depleted uranium bomb.

No.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 31, 2006 10:48 PM (FRalS)

63 richard is right. there's aready a depleted uranium tangent going on.

Posted by: jummy at July 31, 2006 10:52 PM (gLRnO)

64 Like it matters, one or two less future terrorists, this is a cult of death and that is all they respect. I hope Israel finishes them all off.

My heart has gone cold, the pity is gone, its them or me.

Posted by: Awakened at July 31, 2006 10:57 PM (OkrBe)

65 I would like to add a tidbit to this debate.

It is from personal experience, not just personal opinion.

"Back in the day", myself and some buds were about 1400 meters from where a one thousand lb bomb was dropped (actually three runs were made) one bomb per run.

This is a little less than one mile and the blast almost knocked us off our feet on the first run, we were hugging the dirt for the other two.
The ground bounced me on the chin.

So....if the third IDF bombing was at 730am, it is possible that the concussion from that caused the already damaged building to collapse.

It would depend on how far away it was and what size bomb was dropped and how many together.

Or was it a missile attack, I can't find any details. They might come out later, I don't know.

But my point is, you don't have to be close to a bomb or explosion to have considerable effects.

For what it's worth.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Posted by: Papa Ray at July 31, 2006 11:00 PM (B6ERo)

66 Pixy, you can say "no", but the facts are against you. Every munitions expert, every soldier in the field, the boots know the truth.

The Ratheon constructed GBU bunker buster warheads are encased in hardened heavy metal containing DU.

They were used in Operation Allied Force, they were used in Operation Desert Shield and they are being used in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And, since the Israeli's have them as well, we may expect that they are being used.

It's easy to say "no". Back it up. But, you can not.

Look at the facts. No. Wait. You can't / won't do that...

How shocking.

Posted by: David (SNAFU Principle) at July 31, 2006 11:00 PM (lwQfV)

67 Poor CY sends me the following e-mail:

David, you ignorant slut:


The Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-2 is a special weapon developed for penetrating hardened Iraqi command centers located deep underground. The GBU-28 is a 5,000-pound laser-guided conventional munition that uses a 4,400-pound penetrating warhead. The bombs are modified Army artillery tubes, weigh 4,637 pounds, and contain 630 pounds of high explosives. They are fitted with GBU-27 LGB kits, 14.5 inches in diameter and almost 19 feet long. The operator illuminates a target with a laser designator and then the munition guides to a spot of laser energy reflected from the target.


http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-28.htm

piss off, lightweight.

The truth hurts.

Too bad CY thinks that name calling hurts as well.

Grow up.

Posted by: David (SNAFU Principle) at July 31, 2006 11:03 PM (lwQfV)

68 U-238 is a radioactive metal that produces alpha and beta particles. In its solid form, it is not particularly dangerous because its half-life is 4.5 billion years, meaning that the atomic decay is very slow. Depleted uranium is used, for example, in boats and airplanes as ballast. The three properties that make depleted uranium useful in penetrating weapons are its:

* Density - Depleted uranium is 1.7 times heavier than lead, and 2.4 times heavier than steel.

* Hardness - If you look at a Web site like WebElements.com, you can see that the Brinell hardness of U-238 is 2,400, which is just shy of tungsten at 2,570. Iron is 490. Depleted uranium alloyed with a small amount of titanium is even harder.

* Incendiary properties - Depleted uranium burns. It is something like magnesium in this regard. If you heat uranium up in an oxygen environment (normal air), it will ignite and burn with an extremely intense flame. Once inside the target, burning uranium is another part of the bomb's destructive power.

These three properties make depleted uranium an obvious choice when creating advanced bunker-busting bombs. With depleted uranium, it is possible to create extremely heavy, strong and narrow bombs that have tremendous penetrating force.

Posted by: David (SNAFU Principle) at July 31, 2006 11:05 PM (lwQfV)

69 David, get your basic facts straight, you simple idiot:


The Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-2 is a special weapon developed for penetrating hardened Iraqi command centers located deep underground. The GBU-28 is a 5,000-pound laser-guided conventional munition that uses a 4,400-pound penetrating warhead. The bombs are modified Army artillery tubes, weigh 4,637 pounds, and contain 630 pounds of high explosives. They are fitted with GBU-27 LGB kits, 14.5 inches in diameter and almost 19 feet long. The operator illuminates a target with a laser designator and then the munition guides to a spot of laser energy reflected from the target.


Your own link. on the GBU-24 cites a pentrator made of "tough nickel-cobalt steel alloy called Air Force 1410."

There is NO depleted uranium in either of these bombs. Not one milligram. Never has been, never will be, as even your own sources show.

The M829 sabot is a cannon round fired from the 120mm smoothbore, exactly as I earlier said when I said DU was only used in cannons

Do you have a substance abuse problem?

WHAT AN IDIOT.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at July 31, 2006 11:06 PM (psJM2)

70 Everybody stand back...we've got a pissing contest! Who knows more about bombs!

Posted by: Johnny at July 31, 2006 11:17 PM (Vtwo9)

71 Goodness C.Y. You're really bringing out the best in the terrorist enablers with comments like SNAFU's above.

You may have seen the questions that EU Referendum poses regarding the "Baby Carrier" or as EU calls him "Green Helmet:"

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/

The guy seems to show up all over Lebanon whenever a bomb drops.

I'd also like to stress that reporters are brought to these scenes of carnage by Hezboo handlers. They are not witnesses to the actual attack and in the case of Qana, it was hours later that they were brought to the scene.

Any wonder then that we never see any evidence of rocket launchers or Hezboo fighters?

Posted by: Mike's America at July 31, 2006 11:20 PM (SHL+1)

72 The answer is obvious, johnny, but it is more a
matter of basic reading comprehension, isn't it?

Read the links cited, and see if you can find any evidence that depleted uranium is used in aerial bombs, specifically the DBU-24 and GBU-28.

A simple enough reading comprehension test. See how you do.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at July 31, 2006 11:23 PM (psJM2)

73 Bottom line is that HA decides where to put their launchers, when to fire them (and therefore indirectly when the return fire will come), as well as who gets to take pictures, when, and how. It is logical to assume that they will spin every photo op to maximize civilian damage and show zero military effect (notice that there are NO pictures of blown-up trucks with rocket launchers on them, NO dead HA fighters whatsoever).

This is the biggest reason why IDF has to change the mix and bring in 15K more ground troops. If IDF controls the ground, then the reporters are no longer reporting on HA terms. It will cost the lives of IDF troops in order to stop the loss of the propaganda war.

Posted by: The Monster at July 31, 2006 11:34 PM (tw5mW)

74 I am not certain that everyone in a bombed out building would be crushed. The concussion killed Zarq man.(eventually Violent trama from a bomb would probably leave all kinds of dead people. Be careful not to get carried away or you might turn into a Truther like KC.

The pacifier is definatly fake though.

Posted by: mike at July 31, 2006 11:36 PM (TE1fr)

75 I was just trying to make light of a situation CY.

It is obvious to me that you are coming "un-glued" tonight, but we'll let the readers make their own assessment.

Frankly, I don't care what is in one of those bombs. An over-zealous/over-imaginative reader got excited about bombs and boogie-men, and mentioned uranium. Hence, the conversation became explosive, no pun intended! Well...maybe...

I was more interested in the boat project...but I guess I gotta talk about what daddy wants to talk about...right?

Posted by: Johnny at July 31, 2006 11:40 PM (Vtwo9)

76 Also, about the green helmet guy. He might just be the go to guy for foreign press.

Posted by: mike at July 31, 2006 11:42 PM (TE1fr)

77 Also from FAS, a list of DU munitions (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/du.htm):

- 20mm MK149
- 25mm PGU-20
- 25mm M919 Armor Piercing, Fin Stabilized, Discarding Sabot, with Tracer (APFSDS-T)
- 30mm PGU-14/B API Armor Piercing Incendiary
- 120mm M829 Armor Piercing, Fin Stabilized, Discarding Sabot-Tracer (APFSDS-T)

All direct fire. None is a bomb.
I can only suppose the tag is supposed to mean Stupid Nincompoop, Always Freakin' Useless.

Posted by: The Atom Bomb of Loving Kindness. at August 01, 2006 12:11 AM (lpnZt)

78 after reading all the comments it seems those who are being emotional, insulting and sarcastic are saying its real, and those who are calm and actually studying the photographic evidence are either strongly convinced its staged, or doubtful of hezbollahs account of what happened. i believe the level headed comments and history of israels enemies either sacrificing their own or just plain LYING for the sake of swaying world opinion for sympathy and for their cause of eliminating israel.

Posted by: Scott at August 01, 2006 12:18 AM (cVM4k)

79 THE WHOLE WAR IS BEING STAGED FOR THE BENEFIT OF GEORGE, IT KEEPS THE DISMAL NEWS OF IRAQ OFF THE RADAR.

Posted by: HOKUMJEEBS at August 01, 2006 12:25 AM (BgC2g)

80 CY,

You poor thing. The FAS link does not specifically mention the fact that the GBU-24 and the GBU-28 have DU in the warhead casing. This is, of course, an "industry secret". A secret which you either are unaware of, or are a willing shill for... I presume the latter based upon your history of making stuff up on a regular basis.
But, plenty of other links do mention that DU is a compenent of the GBU bombs, including the other one I quoted from above which you conveniently ignore.

Read the links cited, and see if you can find any evidence that depleted uranium is used in aerial bombs, specifically the DBU-24 and GBU-28.

Here is the link again:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster.htm

Here is the quote once again:

The GBU-27/GBU-24 (aka BLU-109) is nearly identical to the GBU-28, except that it weighs only 2,000 pounds (900 kg). It is less expensive to manufacture, and a bomber can carry more of them on each mission.

To make bunker busters that can go even deeper, designers have three choices:

* They can make the weapon heavier. More weight gives the bomb more kinetic energy when it hits the target.

* They can make the weapon smaller in diameter. The smaller cross-sectional area means that the bomb has to move less material (earth or concrete) "out of the way" as it penetrates.

* They can make the bomb faster to increase its kinetic energy. The only practical way to do this is to add some sort of large rocket engine that fires right before impact.

One way to make a bunker buster heavier while maintaining a narrow cross-sectional area is to use a metal that is heavier than steel. Lead is heavier, but it is so soft that it is useless in a penetrator -- lead would deform or disintegrate when the bomb hits the target.

One material that is both extremely strong and extremely dense is depleted uranium. DU is the material of choice for penetrating weapons because of these properties. For example, the M829 is an armor-piercing "dart" fired from the cannon of an M1 tank. These 10-pound (4.5-kg) darts are 2 feet (61 cm) long, approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter and leave the barrel of the tank's cannon traveling at over 1 mile (1.6 km) per second. The dart has so much kinetic energy and is so strong that it is able to pierce the strongest armor plating.

It's rather interesting that your rather reliable reaction is to attack me rather than the facts laid out before you. The avenue of the trapped dog. Don't you think? Yes. How sad.

The FAS link was included for its historical military information. And, being a military consultancy, the FAS will not specifically mention that DU is present on the GBU bombs of concern here. It's not something they particularly wish to be well known. It's not even acknowledged.

But, you woulndn't know that now would you?

"The Pentagon has not confirmed the use of uranium or depleted uranium in the bunker-busters, and it has refused to identify the composition of the dense-metal warheads that enable the missiles to penetrate structures deeply buried under earth, steel and reinforced concrete. "

And, of course, the actual patent for the BLU-109B, the advanced penatrator for the GBU-24 specifically identifies BOTH Tungsten AND
Depleted Uranium penetrator versions.

http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u23.htm#USpatreport

Tungsten can also be used, but is considered less reliable. Which raises the question: if Tuegsten is used, why does the Pentagon not acknowledge it as such and defuse the depleted uranium uproar? Because they can not.

And, why should they when uninformed tools like CY are there doing their bidding?

Meanwhile, patriots and warriors are suffering from the affects of these weapons. And, their children are suffering.

http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

What would you know about that CY?

Nothing. How wonderful for you.

Carry on men!

Posted by: David (SNAFU Principle) at August 01, 2006 12:39 AM (lwQfV)

81 Atom Bomb,

Here's a link for ya... It lists all of the Registered Patents for guided weapons - yes, bombs included- that have specific mentions of utilzing depleted uranium in the warhead components.

http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/pdfs/USpats.pdf

This is where y'all start to attack the messenger and the sources in the links!

(Oh darn. Did I spoil it for you?)

Posted by: David (SNAFU Principle) at August 01, 2006 12:43 AM (lwQfV)

82 No one seems to care about the ball-bearing packed missiles that have been deliberately sent at civilians in Israel. If a lot of civilians were killed in Israel, would the hezbos hold their fire to investigate?

Posted by: David at August 01, 2006 01:06 AM (nvpz9)

83 I find it hard to believe the IDF would use inferior, overpriced and obsolete tungsten penetrators on their smart bombs, they were phased out over the past decade state side, though I suppose they may have some old stock as they have requested another couple hundred from the states.

It is an open secret that BLU-113 warheads regularly utilize depleted uranium penetrators, though if used on softer targets or near allied soldiers it is more likely a conventional penetrator. Those bright white fireworks that sprinkle around some of the guided bomb sights is the magical property of fine uranium particles spontaneously combusting as they encounter oxygen molecules, not dissimilar to magnesium, I forget the name for this property.

How many other kinetic penetrating warheads can utilize it?...probably all of them as nothing comes close in penetrating power. I for one hope they are not using many DU equipped warheads, as they contaminate a very large area with uranium oxide.

Anyhow, back on topic, I agree it is unfortunate the media is not telling the story as it unfolds, but they obviously do not want to endanger themselves either, so they kinda play into hezbollah's propaganda game, whether they like it or not.

Either way it is horrible so many civilians are being killed on both sides, but not much you can do about that when one side is a massive modern military, the other is a small number of well armed guerilla's and the battle is smack bang in the middle of populated areas, kind of the only way hezbollah has the advantage unfortunately.

Fingers crossed all this madness is nearly over, last thing we need is other countries feeling compelled to assist the little guy.

Posted by: Captain Obvious at August 01, 2006 01:29 AM (vAn9z)

84 Does anyone remember the Palestinian funeral where caught on tape, they dropped the casket and the body got up and walked away?

Naw, these things are never faked. That's just crazy talk.

Posted by: TrueGrit at August 01, 2006 01:45 AM (KSd/U)

85 Israeli civilian casualties don't matter.

The fact is, Israelis are stupid - they keep on building bomb shelters, and putting their children into them, and when they think rockets are coming, hiding their children inside of them. And if Hezbollah actually warned them that the rockets were coming at their civilian areas (not the areas where their missiles were being fired from, or the private homes where their military were hiding out) - say, by dropping leaflets or calling their cell phones or TEXT MESSAGING THEM TELLING THEM TO LEAVE THE AREA, like most attacking armies do in a war - they should treat those warnings as just playful suggestions and let their children hang out in the streets and sleep out in the open unprotected as usual.

THAT's how you win a war if you truly care about your children.

[/sarcasm]

Posted by: Michelle at August 01, 2006 01:49 AM (toCqQ)

86 Someone blew up a house, and the people WHO HAVE BEEN TRYING TO BLOW UP THE HOUSE say that it wasn't them, although they did try.

That's not an excuse. That's a pathetic excuse for an excuse. But Confederate Yankee doesn't doubt them, because some people aren't dusty enough, and the corpses look too crooked, and there isn't as much blood as he would like. Ipso Facto: Hezbollah dunnit!

Wow, you're like some sort of wonderful, modern-day Sherlock Holmes, aren't you, CY?

Posted by: Railroad Stone at August 01, 2006 01:58 AM (51E0l)

87 A few things before you get too hysterical about this theory:

- All witnesses say the building collapsed DURING THE NIGHT

- By the time the rescue workers got there in the morning, rigor mortis had plenty of time to set in

- Why would civilians not leave a building that was being bombed? Think! These people believed themselves to be a in the strongest building around. The last thing they were going to do was leave their 'bunker' during a raid.

- Why would journalists be able to drive to the scene when civilians can't leave? Because the going rate for a taxi in Southern Lebanon is $1,000. Peanuts for a news team, more than a lifetime's saving for impoverished Shiites.

- Why would rescue workers not attempt to access the rubble until daylight? Again, think! There were bombing raids going on. The last thing you're going to do is present an even easier target by bringing in strong lights to an area that Israel is clearly intent on bombing. As for heavy equipment: there is none in southern Lebanon. What's done is done by hand, and that can only be done during daylight.

It's astounding that the same people who continually blast conspiracy theories such as 'Loose Change' are prepared to come up with such hare-brained explanations for what was clearly a massacre. You're completely discrediting your position with this kind of stuff.

Posted by: jimmie at August 01, 2006 01:59 AM (GcBT+)

88 At least I can go to bed tonight knowing I'm not a sanctimoniously pompous ignoramus whose most 'reliable' sources are wingnut tinhatters in Britain who wouldn't know DU if they sat on it.
"Well, since there's this one patent discussing the possibility of using a DU warhead, (which looks like it would be a guided sabot round dropped from a plane) then obviously that's the only possible thing that they are now using."
Re-read the site, that is what they say. They found 1 patent from 1997, and they have imagined all of the rest.

The FACT is that you have not yet shown the slightest evidence that there is DU in those weapons. The 'how stuff works' and patent indicate the possibility, not actuality ("To make bunker busters that can go even deeper, designers have _three choices_..." is what you quoted, after all). You already KNOW that there is DU in these things (though you can't explain how exactly you know it), so anything that comes close to reaffirming your pre-existing belief is 'proof.' I, however, do not share that pre-exiting belief, and so your proofs are meaningless and flimsy. Provide more meaningful proof and I'll look at it. I've been out of the service for a while now, and maybe they are using more DU. When I was in, though, they phased out DU in CIWS to go with tungsten instead.

CO, the term you want is pyrophric. DU is, in fact, pyrophoric. As are several other things like caclium, sodium, potassium, aluminum, and more than a few others.

The bottom line is that the GBU-28 is made out of an 8" artillery tube filled with explosives. And so, it's real long and skinny just like an 8" artillery tube would tend to be, which would be one of those choices listed in the 'how stuff works' column! Imagine that. And here's the kicker: why would the US Army -- or ANY Army for that matter -- build an artillery tube out of DU?

Bueller? ... Bueller?

And, in any case, the danger that DU may pose is not radiological (your getting a bigger dose from your monitor at the moment, most likely), but potentially chemical. Uranium is a metal. And it is heavy. For those reasons, oddly enough, it is sometimes refered to as a 'heavy metal.' Crazy, isn't it? It's bonkers!
So, yes, if you eat an entire tank that was recently blown up with a DU round you will probably get heavy metal poinsoning. If the synthetic oils don't kill you first, that is. Or the toxic fumes from the burning components in the tank.

Posted by: The Atom bomb of Loving Kindness at August 01, 2006 02:31 AM (lpnZt)

89 Honestly, this is the right wing equivalent of the moonbat world trade center conspiracy theories. It was a horrible incident. Those children would have been alive though had Hezbollah not started this latest war and used them for cover.

Posted by: Bill at August 01, 2006 02:54 AM (znuED)

90 You can take an ass to water but you can not make them drink. I read the clips by the leftist anti Israeli bashers and they can not be convinced that the Hezbababybutchers could kill some christian Arabs and stage this photo op. When someone is dead with their arms out in front of them the last thing they did was to try and protect themselves. I bet if you had taken off some of the victims clothes you would have found bullet holes or contusions from heavy body blows. KC, sounds like the usual mindless leftist that attacks Israel even when Israels children are being killed day after day.

Don't people understand that if the building came down from a blast that those people would not be in one peice. You could not even guess what arm fit what body. It does not matter though people like KC will hate Jews and bring them by the train loads to die for staged killings like this one and any other reason under the sun. They do not even need a reason, they are as blood thirsty as the Arabs pulling out those bodies wishing they were Jewish. Well it is going to come down in time to Jews being all alone against the world that hates them and I hope and pray that it will come soon. The world is going to get a huge surprise.

Posted by: Yonatan at August 01, 2006 02:54 AM (zHd9P)

91 Ben Wedeman of CNN (!) reported already on July 30th, the day of the incident and BEFORE the Israeli spokesman reported it, that the building was hit by the Israeli air force shortly after midnight.
The NY Times reported on the 31st: "But the house appeared to have been hit from above, and residents said the walls and ceiling came down around them immediately after the first bomb."
Sabrine Tavernise - NYTimes

However - the NY Times also showed this picture:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/07/30/world/20060730_QANA_SLIDESHOW_7.html
Note that the ceiling is completely intact. Note also the rigor mortis evident in the woman's hands, and the position that she is in.

Posted by: jane doe at August 01, 2006 04:11 AM (flk8t)

92 Oh, and the fact that the men were virtually unscathed and that the dead were nearly all women and children. That is not consistent with them having died when the building was originally hit at midnight.

Posted by: jane doe at August 01, 2006 04:13 AM (flk8t)

93 GO ISRAEL!!!

Posted by: michelle at August 01, 2006 04:25 AM (CgyR1)

94 People thinking this bombing is fake should be really ashamed of themselves (no matter on what "side" you are). Yes indeed they are showing the bodies and may even exploited them. We would do the same thing on a different level (list of names, coverage of the people killed telling who they were etc.) Furthermore questioning both Israel and the Arabs doesn't make anyone a fascist. Either live is as important. The US just happens to be on the Israel side, that's all

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 05:15 AM (SL1fo)

95 For the record, michelle at 4:25 a.m. is a different Michelle than me... I'm still as bitter and sarcastic as I was at 1:49 a.m., but I'm not waving flags about all this.

You do what you have to do to protect your country, and if that means sending troops in to get rid of the rockets that are targeting your civilians, then that's what you do. Israel is bending over backwards not to target those children, while Hezbollah is doing the exact opposite. The person who mentioned the ball-bearings packed inside Hezbollah rockets to cause maximum injuries (another point immediately ignored, I noticed) made that clear before I could.

I think what happened at Qana could very well be at least partly staged. If you haven't seen the "Pallywood" film http://www.seconddraft.org/movies.php , it's worth checking out, even if only to be skeptical. But it doesn't matter. Like the civilian deaths at the beach in Gaza, which was proven to be caused by ordnance and not Israeli shelling, and possibly even explosives planted by Hamas itself, the record will always be passed on that it was caused "by Israeli shelling." Israel was judged on the strength of the photographs of the girl crying and the official Palestinian reports complete with doctored film footage, and that film footage is still making the rounds today. Many people still refer to the "massacre" in Jenin. So it goes.

So we can argue this and point it out, and like some people here have noted, until Israel makes an official statement, no one will believe it. But even when Israel does make an official statement, what will it matter? Then it will be "The Zionists not taking responsibility for their massacres" or some such garbage. Children were killed, and Israelis have a conscience, and Olmert issued an apology. Frankly, I'm glad of that. Even if Hezbollah will always be scum and never apologize for a single child ripped limb from limb with their bare hands (God forbid) and even shown off with a banner saying "Look mom, I did this for you!!!" I'd rather have Israelis apologize and be genuinely upset about civilian deaths - no matter whose fault it is they died - than be callous about it - so long as they do their job and protect their own. It shows a moral compass.

For me, Golda Meir said it best. "When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their children."

Posted by: Michelle at August 01, 2006 05:28 AM (toCqQ)

96 I didn't realize that there were so many medical examiners, coroners, morticians and others that were so learned in the detailed analysis of a crime scene, or other causes of death and its outcome, were such loyal fans of this site. It certainly sounds like it they are, from all of the pontificating about "dust on bodies," ashen skin, rigor mortis, and other confirmations of facts and time-frames surrounding death that are being postulated here. Or, maybe a lot of the people offering these iron-clad analyses are actually spending too much time watching CSI.

Either way, do any of the photo's in the recent news from the Lebanese-Israeli war deny the fact that there are HUNDREDS of innocent men, women and CHILDREN that have been KILLED in Lebanon because of the Israeli bombings, and THOSANDS that have been seriously inured??

Israel should certainly be able to defend itself from hostile armies and attacks, and of course the Hezbo's are a crazy, violent organization, but how can you ignore the fact that there are FAR more CHILDREN that have been killed on Lebanese soil than the number of Israeli soldiers that have been killed -- both on Israeli soil AND in actual combat in Lebanon COMBINED... what does it say about the way Israel is conducting this so-called "defensive" military action? Even if the Hezbo's are launching rockets from locations that are very near to civilian homes, does Israel have the right to just open the bomb-bay doors and drop whatever ordnance it wants, knowing that it is hitting a predominantly civilian area?

And even if the Hezbo's actually brought the bodies of these dead CHILDREN to this bomb site from somewhere else, or that they may have been killed in some other bombing at a slightly earlier time of day, as your pointed accusations denounce, does that deny that these CHILDREN were KILLED somewhere, in a recent bombing or military action?

Have you become so enamored with the Bush approach to war that says: "Kill 'em all, let God sort them out later" that you have become totally immune, indifferent, or (God-forbid) even IN FAVOR of the kind of atrocities that Israel is committing against CIVILIANS under the guise of so-called, and supposedly undeniable "national self-defense"...? Even if you have been seduced by the ludicrous and self-serving doctrine of Bush's so-called "pre-emptive" attacks against potential enemies (which has completely destroyed the good name that the US once had in the world), and assume that Israel should follow our lead in that regard, what kind of military strategy kills more innocent CHILDREN on the enemy side than it has lost from within its own ranks?

It doesn't matter if it is labeled as a 'pre-emptive', 'pro-active' or any other metaphorically-based, sound-bite enhanced marketing campaign used as a justification for an attack on another country, when the military action produces CIVILIAN casualties on this magnitude, it is WRONG.

What will you say next -- that the Hezbo's killed their OWN people, just for the potential photo-op and political propaganda? Or, are you going to make the tired old "two wrongs DO make a right" argument that since the Hezbo's, the PLO, and other violence-based groups often target innocent civilians, it automatically gives the US, Israel or any of our other allies the justification to do the same thing?? If you believe any of that, even a little, then God help us all.... it means that you really DO want to return to the Stone Age... and there will be no hope for any of us.

Posted by: aja10024 at August 01, 2006 05:44 AM (wZLWV)

97 Whether or not bunker-busters contain DU is beside the point. The target in Cana wasn't a bunker, and Israel isn't going to waste their inventory on a katyusha store.

As to whether the Cana tragedy was staged, I'm open minded - possible, but not proven. Morally there's no difference, as Israel wouldn't have dropped the bomb if they'd known it would kill a few dozen kids. On the other hand, Hezbollah would certainly stage this if they could get a propaganda victory out of it and could get away with it. I wouldn't put it past them to deliberate ly kill people to do it either - they love death, don't they? And they certainly encourage civilians to get killed, and it's not a great distance from there to killing them yourself "for the cause".

||

Posted by: parallel at August 01, 2006 06:09 AM (6U4Ti)

98 When this first began, there were videos on Fox of people being rushed to the hospital. I noticed the same thing: the supposed victims had no visible wounds. In one, there was a young woman in a vehicle with her forehead being daubed by a man behind her. It seemed like for an instant she smiled and then quickly folded up her arm to cover her face with wrist and hand. The babies being hurried to the hospital also showed no visible wounds or blood in these early videos. I do suspect that many of the photos and video are staged. There probably are victims, but for the hez terrorists, this is a film production, I'm certain.

Posted by: Adie at August 01, 2006 06:11 AM (JMw+G)

99 YOU honestly think that killing their own people for propoganda purposes is beyond the pale for Hezbollah? The same group that delights in bashing six year old Isreali girls in the head with rifle butts and shooting pregnant women?

Posted by: Ryan at August 01, 2006 06:16 AM (XmZOg)

100 It seems likely that Hezbollah is not above a little human sacrifice, especially if it results in sympathy and perhaps drumming up support from fellow Jihadis. This is the nature of assymetric warfare and information operations. The location of the incident in Qana seem suspicious, as do the staging of the bodies. And it certainly seems barbaric, but I couldn't put it past hezbollah who pride themselves on their barbarity.

Whatever else, I suggest that people pay attention to what actually constitutes a war crime. It keeps getting repeated infinitum. Let me make it really simple:

If civilians in a war zone get killed it is not a war crime. It is regrettable and tragic, but it does not itself constitute a "war crime". Hezbollah is firing unguided antipersonnel rockets towards civilians in Israel and I never see anyone calling that a war crime.

Co-locating attack weaponry with civilian housing and using civilian areas for cover and munitions storage in time of war, however, IS a war crime. It's called Perfidy. If anyone is going to stand trial for war crimes at the conclusion of this conflict, it will be Hezbollah.

But I doubt it.

Posted by: Peter at August 01, 2006 06:22 AM (56lYi)

101 Somebody tell EUReferendum that the times listed next to the photos on his site do not represent that exact time a photo was taken.

The whole point of the post falls apart when you remove the "evidence" that the photos were taken hours apart.

Any idiot should be able to figure this out (and only an arrogant idiot would think that the whole editorial office at AP and Reuters would miss such an obvious staging, regardless of whether the obviously terrorist-sympathizing photographer was in on it or not) but I guess it just goes to show that people can disregard almost any amount of contradictory evidence if they reeeeeaaaaaaly want to believe something.

Posted by: Blud at August 01, 2006 06:42 AM (xGLyS)

102 Specter,

Apparently my comment that you were referring to got deleted.

I was saying that Hezbollah DOES NOT have any "moral sense."

My point is not that they are innocent. They are psychotic murderers.

My point was that there is a timeline that explains at least some of the evidence without assuming they trucked in bodies. This time.

I haven't read the whole comment train yet, I just wanted to clarify my own position on that.

Posted by: Sam at August 01, 2006 06:45 AM (6GFTi)

103 Jenin Massacre hoax
Gaza beach hoax
Qana massacre hoax

it's deje-vu all over again

see http://g eocities.com/realtrueactuality/PalFakeImages.html

Posted by: Maria at August 01, 2006 06:47 AM (/i/bz)

104 HA is Iran proxy. Here is a link showing how Iran treats his children:

https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20060424&s=kuntzel042406

Why HA should act differently?

Posted by: Mitrii at August 01, 2006 06:48 AM (id6E9)

105 Are there no depths that these evil bastards won't plumb?

Posted by: Glynn Jones at August 01, 2006 06:52 AM (ZwUHu)

106 Hez fires rockets at civilian centers in Israel.

Fires these rockets from its own civilian centers(Lebanese anyway).

Hides behind civilians and UN observation points.

Their stated goal is to exterminate Israel.

How could anyone be surprised that innocent civilians on the Lebanese side would be hurt and killed given the tactics of Hez?? What should come as no surprise is the Israeli civilian casualties.

Posted by: Just One Voice at August 01, 2006 07:06 AM (X2tAw)

107 I love this:

The FAS link does not specifically mention the fact that the GBU-24 and the GBU-28 have DU in the warhead casing. This is, of course, an "industry secret".

Oh yeah, the Federation of American Scientists is a well-known defense industry shill. *snicker*

Duh, they act as a defense *watchdog* organization.

Three points.

1. Their descriptions of these weapons -- the source *you* selected -- don't mention depleted uranium.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-28.htm
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-24.htm
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-109.htm
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/mk84.htm

(BLU-109 and MK84 included for reference data)

2. The quote from howstuffworks.com has exceeded your reading comprehension. It describes the GBU-27/GBU-24, then says "To make bunker busters that can go even deeper" (than what it just described), "designers have three choices:" one of which is depleted uranium.

That quote indicates that depleted uranium is NOT used in the GBU-27 or GBU-24.

3. Captain Obvious had some technical facts wrong, but his point was that overpressure from bombs can kill people without visible injuries. That's true, and if the "rescuers" were just getting out the easiest bodies to reach, they might be the un-crushed ones.

Crushed bodies, being buried under rubble, can't be removed without, like, manual labor. We can't expect Hezbollah to provide THAT. Let the locals actually dig after the photo op.

Posted by: Sam at August 01, 2006 07:13 AM (6GFTi)

108 1st Principle: remember the "Jenin Massacre"!
2nd Principle: the only statement you can accept as truth from an Islamo-fascist is that he wants to kill Jews
3rd Principle: Kofi Annon doesn't know Principles 1 and 2 OR just enjoys speaking Blood Libels about Israel.
Conclusion: Re Qana - - - I'm from Missouri - - Show me the proof!!

Posted by: Steve B at August 01, 2006 07:20 AM (XWhUa)

109 Girls, girls, girls. Come, come now...

Stop all this bickering.

Hezbollah is using this as a photo op. Yes, innocents are being killed, PRIMARILY BECAUSE HEZBOLLAH USES WOMEN AND CHILDREN AS SHIELDS. This is Fourth Generation Warfare, which their simple logic doesn't quite understand - yet. Radicals like Hezbollah cannot say the truth, that would damn them forever, so they lie.

Posted by: J K H at August 01, 2006 08:01 AM (z62e3)

110 War
People die.
Good, bad, innocent, young, old, Etc.
What matters to me is more of them (THE ENEMY) die than us.
Save your tears and drama till after We have defeated the enemy.
until then.
I do not care if they die.

Posted by: Barry at August 01, 2006 08:51 AM (Ffvoi)

111 It's largely immaterial. Israel has a right to defend itself, and the civilians were warned this could happen. The only thing that has prevented TRULY widespread civilian death has been the IDF/IAF's supreme skill at targeting.

In time of war, a nation has the natural right to prefer the lives of its own civilians over those of the enemy. Period.

As for the UN observers, the question isn't if they died or not. It's why a UN force so totally failing to acheive its goals was kept in place so long, even after the UN was receiving hourly reports from the observers about the imminent danger they were in. The UN's refusal to relocate the observers killed those men as surely as did any Israeli ordinance.

Posted by: Matt at August 01, 2006 09:18 AM (CJkM2)

112 Oh. Ok. Ahem. I'll go ahead and point out that the attacks of 911 were perpetrated by our own government, in league with the Mossad (just a branch of our own government, if you only look at funding), and those aliens from the X Files.

Did you see how those steel framed buildings collapsed in a pancake fashion?

Where was the wreckage on the lawn of the Pentagon?


"Nothing to add to the conversation..."

Yeah, that about sums it up. One can't add "nothing" to "nothing".

Oh - and I like the notion that the images you have shown are "Hezbollah images".

The "intellectual" output of this group of amateur CSI detectives is amusing, yet ultimately unsatisfying.

Did Hezbollah stage the other 300 civilian deaths?
Damn, people lay off the Kool Aid for just one day, please?

Posted by: KC at August 01, 2006 09:24 AM (sxPyp)

113 To aja10024,

You're one of only a few to have actually left an intelligent comment, showing compassion, understanding and the sort of moral integrity which others on here could do well to follow.

No doubt, as the bodies pile up on both sides of the conflict, there will be those who gleefully endorse the terror waged by Israel on innocent civilians. After all, the terror campaign undertaken by US/UK forces in Iraq to remove Saddam served as a nice prelude for all you flag-waving braindead (and no doubt in-bred) patriots.

You see, I deplore those who support Hezbollah or Hamas in their desire to kill Israeli civilians, just like I deplore the Israeli armed forces who have killed so many in Lebanon, along with their policy (over many decades) to subjugate the Palestinians in order to acquire more and more land within the occupied territories (all for Jewish American/Russian emigrants who have rarely, or never, previously set foot in the "Holy Land").


Perhaps the decades of brutality shown by IDF soldiers towards the Palestinians, where deaths on the Palestinian side far outweigh those on the Israeli side, are a figment of my imagination too?

It's amazing to me, that while many of you condemn the terrorists on one side, you gleefully encourage state terrorism (by Israel) on the other.

I have no doubt that a constant diet of Fox news, evangelical right-wing preachers and the successful lobbying by AIPAC to Congress, have transformed you and your politicians into parrots/puppets/mouthpieces of the Israeli government.

Oh, before you say I'm a jew hater. No, on the contrary. I believe in Israel's inalienable right to exist. For it's population to be able to leave in peace. And for the right to expect its neighbours to co-exist peacefully with them.

However, Israel's so called "democracy" (which makes Israeli arabs into second-class citizens) doesn't extend those same core values to the Palestinians (who are stateless and hopeless after 40 years). And therein lies the rub.

Believe it or not, the road to peace in the Middle-East starts in the US. Brave politicians there need to combat the overzealous Israeli lobby (who are doing Israel no favours in the long-run) by steering a new course away from the use of overwhelming force and occupation (which has never and will never bring peace and harmony to the region).

In fact, Israel's offensive has simply emboldened Hezbollah, with such actions surely
leading to a further rise in the numbers of radical-islamists.

Comments like "Go Israel!" and Maria's "Jenin Massacre hoax, Gaza beach hoax, Qana massacre hoax" just go to show how insular and frankly downright dumb some of your are. I doubt Maria could identify the Mid-East on a map, let alone grasp the truth of the situation.

For there to be a lasting peace, the US needs to lead by putting forward a fair, equitable solution to the Palestian problem. A viable Palestinian state with control of its own land, sea and air.

After all, most citizens in arab lands do not hate jews per se, they simply hate what they deem to be the actions of a facist, racist state hell-bent on acquiring Palestinian lands and despatching its diaspora off into neighboring arab countries.

If such a state did come into being, it would have the effect of marginalising extremist arab elements and actually forge the basis for future democracies to emerge in the Middle-East.

But then again, with America's slavish desire to pursue a foreign policy with "made in Israel" stamped all over it, not much hope for now me thinks.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 09:25 AM (RNCjq)

114 but how can you ignore the fact that there are FAR more CHILDREN that have been killed on Lebanese soil than the number of Israeli soldiers that have been killed -- both on Israeli soil AND in actual combat in Lebanon COMBINED... what does it say about the way Israel is conducting this so-called "defensive" military action?

So aja10024, in your opinion, what is the proper ratio of dead Jews to dead civilians? As to what it says, I'd read it as force protection getting high priority for the Israelis. Wise that. Don't let your heart get in the way of seeing who are the bad guys here.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 09:27 AM (ATbKm)

115 damn html tags, my bad.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 09:28 AM (ATbKm)

116 But then again, with America's slavish desire to pursue a foreign policy with "made in Israel" stamped all over it, not much hope for now me thinks.

Go ahead and say it Jules, its the Joooos.

Useless.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 09:31 AM (ATbKm)

117 Wow! You lot really have embraced that vile fascist belief that some sections of humanity can have their right to life and existence disregarded.

The Nazis were wrong to do this to the Jews, the Jews are as wrong to do this to the Arabs.

Shame on you - and children as well!

Posted by: David Ash at August 01, 2006 09:53 AM (UASwj)

118 Wow! You lot really have embraced that vile fascist belief that some sections of humanity can have their right to life and existence disregarded.

The Nazis were wrong to do this to the Jews, the Jews are as wrong to do this to the Arabs.

Shame on you - and children as well!

Posted by: David at August 01, 2006 09:53 AM (UASwj)

119 None of these comments will have any material effect on the progress of the war, so no point in getting angry about any of the attitudes portrayed in them. But - Barry - yours is the most apposite, as it is what you are most likely to hear in the Middle East from all sides, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis, Lebanese, Palestinians.. ask them, they will tell you: "We live in a rough neighbourhood." When I lived in that neighbourhood it was Hama rules. It will continue to be, as long as those with the power to stop the babies dying stand by and do nothing, because they think that it is in their interests to let it continue. To begin to stop it will take knowing something of what the death of babies and children, of whatever faith or nation, means, and what a disgrace it is. None of what I read here gives any sense that anyone has asked themselves what it would be like to be the father or mother of the baby in the picture. There's posturing, emotional immaturity, boastfulness,dismissiveness, sarcasm, and lack of respect, but not much generosity of spirit. We have to change to make a change.

Posted by: kizilpaul at August 01, 2006 09:57 AM (Dqj2/)

120 Jules -

Aja was not the first person to leave an intelligent comment showing compassion - in fact, he just echoed the party line that only Lebanese casualties matter. YOURS was the first anti-Israel coment I have yet to see on this thread that actually paid lip service to the deaths of Israeli civilians ("Hezbollah's desire to kill them) (italics mine). And the ongoing statement that because Israel has killed MORE civilians than Hezbollah has, or than the Palestinians have, then therefore they are the ones with blood on their hands. Think for a second - part of the reason that fewer Israeli children are dying right now is not because Hezbollah is more decent - it is because Israel is putting them in bomb shelters, and because Hezbollah does not have the bombs to hurt them. If all the weaponry were equal, do you think for even one moment that Hezbollah would suddenly be turning the rockets away from Israeli cities and towns, and toward military targets? Think about who they are and what their STATED goals are.

Having compassion means saying that killing civilians is wrong, period. Not saying killing "our" civilians is wrong, and pretending that no one else is doing it. Until you deplore the fact that there is ongoing rocketfire aimed directly at Israeli homes, not aimed at infrastructure or military installations, you are not showing compassion -- you are only spouting one-sided rage yourself. Justifiable rage, because you feel a justifiable loss. But it is not compassion. And dancing around the fact that endangering civilians is wrong, is absolutely not showing compassion for the victims - it is enabling the people who allowed them to be hurt. If you want to hate Israel, hate Israel. But call a spade a spade - you're just waving the same dead bodies around. You're just doing it with words. Pure hypocrisy.

Posted by: Michelle at August 01, 2006 10:01 AM (toCqQ)

121 Toby,

There's no doubt that America's Israeli lobby is hugely influential. And yes, AIPAC's goals, which are an extension of the Israeli government's foreign policy, have formed the basis of US foreign policy in recent years(particularly under this administration).

And all credit to them in that sense, they work in the same way as any other lobby do i.e. steel, oil etc.

I'm simply saying that they are misguided in their approach. A strong Israel can only be attained by negotiating a settlement with the Palestinians, not by taking more and more of their land or by building "security walls".

All that such unwavering support in the US has done is to create more enemies for Israel, giving its politicians and population a siege mentality.

But there is no debate about this is in America. Why?

Well, it's because AIPAC and other jewish organisations have always been clever to equate any criticism of Israel, even on University campuses, with anti-semitism. Just like, no doubt, you're labelling me now.

However, if you care to engage your brain, I'm only saying that, for all their good intentions, stifling real debate actually harms Israel in the long run.

The whole world sees that the US is never, ever critical of Israel. Even when Israel itself acts like a terrorist state (after all during the troubles in Northern Ireland with the UK, London was bombed on many occasions. The British government didn't decide, however, to go and bomb Belfast into oblivion now, did it?)

Instead, to be a good ally, the United States HAS to be critical. It SHOULD, in the future, be critical where valid criticism is due.

This, I hope, will lead to the greater debate about the whole Israeli-Palestinian issue and the eventual adoption of a two-state solution.

Then, you'll truly get a strong Israel, in a moral sense, in a democratic one, and in an economic one.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 10:04 AM (RNCjq)

122 Come on now, boys. You're sounding just like the liberals at smirking chimp who actually believe that because Zarqawi wasn't splattered all over the walls, that we never really killed him.

These kids were likely in beds when the ceilings collapsed on them, hence any lack of blood, etc.

Let's just accept the fact that war kills civilians, as horrible as that realization is.

Don't get stupid with more conspiracy theories.

signed.
Pierre Salinger

Posted by: Strangelove at August 01, 2006 10:05 AM (P2Dko)

123 A fisking I will go ...

I'm simply saying that they are misguided in their approach. A strong Israel can only be attained by negotiating a settlement with the Palestinians, not by taking more and more of their land or by building "security walls".

I would think that you would have to make some kind of argument for that statement, otherwise, its simply your opinion. Great.

But there is no debate about this is in America. Why?

Are you not attempting to debate, however poorly? Are you being censored?

Just like, no doubt, you're labelling me now.

Just my opinion Jules. You're not trying to stifle debate by branding your ideological opponents as dupes of the Jews are you? Wait, you are.

I have no doubt that a constant diet of Fox news, evangelical right-wing preachers and the successful lobbying by AIPAC to Congress, have transformed you and your politicians into parrots/puppets/mouthpieces of the Israeli government.

You're just a provincial lightweight, Jules. We've been mau-mau'ed by the best and your not it.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 10:17 AM (ATbKm)

124 Michelle,

No, I don't think you've understood what I said. I am not anti-Israeli. I am against the violence that Israeli has used in Lebanon and against the continued violence it uses against the Palestinians.

I only referred to the ratio of Palestinian dead against Israelis, because you, and others like you, seem to think that Israel is incapable of committing atrocities when the very opposite is true.

I agree with you that Hezbollah would kill many more Israelis if it could. And yes, I deplore their violent acts in the same way as I deplore those cowards within Hamas who send young/men and women into Israel as suicide bombers with the intent to kill as many innocent people as possible.

The whole point of my post was that in my mind, they are all as bad as each other.

But here, on this thread you have people who deny what even the Israeli military are not denying.

We all think those who deny the Holocaust are the lowest of the low, but here, you have people who are using the same thought process (or should I say "lack of thought process") in making out the Israeli air force didn't killl those people in Qana (or as Maria said in relation to hoax deaths in Jenin and elsewhere).

Namely, they create any old excuse or hair brain scheme to stop short of actually criticizing Israel. I've criticized both sides, because a life is a life. It's just a shame that both Olmert and the deranged leaders of Hezbollah don't actually give damn about the deaths of Lebanese civilians.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 10:23 AM (RNCjq)

125 And Jules -

What about the "Jenin massacre hoax" is so "dumb" to you? What happened in Jenin was a heated gun battle, in which 52 Palestinians were killed, more than half of them armed militants. An almost equal number of Israeli soldiers were killed. A battle, in a dense civilian area, started by Palestinian militants. This was verified by Palestinian hospitals and by the U.N. Human Rights watch. But before the smoke cleared, Saab Erekat was on every news channel saying that Israelis had killed 500 Palestinian civilians.

There was even footage - you can easily find it on Google - showing a Palestinian funeral where the Jenin corpse fell off of the stretcher and got back up again, perfectly fine.

If that's not your definition of a hoax, I'm not sure who's being dumb.

Killing civilians is wrong. Killing them on purpose is inexcusable. Using them as human shields is horrific. Only one side is doing this. When times are calm, I have room to criticize Israel. Right now, I can see clearly what is going on, and I don't think some critical attention to what is going on in both directions is out of order.

Posted by: Michelle at August 01, 2006 10:23 AM (toCqQ)

126 blud, you said the whole point of the post falls apart when you remove the evidence that the pictures were taken hours apart.

You can still see gloves on/gloves off, radio in pocket/no radio in pocket, jacket on/jacket off, etc. The discrepencies in the rescuer's outfit in so many of the photos of the same victims point to obvious breaks in the timeline between photos and we don't need accurate datestamps to come to a conclusion that these pictures were staged for some reason.

I agree that we can't jump into a full-fledged conspiracy from this, but I think we should question it and everything else surrounding this incident.

The problem with 9/11 conspiracy nuts isn't that they ever questioned and discussed things - it's that they didn't accept valid proof that their observations and theories were wrong when it was clearly shown to them.

We now know that these photos could have been taken only minutes apart, but we don't know why the rescuer was doing a quick change act during all the photos and for what purpose the photos were staged.

Posted by: Elyse at August 01, 2006 10:23 AM (pr2Is)

127 Depleted Uranium in bombs?!?! Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My!

I honestly couldn't care less if the bombs have DU. Actually, I'm all for it, if it makes the ordnance more effective. Afterall, that's what bombs do... go BOOM, destroy stuff and injure/kill people. And, yes, unfortunately some non-combatants will be injured/killed. That is the nature of war, like it or not.

I wish the Israeli bombs contained actual uranium and made mushroom clouds. Just my nutty opinion, but this is the inevitable conclusion to this War (by War, I mean Islmo-fascist vs the Civilized World not just this Israeli-Hezb/Hamas skirmish).

Any delays in obliterating the enemy will only allow more time for the completely whacko Islamo-fascist nations and/or terrorist groups to unleash a nuke of their own on the Western world. I am sure N. Korea wouldn't mind selling a nuke or two to Iran or Syria or Al-Qaeda or [insert favorite terrorist here]. Ya know, have a small tag sale to generate some much needed revenue for Kwazy Kim's Utopia.

If you're gonna fight a war, you might as well win it.

P.S. In regards to the excuse (because of the high cost of a taxi?!?!) that civilians couldn't leave after being warned by the IDF to do so... Do they not have feet? Could they not walk away? If reporters can drive in by taxi then people can walk out. Please gimme a break.

Worst. Excuse. Ever.

If they couldn't leave, it would mostly likely be because Hezbollah would not allow them to leave ('cuz they make nice shields and all), not because they were short on cab fare. Sheesh!

Posted by: Rob at August 01, 2006 10:25 AM (yz0c9)

128 What really sucks, is that the gaza beach incident was handled poorly, irrespective of what actually exploded none of the investigative evidence was shared openly with the public, which as we all know leaves a door wide open for conspiracy and self interpretation.

Sure the resentment and hatred goes way back, but this one single incident is the reason we are where we are today, hamas ended their truce, israel responded overly aggressively and hezbollah tried to offer support, thereby aggravating the situation even further.

After this many mistakes, we can only hope everybody is growing cautious about what future decisions they make.

It may seem like a new concept to some, but hezbollah militants and supporters are lebanese civilians, albeit organized, pissed off civilians with access to some decent training and equipment, not dissimilar to how some paranoid westerners take it upon themselves to form private militia to protect their homeland, the lebanese army has been ineffective for decades against israeli incursions.

None of this makes the civilian casualties on either side of the border acceptable, hopefully the ground invasion will be quickly replaced by some form of UN intervention.

Posted by: Captain Obvious at August 01, 2006 10:27 AM (bcq8M)

129 Like I said before - and statements that KC obviously ignores - we will not know exactly what happened without a competent, unbiased forensics team. The images we have seen are completely controlled by Hezbollah, so you can put whatever stock in that you wish. The EU photos and others of "Green Helmet" that have been dug up show this guy all over Lebanon - same guy, same outfit, in areas miles and miles from each other in a matter of hours. How does that work?

Now - obviously some children have been killed. The pictures I have see do not show 50+ bodies. More like half a dozen. But again, with Hezbollah controlling we only get to see what they show us. Killing of innocents is wrong. But - I have yet to see all of the "Israel is evil" crowd that has been posting here actually defend Hezbollah's insistence in hiding behind women and children, firing rockets from civilian areas. I have not seen them defend the years of Hamas, Palestinian, and Hezbollah terror attacks on Israel that killed hundreds and hundreds of innocent men, women, and children. All I see is "terrorist apologists" making up excuses as to why Hezbollah is a great, humanitarial, and wholly moral group that was unfairly attacked by Israel. What say you?

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 10:28 AM (ybfXM)

130 "At some point we have to face down a culture in which not only the mob in the street but the highest judges and academics talk like crazies. Abdul Rahman embodies the question at the heart of this struggle: If Islam is a religion one can only convert to, not from, then in the long run it is a threat to every free person on the planet." - Mark Steyn

Posted by: . at August 01, 2006 10:49 AM (1p7lX)

131 Michelle,

Started by Palestinian militants eh! And to think I thought they'd invite the IDF in for milk and cookies.

Er, perhaps it was like an INCURSION into PALESTINIAN LAND by the IDF.

Imagine, for just one moment, that a force came into your home town/city and decided to occupy it for 40 years +. Didn't allow you rites of passage to neighbouring towns, established more and more settlements on your land, destroyed your economy and subjugated you and the general population in a brutal, often humilating fashion (taking with it all hope that things would ever get better).

Perhaps then you'd also take up arms. Ah, but that would be your PATRIOTIC duty wouldn't it? And you'd be a freedom fighter!

Whereas a Palestinian with a gun defending his own land is an armed militant who no doubt deserves to be blown away. And goodness gracious me, by your own reckoning half of those killed weren't actually militants. Pray tell who were these civilians killed by then?

Oh, and if you didn't know, time and time again the IDF use Palestinians as human shields when entering buildings that it suspects house "militants".

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 10:57 AM (RNCjq)

132 I am at the total opposite of the political spectrum from the blogger maintaining this site. Despite that, we are 100% united in believing that Qana is a staged disaster. Think Mohomad Dura many times over. That is what is going on here.

Posted by: emanon at August 01, 2006 11:05 AM (68Ugu)

133 Tob,

Yeah, like saying "it's the jooooos" to me isn't your way of stifling debate by implying I'm anti-semitic. Way to go home boy!

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 11:15 AM (RNCjq)

134 There are a lot of questions that need to be answered and I'm pretty certain this was a set up of some kind by Hezzbullah.

But even if the buiding had come down due to Israel, which I don't not believe, I have seen only one other person notice how intent the rescuers are on displaying dead bodies, and not rescuing people who might be alive below the rubble. (maybe I missed)

People have survived days beneath collapsed buildings. The first goal of the rescuers would have been to get as many people out as fast as they could without creating further harm. That would negate such actions as those by Green Helmet and Co.

Kind of telling, imho. Like the person who hears someone is shot and says "he was such a nice man" before they hear he was dead.

Posted by: Rachel Ann at August 01, 2006 11:22 AM (XFlpX)

135 Wouldn't you think too that the photogs and the video folks would have been filming the actual removal of all those bodies rather than following two or three guys around taking photo after photo of them holding the same children?

Jules - where is your defense of the "good" terrorists and their actions over the years? Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Hezbollah continued to attack. Israel was in the process of withdrawing from Palestine - in fact forcing their own citizens to move out - and the PLO continued to attack. How can you defend that? I see that you and the other "terrorist apologists" haven't even attempted to rationalize all that, you just condemn Israel.

You asked Toby to answer what he would do if a group invaded his country and then stayed for years. Good question. How about this though - after the invaders leave, we should still keep firing rockets and RPGs and mortars at civilian targets within their country for years, right? Killing hundreds of innocent people, right? That seems to be what you are saying.

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 11:33 AM (ybfXM)

136 the reason they show children is that probably is the only sight people may have pity on... i mean look at the nasty comments, an adult body would not have caused all this talk. It's amazing to read people's hatred comments on these deaths like they are ants or something. Even masskilles in the States have more rights it seems.

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 11:57 AM (SL1fo)

137 Lotsa good stuff here. I am at work so I can't see the photos or the linked video. But maybe someone can count for me, maybe Jules!, how many actual bodies of women and children are shown in the photos. I just keep seeing the same two bodies pop up in photo after photo. Has someone actually tallied it up?

So Jules, to keep yourself from being stupid (you know, like all the people that believe the official Isreali hoaxes), why don't you count how many individual dead children you see? There were supposed to be some 60 women and chidren killed in their sleep, right? How many do you count?

Normally, I wouldn't post a challenge without doing the math first myself, but I'll take a chance here.

Next Jules, you stated that "most arabs don't hate Isrealis, per se" or was it Jews? I don't know, same difference I guess. Isreali = Jew, right? But in this wide ranging poll you took of Arabs that qualifies you to speak for them, did you not give them the choice to hate Zionists? Just wondering...

"Palestinian lands" ...where exactly is the country called Palestine? Was it created before or after the Egyptians built a wall to keep the Palestinians out? I also can't believe that the UN gave Isreal to the Isrealis...its not like Jews have history there, right? I mean, that is where the first covenant was broken by the Jews which led to both Christianity and Islam (the New Testament is the new covenant and all). Just a few sniggling points...

In another post someone mentioned that the Jews are just as fascist now as the Germans were but now the Jews are doing it to Arabs. This building in Qana...it was an oven?? Or was it a cyanide chamber? Have we seen Arabs by the trainloads disappearing into a walled compound in Isreal, never to be seen again? You know, I didn't think so. Maybe that comparison doesn't work too well and y'all should stop using it.

And, Jules, referring back to counting, I just noticed in your previous post "half of those killed weren't actually militants." You determined their militant status prior to death (without a uniform, you must have personally asked each of them, "militant? yes or no") and then went and matched the bodies to your data? Outstanding piece of work there. You go girl.

You know, calling me dumb for believing the Isreali's about hoaxes and then reading your arguments makes me wonder...wouldn't YOU feel stupid if you fell for a terrorist's propaganda?

I would be interested in knowing how many child bodies you actually count in the video you linked...not red-square counting, mind you...just count each body once.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Posted by: y7 at August 01, 2006 11:58 AM (yYph9)

138 Let me get this straight - you have a liberal democratic country founded on human rights and common decency....and you have proven monsters who show no value of human life....not their own and not of their children. And we spend our days DEBATING who is the bad guy?

How f--ked up is this world we live in! Its called a WAR people!! Its not kindergarden!! Innocent people die in wars....intentional or not.

Lets think about this one.....IF Israel wanted to indiscrimanately kill civilians, don't you think they could have done a better job by now given all of their superior technology? And what exactly are the benefits provided to them for killing civilians? If their goal is to kick Hez's butt, why would they want to create all of this global hysteria against them sooner rather than later? having to face all these time constraints, and pressures on their military campaign from UN, US, etc. Call the IDF what you will, but they are NOT irrational and stupid.

Kudos to Hez for getting the upper hand in the propoganda war but ultimately we know that the truth will come out. I think we are beyond debate that these are mass murdering, savage butchers.....you can't disguise that fact for too long.


I wish I had a solution to this crisis but we have seen too many times now, that Arabs view appeasement and compromise as only weakness. And unfortunately, once you are dead its too late to say "I told you so."

If you are an anti-semite....that is too bad but we have nothing to talk about. Enjoy the next Mel Gibson flick.

If you are angry at Israel and think they are in the wrong, I suggest reading some recognized history books on the middle east and taking a course in moral clarity.

In war, no one walks away without blood on their hands. BUT, this issue is a lot more black and white then the media will let on. Isreal does not need to apologize for anything. Unfortunately, I am not holding my breathe for Hez, Iran, and Syria to apologize either.

Posted by: G$ at August 01, 2006 12:21 PM (noU/U)

139 Way to go home boy!

That's just how I roll.

You seem possessed by the illusion that if those crafty American Jews would just shutup, rational compromise would be possible. I believe the weight of evidence is against your position. Its tough to find a middle ground between the victim and the executioner and to grant them moral equivilency is just laziness and wishfull thinking on your part. The war can stop any time Hez stops attacking, just as the war with Egypt stopped when the Egyptians stopped attacking.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 12:41 PM (ATbKm)

140 It seriously concerns me that Hezbollah, Hamas, alQaida, etc. have learned enough about my culture to know that dead babies break my heart and demoralizes me, especially if I feel me or mine are in anyway responsible. They are impowered by understanding our sense of fair play and ethics of war. They know our public outrage when these codes are broken by our own (or our allies.) They patiently wait us out, knowing we are impatient and with short attention spans and primarily focused long term on ourselves. They take full advantage of media that is no longer able to impartially investigate, process and report events and statements and they are heartened by political leaders who in the name of freedoms we hold dear, flip-flop back and forth on their support of defending this country...totally dependent on what is politically advantageous for themselves...NOT this country.
And what do we know about them???? Enough to believe they would stage such a horrific event...Enough to question why only certain events bring out the demonstrative crowd? With all the military might of the US and Israel, I worry that we will be defeated by our own ignorance of our enemy, and our refusal to believe such an enemy could exist.
I am yet to be given an answer why all this hate of Israel/Jews. Excuses yes, but reasons for extinction.. no.
And then me and mine are next on their list.

Posted by: Kari S. at August 01, 2006 01:06 PM (y6n8O)

141 What a stupid, racist, unChristian, unAmerican and inhumane question!

Perhaps you would like the world to forget, but the bodies weren't staged the last time the IDF killed civilians in Qana, either.

The IDF enjoys killing, gets an erotic thrill from the gore and carnage - and, from your comments, so do you - but that doesn't change the essential immorality of your position.

God said, "Thou shalt not kill." Any killing violates this most basic moral tenet of both Judaism and Christianity - and shows you to be the coward and failed Christian we can all see you are.

Posted by: Fiskhus Jim at August 01, 2006 01:13 PM (V7aQ1)

142 Clearly, most of those insisting the Qana results have NOT been faked or manipulated by Hizbollah into something quite different than what they were have not taken a critical look.

Whether this is because they have credulously accepted the fMSM/Hizbollah version on its face, or because they are simply Hizbollah sympathizers, is the only remaining question about them.

There is no culture in the world where a "rescue worker" would parade the SAME child's body about for SEVEN HOURS, posing for every photographer brought in.

Posted by: Adjoran at August 01, 2006 01:16 PM (NR+f8)

143 Specter,

Yes, Israel withdrew from Gaza but continued to shell on a daily basis in and around civilian areas (which led to the incident with the family on the beach). It also continues with its policy of extra judicial killings which usually result in civilian deaths. But you fail to mention for some reason.

As for the settlers which left Gaza, they've simply been relocated to the West Bank which Israel has no intention of giving up. In fact, US tax payers money continues to fund its enlargement in contravention on International law.

As I've already stated here, I deplore the actions of groups like Hamas who murder Israeli civilians with rockets or with suicide bombers. And I deplore too, Hezbollah who care not one iota about the civilians of Israel or Lebanon. They are murderous thugs too.

But Israel's actions are also barbaric and serve only to embolden Hezbollah and all the other crackpot radical Islamist groups out there. Continued military action against Lebanon will just make things worse.

And for G$, how can Israel be a country founded on human rights when it denies them to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (and to its Israeli arab population).

I suggest, so far as your course in moral clarity is concerned, that you read up a bit on "Irgun" and "the Stern Gang", the bombing of the King David Hotel and other atrocities leading up to the founding of Israel. Israel wasn't founded on common decency, it was founded using tactics no better than those of Hamas and Hezbollah today. Indeed, Yitzhak Shamir (who was regarded as a cuddly statesman in the US) was just as much of a terrorist as anyone in Hamas or Hezbollah. But then none of you will go and read up on that, as it doesn't tie in with your narrow-minded view of the world.

A with the IRA, dialogue and dialogue only leads to peace. Those who, in the past, have used terrorist methods to further their cause ultimately realise that only through political activity and negotiation can their goals be realised.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 01:34 PM (RNCjq)

144 Those who, in the past, have used terrorist methods to further their cause ultimately realise that only through political activity and negotiation can their goals be realised.

Jules, how and when will Hezzballah come to that conclusion?

Do you seriously believe that if Israel were to withdraw within the 1948 armistice lines that that would be that? Do you think that the "palestinians" would then settle down and live in peace with the Jews?

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 01:56 PM (ATbKm)

145 It never seems to amaze me how the people determined to condemn Israel just stick to the same old and tired rhetoric.

Hizbullah, Hamas et all are past masters at faking it - have the people who swallow their lies ever heard of Pallywood? One video of the famous Jenin "massacre" that never was shows people on stretchers being ferried to ambulances, amid loud weeping and wailing. The contents of one of the stretchers was dropped, and the "body" promptly got up and climbed back on the stretcher! Just one in a long line of Palestinian "actors" doing their bit for propaganda. And you people swallow it all whole, no matter what it is, just as long as Israel is condemned. How Hizbullah is laughing at all of you Dhimmis!!!

Posted by: Ilana at August 01, 2006 01:58 PM (ZHDU4)

146 Jules, a better question would be: What, in your opinion, would Isreal have to offer the 'palestinians' in order to be left alone?

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 01:59 PM (ATbKm)

147 Still waiting for that body count, Jules... Or do you just prefer to believe them when they say "60 women and children were killed" but only show you a few? Obviously they have no compunction about showing bodies so what gives?

"dialogue and dialogue only leads to peace" - Ok, Isn't hezbolla that states they will never stop until Isreal is exterminated? Or is that Hamas? Hard to tell all these hate groups apart.... So did they say "we are gonna talk you to death?" That is about the only way your statement works...

"The IDF enjoys killing, gets an erotic thrill from the gore and carnage" Fishkus Jim...you noticed it too? You don't think maybe it could be a roll of quarters or Tums in thier pocket?

Both you and Jules like to cast a broad net of generalization over Isrealis and Arabs...that tendancy is either arrogant or racist, you decide. You cannot speak with authority on the contents of a man's heart and mind. You can judge his actions but you cannot declare to know his motives or his thoughts about said actions.

These broad judgements and pronouncements prove you to be dishonest, arrogant, bigoted, and ignorant...everything you accuse others of being. Good luck in the mid-terms. Just hope the your politicians of choice direct your emails to their spam folder.

C'mon fishkus...give up trying to sound smart, just have fun saying it "Isrealis got wood!" C'mon, just say it, you know you want to. Wait...it does sound silly like that but that is exactly what you are saying, no?

Posted by: y7 at August 01, 2006 02:16 PM (yYph9)

148 The Capitan nails it here: http://tinyurl.com/hytzc

Now, when a universally acknowledged terrorist organization commits an obvious act of war, the West demands that the victim stop fighting back. Instead of uniting to face down the terrorist enablers in Teheran and Damascus, we have the spectacle of the French government calling Iran a "stabilizing force" for the region. They may be right -- but what kind of stabilization does France and the rest of Europe want? Apparently the same kind that Hitler provided and Vichy administered.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 02:22 PM (ATbKm)

149 Tob,

Er, yeah. Get this, they're human beings just like you and me. And even more unbelievable, they'd quite like to live in peace, make a decent living, see their children grow up, get a decent education etc.

I also suggest you read up on the period of Ottoman rule in Palestine from 1517 onwards. They seemed co-exist with each other okay back then.

If you don't think that can happen again, what's your solution then. What would you do with the Palestinians? I'm curious to know...

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 02:27 PM (RNCjq)

150 And Fishkus, everyone loves the morality play "thou shalt not kill." It works great to condemn those who profess to be religious...wait, wait, wait...the 10 Commandments...Islam didn't incorporate that now did they? So you are just pointing out that the Jews are still breaking the First Convenant...got it.

Muslims can kill anyone because their holy book allows it. Jews can't because theirs doesn't. Glad we got that ironed out.

You should condemn GW for not turning the other cheek because that's what Christians are supposed to do, right?

Now I see your point; Muslims can kill but Christians and Jews can't. Seems about right. I better go buy my plot.

Posted by: y7 at August 01, 2006 02:28 PM (yYph9)

151 Actually, on several of the victims where you claim 'no concrete dust' there is plenty of concrete dust.

The fact is that Western observers have visited the sites of Israeli airstrikes. What they don't find is the Israeli claimed evidence of weapons caches, bomb making facilities, etc. What they do find is dead little boys and girls and women.

You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

Posted by: stari_momak at August 01, 2006 02:37 PM (jRpXT)

152 I suggest, so far as your course in moral clarity is concerned, that you read up a bit on "Irgun" and "the Stern Gang", the bombing of the King David Hotel and other atrocities leading up to the founding of Israel.

Wow, I'm surprised you know a bit of history. However, what you neglected to mention that these groups were on the fringe, and as far as I remember my history lessons, they focused on military targets, or British icons; furthermore, they used to warn the people ahead of the blast, so the details regarding the King David hotel are a bit murky.

Additionally, saying that Israel was founded on terrorism is a bit of a stretch. The Haganah carried out operation to liberate interned immigrants, as well as to sabotage British radar installation, so ships could sneak throug.

So, do you want to tell me that those actions are equivalent to what Hamas & Hez. are doing? Hell no! These two organization explicitly target civilians by sending women and children with explosives on them, or lobbing rockets into cities.


Now, let's shift gears and address these claims regarding Palestinian lands that everybody loves to talk about. It is probably high time that people stopped taking that argument as a fact, and asked for some proof.

Fact is that Israel/Palestine didn't used to be very hospitable, with swamps and maleria; needless to say, there weren't that many people living there. Jews that arrived bought lands which were in most cases owned by absentee landowners (probably living comfortably in Damascus), and made it habitable.

If any lands were stolen up to 1948, then people should have brought their grievances to those in charge -- the Brits.

As of 1948, the proposed UN partition of the land was rejected by the arabs (even though they were to get more, and better land). The neighboring countries invaded, and war ensued. After the war ended, the West Bank and the Gaza strip were taken held by Jordan and Egypt.

At this point, all I have to say is this -- if any resident fled his house during the war, then he should be compensated by the neighboring countries that started the fighting. Furthermore, at this point Jordan and Egypt should've created a Palestinian state, if the issue was so near and dear to their heart.

As far as the present day situation is, with Israel annexing the Golan Heights, and possesing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, I can't really blame them: after the wars in 67 and 73 it has been quite clear that Israel needs as buffer zone as it can have, especially when you can cross the length and breadth of the country in less than a day.

One final comment about the Golan Heights: I fully agree with annexing it, especially after Syria was using it to gain a strategic advantage; it was used to dominate the surrounding area. I see it like this: "You attacked me for no reason, I fought you back, and took possession of this region that provides great advantage during combat; now I'm going to keep it to make it harder for next time you're thinking of attacking me".

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 02:51 PM (tJzld)

153 stari_momak,

Please link your sources. Would love to read them. What's that? No linky? Thought so.

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 02:57 PM (ybfXM)

154 Jules,

You tag the start of all this as 40 years ago.

1) Few of the soldiers on either side are old enough for that. It's irrelevant.

2) But why that time? If it started 40 years ago, why were the Arabs trying to kill Jews long before that? Why were the Jews thrown out of all the Arab nations? How far back are we allowed to go for historical justification? If you say 40 years, can I up the ante? How about we go back to 634 AD? Ok? Or is there some common sense point where you have to say STFU, it's history? Or is that logic okay with Poles and Germans and Finns and Japanese who have to look at maps that no longer equate to the maps of 1925, but not with Arabs, who can never be expected to accept any humiliation, ever?

3) Yes, Jules, they want to live in peace. Everybody wants to live in peace. The problem always is, we all want something MORE than peace. Hezbollah PREFERS keeping Israelis as prisoner and maintaining its war to Peace. Peace is something that they would love to have after every Jew is dead. Israelis want Peace, but not just a "ceasefire while we rearm to kill you again" kind of peace, or worse, the "peace, but we get to kill you every now then because we have Arab Rage, and you ignore us". They want a real No Violence, Period, Peace. Do you believe the Arabs are ready to deliver? So far, they've said no.

So saying "I want peace" is lazy. The hard part is specifying what you will give up in return for it. Hezbollah has stated that they will give up nothing. They wish to destroy Israel. Ergo, We can conclude that Hezbollah and Hezbollah supporters want peace in the same way that I want an African Gray Parrot: In theory, yes, maybe, but not if it means buying it, feeding it, caring for it, putting up with squawking, etc.


Ben

Posted by: Ben at August 01, 2006 03:05 PM (8GHW6)

155 Er, yeah. Get this, they're human beings just like you and me. And even more unbelievable, they'd quite like to live in peace, make a decent living, see their children grow up, get a decent education etc.

Er well, apparently not, or at least, those in power among them do not. Look at the Gaza strip. Israel withdrew and rather than using that as the core of a nascent peaceful state, Hamas immediately began to use it as a forward firing base. If the arabs had lived quietly in the Gaza strip, perhaps opening resorts, casinos and the like along the beachfront, Israel would be much more inclined to withdraw from the West Bank. Just because the common people want to live in peace, doesn't mean that they don't also want their perceived enemies dead. I think that the Arabs want the peace of total victory over the Jews.

What would you do with the Palestinians? I'm curious to know...

If I were diktator of the world, I would insist that the Egyptian 'palestinians' return to Egyptian rule and the Jordanian 'palestinians' to Jordanian rule. In other words, return to the status of 1966. (less the partitian of Jerusalem) While it would be fair to return to the actual mandate with Israel's borders extending to the Jordan, I don't think that the Israelis want those nuts inside their borders.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:09 PM (ATbKm)

156 Jules, I note that you did not respond to my question:

What, in your opinion, would Isreal have to offer the 'palestinians' in order to be left alone?

Unless I misread and your response was a quip about the peaceful life under the Ottoman empire, the return of which a less than likely state of affairs.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:17 PM (ATbKm)

157 Yes, DNA I do know a bit of history.

For your further info, 91 people were killed when the King David Hotel was reduced to rubble. Statisically speaking then, it's actually more than Hezbollah have killed so far. Hell yeah!

Not really a stretch then at all to say that the state of Israel was founded, in part, through terrorist actions.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 03:18 PM (RNCjq)

158 Tob,

Egypt and Jordan don't want those nutjobs either. That's why they abandoned their claims to Gaza and the West Bank and have no intention of reinstating them. Would YOU want those territories, and the inhabitants thereof, in YOUR country? I think not. The Jordanians and Egyptians knew exactly what they were doing. It wasn't fear of Israel that made them drop their claims.

Ben

Posted by: Ben at August 01, 2006 03:18 PM (8GHW6)

159 Egypt and Jordan don't want those nutjobs either.

No duh. I'm still mad at Hussein for relinquishing control of the West Bank and sparking all this instability. I long for the days when the PLO was on the run in Tunis. The Israelis should have made their withdrawal in the early 80's, maybe right after the peace deal with Egypt, before two generations could be raised by these maniacs into a life of hopeless hatred and no usable skills.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:23 PM (ATbKm)

160 Julia,

Since you are so good at history, why don't you tell us how many Israeli citizens have been killed by Hezbollah, Hamas, and PLO over...let's pick a finite period....the last 10 years? Then compare that to how many Israel killed. Who do you think will have more notches on their scimitars?

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 03:26 PM (ybfXM)

161 Then compare that to how many Israel killed. Who do you think will have more notches on their scimitars?

*cough* actually, I think that the Israelis have been more effective over that period but its not from a lack of trying on the Arabs part. ;-)
Maybe if you rephrased that as how many civilians have been killed. Certainly, if you asked how many civilians have been killed deliberately the Arabs would come out ahead.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:30 PM (ATbKm)

162 Assuming mild temperatures, rigour usually sets in about 3-4 hours after clinical death, with full rigour being in effect at about 12 hours, and eventually subsiding to relaxation at about 36 hours.

So you are assuming that the temperature, in Iraq, in midsummer, is mild? You must be really desperate to explain away this tragedy. It doesn't take much searching to find info on the effects of temperature on development of rigor

You'll see that at 37 C (a hot summer day, but by no means a scorcher for Iraq) rigor can develop in under an hour. One would expect a lot of variation in development of rigor, depending upon whether a body was exposed to direct heat of the sun, or buried under a lot of rubble.

Posted by: trrll at August 01, 2006 03:31 PM (6ORla)

163 Tob,

Perhaps the Palestinians want to be left alone, rather than occupied.

So, you advocate forcible expulsion/ethnic cleansing, do you? I like it! At least now you've drawn your line in the sand.

Do you have a poster of Hitler on your wall by any chance? After all, that's pretty much the way he thought.

And if they don't go? Gas them may be? Gaza is, after all, one big prison. Why don't you go the whole hog and turn it into a concentration camp?

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 03:32 PM (RNCjq)

164 Is mu.nu under attack again? Performance on this blog is terrible from my pov and I'm using bonded T's.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:37 PM (ATbKm)

165 Perhaps the Palestinians want to be left alone, rather than occupied.

Gaza.Proof.meet.Pudding.

So, you advocate forcible expulsion/ethnic cleansing, do you? I like it! At least now you've drawn your line in the sand.

Are you reading challenged? Where have I advocated expulsion? As for the rest of your ranting, I invoke Godwin.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:41 PM (ATbKm)

166 Oops. Thought "Lebanon" and wrote, "Iraq." Same issues apply, though.

Posted by: trrll at August 01, 2006 03:42 PM (6ORla)

167 and to quote myself

Jules, I note that you did not respond to my question:

What, in your opinion, would Isreal have to offer the 'palestinians' in order to be left alone?



Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:43 PM (ATbKm)

168 Fiskhus Jim:

Your limited knowledge is showing. God told man not to judge, but you are doing it. And for your information, God did not say "Thou shalt not kill". A correct translation is more appropriately "Thou shalt not murder". Notice the difference? So, killing in self-defense is not murder and is not prohibited by God. Go reread the Bible in the original and translations from the original.

David of SNAFU;

Your knowledge of GBUs and Depleted Unranium is limited to what you read and absorb from others. I can tell you that the GBU does NOT have DU. I was at Nellis when the first one was tested and I have carried many bombs in my career. BACKGROUND: Retired USAF senior navigator, fighter gator, Wild Weasel Instructor EWO. All my time was in the F-4D/E/G. I may not have much experience carrying GBUs, but when I was not flying, I was working bombing ranges. Over 20 years of that now, and you really need to research your topic better.

Posted by: Pontotoc Bill at August 01, 2006 03:44 PM (oQLDZ)

169 Specter,

Glad you asked me that. I happen to think that loss of life on both sides is tragic. However, seeing as you asked:

From Sept 2000-Sept 2005 3,218 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza, including 657 aged under 18, 187 killed in extrajudicial executions and 296 (including at least 29 aged under 1 killed in the course of assassination operations.

56 were killed by security forces in Israel
including one aged under 18

41 killed by Israeli citizens in the West Bank and Gaza including at least three aged under 18.

Israelis killed by Palestinians totalled:

444 civilians killed in Israel including 80 aged under 18

223 civilians killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip including 37 aged under 18

221 Israeli security forces killed in West Bank and Gaza.

84 Israeli security forces killed in Israel

As I say tragic whichever way you look at it. However, if the IDF had scimitars they'd be winning by a sizeable margin.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 03:46 PM (RNCjq)

170 However, seeing as you asked: ... However, if the IDF had scimitars they'd be winning by a sizeable margin.

I tried to warn you off that Specter. Its really in the deliberate killing of civilians that Hamas/Hez/IJ make their mark. You can't fault the Israelis that they are better at killing combatants. They should be applauded.

And Jules, its net etiquete to provide a link, not that I am disputing your fiqures.

Also, I await your apology on the Hitler poster shit.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 03:53 PM (ATbKm)

171 Jules, got a link for those figures?

Posted by: James McMurray at August 01, 2006 04:01 PM (1R6cr)

172 Jules,

Claiming that Israel was founded in part by terrorism is indeed a stretch, and by repetitively bringing up the King David Hotel incident you make your claim even weaker.

In case you have forgotten, the UN "approved" the creation of the state of Israel. So, please do tell me how all those nasty Israeli terrorist -- fresh out of the death camps in Europe -- were able to enforce their will on all those countries.


From Sept 2000-Sept 2005 3,218 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza, including 657 aged under 18, 187 killed in extrajudicial executions and 296 (including at least 29 aged under 1 killed in the course of assassination operations.

Interesting; do these numbers include Mohamed Al-Durah, his father, and the rest of the fabricated victims from the Netzarim junction?

Also, kudos on totally ignoring the whole land issue I mentioned in my previous post; I guess it is indeed a fact that the Zionists kicked out all the "natives" from their luxuary apartments back in the early 1900s.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 04:10 PM (tJzld)

173 I did say citizens in the original post.

Israeli citizens have been killed by Hezbollah, Hamas, and PLO over...let's pick a finite period....the last 10 years? Then compare that to how many Israel killed.

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 04:13 PM (ybfXM)

174 And BTW Julia - you didn't answer the whole question didya?

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 04:20 PM (ybfXM)

175 Since I know that that Jules fella/gal will be bitching about it, here's two links regarding the land issue; not comperhevsive info, but something to think about:

(1) http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/17241/edition_id/340/format/html/displaystory.html
(2) http://www.shamar.org/emet/analysis/arab_claim_to_palestine.htm


And here's a very interesting quote from the first link:
During an 1867 visit to Palestine, Mark Twain observed: "Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince. The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes..."

So, you see, it's pretty hard to steal a land that nobody lived on, cultivated, and probably even want. (Nevertheless, I did mention that they bought land from absentee owners)

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 04:26 PM (tJzld)

176 Wouldn't the "swarms of beggars" indicate people living there?

Posted by: James McMurray at August 01, 2006 04:33 PM (1R6cr)

177 Tob,

Okay, sincere apologies for that. I did indeed misread what you wrote. So yes, call me a jackass, I deserve it.

Not sure what you'd do with those in East Jerusalem though...

As for stats, well they compiled by Btselem, an Israeli human rights group.

BBC website carries these figures at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4294502.stm

As for what I'd do, well the Palestinians have to be given a viable state (this means a return to the 1967 borders). "Facts on the ground" however, dictate that that this won't happen owing to the expansion by Israel into the West Bank. So essentially the Palestinians aren't in a position to negotiate. It's already a a fait accomplis. Jerusalem is pretty much the same story with the expansion of the Abu Ghneim suburb. In an ideal world, however, it should become a city of shared or divided sovereignty based upon the outcome of joint negotiations.

As for The right of return, this is perhaps the biggest sticking point of all. The Palestinians must recognise that a wholesale right of return will never be allowed by Israel. For its part, Israel must accept some sort of provision to accept Palestinians claims, in part. Again, this would have to be based on negotiation through an even handed third-party (though I believe the US could not adopt this role at the current time).

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 04:34 PM (RNCjq)

178 A warning message was delivered to the telephone operator of the King David Hotel before the attack and also delivered to the French consulate and the Palestine Post newspaper. According to Irgun sources, the message read "I am speaking on behalf of the Hebrew underground. We have placed an explosive device in the hotel. Evacuate it at once - you have been warned."

That is from the same Wikipedia article I am sure that you are quoting. I don't condone terrorism, but there was a warning issued.

Want to see what happens when bombs go off. Click on this link

Watch that video and remember that the real terrorists engage in wholesale slaughter. They murder indiscriminately without a care for who might be there.

Posted by: Jack at August 01, 2006 04:34 PM (YEuC7)

179 chk this info from a Lebanese source:-




http://www.libanoscopie.com/fulldoc.asp?doccode=994&cat=2

Posted by: effi at August 01, 2006 04:36 PM (Obuwp)

180 Negotiate settlement terms through a third party. . . Hmm. . . I wonder why nobody ever though of that before. ;-)

Posted by: James McMurray at August 01, 2006 04:36 PM (1R6cr)

181 James,

I think I wrote "even handed" third party actually...

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 04:40 PM (RNCjq)

182 someone can explain why when someone is interpreting the bible is killing okay and murder not?
so if i understand this correctly isreal is killing people and the H. is murdering people?

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 04:43 PM (SL1fo)

183 Jules, I accept your apology, good on you to man up like that.

I just don't share your faith in negotiation with the various arab factions. Hudna's a pleanty but no real peace.

I once, half jokingly, suggested that rather than spending money on arms and defense, the Irsaeli state should pay the palestinian arabs to move away. Pay them the cash value for any property that they can claim within the borders of Israel. Pay them on a sliding scale the further away that they move. 5k to move to Jordan, Egypt , or Lebanon. Say 10k to SA, Syria, or Iraq. 20k for Libya etc, maybe 30k to move to Canada or the South America.

It might turn out to be the best course rather than a joke.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 04:44 PM (ATbKm)

184 Jules: Palastine and to a larger extent Hezbollah have made it clear that there is no such thing as a "even handed" third party. On one side you have Israel, who wants to live. On the other you have Palestine and Hezbollah, who has vowed the utter destruction of Israel. They've shown through their actions that they do not desire peace, only total victory (which they'll never win). As such, any negotiator that doesn't give them everything will not be "even handed" he'll be a "sympathizer."

It'll take decades to break the society of grievance that festers there before any real progress can be made. Either that or total annihilation of one or both sides.

Posted by: James McMurray at August 01, 2006 04:55 PM (1R6cr)

185 interesting math: with the CIA World Factbook setting the population of the West Bank at 2,460,492, a 100g$ investment would give each person $40642.27 or $243,853.69 per family of 6. That would go a long way in Mediterranian Africa or South/Central America.

Why can't the US and the oil kingdoms just buy peace in the region?

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 05:06 PM (ATbKm)

186 Gaza population 1,428,757. You guys can do the figures but the same principle stands.

Would you give up claims that will most likely be denied for the forseeable future in exchange for 30 years income? I might.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 05:09 PM (ATbKm)

187 Ah, Jack,

"I don't condone terrorism but there was a warning issued".

So all Hezbollah need do is call up Ha'aretz and warn everyone that their rockets are on the way. Then it would be legit! I see!

However, we all know that what Hezbollah is doing is terrorism. And, though many of you here think otherwise, what the IDF is doing is state terrorism. They're simply continuing the tradition established by their forefathers in Irgun, albeit under the guise of "defense operations" carried out by a "peace loving" and "democratic state".

On the basis of probability then (seeing as 500+ civilians have already been bombed out of existence and because Qana has already witnessed such a massacre before), I have a sneaky suspicion it might just have been US (oops sorry, I mean, Israeli) ordinance.

No doubt, over the coming days, when another similar event takes place, you'll come up with even more pitiful theories to excuse such war crimes.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 05:10 PM (RNCjq)

188 Jules: the crime is hiding behind civilians, not bombing enemy positions. International law (and logic) are both clear on that. I certainly don't expect you to agree with that, but it doesn't change the actuality of it.

Posted by: James McMurray at August 01, 2006 05:16 PM (1R6cr)

189 you'll come up with even more pitiful theories to excuse such war crimes.

See, that kind of crap is why we can't have a meaningful exchange. Words have meanings, the strike on the house in Qana is in no way a war crime even if the occupants are completely noncombatants. Neither the GC or the Customs and Practices of Nations, ie International Law, allow combatants to use noncombatants as shields to prevent another combatant from striking them. Indeed, it is specifically proscribed in the GC and is, itself, a war crime to do so.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 05:20 PM (ATbKm)

190 The Laws of Armed Conflict (LAC) and International humanitarian law (IHL) were the terms I was reaching for in the reference to Customs and Practices of Nations. The GC is subsumed within those larger bundles of treaties.

My bad.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 05:25 PM (ATbKm)

191 So all Hezbollah need do is call up Ha'aretz and warn everyone that their rockets are on the way. Then it would be legit! I see!

If the Hez had accurate missles and named their targets, it would indeed go a long way toward mitigating the heinious nature of their attacks IMHO. Not to condone them though. At one point, the Hez was grudging accorded some respect because they, mostly, limited their attacks to military/government targets. Those days are clearly gone.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 05:29 PM (ATbKm)

192 James,

Don't forget Hezbollah was formed primarily to fight against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon from 1982 onwards.

Unfortunately, as history has a tendency to repeat itself, even if Israel were to annihilate Hezbollah this time round, by inflicting such a devasting blow on Lebanon's people and its infrastructure, we'll just see another group of its type come along in a few years time.

So I don't disagree with you on your final point about the decades needed to break the society of grievance. It's just that its actions both in Lebanon and, let's not forget the Gaza strip, Israel is doing nothing to secure its long term security.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 05:31 PM (RNCjq)

193 Short term security (a buffer zone) always takes priority over long term security (a lasting peace) because without the first you may not survive to see that second.

Also, it doesn't matter when or why an organization was formed, only what it does now. And right now Hezbollah is engineering the deaths of civilians in the country it supposedly protects.

Posted by: James McMurray at August 01, 2006 05:35 PM (1R6cr)

194 (steak time) last post for a while wild cheering from the crowd, shouts of huzzah!

Jules says:

And, though many of you here think otherwise, what the IDF is doing is state terrorism. They're simply continuing the tradition established by their forefathers in Irgun, albeit under the guise of "defense operations" carried out by a "peace loving" and "democratic state".

Its state terrorism because you say it is, I guess. You haven't cited anything to back that up. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but your posts continue to suggest that you're bent out of shape because you just don't like the Jews and their defense of their homes and families. Why else you would want to hitch your wagon the Hez is beyond me.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 01, 2006 05:38 PM (ATbKm)

195 Tob,

As far as I know, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, plus two additional protocols (dating from 1977) are the main instruments of international humanitarian law. Israel's responsibilities are therefore as follows:

Article 48 of Protocol I

"in order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives"

Article 51(4) of Protocol I prohibits indiscriminate attacks:

"an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated"

And, according to the Rome Statute, performing intentional attacks against the civilian population, or against individual civilians not taking a direct part in hostilities is a war crime. (Article 8 (2) (b) (i))

While many here (and Israel itself) argues that Hezbollah hides among the civilian population in Shia areas, it doesn't explain why, on the first day of hostilities General Halutz promised to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years", nor why Christian towns have been bombed, nor why clearly marked aid convoys and ambulances have been attacked.

Israel is simply following a military strategy designed to maximise the suffering of the Lebanese people as a whole (with the aim of moving them northward so as to enable a clean up of Hezbollah occupied areas).

Therefore, you have grounds for arguing that war crimes have been committed.

Equally, although Hezbollah are not party to international conventions (being an armed group), they too are bound by international humanitarian law. Therefore, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah can also rightly be described as a war criminal.

Of course, Olmert and co. will never be brought to justice for their disproportionate use of violence, whereas Nasrallah will likely end up in little bits rather than a court.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 06:10 PM (RNCjq)

196 Was there ever another war where the world was so concerned about 'civilians, mothers, children, the aged'? Where the world clamoured for a cease fire in order to assist the civilians caught up in the war front and to evacuate them? Where was the clamour when 1 million Ugandians were slaughtered? When Hitler devastated entire cities? Why dont they save the women and children in Iraq from being slaughtered daily?

Why is it that ONLY when Israel / Jews are involved in cleaning up terror nests, the world cries out, effectively in defence of these terrorists who have established their Israel-ridding murder gangs amongst civilians - their OWN people, camouflaged as civilians themselves. How many of the dead 'civilians' are really active Hezbullah terrorists?

When did nations clamour to support, defend and save the civilians of their enemies? - if we concede that all these civilians (or at least those screaming ones featured on CNN etc,) spew hate at Israel and pledge their lives to the Hezbullah terror organization.

Or do I have it wrong - it simply proves that Israel is the enemy and Hezbullah the saviours of the nations?

Posted by: OvadYah at August 01, 2006 06:25 PM (EmYtZ)

197 Don't forget Hezbollah was formed primarily to fight against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon from 1982 onwards.

Don't forget that Israel went into Lebanon in 1982 because the PLO had bases there, and was staging attacks against civilians; here's an example:

On March 11, 1978 eleven terrorists, again coming from Lebanon with Zoadic rubber commando dinghies, landed at the beach of Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael. They killed an American photographer and a taxi driver and hijacked a bus, whose passengers, including many children, were on a day-trip to the north. The hijackers forced the driver to return to Tel Aviv. Driving on the coastal highway, the terrorists fired on passing cars from the bus.

When the bus approached a blockade set up by the police at an entrance to Tel Aviv, a shootout took place. The terrorists left the bus and fired missiles. The bus burst into flames and most of the passengers were either burned alive or killed by terrorist gunfire.

The massacre left 35 innocent people dead and 100 injured. The terrorists were identified as belonging to Fatah; nine were killed and two captured.

Amazing how you neglected to mention that minor crucial detail.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 06:26 PM (tJzld)

198 As far as I am concerned, until I see a photo of at least one crushed, abraded, and mangled body, no one will ever convince me that any of those bloodless corpses were anywhere near a collapsing building, much less inside one. Every one of those bodies looked like it was ready for an open casket funeral, an event that would be highly unusual for the victim of a building collapse.
As all these interesting comments show, it is easy to get distracted from the main question: Are these pictures what Hizbollah and the MSM say they are?
All of the other details of the discussion seem arcane or just stupid to me.
Those bodies may be dead, but they didn't die the way the captions say they did.

Posted by: Dan Roll at August 01, 2006 06:30 PM (jiktV)

199 Tob,

If a katusha drops on an Israeli house killing innocent civilians it's a war crime.

If state-of-the-art ordinance is deliberately dropped or targetted by the Israeli air force directly onto civilian areas, then it's also a war crime.

I apologised for the post against you. But don't you dare suggest that I'm an anti-semite.

Furthermore, I haven't taken the side of Hezbollah. In my posts I've been critical of both sides.

My whole thrust was that whilst many here cry for the dead on one side, they conveniently make excuses for the atrocities it commits against the civilian population in Lebanon.

After 9/11 there was so much sympathy for the American public. As the Le Monde editorial said a few days later "We Are All American". Yet, as the Bush administration and most people here have demonstrated, you lot really don't give a shit about other people's suffering. Hence, no UN resolution critical of Israel in Lebanon. No US condemnation (ever) of Israeli agression against the Palestinians. And 40,000+ dead in Iraq simply because of neo-cons (who pull your puppet Presiden't strings) having a hard-on for their pet project to rearrange the Mid-East.

Is America a beacon of freedom and justice these days? Quite the opposite, well at least from what I've read on here anyway.

Posted by: Jules at August 01, 2006 06:46 PM (RNCjq)

200 No doubt, over the coming days, when another similar event takes place, you'll come up with even more pitiful theories to excuse such war crimes.

You know something, a week ago I would've bought the whole thing in Qana as an Israeli mistake.

However, I also used to think that Muhamed al-Durah was shot by Israeli soldiers at the Nezarim Junction, until I stumbled upon the videos regarding Pallywood.

Despite the Israeli kneejerk apology, I am not convinced they are at fault, and the whole parade of dead children in front of the camera is indeed suspicious, especially when it is the same photogenic guy from 10 years ago.

I'm sure that as more details emerge, it will become more evident who was at fault. In the meantime I won't believe anything that comes from an area where the Hezbollah dictates where foreing, non-arab journalists can take pictures or shoot some video.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 06:51 PM (tJzld)

201 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

But don't worry. You'll never have to hear about it if you stay glued to Rush Libaugh's incoherent mental masturbation.

Posted by: Railroad Stone at August 01, 2006 06:56 PM (51E0l)

202 If a katusha drops on an Israeli house killing innocent civilians it's a war crime.

If state-of-the-art ordinance is deliberately dropped or targetted by the Israeli air force directly onto civilian areas, then it's also a war crime.

Playing the dumb-card again, are we?

(1) A katyusha is an unguided weapon: fire-and-forget-and-hope-it-hits-what-you-want-type
(2) The katyushas launched so far were aimed at civilians, period.
war crime alert

Now, on the Israeli side of things:
(1) A guided will almost surely hit its intended target
(2) Israel has notified people to evacuate
(3) Hezbollah has been firing from outside the village, and then quickly retreating into it; this has been proven.
(4) Israel didn't not aim for civilians.


At the end of the day, those people who were supposedly killed should not have been there, and should have left long ago. And please, spare me the excuses of not having means to leave the area -- if all else fails, then they could have walked north; you can cover quite some distance in a day, so where there's will, there's a way.


P.S.
I can hardly wait for someone to mention the elderly, and the disabled; but then again, they never get the photo-ops, it's only the dead women and children. Actually, just the children, since they evoke the greatest emotional reaction.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 07:18 PM (tJzld)

203 At the risk of being (not as much as some) off topic: The modern concept of civilian casualties for those not familiar with it.
Since the French-Algerian war, Muslim insurgent groups have realized that dead women and children have a unique ability to horrify and fixate the West. The power of news reports or footage of dead babies and/or women is so powerful a deterrent to further action by the West, it is the most reliable (and inexpensive) weapon in the insurgents arsenal. If actual combat doesn't provide the visuals necessary, then they can be produced when needed. The value of those already dead is lost if they met their fate in small groups or individually, so why not collect them and put them to use in groups like the little patriots they would of been had they lived. They are at the morgue or a collection point anyway, there probably isn't any electricity to keep them cool, so how can they be quickly used to best advantage? If you review the conflicts of the last forty years in the middle east, a 'massacre' of civilians always happens at a convenient time for the losing side.
Only when the West is involved does this come into play. The Egyptian/Yemeni and the Iran/Iraq war both went on for years and years with horrifying losses on both sides, but as neither side would have been the slightest bit deterred by the reporting of it, the deaths of babies/women went largely unnoticed. Saddam was able to practice genocide on a scale not seen since WWII without the media parading pictures of every dead woman and baby for effect, as the media well knew that footage of dead babies/women would not trouble the leader of the Iraqis. Only the Vietnamese were too classy to stoop to this sort of thing, though they had no shortage of dead babies/women to use for propaganda purposes.

Posted by: Dan Roll at August 01, 2006 07:22 PM (jiktV)

204 Railroad Stone quoted:
It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

But neglected:
The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.

I guess you're right -- they should've have felt perfectly safe, even though rockets were fired from next door, and despite the fact that the IAF gave them an advanced warning.

A bad analogy would be of riding in a car with a drunken maniac, but telling yourself you're gonna be just fine since you put on your seatbelt.


But don't worry. You'll never have to hear about it if you stay glued to Rush Libaugh's incoherent mental masturbation.

I don't listen to Limbaugh -- that guy lets out more hot air than a leaf blower. Nevertheless, nice attempt at labeling me a right wing nutcase.

Better luck next time.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 07:34 PM (tJzld)

205 Wow, a whole discussion list of people going to hell. I work in the main stream media, I see it all come in unfiltered, and trust me when I say it is REAL. And we save your filthy eyes from seeing the true nature of war-NOT by my choice. Are you choosing to ignore the images of corpses with hands stuck in place because their last move was a failed attempt to protect themselves or the dead mothers grasping on to their dead children? Their last attempt to protect their child like any muslim, christian, jew, hindu, or athiest-it is called being human.

The time delay of recovery wouldn't have anything to do with no roads or contastant arial bombings would it?

Even though I think the majority of you are filthy monsters I do not wish for one second you experience the death they did.

How about you educate yourselves you dumb fu*ks!

Posted by: wow wow at August 01, 2006 07:44 PM (51ZIa)

206 For those of you who still don't think that Hezbollah is spinning like crazy, here's some material from CNN's Andersons Cooper's report:

“This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians. That's the story that Hezbollah wants people to know about.

“These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.”

Cooper concluded: “Hezbollah may not be terribly subtle about spinning a story, but it is telling perhaps that they try. Even after all this bombing, Hezbollah is still organized enough to have a public relations strategy, still in control enough to try and get its message out.”


You can find the slightly old article here, and let us not forget Palywood.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 07:45 PM (tJzld)

207 Michelle said that my comments about dead Lebanese children "just echoed the party line that only Lebanese casualties matter." I never said that. Of course ALL of the people that get killed matter, and yes the innocent children on BOTH sides are the most tragic aspect of it. Children are children. I wouldn't think of hurting any children ever as a way of punishing the politics of their parents.

And I do completely agree with her comment "Having compassion means saying that killing civilians is wrong, period. Not saying killing "our" civilians is wrong, and pretending that no one else is doing it. Until you deplore the fact that there is ongoing rocket fire aimed directly at Israeli homes, not aimed at infrastructure or military installations, you are not showing compassion" ... well, of course I deplore it when the Hezbo's or the PLO, or the IRA, or the KKK or ANY other violence-oriented group takes the law into their own hands and decides that blowing people up is the only way to solve their problems.

I was only making the comment about the death of Lebanese children because so many people here seem to be almost gleeful that those children were killed, as if it was some kind of rational or reasonable response to the fact that since the Hezbo's are a violent organization, whatever happens to ANYONE in their country is perfectly acceptable.

My main concern was for the apparent numbness (and obvious dumbness) that seems to pervade this site regarding the atrocities and over the tragedies of war, such as Barry's oh-so-compassionate and humane observation: "I do not care if they die. What matters is that more of them die than us." I don't know if Barry has ever been in a theater of war, but I implore him to ask any veteran of any war, especially someone who has seen death up close, on either side, or actually caused it by his own hands, and I doubt that very many (if any) of them will say "hey, that's just the way the cookie crumbles, people get killed, it's no big deal."

I never said there was any easy, black & white answer to all of this, or that either side was completely justified or unjustified in their actions. I was just reeling from what seemed to be a very cold, indifferent, and downright flippant attitude in so many posts here about how there is nothing really wrong with, or of concern, or worth discussing, when children in a war zone get killed.

Posted by: aja10024 at August 01, 2006 07:49 PM (Ffvoi)

208 Thank you Dan Roll for (hopefully) enlightening some people here.

Truth is that in the Arab world dead children don't matter much, unless they were "massacred" by the contemptible Zionists. A good example is Saddam's doing during the Iran-Iraq war.

Good thing Israel took out his nuclear reactor, otherwise his Kuwait invasion would have had a lot more "fallout".

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 07:53 PM (tJzld)

209 aja10024 worte:
My main concern was for the apparent numbness (and obvious dumbness) that seems to pervade this site regarding the atrocities and over the tragedies of war

Once you know that Hezbollah is spinning, and you see a suspicious looking rescue worker having his photo shoot taken on the catwalk (from the rubble to the ambulance, or something) -- then you become a tiny bit desensitized. Also, there's also been unconfirmed reports (as far as I know) about Hezbollah not letting people leave, and I wouldn't put it past them.

Now take all those reasons, and add all those protests lamenting about the "poor children" in an obvious effort to evoke an emotional reponse, and you'll understand why.

As I said in a previous message: nobody cared about the children when Saddam gassed them, or when Iran was using them to clear landmines during the Iran-Iraq war.

Also, don't use the word atrocity where it does not belong. The IAF wasn't "out to get those children", while on the other hand, the Hezbollah was.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 08:13 PM (tJzld)

210 Long before the world witnessed the Qana incident, there was a bit where Anderson Cooper was "allowed" to go in certain Hezbollah areas and they were "guided" where to go and what they could film. At the end, there was a speed off of several ambulances- signaled to GO.. as if off to somwhere, and Anderson says something like, they are not going anywhere, this is a staged, and we were told to film.
When I saw these children in Qana, on various channels online and on TV, I wept, but through my tears, I wondered how the children alread had rigor mortis, and many so clean. At first, I thought some were alive the way they held up their stiff arms to whoever was carrying them, but it was reported they were dead..
WHEN did these angels actually die? If they were under concrete, WHY are they so clean of concrete dust? I saw this the day this happened, and as a mother of children myself, I could NOT believe that something else was going on possibly.. but I could not help think the unthinkable.
Was this possibly staged? Staged or not, I am upset as H#LL that these children are the victims of a WAR.
I hope somehow THIS will be intensely investigated - WE ALL WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH, no matter what it holds!

Posted by: CMM at August 01, 2006 08:15 PM (XYb1j)

211 It's interesting to read Toby928's straw man question: "what is the proper ratio of dead Jews to dead civilians?" ... as if I was ever implying that the deaths could or should be put on any scale and weighed for relevance and justification of which side is "right." Come on, Toby, you're smarter than that. My post didn't have any such allusions.

What was more telling was the similar non sequiter comment by OvadYah, who is guilty of begging the question when he states: "Was there ever another war where the world was so concerned about 'civilians, mothers, children, the aged'?"

Ovad, do you ever read the news (from any legitimate source in the world), or do you only read blogs like this, where so many people with the same limited mind-set tend to commiserate and pat each other on the back while engaging in name-calling and making school-yard accusations of anyone who disagrees with them?

Any rational, intelligent humane person anywhere is concerned about the atrocities of war. Even a cursory review on the internet will produce so many reports of this kind, going back decades, that it would make your head spin. I almost don't see the need to provide evidence to answer such a ludicrous accusation, but since it was so easy, here are a couple that I found on the web after searching for about ten seconds:

June 200: "In an extensive report that infuriated NATO leaders, Amnesty International said today that NATO violated international law in its bombing war over Yugoslavia by hitting targets where civilians were sure to be killed. In particular, the human rights group said that NATO's bombing of the Belgrade headquarters of Radio Television Serbia, on April 23, 1999, ''was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime."
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/060800amnesty-nato.html

Sep. 1992: "A United Nations envoy called today for the Security Council to send more peacekeeping soldiers to Bosnia and Herzegovina and give them new powers to counter abuses including the practice known as 'ethnic cleansing' "
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10616F73B5C0C728CDDA00894DA494D81

Ovad then has the temerity to ask: "Why don't they save the women and children in Iraq from being slaughtered daily?"

Uhhh, about 65% of this country, and about 95% of the rest of the world have been asking for answers to that question for quite some time now. But that's a whole 'nother topic for another day.

Posted by: aja10024 at August 01, 2006 09:01 PM (Ffvoi)

212 the truth you want? well IF this whole thing was staged don't you think the news would dive right in? FOX? BBC? whatever? why don't you guys check it out for yourselves? such a good tellers but no show uppers? right? go there and see with your own eyes what is happening and then comes back with your X files stories, right then I might believe you.

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 09:06 PM (SL1fo)

213 wow wow,

Anyone can claim to be MSM. Prove it.

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 09:12 PM (ybfXM)

214 aja,

Is that why you hang out on so many blogs? I mean you come here and accuse people for asking questions. And you try to tell us all that you are somehow intellectually superior because you read the news? 5th graders can read the news. So what makes you special? Nothing that I can see. Lots of rhetoric, but all fluff - just like a 5th grader. Go sell it to people who don't think for themselves.

Posted by: Specter at August 01, 2006 09:18 PM (ybfXM)

215 mylena wrote:
the truth you want? well IF this whole thing was staged don't you think the news would dive right in?

Have you been reading any of the comments on the page?

Scroll up and check some of mine with links regarding Hezbollah's spinning, and some videos of Mohamed al Durah "dying"; the latter story wasn't proved a hoax right away, but naturally, it already had it's intended effect.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 09:23 PM (tJzld)

216 okay you wanna play dirty? the thing what binds the UScitizens with the Jews IS that they stole the property (when occupying Germany and they didn't know they were stealing actually Jewish property) so NOW today the Jews have ( rightfully they lost so much) BUT the us do not want to give BACK the property taken or do not want their names scattered.....
that's all

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 09:33 PM (SL1fo)

217 and dns that was all there was during WW II my grandpa was in a camp (while hiding jews) and captured by the US and then seeing the crimes the US army THEN commit..... the JEWS can for ever and EVER blackmail the USA.

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 09:37 PM (SL1fo)

218 and to dna: YEAH man, i listen to you... but as I say you weren't there not Now NOT THEN..... all you are is a subject towards news.

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 09:41 PM (SL1fo)

219 also i am for ALL the children !!! (dna) dont tell me it takes a lot of trouble to get them (born) and raise them right (boys/girls).... to see them killed by???!!!

Posted by: mylena at August 01, 2006 09:47 PM (SL1fo)

220 dna, you're correct. That is a bad analogy.

My point (ably sidestepped) was that the IDF story changed. Changing stories is an obvious sign of fibbing, or did you miss that day in kindergarten?

I never labelled you. Yes, you're a rightwing nutcase, but I wouldn't have bothered stating the obvious.

If you'd like to tell me which street you live on, I'll drop by this afternoon with some leaflets explaining that I will be destroying your home later this week.

Yes! It's just that simple, apparrently!

I don't need to feel guilty about killing your entire family, if I've dropped leaflets!

(NB: That is an analogy.)

Posted by: Railroad Stone at August 01, 2006 09:52 PM (51E0l)

221 Mylena,

Your last few posts aren't very coherent, but you definitely sound like a drunken Mel Gibson, i.e. an anti-Semite.

Now that you've shown your true color, I'm unlikely to read or respond to any of your future posts, since you obviously have some issues.

Nevertheless, and assuming that it is true, I will commend your grandfather for helping people during the war, saving them from really being massacred.


P.S.
I also wasn't at the Netzarim Junction, but after watching the videos there isn't a doubt in my mind that there have been plenty of staged of staged clips that were broadcast by TV networks, and I foolishly believed.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 09:53 PM (tJzld)

222 One may safely assume that the vast majority of civilians left in south Lebanon are either Hezbollah or Hezbollah supporters and their families. The children of these sick, twisted terrorists look just like anyone else's, and the Muslim media spinners and their shills take shameless advantage of every possible photo-op to sell their bullshit to a gullible audience.

Since the majority of audiences in the Western world have no real sense of the importance of stopping these modern-day Nazis before they become more powerful, the leftist twits and twats sell this silly, crybaby aspect as if it actually mattered to anyone beyond the immediate family of the victims.

Those who want to piss and moan about how the world must stop because a few innocents get snuffed have no business discussing geopolitics and strategy.

The basics are very simple: a militia tolerated by the Lebanese Muslims, the Syrians, the Iranians and the U.N. has been lobbing thousands of rounds across the border into a sovereign state. Diplomacy has, for years, done squat. The ambushed state finally has enough when the terrorists cross the border and begin killing and kidnapping soldiers off the street, and responds in kind, only with much more carefully-targetted strikes. And then some assholes blame everything on the Jews. The mind boggles.

I don't expect much from the Muslim world, where education generally doesn't extend much beyond parroting the Koran and vitriolic hatred of infidels, but for anyone with an ounce of education or knowledge of history, sympathizing with Hezbollah and the Lebanese Muslims is beyond comprehension.

Posted by: Master Sgt X at August 01, 2006 09:53 PM (DbZ4m)

223 My point (ably sidestepped) was that the IDF story changed. Changing stories is an obvious sign of fibbing, or did you miss that day in kindergarten?

You may consider it as sidestepping, but I simply don't think that it is relevant given the state of war. They should be greatful they even got a 5-day heads-up. Furthemore, I hope you are able to recognized the difference between the IDF and Hezbollah, where the former is willing to share details as its investigation progresses, while the latter stages media events (1, 2), provides "guided" tours, and arranges for ambulances to race to phantom incidents.


(NB: That is an analogy.)
Fortunately for me, your analogy is even worse -- you speak of unprovoked violence, while any IAF strike in Qana was as a direct result of over 100 Katyusha rockets being launched from the village.


never labelled you. Yes, you're a rightwing nutcase, but I wouldn't have bothered stating the obvious.

You have no idea how amused I am by such remakrs. Nevertheless, I'll acknowledge to being a right-wing nutcase, if you'll admit to being an ostrich.

Posted by: dna at August 01, 2006 10:17 PM (tJzld)

224 Specter writes: Is that why you hang out on so many blogs?

How many do you think I hang out on? I have only made posts on this and one other in approximately the past year (with a total of maybe 6 or 7 posts on both - which is way less than what I see from any number of folks on this one in the same day). I only found this one indirectly from a link on another news site (and can't even remember what it was now). However, when I read a lot of the posts here, I was shocked at what seemed like the indifference to the deaths of children, so I replied with a post and the re-replied to responses I got back. Isn't that what blog sites are all about - the exchange of ideas in some way?

Or was I possibly correct in my assessment of this one, like many other I've seen like it, that it was mainly full of "people with the same limited mind-set commiserate and pat each other on the back while engaging in name-calling and making school-yard accusations?" You seem to confirm that mind-set with your remarks to me: " I mean you come here and accuse people for asking questions."

In fact, I was offering a counter argument that said that Ovad's remarks seemed to be out of touch, because in his sweeping generalization about all people's actions in almost every situation, throughout history (that he offered in the form of a question), he seemed to be stating that there was never a war that war "where the world was so concerned about 'civilians, mothers, children, the aged" and I was trying to counter that with what looked like obvious answers... and since they came from news articles that were so easily found, I suggested that perhaps he doesn't read the news, because if he did it would be hard not to notice all of the articles out there on the subject, like the two that I quoted two in my reply.

Also, have you noticed that I tend to make almost all of my statements here as "it seems to be that" or "many people say that they do are X, Y or Z" because, unlike many people who post on these kinds of "venting" blogs, I do not attempot to assume that I know exactly why someone is saying something, or what all of their background knowledge is, or what their character make-up is all about... I'm merely responding to their posts, and the tone and tenor of what they are saying at the time.

I didn't think my comment implied that Ovad, or anyone else here was "somehow intellectually inferior" (and I hope you're not feeling that way about yourself, because if you are, I do apologize). Also, I certainly didn't think I had stooped to the kinds of nasty name-calling or personal attacks on people's character that also seem to be pso revalent on here, as in your comment, tame as it was, but which still focused on judging me, rather than my statements: "So what makes you special? Nothing that I can see. Lots of rhetoric, but all fluff - just like a 5th grader."

Maybe the fans of this blog would be happier if there was some kind of clear caveat posted at the top, stating "Please Note: if you don't agree with the kinds of commentary you see here, we don't want your opinions. We are too busy expressing ours and feeling good about them to have to answer anyone that has a different point of view."

Posted by: aja10024 at August 01, 2006 10:50 PM (Ffvoi)

225 Hmmmmm, interesting...! first thing first, its sad to see innocent people dying..may god rest there souls.... secondly, how on earth can you people just sit there and say this was staged..? you guys are seriously mental...! we are talking about human beings..! lifes..! people being killed on both sides, and all you can talk about is " Oh tiz waza staged by da terrorist dudes ".oh nice pallywood theory..! its right up there with 9/11.. sad..!

Posted by: momo at August 02, 2006 01:17 AM (NCwG3)

226 So, dna, your points are:

a) Truth is irrelevant once war is declared. (Nice!)
b) Advance warning is more than THEY deserved, because (wait for it...)
c) The IDF are nicer than Hezbollah. (That didn't take long.)

I don't CARE about the difference between the IDF and Hezbollah. This is about the Lebanese civillians whose deaths you're attempting to justify.

You know nothing of them, except that Israel dropped bombs on them, but you assume that they must be terrorists.

If they weren't terrorists, then Israel did wrong, and if Israel are the bad guys, that means you're on the wrong side. Since you can't possibly be wrong, the victims must be terrorists.

It would be amusing except for, you know, all of those dead people.

Posted by: Railroad Stone at August 02, 2006 01:30 AM (51E0l)

227 Ah, Jack,

"I don't condone terrorism but there was a warning issued".

So all Hezbollah need do is call up Ha'aretz and warn everyone that their rockets are on the way. Then it would be legit! I see!

Jules,

Nice emotional response, illogical too. I'll let you off the hook and give it slowly. Israel makes every attempt to avoid civilian casualties whereas Hezbollah wants them, on both sides.

Can you do better than that.

However, we all know that what Hezbollah is doing is terrorism.

Nice to see that you understand that they are terrorists.

And, though many of you here think otherwise, what the IDF is doing is state terrorism.

Right. A sovreign nation is attacked and when they respond it is terrorism. Moral equivalency doesn't work real well here, does it.

They're simply continuing the tradition established by their forefathers in Irgun,

If you really knew Israeli history then you would not make such simplistic statements about the Irgun. If you want to engage in intellectually honest pursuits than you'll acknowledge that they were a splinter group and that there were factions within that didn't approve of their methods.

You'll also acknowledge that they didn't have a Constitution that called for the destruction of a sovreign state. Just for fun you can read about them here.


albeit under the guise of "defense operations" carried out by a "peace loving" and "democratic state".

On the basis of probability then (seeing as 500+ civilians have already been bombed out of existence and because Qana has already witnessed such a massacre before), I have a sneaky suspicion it might just have been US (oops sorry, I mean, Israeli) ordinance.

And maybe it was. Maybe it was a terrible tragedy that Israel is certain to be sorry about and offer apologies. But OTOH, there is reason to believe that it may not have been and common knowledge that Hezbollah intentionally operates out of population centers with the hope that civilians will be killed. The responsibility lies with the terrorists.

No doubt, over the coming days, when another similar event takes place, you'll come up with even more pitiful theories to excuse such war crimes.

No doubt that you'll continue to use distortion, twisted facts and bias to continue to make ill informed and ignorant comments.

Jules,

You have good intentions but clearly your background doesn't measure up. Take some time to read some more.

BTW, I noticed that you didn't bother to comment on the video.Here is another one you probably won't watch. Pallywood

Posted by: Jack at August 02, 2006 02:47 AM (jZSgI)

228 dna really i urge you to go see with your own eyes what is going on (videos, pictures you can't rely on that, don't you think journalist or photographers themselves like to make 'good' pictures that sell? why just blame the H.?) There is no staging, can't you just accept that? these people were killed... period... if ou want to justify it, please do...

we all sit here in a safe surrounding sitting with easy talking...? Mel Gibson? he probably is on your side....

Posted by: mylena at August 02, 2006 03:18 AM (SL1fo)

229 This sort of news manipulation is nothing new to Hezbollah. A few months ago I had extensive footage of clips from action within Gaza. In every instance movies had been cleverly edited but left massive questions unanswered.

If Hezbollah lay down their arms the fighting will stop. If Israel lay down their arms it will cease to exist!!! I know of no instance where an Israeli has committed suicide through suicide bombing. Why is the western media blaming Israel?

We are all quests on this planet. The eath we stand on belongs to no one. Remember Churchill's statement? "Jaw, jaw, not war, war"!

By the way, until a short time ago I was thouroughly anti Semitic but how my views have changed!!!!

Posted by: J. Edwin White at August 02, 2006 04:32 AM (ic4qI)

230 Israel has the right to defend itself!!! And everyone here should just admit that these deaths are sad casualties of war, in stead of questioning if it is stages or not....

Posted by: mylena at August 02, 2006 05:18 AM (SL1fo)

231 Re the photo of the poor dust-coated baby, how come the pacificer is spotlessly clean and stratigically-positioned in all the photos! The only explanation is to make the photo seem more heart-rending.

Posted by: Marian Propp at August 02, 2006 06:38 AM (OZnmw)

232 Yes, and to make it look _really_ convincing, hezbollah called in an Israeli airstrike on the very building where they had staged their wicked scheme!

Think about it, dudes.

The IDF bombed the house. Really, they did - they have admitted it. Are you suggesting that Hezbollah somehow, in the middle of the night, rustled up 60 freshly dead bodies, dug up the rubble and put them under - and in such a convincing way as that all the journalists there, all the red cross, doctors, ambulancemen and UN observers accept what has happened - only to be foiled by a couple of right-wing posters 7000 miles away?

You're deluding yourselves, but you're not fooling anybody else.

Posted by: billy at August 02, 2006 08:52 AM (lY0Zo)

233 Actually, Billy, the IDF is opening an investigation based upon the questions and observations made here and on other blogs, and the International Red Cross is going to attempt to answer these questions as well.

The only folks who seem to claim to have all the answers are Hezbollah... and their allies.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 02, 2006 09:03 AM (g5Nba)

234 Master Sgt X, I believe you meant to say "parroting the twisted Koran, as the actual Koran isn't a big fan of killing innocents.

mylena, you said "there is no staging." Please follow the links to the CNN articles where the reporters admit to having told stories that were staged by Hezbollah. The fact that there have been staged stories coming out of Lebanon is not realy debatable anymore. The only thing debatable is whether this instance was staged or not.

Posted by: James McMurray at August 02, 2006 09:03 AM (1R6cr)

235 momo wrote:
oh nice pallywood theory..! its right up there with 9/11.. sad..!
mylena wrote:
dna really i urge you to go see with your own eyes what is going on

I just love it: these people tell me to see it with my own eyes (the photos, I assume), yet totally ignore "minor" facts regarding what type of freedom journalists have over there, and whether some of the journalists there are a bit too coperative with the Hezbollah.

Has either one of you even bothered to watch the Pallywood videos? If fake funeral processions with live corpses, staged injuries, and ambulances that are miraculously always a few meters away don't get you a little bit suspicious, then there is nothing I can say or point at to make you change you mind just a little bit.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 09:43 AM (tJzld)

236 Maybe the fans of this blog would be happier if there was some kind of clear caveat posted at the top, stating "Please Note: if you don't agree with the kinds of commentary you see here, we don't want your opinions. We are too busy expressing ours and feeling good about them to have to answer anyone that has a different point of view."

Pot, meet kettle.

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 02, 2006 09:50 AM (ATbKm)

237 Railroad Stone wrote:
a) Truth is irrelevant once war is declared. (Nice!)
b) Advance warning is more than THEY deserved, because (wait for it...)
c) The IDF are nicer than Hezbollah. (That didn't take long.)

Remarkable! You really managed to twist everything I said. I won't bother with a lengthy response to your assault on my morality, but I will say that the IDF is more trusthworthy than Hezbollah.


I don't CARE about the difference between the IDF and Hezbollah. This is about the Lebanese civillians whose deaths you're attempting to justify.

Are you this emotional every day? After all, dozens of people die daily in Iraq due to the Sunni-Shia conflict (et al), and surely there are children that die.

I looked up on the Al Jazeera site information regarding the bombing in Iraq and stumbled upon a year old article; here's a quote: "One of the injured, Ammar al-Karaguili, 40, said he saw desperate parents throwing their children out of windows and from balconies to escape the inferno."

Surprisingly enough there were no pictures of dead children held up high and in full view for the cameras to see; no photogenic fella single handedly carrying each and every child to an ambulance.

Do you know why there weren't any photos? Because it doesn't matter to them -- they aren't trying to shape public opinion, the way that the Hezbollah is trying; they are merely reporting news.

Now that is double standards: making a lot of fuss over a child that was supposedly killed by the detestable Zionist, while a child killed in Iraq is buisiness as usual since it is an internal matter in the Arab world.

(Again, this begs the reference to the Iran-Iraq war where Saddam gasses plenty of people, and the Iranians sent off children to trigger landmines; also Saddam gassing the Kurds. Internal matters, right?)

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 10:06 AM (tJzld)

238 billy wrote:
Yes, and to make it look _really_ convincing, hezbollah called in an Israeli airstrike on the very building where they had staged their wicked scheme!

Think about it, dudes.

Yeah, think about: some of these people follow religious wackos issuing Fatwas to enable women to commit suicide bombings, they brainwash children, and even had some teens to blow themselves up.

Combine that with their willingness to pose, and put up a good act for the camera, then yes -- it doesn't seem so wrong to have some doubt regarding whatever info/photos Hezbollah is letting out of Qana.

Perhaps they did arrange some victims -- just grab some people they don't know, and tell them to stay there, because it will be safe. I wouldn't put it past them.

Don't forget that (Muslim) foreign fighters in Iraq haven't had any problem with blowing themselves up in bustling markets in Bagdad.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 10:27 AM (tJzld)

239 this is SIMPLY ANOTHER JEWISH propaganda to divert attention from their BRUTAL AGGRESSION AND RACIST ZIONIST WAR on innocent children and old people. what does is matter that the photos are staged when the children were murdered by these FAKE JEWS AND KHAZARS who hold the world HOSTAGE WITH their taste for arab blood.

Posted by: vice at August 02, 2006 11:10 AM (RUbqb)

240 vice wrote:
what does is matter that the photos are staged when the children were murdered by these FAKE JEWS AND KHAZARS who hold the world HOSTAGE WITH their taste for arab blood.


Damn! You saw straight through their grand plans. Now how will they ever get all that blood they need to make the Matzhos for next passover?

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 11:19 AM (tJzld)

241 Pallywood. You mean to tell me that governments and/or terrorists stage events in order to manipulate public opinion.
Shocking!
Thank god our government doesn't do that.
Nothing but the unvarnished truth here.

Posted by: happy talk at August 02, 2006 11:20 AM (dygWc)

242 I can no longer tell the difference between real idiots and fake idiots.

Like "vice", for example.

Sigh.

Posted by: happy talk at August 02, 2006 11:24 AM (dygWc)

243 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060801/ap_on_re_us/mideast_photos
all i care about is what the reporters tell themselves, i'm very sorry if people can't choke it, but it is what it is. Just like walking on the moon wasn't staged. And for all what it is, why are you guys so upset why can't you just realize where there is a war, there are death people, it's no fun war. those theories you are throwing up isn't holding.

Posted by: mylena at August 02, 2006 11:43 AM (SL1fo)

244 Two nights ago, I saw photos of rescue workers digging these dead bodies out of a mound of dirt(...DIRT!!!) in the basement of the "collapsed" building. There was a mound of dirt, with some soft-ball sized peices of concrete mixed in it. If these childern were killed by the re-inforced concrete building having "collapsed" on them, why were they they shown being dug out of a mound of DIRT?
The photos showed a hole in the room's ceiling, proving the building was constructed of re-inforced concrete. The hole in the ceiling also proved that, since there was still a ceiling, the building had not "collapsed".
Also, not only was there no blood on any of the dead childern, but there was NO sign of any trauma. No punctures, no contusions, no broken bones, not even a bruise or a scrape! How did they die, malaria? I thought a re-inforced concrete building "collapsed" on them ?

Posted by: RDX at August 02, 2006 11:56 AM (IZU9f)

245 You want a conspiracy theory, how about this: There is no war, it never happened, this whole thing is nothing more than one more Karl Rove political stunt. It is all designed to draw either Syria or Iran into a war and it has to happen, and it will happen, surprise, surprise, by late October. The murdering of children is the ultimate provocation, and that's the exact intention. If Syria and or Iran cannot be goaded into war, bombing will begin in October regardless, so their message is, You might as well take the bait now because we just keep picking at you, humiliating the Arab people, destroying innocent villages and causing more damage until you come out and attack us. In the words of Karl's clueless drunk puppet, "Bring It On." This war the neo-cons have been manstrabating over for over a decade now.
Why the neo cons want this war goes back many years. It arose in Y2K apocalyptic Limbaugh triumphalism no reality based details can ever derail. For Cheney and von Rumsfield it goes back even further, the red menace, the bay of pigs and the compact Herbert Walker on the Grassy Knoll. Today as the details about 9/11 are beginning to unravel and more people are beginning to suspect something stinks, your O'Riley sarcasm over the very term conspiracy theory wares thin. Everything is a conspiracy theory unless both Fox News and Buzzflash.com are both always true at the same time. This invasion of Lebanon is Cheney's war, few doubt it. The right wing noise machine and even hate radio opinion masters have been told to call it a proxy war.
Why they want the war now is all politics. First it keeps the complete debacle in Iraq off the sheeple's minds and it keeps other troubling details off the front pages such as the complete and total full scale refusal of the people of Mexico to allow another election to be stolen. For almost a month now the nation on our southern border has not had a recognized president and it has never made the news in the US once, all thanks to Cheney's war. So you want a conspiracy theory here it is. Sure Qana happened. Murdering children and humiliating the entire non-Jewish Middle East is the exact mission at the moment so to goad Syrian and Iran into a war in time for the November elections. This is Cheney's war and even the Israeli military know it's a colossal disaster.

Posted by: curtius at August 02, 2006 12:07 PM (QZoKM)

246 "the IDF is opening an investigation"? man, that black humour just keeps getting blacker.

Let's put this to bed.

The families were killed when the building was bombed, and collapsed, in the early hours of the morning. All eyewitness reports agree on this. Here are links to some:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744332.html
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=101b250b-92be-4dae-9bd9-be7b62b02192
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/08/01/5159.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5228224.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1833884,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1

"Why would the civilians who had supposedly taken shelter in the basement of the building not leave after the post-midnight attack?"

It was because they were dead, dude.

"While Hezbollah have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there."

No, that's wrong - in fact it's both wrong and unsourced. If you'd read any actual reports you would have realised this.

"Immediately after we got the call [at 5am] we took three ambulances and headed to Qana," he said. "But three bombs nearly hit our first ambulance, so we turned back." - Red Cross HQ in Tyre
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34187

"Further air strikes and heavy artillery bombardments during the night that destroyed at least four other houses in the Qana neighborhood, meant that it was another six hours before the rescue services could reach the stricken village."
"there are only two roads leading out and the Israelis bombed them both several days ago"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0731/p01s04-wome.html?s=t5

You quote the following: "There was little blood, CNN’s Wedeman noted: all the victims, he concluded, appeared to have died while as they were sleeping" as if it somehow was evidence for your conspiracy, though you don't explain why - because there is no 'why'. Look at these photos (graphic image warning) and you will understand why Wedeman described what he did:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16733489@N00/204023951/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49762791@N00/201961843/

You write: "the most damning evidence of Hezbollah staging this event with bodies from a morgue. This young victim is again relatively clean and displays no evidence of the expected crush injuries"

Well, it's a picture of a dead child. It has nothing about him to suggest he has any connection to Hezbollah, and nothing to suggest any relation to a morgue except that he's sadly on the way to one. His body is certainly not 'clean' - don't know what your childhood was like, dude, but we used to wash. And what are the 'expected crush injuries'? You've spent so much time trying to invent a scenario you haven't paid any attention to what actually happened. Most people seem to have been killed by the blast (most survivors who've told their stories report having been knocked unconscious) or by buried under earth and rubble. Here, for medical experts such as yourself, is a short but extremely bleak description of their injuries:

"They came across the smallest corpses last, many intact but with lungs crushed by the blast wave of the bombing."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1833884,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/07/31/sean_smiths_photographs_death_in_qana.html

"The two men show no signs of having been digging in rubble." - this is irrelevant, since nobody has claimed they were digging. But your assertion is wrong anyhow - the guys in this picture, for example, look kinda clean too, but they are clearly digging in rubble:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16733489@N00/203985476/

As for the rigor mortis in the bodies, that just corroborates the fact that those people were killed when the building was bombed at 1am.
Simple as that. It tallies exactly with the victims' story. No conspiracy required.

You say the child in the photo you show above is "the only victim that actually appears authentic", ie covered in dust. Yet the image you use just above it shows four bodies thick with dust and dirt. And perhaps you haven't seen these poor guys (warning - heartbreakingly grim image):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16733489@N00/204014585/

None of your "evidence" is evidence. It's made-up or nonexistent. You're trying to cobble together a fake conspiracy for the sake of duping gullible bigots, and it's really not pretty.

Did you really think that the family members, ambulancemen, Red Cross workers, doctors, civil defense volunteers, UN soldiers and Western journalists on the scene have all been fooled by a plot that could be uncovered by a couple of right-wing bloggers 7000 miles away? that's not a conspiracy theory, it's just madly arrogant and self-deluded.

Now would be a good time to withdraw with a gracious, 'I'm sorry, perhaps I was hasty and overlooked certain facts'.

This, for example:

Ha'aretz reports that "It now appears that the [Israeli] military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/745130.html

In other words, the IAF weren't bombing Hezbollah and they knew they weren't - according to the Israeli military themselves.

That's right, the IDF admits it wasn't targeting Hezbollah in the attack - it admits it knew it was bombing civilian targets.

Check it for yourself.
Read it again.

Yep, that's what the IDF investigated, and that's what they found - that they had targeted innocent civilians knowing that there were no Hizbollah fighters in the area.

Now go and blog something that is of some tiny use to humanity, please?

Posted by: billy at August 02, 2006 12:28 PM (lY0Zo)

247 This war the neo-cons have been manstrabating over for over a decade now.

This is a parody right?

Tob

Posted by: Toby928 at August 02, 2006 12:46 PM (ATbKm)

248 Breaking news -- Blasts hit Baghdad football game:
At least 12 people, many of them children, have been killed in bomb attacks while they were playing football in west Baghdad, police say.

Will we see pictures of dead children prominently displayed for the cameras?

Probably not.

Why?

Because Arab-on-Arab on violence that leads to the death of children is apparently meaningless in the Arab world.

I'll keep my eye on Al Jazeera to make sure.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 01:01 PM (tJzld)

249 Great examination of the photographic evidence. We knew that hezbullah got the qana people killed on purpose, but that wasn't good enough, they had to invoke a little "pallywood" magic to really thrill the crowds.

Great Post!

Posted by: Michael Ghostwolf at August 02, 2006 01:07 PM (HuObf)

250 Anderson Cooper on Hezbollah

“We'd come to get a look at the damage and had hoped to talk with a Hezbollah representative. Instead, we found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah. Young men on motor scooters followed our every movement. They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings. Once, when they thought we'd videotaped them, they asked us to erase the tape. These men are called al-Shabab, Hezbollah volunteers who are the organization's eyes and ears.”

Gesturing to racks of music CDs in a building that had lost at least one of its walls, Cooper remarked, “You see their CDs on the wall still.”

He continued: “Hezbollah representatives are with us now but don't want to be photographed. They'll point to something like that and they'll say, ‘Well, look, this is a store.’ The civilians lived in this building. This is a residential complex.

“And while that may be true, what the Israelis will say is that Hezbollah has their offices, their leadership has offices and bunkers even in residential neighborhoods. And if you're trying to knock out the Hezbollah leadership with air strikes, it's very difficult to do that without killing civilians.

“As bad as this damage is, it certainly could have been much worse in terms of civilian casualties. Before they started heavily bombing this area, Israeli warplanes did drop leaflets in this area, telling people to get out. The civilian death toll, though, has angered many Lebanese. Even those who do not support Hezbollah are outraged by the pictures they've seen on television of civilian casualties.”As the video showed a group reporters and photographers interviewing a single woman on a blanket, Cooper explained, “Civilian casualties are clearly what Hezbollah wants foreign reporters to focus on. It keeps the attention off them — and questions about why Hezbollah should still be allowed to have weapons when all the other militias in Lebanon have already disarmed.

“After letting us take pictures of a few damaged buildings, they take us to another location, where there are ambulances waiting.

“This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians. That's the story that Hezbollah wants people to know about.

“These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.”

Cooper concluded: “Hezbollah may not be terribly subtle about spinning a story, but it is telling perhaps that they try. Even after all this bombing, Hezbollah is still organized enough to have a public relations strategy, still in control enough to try and get its message out.”

Posted by: Jack at August 02, 2006 01:18 PM (Kn9GP)

251 billy wrote:
In other words, the IAF weren't bombing Hezbollah and they knew they weren't - according to the Israeli military themselves.

That's right, the IDF admits it wasn't targeting Hezbollah in the attack - it admits it knew it was bombing civilian targets.

Your attempt at distorting facts is laughable. In the articles it says that the IAF had plans to bomb building in a certain radius from a launch point.

What is also funny is your aparent demand that the IDF strike only those building where it knows with 100% certainty that Hezbollah is there.

Well, guess what? Hezbollah has been observed operating from that village clearly firing rockets, and then stashing the vehicles in certain building. At this point the IDF should've have given the residents an ultimatum to evacuate, and once it has passed, it should've flattened the entire village with artillery fire and unguided bombs. (I just can't wait to be called a wacko for the previous statment; read the analogy below).

Tell me: do you also expect the Hezbollah to selectively target only military installations? If so, I don't think that the last 2,000 rockets it has been firing at Haifa (and other cities) have been quite on target.

-------------

A little analogy: You are having a social event in your apartment, and a couple of people decides they are bored and go to an empty room and start throwing eggs at passing cars. At some point a car with a bunch of guys gets hit, and they come upstairs. You open the door, and you get smacked, and then they continue on to smack other people in your apartment, even though they had nothing to do with the egging.

Does it really matter that you didn't know what those two were doing? Perhaps, but it was your apartment your eggs, and your responsibility.

The people in Qana knew very well that Hezbollah has hoarding weapons in their village, as well as hiding trucks capble of launching rockets. Calling them innocent civilians does not reflect the truth.

What happened there is primarily the Hezbollah's fault, but theirs as well. They knew full well what was going to happen based on past retaliations from the IDF.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 01:31 PM (tJzld)

252 After reading all these comments I now see
why Hezmessy continues the actions they do and
the reason is, there are many Jew(Hebrew)haters
still in this sick world and anytime any are
killed most of the world is tickled to death.
Hessymess knows enough to keep doing what their
doing because the world is sick like them and
many Americans are idiots and believe all anti-
american and antiIsraely tripe whether truth or,
lie. We put up with this garbage in vietnam and
many more died than needed to cause of Kerry,
Fonda... I persume the reason why America has
quititis is the Caucasians are the only ones
who have the right to not be murdered by
the horrible, awful, governments they find
themselves ruled by. Go for it elitist,your so..
It seems to not matter when Hebrew children and
Americans are murdered by the terrorist beast
but, let any other little one die whether at
the hand of hezzy or, not, all Yisroel and their
people are to blame!!
To the ones who are reasonable in their treatment
of Yisroel, and have a logical mindset ,I want to
thank you for your ability to see through the
fog, were terrorist hide themselves.

Posted by: Levi at August 02, 2006 02:24 PM (8uVzU)

253 dna - just a couple of questions.

"In the articles it says that the IAF had plans to bomb buildings in a certain radius from a launch point."

That's right. What radius? Do you know? No you don't. It's a completely arbitrary attempt to justify bombing a civilian target, a play on words for those who want to cling to propaganda.

Who did the IDF think would be in a civilian house 'a certain radius' from a place where missiles had been launched - from a mobile launcher - at some unspecified time in the past? No excuse. Really, no excuse at all.

"Hezbollah has been observed operating from that village clearly firing rockets."

Apparently - but when? This week? This year? Last year? A decade ago? Nothing at the link you gave gives any indication whatsoever.

"do you also expect the Hezbollah to selectively target only military installations?"

Yes - I think the rocket attacks on Israeli citizens are morally wrong and tactically pointless.

As for the eggs... you should read what you wrote again. I think it describes bullying, paranoid overreaction, indiscriminate and disproportionate violence very well.

Posted by: billy at August 02, 2006 02:35 PM (lY0Zo)

254 This conspiracy theory is a pretty weak one.
1) The time line issue: 2 seperate eyewitesses on the ground confirm that the building collapsed around 1AM, Noone said that it collapsed at 7AM.
The Red Cross were contacted at 7AM so people assumed that the collapse happened at 7AM.
Given that there weren't a great deal of people about and certainly not in the middle of Isreali bombing and it was most likely pitch dark is it any wonder that the Red Cross was not contacted until the morning.

2)This building was only 3 storeys and was made of
different materials than the World Trade Center so
you can't really say all victims will look like those from the World Trade Center.

3)The building collapsed but we don't actually know if the deaths were caused by crushing, asphyxiation or dust smoke Inhalation.
Given that there were quite a lot of people in one
room, the basement it is quite likely that oxygen levels were low any way, so many of the victims may have died of oxygen depravation some hours after the initial collapse.

This conspiracy theory doesn't stack up at all.
The victims names have now all been documented:

Source : Reuters

Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 55
Ibrahim Hashim, 65
Husna Hashim, 75
'Ali Ahmad Hashim, 3
'Abbas Ahmad Hashim, 9 months
Hura' Muhammad Qassim Shalhub, 12
Mahdi Mahmud Hashim, 68
Zahra Muhammad Qassim Shalhub, 2
Ibrahim Ahmad Hashim, 7
Ja'far Mahmud Hashim, 10
Lina Muhammad Mahmud Shalhub, 30
Nabila 'Ali Amin Shalhub, 40
'Ula Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 25
Khadija 'Ali Yusif, 31
Taysir 'Ali Shalhub, 39
Zaynab Muhammad 'Ali Amin Shalhub, 6
Fatima Muhammad Hashim, 4
'Ali Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 17
Maryam Hassan Muhsin, 30
'Afaf al-Zabad, 45
Yahya Muhammad Qassim Shalhub, 9
'Ali Muhammad Kassim Shalhub, 10
Yusif Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 6
Qassim Samih Shalhub, 9
Hussain Ahmad Hashim, 12
Qassim Muhammad Shalhub, 7
Raqita Mahmud Shalhub, 7
Rukaya Muhammad Hashim, unknown

Posted by: K Lam at August 02, 2006 04:47 PM (lljLc)

255 billy wrote:
Apparently - but when? This week? This year? Last year? A decade ago? Nothing at the link you gave gives any indication whatsoever.
You gotta be fucking kidding me; people like you swallow anything that the Hezbollah throw at them, while anything officially claimed by Israel must be a lie. I looked it up just for you, because of course, you didn't bother researching yourself, and it was "fake" by default, unlike Hezbollah's honest reports.


That's right. What radius? Do you know? No you don't. It's a completely arbitrary attempt to justify bombing a civilian target, a play on words for those who want to cling to propaganda.
You keep brining the discussion back to this point, trying to evoke an emotional response from people -- just like the Hezbollah wanted. I don't really care about the radius, since that village is (1) really close to the border, (2) the "innocent civilians" have been told to leave, and (3) the Hezbollah has been operating from that village; take all that, and they should've damn well known that the front-line will be there fairly shortly.

The people in the village were complicit to Hezbollahs actions of hoarding munition, and then firing into Israel; not so innocent after all.

As I a said, the village should've been bombed to the ground; there is video footage showing them firing and then hiding. At this point any house in that village is suspect of storing ammunition.

Yes - I think the rocket attacks on Israeli citizens are morally wrong and tactically pointless.
Hypocrisy again: Hezbollah firing at civilians -- morally wrong; Israel attacking (after an advanced notice) a village from where Hezbollah has been firing and hiding -- war crime or massacre (pick your favorite, and then liken it to the Nazis & holocaust).

I suggest, since the issue is so near and dear to your heart, that you go to Lebanon with a list of proposed IAF targets; then you can go house to house and make sure there are no "innocent civillians" in there. Superman -- with his X-Ray vision -- was unavailable for this conflict; he's working on his next movie "Superman Leaves".


As for the eggs... you should read what you wrote again. I think it describes bullying, paranoid overreaction, indiscriminate and disproportionate violence very well.
Yeah, and I guess the incursion into Israel which led to 8 dead soldiers, and two kidnapped, was the equivalent of egging -- no one got hurt, and Israel is bullying the poor little Hezbollah.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 05:50 PM (tJzld)

256 K Lam wrote:
1) The time line issue: 2 seperate eyewitesses on the ground confirm that the building collapsed around 1AM, Noone said that it collapsed at 7AM.
Yeah, two very reliable eyewitenesses, which probably, definitiley aren't Hezbollah.

3)The building collapsed but we don't actually know if the deaths were caused by crushing, asphyxiation or dust smoke Inhalation.
Nor will we ever know: they had their moment of fame with Green Helmet in front of the camera, and then they were whisked off for burial.


The victims names have now all been documented
They could've walked: there is a sufficient number of adults, and the older children could have pitched in and helped the younger ones. They should've been able to cover at the very least 20km, should have been able to reach Tyre, or some other nearby villages.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 06:06 PM (tJzld)

257 dna - keep your hair on.

"I looked it up just for you, because of course, you didn't bother researching yourself" - but neither the link in your previous post, nor the IDF press release you link to here, answers my previous question.

When were these rocket attacks? last week? last year? The IDF release pointedly avoids giving any timescale at all.

"I don't really care about the radius"

Well, there you go. Nothing like a reasoned argument. You don't care. Lovely.

"The people in the village were complicit to Hezbollahs actions of hoarding munition, and then firing into Israel"

Again, you have no evidence for this assertion at all. It just seems to make you feel good to say it.

"Hezbollah firing at civilians -- morally wrong; Israel attacking (after an advanced notice) a village from where Hezbollah has been firing and hiding -- war crime or massacre"

Your words, not mine.

"As I said, the village should've been bombed to the ground."

Case closed.

Posted by: billy at August 02, 2006 06:59 PM (lY0Zo)

258 K Lam,
Look at the photos with your eyes open! The building did NOT collpase! You can see the re-inforced concrete ceiling still intact! There are dozens of photos of dead childern with NO sign of trauma! NO blood! No scrapes! If a concrete building collapses on a kid, something will get broken, cut, or punctured! Unless, of course the JEWS used poison gas! (For those of you too lazy to find the "DIRT pile" photos on your own, www.bubbleshare.com/album/51546/overview )

Posted by: RDX at August 02, 2006 07:48 PM (IZU9f)

259 1) The time line issue: 2 seperate eyewitesses on the ground confirm that the building collapsed around 1AM, Noone said that it collapsed at 7AM.

"Yeah, two very reliable eyewitenesses, which probably, definitiley aren't Hezbollah."

DNA, firstly the time issue has been blown out of proportion, the only reason the IDF thought the building collapsed at 8 PM was because of media reports that really didn't have any accurate idea but assumed the collapsed occured not long after the Red Cross arrived, which was a totally wrong assumption.
Take the timeline factor out of the equation and you have a very much weakened case for a conspiracy theory. If you think that Hezbolla planted explosion then you would think that IDF surveilance would pick up the blast and it's effects loud and clear.
As for whether these 2 witnesses can be relied on,
well can Olmert be relied upon?
Just today he said that Hezbolla's infrastructure
had been completely destroyed. On a day that Hezbollah sends a record number of Rockets over to
Israel , well that simply isn't true.

"hey could've walked: there is a sufficient number of adults, and the older children could have pitched in and helped the younger ones. They should've been able to cover at the very least 20km, should have been able to reach Tyre, or some other nearby villages."

There are a number of reasons why they may not have wanted to evacuate.
One is that these 2 families had little money and therefore would be reluctant to go to an unfamiliar town where their well being was not guaranteed. Don't forget many of the older generation would be reluctant to leave there homes behind.
It has already been mentioned that the families were scared to travel due to Israelis bombing convoys, if yoy knew the road was a target for bombardment, would you readily walk on it?

Another reason why some people say that they haven't left there homes is because they fear that
the Isrealis would occupy the town and never let them go back.

Imagine if someone said everyone had to evacuate your home town immeadiately to avoid extreme danger, not everyone will evacuate, remember New Orleans?

Posted by: K Lam at August 02, 2006 07:54 PM (lljLc)

260 Con Yank: where did you study forensics and where did yo get your MD degree? Where did you do your pathology residency?

It must be a great place for you to be able to derive these conclusions by photos!

Posted by: Randy Paul at August 02, 2006 08:08 PM (UaTM7)

261
"K Lam,
Look at the photos with your eyes open! The building did NOT collpase! You can see the re-inforced concrete ceiling still intact! There are dozens of photos of dead childern with NO sign of trauma! NO blood! No scrapes! If a concrete building collapses on a kid, something will get broken, cut, or punctured! Unless, of course the JEWS used poison gas!"

RDX, it is not suprising that the ceiling was intact as the building never took a direct hit!
The structure did take damge from the bomb blast though even though the bomb hit the area adjacent to the building, bearing in mind that if as belived the Isrealis used their US supplied "bunker busting "bombs, these bombs are said to be the the most powerful bombs that can be used that are not nuclear.
As for looking at the photographs, I have, sure they don't show as much blood that you may associate with other bombing attrocites, but then
the building collapsed whilst they were all in the basement so we don't know how they all died.
Perhaps they were asphixiated due to lack of oxygen or may be the bombing ruptured gas pipes in the building that poisoned the residents?
The photographs in themselves prove nothing.

Posted by: K Lam at August 02, 2006 08:09 PM (lljLc)

262 Ghostwolf,
For a real hoot, go to Yahoo.com and watch Kevin Sites 2:00 min. video of the ambulance which was "blown-up" by an Israeli rocket. None of the doors or body panels were so much as dented, and none of the upholstry was even ripped, even though "several passangers were injured." I told Kevin that he deserved a Pulitzer for that one.

Posted by: RDX at August 02, 2006 08:11 PM (IZU9f)

263 billy wrote:
When were these rocket attacks? last week? last year? The IDF release pointedly avoids giving any timescale at all.

Sure, the video is a few years old, and Israel just kept it in the safe for just-in-case; in fact, the rockets launched several years ago only recently landed in northern Israel.

Why don't you contact the IAF and ask them for a complete list of their past and upcoming sorties -- I'm sure they'll give it to you; then you can compare that with a itemized list of rocket launches maintained by the Hezbollah.

Remarkable how you dwell on these minor details, even though there is no reason to believe that the video is old or fake. This must be your little conspiracy theory: Israel fabricated the video in order to justify an attack on a village full of innocent civilians.


Well, there you go. Nothing like a reasoned argument. You don't care. Lovely.
I'll tell you the radius the IAF uses, if you tell me the one that Hezbollah uses. Don't forget to let us all know the means through which they warn innocent civilians in northern Israel that they are about to be attacked.


Again, you have no evidence for this assertion at all. It just seems to make you feel good to say it.
Again, your claim is only valid if you prove that the IAF videos are fake. Also, feeling has nothing to do with it.


Your words, not mine.
Right, you are merely promoting the bruhaha over civilians deaths that the Hezbollah is pushing. Were you so outraged when the rockets killed two children in Nazereth? Or when it hit a factory in Haifa and killed several workers? Did you go on Arab blogs/websites, decried it as an atrocity and demanded that Hezbollah cease their attacks immediately?

I didn't think so.


Case closed.
Of course, now that some civilians got hit on the Hezbollah side we have to stop everything. Who cares about minor details like their incursion into Israel, and the killing of 8 soldiers, and the kidnapping of the other two; that is completely irrelevant.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 08:18 PM (tJzld)

264 K Lam,
You are wrong again. The bunker buster is a ground penetrating bomb designed to bury itself deep into the earth before exploding. They are too heavy to be carried by the Isreali F-16's. They were targeting a truck-mounted rocket launching system and a bunker-buster would be exactly the wrong weapon for such a task. And you are also lying when you say you have looked at the photos I referenced. After you look, explain how those kids got UNDER a PILE of dirt.

Posted by: RDX at August 02, 2006 08:27 PM (IZU9f)

265 Randy Paul,
My wife has benn a surgeon for 28 years. M.D. from Univ. of Pennsylvania, residency at Long Island Jewish. Where did you get your M.D. How long have YOU been a surgeon???

Posted by: RDX at August 02, 2006 08:32 PM (IZU9f)

266 Randy Paul,

P.S. Next time you get in a pissing contest, make sure you have a dick.

Posted by: RDX at August 02, 2006 08:34 PM (IZU9f)

267 RDX how dare you call me a liar!
I said I saw the photographs and I have!!
Just because I don't agree with your wild speculations doesn't make me a liar.

If you read my post properly I never said they used a bunker buster bomb but it has been suggested by the media.
Obviously I'm not a munnitions expert like you are but the point is that the bombs that Isreal are using are powerful enough to damage structures without hitting them directly.
Now instead of ranting about your questionable "evidence" use your time wisely and show me some real evidence!

Posted by: K Lam at August 02, 2006 08:39 PM (lljLc)

268 K Lam wrote:
RDX, it is not suprising that the ceiling was intact as the building never took a direct hit!
The structure did take damge from the bomb blast though even though the bomb hit the area adjacent to the building, bearing in mind that if as belived the Isrealis used their US supplied "bunker busting "bombs, these bombs are said to be the the most powerful bombs that can be used that are not nuclear.

Yeah right, take a look at some of the photos here and then tell me that that punny civilian building could've survivided the shockwave (you just said they are the most powerful, sans nuclear). But hey, if it never took a direct hit, then why all these accusations about Israel intentionally targetting civilians?


As for looking at the photographs, ... but then
the building collapsed whilst they were all in the basement so we don't know how they all died.
Wait, wait, wait -- ceiling intact, the most powerful bomb -- and yet the building collapses leaving the basement intact (yet full of suspicious debris). Silly me, looking at the pictures in the previous link would make me think that a bunker-buster bomb hit even 30 meters away would flatten the building (earthquake-like shockwaves).


Perhaps they were asphixiated due to lack of oxygen or may be the bombing ruptured gas pipes in the building that poisoned the residents?
Well, an autopsy would certainly help, but for some odd reason I don't think that Hezbollah would allow that.

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 08:44 PM (tJzld)

269 i can't believe it!
-israeli warns the villagers to evacuate... and sends them to their death.. all vehicles r targeted (23 women &children from Marwaheen were killed in a raid on july 17th while on their way to a "safer" town in a pick up truck!!, ambulances, rescue teams, redcross vehicles..), ppl r under siege, all bridges & raods r bombarded, no fuel, no food, no medication..
- the biblical town of QANA where Jesus performed his first miracle changing water to wine at a wedding has witnessed 2 massacres in 10 years. 1996: bombarding a Fijian UN shelter..109 victims!
-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni herself said: "It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time." http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html
-the building was bombarded at 1AM but the raids contined till morning.. ppl in other shelters went out to check on their neighbors only to find the building they'd taken as shelter had been hit and collapsed.. they contacted the redcross at 7AM by mobile (no phones, no electricpower,, all cut). rescue teams and press agencies managed to arrive at 8AM taking great risks due to potential strikes from warplanes still hovering above and the difficulty to find a road intact connecting them to the village.
- the rescue operations were shown live on TV except that there was no one to rescue,, all dead,, the horror!! 60 dead! 37 kids! 27 of them under 13 years of age! 1 didn't live to celebrate his second day of age!
- have a heart ppl and stop analizing the pictures. have some respect for the dead. don't look for explanations and sick aguments when it's all there on tape. some of those victims could have survived maybe if they'd been rescued earlier instead of bleeding to death!
- israel is using the lebanese civilians to experiment with some chemical weapons too(all made in USA of course).
- today a mass burial had to be postponed because warplanes were attacking the area all day long! bodies waiting for burial r kept in refrigerator trucks!
- more than 850 ppl have been killed!
- take a few minutes and have a look at www.whylebanon.net

Posted by: under attack at August 02, 2006 08:50 PM (TMQxa)

270 Okay DNA (post left for you in the media cover up thread) & RDX, it's obvious that you guys have managed to convince yourselves or been duped by the this weak conspiracy theory.

Read what the Washington Post has to say on the matter

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/08/the_qana_conspiracy_theory.html

I ain't convinced and neither are the Washington Post!

Posted by: K Lam at August 02, 2006 09:06 PM (lljLc)

271 t's obvious that you guys have managed to convince yourselves

The only thing I'm convinced of are:
1) Hezbollah has been firing and hiding in Qana
2) Qana received a 5 day warnning
3) Hebollah has been spinning
4) The deaths are the Hezbollah's responsibility.

Have you watched the videos? Have you read the article?

I don't subscribe to any conspiracy theory, I just look at evidence -- in this case the suspicious pile of dirt and debris in that room (basement?) with an intact ceiling.

History also plays into this, and the supposed death of Mohamed al Durah doesn't further the credibility of Arab run media operations when Israel is part of the story.

Do watch all the videos, and then tell me that there is no reason to be suspicious of how things are presented, conspiracy or no conspiracy.

What people like you want is that everybody end their sentences with a "think of the children" remark. Well, that's not my style; I prefer to look at the evidence, and leave feelings out of it.

Also, to reinforce my point that the whole Qana incident has become a media event against Israel, just look at the reports regarding today's blasts in Baghdad: the BBC reports that many of the victms were children, while Al Jazeera doesn't even mention children fatalities.

Why? Because it is Arab-on-Arab violence, and nobody is trying to shape opinion in the West. Wouldn't that qualify as double standards in your book?

Posted by: dna at August 02, 2006 09:50 PM (tJzld)

272 I can't believe all these morons.

1. This building was used by terrorists as a weapons storage place, that same building was used to fire rockets into Israel (very humane of them to use a civilain building).

2. The terrorists used a hospital as their headquarters. If israel would have blown it up all you morons will go up in arms. Israel went in with comando units killed a few terrorists and took a few enemy combatants (high ranking ones). I didn't hear any uproar that a hospital was used for military purposes.

3. Per the geneva convention ANY location that is used to fire from, store weapons etc. is a legitimate war target!!! Hospital, Mosq, Church etc.

Stop all you anti semitism that the arabs can do no wrong and Israel is allways bad.

Remember one thing Israel does not target killing of civilians. If they target a legitimate target and these scum use children as live shields that is when you get "innocent" death.

The Arabs specifically TARGET civilians over 2000 rockets were shot into Israel. Where were they targetd to??? ALL civilians.

Where is the worlds uproar on that???

I gues Jewish blood is cheap and is good to be spilled and the media is not biased and not anti semite.

Posted by: antimatter at August 03, 2006 12:10 AM (xKGxX)

273 RDX said:

My wife has benn a surgeon for 28 years. M.D. from Univ. of Pennsylvania, residency at Long Island Jewish. Where did you get your M.D. How long have YOU been a surgeon???

P.S. Next time you get in a pissing contest, make sure you have a dick.

Or in this case, make sure your wife has a dick.

Posted by: Railroad Stone at August 03, 2006 01:55 AM (51E0l)

274 DNA:

If you're confident enough in believing Hezbollah would go through all the proposed effort to stage the civilian deaths in Qana, why would you put the outdated, rocket attack videos past the Israelis? Afterall there still is the possibility.

Posted by: Immie at August 03, 2006 07:25 AM (zMUsp)

275 K Lam,
That guy at the Washington Post has a degree in what ? Journalism ?? I guess he trumps my degree in Mech. Engineering and my wife's M.D. When the Wash. Post says the building "collapsed", it must be true. They couldn't print it if it weren't true. Besides, they have the word of Nasser Nasser, the photographer, and we can believe him; he's a photo-journalist.
Bottom Line-- I ain't convinced, either! But it's obvious that the building didn't "collapse" and I wonder what else didn't happen the way they it did.

Posted by: RDX at August 03, 2006 08:02 AM (zh7Gw)

276 The body showing dark stains on the lower left face & lower left arm is exhibiting Post Mortem Lividity. After death, the blood flows to the lowest parts of the body causing dark coloration in those areas & leaving pale coloration elsewhere. This would indicate that those parts of the body were lowest after death. Since they're not lowest on that stretcher, I wonder what position the child was in immediately after death.

Posted by: Bill Anderson at August 03, 2006 08:10 AM (8ERH1)

277 B/T/W,
Has anyone asked WHY 56 people would be in the BASEMENT of a multi-story, re-inforced concrete building at 1:00 A.M. ?? Maybe, just maybe,IMHO, the Hezbos were launching rockets from a mobile launcher in the public square (this was close to the main mosque in Qana), the Hezbos, expecting an Israeli air-raid trying to take out the launcher, ordered everyone into the basement (bomb shelter). The expected air-raid came, ca. 1:00 A.M. Two bombs were dropped. They were 500 or 1,000 lb. G/P, perhaps laser-guided. One blew up the building we see as rubble in the back-ground of some of the photos. The other one was a "dud" which penetrated the "collapsed" building, to the basement, and threw up a PILE of dirt, which is why almost none of the bodies had obvious signs of trauma. They suffocated to death.
The Hezbos then spent the next 7-8 hours cleaning out the incriminating evidence, e.g.: launchers; anti-aircraft artillery sites, spent A-A shells, any military items in any of the damaged buildings; bodies of dead,or wounded, Hezbo fighters; and calling Green Helmet Guy, who is OBVIOUSLY the Hezbos' head of P/R.
They wait until daylight before attempting to "rescue" the women and children, so that the photographers will get the most-dramatic shots possible. They don't even begin digging out the bodies until the A.P, A.P.F., et al., photographers arrive from Tyre, which is "hours away" by road. Then G/H/G finds the youngest dead child, digs him out of the dirt himself, and then parades with him all over town to make sure ALL the photographers have all the shots they need. N.B.: The bodies of the dead adults were covered with sheets, including at least one guy wearing camo fatigues. The ONLY dead bodies which the Hezbos put on display were those of children. How tasteful. And NOT for propaganda purposes.
So, this time-line would explain why the Hezbos claimed that the building didn't "collapse" until ca. 8:00 A.M. Waiting for 8 hours before even attempting to rescue all those women and children would seem so cold, calculating, and callous. Wouldn't it ?

Posted by: RDX at August 03, 2006 09:56 AM (zh7Gw)

278 For those of you who are as confused as I was about what International Law has to say about the killing of innocent civilians, this site may come of some help:

http://www.forward.com/articles/8224

-

I found this excerpt from the site exceptionally notable:

"...A colonel, who is an Israeli air force squadron commander gave an unusual interview to Ha'aretz, authorized by the military, in which he laid out some of the bombing policies. Often, he said, one of the militants firing rockets is seen seeking refuge in a residential home in South Lebanon. Such a house, he said, "ought to be struck, even if a family lives in it." Such a family, he said, has allowed combatants into its home, and "hence joined those who are fighting us." The lives of Israeli civilians are more important to him than the lives of Lebanese civilians, the squadron commander said on condition of anonymity, a routine practice for Israeli military officers.
Asked about the air strikes that leveled the pro-Hezbollah Shi'ite neighborhood of al-Dahiya in southern Beirut, the senior officer said that the area was a legitimate target because it was inhabited by Hezbollah personnel and their families."

Assuming the reliability of the source and in which case accepting that all other sources are of equal reliability, where does that leave the significance of whether or not the Qana bodies were staged?

(Ponders) Quite intriguing if you ask me...

Posted by: Immie at August 03, 2006 10:39 AM (zMUsp)

279 The thing that is funny in a sick way is that no one seems to be discussing Hezbollah's role in the war.

They can send hundreds of rockets into Israel. They can murder civilians and there is nary a peep. But G-d forbid Israel kill any because that would just be terrible.

Posted by: Jack at August 03, 2006 10:48 AM (ggZOj)

280 RDX,

I'm sure your wife doesn't make diagnoses and decide on treament from photographs, either.

Your comment anyway is irrelevant. I'm not making any kind of claim, I'm merely questioning the qualifications of the one making the claim. In other words (and I'll try to dumb this down enough for you), I don't have to prove qualifications for anything here as I'm not trying to prove a negative. You must of skipped Logic 101.

As for your urination contest comment, suffice it to say that I have enough in that department to take on people like you without having to hide behind my wife's skirts as you did. Christ, I pick pieces of witless wingnuts like you out of my stool every morning.

Posted by: Randy Paul at August 03, 2006 11:36 AM (mOoxv)

281 Obviously we've got some major diplomats here. Maybe we should send a few of the "my dick is bigger" crowd over to the Middle East to solve the whole thing. :-)

Jack: It isn't that nobody is talking about it. It gets brought up fairly frequently, but is ignored by the people who are too busy complaining about Israel to morn for their children as well.

Posted by: James McMurray at August 03, 2006 11:43 AM (1R6cr)

282 RDX,

P.S.: regarding the urination contest comment again, I suggest that you learn the difference between having a dick and simply being one as the latter clearly applies to you.

Warm regards,

Randy Paul

Posted by: Randy Paul at August 03, 2006 11:44 AM (mOoxv)

283 About the depleted uranium. The other nite I was listening to radio talk show, and they had an expert on uranium on the show. I heard him explain the composition of the uranium, and all that, but there was one other thing he mentioned that I haven't seen mentioned here at all. He said that when one of those bombs with depleted uranium hits it's target, the energy from the depleted uranium is so powerful that anyone within certain radius, will have all the air sucked right of them, thus collapsing their lungs. That would explain why these people didn't really die from the collapsed bldg.

Posted by: Extremely_liberal at August 03, 2006 04:20 PM (dTl2c)

284 Go Israel!!!
Thanx to anyone who supports us and our
legit actions.

Posted by: Gil from Haifa Israel at August 03, 2006 04:39 PM (WpUtb)

285 Extremely,

There is NO depleted uranium in any of the bombs Israel uses, nor in US bombs. None.

Please get better sources, or simply go to a reputable site such as GlobalSecurity.org and poke around for yourself.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 03, 2006 04:59 PM (psJM2)

286 As a matter of fact, no bunker buster bomb of any time, nor any bombs at all, were used in the strike.

The IDF inquiry states that two missiles were fired at the building, and one of those was a dud.

I'm trying to get an answer on what kind of missile that was.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 03, 2006 10:35 PM (psJM2)

287 Kadima am Israel!!! Finish the job. This is an opportunity to clean house.
You have been shelled for 6 years. You left Gaza just to eat Kasam rockets.

Let’s get the job done.

Posted by: Shuky at August 03, 2006 10:58 PM (jEDHh)

288 Randy Paul,
Interesting that you admit to picking through your own stool every morning. You must be a proctologist. So, where DID you get your M.D.?

Posted by: RDX at August 03, 2006 11:54 PM (QerL2)

289 What is happening to the Lebanese reminds me of what a famous Englishman, Air Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the head of the British Bomber Command in WWII said of the Germans, before his aircraft decimated Hamburg in July-August 1943, killing over 50,000 (yes fifty thousand !!) people within a span of less than three weeks during “Operation Gomorrah”:

"They have sowed the wind and so shall they reap the whirlwind".

"Bomber" Harris is my heroe alongside his boss Winston Churchill

Posted by: Sam Gilon at August 04, 2006 01:49 AM (0Ps7A)

290 RDX,

I'm just looking to see if you have your head up my ass as firmly as you have it up your own.

Again, you still fail to acknowledge your logical fallacy. I'll type this slowly so you understand. My background is irrelevant. I'm not making any claims. I'm calling into question Con Yank's qualifications as he's making the claim.

Anyway, the inquiry has confirmed the deaths. Go fill up some cartridges,but be careful: it's obvious the fumes have caused brain damage.

Posted by: Randy Paul at August 04, 2006 06:50 AM (UaTM7)

291 Consider for a moment that all the killing of humans by humans has been the animal control check of this species. It will never end, and the why of it dosen't matter beacuse; the IS of it....will be the only answer ever found. I recommend attacking Iran, Syira, and annexing them into the US along with Iraq.

Did any other country ever conqure a land at the cost of lives to their soldiers, and give it back........
The object of war is to attrit everything until the will of the people to fight is broken.

Posted by: JJ at August 04, 2006 06:52 AM (ccffY)

292 "K Lam,
That guy at the Washington Post has a degree in what ? Journalism ?? I guess he trumps my degree in Mech. Engineering and my wife's M.D. When the Wash. Post says the building "collapsed", it must be true. They couldn't print it if it weren't true. Besides, they have the word of Nasser Nasser, the photographer, and we can believe him; he's a photo-journalist.
Bottom Line-- I ain't convinced, either! But it's obvious that the building didn't "collapse" and I wonder what else didn't happen the way they it did."

Quite, you keep bragging about your qualifications but what do you do with them? Spend your time trying to get people to believe in something which
is yet unproven and you base this on a handful of photographs. If you were in Qana as a hands eyewitness then you would have more credibility.
There is a reason why you don't write for a newspaper and that's because you ain't a journalist besides all the degrees in the world don't stop you from being extremely rude and probably very wrong!

Posted by: K Lam at August 04, 2006 07:35 AM (QFuao)

293 The victims names have now all been documented:

Source : Reuters

Posted by K Lam at August 2, 2006 04:47 PM

The list you provided only shows 27 victims. Lebanese Red Cross cites only 28 victims.
Human Rights Watch cites only 28 victims.

By Hussein Saad in Qana, Lebanon

July 31, 2006 03:00am
Article from: Reuters

AN Israeli air strike killed at least 60 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children

The Israeli strike killed at least 54 people, more than half of them children. BBC News Sunday, 30 July 2006, 14:53 GMT 15:53 UK

Jul. 30 - Lebanese villagers mourn the deaths of dozens killed in an Israeli attack.

At least 50 civilians are now known to have perished when several houses collapsed and a building in which people were sheltering from the bombardment was destroyed.

More than half of the victims were children.

Paul Chapman reports - Reuters Video

Though no less tragic, the information originally released to the world was misleading and inaccurate. Why?

Fog of war?
Rescue/recovery confusion?
Propaganda to inflame public opinion?

Has Hezbollah ever distorted the truth in order to play a PR game? How critical is the media when fact checking to get the stories out?

If the original number of dead was actually a lie, then what else in the release of information could have been "manufactured"?

The people were killed. But are the story and the pictures an accurate reflection of how they died, or is it a manufactured story to inflame public opinion?

"Green Helmet" "posing" over a lengthy time period with the same victim to enhance photo ops seems to me to be part of story manufacturing vs an open accurate accounting of events.

Posted by: SouthernRoots at August 04, 2006 10:09 AM (jHBWL)

294 "Though no less tragic, the information originally released to the world was misleading and inaccurate. Why?

Fog of war?
Rescue/recovery confusion?
Propaganda to inflame public opinion?"

Actually Southern Roots a more simpler explanation has been put forward.
The number of casualties were based on the number
of people that had been originally recorded as being in the building.
It looks like some had fled before the building was struck.
Sure it's not on the same scale but remember how the death toll from the twin towers kept fluctuating? The same thing appears to have happen here albeit on a much,much smaller scale.

Posted by: K Lam at August 04, 2006 12:58 PM (QFuao)

295 Don't forget the big picture:
1)the original kidnappers asked for a prisoner release.
2)Israel, when they COULD HAVE released prisoners as they have before, CHOSE not to keep the peace by bombing Gaza and kidnapping 1/3 of the cabinet of a democratically elected government.
3)Hezbollah responded to Israel's acts of war in Gaza by attacking THE ISRAELI MILITARY, not civilians. Anyone who calls Hezbollah's actions "unprovoked", even after reading this timeline, http://www.abc.net.au/news/indepth/featureitems/s1694729.htm
is either a Zionist apologist neo-con, a Jew, a paid Israeli-propagandist, a Foxnews employee or an idiot.
4) Israel started a war against Lebanon using its main military advantage: its air force. A cowardly strategy because the only people with a risk of getting hurt are Lebanese. Justified, perhaps, if the bombs were smart enough to take out rocket launchers, which were the ONLY Hezbollah threat to Israeli civilians.
5) On the day after Qana, with 500 civilians already exterminated by US-made Israeli bombs, a one-day record for Katyushas launched by Hezbollah was set at 155. Yes, Israel bombed enough to kill over 500 people but there were still enough rocket launchers to fire 155 Katyushas.
6) a few days later, over 200 rockets were launched, a new record. Bottom line: Israeli bombing, while very effective in destroying human life, IS NOT effective at destroying rocket launchers.

What has happened, what could have been a merely a minor incident had Israel traded prisoners for Shalit as the US did for Jill Carrol, has become a major atrocity and war crime with 900 lebanese now dead, 3000 injured and less than 100 Israeli's dead. These are the facts. With the US having no moral authority to control Israeli arrogance, and Bush having no spine to tell Israel not to do anything, this blood and these massacres are on the hands of America and the republican party as well as on Israel. Even if neo-cons and jews are in denial(watch them come back to "unprovoked Hezbollah attacks" over and over again, as if it will actually become true the more they repeat it), the Arab world, the world that the US/Israeli power mongers have a self-interest in PACIFYING, sees and understands the inflammatory truth.

Posted by: Thrasymachus at August 04, 2006 03:38 PM (cZY6q)

296 please let the world know the truth. make aworld wide campaign and show this. contact alhurra tv and arabiya tv
do something and be human. world needs the truth

Posted by: alison at August 04, 2006 04:33 PM (cSsHW)

297 Thrasymachus wrote:
1)the original kidnappers asked for a prisoner release.
Incidently, the "kidnappers" also murdered 8 other soldiers.

2)Israel, when they COULD HAVE released prisoners as they have before, CHOSE not to keep the peace by bombing Gaza and kidnapping 1/3 of the cabinet of a democratically elected government.
Sure, why not, they should've released Samir Kuntar -- he's a perfectly innocent man. As for the 1/3 of a democratically elected government (not quite sure why you stress that), those are Hamas memembers, and some of them are tied to many of the suicide bombings launched against Israeli civilians.

3)Hezbollah responded to Israel's acts of war in Gaza by attacking THE ISRAELI MILITARY, not civilians. Anyone who calls Hezbollah's actions "unprovoked"
You're kidding, right? What did Hizballah had to do with what was going on in Gaza? Using your twisted logic you could easily justify the attack in Seattle.

4)... A cowardly strategy because the only people with a risk of getting hurt are Lebanese.
That's war buddy -- the days of knights & ceremonial duels are long gone. I guess Hizballah should've thought about Lebanon's popuplation prior to initiating hostilities.

5) On the day after Qana, with 500 civilians already exterminated
I wouldn't trust any number that is released by Hizballah; they have a knack for spinning.

6) a few days later, over 200 rockets were launched, a new record. Bottom line: Israeli bombing, while very effective in destroying human life, IS NOT effective at destroying rocket launchers.
And your suggestion is what? Turn the other cheek? If Hizballah isn't taken care of now, then it will simply amass more weapons which will be used in the future -- there is not doubt about it.

Sigh... the only reason I answer wackos like you is just for the sake of the ocassional reader who don't know all the details, but is willing to use his/her own brain.

So quit spreading inaccurate facts.

Posted by: dna at August 04, 2006 06:28 PM (tJzld)

298 Oh, i almost forgot...
7)Israel still doesnt have their soldiers back

In other words, bombing hasnt worked(rockets still coming), starting a war hasnt worked(no hostages recovered), blaming Hezbollah hasnt worked(Hezbollah is now MORE popular even among Sunni's). A complete disaster. And neo-cons, who are mentally programmed to think(us/israel=good, arabs=terrorists) in a simple black and white moral framework, desperately trying to exonerate Israel for the sake of adhering to their neanderthal biases, can only bring shame and disgrace upon themselves by scrutinizing a massacre. You morons dont like the looks of Qana? Why dont you check out the latest bombing atrocity. Just happened today. Is there enough dirt on these new victims to make you at least shut the fuck up until you can find some new way to demonize the arabs?

Posted by: Thrasymachus at August 04, 2006 06:41 PM (2RkR0)

299 My suggestion is the obvious one: RELEASE SOME PRISONERS. If a prisoner exchange eventually happens, 900+ lives will have been wasted and an entire country will have been destroyed solely because Israel was too arrogant to exchange prisoners in the first place. Its precisely this kind of arrogance, characteristic of Zionist jews, that precipitates attacks like the one in Seattle.
Dont act like an idiot and say Hezbollah's raid had nothing to do with what was going on in Gaza. When Israel punishes an entire nation with military terrorism for the acts of fewer than 10 individuals who kidnapped Shalit in Gaza, who would restrain Israel for its transgressions? The US doesnt do it anymore because, as invaders of Iraq, they dont have the moral authority. Idiots and neo-cons like dna, who are tone-deaf to the injustices that Israel has been getting away with in Palestine for years, dont understand that Israel HAS NO MORAL AUTHORITY TO EVEN KEEP PRISONERS. Even if every prisoner in Israeli jails had been responsible for the death of a family, Israel's status as a world leader both in killing people under the age of 18 and being in non-compliance with UN resolutions precludes it from having the right to keep those avengers of Israeli crimes.
A suicide bombing is an individual act of resisting injustice. No civilized country would think of trying to punish other people for a choice that a suicide bomber makes. Yet Israel, which professes to be democratic, lawful and civilized, breaks out into the same tribalistic, blood-feud mentality which has gotten so many Muslim groups branded as "terrorist" when, after a suicide bombing, it bulldozes the house of the suicide bomber's FAMILY. This is unconscionable. Can you imagine if Klebold and Harris' parents had their house taken away because of the Columbine attack that THEIR KIDS DID, NOT THEM?
I'll say it again: the original kidnappers asked Israel to release women prisoners and minors. Israel refused. Israel invaded Gaza, shot up government building and killed 40 Palestinians. Israel, a terrorist state with a long history of crimes ranging from ethnic cleansing to murder, has 10,000 Palestinian prisoners and the original kidnappers had 1. Israel was asked to trade. They chose to kill instead. Hezbollah did the only thing it could to protect the Palestinians from more injustice and crime.
This is Israel's war. They can chose to end the Katyusha attacks at any time by releasing prisoners. Or they can choose to keep killing, as they are.

Posted by: Thrasymachus at August 04, 2006 07:57 PM (Jf5b4)

300 Thrasymachus - So, according to you, the Palestinian and Hezbollah folks were just sitting around and out of the blue the evil and dastardly Zionist Israelites just started raining down bombs on them - for absolutely no reason at all.

"1/3 of a duly elected government captured". Hamas is the ruling party in the Palestinian government. Hamas crossed an international border and kidnapped an Israeli soldier and an innocent civilian. Hamas then killed the civilian and demanded hundreds of prisoners to be exchanged for the one soldier. Wow, seems like a totally reasonable opening negotiation ploy to me.

You feeeel that Israel should have given in to Hamas' demands and done the exchange. What about the next time? The time after that? How many times should Israel make concessions for the return of kidnapped soldiers and murdered citizens?

Israel pulled totally out of Gaza yet they are still attacked by suicide bombers and weapons across the border. What concessions can they make to keep Hamas from wiping them off the face of the earth? What will make the Palestinians stop turning their children into suicide bombers - annihilation of Israel doesn't count as a valid answer?

Ah yes, those frisky Hezbollah folks just sitting on their porches drinking mint tea. They cross an international border, kill eight soldiers, kidnap two and start lobbing missles over the border.

Then they demand hundreds of prisoners (captured Hezbollah fighters) to be exchanged for the two Israeli soldiers. Wow, another highly incenting opening negotiation ploy. Israel declines their offer and so Hezbollah lobs even more missles, indiscriminately, at innocent civilians in Israeli cities.

Under international law, the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah constitute acts of war. Israel responds accordingly. The proclivity of Hezbollah and Hamas to hide amongst civilians while firing on Israel also is a violation of the Geneva conventions.

All this and you make it out that Hezbollah and Hamas are as pure as the driven snow.

If Hamas and Hezbollah lay down their arms and stop trying to kill Israel, Israel would stand down.

On the other hand, if Israel were to stand down, would Hamas and Hezbollah stop trying to kill them? I haven't seen any proof of that yet.

Posted by: SouthernRoots at August 04, 2006 08:49 PM (jHBWL)

301 Thrasymachus - It's not so one sided:
http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2006/08/123-israeli-children-killed-by.html

Posted by: SouthernRoots at August 04, 2006 09:17 PM (jHBWL)

302 Thrasymachus wrote:
A suicide bombing is an individual act of resisting injustice. No civilized country would think of trying to punish other people for a choice that a suicide bomber makes. Yet Israel, which professes to be democratic, lawful and civilized, breaks out into the same tribalistic, blood-feud mentality which has gotten so many Muslim groups branded as "terrorist" when, after a suicide bombing, it bulldozes the house of the suicide bomber's FAMILY.

A riddle for you: if a foreign figher blows himself in Baghdad/Iraq, killing plenty of civilians, then what injustice was that fella dying for?

As as punishing the families, well, it is well known that some of the families of suicide bombers in Israel are taken care of by Hamas, even given large sums of money as a payment for the dead member.

Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to blow himself up, just like people who commit suicide (by a bullet to the head, overdose, etc) don't just do it -- there is a prolonged period where they reach that state of mind enabling them to execute it.

Therefore, you can be damn sure that these suicide bombers are brainwashed and goaded towards that objective, and guarantee to support the family after they are gone is an incentive to take that final step.

That is why demolishing the house is used as a preventative measure -- it adds another variable into play, as the would-be suicide bomber needs to think about his family, and what will it do without their house, if he carries through.

Is the punishment wrong? Maybe; but it is just as wrong as the suicide bomber who is exacting vengence on people that did not harm him directly, so I guess it sort of balances out at the end.

Maybe people in the West Bank & Gaza would be living better if Araft hadn't skimmed so much money.

Posted by: dna at August 04, 2006 10:00 PM (tJzld)

303 Thrasymachus wrote:
Hezbollah did the only thing it could to protect the Palestinians from more injustice and crime.

You're right! Just like Osama bin-Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohamed did on 2001/09/11.

Hizballah couldn't care squat about the Palestinians: it's a Shia/Sunni division. Hizballa was merely seeking attention in order to help Iran, which was/is in the nuclear hotseat.

So, stop being coy about it and admit you're an anti-semite, and an Israel hater.

Posted by: dna at August 04, 2006 10:07 PM (tJzld)

304 Israel pulled out of Gaza....and then sealed the border crossing:

'Israeli officials first closed the crossing in January, citing security threats. Palestinian officials subsequently discovered a tunnel nearby and said they sealed it.

Palestinians believe the closure is retribution for Hamas' victory in January legislative elections and say the Israeli government is trying to look tough ahead of Israeli elections this month.

"Israel is using the iron fist policy against our people because of the Israeli election," said Mazen Sonnoqrot, the Palestinian minister for economic affairs. "Our people have to pay a political price for the coming Israeli election."'

Shalit was taken by 3 groups, one of which was the armed wing of Hamas. The Palestinians elected Hamas, but there was no referendum on "should we kidnap a guy." That was the choice of individual militants. If Israel chooses to withdraw from the territories and release all the prisoners, most of whom were imprisoned for fighting the illicit Israeli military presence, there would be no need for any suicide bombings or kidnappings.
Im not saying the Palestinians are suffused by innocence and Israel is completely cloaked by guilt. There is very little innocence on either side of a middle east conflict. The problem is that Israel, for whatever reason, having a military or being coddled by the US(i dont know), acts as if it IS totally innocent and its adherence to that arrogance is the root cause of the continuance or escalation of conflict. "what, we, the great Israel, favored son of George Bush and the United States, have to release OUR prisoners???" It's a slight admission of guilt to release a prisoner, and we all know jews hate to give up a goddamn nickel. If Israel were a Christian nation, like Germany, reparations would have been made and this conflict would have been over a long, long, long time ago.
If that sounds "anti-semitic", it probably is. And dont be surprised if the reputation of jews continues to deteriorate as more bombs fall. And that IS sad, that an entire race and religion have to be reexamined and dragged through the mud in human consciousness for the sins of a nation's leaders and military. But that comes with the Zionist territory and is why jews everywhere should NOT be supportive of a bellicose Israel.
For the alarmists and hysterics who always cite the 'intention to destroy Israel' of Islamic groups: That has very little chance of happening if Israel earns the right to exist by negotiating with its neighbors instead of starting wars with them. As the body count grows, Israel is only proving that it should NOT have a right to exist. Why only the rest of the world sees this, and not the US and its neo-con jingoists, I have no idea.

Posted by: Thrasymachus at August 04, 2006 10:12 PM (gDqPh)

305 How can you say that Israel is “starting the wars with them….”? What does it take for a sovereign state to protect their citizens? How many terror attacks, Katusha attacks, homicide attacks, kidnappings, stabbings, sniping attacks, does it take before you realize you are already in a war?
Israel left Lebanon only to get shelled by Hizbalah for 6 years. This is not the first time Israelis were shot at and abducted. This has been going on for years. The Hizbalah exists only for one purpose - attacking Israel. For what? There is no occupation in Lebanon. At least there wasn’t until 3 weeks ago.
The Israelis left Gaza and ended an occupation in an effort to allow the Palestinians to grow and begin their long awaited statehood. Only the reward for ending the occupation was 10 months of terror attacks and Kasam Rockets.
With no one to talk to, what is the incentive to leave the rest of the west bank?
In 1993, after the Oslo accords, Israel built, trained and armed the Palestinian authority. The reward – those same weapons were used to kill Israelis in the second Intefada.

It is well known that the goal and aspirations of the Palestinian and some of the Arab world leaders is to destroy all of Israel. In spite of that, Israel, a country smaller then the state of Connecticut, continues to make concessions. The only problem now, they don’t even have who to talk to about the next set concessions.

Posted by: Shuky at August 04, 2006 11:08 PM (jEDHh)

306 Thrasymachus said:

A suicide bombing is an individual act of resisting injustice. No civilized country would think of trying to punish other people for a choice that a suicide bomber makes.

Are you saying that there is no such thing as "State Sponsored Terrorism"? Only individuals acting alone, with no connection, support or organizational assistance from a government?

Riight.

Posted by: SouthernRoots at August 04, 2006 11:25 PM (jHBWL)

307 This is the 'moral superiority' we in the west have? How can you claim 'moral superiority' if you are spreading lies that do a dishonor to the innocent victims of Israeli military action? You people make me sick and your doing a dis-service to the state of Israel.

Posted by: BoChuck at August 04, 2006 11:40 PM (q9uTj)

308 When Israel punishes an entire nation with military terrorism for the acts of fewer than 10 individuals who kidnapped Shalit in Gaza,

I have read moronic statements but this takes the cake. How do you know how many people were involved in kidnapping Shalit.

Should we ignore all of the Kassams that Hamas fired after Israel left Gaza. Should we ignore the fact that both Hamas and Hizbollah call for the destruction of Israel.

If Israel were a Christian nation, like Germany, reparations would have been made and this conflict would have been over a long, long, long time ago.

Right bonehead. No Christian nation would do anything foolish like fight a war over sheep or engage in crusades colonialism. Who started both world wars, the Inquisition.

Look, if you want to engage in a pissing contest about what religion did what to whom we win. But the fact is that is just stupid as are your comments.

For the alarmists and hysterics who always cite the 'intention to destroy Israel' of Islamic groups: That has very little chance of happening if Israel earns the right to exist by negotiating with its neighbors instead of starting wars with them.

Hey monkey boy, enlightened and progressive nations don't enter into negotiations begging for their neighbors to accept them. Most of the ME was created out of nothing. I don't read crap like this about Jordan. "Please accept me, I deserve it."

But let's get down to brass tacks. Let's say that we accept that none of the arab nations can destroy Israel. Fine.

That doesn't mean that we have to allow terrorists to murder our citizens. No nation will stand for that and we are not going to ask for permission to protect ourselves.

I am kind of cranky now which is why I resorted to personal attacks, but at the moment I don't much care because an ape like you needs his fruit.

As the body count grows, Israel is only proving that it should NOT have a right to exist.

What do you think about the behavior of Russia in Chechnya or France in Algeria. I guess that the Germans should be glad that we didn't just dissolve their nation. Two wars later and they are still here.

Good luck in life moron, you need it.

Posted by: Jack at August 05, 2006 01:27 AM (mftwL)

309 Where the hell is David (Snafu Principle)? Missing the actions???

Posted by: Trosp at August 05, 2006 03:33 AM (l0L9r)

310 It's a slight admission of guilt to release a prisoner, and we all know jews hate to give up a goddamn nickel.
...
If that sounds "anti-semitic", it probably is.

Yep, that's classical anti-semitism: jews hoard money and are cheap. Thanks for proving to be one, now it is no longer a suspicion.

Don't be hating because some people have more money than you do; there are plenty of non-jews who have more money than you, such as Arafat's familiy.

... if Israel earns the right to exist by negotiating with its neighbors instead of starting wars with them.

What history book are you reading? Israel has been repetitively attacked after it declared statehood in 1948 (after getting UN approval).

Posted by: dna at August 05, 2006 09:40 AM (tJzld)

311 'Hezbollah has been shelling Israel for the last 6 years': I admit, if this is true, it is a low blow and unjust provocation. However, I would speculate that each barrage of shelling was in some way a consequence for reckless Israeli military actions in the occupied territories. For example, 1)Israel drops a bomb on the house of an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza in an air assassination..... a 14-year-old bystander, as well as the family of the targeted individual, is killed. 2) Hezbollah shelling increases.
Or, it may be that a Hezbollah fighter feels it is his God-given mission to attack the infidels whenever he can. In the comfortable, democratic West, where we believe in individualized meritocracy(as opposed to tribalism) and the division of state from religion, Jihad-motivation is equated with psychotic insanity; it simply cannot be understood and so is used to demonize muslim groups and brand them as 'terrorists'. Once we start to use this word, as Bush and the now extremely conserative MSM are in the habit of doing, we justify war with the "they seek total destruction of us, thus we must totally destroy them" neanderthal-rhetoric bombast. Neo-cons, who are mostly diminutive men seeking compensatory hyper-masculinization through war fantasies, love this kind of thing. But the consequences are tragic as those who profess to be civilized commit unspeakable atrocities.

Unspeakable? Well, after the first Israeli Qana-bombing massacre in April 1996, a neutral organization investigated:

'Amnesty International conducted an on-site investigation of the incident in collaboration with military experts, using interviews with UNIFIL staff and civilians in the compound, and posing questions to the IDF, who did not reply. Amnesty concluded, "the IDF intentionally attacked the UN compound, although the motives for doing so remain unclear. The IDF have failed to substantiate their claim that the attack was a mistake. Even if they were to do so they would still bear responsibility for killing so many civilians by taking the risk to launch an attack so close to the UN compound."'

Thus, the Israeli Defense force has utterly lost innocence for themselves and, in the eyes of the Arab world, the United States(its ally and benefactor) and Zionism. So now, the resistors to these great terrorist nations become heroes in their acts of revenge. Innocence is lost on all sides as terror must avenge terror.

At some point, one side must take responsibility for its past crimes and admit guilt. This NEVER happens among Semitic peoples in the middle east(without US or UN mediation) because of their nature and the regional traditions of blood-feud. Is it bad that muslims live out of old 7th century books which include the all important 'Jihad' term? YES! But is it just as bad that Zionist jews look to even older books, filled with location names, to adjudicate their very identities as 'owners' of these locations? YES!

"your mail's the same color as mine, pal"

You say Israel has noone to talk to? Well, they kidnapped the Palestinian government and wont talk to the 'terrorist' Haniyeh or 'terrorist' Nasrallah. Israel started the bombing, Israel started the war, they can now LISTEN to the videotapes and LISTEN to Ahmadinejad and LISTEN to the katyushas. They couldnt cut a deal due to their arrogance. Now they get to tell the world how 'sorry' they are for their new massacres and war crimes.

What do I think about Russia in Chechnya? An ugly crime. Russia in Afghanistan? An heroic and deserved ass-kicking by Bin Laden.

But what seems to me often sicker than actual war is the rhetoric that these Foxnews war-crime-apologists use. I just heard Ed Koch say the arabs hate us for "our freedom and our success".
Moron, why dont you read the Bin Laden interview in 1998 http://www.pbs dot org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html
Bin Laden never once says "i hate freedom. I hate success." No, Mr Idiot Koch, he says this: "The leaders in America and in other countries as well have fallen victim to Jewish Zionist blackmail." and this: "The enmity between us and the Jews goes far back in time and is deep rooted. There is no question that war between the two of us is inevitable. For this reason it is not in the interest of Western governments to expose the interests of their people to all kinds of retaliation for almost nothing. It is hoped that people of those countries will initiate a positive move and force their governments not to act on behalf of other states and other sects"
9/11 happened, to a large degree, because the US has supported Israel. Now, with the US supporting Israel even more, and with Israel killing more muslims and committing more war crimes, the instigation toward muslim 'terror' attacks against the US is much higher. You may believe, in your war-fantasy world in which you somehow grow taller as more bombs destroy innocent lives, Neo-con, that muslims and arabs will be pacified by great shows of strength. Wrong, this is only begging for more suicide bombings. Keeping the peace, though it sometimes is an affront to imagined dignity and innocence for one side to make concessions, is the mark of the civilized.

Posted by: Thrasymachus at August 05, 2006 11:52 AM (h2HXW)

312 Well, I grew up with jews, my best friends were jewish, they probably still owe me money for failing to pay lost golf bets. I know the competitive mentality of the jewish mind. This is not really a problem in a personal friendship. But when you have a nation that is explicitly jewish in culture, identity and citizenship, and that same collective nature becomes an obstacle to the negotiation and maintenance of a lasting regional peace, you'd better believe that jews, as a race, as a religion, as a culture, deserve to be, and should be, called out on it. I have no doubt, that arabs, who are also Semitic people since they speak a Semitic language, are just as competitive and tribalistic. But Israel, with 10,000 prisoners against the 3 held by the resistance groups, has the upper hand in this particular arena of negotiation. The long-term utilitarian and humanitarian benefits of making a trade to avert war and save lives are(or were) so utterly stark and obvious.

I remember my best jewish friend had a car and drove us to play golf. I probably had beat him a few times for a couple of quarters or dollars and all of a sudden he wanted me to start paying him for gas money. I thought the request unreasonable and refused to pay. We didnt play golf for months after that. In retrospect, I should have just paid him 50 or 75 cents a ride because the joy of playing golf with a friend was clearly worth it. The point is that I can admit I was wrong to not make a mutually beneficial deal. Israel cant do this, and what's sick and infuriating is that the Bush administration and 'arab terrorist'-fearing, Neo-con, American-mob-controlled media can't tell Israel that they are wrong for not doing it.

Arafat is now dead, Israeli-propagandist Neo-con. Israel had a chance to make peace with the people's choice, Haniyeh, a man Israel had attempted to assassinate. Instead, Israel chose war, proving that Israel has the utmost contempt for the democratic expression of the Palestinian people.

Posted by: Thrasymachus at August 05, 2006 12:37 PM (h2HXW)

313 DNA wrote:
"I don't subscribe to any conspiracy theory, I just look at evidence -- in this case the suspicious pile of dirt and debris in that room (basement?) with an intact ceiling."

DNA this link might help explain your suspicions.

http://volokh.com/posts/1154560342.shtml#contact

Posted by: K Lam at August 05, 2006 12:43 PM (Zd4UD)

314 "My suggestion is the obvious one: RELEASE SOME PRISONERS."

Do you have even the slightest grasp of political realities and the inevitability of cause and effect? If someone crosses your border, murders 8 of your people and kidnaps two more you can not respond by knuckling under to their demands. If you do, you only invite more murders and kidnappings.

"Even if every prisoner in Israeli jails had been responsible for the death of a family, Israel's status as a world leader both in killing people under the age of 18 and being in non-compliance with UN resolutions precludes it from having the right to keep those avengers of Israeli crimes."

So it's your belief that murderers should be set free simply because the people holding them have a prominent position in the world? Or because young people have been killed? Do you not think that any children were killed in the attacks on Israel that have raged for 50 years?

I won't even begin to copy the rest of your posts because there's no need. You admitted to anti-semitism which turns you from a possible misunderstanding to an outright fool.

Posted by: James McMurray at August 05, 2006 01:55 PM (1R6cr)

315 I just hate these fucking fascist Zionists. Onve Trotsky had said "Don't discuss with fascism; just smash it!"

So, don't discuss with Zionists...

Posted by: Jack at August 05, 2006 02:12 PM (jfF/P)

316 LOL! What a sad statement of your own personal worth (or lack thereof).

Posted by: James McMurray at August 05, 2006 02:41 PM (1R6cr)

317 Thrasymachus wrote:
Arafat is now dead, Israeli-propagandist Neo-con.
Yes, and all the money he skimmed is now long gone too. Howver, do you know what's not dead? The culture of corruption that he left behind.

I guess they never really needed that money in Gaza or the West Bank; that must be your official take on it, and the rest is Israel's fault.

Neo-con? Me? That's a laugh. Not even a propagandist; I try to deal with historical facts, while you present half-truths, and take things out of context, e.g. the so called kidnapping of a 1/3 of a parlament, yet you neglect to mention that those are Hamas members, which are connected to past suicide bombings -- minor details, right? You prefer to stress that it was democratically elected. Don't forget that Nazis were also democratically elected, so trying to get sympathy for them in that manner won't get you very far.

they probably still owe me money for failing to pay lost golf bets.
...
I remember my best jewish friend had a car and drove us to play golf. I probably had beat him a few times for a couple of quarters or dollars and all of a sudden he wanted me to start paying him for gas money.

That is so sad... using your golfing experience to draw a conclusion on an entire nation, on an entire people (not race, buddy boy). Perhaps if you were smart enough not to involve money with friends, especially to bitch about such small sums, while the bulk of your money is going to the golf course owners.


At some point, one side must take responsibility for its past crimes and admit guilt. This NEVER happens among Semitic peoples in the middle east
Excellent point -- they can all learn from Europe, where they got along just fine -- only after two World Wars. (not to mention all those brawls among Spain, France and England, way back in the days)

Oh, wait, I know why they can't get along: it's because they are indoctrinating their children to hate Israel in countries all the way as far as Iran, Pakistan, Malaysa, and others in Africa. They must have a good reason, after all, Israel has caused so much hardship to muslims in Pakistan and Malasia.

Let's stop being coy about this issue -- corrupt regimes need diversions, so their people won't focus on their own problems. They keep feeding religious mumbo-jambo to generations after generations, and they end up with people unable to think for themselves.

If all the jews in Israel -- nay, the entire Middle East -- were to relocate somewhere else, then I guarantee you that in a year or two all hell would break loose in the region. Without Israel as a scapegoat, the whole issue will fallback to the Sunni-Shia struggle, but then it won't only restricted to Iraq.

Posted by: dna at August 05, 2006 05:08 PM (xjpGM)

318 Uh, Every well-educated muslim that I've ever met (probably around 30 or so) has tried to tell me the holocaust never happened.

Anybody who will lie about that will lie about anything. (yes I know not all muslims are clones of each other)

Even walking through a collapsed building for 30 seconds will leave a person with some dust on them. Those people were practically spotless in some photos.

These people do not know how to get along with others who are different. The only way there will be peace is when the muslims are all dead. Jews are not the ones who have said repeatedly that their enemies must be wiped off the earth; that was muslims who say that.

Posted by: real at August 05, 2006 09:08 PM (y2s/z)

319 Actually, it isn't Muslims that feel that way, it's radical muslims (primarily the ones living in the Middle East). Saying the entire religion wants to wipe Israel off the map is like saying every Jew is happy to see enemy civilians dying to balance the scales for past terrorist acts by Muslims.

Posted by: James McMurray at August 06, 2006 10:42 AM (1R6cr)

320 here is a site on You Tube with videos posted by a muslim to let you know what THEY think.

this person obviously pro muslim:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AbuMustafa

here is another you tube exposing muslim theology:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Peacefulspirit

finally...an ex- muslim woman explains the goals of islam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wPglHZQf-0

Posted by: Lonewolf at August 06, 2006 05:42 PM (4Qzpw)

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Qana Media Coverup?

The more I see about the timeline in Qana, the more I doubt the story being told to us by the world's media.

Katherine Shrader and Kathy Gannon of AP make the strike and its effect seem immediate:

A three-story house on the outskirts of Qana was leveled when a missile crashed into it at 1 a.m. Red Cross officials said 56 were killed and police said 34 children and 12 adult women were among the dead. It was worst single strike since Israel's campaign in Lebanon began on July 12 when Hezbollah militants crossed the border into Israel and abducted two soldiers.

But we know that the immediacy of the collapse given in this timeline to be a false construct. Many hours before this AP story was released, the IDF had already reported that the building did not collapse until 8 A.M.

Shrader and Gannon did not question the rather unique makeup of the families hardest hit in the attack (my bold):

Israel suspended air attacks on south Lebanon for 48 hours starting early Monday in the face of widespread outrage over an airstrike on a house that killed 56 Lebanese, almost all of them women and children.

[jump to page 2]

Red Cross officials said 56 were killed and police said 34 children and 12 adult women were among the dead.

[snip]

In Qana, workers pulled dirt-covered bodies of young boys and girls dressed in the shorts and T-shirts they had been sleeping in out of the mangled wreckage of the building. Bodies were carried in blankets.

Two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, had gathered in the house for shelter from another night of Israeli bombardment in the border area when the strike brought the building down.

"I was so afraid. There was dirt and rocks and I couldn't see. Everything was black," said 13-year-old Noor Hashem, who survived, although her five siblings did not. She was pulled out of the ruins by her uncle, whose wife and five children also died.

34 children. 12 adult women. Not a single adult male officially listed among them. How strangely asexual these "civilian" families seem to be.

The men were elsewhere as under-reported elsewhere:

In Qana this morning, the Katyusha squads took their rocket launchers and rockets from inside the buildings, fired off the rockets at Israel and then rushed back inside.

It seems increasingly probable that the Shalhoub and Hashem men were likely members of Hezbollah, involved in launching the very rockets at Israel that called in the counter-battery fire that killed their families that were hiding deeper in the building.

It also seems possible that the deaths of the Shalhoub and Hashem women and children came not as a result of the initial Israeli air strike, but because of secondary explosions more than seven hours later, explosions that would seem to be consistent with ammunition and rockets "cooking off."

Based upon the evidence emerging, it seems more plausible than not that Hezbollah men were responsible for the deaths of Hezbollah women and children, and over-exploited that fact for media consumption.

Somehow, this more plausible scenario gets little play from Shrader and Gannon and the rest of the media.

It must be the CNN effect.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:56 AM | Comments (51) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 30, 2006

Mel's Apocalyptic Statement

"F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:34 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

There Are No Civilians Here

At least 56 Lebanese, including 34 children, died in an Israeli air strike on a neighborhood that Hezbollah had been using to launch rockets. The errant air strike killed 56.

Some were innocents. None were civilians.

Since 1982, Hezbollah—"The Party of God"—has spread throughout the Lebanese Shiite culture. Inspired by Ayatollah Ruhollah Sayed Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran, it is far more than just a terrorist group. Hezbollah sponsors social programs, runs hospitals, schools, and newspapers, and its political arm holds seats in the Lebanese Parliament and Cabinet. Hezbollah is involved in every facet of Shia life in Lebanon. A July 26 poll by the "Beirut Center for Research and Information" purports to show that 87% of Lebanese support Hezbollah's current war against Israel. For all intents and purposes Hezbollah is Shiite Lebanon, from cradle to grave.

This is Hezbollah.

So is this.

As is this.

As is this.

Hezbollah seeks to set up an Islamic government in Lebanon modeled after the one in Iran. Hezbollah officially supports the destruction of the state of Israel; the eradication of Jews from the Mediterranean. From birth, Hezbollah trains Lebanese Shiite to hate and desire to kill Israelis. It trains man, woman and child to do what they can to drive Israel into the sea and end the Jewish state. That is why Lebanese Shiites accept Hezbollah rockets, barracks, and weapons depots in their neighborhoods, and why those killed today will be celebrated as martyrs.

The 34 children who died in this Israeli strike were innocent in that they know no other way of life than to hate Jews. But they were not civilians.

Not in any way we'd recognize at all.

Update: The building collapsed almost eight hours after the Israeli air strike. The IDF thinks that Hezbollah explosives stored in the building may have detonated, causing the collapse.

Update 2: A.J. Strata has been following this story very closely. It seems Hezbollah was firing rockets from this neighborhood, and then running inside the building hit and others nearby for cover. They knew Israel would track the rockets back to their location and engage in counterbattery fire.

Hezbollah purposefully put children in a building in a combat zone and launched rockets from outside their location, knowing the Israeli response. Hezbollah targeted Lebanese children with Israeli missiles.

They served their purpose. They're martyrs, you see.

There are no civilians here.

Update 3: Staged.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:44 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 29, 2006

Turtle Eggs and Cannons

"Abbey Road, Mexico." (l to r) Sean Quigley, John Donovan, Ward Brewer, and John Nowakowski, half of "Brewer's Bandits" on the DD-574/E-01 in Lazaro Cardenas. Mk4 20mm cannon in the foreground.
Photo filched from Rob Harshbarger.

John Donovan of Argghhh! and the rest of Ward Brewer's crew are getting a lot of work done on the John Rodgers/Cúitlahuac as they continue to prep the destroyer to take the long trip from Mexico's west coast to Mobile Bay. The Mexican Navy is taking great care of them... perhaps too good of care of them. I'm jealous.

Read the latest posts at Argghhh! here and here to find out why.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:08 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Another "Deranged" Muslim Attacks

Another violent attack carried out because of religion, and once more, it isn't carried out by Methodists.

Six women were shot - one fatally - this afternoon at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle by a man who told a witness he was upset about "what was going on in Israel."

Police spokesman Rich Pruitt said there was one shooter, who was apprehended without incident outside the Jewish Federation building at the corner of Third Avenue and Virginia Street.

"We believe it's a lone individual acting out his antagonism," said David Gomez, who heads the FBI's counterterrorism efforts in Seattle.

Authorities did not release many details, but the FBI said the alleged shooter was between 30 and 40 and agents were investigating the incident as a hate crime. When asked at a news conference if that meant the alleged shooter was Muslim, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said: "You could infer that."

Steve at Hog on Ice captures my frustration with this and other attacks from Muslims on civilian targets nearly perfectly:

Congratulations, Brave Muslim Warriors
Seattle is Safe From Pregnant Jewish Women

When will the political left figure out the difference between Israel and the Muslims? Notice I don't say "Muslim extremists." That's because the "extremists" have the moral and financial support of Muslims everywhere, and because the Islam we call "moderate" is more intolerant than the Klan.

The left excoriates Israel constantly for its "brutality," complaining that Israel kills civilians. Yes, Israel kills civilians. So does every country that engages in military action. Like all civilized (i.e. "non-Muslim") nations, and to a greater degree than most, Israel strives to avoid civilian casualties, but they still happen. As a result of Muslim provocation, of course. No one bothers to point that out.

Muslims, on the other hand, target civilians deliberately. The USUAL goal of armed Muslims is to kill civilians. Partly because they're barbarians, and partly because they generally lack the guts to take on soldiers.

Israel attacks a missile battery. The Muslims shell a suburb. Israel destroys an ammunition dump. The Muslims shoot up a playground. This is the way it has always worked. Yet the poltical left squeals in outrage when a Muslim civilian dies, and they accept dead Jewish civilians as though being a Jew justifies murder.

The left wets itself when anyone dares suggest that Muslim immigrants and resident aliens need special scrutiny, or that they might turn out to be disloyal. But the left isn't around to pick up the pieces when British Muslims or American Muslims who have never been oppressed in their lives blow up a subway train or kill random citizens with a sniper rifle. Actually, they ARE around. To tell us we brought it on ourselves.

Steve (read the whole thing, it's an impressive rant) goes on to advocate the conquering of Muslim countries and forcing them into submission, which I do not advocate.

Yet.

Ask me again after the next 9/11-scale terrorist attack on this nation.

Until then, these pinprick attacks by "unstable" Muslims make me view the rest of their co-religionists with deep suspicion and mistrust

They've earned every bit of it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:43 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 ...and the cops didn't want to admit he was Muslim while, even before any investigation had begun, the FBI immediately cast doubt that the attack was terrorist motivated or linked. Protect and Serve? Just whom might they be protecting and serving is my question?

Yea, we're doing such a swell job now, just think of the marvels to be achieved as we gain more experience.

Posted by: Eg at July 29, 2006 11:03 AM (9i141)

2 "The left excoriates Israel constantly for its "brutality," complaining that Israel kills civilians." and "...The left wets itself..."???

A large block of the "left" base is rich Jewish Americans who'd like nothing more than to see Israel pound Arabs out of that entire region, militia and civilians.

...More generalizations to make progressive thinkers seem weak, when in fact, that is far far from the truth.

Posted by: Johnny at July 29, 2006 12:33 PM (Vtwo9)

3 trackback not working... I linked to your post from Why the Muslim shot the Jews in Seattle

Posted by: bernie at July 29, 2006 12:38 PM (xcpbx)

4 A large block of the "left" base is rich Jewish Americans

I had no idea the left bloc was so small.

Tob

Posted by: toby928 at July 29, 2006 02:08 PM (PD1tk)

5 Tob said "I had no idea the left blog was so small." Heh! That's funny!

They think the shooter might be Muslim... ya think?! Sheesh, we here in America are certainly bright, aren't we?

I maintain there is no such thing as a "Moderate Muslim." If there is such a critter, why isn't it speaking out that in loud and clear terms that it doesn't agree with the extremists, and it is on the side of Israel??? Hunh? The silence from them is extremely deafening!

Excellent post.

Posted by: Gayle at July 29, 2006 03:09 PM (f088i)

6 I know several "moderate muslims" in the states. You get to know them when you live in a metro area with some people of sophistication. Some sentiments expressed to me are...

They feel like what is happening is an extreme waste of resources. Their people should be living secure lives in countries so rich, yet they continue to fight among themselves. To boot, other countries, including the U.S., continue to entangle in their affairs which makes it worse.

I think they have a lot to say, but in this day and age,would you want to speak freely and become a target in your personal and work life?

Posted by: Johnny at July 29, 2006 03:25 PM (Vtwo9)

7 Toby928,

When you live in Mayberry, the left block would indeed seem quite small.

If you look at a political map, you will find most developed areas containing the educated and wealthly (i.e. California and the North East), the "left" presence will be a little more noticable

Posted by: Johnny at July 29, 2006 03:33 PM (Vtwo9)

8 "If you look at a political map, you will find most developed areas containing the educated and wealthly (i.e. California and the North East), the "left" presence will be a little more noticable"

Well said Johnny, in elite liberalism speak that is... That's the paramount reason I will not go back to the Northeast - because there is a general atmosphere of elitism. Wake up, the Sun doesn't revolve around New England or California.

As for your political map, as I recall, the red areas kind knocked the snot outa the blue areas during the last two presidential elections.

Posted by: Old Soldier at July 29, 2006 04:02 PM (owAN1)

9 If you look at a political map, you will find most developed areas containing the educated and wealthly

Hee hee, now that's cute. It also contains people like yourself but I refuse to judge entire regions by your example. You really should try to escape your provincial mindset and be more cosmo. ;-)

Its the math.

Tob

Posted by: toby928 at July 29, 2006 04:05 PM (PD1tk)

10 Old Soldier, the last election(s) was/were close, but the clock is ticking for your kind. November is almost here...'ole silver spoon will be neutralized. Don't forget were Bush went to school, though he claims to be a "cowboy".

Only radicals like yourself are going to continue to say, "Thank you sir, may I have another!"

Posted by: Johnny at July 29, 2006 06:50 PM (Vtwo9)

11 Old Soldier, if you think liberals are the party of the "elite", then you should read the front pages to see what your boys have done next....they tagged a raising of the minimum wage bill, with reduction of estate inheritence taxes for the "elite". Wonder which party those "elite" belong to?

If you truly believe that democrats are the party of the elite, then the republican PR machine is working wonders on the common man...

Posted by: Johnny at July 29, 2006 07:09 PM (Vtwo9)

12 A bit of bluster there Johnny boy? Note the subject of the post, we got enemies in common. The problem with the left is that they see conservatives as more of the enemy that the homo-crushing, woment-enslaving, child-slaughtering Islamofascists. Your comments are prima facie evidence to that.

Cheers

Tob

Posted by: toby928 at July 29, 2006 07:28 PM (PD1tk)

13 "....homo-crushing, woment-enslaving, child-slaughtering Islamofascists...." That is a mouth full Tob! You've been watching too much Heartland on Fox! Hehe.

Fascism is bad, no matter where it resides in my view. The notion that everyone must act and conduct themselves "the same", or you need to die or need to change, just plain sucks.

Live and let live man.

Posted by: Johnny at July 29, 2006 08:03 PM (Vtwo9)

14 See you at the polls, Johnny.

So what else do you have to say about a Muslim shooting six Americans other than: "A large block of the "left" base is rich Jewish Americans who'd like nothing more than to see Israel pound Arabs out of that entire region, militia and civilians."

I'm not Jewish, Johnny, and I certainly stand behind Israel being able to live free from Hezbollah rockets and missiles raining down on them daily. You don't think that is too much to ask of radical Muslims, do you?

Posted by: Ols Soldier at July 29, 2006 08:28 PM (owAN1)

15 “A large block of the "left" base is rich Jewish Americans who'd like nothing more than to see Israel pound Arabs out of that entire region, militia and civilians.”

Oh really? Have you not noticed all the self-hating Jews on the left who bend over backwards to defend militant Islam and bristle at the notion that Israel might have a right to exist?

“If you look at a political map, you will find most developed areas containing the educated and wealthly (i.e. California and the North East), the "left" presence will be a little more noticable”

Developed is just a fancy way of saying crowded... and considering how overrun academia is with Jew-hating leftist kooks, being "educated" is not always a good thing. (Look what happened to Rachel Corrie.)

“...they tagged a raising of the minimum wage bill, with reduction of estate inheritence taxes for the "elite". Wonder which party those "elite" belong to?”

So, according to you the left is ultra rich... but then you complain about those evil Repubicans and their "elitist" tax cuts. Huh?

Posted by: Watcher at July 29, 2006 10:04 PM (xd84L)

16 I suspect that the reason that the police initially held back the muslim portion of the attacker's identity was simply to make sure that there wasn't an instant retaliation from some nut against muslims.

As for why the "moderate muslims" don't speak out, well I think we can draw some parallels here. First off, quite a few of them do - even in the middle east. Last week (or the week before) one of the top imams over there declared a fatwah against Hezbollah and their terror tactics. So it does happen.

But let's look at the Democratic Party, or even what people have termed the "moral majority" in this country. I have had several debates with people who profess to be middle-of-the-road democrats who agree that the party has been taken over by the far left of the party. They don't like the way their leaders are running things (seen the latest congressional polls?), but they don't know what to do to rescue the party. Same with the "moral majority". They are at a loss. Consequently, they wait quietly on the side, put their power into the ballot box, and wait to see what happens. I opine that the same goes for "moderate muslims" - especially with the level of negativity shown them around the world.

Johnny - you are right that there are moderate muslims - and more of them than radical. We have a Mosque near here where the leader regularly invites christians into services, and several times a year sponsors forums where he and Christian and Jewish leaders openly discuss the differences and similarities in the religions. All of them basically agree that the underlying rule is that it is not OK to hurt one another in any of the religions.

But - What I object to here is your elitist attitude. You imply that only people of "sophistication" would know this. What - are you a "person of sophistication?" Are you elite? I live in a very small town and I know about this stuff.

The fact is that there are radical muslims in the world, and that they do attack and kill people who do not believe in their POV. We've seen two egregious instances over the past few months right here in the US. The Jeep in South (North?) Carolina, and now the shooting in Seattle. And these are minor instances compared with attacks against Iraeli citizens from Hezbollah rockets and grenades (and that was continuous before the hostilities broke out). The big question is how do we deal with the fringes of society that want to force their POV on everyone else? And that is nothing new in our world - we've seen it over and over again in history. The problem is bigger now because of the fact that we have near instant communications and powerful weapons that are easily available.

Posted by: Specter at July 30, 2006 12:44 PM (ybfXM)

17 AMEN Specter.

IMO Radical religious sects of every type have always existed. We just didn't have the instant communication we do now to know about it.

Posted by: matt a at July 31, 2006 07:38 AM (E+3yy)

18 matt a,

It is really nice to see something we agree on. On another thread here on CY there is a guy named Joseph who is obviously on the wrong end of the christian spectrum. And then there is Mel Gibson. Taken all together there are many, many vocal fringe groups. They can get instant fame if they can do soemthing big, or even draw enough people to a blog. Some of the negatives of our technology I am sure.

I agree that maybe they have always been there, but with no voice.

Posted by: Specter at July 31, 2006 01:16 PM (ybfXM)

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July 28, 2006

Inside the Sandbox

A soldier/son's wise perspective on Iraq at Blue Crab Boulevard.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:22 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Cindy Lied, SAGEBRUSH DIED!

Hot Air has a breaking story that Cindy Sheehan arranged a strawman purchase of five acres of land in Crawford, TX, on a concocted sob-story that the real buyer was a Hurricane Katrina victim trying to start over.

Oops. I bet that little detail wasn't supposed to slip out.

On the bright side, she couldn't loose any more credibility...

Update: Cindy's new themepark, Stalkerland.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:03 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Frog-Marching Tice?

This press release by the so-called "National Security Whistleblowers Coalition" is sure to get the progressive netroots in a tizzy (via Stop the ACLU):

On Wednesday, July 26, Russell Tice, former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst and a member of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), was approached outside his home by two FBI agents who served him with a subpoena to testify in front of a federal grand jury. NSWBC has obtained a copy of the subpoena issued for Mr. Tice's testimony and is releasing it to the public for the first time. The subpoena directs Mr. Tice to appear before the jury on August 2, 2006 at 1:00 p.m. in the Eastern District of Virginia. Mr. Tice “will be asked to testify and answer questions concerning possible violations of federal criminal law." [To view the subpoena click here].

In response to the subpoena, Mr. Tice issued the following statement: “This latest action by the government is designed only for one purpose: to ensure that people who witness criminal action being committed by the government are intimidated into remaining silent.” He continued: “To this date I have pursued all the appropriate channels to report unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted [by the government] while I served as an intelligence officer with the NSA and DIA. It was with my oath as a US intelligence officer to protect and preserve the U.S. Constitution weighing heavy on my mind that I reported acts that I know to be unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state.”

Uh, yeah.

Are we to believe that the purpose of the NSWC is to protect those that illegally leak classified information to the media? I'm only asking, because that is what not only what Russell Tice did, but publicly admitted to doing.

The NSWC is calling this a "witch hunt," but when someone commits a crime, and acknowledges doing so publicly, what responsible authority can decide not to investigate the charges? This is akin to an arsonist standing outside of a burning abandoned, shouting "I DID IT!" and then expressing incredulity when he is taken down to the local precinct for questioning.

To cry foul when the government takes your admission seriously is perhaps even more deranged than stalking a fellow employee and acting surprised when you get disciplined for it.

Perhaps Tice is the only person that may be facing a subpoena at this time, but I strongly suspect that the NSWC is making so much noise because they are concerned that others in their merry little band of leakers might also wind up in front of a federal grand jury.

It appears Tice and his ilk are willing to be patriots only up until the point that they might have to deal with the legal consequences of their actions.

Chickensquawks.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:19 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

What You Need To Know

The editors of Pajamas Media are providing by far the most comprehensive news and opinion round-up on the on-going war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, featuring frequently-updated news breaks from the world's media outlets, along with opinion and blog reporting.

N.Z. Bear is providing the eyes-on-the-ground, first-hand reporting from civilian bloggers in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Israel, in addition to round-up of bloggers around the world covering the conflict.

No news organization in the world is providing as comprehensive reporting as these two sites.

Period.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:22 AM | Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

"Thank you from the bottom of my heart"

Listen to a gripping call to Pat Dollard from Susan, and Army wife and mother, on Pundit Review.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 27, 2006

Hezbollah's White Phosphorus Lies

It was only a matter of time before Hezbollah and their gullible dupes in the media began applying the Terrorist Propaganda Cook Book to the present war in Lebanon, accusing Israel forces of using chemical and other "illegal weapons" against civilians.

The Sydney Morning Herald was all too willing to print these suspiciously vague allegations:

Killed by Israeli air raids, the Lebanese dead are charred in a way local doctors, who have lived through years of civil war and Israeli occupation, say they have not seen before.

Bachir Cham, a Belgian-Lebanese doctor at the Southern Medical Centre in Sidon, received eight bodies after an Israeli air raid on nearby Rmeili which he said exhibited such wounds.

He has taken 24 samples from the bodies to test what killed them. He believes it is a chemical.
Cham said the bodies of some victims were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons. They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not really burnt. It is something else."
"If you burnt someone with petrol their hair would burn and their skin would burn down to the bone. The Israelis are 100 per cent using chemical weapons."

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has repeatedly accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs in its offensive.

Human Rights Watch, which has accused the Israeli army of using cluster bombs in populated areas of southern Lebanon, said it had not verified claims that Israel had used phosphorus.

"We are investigating but we haven't confirmed anything yet. We have seen phosphorus used before and we have seen it in the artillery stocks of the Israeli army in the north," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

"Phosphorus shells do have a legitimate use in illuminating the battlefield at night. The offensive use of phosphorus would be a violation of international conventions."

If these charges seem to be familiar, it is because they are an echo of the exact same kind of charges popularized in a fraudulent documentary called Fallujah, the Hidden Massacre, from Italian Rai News24, an offshoot of communist-dominated channel Rai 3, directed by Sigfrido Ranucci.

I thoroughly debunked the half-truths and lies of this film back in November in a series of posts:

Rai's White Phosphorus Fraud

The Lies of Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, Part 1

The Lies of Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, Part 2

The Lies of Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, Part 3

The well-documented and irrefutable lies in Ranucci's film begin in the opening credits and do not stop until the final credits are over.

Hezbollah seeks to use these same dark libels without a shred of any evidence supporting their allegations, other than claims made by Lebanese doctors and government officials. Let's look at the claims made by the Lebanese doctor in the Sydney Morning Herald article again:

Bachir Cham, a Belgian-Lebanese doctor at the Southern Medical Centre in Sidon, received eight bodies after an Israeli air raid on nearby Rmeili which he said exhibited such wounds.

He has taken 24 samples from the bodies to test what killed them. He believes it is a chemical.

Cham said the bodies of some victims were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons. They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not really burnt. It is something else."

Almost these exact same descriptions are used to describe many of the bodies shown in Fallujah, the Hidden Massacre. Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield (England), had this to say about those bodies:

He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt". They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition. "

The simple fact of the matter is that the war in Lebanon has been going on for 16 days, and those people killed more than a few days ago would quickly begin to decompose in the summer heat. Conditions vary from place to place, but it is quite possible and perhaps even probably that those killed by primary blast efects from bombs or artillery fire and left in the streets would be black through decomposition, not the affects of some sort of "mystery weapon."

The classification of injuries caused by an explosive blast fall into four classifications:

• primary
• secondary
• tertiary
• quaternary

A thorough description of these kinds of injuries is available here.

Primary blast injuries—those caused by the pressure wave of a conventional military explosives, typically affecting soft tissues within the body but leaving little or no visible wound on the body—are highly consistent with the bodies described by the Lebanese doctor, providing that as ABC alluded to, bodies are often unrecovered for days.

This is the exact same kind of injury that killed Jordanian terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Had he not been recovered immediately—say, a major conflict was erupting around his body and it could not easily be recovered for days or even weeks—there is a quite distinct chance that if the environmental condition in his area were favorable, then his body would have been recovered, "all black but... hair and skin... intact," precisely as Dr Cham saw in Lebanon.

Now, let us look again at the specific white phosphorus comments made in this SMH article:

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has repeatedly accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs in its offensive.

Human Rights Watch, which has accused the Israeli army of using cluster bombs in populated areas of southern Lebanon, said it had not verified claims that Israel had used phosphorus.

"We are investigating but we haven't confirmed anything yet. We have seen phosphorus used before and we have seen it in the artillery stocks of the Israeli army in the north," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

"Phosphorus shells do have a legitimate use in illuminating the battlefield at night. The offensive use of phosphorus would be a violation of international conventions."

White phosphorus munitions, despite the way they are described in this article, are not illegal, are not banned by any international treaty, and have perfectly legitimate military uses.

They are primarily used for smoke screens, but because of their incendiary nature, they are also useful against flammable targets. Hezbollah's rockets—more than 2,000 of which have been fired into Israel with up to an estimated 8,000 more remaining in Lebanon—are highly flammable, and a viable target for WP munitions.

White phosphorus shells are also useful as a psychological weapon against entrenched position. The U.S. forces in Fallujah used a combination of white phosphorus and proximity-fused high explosive shells to clear terrorist positions, as described here:

In a tactical trick called a "shake 'n bake," American mortars or howitzers would drop several white phosphorus shells as close as possible to an entrenched enemy position. The white phosphorus-saturated felt wedges would then deploy and fall to the ground, where some could potentially burn terrorists hiding in trenches and spider holes, but it would almost certainly obscure their vision, no matter what kind of cover they were under.

The terrorists, knowing that American forces preferred to use the dense smoke of white phosphorus to screen attacks, would panic, fearing they were about to be overrun. As the evacuated their entrenched ambush positions, high explosive shells were the fired to kill the insurgents flushed out in the open.

White phosphorus munitions are a normal part of the inventory for NATO forces, among others, and there is nothing illegal in their use. Some have complained that white phosphorus weapons are illegally being used against civilians. Would it be more palatable of these civilians were killed with other munitions?

The simple fact of the matter is that Hezbollah, by purposefully integrating their positions into civilian neighborhoods, place the lives of Lebanon's civilians in danger. Lebanese Shiites that support Hezbollah and allow Hezbollah to build bunkers, storehouses, and sniper nests in their homes should not be surprised or appalled when the Israeli military targets that position.

The arguments are recycled, the evidence contrived; there is no credible evidence that chemical or white phosphorus weapons are being used to target Lebanese civilians, and it is telling that the media are all too willing to be led down this same path of lies again.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:20 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Bringing the Rogers Home-Day 1

Ward Brewer and his team from Beauchamp Tower Corporation (Operation Enduring Service web site, blog) have arrived in Mexico City on the first leg of their trip to bring home the DD-574 John Rogers/E-01 Cuitlahuac (photos from NavSource Online), the longest-serving of the World War II-era Fletcher-class destroyers.

AA Action view from CVA-8 Hornet 14 May 1945 of kamikaze exploding over John Rogers (John Chiquoine via NavSource Online)

They will push on today to Lázaro Cárdenas, a Mexican port city in the state of Michoacán, where the John Rogers is currently berthed.

The blogging community is very lucky to have an exclusive on the repatriation of the Rogers, with milblogger John Donovan reporting in on Argghh!, and his first post form Mexico is already online.

Read it here.

I'll hope to have some additional commentary posted here on Confederate Yankee, and my brother phin will be chiming in as well, which isn't necessarily a good thing. He promised to reveal "deep, dark secrets" about me to Ward and John in exchange for the recipe for the Avocado Ranch dressing they use to lace the fish tacos he got addicted to on his business trips to the southwest.

Whatever the charge, I maintain my innocence, and will remind my dear brother that that particular street runs both ways.

Update: John has another post here, and the first pic.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:21 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Illustrated Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald's fans will continue to deny his fraudulent nature as he wanders the golf courses of Florida looking for the real killers bed & breakfasts of Brazil looking for the "real puppeteers."

That said, Patterico's thoroughly damning Annotated WuzzaDem makes it very unlikely that ardent Greenwald supporters Ryan, Wilson, Ellison, Thomas Ellers, and Rick Ellensburg (who all disappeared when Greenwald was accused of sock puppetry, and who have not resurfaced since) will ever be heard from again.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:13 AM | Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 26, 2006

"You're a Dead Man"

Those were the words uttered to George at Seixon this morning on his cell phone, from a person he believes to be none other than disgraced lefty journalist Jason Leopold.

This was after Larry Johnson's alleged threats against George and his family yesterday.

Several weeks ago, Glenn Greenwald—the official one, not one of his many assumed names we've since learned of—made the following statement in the comments to the post A Proud Member of the Toddler-Threatening Community:

There are random anonymous commenters who make repugnant comments all the time on blog. LGF linked to a post I wrote yesterday and I had people coming to my blog telling me to do the world a favor and end my life with an honor suicide just as my Muslim terrorist allies would do.

There is a big difference between comments of this sort coming from people who have influence and are known opinion leaders (like David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin, StopTheACLU, etc.) and some random individual who starts commenting on a blog. Trying to build up her importance in order to make her somehow representative of the "Left" is rather misleading.

So tell me now Mr Greenwald: does Jason Leopold constitute "a known opinion maker," as a "regular contributor" to CNBC and National Public Radio? Is he "representative of the 'Left'" as a writer for Alternet, CounterPunch, Common Dreams, Raw Story, and Truthout?

What of Larry Johnson, who gave the weekly radio address on July 23, 2005 for the Democratic Party, and wrote a July, 2001 NY Times editorial claiming a declining terrorist threat, and has appeared on many of the major news channels? I think he qualifies as well.

Larisa Alexandrovna, the managing editor of progressive news site Raw Story seems to be the most likely person to have given Seixon's name to Leopold, and she is certainly regarded as a representative of the "Left."

This is Glenn Greenwald's chance to go after three "known opinion makers" that most reasonable people would agree have likely conspired to go far over the line. this would seem to present Greenwald with the fight he seems to be clamoring for in the excerpted comment cited above.

What course of battle, then, does Greenwald choose today?

Why, attacking the exact same "random anonymous commenters" at LGF that he seemed to think were unimportant less than a month ago.

Perhaps with Wilson, Ryan, Ellison and Thomas also using that same computer, Glenn simply couldn't get online long enough to post a condemnation about the kind of people he personally states he thought were worthwhile condemning.

He'll get to it tomorrow, I'm sure.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:51 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

"Everybody Gets Blown Up"

Patt Dollard has a new trailer posted for Young Americans. It's something over six minutes long, interviewing the survivor's of an IED attack on what appears to be a LAV-25.

As always, Dollard doesn't pull punches or attempt to script what the Marines say, so the language is raw, and perhaps not safe for work. In addition, there is some mild gore, with blood shown on the LAV-25 after the IED attack.

Pat is also collecting donations for an injured Marine Lance Corporal Benjamin Hardgrove:

Well, the very first night we got back to California from Iraq, Hardgrove was hit by a car and has suffered extensive injuries including severe brain damage. He is 20 years old. His mother is a fighter who has done everything she can to secure the best medical treatment possible. Half of all donations to Young Americans Media this week will go to Hardgrove's medical fund, and I am beginning to work with his mother, Jaime, to have another fund set up exclusively for him by week's end.

If you're able to help out, the PayPal link is at the bottom of Dollard's main page.

Update: More about Hardgrove here.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:36 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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