Herald Sun.… 30–6-06
THIS is the picture that damns Hezbollah. It is one of several, smuggled from behind Lebanon’s battle lines, showing that Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia.
The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.
Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.
Salon.com.…. 28–6-07
My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters — as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers — avoid civilians like the plague. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators — as so many Palestinian militants have been.
Links worth to read (thanks to Keld Bach)
1– Shin Bet Vetoed Secret Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement
3– Yesha Rabbinical Council: During time of war, enemy has no innocents
Those cowardly hez’s. Why dont they come out and stand in the middle of the road so we, the brave IDF, can strafe them from our air conditioned US taxpayer supplied helicopters?
That’s a good point Jesus and I agree. It is not tactically smart for Hezbollah to fight out in the open. That goes for any military force. It is safer to fight from a secure position. There are different types of positions that provide different types and levels of security.
But whether or not something is tactically smart is not a valid rebuttal to the moral issue of whether or not it is ‘right.’
When Hezbollah fights from a civilian position, it has simply decided that the increased risks to the civilians is LESS IMPORTANT than their own security.
You could still argue that Hezbollah is right. They are protecting Lebanon from evil invaders, and the localized civilian casualties that occur truly are less important than the overall protection they provide to Lebanon. For example, we all know that if Lebanon were destroyed, IDF would pillage and rape Lebanon. Sacrificing the few to savethe many is a common argument.
Just don’t pretend that it is not Hezbollah that is making these calculations on utility/morality.
Here is some more zionist misinformation video. You can add it to the UN zionist misinformation.
The lies begin to catch up with Israel.
http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=138&ch=0&newsid=93149
“There are no Hezbollah activists in the village of Qana, Israel is bombarding civilian buildings and vehicles”, Spanish journalist Monica Leiva, who is in the southern Lebanese village at the moment, told FOCUS News Agency.
‘No Hezbollah Rockets Fired from Qana’
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34186
Dahr Jamail
QANA, Aug 1 (IPS) — Red Cross workers and residents of Qana, where Israeli bombing killed at least 60 civilians, have told IPS that no Hezbollah rockets were launched from the city before the Israeli air strike.
The Israeli military has said it bombed the building in which several people had taken shelter, more than half of them children, because the Army had faced rocket fire from Qana. The Israeli military has said that Hezbollah was therefore responsible for the deaths.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/745185.html
FROM AN ISREALI SOURCE
“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.”
Can you see how the media and the UN are manipulated?
Here we see two article from Haaretz, first on the 31st July where the Israeli representative to the UN tries to imply that Qana was a hotbed of their so called terrorists. The following one a day later where they actually admit there were NO so called terrorists in Qana, after of course the UN Resolution was vetoed by the USA.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744360.html
UN Security Council rejects Annan’s call for immediate cease-fire
Israel’s UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman said Qana was “a hub for Hezbollah” and said his country had “beseeched” residents to leave prior to Sunday’s attack.
“I am beseeching you not to play into their (Hezbollah’s) hands, not to provide them with what they are seeking while sacrificing their own people as human shields and as victims,” Gillerman said.
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.”
And? They were taking out a Hezbo firing position. IDF was leveling the area around a Hezbo artillery position to make it less likely that it could be used as secure cover in the future.
This is an absolutely normal military tactic.
Whether it is an artillery battery, or a sniper, etc., IDF’s job is to neutralize the position and make it non-viable for enemy to operate from.
I think Hezbo’s tactic of using civilian areas and putting civilians at risk is working. Israel’s hands are getting tied tighter and tighter.
As was shown in the videos above (and there are others), it is clearly established that Hezbo uses civilian areas to fire rockets. It is Hezbo that attracts fire to civilian areas.
You lost any credence months ago Char lie. :)
Perroquet,
Its hardly an argument to attack me personally. I couldn’t give a rats ass what a putz like you thinks of me. Do you get it you twit?
A more compelling form of argumentation from your part would be to address the facts.
I know that would throw a wrench in your little propaganda machine — but give it a try. It would make you more credible.
So regarding Hezbo, do you deny that they are using a tactic of attacking from civilian areas?
Its hardly an argument to attack me personally. I couldn’t give a rats ass what a putz like you thinks of me. Do you get it you twit?
I merely want to bring to Ladybird’s attention the fact that you are a waste of time even having on this forum because your capacity for lying is boundless.
A more compelling form of argumentation from your part would be to address the facts.
What do you know about facts? You make them up as you go along. The facts are in this particular case is that the Israelis claimed that missiles were being fired from Qana but local reports and those of the Red Cross suggest that was total crap. Even the Israelis have now confessed to their lies, which you appear to want to continue to defend.
I know that would throw a wrench in your little propaganda machine — but give it a try. It would make you more credible.
I must say I’m pleased that I can simply rely on the truth.So regarding Hezbo, do you deny that they are using a tactic of attacking from civilian areas?
I certainly agree that they have anti-aircraft in civilian areas and why not? They are trying to defend villages against Israeli air strikes.
What about offensive weapons such as rocket launchers?
The video links I provided are pretty clear. They are launching rockets from directly within villages and towns, and then the rocket launchers scurry into civilian buildings to hide.
Do you agree that Hezbo is using civilian areas to launch offensive attacks?
Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 11 minutes ago
Do you believe in Iraqi “WMD”?
Did Saddam Hussein’s government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
People tend to become “independent of reality” in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.
The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.
Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents — up from 36 percent last year — said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.
“I’m flabbergasted,” said Michael Massing, a media critic whose writings dissected the largely unquestioning U.S. news reporting on the Bush administration’s shaky WMD claims in 2002-03.
“This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence,” Massing said.
Timing may explain some of the poll result. Two weeks before the survey, two Republican lawmakers, Pennsylvania’s Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record) and Michigan’s Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), released an intelligence report in Washington saying 500 chemical munitions had been collected in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
“I think the Harris Poll was measuring people’s surprise at hearing this after being told for so long there were no WMD in the country,” said Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware.
But the Pentagon and outside experts stressed that these abandoned shells, many found in ones and twos, were 15 years old or more, their chemical contents were degraded, and they were unusable as artillery ordnance. Since the 1990s, such “orphan” munitions, from among 160,000 made by Iraq and destroyed, have turned up on old battlefields and elsewhere in Iraq, ex-inspectors say. In other words, this was no surprise.
“These are not stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction,” said Scott Ritter, the ex-Marine who was a U.N. inspector in the 1990s. “They weren’t deliberately withheld from inspectors by the Iraqis.”
Conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, who trumpeted Hoekstra’s announcement in his syndicated column, complained in an interview that the press “didn’t give the story the play it deserved.” But in some quarters it was headlined.
“Our top story tonight, the nation abuzz today …” was how Fox News led its report on the old, stray shells. Talk-radio hosts and their callers seized on it. Feedback to blogs grew intense. “Americans are waking up from a distorted reality,” read one posting.
Other claims about supposed WMD had preceded this, especially speculation since 2003 that Iraq had secretly shipped WMD abroad. A former Iraqi general’s book — at best uncorroborated hearsay — claimed “56 flights” by jetliners had borne such material to Syria.
But Kull, Massing and others see an influence on opinion that’s more sustained than the odd headline.
“I think the Santorum-Hoekstra thing is the latest ‘factoid,’ but the basic dynamic is the insistent repetition by the Bush administration of the original argument,” said John Prados, author of the 2004 book “Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War.”
Administration statements still describe Saddam’s Iraq as a threat. Despite the official findings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has allowed only that “perhaps” WMD weren’t in Iraq. And Bush himself, since 2003, has repeatedly insisted on one plainly false point: that Saddam rebuffed the U.N. inspectors in 2002, that “he wouldn’t let them in,” as he said in 2003, and “he chose to deny inspectors,” as he said this March.
The facts are that Iraq — after a four-year hiatus in cooperating with inspections — acceded to the U.N. Security Council’s demand and allowed scores of experts to conduct more than 700 inspections of potential weapons sites from Nov. 27, 2002, to March 16, 2003. The inspectors said they could wrap up their work within months. Instead, the U.S. invasion aborted that work.
As recently as May 27, Bush told West Point graduates, “When the United Nations Security Council gave him one final chance to disclose and disarm, or face serious consequences, he refused to take that final opportunity.”
“Which isn’t true,” observed Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a scholar of presidential rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania. But “it doesn’t surprise me when presidents reconstruct reality to make their policies defensible.” This president may even have convinced himself it’s true, she said.
Americans have heard it. A poll by Kull’s WorldPublicOpinion.org found that seven in 10 Americans perceive the administration as still saying Iraq had a WMD program. Combine that rhetoric with simplistic headlines about WMD “finds,” and people “assume the issue is still in play,” Kull said.
“For some it almost becomes independent of reality and becomes very partisan.” The WMD believers are heavily Republican, polls show.
Beyond partisanship, however, people may also feel a need to believe in WMD, the analysts say.
“As perception grows of worsening conditions in Iraq, it may be that Americans are just hoping for more of a solid basis for being in Iraq to begin with,” said the Harris Poll’s David Krane.
Charles Duelfer, the lead U.S. inspector who announced the negative WMD findings two years ago, has watched uncertainly as TV sound bites, bloggers and politicians try to chip away at “the best factual account,” his group’s densely detailed, 1,000-page final report.
“It is easy to see what is accepted as truth rapidly morph from one representation to another,” he said in an e-mail. “It would be a shame if one effect of the power of the Internet was to undermine any commonly agreed set of facts.”
The creative “morphing” goes on.
As Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas battled in Lebanon on July 21, a Fox News segment suggested, with no evidence, yet another destination for the supposed doomsday arms.
“ARE SADDAM HUSSEIN’S WMDS NOW IN HEZBOLLAH’S HANDS?” asked the headline, lingering for long minutes on TV screens in a million American homes.