By John Burtis
Monday, august 7, 2006
First there was Qana I.
In 1996 Israel conducted a 16-day military operation, dubbed the "Grapes of Wrath," to destroy or degrade Hezbollah's ability to launch Katyusha rockets into its northern environs.
On april 18th, as a direct result of missiles being fired from the immediate vicinity of the UN compound at Qana — sound familiar? — the Israelis responded with artillery fire. an unknown number of shells struck the compound, killing some 102 civilians. The media was quick to pounce on Israel and avoid chastising Hezbollah.
as a result of the international fallout from this strike, an "april Understanding" was realized on april 26, where both Israel and Hezbollah committed themselves to "avoid targeting civilians and using populated areas to launch attacks." In addition, the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group (ILMG) was established, under the aegis of the US, France, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon, to carry out this Understanding and to investigate reports of violations.
The ILMG was disbanded when Israel withdrew from the occupied territories in South Lebanon in May of 2000, under UN and international approval.
But knowing what we know today about Hezbollah and the UN outpost destroyed by artillery fire on July 25th, where the Stalin "organs" played their deadly tunes only meters away - according to the e-mail from the Canadian soldier sent to his commanding general in Canada - the Israelis may have been replying in kind in 1996. But with Mr. Clinton's grasping fingers on our helm of state, with his coterie criminally weak sisters advising him, Israel's offensive certainly lacked a steady US hand for success.
Hezbollah, not Israel, first abrogated the april Understanding. Hezbollah operates behind the ready wall of civilians. Hezbollah began this most recent conflict by targeting innocent civilians with their unguided rockets and crossing the internationally recognized borders to kidnap two soldiers.
Then there was the was a second and more highly suspicious attack on Qana on July 31st, where, it now appears, that a large degree of hokey-pokey was involved, and the all too willing dupes of the drive by media were complicit in the drumming of Hezbollah's story of Israeli's repeat cruelty.
But when the time lines are examined, the time stamps on the photos are compared, when the same poor baby is callously passed around, again and again, for the same myopic media, when the injured fall from their gurneys and jump back on for their filmed rides, when so little blood is spilled by the "dead," we are left to wonder how the media can be so easily fooled unless they are willing participants in this gaudy hoax. Especially in view of the rockets being launched from the building in question.
It is a commonly accepted feature of today's media that "journalists," when they scent a story deleterious to their ideological foes, cease any investigative function and simply run with it. They have realized that the tar, feathers, and the damage to personal reputations fare far better without facts, than well researched stories which may lead to different, though truthful, stories of less favorable ideological import down the road. and sometimes, the media is forced manufacture things to get their points across.
a Qana massacre today based on outrageous fabrications with nary a question of who, what, when, where, or why, is always better than the slightest worry about lawyers, guns, and money later on. Somebody else will willingly foot those bills, because they possess the same progressive credentials.
and now Reuters, once known in the business for a slight modicum of fairness and truth in their pronouncements before they went soft on terror and hard on democracy, and not wishing to be left out of the race for favor with Hezbollah, has now jumped on that great bandwagon of manufactured perversity, where make believe is regularly manufactured to assist the terror mongers, just like it was at Qana II. Whatever can be cobbled together to Israel's detriment is hung out there for the great unwashed to gape at.
Yep, poor Reuters, has now been caught manufacturing smoke, of all things, in a photograph of Beirut on august 5th. The photograph was debunked by those dreaded american bloggers, who quickly noticed the doctored up repetitive artifacts in the smoke columns, and accused Reuters of "blatant evidence of manipulation," - the horror. Imagine how desperate the shutter bug must have felt to enhance particulate matter while knowing that the pictures will tell a thousand unkind words.
The chastened news peddler suspended the photographer and withdrew the picture from their file.
I find it uproarious that Reuters' small contribution to the aid and comfort of the enemies of democracy, capitalism and freedom of speech would be smoke, especially in view of all the smoke the fourth estate has been blowing our way for so long, and all the fog they have been laying over the vicious activities of international terror, as they couch the vicious murderers of Hezbollah in cloaks of community activism and earnest men about town.
But when it comes to white washing terror, smoke gets in your eyes.
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