In the comments of this post, Ronald Lewis, an experienced bomb damage assessment expert with 20 years of experience, states, in part (my bold):

...The nature of the hole in the roof of the Reuters vehicles is inconsistent with penetration by shrapnel. There would be more than one hole, a larger one surrounded by many smaller ones. This single hole, its shape and the initial gray color of the damage area are more consistent with a vehicle struck by a large piece of masonry striking the top of the vehicle at high velocity, possibly dislodged by a rocket blast. It is clear that the vehicle, itself, was not struck by missiles or rockets...

Mr Lewis is not the only expert to reach a similar conclusion.

Both of the armored vehicle manufacturers I corresponded with yesterday agreed that an explosive probably did not cause the damage shown on the Reuters vehicle. Old Soldier, a retired Master Army Aviator helicopter and fixed-wing test pilot also remarked based upon his 31-years experience that the damage may have been caused by (my bold):

... [a] chunk of flying concrete debris from a larger explosion (say perhaps a HELLFIRE or artillery round hitting a building nearby).

There are, of course, conflicting ideas that very may well be valid. Photo analysis alone does not seem capable of resolving this issue with any degree of certainty in the blogosphere, which is why it is quite disappointing that the professional media refuses to investigate what may have occurred.

I have one more email floating out there to an expert that might be able to shed a little more light on this incident, but as time passes, it appears that they are unlikely to return comment. The simple fact of the matter is that without a close-up inspection of the vehicle by recognized experts and perhaps metallurgical tests on any shrapnel that can be verified as being recovered from the victims and the vehicle, we may never know exactly what transpired.

I could not resist my sillier side, however, and present to you an artist's conception of the helicopter that carried out the attack.

Barring any late-breaking developments, I think this story is pretty much done.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:48 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I generally oppose the idea of taking moral advice from a convicted felon, and so it was with quite a bit of skepticism that I clicked on the link to today's Boston Globeeditorial by George Soros.

My skepticism was well-founded:

The failure of Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One of those weaknesses is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.

In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel was justified in attacking Hezbollah to protect itself against the threat of missiles on its border. However, Israel should have taken greater care to minimize collateral damage. The civilian casualties and material damage inflicted on Lebanon inflamed Muslims and world opinion against Israel and converted Hezbollah from aggressors to heroes of resistance for many. Weakening Lebanon has also made it more difficult to rein in Hezbollah.

Precisely what further steps should Israel have taken to minimize civilian casualties, Mr. Soros? Israel warned all Lebanese civilians to leave areas where they might launch airstrikes, often days in advance. Israel primarily used precision-guided munitions from strike aircraft to strike specific targeted locations. Israel took the responsible steps any nation should by using precision weaponry instead of area weapons whenever possible, and gave up some of its combat effectiveness by announcing where strikes may occur well before an attack, so that Lebanese civilian and terrorist alike had the opportunity to leave well in advance. Apparently an advance warning wasn't enough, and Soros would have Israel provide transportation as well.

Further, Soros blames Israel for their response, but does not even attempt to address the fact that Hezbollah purposefully thrust Lebanese civilians into the conflict. Hezbollah fired rockets from residential areas, hid the rockets themselves, their launchers, and their fighters in buildings occupied by civilians. The fact that the Lebanese government was weak, ineffectual, and heavily influenced by Hezbollah's paymasters in Damascus is a fact Soros would rather skip past than address.

Another weakness of the war-on-terror concept is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches. Israel previously withdrew from Lebanon and then from Gaza unilaterally, rather than negotiating political settlements with the Lebanese government and the Palestinian authority. The strengthening of Hezbollah and Hamas was a direct consequence of that approach. The war-on-terror concept stands in the way of recognizing this fact because it separates "us" from "them" and denies that our actions help shape their behavior.

Starting with Presidents Nixon and Ford, the United states, with the rest of the world in tow, started a pattern of appeasing terrorists by providing little or no deterrence to increasingly violent attacks. The lack of a cohesive and forceful military response to these attacks only encouraged the spread of terrorist groups, allowing them to grow virtually unchecked as they killed and injured thousands. It was this long-running pattern of relying on politics, policing, and negotiating that placed us in the situation we have today. Soros repeat a pattern that 35 years of failures has proven is impotent and ineffectual.

Hezbollah, Hamas and the governments that support them have repeatedly stated that their reason to exist is to wipe Israel off the face of the map and to force the rest of the world to accept their radical version of Islam at the point of a sword. Historically, Soros' recommended course of action has proven to be one of failure time and again. He, like the components of the Far Left that lap up his funding, are philosophically unable to face that reality, and continued a dogged pursuit of polices that encourage terrorism to continue to blossom.

A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish among Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations, being different, require different responses. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because both have deep roots in their societies; yet there are profound differences between them.

Again, Soros shows that he misunderstands the problem of confronting Islamic terrorism on a fundamental level. Theirs is not a "political” movement, and while these groups interpret Islam differently, they do not recognize a separation of theology from governance. The tenants of Sharia itself disprove his views categorically. While the specifics differ, all share a common goal of the destruction of Israel, the subjugation of the West under Islam, and death to any that hold an opposing view. You cannot negotiate with those who see their views and their views alone as Absolute Truth. You can choose to bend their will and give up your views, your freedoms, and your rights, or you must fight them to the death. This is the lesson that Islam has spread to every border as it has expanded and been forcefully repulsed over nearly 1,400 years of human history, whether to invading Muslim Army has been Sunni or Shiite in makeup. Soros and those who acquiesce to his viewpoint are woefully unprepared to take the only course of action that over a millennia of experience shows us is the only thing that works to stop or slow the spread of the violence inherent to the various fundamentalist sects of Islam.

Looking back, it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan on behalf of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, allowing an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt; and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands. None of the six points was implemented. This contributed to Hamas's electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to hold elections, then backed Israel's refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect was to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.

Soros forgets to mention the constant failure of these groups to keep their end of a bargain. Once more, Soros places all the blame on Western states, while treating Arab states as children unable to take any initiative towards peace or betterment on their own. It betrays an inherent racism, the absolving of a proclivity towards violence as an accepted consequence of who they are. Soros belittles both the mental acuity of these actors and absolves them or wrongdoing. Though a sidenote, Soros forgets to mention what happened when those prosperous greenhouses were transferred from Israeli to Palestinian hands.

The Palestinians destroyed them. The hardships they suffer are self-imposed.

Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement with the political arm of Hamas for the formation of a unity government. It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel -- which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front.

That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.

Once more, Soros shows he cannot wrap his mind about the simplest concept; as long as terrorist groups are alive, there can be no peace.

Israel has been a participant in this game, and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel's unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy. Israel is now more endangered in its existence than it was at the time of the Oslo Agreement on peace.

Similarly, the United States has become less safe since Bush declared war on terror.

Israel's "flawed policy"--its determined will to survive-- seems to trouble Soros greatly. A tiny sliver of land in a vast Middle East, Israel only exists because its military has successfully repulsed attempts made by every single Arab neighboring state to destroy them. Israel escalates conflicts until they become unbearable for those attacking them, or it dies. Soros does not seem overly concerned about the possibility of the latter.

Soros says we are less safe now than in the past. Wars are never safe by definition, but the appeasement he preaches is far more deadly.

The time has come to realize that the present policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. The Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise.

There are strong voices arguing that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel's position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course. Similarly Hezbollah, having tasted the sense but not the reality of victory (and egged on by Syria and Iran) may prove recalcitrant. But that is where the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas comes into play. The Palestinian people yearn for peace and relief from suffering. The political -- as distinct from the military -- wing of Hamas must be responsive to their desires. It is not too late for Israel to encourage and deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better-balanced approach.

Given how strong the US-Israeli relationship is, it would help Israel to achieve its own legitimate aims if the US government were not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.

Once more, Soros seems to be under the illusion that the Palestinians want peace. Hezbollah, Hamas, and their sponsors patently refuse to recognize Israel's right to even exist. They state in their charters that they fight for the total destruction of Israel.

George Soros seems to think that is negotiable.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:58 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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In an article focusing on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's speech to the American Legion Tuesday, the L.A. Times' Julian E. Barnes slipped this in near the end:

Rumsfeld's speech drew sharp complaints from Democrats, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was criticized by Rumsfeld in a speech Monday.

The elder Kennedy, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Britain before World War II, resigned that post because he opposed British and U.S. war preparations.

"Secretary Rumsfeld is the last person who should preach the lessons of history after ignoring them for the last six years," Kennedy said in a statement. "As a result of his failures, Americans are less safe."

Barnes states that the elder Kennedy "opposed British and U.S. war preparations," but it is not surprising that he glossed over just why the senior Kennedy was opposed to the preparations for war.

Wikipedia offers a clue:

Kennedy was (for a while) a close friend with leading Jewish lawyer Felix Frankfurter, who helped Kennedy get his sons into the London School of Economics, where they worked with Harold Laski, a leading Jewish intellectual and prominent Socialist.[4] While holding positive attitudes towards individual Jews, Kennedy's views of the Jews as a people were, by his own admission, overwhelmingly negative.

According to Harvey Klemmer, who served as one of Kennedy's embassy aides, Kennedy habitually referred to Jews as "kikes or sheenies." Kennedy allegedly told Klemmer that "[some] individual Jews are all right, Harvey, but as a race they stink. They spoil everything they touch."[5] When Klemmer returned from a trip to Germany and reported the pattern of vandalism and assault on Jews by Nazis, Kennedy responded "well, they brought it on themselves."[6]

On June 13, 1938, Kennedy met with Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador in London, who reported to Berlin that Kennedy had told him that "it was not so much the fact that we want to get rid of the Jews that was so harmful to us, but rather the loud clamor with which we accompanied this purpose. [Kennedy] himself fully understood our Jewish policy."[7] Kennedy's main concern with such violent acts against German Jews as Kristallnacht was that they generated bad publicity in the West for the Nazi regime, a concern he communicated in a letter to Charles Lindbergh.[8]

From Seymour Hersh's Dark Side of Camelot:

There is no evidence that Ambassador [Joseph] Kennedy understood in the days before the war that stopping Hitler was a moral imperative.

"Individual Jews are all right, Harvey," Kennedy told Harvey Klemmer, one of his few trusted aides in the American Embassy, "but as a race they stink. They spoil everything they touch. Look what they did to the movies." Klemmer, in an interview many years later made avail­able for this book, recalled that Kennedy and his "entourage" gener­ally referred to Jews as "kikes or sheenies."

Kennedy and his family would later emphatically deny allegations of anti-Semitism stemming from his years as ambassador, but the German diplomatic documents show that Kennedy consistently minimized the Jewish issue in his four-month attempt in the summer and fall of 1938 to obtain an audience with Hitler. On June 13, as the Nazi regime was systematically segregating Jews from German society, Kennedy advised Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador in London, as Dirksen reported to Berlin, that "it
was not so much the fact that we wanted to get rid of the Jews that was so harmful to us, but rather the loud clamor with which we accompanied this purpose. He himself understood our Jewish policy completely." On October 13, 1938, a few weeks before Kristallnacht, with its Brown Shirt terror attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses, Kennedy met again with Ambassador Dirksen, who subsequently informed his superiors that "today, too, as during former conversations, Kennedy mentioned that very strong anti-Semitic feelings existed in the United States and that a large portion of the population had an understanding of the German attitude toward the Jews."

From George Mason University's History News Network:

Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American. Viscountess Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor assured Kennedy early in their friendship that he should not be put off by her pronounced and proud anti-Catholicism.

"I'm glad you are smart enough not to take my [views] personally," she wrote. Astor pointed out that she had a number of Roman Catholic friends - G.K. Chesterton among them - with whom she shared, if nothing else, a profound hatred for the Jewish race. Joe Kennedy, in turn, had always detested Jews generally, although he claimed several as friends individually. Indeed, Kennedy seems to have tolerated the occasional Jew in the same way Astor tolerated the occasional Catholic.

As fiercely anti-Communist as they were anti-Semitic, Kennedy and Astor looked upon Adolf Hitler as a welcome solution to both of these "world problems" (Nancy's phrase). No member of the so-called "Cliveden Set" (the informal cabal of appeasers who met frequently at Nancy Astor's palatial home) seemed much concerned with the dilemma faced by Jews under the Reich. Astor wrote Kennedy that Hitler would have to do more than just "give a rough time" to "the killers of Christ" before she'd be in favor of launching "Armageddon to save them. The wheel of history swings round as the Lord would have it. Who are we to stand in the way of the future?" Kennedy replied that he expected the "Jew media" in the United States to become a problem, that "Jewish pundits in New York and Los Angeles" were already making noises contrived to "set a match to the fuse of the world."

During May of 1938, Kennedy engaged in extensive discussions with the new German Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Herbert von Dirksen. In the midst of these conversations (held without approval from the U.S. State Department), Kennedy advised von Dirksen that President Roosevelt was the victim of "Jewish influence" and was poorly informed as to the philosophy, ambitions and ideals of Hitler's regime. (The Nazi ambassador subsequently told his bosses that Kennedy was "Germany's best friend" in London.)

Columnists back in the states condemned Kennedy's fraternizing. Kennedy later claimed that 75% of the attacks made on him during his Ambassadorship emanated from "a number of Jewish publishers and writers. ... Some of them in their zeal did not hesitate to resort to slander and falsehood to achieve their aims." He told his eldest son, Joe Jr., that he disliked having to put up with "Jewish columnists" who criticized him with no good reason.

Like his father, Joe Jr. admired Adolf Hitler. Young Joe had come away impressed by Nazi rhetoric after traveling in Germany as a student in 1934. Writing at the time, Joe applauded Hitler's insight in realizing the German people's "need of a common enemy, someone of whom to make the goat. Someone, by whose riddance the Germans would feel they had cast out the cause of their predicament. It was excellent psychology, and it was too bad that it had to be done to the Jews. The dislike of the Jews, however, was well-founded. They were at the heads of all big business, in law etc. It is all to their credit for them to get so far, but their methods had been quite unscrupulous ... the lawyers and prominent judges were Jews, and if you had a case against a Jew, you were nearly always sure to lose it. ... As far as the brutality is concerned, it must have been necessary to use some ... ."

Brutality was in the eye of the beholder. Writing to Charles Lindbergh shortly after Kristallnacht in November of 1938, Joe Kennedy Sr. seemed more concerned about the political ramifications stemming from high-profile, riotous anti-Semitism than he was about the actual violence done to the Jews. "... Isn't there some way," he asked, "to persuade [the Nazis] it is on a situation like this that the whole program of saving western civilization might hinge? It is more and more difficult for those seeking peaceful solutions to advocate any plan when the papers are filled with such horror." Clearly, Kennedy's chief concern about Kristallnacht was that it might serve to harden anti-fascist sentiment at home in the United States.

Like his friend Charles Coughlin (an anti-Semitic broadcaster and Roman Catholic priest), Kennedy always remained convinced of what he believed to be the Jews' corrupt, malignant, and profound influence in American culture and politics. "The Democratic [party] policy of the United States is a Jewish production," Kennedy told a British reporter near the end of 1939, adding confidently that Roosevelt would "fall" in 1940.

But it wasn't Roosevelt who fell. Kennedy resigned his ambassadorship just weeks after FDR's overwhelming triumph at the polls. He then retreated to his home in Florida: a bitter, resentful man nurturing religious and racial bigotries that put him out-of-step with his country, and out-of-touch with history.

Senator Edward Kennedy has the gall to suggest some are ignoring history. Considering his family history of admiring and trying to appease fascists intent on wiping out Jews, he may count himself lucky if that is indeed the case.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:05 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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But Dr. Perlmutter gives me an "A" all the same:

I first talked about the blogger-driven battles over the Israel-Hezbullah war imagery in an essay for Editor & Publisher and then here and here in PBB.

And the controversy continues--with a constructive object lesson for us all.

I don't think blogs will replace big media, but the small blogger can, with moxie and smarts, shame the big boys and girls by doing the job that we trained the professionals to do in journalism school. Every good J-School teacher I know instructs her/his students to think, question and dig. Don't just accept the press release or the face value of an event. Scratch your head and ask: “Where can I go besides the usual sources to get the information that will better reveal the truth?”

Sometimes the answer is simple, and you think “Wow, why did nobody else think of that?” The answer is sadly that industrial journalism breeds laziness and routine. There are many hard working journalists out there; but the system undercuts their inventiveness and encourages them to walk the rut of what everybody else is doing.

Not so with the nimble, one wo/man blog enterprise. Consider the case of Mr. Bob Owens, aka, "ConfederateYankee."

As they say, read it all.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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There has been quite a bit of debate in the blogosphere surrounding this story (note: link has been deactivated) of several days ago:

An Israeli air strike hit a Reuters vehicle in Gaza City on Saturday, wounding two journalists as they covered a military incursion, doctors and residents said.

One of the Palestinian journalists, who worked for a local media organization, was seriously wounded. A cameraman working for Reuters was knocked unconscious in the air strike, one of several in the area.

The Israeli army said the vehicle was hit because it was acting suspiciously in an area of combat and had not been identified as belonging to the media.

"During the operation, there was an aerial attack on a suspicious vehicle that drove in a suspicious manner right by the forces and in between the Palestinian militant posts," army spokeswoman Captain Noa Meir said.

"This car was not identified by the army as a press vehicle," she said. "If journalists were hurt, we regret it."

Despite the Israeli acknowledgement that they did fire on a "suspicious vehicle," bloggers were inherently suspicious of the story due to apparently staged and in some cases definitively falsified information provided by Arab news stringers and photojournalists in the recent Israeli-Hezbollah War. Some were quick to cast doubts on the veracity of the story.

Other bloggers, notably AllahPundit, Ace of Spades and Dan Riehl cautioned that we should resist jumping on the "Pallywood" bandwagon without having support for the claims being made.

I wanted support to prove or disprove these allegations, and so I went to the people who should know most about the kind of vehicles damaged in the attack, armored vehicle manufacturers themselves.

I sent an email to these five armored vehicle manufacturers, asking them to look at the photo (above) that seems to be the center of the debate, and asked them two questions:

1. Is this damage consistent with what you might expect from a 70MM rocket's warhead detonating roughly a foot above an civilian-manufactured armored vehicle such as the one pictured? If not, would you expect more damage, or less?
2. People suspicious of the attack are citing the obvious rust around the impact site on the vehicle as proof that these are old markings, while the expert claims that vehicles can rust in this kind of climate in the short time mentioned. Does that sound logical, or would alloys used in civilian armored vehicles take longer to show this level of rust? Would you provide an estimate of how long it would take?
   

Within an hour, I had responses from representatives of two armored vehicle manufacturing companies.

David Khazanski of Inkas Armored Vehicle Manufacturing responded first, stating:

Looking at the picture received through the link on your email, the damage on the vehicle was sustained very long time ago and probably not by the rocket, or it was already tempered [sic] with[.]

In no uncertain terms, Mr. Khazankski doubts that the vehicle was damaged recently, or by rocket fire, and suggests that the vehicle may have been tampered with.

Chris Badsey, chairman and CEO of First Defense International Group, which has armored vehicles deployed in the Middle East and has professional knowledge of Israeli weaponry, graciously offered up a very detailed analysis of the vehicle in the photo above (minor spelling errors corrected):

1.) Firstly as an armouring company we are familiar with all weapons, weapons damage, collateral damage and the destruction of armoured vehicles from blasts and various types of rockets and ammunition.


2.) Secondly we are familiar with the Israeli weapons of choice and uses in the field as we continue to work with them and have a manufacturing relationship with them both in Israel and Iraq.


3.) Whether the Reuters vehicle was attacked by who I could not verify but In my expert opinion the damage, the hole is NOT consistent of a Hellfire Missile or a 70mm rocket nor any armoured piercing bullet/trajectory.


4.) The Reuters armoured van would only be armoured to threat level IV which would consist of 8mm of High Hard 4140 Steel armouring on the roof which you can see in the picture as peeled open somewhat. The damage to the roof looks to me very consistent with possible shrapnel penetration from an object other than a rocket or missile itself.


5.) Furthermore the armored glass would be 62mm for threat level IV protection against blasts and armour piercing rounds. The damage to the back window is certainly NOT consistent with any missile, bomb, rocket blast that would have occurred on impact if a rocket was fired around and directly at the vehicle.

Mr. Badsey went on to bring up a point that few of us seemed to have considered, and that is the primary blast effect involved in any explosive projectile used against an armored vehicle.

There are essential four kinds of blast effects (mechanisms) related to the detonation of any explosive device on the human body, and the first three carry over to the kind of damage we should expect warheads to have on vehicles.

They are:

• primary: Unique to high-order explosives; results from the impact of the overpressurization wave with body surfaces ;
• secondary: Results from flying debris and bomb fragments;
• tertiary: Results when bodies
  are thrown by blast wind;
• quaternary: All explosion-related injuries, illnesses, or diseases not due to primary, secondary, or tertiary mechanisms; includes exacerbation or complications of existing conditions

The vehicle in the picture above shows only very minor damage that some allege are consistent with the secondary, or shrapnel effect of a warhead detonating in close proximity. But a vehicle either hit by or suffering a near miss from a helicopter warhead would also sustain major primary blast damage, as shown below.

The photo above is of one of First Defense International Group's armored Ford Expeditions which was heavily damaged by an IED blast near Baghdad, Iraq. Note how the vehicle has been heavily dented by the blast. Teh hood is crumpled and the bumbers are destroyed. All bulletproof windows have been heavily damaged, with the left rear glass completely imploded (to FDI's credit, there were no casualties).

The Reuter's vehicle, however seems to show far less damage than one may expect. The sheet metal is not damaged, and the spider-webbing of the windshield would seem to be the only damage to the vehicle's glass. If a warhead detonated on or within feet of this vehicle as seems to be the claim, Mr. Badsey would have expected far more damage, what one word did he use to describe what we should see of this vehicle?

"Pieces."

It was preceded by the words, "nothing left but."

I then forwarded this link to Mr. Badsey, and asked him if what he saw was consistent with the kind of damage he might expect from a 70MM rocket explosion above the vehicle as an intelligence expert opined to Allah at Hotair.com.

He responded:

There is clearly no blast damage internally and only from some object inconsistent with any rocket or missile attack. I'm unable to see any burn or secondary explosion or markings from the picture so apologize for not been 100% able to see from this picture.

A 70mm rocket has certain features and destructive mechanisms that are not consistent in either pictures especially on entry and internal damage from what you have shown me.

The inside is too intact including the upholstery for this type of ammunition detonation on impact. It looks as if the armor was penetrated by probably flying shrapnel. Not consistent with missiles or rockets of any kind

And so here we stand, weighing conflicting stories.

Reuters says they were fired upon, and Israel agrees that they fired at a suspicious vehicle, but two armored vehicle experts state that the damage to this Reuters vehicle is not even close to being consistent with what they would expect from Israeli rockets or missiles. The first expert, Mr. Khazanski, indicated that he thinks the damage on the roof was sustained a "long time ago."

From what these experts tell me, it does not appear that the vehicle Reuters claimed was hit was hit by either a rocket or a missile, that the damage appears to be from some time prior to the attack, but that the damage may be consistent with shrapnel from something else.

Something damaged this Reuters armored vehicle, but when and how seems to be very much in doubt.

Update: Allah has another photo... no rust. that would possibly rule out the the damage being old, but what precisely hit the vehicle is still up in the air.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:22 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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I'm admittedly late to commenting on the story of 29-year-old Omeed Aziz Popal, an Afghan native that went on a hit-and-run spree in San Francisco, wounding 14, after running down and killing a man in Freemont, California.

The immediate conclusion that some jumped to was that this was a Left Coast replay of March's Jeep Jihad in Chapel Hill, where Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar decided to run-down UNC-Chapel Hill students because he did not like how Americans were treating Muslims.

I don't think that the motives in this case are clear yet, but he had been reported missing three days ago, and there are early explanations range from saying that he was under a great deal of stress having recently gone through an arranged marriage in Afghanistan, to possibly being mentally ill by relatives.

If it is indeed the case that Popal's family sent a mentally ill man into an arranged marriage, I hope that the bride can get a mulligan. Somehow, I doubt his claimed history of mental illness was revealed to his new in-laws.

Michelle Malkin has the round-up.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I'm sure it sounds better in the original German.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:50 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Will Thoretz is the company spokesman for VNU Media, the company that owns Editor & Publisher and employs Editor Greg Mitchell, a man that has something of a "truth problem" according to Michael Silence, and seems to be on the wrong side of an example of "journalistic malpractice" according to Stephen Spruiell.

Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall.com attempted to contact Mitchell at Editor & Publisher for comment several times yesterday, but Mitchell has thus far decline to respond. Ham also tried to contact Will Thoretz of Editor & Publisher's parent company, VNU Media, and while she was able to speak to his assistant, Thoretz has not responded to Ham to date.

Color me skeptical, but evidence indicating that one of your editors has severe ethical issues should demand an immediate response of some sort, unless, of course, the decision has been made to stonewall the story and hope it goes away.

Hopeing that this would not turn out to be the case, I sent the following email to Mr. Thoretz moments ago, hoping to spur him to action:

Dear Will Thoretz,

My name is Bob Owens, and I am the blogger that noticed Greg Mitchell's 2003 editorial admitting that he manufactured elements of a story as a young reporter, was suddenly changed within hours of my having linked it. I also know that you have been contacted by Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall.com regarding the unacknowledged and unethical rewrite of the 2003 column, a rewrite apparently designed to cast Mr. Mitchell in a more favorable light.

I have also noticed that while the article now features a correction to the timeline elements that Mitchell got wrong, it still includes elements of the rewrite (specifically the new addition of the phrase "as a summer intern" which did not exist before 4:00 PM Friday, Aug 26).

I would like to ask why this article has not been restored to the 2003 form in which it has existed for over three years until an unfavorable light was cast on Mitchell's admitted journalistic fraud, and why these changed elements are allowed to still exist without an acknowledgement that such changes took place.

The self-serving rewrite of Mr. Mitchell's column has been described as "journalistic malpractice," and I think the public has a right to know how this happened, who was responsible, and what policies will be put in place by VNU Media to keep such incidents from occurring in the future.

To date, I have noticed that Mr. Mitchell seems to be ducking phone calls from Ms. Ham, and you have not (to the best of my knowledge) responded to her either. I certainly hope that an effort to "stonewall" this issue is not underway, as that would be quite counterproductive to all concerned.

All it takes is a simple look to the server logs to conclusively identify who rewrote Mitchell's 2003 column late this past Friday afternoon. An even application of the kind of company policies I expect in any large media organization against this kind of unethical behavior should provide the remedy.

Please let me know what steps VNU Media intends to take to resolve this matter.

Thank you very much for your time.

Respectfully,

I certainly hope Mr. Thoretz and VNU Media will choose to publicly respond to this issue sooner rather than later. By now, they should know that the longer things linger the more time people have to dig, and the worse things get, day by day.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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With the exposure of the "Pallywood" staging of events in Lebanon and Gaza recently, it is perhaps expected that we look at recent claims that a Reuters news vehicle was hit by an Israeli air strike with a certain degree of skepticism, especially as similar attacks have been claimed recently, and convincingly debunked. The fact that Reuters' own reporting of the incident attempted to hide the identity of one of the journalists doesn't exactly lend their account of story much credibility.

And so much to his credit, AllahPundit has refused to take the easy way and assume that the Reuters air strike was faked. In fact, he makes a decent case that case that not only did the strike probably occur, but that 2.75" (70MM) rockets were the likely munition used, based upon the logical comments of someone claiming to be an intel expert:

My second theory, which I think is a slightly more probable, is that the van was attacked with two 70mm unguided rockets. Apaches and other helicopters frequently carry pods with these rockets...

...Although unguided, at close range they are very accurate. This scenario would better fit the report of two rockets since they are usually fired in pairs. Although not definitive, the damage could easily have come from hit from one of these rockets. The 70mm rocket has a smaller warhead than the hellfire and is typically impact detonated. I think the damage seen is consistent with a rocket of this type.

Based upon the opinion of a long-time Army chopper jockey I know who is still active in the aerospace defense establishment, I'm not sure that Allah's expert is correct, but from where I sit, that is kind of beside the point. The point is that good bloggers keep searching for proof where others in the blogosphere and in the professional media often seem to choose a storyline and insert the facts to fit their preconceived biases.

We may never know conclusively what happened in this air strike, but Allah is exhausting every effort at his disposal to make the attempt, and it's something more of us should try to do, both media amateurs and professionals alike.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:48 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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A battered Mardi Gras float in a Gretna, LA, warehouse destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

One year ago today, Hurricane Katrina made its second and third landfalls as a Category 3 Hurricane. While the media continues to portray Katrina as the "perfect storm" because of the destruction it caused in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the simple fact is that Katrina could have been far worse. New Orleans did not suffer a direct hit.

At some point in the unforeseen future, the perfect storm will hit New Orleans, and the billions of dollars we are pumping into rebuilding the city will be realized for the misallocation of funds that it is as it slides beneath the waves for a final time, perhaps with a far greater loss of life than the 1,836 souls that were lost when Katrina bypassed New Orleans.

We should have learned; you don't build a major city in a hole in a swamp surrounded by the Mighty Mississippi on the once side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other an expect it to last. Katrina should have been our wake-up call to relocate or abandon the Big Easy for higher ground; instead we are pumping millions of dollars into a city that the Army Corps of Engineers predicted would fall into the sea within 50 years even before Katrina chewed up an already receding Louisiana coastline.

A pre-Katrina map of what the Louisiana coastline may look like in less than 50 years.

We have not learned the lessons that this mighty near miss tried to teach us, and are now doomed to repeat our mistake in the future. It is arrogant and foolish to think Band-Aid solutions will resurrect a city so close to its natural death.

So what would have been the "proper" response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina? Rebuilding elsewhere. Surely, the millions of dollars flowing into the slowly drowning city of New Orleans would have been better spent in relocating it to higher ground further inland, where it could have a legitimate chance to rebuild and prosper, instead of looking forward to the dark further of The Next Time, when the futility of our efforts to combat the forces of nature will be realized on a stark day after.

But instead we rebuild New Orleans to fail, no stronger, weaker in many regards, and doomed to repeat as scene of massive tragedy. We have failed to learn from the recent past, and will be forced to live with the consequences in the future.

Update: In the comments, some folks are making the correct observation that not all of New Orleans flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina, and that some spots are indeed above sea level. To them I say, "for now."

New Orleans, on average, is eight feet below sea level, and sinking three feet per century.

The simple fact of the matter is that all of New Orleans (and the Mississippi Delta in general) is built upon a bed of silt hundreds of feet thick, and this fine material is constantly compacting. The rate of subsidence varies from spot to spot, but all of the Mississippi delta is subsiding, and all of New Orleans is sinking along with it.

That is according to the U.S Geological Survey.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:12 AM | Comments (52) | Add Comment
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Mary Katherine Ham notes this Club for Growth article that Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) may be the "mystery senator" holding up legislation that would create "an online, searchable database to allow taxpayers to investigate all federal spending."

Is she?

Well, she certainly seems to have the right qualifications...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:54 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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This past Friday afternoon, an unscrupulous revision to a forgotten three year-old editorial by Greg Mitchell became the bomb that threatens to blow apart Editor & Publisher, a media industry trade publication, and it's parent company, VNU Media.

Mitchell wrote a two part editorial last week, "In Defense of War Photographers," attacking bloggers for exposing Reuters news photographers as the author of two faked photos, and calling into question other events bloggers felt were possibly staged.

I hypothesized on Friday that Mitchell's stirring defense of the suspected fakers might have arisen from his own past as someone who has admitted staging the news in a 2003 editorial.

The story should have died right there, but then, in a surprisingly stupid and petty act, someone with access to Mitchell's editorial decided to change the lede of the editorial to paint Mitchell in a more favorable light. Someone at Editor & Publisher was rewriting history within hours of unwanted attention cast upon the editorial by a handful of blogs.

Suddenly, the sleepy little editorial that had lain dormant for three years had detonated into charges of "journalistic malpractice" and calls for Mitchell to resign. Surely, someone who represents an industry trade publication as its editor must be held to the same standards as other journalists, if not higher standards.

And so while other fact errors in Mitchell's editorial have been addressed, Editor & Publisher pointedly refuse to even mention the blatant rewrite of the column's lede that suddenly brought this sleepy editorial back to the nation's attention.

Editor & Publisher and Greg Mitchell could easily defuse an increasingly volatile situation by simply admitting that Mitchell "tweaked" the article because he wanted to write off his fraud as a youthful indiscretion, but instead of taking a small bite of well-deserved crow, it seems Editor & Publisher and their parent company, VNU Media, may attempt instead to act as if nothing ever happened, and hope that the storm will pass without them having to admit their ever-compounding errors in judgement.

Mary Katharine Ham is trying to reach Mitchell at Editor and Publisher for comment, but so far has had no luck. I think she should try Will Thoretz, VNU's company spokesman instead. It seems that sooner rather than later that this particular ball will be in his court as Mitchell continues to hope that his fradulent past and present won't catch up to him.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:33 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Mary Katharine Ham has a new column up at Townhall.com discussing the "Fauxtography" scandals and the journalistic malpractice in Greg Mitchell's 2003 column that I highlighted over the weekend.

I should hope that Editor & Publisher's parent company VNU Media follows David Perlmutter's suggested option on how to handle similar scandals:

News picture-making media organizations have two paths of possible response to this unnerving new situation. First, they can stonewall, deny, delete, dismiss, counter-slur, or ignore the problem. To some extent, this is what is happening now and, ethical consideration aside, such a strategy is the practical equivalent of taking extra photos of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The second, much more painful option, is to implement your ideals, the ones we still teach in journalism school. Admit mistakes right away. Correct them with as much fanfare and surface area as you devoted to the original image. Create task forces and investigating panels. Don't delete archives but publish them along with detailed descriptions of what went wrong. Attend to your critics and diversify the sources of imagery, or better yet be brave enough to refuse to show any images of scenes in which you are being told what to show. I would even love to see special inserts or mini-documentaries on how to spot photo bias or photo fakery—in other words, be as transparent, unarrogant, and responsive as you expect those you cover to be.

The stakes are high. Democracy is based on the premise that it is acceptable for people to believe that some politicians or news media are lying to them; democracy collapses when the public believes that everybody in government and the press is lying to them.

While Perlmutter was specifically talking about photojournalism, the same principles apply to print journalism as well. VNU Media would be wise to opt for a transparent investigation.

We should know just how seriously they value their credibility by their action or inaction later today.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Reuters claims this armored car was hit by two missiles from an Israeli helicopter.

As you can see, Isreal's new missiles are quite different than the standard Hellfire and TOW ATGMs of the past, both of which, designed for tanks, would have minced an armored car such as this one. Ths armored car is said to have been hit not once, but twice by missiles, and the only apparent damage is a hole that seems to be surrounded by rust. Corrosion, or explosion?

I think it is fairly obvious that if the Israelis did fire two missiles at this armor car, that the car did not take a direct hit. Tanks can't survive the ATGMs Israel uses on their helicopters, and armored cars have much thinner armor than tanks. It would have cut through one side, detonated, and left a shattered, burning hulk. There was no explosion, and even a dud would have completely punched through the vehicle, exiting the other side with a noticable hole. The photo below shows no such penetration on the opposite side.

Powerline has more. I'd consider the possibility of a near miss causing some damage, but this vehicle was not directly hit by any known missile, and I don't know of any weapons system that would cause a vehicle to apparently rust by the next morning.

To put it mildly, I view the Reuters claims of an successful pair of Israeli missile strikes on this vehicle as highly unlikely.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:29 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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A bit of three years after-the-fact editing in a 2003 Greg Mitchell editorial at Editor & Publisher got quite a bit of attention in the blogosphere yesterday.

For those you now just coming to this story, Mitchell wrote a May, 20, 2003 article in which he admitted to faking a news story as a young reporter. Jon Ham tipped me off to the existence of the article, which led me to write this post opining that perhaps Mitchell wrote his sympathetic and spirited defenses of photojournalists accused of staging photographs precisely because he, too, had an admitted history as a fraudulent journalist.

My post, complete with a link to Mitchell's 2003 editorial, went "live" early Friday afternoon, complete with quotes pulled from Mitchell's article.

Many blogs linked the story quickly starting at 1:56 PM, and by 4:00 PM, no fewer than five other blogs had copied sections of text, including the opening paragraph. By 5:00 PM, in the course of an hour, the long-dormant story reappeared, rewritten to emphasize Mitchell's youth and inexperience.

As Mary Katharine Ham noted:

This is just so phenomenally stupid. CY rounded up all the blogs that excerpted the original article, and he has the link to the original article from the Wayback Machine. It's all there, for everyone to see. All of the incredible dishonesty. If it was pathetic to fake a story about tourists at Niagara, it's downright embarrassing to alter the confession after a couple people bring attention to it.

Stephen Spriuell, writing at National Review Online's Media Blog, says this represents journalistic malpractice, and if true, calls Mitchell's professional ethics into question.

And so as the work week begins again tomorrow, I suspect we're going to learn some lessons not only about Mitchell, but about the company Mitchell works for, VNU Business Media, and it's President and CEO, Michael Marchesano. Marchesano's site states that, "VNU Business Media takes pride in being one of the most prestigious and respected business information companies in the world."

I have no reason to doubt that, and at this point on a Sunday morning, would be quite surprised if Mr. Marchesano even knew about the potential damage to his company's reputation committed by "someone" trying to mitigate the damage to the reputation of someone who is already a self-admitted fraud.

VNU Business Media claims "45 market-leading trade magazines, 17 directories, 70 events and conferences, 65 trade shows and 165 eMedia products." We will learn tomorrow how willing they are to defend their credibility, and how transparently they choose to respond to what is a flagrant and well-documented cases of dishonesty by someone on their editorial staff. This case is easily proven by an internal audit showing precisely who updated the May 20, 2003 article between 4:00PM and 5:00 PM (Eastern) this past Friday afternoon.

The actual investigation should take less than an hour, but how VNU Business Media, Editor & Publisher, and Greg Mitchell choose to respond may affect them all for a long time to come.

Update: It might not be VNU Business Media that looks into Mitchell's apparent transgressions, but VNU eMedia, who can be contacted here. If you choose to write VNU, please respectfully ask for a review of the changes to the article, and explain who you think it warrants a review.

Update: Dan Riehl establishes that Mitchell seems to have lied about other elements of this story as well. Riehl argues Mitchell was neither nineteen, nor an intern, but 21-year-old professional journalist when he committed his first journalistic fraud. It seems Greg Mitchell has a pattern of behavior that should call his entire body of work into question.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:40 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Acting on a tip yesterday from Jon Ham, I wrote this post, ripping into Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell for his guilty history of staging the news.

The story was quickly picked up in the blogosphere, including NRO's Media Blog, Instapundit, and Ace of Spades HQ.

The "meat" of the story was Greg Mitchell's 2003 admission that he had faked a minor news story in his past, and this "re-broke" after Mitchell had just written a pair of columns blasting bloggers for questioning the apparent staging and faking of news stories by the media in the recent Israeli-Hezbollah war. The article read:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

I never found out. Oh, I went down to the falls, all right, but when I got there, I discovered that I just could not wander up to strangers (even dorky ones wearing funny hats and knee socks) and ask them for their personal opinions, however innocuous. It was a puffball assignment, but that wasn't why I rebelled. I just could not bring myself to do it.

So I sat on a park bench and scribbled out a few fake notes and then went back to the office and wrote my fake story, no doubt quoting someone like Jane Smith from Seattle, honeymooning with her husband Oscar, saying something like, "Gosh, I never knew there was so much rock under there!"

Of course, I got away with it.

That was exactly the text of this article when I, Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall.com, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, Mike of Cold Fury, and Suitably Flip cited the text of the article this afternoon.

And yet now, things have mysteriously changed within the article.

As cited by the six blogs listed in the proceeding paragraph, the opening lines of the article began:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally “turned off” the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

By 5:01 PM Eastern time, someone pasting at CY under the name Barfly, in a comment defending Mitchell, noted:

"Back when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern[ . . .]"

I think its hilarious how you take Greg to task - and do it in such a dishonest way! Why did you omit the part about his being an intern at the time? Did it interfere with your narrative?. . .

And Barfly was correct: the narrative had changed. It had changed to this:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

Not sure what changed? Let's show the newly added words in bold just to make it a bit more obvious:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

Someone substantially altered the text of the mediainfo.com story, after six different bloggers cited the article. If you type in the URL of http://www.mediainfo.com/ and press "enter" so that you could investigate who mediainfo.com belongs to, wondering how they could change such an old story so quickly, the URL will resolve to adweek.com.

Adweek is owned by VNU Business Media, the same company that runs media web sites BrandWeek, MediaWeek and--you guessed it--Editor & Publisher, where Greg Mitchell is the editor on the hotseat.

It is readily apparent that someone at Editor and Publisher has been manipulating the news a lot more recently than 1967, and if I was a corporate officer at VNU Business Media, I think I'd start my Monday morning by asking who has access rights to post and repost stories, and I'd make a thorough investigation of the server logs to see who uploaded the changes to that article Friday afternoon, sometime between 2:30 PM and 5:01 PM. I'd ask, because that someone is torpedoing my company's credibility.

When they talk to "that person," I hope they remind him that 1967 is long past, but character flaws are forever.

Update: Ed Driscoll notes that the original, unaltered article exists on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:19 AM | Comments (84) | Add Comment
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1 Well, this is something of a bombshell. Obviously it suggests the intellectual dishonesty Greg Mitchell engaged in as a “19-year-old intern” (or staff reporter or whatever) is still very much apart of his journalistic persona. What’s especially ironic is that E&P presents itself as being the conscious and “watchdog” of the journalistic trade or “profession.” Yet here’s an apparent example of E&P going into archival materials and making changes – without notifying readers. If true, it’s going to be fascinating to see how this plays out. Incidentally, when E&P was covering the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, I noticed an online discussion (I don’t remember where) between journalists about how the wording in E&P’s hard-hitting stories criticizing the media’s coverage had mysteriously changed during the day. And these changes, to be sure, apparently went beyond typos, misspellings, and that sort of thing. E&P allegedly tweaked substantive parts of its articles -- just like it’s apparently done with archival material -- rather than notifying readers of clarifications or corrections. To be sure, I don’t know if my anecdote involving E&P’s mine coverage is accurate. But it certainly is consistent with what’s being described in respect to the mysterious changes in Mitchell’s retrospective piece. Finally, as I noted in an earlier comment, even if Mitchell was only an intern, it’s highly probable he had enough journalism experience and training to know that what he was doing was wrong. There’s a final irony here. Like many senior editors in the MSM, Mitchell came of age during the Watergate and Vietnam War eras. That’s when the word “cover-up,” among other things, became part of the journalistic lexicon. And those engaging in cover-ups of any kind -- according to the journalistic culture that sprang from that era -- were given no quarter. Now that E&P is engaging in an apparent cover-up, let’s see how much slack Mitchell’s MSM pals give him.

Posted by: dpaulin at August 26, 2006 02:47 AM (AN+Gn)

2 It takes forever to load, but as of the time of this post, the original version of Mitchell's article is still in The Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Posted by: Ed Driscoll at August 26, 2006 03:07 AM (thF07)

3 Someone substantially altered the text of the mediainfo.com story, after six different bloggers cited the article. If you type in the URL of http://www.mediainfo.com/ and press "enter" so that you could investigate who mediainfo.com belongs to, wondering how they could change such an old story so quickly, the URL will resolve to adweek.com. It is readily apparent that someone at Editor and Publisher has been manipulating the news a lot more recently than 1967, and if I was a corporate officer at VNU Business Media, I think I'd start my Monday morning by asking who has access rights to post and repost stories, and I'd make a thorough investigation of the server logs to see who uploaded the changes to that article Friday afternoon, sometime between 2:30 PM and 5:01 PM. IÂ’d ask, because that someone is torpedoing my companyÂ’s credibility. When they talk to "that person," I hope they remind him that 1967 is long past, but character flaws are forever." Posted by Confederate Yankee at August 26, 2006 01:19 AM | TrackBack So you have no proof of this "change", correct? And we're supposed to just trust that you wingers aren't covering for each other? Here's an alternate theory: one blogger (perhaps "Jon Ham") altered the text for partisan reasons, and sent it out, and you guys ran with it. When I pointed out the discrepancy, you went into CYA mode. Since I caught the change, and not you, I could just as easily ascribe this "change" to you, as you did to someone at E&P as you have no proof. The alternative is to take you guys at your word, without proof. This stinks like a "family" cover-up, and I don't mean Greg Sargent and E&P. Why would he include the info, after leaving it out? What purpose would it serve? But you, your motives are crystal, buddy.

Posted by: Barfly at August 26, 2006 03:16 AM (LaWWK)

4 Barfly, The original is still archived and online.

Posted by: Ed Driscoll at August 26, 2006 03:26 AM (thF07)

5 Mayhap it's time for Greg Mitchell to be exiled to the Island of Misfit Journalists along with Mary Mapes, Dan Rather, Jayson Blair, and a good chunk of Reuters' photo stringers. There's a certain principle in law enforcement that says for evey time someone is caught doing something wrong, there were probably ten times they were not caught. Character matters quite a lot in a business based so much on trust.

Posted by: TallDave at August 26, 2006 07:11 AM (H8Wgl)

6 Barfly, My hacking skills aren't what you imagine. I would have no idea how to get into E&P's server to change wording in a column. I remembered that column from four years ago because it enraged me so at the time. I wrote a letter contemporaneously to Romenesko's blog about it, but no one seemed to think this was a big deal. But that's because at the time I worked for the MSM and when writing to Romenesko I was talking to the MSM, and E&P circulated only to the MSM. Talk about a closed circuit! As for the word changes, I don't see the point. Mitchell made clear in the original (fifth graf) that he was a 19-year-old intern and I referenced that in my letter. Putting it in the lede ex post facto doesn't change much. Anyway, this whole episode has been an instructive lesson in how the new media has changed everything.

Posted by: Jon Ham at August 26, 2006 08:04 AM (oaai4)

7 Mike Wallace can learn a thing or two from Greg Mitchell.

Posted by: jay at August 26, 2006 08:20 AM (tG/yU)

8 "And we're supposed to just trust that you wingers aren't covering for each other?" Barfly: it looks like you owe them an apology. Will one be forthcoming? I doubt it.

Posted by: Charlie the Hammer at August 26, 2006 09:01 AM (F427A)

9 With the original article clearly stored in the Internet Archives, "Barfly" and Mr. Mitchell will have to back up from the "smear campaign" claims and try something else. Attacking the bloggers as Wing Nuts is no doubt one plan, which they've already started. Hard to see that that will work when anyone with a spare minute can confirm this for themselves. E&P can only pray that a bigger story will surface that will distract their critics. But bigger than the challenge to E&P will be the challenge for the New York Times. Mr. Mitchell has been a "long time contributor" for the paper of record. I wonder what similar "skills" he's applied there? Anyone care to look?

Posted by: Regret at August 26, 2006 09:13 AM (4Rdaz)

10 Good work.

Posted by: Patterico at August 26, 2006 09:16 AM (nzgAx)

11 It's not the crime, it's the coverup. Except in this case it's the crime too.

Posted by: Barfy at August 26, 2006 09:17 AM (9dLdW)

12 Coverup ? Who does he think you are? The Edgartown police investigating an automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island?

Posted by: Actual at August 26, 2006 09:32 AM (jSipq)

13 That wasn't much of an apology, Barfly.

Posted by: Laddy at August 26, 2006 09:39 AM (4/q5L)

14 Barfly: Come on, don't apologize, dig deeper! Obviously, those right-wing ideologues at the WaybackMachine are in on the act. Google's cache--and everybody else who will have looked at the prior-to-change version is part of the conspiracy, too! Call Oliver Stone!

Posted by: A. Rickey at August 26, 2006 09:52 AM (BWWt2)

15 What's new? Making up stories is part of lazy journalism practiced since Guttenburg. Its now getting more notice because of the blogging community which has become like a uncontrollable thruth serum. Of course, 3 martini journalists don't like it - why should they.

Posted by: Jack Lillywhite at August 26, 2006 09:52 AM (y0YKw)

16 Laddy, if you look closely, 'Barfy' is not 'Barfly'. They even indicate different email addresses. I think the best we can hope for is that 'Barfly' will STFU, having no sane response that can be fit into the Derangement Syndrome worldview.

Posted by: The Monster at August 26, 2006 09:52 AM (tw5mW)

17 Hmmn, he was there in 1967 reporting about the Falls being turned off? I thought the Corp of Engineers did that in 1969 not 1967.

Posted by: Uncle_Walther at August 26, 2006 09:58 AM (u0+aA)

18 That doesn't sound like an apology to John Ham to me, Barfly.

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 10:04 AM (DRifx)

19 This little fracas is getting to be par for the course with Editor and Publisher. The magazine is as much about left-wing editorializing and activism as it is about media criticism. See here: http://blogs.rocky mountainnews.com/denver/temple/archives/2006/08/why_editor_publ.html And here: http://www.inopinion.com/features/?itemid=951 And here: http://www.inopinion.com/features/index.php?itemid=805

Posted by: David Mastio at August 26, 2006 10:13 AM (ac6h5)

20 I've always wondered how the barking moonbats could support the conspiracy theories they come up with. Now ... evidence that at least one of them is a drunk and has pickled his brain. It begins to come together.

Posted by: NahnCee at August 26, 2006 10:15 AM (p1fbb)

21 1967... 1969... what's the difference? Uncle looks to be correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagra_Falls

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 10:19 AM (DRifx)

22 Barfly, In your original comment, you thought that C.Y. had misquoted the E&P article by Mitchell, right? Then in this thread, you wrote (8/26/06 3:16am) that a right-wing blogger might have altered the text of Mitchell's E&P article to create this kerfluffle. You mean that Jon Ham or somebody hacked E&P's site and made the text alterations illicitly and without Mitchell's or E&P's knowledge, right? Jon Ham noted the obvious (8:04am), that it's a bit of a stretch to hang the subtle changes in the article on uberhacking feats by bloggers unaffiliated with E&P. Then you recently commented (9:17am) It's not the crime, it's the coverup. Except in this case it's the crime too. I'm confused. What do you now see as the crime, and what do you think the coverup is?

Posted by: AMac at August 26, 2006 10:19 AM (GWP+/)

23 Wow, IÂ’ve heard of rewriting history, but that is a literal rewrite. I would think that in the long run, the MSM would be grateful to bloggers, for helping them with their fact checking. ItÂ’s not like bloggers want to destroy all news agencies, but rather for them to tighten up the screws. When youÂ’re caught, you have to repent and move on. You donÂ’t get to counter accuse. I guess thatÂ’s the new definition of good journalism.

Posted by: brando at August 26, 2006 10:20 AM (K+VjK)

24 Okay, am i the only person who doesn't really care. Okay, so he added that he was 19 and an intern. He added a little mitigating info. so what? At worst, he should have noted the minor change, but so long as it is true, i don't see how its a big ethical lapse to add it in. The real headline is he has done this himself.

Posted by: A.W. of Freespeech.com at August 26, 2006 10:22 AM (ajx3n)

25 Except, A.W., it looks like he was lying about being 19 if the falls were actually turned off in 1969 as Wikipedia indicates. What we appear to have hear is an interesting story...

Posted by: Jason Blair at August 26, 2006 10:30 AM (retis)

26 off coarse, Eye mint "here". Stupdi tiepos.

Posted by: Jason Blair at August 26, 2006 10:32 AM (retis)

27 The Falls were shut off in 1969, not 1967. Was this just a typo at E&P or another clumsy lie? When was Greg Mitchell born? Was he a 19 year old intern in 1969, when he fabricated the Falls story?

Posted by: Lewis at August 26, 2006 10:33 AM (hfEuj)

28 The Monster wrote (9:52am): if you look closely, 'Barfy' is not 'Barfly'. They even indicate different email addresses. Sorry, Barfly, my bad at 10:19am--missed that. I still hope you do share your current thinking on how the changes at E&P came to pass.

Posted by: AMac at August 26, 2006 10:34 AM (GWP+/)

29 A classic case of digging deeper, and an extraordinary irony. Mitchell presented the tale as a learning experience: he was only 19, an intern. As he wrote it, he must have thought how safely distant that lapse was, his position at the helm of E&P proof of how far he'd come. Who could doubt he had learned right from wrong? Changing the article, assuming Mitchell did it, suggests he would have profitted from a few more lessons in ethics, particularly given parallels with the recent photo scandals. That old E&P article is a historical artifact, a piece of evidence, that an honest journalist would have to deal with as is. However, as in the case of the corrupt photojournalists, the evidence (text/image) that's available didn't tell quite the right story, so it had to be altered. The change is modest, as Jon Ham points out above. It does not change the facts of the story, only the effect of the story on the reader. But it does change the fact of the story itself, and it does reveal a distrust of the reader great enough to rationalize dishonesty. How common is this attitude among journalists? How often do well-meaning journalists rationalize dishonesty in the name of "truth"? Truth of this sort is unmoored from facts and essentially a literary effect.

Posted by: clazy at August 26, 2006 10:38 AM (BJOWr)

30 What do you now see as the crime I've submitted this case to the Kos jury for deliberation. The charge: Criticism of an apparent leftwing moonbat who admits to "making shit up" as a journalist. The defense: incoherant rambling and nonsense. Verdict: Innocent by reason of being a fellow traveler ;->

Posted by: Purple Avenger at August 26, 2006 10:39 AM (+u+9/)

31 Barfy Barfly

Posted by: spacemonkey at August 26, 2006 10:42 AM (qSKHX)

32 Well... Wikipedia seems pretty certain that it was June, 1969 that the falls were turned off to work on the rock faces, not 1967. So the question is, was Mitchell 21, not 19, when he fabricated those quotes? Anybody got access to Mitchell's DOB?

Posted by: MrJimm at August 26, 2006 10:43 AM (K4jYa)

33 that was supposed to be a mathematical 'not equal' sign.

Posted by: spacemonkey at August 26, 2006 10:44 AM (qSKHX)

34 They should have put a note saying the article had been updated. So that's a little sneaky. However--the issue itself is a non-issue. Yeah, he made a minor mistake 40 years ago!~ And he is admitting it in the article because it's relevant. And yet the "character" death squads get called out. Absurd. How is dialogue to exist with such over-the-top over-reaction--please. Without sin, throw the first stone and all that. Come on. Cripes.

Posted by: lee kane at August 26, 2006 10:48 AM (T3vq4)

35 Btw, how old was Domenech when he plagiarized? And what happened to him?

Posted by: Patterico at August 26, 2006 10:58 AM (nzgAx)

36 Lee. A mistake is when you grab the wrong coffee cup. "Mistake" has no component of will in it. Mitchell didn't make a mistake. He lied on purpose. And he did it for a reason, to make it easy on himself.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at August 26, 2006 10:59 AM (rAMA0)

37 Umm, lee - rewriting the article three years after the fact is not a good journalistic practice. Adding an 'Update' would be okay. Updated: This article has generated some recent interest, I'd like to make it more clear that the example I give is from when I was 19 years old, working as an intern. Greg Mitchell ------------------ Original text. ------------------

Posted by: BumperStickerist at August 26, 2006 11:03 AM (PcDvW)

38 Lee Kane, For a business engaged in reporting facts, a "little sneaky" is like "a little bit pregnant".

Posted by: Chants at August 26, 2006 11:03 AM (PvJWa)

39 Looks like Mitchell was indeed 21 at the time, based on a 2003 article listing his age as 55. http://suitablyflip.blogs.com/suitably_flip/2006/08/recovering_fabu.html

Posted by: Flip at August 26, 2006 11:11 AM (OmwM3)

40 Will Editor & Publisher finally change their name to Fabricator & Airbrusher? The MSM deserves a worthies cataloger of its demise than this.

Posted by: hehster at August 26, 2006 11:26 AM (S7FHT)

41 No updated response from Barfly yet.... If this were a 1337 h4x0r website, they'd have a word for what happened to Barfly... PWNED!!11!! Hey Spacemonkey, I kind of like Barfy.

Posted by: Lubbert Das at August 26, 2006 11:35 AM (jz18l)

42 Just a thought: Have you checked barfly's IP address? -- Erik

Posted by: Erik at August 26, 2006 11:37 AM (H2vXM)

43 This is just another example of the fifth column in America exposing itself.

Posted by: Tood at August 26, 2006 11:52 AM (QRBhQ)

44 A.W., I guess it's just you. The post-publication edits are not, as you pointed out, noted. The piece is simply edited as if it were written that way in 2003. Was the piece edited as recently as August 2006? If so, why? You seem to believe the details are simply mitigating, but Barfly brings forward the accusation that it was Jon Ham who edited the piece to make Greg Mitchell look back. I would present to you that it was someone working on behalf of Greg Mitchel to make Jon Ham look unethical in the face of Ham's disgust at what Mitchell calls trivial and common fabrication. Think about it.

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 11:52 AM (DRifx)

45 I must immediately retract my accusation. Looking at the edit history at the Wayback Machine it seems as if the story was edited between November 5, 2003 and January 17, 2004. So it does indeed look as if the details are mitigating even if they are not accurate.

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 11:56 AM (DRifx)

46 Faking the news is nothing new. In one of his memoirs, Henry Louis Mencken relates that as a cub reporter covering the waterfront for the Sunpapers in Baltimore, he and the other cub reporters for the other 5 dailies in the city decided the weather was too nasty to work, and so they spent the day in a tavern, eating & drinking. To cover themselves, they made up a story which they all turned in to their editors. The next day, Mencken's editor confronted him: Nice work, he said, this time at least you spelled the names right. Now if any researcher happened upon that story in the archives of the Sunpapers, and confirmed that all of the daily newspapers in the city had the identical story, he would be certain that the events recounted actually occurred. But it was all made up. Making up the news is an old story. Getting caught by the blogosphere is what's new.

Posted by: Gandalin at August 26, 2006 11:57 AM (ltFM+)

47 Barfly has cut 'n run.

Posted by: Garth Farkley at August 26, 2006 12:02 PM (2y863)

48 AW of Freespeech's comment is not unfair, and it would be tempting to go with it. If they had been true (see, conservatives understand stuff like the subjunctive too, y'know) the additions, though clearly intended to offer youth and inexperience as excuses, would have been fairly minor. But they're not just nothing. They actually illuminate his original comments interestingly, suggesting a person of low social courage who has an inordinate fear of looking foolish. Which ties in pretty strongly with the criticism of MSM figures as "all on the same page," "living in a bubble," "drawn from the same political class," etc. So by giving us less information, then having to backtrack and grudgingly give more to cover their asses, they end up by revealing more about themselves than they ever intended.

Posted by: Assistant Village Idiot at August 26, 2006 12:03 PM (1w197)

49 BTW, here's confirmation of the 1969 date from a non-Wikipedia source. (courtesy LGF)

Posted by: Abu Al-Poopypants at August 26, 2006 12:14 PM (QB67L)

50 And here's the edit history according to the archive: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030 You have to click on each edit to determine when the excuses, er I mean details, were added. CY, where did you find the May-November 2003 version of the story or is it your assertion that the story on mediainfo.com to which you linked was the source for your blockquote? Can you clarify?

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 12:17 PM (DRifx)

51 The version on the WayBack machine does explicitly state that Mitchell was a 19-year-old summer intern: Still, I felt bad about it for years and (obviously) have never forgotten it. On the other hand, I was, at the time, just 19, it was a summer internship, and I'd only been on the job about a month.

One of the many alarming things about the Jayson Blair scandal is that he never grew up, and no one at The New York Times ever seemed to notice. My ethical breach at 19 in Niagara Falls was bad enough. One expects a bit more from a 27-year-old with years of experience in New York.

Posted by: Lindsay Beyerstein at August 26, 2006 12:43 PM (endTl)

52 Checking the Wayback Machine more closely, not only was the article substantively editted, but the audit trail for changes was faked, as well. The article was in 2003. There are 3 change entries listed in 2003, and their web address gives a matching datestamp. For example, the change listed as "Nov 05, 2003" has a "20031105072113" embedded in the archive URL. The 2003 updates do not have the bit about being a 19 year old intern. There are 2 changes listed in 2004. They both have the 19 year old intern bit. However, the url shows the updates occuring in 2006. For example, the change linked on Wayback as "Jan 17, 2004" has embedded "20060826173129". Assuming those are Greenwich timestamps (5 hours ahead of the US east coast), it means the update was added earlier today. Here's the Wayback change history url for the article in question http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030 It shows 5 changes, purporting that 3 were in 2003 and 2 in 2004. Each change link goes to a url of the form http://web.archive.org/web/ TIMESTAMP ARTICLESPECIFIC The 3 2003 changes have url parts that agree with the date. None of these have the 19 year old intern bit. The 2 changes purporting to be from 2004 have timestamps in with 20060826 in them. The 2 changes are seconds apart and both have the 19 year old intern claim. It wouldn't shock me if the change history gets altered again. For posterity, the current link for the first version with the 19 year old intern claim purports to be "Jan 19, 2004" but the link goes to the url "http://web.archive.org/web/20060826175353/http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030"

Posted by: Lewis at August 26, 2006 12:57 PM (hfEuj)

53 Lewis, I cannot confirm your claims. The URLs I get are now: http://web.archive.org/web/20040117221659/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030 and http://web.archive.org/web/20041128205109/http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1891030 As you can see, there is no 2006 timestamp there.

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 01:09 PM (DRifx)

54 I see. When I click on the links to the 2004 versions it resolves to a URL that is formatted as Lewis claims. When I click on the links to the 2003 versions they resolve to URLs that are formatted as though the date stamp is 2003. Maybe this time stamp does not indicate what you think it is? I don't know. Curiouser and curiouser.

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 01:20 PM (DRifx)

55 E&P used to be nothing but a classified ad vehicle for journalism jobs. Nobody ever paid attention to its editorial content before Mitchell came on board. He made it a vehicle for a sort of preserved-in-amber 1960s ethos, dressed in 21st century clothes. Strangest thing about this story: Why would a 19-year-old whose internship revealed to him that he could not approach strangers then continue on as a newspaperman? I was a 19-year-old intern a few years earlier than Mitchell, and if I'd found I was that shy about approaching strangers, I would have found another career.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 26, 2006 01:24 PM (byoh1)

56 We're forgetting what is most important in all of this: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH Not to mention Ted Turner's Ministry of Truth self-censorship of decades of cartoons to eliminate what is not politically correct today (i.e. smoking in Tom and Jerry)

Posted by: Symes at August 26, 2006 01:44 PM (EXkFi)

57 Lindsay, the article has also been edited without notation. Do you agree? I'm guessing that Greg has heard the story of the annual competition at the Prevaricator's Club. The reigning champ tells a tale of having been the only person ever to go UP Niagra Falls in a barrel. The challeneger, in a winning bid, simply says: "I know you did. I saw you do it." E&P: You lie, we swear to it.

Posted by: Pablo at August 26, 2006 01:55 PM (EErm0)

58 The original at TWM does have the references to him being a 19 year old intern in the fifth and sixth paragraphs -- just not the first one. And the asterisks on the Way Back Machine search page don't necessarily indicate changes in the text. Updating the page could be something like a change in formatting (which does occur here). But today's date in the URL of an update that was supposedly made back in 2004 is disturbing. That's pretty good evidence of a deliberate attempt to mislead people -- why, I can't imagine, since moving information already found later in the article up to the lede doesn't accomplish much. And pretty stupid not to have forged the change all the way back to the beginning. Unless he couldn't.

Posted by: LB at August 26, 2006 02:05 PM (r/50u)

59 The date in the Wayback URL is the date of the last crawl. So unfortunately, Wayback did not actually crawl or archive any versions of the story in 2004. We cannot know for a fact what those stories looked like in 2004 according to wayback. How did I end up on the live version of a site? or I clicked on X date, but now I am on Y date, how is that possible?

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 02:12 PM (DRifx)

60 Yes, the E&P article was edited without notation. Looks fishy to me, and utterly pointless. Why bother covertly rewriting a lede when the relevant information was already in the article?

Posted by: Lindsay Beyerstein at August 26, 2006 02:15 PM (endTl)

61 Exactly the right question, Lindsay. I think the answer lies in disrespect for your (or his, as it were) readers and your profession. He's just so much more clever than the rest of us.

Posted by: Pablo at August 26, 2006 02:24 PM (EErm0)

62 I believe CY took his blockquote from the link that I sent him yesterday. That version on the MediaInfo site did NOT have the 19-year-old intern info in the lede as of yesterday. It was as I remembered it from May 2003 when I posted my letter on the Poynter site. I don't think there's any question that it got changed yesterday afternoon or late last night.

Posted by: Jon Ham at August 26, 2006 02:30 PM (oaai4)

63 w3, upon further checking, I see the links purporting to be for changes in 2004 behave differently. The 2003 links give a timestamp in 2003 in the url. The links purporting to be in 2004 give an embedded timestamp that appears to be the Greenwich time of when the link was clicked. So, if you click the link twice, 2 minutes apart, you'll get different links, with timestamps 2 minutes apart and representative of the Greenwich time of when you click the links. Note that the old links persist, at least for a few hours. The first link, which I noted in my post above, still works. I find it hard to believe they save directories for every time someone clicks a link for years. I've checked other urls with changes in 2004. All of them give timestamps in the url which agree with the purported change date on the Wayback page. I've tried this for pages with multiple stories (e.g. instapundit.com) and single articles in other publications with 2004 changes. So, Confederate Yankee quoted what he thought to be the story. The story was changed, with an audit log that claimed the change which added the 19 year old intern claim were in 2004. However, Wayback recovery of "intern" links doesn't use Wayback's mechanism for retrieving archives. Wayback uses a uniform mechanism for the 2003 archives and the archives in 2004 for every other article or page I've checked. It's just the change for this article adding the "intern" claim, purported to be in 2004, that doesn't act like an archive. When Confederate Yankee first linked the story, he didn't go searching for an old copy. I don't think he got an old copy. I think the version without the "intern" claim was the version of record as recently as yesterday. It's odd someone would make 2 changes, separated by months in 2004, that got the date of Niagara closing wrong by 2 years. Especially if the biographical info linked earlier in the comments is correct, i.e. that Mitchell was 19 in 1967 when he interned but was 21 when he actually faked the story. We know Mitchell faked the original Niagara story because he admitted it. We know the update on his article about his fakery is factually incorrect (since Niagara wasn't shut down in 1967 but in 1969). We have an old interview that puts Mitchell's age at 19 in 1967 and 21 in 1969, when he actually faked the article. We have an audit trail for the addition of the "19 year old intern" claim that does not behave like other articles on Wayback or even like the earlier change logs for that article. This looks like deliberate fakery, not when Mitchell was 19 or 21 or even a factually incorrect mea culpa added in 2004. It looks like a fake planted this month. I'd appreciated it if those more familiar with Wayback can doublecheck me. Perhaps there is a special nonarchive archive that behaves in this manner for a special class of articles and only in a special date range. At this point, that's not the way to bet.

Posted by: Lewis at August 26, 2006 02:51 PM (hfEuj)

64 Well -- E&P has rewritten things before. In 2005 (I think ..looking for the email) they had an article in which President Bush "refused" to leave the school class he was at after being informed of the attacks. I wrote questioning the use of the word "refused." (I told them that English was only my first language, so maybe I could be wrong as to its meaning.) Interestingly they re-wrote that sentence in the online article.

I want to know how come they are the journalism-editor gurus when they don't know how to use language accurately? Anyway -- they have done rewrites of posted articles with no mea culpas. The question is why is it so important to rewrite this one when, as some others have pointed out, the age and intern info was already in there. I suppose one could say that young shy (??) journalists are allowed to make stuff up.

"Everybody" does. :-(

Posted by: JAL at August 26, 2006 03:07 PM (/XUEA)

65 I agree with you, Lewis. The only point I want to make clear is that when Wayback lacks an actual copy of a page they indicate has changed on a particular date, it will redirect to either the lastest copy they have or a live version of the page. It seems as though the 2004 versions were not archived by Wayback but marked as changed in some way. The links to the 2004 pages seem to redirect to what is there now. I don't think Wayback ever archived the pages from 2004, only 2003.

Posted by: w3 at August 26, 2006 03:14 PM (DRifx)

66 w3 writes "I don't think Wayback ever archived the pages from 2004, only 2003." I'd state it more strongly. Wayback was given an indication that updates were made in 2004, but it isn't true. The updates were made this month, after Confederate Yankee posted the article of record. Confederate Yankee posted and linked to the article of record August 25, 2006. At that time (yesterday), it did not contain the "19 year old intern" claim. The 2004 change dates are fakes. The reason Wayback performs differently here than on other articles is because there has been an incomplete attempt to corrupt the audit trail. I strongly suspect the attempt to corrupt the audit trail happened this month and was deliberate. I don't know enough about how Wayback works to say how they did it. It's probably something simple like setting a change date of record field that, if left blank, picks up when a web crawl notices the change. If such a thing is event driven (eg an RSS feed of changes) an automatic method will record it changing on the day the change was posted, unless specified otherwise.

Posted by: Lewis at August 26, 2006 03:45 PM (hfEuj)

67 Good catch, Confederate Yankee! You've got another scalp. No surprise that people who defend Hizballah propaganda manipulating the news out of Lebanon would turn out to be filthy liars themselves. Cleaning up the reporting out of Lebanon should never have been a partisan issue to begin with, but for whatever reason the Left has made it one.....

Posted by: LoafingOaf at August 26, 2006 03:51 PM (vFS/o)

68 Apparently to Mitchell and people like him truth and honor are flexible. Mistakes made as a youth just minor mistakes...inconsequntial. And the idea seems to carry on. Why bother with a few cheats and liars in the press? When I was 19 I was carrying an M-16 and at 21 commanding an infantry platoon. Honor and truthfulness were not inconsequential; they had real consequences and cheats and liars could not be tolerated. In today's world the media has a huge impact on public opinion, and in a democracy that translates to what our leaders do. Cheats and liars cannot be tolerated; the stakes are just too high. Yet Mitchell can't even see this and the reason is quite clear. Personal moral failure.

Posted by: Quilly Mammoth at August 26, 2006 03:57 PM (MtuFC)

69 Have you checked barfly's IP address? I'll bet one of Ace's juiceboxs it is somewhere in Brazil ;->

Posted by: Purple Avenger at August 26, 2006 03:59 PM (+u+9/)

70 OK so you're insane, right?

Posted by: jason at August 26, 2006 04:39 PM (PGGTb)

71 Wait! I got it! That date - 1967 - was seared...seared in his memory! Just think - if it indeed happened in 1969 (verified by at least two independent sources, judging by the above comments), then he must have been 21 - much, much closer in age to when he got his first "real" job in journalism.

Posted by: MrJimm at August 26, 2006 05:31 PM (K4jYa)

72 I put up the definitive proof of the timestamp issue just now at LGF, simply because I'm more familiar with what I can get away with, formatting-wise. Bottom line is that the two '2004' edits were crawled in REVERSE ORDER of how they purport to having been made.

Posted by: The Monster at August 26, 2006 06:36 PM (tw5mW)

73 JAL, E&P and its staff are not gurus of publishing. It was a job-hunting service -- a money-making one for a long time, although the Internet has pretty much eclipsed it now. My boss dropped his subscription at least 8 years ago. Mitchell got to be editor of a moribund publication and started punching out Tom Haydenish editorials. Except for Jim Romenesko, who will link to anything, nobody in newspapering pays any attention. In that sense, this is a tropical low -- not even a tempest -- in a very small teapot. I have enjoyed the dismantling of Mitchell not because he is an important spokesman for my profession. He is not even an unimportant spokesman for my profession. He is a nobody. I have enjoyed it because I think his editorials are a disgrace (and I've told him so) and I enjoy watching incompetents get theirs.

Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 26, 2006 07:16 PM (PXKeq)

74 This is such a non-story, is this a joke? Are there not real stories out there, talk about trying to invent a contreversy. I have seen LGF and Michelle Malkin change content without indications before.

Posted by: RealityCheck at August 26, 2006 09:38 PM (j2vGP)

75 Garth Farkley: Remember, it isn't cut and run, it "redeployed over the horizon."

Posted by: clark at August 26, 2006 11:39 PM (VmpAc)

76 "And we're supposed to just trust that you wingers aren't covering for each other?" -- Barfly Lord Rove hacked the passwords to the Google cache.

Posted by: Laika's Last Woof at August 27, 2006 03:30 AM (XAylz)

77 From June 12, 1969 to November 25, 1969 he only found a weekend to visit the dry falls? CouldnÂ’t find any friends who had been there and talk to them? By July it was a major attractionÂ… Just lazy, I guess. I mean, really, 19 or 21 he could have interviewed a few of his buddies at a bar and seen if they had seen the falls. That is *also* tourism. And what is even worse is that with just a bit of background he could have made a puff piece into something a bit less puffy. But that would require *dedication* to being a journalist, adhering to journalistic ethics and going after *more* than the story. The Perlmutter piece by E&P was bad. And I wrote to them on that before this debacle here. Excuse me if I do not think much of them and *their* dedication to the public.

Posted by: ajacksonian at August 27, 2006 06:34 AM (4rGOl)

78 RealityCheck: "I have seen LGF and Michelle Malkin change content without indications before." When? What content? Both sites use updates prodigiously. Please advise.

Posted by: Pablo at August 27, 2006 07:34 AM (EErm0)

79 things must be pretty desperate in wingnutland when this is all you guys have to talk about. "ooh, mitchell was 21, not 19, when he faked a quote -- yet another liberal media conspiracy revealed." get a grip, people. your president (he's definitely not mine) has sent this country swirling down the toilet. two-thirds of America agrees with me. and all you can do use flimsy prextexts to attack his critics. it's sad and pathetic.

Posted by: dt at August 27, 2006 08:31 AM (g/Qrs)

80 Someone calling themselves "RealityCheck" giving assertions as proof. Our schools really do not teach the appreciation of irony enough. Funny, but when I see non-stories I don't even bother to waste my time to comment. If there's nothing to see, just move along.

Posted by: w3 at August 27, 2006 08:48 AM (DRifx)

81 I think what you have to give Mitchell credit for is the fact that somehow in 1967 he knew the falls were going to be shut down in 1969. Either that or he completely fabricated a story in 1967....LOL. BTW - I am being facetious. dt - great name - stand for delerium tremons? Are you Barfly in disguise? At any rate - Bush's ratings have been back over 40% for some time now so your two-thirds comment is off track. Care to revise? It seems to me that you and yours spend an awful lot of time piping the same tune about a President that can't run again....LOL. What a waste of time on your part. Got anything else?

Posted by: Specter at August 27, 2006 09:21 AM (ybfXM)

82 Maybe I am not understanding all of this correctly- Is it the contention of Mr. Mitchell, E&P, Barfly, el al, that aside from the cover-up issue (not really an issue, is it?) that Mr. Mitchell can be forgiven the fact that he manufactured a story out of the ether because he was a 19 year old intern? I worked for a local paper starting as a senior in high school and the first and most important lesson that was CONSTANTLY hammered into me was being accurate and honest in my reporting. I was told that without the ability to report accurately and with some honest attempt at impartiality, there would be no support from the public, and rightly so. It doesn't matter if Mr. Mitchell was 19, 39, or 49, the fact that he admitted falsifing a story IS the news. (Yet another cardinal sin-becoming the news rather than reporting it) In the absense of any genuine remorse and apology, I cannot help but believe that the general public would have little reason to trust anything that Mr. Mitchell, and by association, the organization that publishes him, prints.

Posted by: Richard at August 28, 2006 01:53 PM (12umn)

83 [When they talk to "that person," I hope they remind him that 1967 is long past, but character flaws are forever.] Kind of like a president being a cocaine user and alcoholic in the '70's. Just saying.

Posted by: TimWB at August 28, 2006 03:46 PM (n6rxJ)

84 Oh Timmy, But it is YOU folks who constantly tell us that being addicted to such substances is a DISEASE, not a character flaw. ADMITTING to having such habits, and successfully kicking them demonstrates great character. And, Timmy, please note that announcing that you've kicked your habit as you step into your limo at Betty Ford is not equivalent to having actually done so. So, Timmy, you are a typical lib driven only by your NEED to bash Bush. You utterly fail to see that using this particular line of "reasoning" hoists you on your own patoot: Bush drank, and Mitchell lied way back when. Mitchell is still lying. Badly.

Posted by: BillSmith at August 28, 2006 05:11 PM (3kalG)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Greg Mitchell, the editor of the influential news trade publication Editor and Publisher has recently raised a spirited defense against questions and allegations that news may have been staged in some instances in the recent Israeli/Hezbollah war in Lebanon, may sound particularly defensive because of his own guilty history of staging news:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

I never found out. Oh, I went down to the falls, all right, but when I got there, I discovered that I just could not wander up to strangers (even dorky ones wearing funny hats and knee socks) and ask them for their personal opinions, however innocuous. It was a puffball assignment, but that wasn't why I rebelled. I just could not bring myself to do it.

So I sat on a park bench and scribbled out a few fake notes and then went back to the office and wrote my fake story, no doubt quoting someone like Jane Smith from Seattle, honeymooning with her husband Oscar, saying something like, "Gosh, I never knew there was so much rock under there!"

Of course, I got away with it.

Somehow, Greg, I don't think that you did. (h/t Jon Ham)

Update: Mary Katharine Ham has more.

Major update: More Fakery?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:41 PM | Comments (34) | Add Comment
Post contains 303 words, total size 2 kb.

According to the New York Times, the United States has initiated an investigation into the use of cluster bombs in South Lebanon during the recent Israeli War against Hezbollah terrorists:

The State Department is investigating whether Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons, two officials said.

The investigation by the department's Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.

For those of you that might not be familiar with the concept of cluster munitions, they different than more traditional explosives in that instead of relying on one large explosive projectile or multiple large explosive projectiles to destroy a target, they deploy a shell or bomb containing many smaller grenade-like bombs (submunitions) over a wider area, saturating a larger area with one cluster munition, theoretically decreasing the number of large explosives needed to take out an area target, such as a troop concentration, or in this instance most likely in the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah, rocket-launching sites. It may be simpler to compare it to the difference between using a rifle and a shotgun.

The recognized downside of cluster munitions are two-fold:

• cluster munitions are designed as area weapons, and are not capable of a pin-point strike to their wide dispersal
• the submunitions in traditional cluster bombs have a failure rate of between 2%-4% according to my subject matter expert, John Donovan. this means that between 2% and 4% of the submunitions fail to explode, essentially "mining" the area struck with unexploded ordinance

This does not mean cluster bombs are "bad" any more than any other physical object can be "good" or "bad," but knowing the characteristics of such weapons prescribes how they should be used.

It is generally accepted conventional wisdom that cluster munitions are acceptable area munitions against area targets such as troop and enemy vehicle or supply concentrations and certain kinds of entrenched positions. They are recognized as being dangerous to use in areas where civilians may fall victim to the immediate widespread blast pattern, or may return to encounter unexploded submunitions before engineering units can dispose of them. It is also not advisable to use cluster munitions in areas where you expect that your own troops may advance, as these same submunitions could cause casualties to friendly troops.

It is worth noting that no munition of any design is "dud-proof," but cluster munitions are more prone to fail to detonate simply because they require a larger number of separate charges to work, and some more modern cluster submunitions are designed to self destruct to reduce risk to civilian and soldier alike.

Back to the Times article:

The inquiry is likely to focus on whether Israel properly informed the United States about its use of the weapons and whether targets were strictly military. So far, the State Department is relying on reports from United Nations personnel and nongovernmental organizations in southern Lebanon, the officials said.

David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said, “We have not been informed about any such inquiry, and when we are we would be happy to respond.”

Officials were granted anonymity to discuss the investigation because it involves sensitive diplomatic issues and agreements that have been kept secret for years.

The agreements that govern Israel's use of American cluster munitions go back to the 1970's, when the first sales of the weapons occurred, but the details of them have never been publicly confirmed. The first one was signed in 1976 and later reaffirmed in 1978 after an Israeli incursion into Lebanon. News accounts over the years have said that they require that the munitions be used only against organized Arab armies and clearly defined military targets under conditions similar to the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973.

A Congressional investigation after Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon found that Israel had used the weapons against civilian areas in violation of the agreements. In response, the Reagan administration imposed a six-year ban on further sales of cluster weapons to Israel.

Israeli officials acknowledged soon after their offensive began last month that they were using cluster munitions against rocket sites and other military targets. While Hezbollah positions were frequently hidden in civilian areas, Israeli officials said their intention was to use cluster bombs in open terrain.

The question seems to be precisely what the language of any such agreement would be, especially in how the agreement describes what constitutes "clearly defined military targets."

I'm merely pontificating here, but I suspect that if such an inquiry is underway, Israel will likely make the argument that a mobile missile launching platform constitutes a "clearly-defined military target." One could easily make a strong case that a mobile Katyusha rocket launcher away from a civilian concentration is a legitimate target, as shown in the this example from camera.org:

This example of a short-range Qassam rocket firing site from weaponssurvey.com apparently located in an orchard would also seem to be a valid target:

And at least some of the cluster munitions used by Israel in Lebanon seem to have been targeted at rural areas, as is the case of this unexploded M-42 submunition found in a banana grove near (but not in) the village of El Maalliye. If this banana grove was away from homes and the banana grove was being used as a site to launch rockets against Israel, the Israelis can likely make a case that the use of cluster munitions in this instance is acceptable.

This however, is much more difficult to justify. The munition is undoubtedly a cluster munition, and the site is said to be just 100 meters from the main Lebanese hospital in Tibnin. John Donovan identified this exact submunition as an M-42.

The Times article states further:

But a report released Wednesday by the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center, which has personnel in Lebanon searching for unexploded ordnance, said it had found unexploded bomblets, including hundreds of American types, in 249 locations south of the Litani River.

The report said American munitions found included 559 M-42's, an anti-personnel bomblet used in 105-millimeter artillery shells; 663 M-77's, a submunition found in M-26 rockets; and 5 BLU-63's, a bomblet found in the CBU-26 cluster bomb. Also found were 608 M-85's, an Israeli-made submunition.

What the Times article does not state is precisely where 1,835 were found.

If the majority of these submunitions were found to be in locations consistent with what the agreement shows to be viable military targets, then Israel should be cleared fairly simply. If however, a substantial number of submunitions were recovered from villages and cities, then Israel's use of cluster munitions may have a legitimate basis to be called into question.

It is important to note, however, that at this time only United Nations personnel and nongovernmental organizations (perhaps Hezbollah itself) have raised these allegations.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:47 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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My brother, to put it mildly is warped.

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Zombie's debunking of the Red Cross ambulance hoax hit primetime news, and as always, Allah has the video.

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