Right Wing Nut House

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today we’ll examine the question: Can Israel still “win?” And we’ll have an indepth look at the 2006 midterms as well as a glance at two Illinois House races that are toss ups. Finally, we’ll have some thoughts about the Reuters scam.

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As I recall from the Gulf War, parading prisoners for propaganda purposes is against the Geneva convention. If I am right, this is a clear violation of these prisoner’s rights:

According to Convention III Article 13, “Prisoners of war must be protected against insults and public curiosity.” I believe this was the cite used by our military during the Gulf War when Saddam showed our captured soldiers blindfolded and on television.

Ah! But you might say that the Hiz are not a “warring party” and therefore not subject to the strictures laid down by the Geneva Convention.

Au contraire, mon ami:

Article 4, Section 1: “Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.”

Hizbullah is recognized as a militia by the Lebanese government. They were formally recognized by the Lebanese parliament as “the resistance” last year. I think you’d have a hard time making a case that their prisoners do not fall under the Geneva Convention protocols.

The IDF also made a video of the interrogation that they’ve already shown on Israeli television. This violates the same strictures against “public curiosity.”

So, am I off base here? I don’t think so. Even if it is not a direct violation of the protocols, it nevertheless is beneath a civilized, humane country to parade its prisoners blindfolded for the cameras as well as making a TV program of their interrogation. It’s something more in keeping with a third world banana republic than a great nation.

Besides, why give your enemies even the slightest opening to cry “foul!” Even though you and I would find their complaints laughable given the fact that they spit on the Geneva Conventions on an hourly basis, it is unfortunate that much of the rest of the world hears what it wants to hear and believes what it wants to believe about Israel.

Yes, it’s a small thing. But we haven’t seen the captured IDF soldiers paraded before the cameras or their interrogations on TV. I see no reason why - even though they are terrorists - that we should see Hizbullah fighters treated in such a way.

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Well, it took a while but I made it through the top 30 or so lefty blogs looking for reactions to the Reuters scam.

After disinfecting the keyboard, I got to work. It appears that out of the top lefty blogs, only 4 had anything to say about the Reuters story. And then there’s Billmon. Our friend didn’t write about the Reuters story. But he did use a photo of a woman that DFR at Drinking from Home has proven to be part of staged propaganda.

TBogg, in his usual incoherent and childish manner (is there a more immature intellect on the web?) essentially points out that yes, it’s bad that Reuters did this but RETHUGLICANS DO IT TOO…NYEAH, NYEAH, NYEAH. (One can almost see TBoy sticking his tongue out in a most defiant manner).

How very grown up of you. Maybe next year, your mama will let you go to the playground all by yourself as long as you look both ways before crossing the street…

Ahab blogging at Roger Ailes site also takes the juvenile road by using the Reuters scam to savage Powerline for not posting a complete answer by Rep. John Dingell to the question of whether or not he was “against Hizbullah.” Dingell answered “no” and then tried to prove he was neutral (meaning of course, he was not against Hizbullah) but which the lefty blogs erupted because the guys didn’t include Dingell’s long winded explanation regarding his agnosticism about a terrorist group.

I know, I know…But you have to think like a liberal to understand the “nuance” involved.

At any rate, Ahab only mentions the Reuters story in passing - as if we get this kind of thing all the time so what’s the big deal? I guess I’m just not sophisticated enough to be blase about a wire service with thousands of clients printing fake pictures in order to advance the public relations cause of a terrorist group.

Brad at Sadly, No! takes exactly the right attitude - for a Hizbullah toady. He condemns the offending photo as “unethical” and then adds the Hiz Spin:

Now, while I think it’s unethical for Reuters to photoshop any picture it runs, I have to ask… is there really that much of a difference between the two that justifies the wingnutosphere’s scream fest? I mean, to me it looks like the photographer mostly darkened the smoke in the picture so it’d look better in black-and-white. I can’t believe this is the best the wingnutosphere can come up with nowadays.

Moral blindness personified. It isn’t a question about whether there is little difference between the two pictures, the fact is that the doctored photo was done to elicit a greater emotional response from the reader. This is the essence of propaganda which makes ‘ole Brad a truly useful idiot of Hizbullah. Even when presented with incontrovertible evidence he’s being taken for a fool, he goes right on acting and thinking foolishly.

The only lefty who seems to get it a little bit is Taylor Marsh who, not surprisingly, is more centrist than leftist on some issues. Ms. Marsh makes a valid point about why this kind of thing happens in the first place:

As if we needed more corporate media disrespect, we’ve now got Reuters’ propaganda. They’ve now admitted to actually doctoring a picture to show more smoke and disaster in Lebanon than was happening in a certain snapshot. It’s bad enough in Beirut, so we surely don’t need to push this envelope, not to mention heighten mistrust of the media. There are not that many corporate outlets willing to risk their people in war zones as it is.

Indeed, the reason Hizbullah is able to get away with this kind of crap is because the mainstream press, for a variety of reasons - some good, some bad - are not covering this war with their own people. The extensive use of stringers has been forced on media outlets due to the danger, the lack of personnel, and the limitations imposed by the warring parties. We see the same thing in Iraq, only magnified considerably because the danger is so much greater thanks to the lawlessness in Baghdad as well as hatred of westerners in general.

This brings us to Billmon of Whiskey Bar and his use of the old woman photo who seems to turn up whenever Reuters needs a “grieving old woman standing in front of her ruined house” picture.

She appears to be the same woman seen in two different pictures, mourning the loss of two different homes, on two different dates.

It is very hard to say for sure, but it appears to me that the picture in Billmon’s post is of an entirely different neighborhood as well. At the very least, this woman has been moved around in order to get great background shots of the devastation. We know this because when Hizbullah takes the press out for a Devastation Photo Op, they rope them off and only show them images that the terrorists want presented to the world.

WORLD PRESS PENNED UP BY HIZBULLAH AT QANA

But Billmon should not be criticized too harshly. After all, he was unaware of the Hizbullah propaganda shenanigans and only used the photo to elicit a gut wrenching, emotional response from the reader. In other words, even if the photo wasn’t staged, he was doing Hizbullah’s work for them.

He also has a picture of Mr. “Green Helmet” whose traveling mortician show magically moves from Lebanese town to Lebanese town. “Green Helmet” was in both Qana and Tyre and just coincidentally happened to bring out dead children in both cities, parading them shamelessly before the penned up reporters down what the EU Referendum blog calls “Stretcher Alley.” Read the jaw dropping piece by EU Ref accompanied by photo evidence that at the very least raises enormously troubling questions about the way that wire services are getting their photos and writing their stories.

And for my lefty friends out there, let me make it absolutely clear that by examining the aftermath of what happened at Qana and Tyre in no way diminishes the fact that civilians lost their lives as a result of a bomb dropped by the IAF. That fact is not in dispute here. I think it a baldfaced lie to say that Israel deliberately targets civilians but I am not arguing that the IAF’s actions leave them blameless. They have freely admitted to making a mistake in Qana, apologized for it, and even changed their targeting regime to help prevent it ever happening again.

What does concern me is that you have become the unwitting propaganda pawns of Hizbullah when you ignore what Reuters has admitted doing; they have pulled every single one of Mr. Hajj’s photos from their archives because he has apparently been doctoring photos for weeks. The implications are staggering. It is now impossible to trust any “news” coming from Reuters. Anyone who does is a fool. And my gut feeling is that these revelations will not be confined to Reuters. It would not surprise me in the slightest if in the coming days we see similar stories about photos from AP, UPI, AFP and other wire service outfits.

And what about stringers being used by the big newspapers like the New York Times and WaPo? Can we really trust these outlets to vet their stringers and make sure that they are as unbiased as possible in this conflict? Can we be assured that the stringer’s BS detector is good enough to tell the difference between propaganda and news?

This story is a foreshock. The earthquake that may follow could rock the media establishment like no other event in our lifetimes. Am I exaggerating? I wonder what they’re talking about at AP today? Do you think they’re nervous over at UPI? Has someone been tasked at AFP with looking at old photos with a more critical eye?

These and other mainstream outlets live or die by selling the appearance of unbiased truth. By exposing Reuters as a propaganda arm of Hizbullah, the blogs have shown that the media emperors have little clothing left covering their behinds. And that’s the kind of perception that directly affects the bottom line.

UPDATE

Jeff Jarvis gets it. In spades:

It seems more likely an act of agenda that fits into the current argument about proportionalism in the Hizbullah-Israel war. One side of the argument is, of course, that Israel’s security was violated by Hizbullah, and it has a right to defend itself and to assure that these attacks will stop by disarming or disabling Hizbullah. The other side of the argument we hear now is that Israel’s response is disproportionate, an argument I find puzzling in war, where the disproportion is in winning or losing (I have blogged on this here and here and here). If the effort is not to make war look worse but to make one side in it look disproporationate, then I suppose it makes sense to make the smoke bigger and blacker. It makes sense if that is your agenda.

It doesn’t make sense if what you’re trying to do is report the news.

And in addition to the usual jaw dropping variety of links in her round-up, Malkin adds this:

If Reuters had half a brain, it would post all of Hajj’s photos on a separate site and welcome continued blogger analysis that uncovered this debacle in the first place. Withdrawing the photos to cover their tracks is a dumb idea.

If they are interested in the truth, they will harness the power of the Internet’s distributed intelligence network–not cut it off.

Thee’s never a half a brain around when you need one…

UPDATE II 8/8

I got a very interesting email from a professional photo-journalist who disabused me of some notions about working in a war zone:

Actually, if you were a journalist with experience in a war zone, or a disaster
site, you’d understand that this is common enough practice. They cordon off a
“secured” area to keep the group safe for their tour. Once the tour is over,
you can go where you want. This is done everywhere, not only by Hezbollah. For
example, on disaster sites, down in NOLA, and at Ground Zero. It’s a common
practice to keep reporters and photogs from stepping into a hole or worse,
during the tour.

Point taken. However, I doubt if you were at NoLA or Ground Zero, they would threaten your life if you aimed your camera at the wrong target.

This is also an excellent point:

Also, you and others keep harping on pictures that seem out of place by date.
The old woman for example. It is not uncommon for a number of things to happen.
First, the photog takes a series of pictures of an event. The one of the woman
could average up to 100. (Fast exposure, multi-series with a digital camera
etc) Easy. And, they could very well show many different backgrounds. I’ve
taken pictures like this many times.

I’ve looked at the pictures you site, and it is just not possible to tell if it
is the same background or not. Not enough info to make that judgement. A point
you struggle with as well. With no real definitive answer.

Agreed. My primary beef with the old woman is that the captions cited by DFH are on two different dates. Perhaps the second one was a result of your editor needing something dramatic. Fine. But the caption from the later date makes it seem as if the Israelis had just destroyed her home the previous night.

Not exactly honest journalism, in my opinion.

Thanks to “Camera A” for the fascinating background info.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today, we’ll look at perceptions of the war from the always excellent Arnoud de Borchgrave as well as some thoughts from StrategyPage.com. Both may surprise you. And we’ll look at the Reuters scandal from several different angles. THIS STORY IS NOT GOING AWAY ANYTIME SOON AND COULD VERY WELL SPREAD TO OTHER MEDIA OUTLETS.

We’ll also discuss the role of blogs in the affair and whether or not this is indeed a “tipping point” for the MSM.

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The IDF may be winning the battle in southern Lebanon to carve out a buffer zone that will eventually keep Hizbullah terrorists from attacking Israeli cities and towns, but they are badly losing the atrocity war.

This “atrocity gap” gets larger daily and threatens the mainstream media’s one sided coverage of the conflict. In fact, some analysts say that it is probable that the lopsided advantage that Hizbullah is showing in the atrocity area could lead to a disastrous state of affairs for the mainstream media. They would be forced to report something like the truth; that Hizbullah revels in targeting and killing innocent civilians while Israel doesn’t. These analysts point to the fact that it is getting harder and harder for the MSM to be sanguine and “neutral” in the face of Hizbullah’s ever growing number of rockets launched aimed at killing civilians while still ginning up enough outrage at the accidental killing of civilians by the IDF.

The Israeli problem is obvious. By nature of the fact that the Israeli atrocities happen by accident, unlike Hizbullah there is no overall plan for the IDF to kill civilians. Many analysts scoff at the excuse that the Israeli Air Force, if they put their mind to it, could really go to town and kill tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians given the superiority of their weaponry and enormous destructive power of their bombs. Lack of atrocity planning by the Israelis is no excuse they say.

The terrorists made a huge stride forward in their atrocity scorecard today:

A woman and two men were killed and at least 189 people were wounded on Sunday evening when a massive barrage of rockets struck at least six sites in a crowded residential area of Haifa.

Two people who were critically wounded died of their wounds shortly after. Several others were listed in serious condition. All of the wounded were evacuated to local hospitals within some 30 minutes.

One building sustained a direct hit and collapsed, trapping dozens of people inside. Emergency workers labored to extract the victims.

The incident was defined a high-casualty event. This was the first time such a definition was applied to an attack on Israel since rockets started landing in Israel almost four weeks ago.

One Hizbullah terrorist speaking on condition of anonymity complained that Hizbullah may be winning the atrocity war as far as “murderous intent” and “cold blooded heartlessness” but that the terrorists were actually losing the all-important “atrocity perceptions” battle.

“What’s the use of deliberately slaughtering innocent Israelis if you infidels in the media don’t give us proper credit for our barbarity?” the terrorist said. “Israel accidentally kills some civilians and the media calls it a ‘war crime. You want war crimes? Nobody can do war crimes like the Party of God,” he said.

Analysts are undecided whether it is more important that Israeli accidental atrocities are perceived as much worse than Hizbullah’s deliberate murder of the innocent or whether the sheer number of Hizbullah atrocities will eventually wear down the MSM and win the day for the terrorists.

These analysts say the outcome of the atrocity war will be one of the more interesting sidelights to the Israeli-Islamist conflict.

UPDATE

Luck of the Hiz:

A massive rocket barrage was fired Sunday afternoon at Kibbutz Kfar Giladi in the Kiryat Shmona area. Ten Israelis were killed in the attack and another two people died of their wounds at the Ziv Medical Center in Safed and the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, to where they were evacuated in critical condition.

Fifteen people are still hospitalized at the Safed and Haifa hospitals, two of them in serious condition, three in moderate condition and six in light condition.

[snip]

Celebratory processions were held in Nablus following the lethal attack. Cars with photographs of Hassan Nasrallah drove past with Hizbullah flags.

The dead were all Israeli reservists evidently gathering in a parking lot waiting to be deployed.

The tragedy brings to mind the unlucky hit by a Scud missile on the American barracks at al-Khobar during the Gulf War. Twenty-eight Americans died and 93 were wounded when the one in a million hit by the crudely aimed Scud caused most of the casualties during that conflict.

To say that these men were a legitimate target would be correct. But they were not the target. Hizbullah could not possibly have had any inkling that the reservists were gathering in that parking lot nor did they themselves know where their missile would end up. Their target was Israeli civilians. The fact that it hit soldiers doesn’t negate the intent of the atrocity.

This is unbelievable.

A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.

The photograph showed two very heavy plumes of black smoke billowing from buildings in Beirut after an Air Force attack on the Lebanese capital. Reuters has since withdrawn the photograph from its website, along a message admitting that the image was distorted, and an apology to editors.

DISTORTED! HOW ABOUT “FAKED?” HOW ABOUT “MANIPULATED?” HOW ABOUT “PROPAGANDIZED?”

It appears that someone emailed Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs with some compelling evidence that a Reuters photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings in Beirut was heavily altered. After Charles posted the original story, the blogosphere went to work with a vengeance.

Several bloggers weighed in with their own evidence, including a photographer’s blog who determined that the photo indeed had been altered. From there, the blog frenzy continued with one blogger finding a probable match for the photo that was undoctored. Others weighed in that the photo really was an awful photoshop image, an obvious fake.

The rest is familiar. As more and more evidence piled up, it became obvious that Reuters had screwed the pooch. And the final bit of evidence that sealed the fate of this photo was the photographer in question, one Adnan Hajj, who just happened by Qana at the moment the “rescue worker” in the green helmet was holding aloft a dead child.

Coincidence or collusion between the photographer and Hizbullah?

It certainly raises some interesting questions about how the Qana story has been reported. First the drastically lower casualty figure of 28 instead of 56 and now we have Mr. Hajj and his travelling propaganda show revealed as a liar and perhaps even an agent of Hizbullah.

Read the entire story at LGF and see the genesis of a Blog Strike. It should probably go without saying that the lefty blogs sat this one out, never dreaming that the international media could be playing them for fools. And it should be interesting to see what they’ll be saying about this as the day wears on. Perhaps I’ll post reaction - if there is any.

Kudos to LGF, Charles, and all the bloggers who participated in this exercise in people power at its best.

Every year on August 6 the world gathers in Hiroshima, Japan for the anti-American orgy to end all anti-American orgies. While ordinary people and most Japanese politicians respectfully remember the death and destruction caused by the the dropping of the first atomic bomb on the city in 1945, the peace nuts, Euro-leftists, historical revisionists, and assorted twerps of the anti-globalist, anti-capitalist left rail against this “unnecessary” decision that was “genocidal” and “unjustifiable.”

It is a perfect opportunity to really get the anti-American juices flowing because a legitimate argument can be made that the decision to bomb Hiroshima using an atomic device in retrospect, may have been unnecessary. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I think the decision was sound myself and probably saved both American and Japanese lives in the end.

Of course, Harry Truman and the committee of wise men that helped make the decision about bombing Hiroshima did not have all the information we have today. The argument that they should have known or should have figured out how best to end the war given the thinking of the Japanese cabinet is a strawman argument, easily dismissed. Gleaning Japanese intentions was an exercise in pure guesswork given the secrecy of their deliberations. What did come out publicly from the Japanese government seemed defiant and unyielding; no unconditional surrender, no occupation, and no dismantling of the Japanese military.

What couldn’t have been known at the time is that the peace faction in the cabinet, fearing for their lives from the militarists, needed to be extra cautious in how they negotiated the surrender. Their overtures through a Swiss intermediary was considered “unofficial” by Washington and hence, not credible. This attempt to use the Swiss as a back channel to get around the military was extremely important in retrospect. But even these proposals from the Japanese representative would have been unacceptable at the time given that the government wished to retain the rank and position of the Emperor. Since there were many in the American government who wanted to try Hirohito for war crimes, that proposal fell by the wayside until being revived after the bombing of Nagasaki.

The official attempt by the Japanese government to use the Russians as intermediaries turned into a farce as Stalin, seeing that the Americans were probably going to win and win quickly, prepared his army to jump into the war in Asia all the while putting off talking to the Japanese high level representatives. In the end, Stalin miscalculated, not declaring war until August 8, 1945. By then, the Japanese representatives had given up hope on getting Russia to mediate between Japan and the United States. And since they were under strict orders from the militarists in the cabinet anyway, it is doubtful anything would have come from Soviet mediation anyway.

These two diplomatic overtures, made during the spring and summer of 1945, are pointed to by revisionists as proof that Hiroshima was not necessary, that the real reason we dropped the bomb was to scare Russia, or to save Harry Truman the embarrassment of having built the bomb at enormous cost and then never using it, or sheer bloodlust. But from all we know about Harry Truman, his decision was based almost solely on his firm belief that dropping the atomic bomb had the best chance of ending the war immediately. And given the number of people dying all over Asia every single day - American soldiers, civilians in a dozen countries, and Japanese citizens in bombing raids by the US Army Air Corps - it could be argued that Truman’s choice was based on solid moral grounds as well as military ones.

For the military options open to Truman were bleak indeed. He could order the continued bombing of Japanese cities, something his Air Force commander Curtis LeMay was telling him would soon become useless given that most of Japan’s population centers were already in smoking ruins. He could consider a blockade against the Islands, something that would take months to initiate and would have an uncertain effect on the fanatics in Tokyo, despite the fact that millions of ordinary Japanese citizens would be at risk of starving to death.

The most controversial military option (and the most argued about in historical circles) was the idea of an invasion of Japan’s home islands. Neither the army nor the Navy were keen for the idea, the Navy believing that putting the fleet within range of the thousands of kamikazes (not only planes but mini-subs and small boats) could result in massive damage to their ships. And it was believed Japan’s civilian casualties would top one million on Kyushu (the island targeted for the initial landings) alone.

American casualties in an invasion could have been anywhere from 250,000 to a million. Hence, the Army’s reluctance. There was also the matter of whether the landings should be across a broad front or a narrow one. This put the two services at odds with each other as the Army believed a broader front would mean less casualties while the Navy thought the narrower front would allow them to protect the fleet better.

The disputes were never resolved and we’ll never know who may have been right or whether an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have been successful. What we do know is that the United States dropped two atomic devices on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing approximately 150,000 Japanese immediately and at least that many in the intervening years as a result of radiation sickness and cancers.

But these arguments mostly fall on deaf ears where the anti-American left is concerned. To them, it is just more proof that America is evil and that the atomic blasts were indicative of our racism and lust for power.

One interesting note to the remembrances this year; there’s hardly a peep about it from the media. If I find any links later today, I’ll post them as an update. And there are no viewings on television of any of the several excellent movies and mini-series on Hiroshima nor does the History Channel have any programming (although this was on their “This Day in History” page). It’s almost as if everything that can be said about Hiroshima, has been said.

The debate will continue in the dusty halls of academia about Truman’s momentous decision to use this horrible weapon. But as far as I’m concerned, I will always take my father’s gratitude to Truman as a sign that it was the right decision. For he and millions of young men - many who had already survived the war in Europe - that dropping of the Atomic bomb meant that they were going to live through the war, that they had a chance to grow old. And for most of them, that notion justified Truman’s choice beyond anything any of the naysayers and carpers can come up with.

Will that deter the lefties from continuing their anti-American diatribes next year? Not a chance. So be sure to check this site same time next August for another rebuttal of their arguments.

As Hizbullah fighters fanatically try and hold their ground in the small villages and towns of southern Lebanon, all the while being slaughtered systematically by the IDF, the makings of Israel’s “defeat” is being spun unmercifully in some corners of the media and on the left.

To date, more than 50 members of the IDF have been killed in the 25 day war. And while information on the numbers of Hizbullah fighters killed in action has been sketchy to say the least, the IDF estimates put the number at 300 on August 1, almost certainly an inflated estimate but one at least more trustworthy than Hizbullah’s laughable figure of 43 given on the same day.

There is every reason to believe that the figure of 300 is closer to being accurate as of today given what’s been happening the last 72 hours in southern Lebanon. Wherever Hizbullah fighters have stood toe to toe with the IDF, they have died. The terrorists perform the best in small unit ambushes where they put the Israelis on the defensive. The IDF then must call in helicopters and fighters to pound Hiz positions in order to extract their men.

But in the last few days, the Israelis have attacked in much larger formations, overwhelming the pockets of Hizbullah fighters and causing them to either flee or be killed. The J-Post reports:

At least ten Hizbullah operatives were killed and three were captured overnight.

Meanwhile, it was released on Sunday that in the past 48 hours, special forces operated south of Tyre. The troops destroyed 3 rocket launchers, a bunker, three weapons warehouses, and three cars used to transport rockets.

Two reserve soldiers were killed in clashes with Hizbullah in southern Lebanon on Saturday. Army forces killed at least 50 Hizbullah guerillas over the weekend, the IDF said.

The raid at Baalbek and the most recent Special Forces op south of Tyre killed dozens more. And given the amount of ordinance expended by the IAF, one has to assume that many Hizbullah fighters have died as the result of bombings.

The point is very simple; Hizbullah fighters are dying in droves, their infrastructure is being smashed to pieces, they are being thrown out of positions in southern Lebanon they’ve occupied since Israel left in 2000, and conversely, they have failed to inflict significant casualties on the IAF although they do very well killing unarmed civilians by launching barrages of rockets indiscriminately into the towns and villages of northern Israel.

Would someone please explain how Hizbullah is “winning” anything except perhaps the race to have the most martyrs claim those 72 virgins in the afterlife?

Where the Hiz are successful, it is in the battle of perceptions. And in this conflict, the IDF is at a huge disadvantage in that the overwhelming majority of the world’s press is openly cheering for Hizbullah to give the Israelis a bloody nose. Tom Gross of the J-Post points to the piss poor job being done by the Israelis in the media war:

Hizbullah and the Palestinians know the value of propaganda. They often fight their media battles by the dirtiest possible means. An expose in these pages on Thursday by former Sunday Telegraph correspondent Tom Gross revealed that Hizbullah officers supervise CNN reports, that a CBS reporter admitted Hizbullah overseers determine what’s filmed, that repeated shots of several downed buildings lend Beirut the erroneous image of devastated WWII Dresden, that journalists are threatened, that Hizbullah holds their passports for ransom, that their analyses are skewed to curry favor, and so on.

Not only doesn’t Israel engage in significant preemptive damage control, it often seems resigned to lose by default. The axiomatic official Israeli attitude often seems to be that “the world hates us.”

It may indeed deny us a fair shake, but there’s a difference between giving up a priori and trying to do something about it. To forfeit without a fight is reckless neglect. It can only impact on Israel’s image, its standing abroad, and the pressure on international politicians to take unsympathetic positions, and thus directly on Israel’s future well-being.

The pathetic nature of Hizbullah’s “success” - the fact that they aren’t running away in terror or surrendering as other, less fanatical Arab armies have done in the past - says much more about those who are lionizing the terrorists than it does about whether they are “winning” the war in any real sense of the word. Because when the dust settles and hostilities end, Israel will have a buffer zone of one kind of another, Hizbullah will be prevented from re-occupying positions they held for nearly 6 years prior to the war, and given Israeli-American insistence, Nasrallah’s fanatics will be disarmed probably by having his militia folded into the Lebanese army.

And this is a Hizbullah “victory?”

Ah, but the Hiz are heroes in the Arab street you say! Nasrallah will be more powerful in Lebanese politics, you crow! As for the former, my aunt Mabel would be popular in the Arab street if she was the beneficiary of the dizzying spin being put on this conflict in the Arab and western press.

As for the latter, someone please give me the crystal ball making that prediction so that I can pick some stocks. No one knows what shape post war Lebanese politics will take., what the impact of Nasrallah’s bellicosity that started the war and now his intransigence that is prolonging it will have on his standing among the other factions. My guess is that the Future Party of Prime Minister Siniora, Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt will do a little anti-Nasrallah spinning of their own in the aftermath of this war. And how that will turn out is anyone’s guess.

The western press always seems able to find present or former State Department officials or analysts of one kind or another who will wail on cue about how badly the war has gone for Israel and how the conflict has “empowered” Hizbullah. These doomsayers have made their prognostications based not what has been happening on the battlefield but what they perceive to be Israel’s weakness in not vanquishing Hizbullah in 6 days - that being the standard set by the international punditariat for a clear Israeli victory. Anything more and either the IDF is losing its edge or they have met their match on the battlefield in Hizbullah. This is so clearly tommyrot. Just look at a map of Israeli positions today and see that they have trapped Hizbullah’s remaining fighters in a kill zone from the border to the Litani River. With roads and bridges impassable, those Hiz fighters are doomed unless they surrender.

Given the fact that Nasrallah has rejected out of hand the provisions in the cease fire resolution that will probably be passed Tuesday or Wednesday, Israel will have a free hand to continue to kill his fighters, bust up his remaining infrastructure, and weaken his organization where it counts - its ability to harm the Jewish state.

Will that matter to those who are busy spinning Israel’s inevitable defeat? Probably not. But then, I doubt the Israelis care very much just as long as they can prevent Hizbullah from harming their citizens whenever they feel like it.

Now that smells like victory…

UPDATE

Judith Klinghoffer has more evidence of a Hizbullah “victory.” Nasrallah begging for help in arranging a cease fire from the very same Arab states he dismissed so cavailerly just 3 weeks ago:

Get out of my way, he told Arab leaders at the start of the conflict. Now he changed his tune:

For your own sake, for the sake of your thrones, I say to you: Combine your humanity with your thrones, and act - even for a single day - to stop this aggression against Lebanon. From the first day, I said that I do not ask or call upon you to do anything. I still do not, but I want to protect you, our country, and our homeland. This is how those who want can help Lebanon.”

Although the US and France have agreed on the outline of a “cessation of hostilities” between Israel and Hizbullah, the terrorist group has indicated it will not abide by its provisions:

The United States and France agreed Saturday on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for a halt to the fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, but would allow Israel to defend itself if attacked.

The draft, sent to the entire Security Council for consideration, “calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations.”

Israel, backed by the U.S., has insisted it must have the right to respond if Hezbollah launches missiles against it. France and many other nations had demanded an immediate halt to the fighting without conditions as a way to push the region back toward stability.

[snip]

Illustrating the difficulty ahead in getting the sides to agree to a cease-fire, Mohammed Fneish, a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese Cabinet, said after the announcement that his group would stop fighting, but only if Israel removed all its troops from Lebanon. The draft resolution makes no such demand.

“If they stay, we will not abide by it,” he told reporters.

Israel has said it wants to continue fighting for up to two more weeks to seriously diminish Hezbollah’s military capability.

Two points to keep in mind. First, apparently Nasrallah is not much of a gambler. He doesn’t know when to quit while he’s ahead (at least in the eyes of the Arab street). The fact that his fighters are now trapped behind the barrier of the Litani River facing 10,000 Israeli soldiers means that if he wants to keep fighting, his men will keep dying.

Second, this will put the onus for the fighting even more on Hizbullah. No more nonsense from Siniora about his noble “resistance” fighting the invader. Nasrallah could have taken the deal and Israel would have quit. Instead, if the Hiz start throwing more rockets into Israel, the IAF will have a green light to continue their own destruction of Hizbullah infrastructure.

Don’t expect that second resolution anytime soon. In fact, if Nasrallah keeps fighting and Israel keeps bombing, there’s no reason to believe the international force will materialize in the near future. No one wants their soldiers walking into a free fire zone.

One other interesting provision of the resolution is an arms embargo against Lebanon which prevents Syria and Iran from resupplying their Hizbullah stooges. Not that it will matter much as far as Hizbullah’s rockets are concerned since it is estimated they still have about half of the 10,000 they started the war with. But in small arms like anti-tank weapons and the like? If the war goes much longer with no way to resupply the Hiz fighters trapped in the south, it may mean that this last phase of the war will go much more swiftly for the IDF.

The rest of the resolution is a rehash of 1559:

Other principles spelled out in the resolution include the disarmament of Hezbollah; the creation of a buffer zone from the U.N.-demarcated border between Israel and Lebanon up to the Litani River, which is about 20 miles north of the frontier; and the delineation of Lebanon’s borders, especially in the disputed Chebaa Farms area.

The resolution would call for the current U.N. force in Lebanon, known by its acronym UNIFIL, to monitor the cessation in fighting. Once Israel and Lebanon have agreed to the series of principles, the Security Council would then authorize a new peacekeeping force for the region.

Does the UN believe that the more times it passes the same resolution, the greater the chance that the thugs of the world will finally abide by it?

How many similar resolutions did this useless collection of testosteroneless diplomats pass telling Saddam to disarm, to obey other resolutions, to stop firing on our planes, to act like a responsible member of the world community?

What good does it do to continue to tell these thugs the same thing over and over and then watch as they thumb their nose at you and continue on their merry way? It is not just an exercise in futility, it is an exercise in fantasy. The diplomats at the UN and those who actually believe they have any relevance whatsoever in the real world are not serious people. They are fantasists. Only when the great powers put their might and prestige behind anything the UN decides does the rest of the world actually take what that body does with any seriousness at all.

The war will go on. And before it’s over, Nasrallah will be wishing he took what the UN is offering today.

ROUNDUP

Ed Morrissey agrees that the onus for the fighting now devolves to Hizbullah if the war continues.

Pamela is not optimistic in the slightest and is mad as a hornet.

Richard Fernandez points out the nuance that I did yesterday; the difference between a “full cessation of hostilities” and “immediate cessation ” of the fighting. We win. France loses.

Mac points out that Bolton triumphed at the UN and makes his critics look silly.

Dave Shuler gives us a tour d’horizon of the Middle East.

Dan Riehl:

Pardon me if I don’t watch it, I believe I’ve seen this movie before. The UN couldn’t stop arms sales into Iraq and there was even more support for those resolutions. All this is is a simple re-hash of previously passed resolutions. If the UN had enforced those in the first place, this war would never have taken place.

James Joyner:

It’s far from clear how meaningful this will be, presuming it passes the full Council. Hezbollah will certainly continue to continue firing rockets into Israel and allow Israel to continue to kill Lebanese civilians so long as it is to their operational advantage.

There are times when my pessimism about what is happening in the world gets the better of me and I sink into one of two states of consciousness; blissful ignorance as I just ignore what is really going on until my curiosity gets the better of me or a simmering anger that usually explodes in some towering rant against those who would lead us (the West) to disaster because of the deliberate self delusion or ignorance of a large and influential segment of our political class.

As for the latter, while emotionally satisfying on one level, there are many times that I wish I had not hit that “publish” button. This is an occupational hazard for any blogger who becomes a slave to content and feels it necessary at times to let loose an ill favored rhetorical barrage at whatever current object of scorn, or derision, or humor that wanders into my gunsights. I realize that is part of the appeal of this site to many of you but there really are times when such writing is ill advised. Better the reasoned riposte than a heaping of calumny directed toward the wayward, the clueless, or the downright dumb.

However, there is something to be said for the former. Existing in one’s own little cocoon of information and opinion is certainly comforting. Reading only people and ideas that you agree with is not only good for one’s blood pressure, but also allows for a smug, self satisfaction to settle over one’s writing. The idea of the Revealed Truth From Rick is reinforced by many of you who leave nice comments and verbally pat me on the back for my perspicacity.

All goes swimmingly until I happen to read what I’ve written after a few weeks time and realize the trap I’ve fallen into. That’s when you must force yourself once again to examine the issues and events of the day from every possible angle so that even in disagreement, you find nuggets of truth, shades of meaning that can alter your perceptions and give a sense of wholeness to your beliefs.

In the end, that’s what this blog is all about; my beliefs. And the sooner you find out that it is silly and dangerous to believe that you have a corner on what is right or what is true, the more intellectually satisfying your search for knowledge will become.

Aristotle wrote:

“The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully or miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled there arises a certain grandeur.”

“All the facts assembled” means that you must humble yourself in order to achieve that “grandeur” by searching out contrary interpretations of the facts. It isn’t just a matter of buttressing your own opinions by finding flaws in another’s arguments. It sometimes comes down to actually trying to wear the shoes of those with whom you disagree, seeing the issue from their perspective. Only then can you truly embrace your own conceits with the confidence that you’ve done all that is required to satisfy those pesky muses who bedevil your unconscious, whispering in your ear that “thou art but mortal” and must work like the dickens to overcome your own arrogance.

But in the face of this kind of evil, this monstrous darkness that is descending over the west largely as a result of our own stupidity and reckless disregard for our own safety, I’m tempted to gather all the Juan Coles, the Billmons, the Kossacks, and the whole lot of morally timid, incredibly myopic liberals who cannot see the horrific danger we are in from the scourge if Islamic fundamentalism and send them packing to Iran so that they can glimpse our future. It is mindboggling. And for someone brought up in a western, liberal, democratic, (small “d”) tradition, really quite perplexing.

Is there nothing in the west worth defending? Are there no values, no artistic or cultural traditions worth standing up for? Is the warm and comfortable embrace of western freedoms to be given up so cavalierly, without a fight and in some cases, even willingly?

On Thursday, the President of Iran said for the umpteenth time that the State of Israel should be eliminated. Previous incarnations of this rhetoric has been the disputed phrase about wiping Israel “off the map” and variations on the theme that the Jewish state will disappear in fire and smoke. Ahmadinejad has also suggested that the Europeans carve out some of their own territory and uproot more than 6 million Jews in order to move them “back” to Europe (the overwhelming majority of Israelis having been born in their own land, given to them by the United Nations and fought for by their fathers and grandfathers).

And yet, despite the clearly stated goals of the Islamic regime in Iran now growing bolder and more open about its intent to use proxies like Hizbullah to carry the fight to all “infidels,” all we hear from most of the left is a combination of nauseating anti-Semitism and a curious moral indistinctness between the Israelis and Hizbullah.

Hizbullah launches hundreds of rockets into Israel with the expressed intent of killing as many non-combatants as possible and the reaction on the left is, after (perhaps) a desultory condemnation of these purely terror tactics, gleeful commentary on how Israel is losing the war. On the other hand, when Israel mistakenly targets a house in Qana, apologizes profusely, and actually alters their targeting regime to try and prevent further mistakes, the moral outrage is without limit. Juan Cole:

There had been some question about whether Hizbullah’s ability to hit Israel with rockets had been degraded, or whether it was just observing the 48 hour air cease fire. On Wednesday it cleared the mystery up. The indiscriminate firing of rockets on civilian targets wounded 21 persons and one hit the Palestinian West Bank. Among the rockets fired was a long-distance Khaybar II. Targeting civilians or unnecessarily endangering them is a war crime.

Please note Professor Cole’s pro-forma recognition that Hizbullah has committed an atrocity is disconnected, unemotional, and matter of fact. He doesn’t even directly accuse Hizbullah of a war crime despite the fact that Hizbullah has now launched thousands of rockets into northern Israel trying desperately to kill as many civilians as they can.

What kind of mind can make that disconnect? The kind that can write this about Qana:

Note how by calling it a “tragedy,” Blair takes the onus off Israel for launching a total war on the Lebanese infrastructure and population. A hurricane is a tragedy, Mr. Prime Minister. This is a war. It is a war launched by specific persons, including especially Ehud Olmert and Gen. Halutz. It isn’t something that can be put into the passive voice.

Even most of the Arab world agrees that Hizbullah “launched” this war, not Prime Minister Olmert. And Cole’s blindness, comforting as it might be for him, extends to his swallowing hook, line, and sinker, this kind of Arab propaganda:

The Israelis appear to be engaged in a concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Shiite towns and villages of southern Lebanon, and are indiscriminately bombing all buildings in the area south of the Litani River. They have chased hundreds of thousands of residents out, and are destroying the property they left behind in a systematic way, rather as they destroy the houses belonging to the family members related to suicide bombers. In other words, the Israelis are engaged in collective punishment on a vast scale. They maintain that rocket launching sites are embedded in these villages. But since Hizbullah keeps firing large numbers of rockets, it does not actually appear to be the case that the Israelis are hitting the rocket launchers. They are demonstrably hitting civilian houses and apartment buildings in a methodical way.

“Ethnic cleansing?” “Collective punishment?” Cole and I share a passion for reading the Daily Star of Lebanon and the individuals making claims such as he is reprinting here are Hizbullah spokesmen. There is no talk from Prime Minister Siniora of “ethnic cleansing” nor of any “methodical” razing of buildings. Cole regurgitates Hizbullah propaganda without batting an eyelash.

And herein lies the cause of my pessimism. Cole is an intelligent man, a font of information on the Middle East and its history (if you can stomach his biases). But last May, he wrote this regarding any confrontation between the west and Iran:

So sit down and shut up, American Enterprise Institute, and Hudson Institute, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and American Heritage Foundation, and this institute and that institute, and cable “news”, and government “spokesmen”, and all the pundit-ferrets you pay millions to make business for the American military-industrial complex and Big Oil.

We don’t give a rat’s ass what Ahmadinejad thinks about European history or what pissant speech the little shit gives.

Despite his hatred for the Iranian regime, Cole believes that we should not take Ahmadinejad at his word. If the Iranian President says that Israel will be eliminated, it is rhetoric that we can safely ignore. And when Ahmadinejad uses proxies like Hizbullah to make war on Israel and the west, I suppose we should bury our heads in the ground and pretend we shouldn’t do anything about it because the entire rationale for looking at Iran as an enemy has to do with the military industrial complex in America and has nothing to do with our own survival.

Cole, of course, is not alone. Not by a long shot. And it is legitimate to ask if Cole and his ilk would do anything to defend themselves against this kind of threat. Time and time again over the last 27 years Islamic fundamentalists have attacked us, eliciting a “proportional” response - a bombing run or lobbing a few cruise missiles at targets of opportunity. All this has gotten us is more attacks.

And Israel, trying to play by the rules laid out by the international community for the last 60 years that prevent it from removing threats to its existence so that the sensibilities of those who refuse to recognize the Jewish state as a legitimate national entity won’t be ruffled, finds itself on the frontline of this most recent war against the west. And once again, an international community more in love with “process” than with actually solving Israel’s dilemma is calling for the Jewish state to halt before it feels the job is done. No wonder the United States wants to change the failed diplomatic framework of the past that did nothing to make Israel safe and only made western politicians look good to the homefolks.

The world is becoming too dangerous to play these kinds of games anymore. Hizbullah must be disarmed. Syria must be be held to account for their meddling in Lebanon which included the brazen assassination of the beloved Hariri. And Iran must be isolated from the community of nations until they rid themselves of those who seek to lead a wordlwide crusade whose goal is the subjugation or destruction of everything we in the west find worth living for.

It is getting very late in the day not to have the left on board for this fight. And perhaps it will take a liberal leader somewhere else to explain it to them. They seem to have turned a deaf ear to anything coming from the United States and especially George Bush.

But wherever the wake-up call comes from - and it will come - the only question is will it come too late so that the west can face this latest challenge to its existence reasonably united.

The alternative is simply unthinkable.