July 31, 2006

Were the Qana Bodies Staged?

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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July 29, 2006

Another "Deranged" Muslim Attacks

Another violent attack carried out because of religion, and once more, it isn't carried out by Methodists.


Six women were shot - one fatally - this afternoon at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle by a man who told a witness he was upset about "what was going on in Israel."

Police spokesman Rich Pruitt said there was one shooter, who was apprehended without incident outside the Jewish Federation building at the corner of Third Avenue and Virginia Street.

"We believe it's a lone individual acting out his antagonism," said David Gomez, who heads the FBI's counterterrorism efforts in Seattle.

Authorities did not release many details, but the FBI said the alleged shooter was between 30 and 40 and agents were investigating the incident as a hate crime. When asked at a news conference if that meant the alleged shooter was Muslim, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said: "You could infer that."

Steve at Hog on Ice captures my frustration with this and other attacks from Muslims on civilian targets nearly perfectly:


Congratulations, Brave Muslim Warriors
Seattle is Safe From Pregnant Jewish Women

When will the political left figure out the difference between Israel and the Muslims? Notice I don't say "Muslim extremists." That's because the "extremists" have the moral and financial support of Muslims everywhere, and because the Islam we call "moderate" is more intolerant than the Klan.

The left excoriates Israel constantly for its "brutality," complaining that Israel kills civilians. Yes, Israel kills civilians. So does every country that engages in military action. Like all civilized (i.e. "non-Muslim") nations, and to a greater degree than most, Israel strives to avoid civilian casualties, but they still happen. As a result of Muslim provocation, of course. No one bothers to point that out.

Muslims, on the other hand, target civilians deliberately. The USUAL goal of armed Muslims is to kill civilians. Partly because they're barbarians, and partly because they generally lack the guts to take on soldiers.

Israel attacks a missile battery. The Muslims shell a suburb. Israel destroys an ammunition dump. The Muslims shoot up a playground. This is the way it has always worked. Yet the poltical left squeals in outrage when a Muslim civilian dies, and they accept dead Jewish civilians as though being a Jew justifies murder.

The left wets itself when anyone dares suggest that Muslim immigrants and resident aliens need special scrutiny, or that they might turn out to be disloyal. But the left isn't around to pick up the pieces when British Muslims or American Muslims who have never been oppressed in their lives blow up a subway train or kill random citizens with a sniper rifle. Actually, they ARE around. To tell us we brought it on ourselves.

Steve (read the whole thing, it's an impressive rant) goes on to advocate the conquering of Muslim countries and forcing them into submission, which I do not advocate.

Yet.

Ask me again after the next 9/11-scale terrorist attack on this nation.

Until then, these pinprick attacks by "unstable" Muslims make me view the rest of their co-religionists with deep suspicion and mistrust

They've earned every bit of it.

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July 28, 2006

Inside the Sandbox

A soldier/son's wise perspective on Iraq at Blue Crab Boulevard.

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"Thank you from the bottom of my heart"

Listen to a gripping call to Pat Dollard from Susan, and Army wife and mother, on Pundit Review.

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July 27, 2006

Hezbollah's White Phosphorus Lies

It was only a matter of time before Hezbollah and their gullible dupes in the media began applying the Terrorist Propaganda Cook Book to the present war in Lebanon, accusing Israel forces of using chemical and other "illegal weapons" against civilians.

The Sydney Morning Herald was all too willing to print these suspiciously vague allegations:


Killed by Israeli air raids, the Lebanese dead are charred in a way local doctors, who have lived through years of civil war and Israeli occupation, say they have not seen before.

Bachir Cham, a Belgian-Lebanese doctor at the Southern Medical Centre in Sidon, received eight bodies after an Israeli air raid on nearby Rmeili which he said exhibited such wounds.

He has taken 24 samples from the bodies to test what killed them. He believes it is a chemical.
Cham said the bodies of some victims were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons. They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not really burnt. It is something else."
"If you burnt someone with petrol their hair would burn and their skin would burn down to the bone. The Israelis are 100 per cent using chemical weapons."

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has repeatedly accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs in its offensive.

Human Rights Watch, which has accused the Israeli army of using cluster bombs in populated areas of southern Lebanon, said it had not verified claims that Israel had used phosphorus.

"We are investigating but we haven't confirmed anything yet. We have seen phosphorus used before and we have seen it in the artillery stocks of the Israeli army in the north," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

"Phosphorus shells do have a legitimate use in illuminating the battlefield at night. The offensive use of phosphorus would be a violation of international conventions."

If these charges seem to be familiar, it is because they are an echo of the exact same kind of charges popularized in a fraudulent documentary called Fallujah, the Hidden Massacre, from Italian Rai News24, an offshoot of communist-dominated channel Rai 3, directed by Sigfrido Ranucci.

I thoroughly debunked the half-truths and lies of this film back in November in a series of posts:

Rai's White Phosphorus Fraud

The Lies of Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, Part 1

The Lies of Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, Part 2

The Lies of Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre, Part 3

The well-documented and irrefutable lies in Ranucci's film begin in the opening credits and do not stop until the final credits are over.

Hezbollah seeks to use these same dark libels without a shred of any evidence supporting their allegations, other than claims made by Lebanese doctors and government officials. Let's look at the claims made by the Lebanese doctor in the Sydney Morning Herald article again:


Bachir Cham, a Belgian-Lebanese doctor at the Southern Medical Centre in Sidon, received eight bodies after an Israeli air raid on nearby Rmeili which he said exhibited such wounds.

He has taken 24 samples from the bodies to test what killed them. He believes it is a chemical.

Cham said the bodies of some victims were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons. They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not really burnt. It is something else."

Almost these exact same descriptions are used to describe many of the bodies shown in Fallujah, the Hidden Massacre. Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield (England), had this to say about those bodies:


He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt". They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition. "

The simple fact of the matter is that the war in Lebanon has been going on for 16 days, and those people killed more than a few days ago would quickly begin to decompose in the summer heat. Conditions vary from place to place, but it is quite possible and perhaps even probably that those killed by primary blast efects from bombs or artillery fire and left in the streets would be black through decomposition, not the affects of some sort of "mystery weapon."

The classification of injuries caused by an explosive blast fall into four classifications:

  • primary
  • secondary
  • tertiary
  • quaternary

A thorough description of these kinds of injuries is available here.

Primary blast injuries—those caused by the pressure wave of a conventional military explosives, typically affecting soft tissues within the body but leaving little or no visible wound on the body—are highly consistent with the bodies described by the Lebanese doctor, providing that as ABC alluded to, bodies are often unrecovered for days.

This is the exact same kind of injury that killed Jordanian terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Had he not been recovered immediately—say, a major conflict was erupting around his body and it could not easily be recovered for days or even weeks—there is a quite distinct chance that if the environmental condition in his area were favorable, then his body would have been recovered, "all black but... hair and skin... intact," precisely as Dr Cham saw in Lebanon.

Now, let us look again at the specific white phosphorus comments made in this SMH article:


Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has repeatedly accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs in its offensive.

Human Rights Watch, which has accused the Israeli army of using cluster bombs in populated areas of southern Lebanon, said it had not verified claims that Israel had used phosphorus.

"We are investigating but we haven't confirmed anything yet. We have seen phosphorus used before and we have seen it in the artillery stocks of the Israeli army in the north," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

"Phosphorus shells do have a legitimate use in illuminating the battlefield at night. The offensive use of phosphorus would be a violation of international conventions."

White phosphorus munitions, despite the way they are described in this article, are not illegal, are not banned by any international treaty, and have perfectly legitimate military uses.

They are primarily used for smoke screens, but because of their incendiary nature, they are also useful against flammable targets. Hezbollah's rockets—more than 2,000 of which have been fired into Israel with up to an estimated 8,000 more remaining in Lebanon—are highly flammable, and a viable target for WP munitions.

White phosphorus shells are also useful as a psychological weapon against entrenched position. The U.S. forces in Fallujah used a combination of white phosphorus and proximity-fused high explosive shells to clear terrorist positions, as described here:


In a tactical trick called a "shake 'n bake," American mortars or howitzers would drop several white phosphorus shells as close as possible to an entrenched enemy position. The white phosphorus-saturated felt wedges would then deploy and fall to the ground, where some could potentially burn terrorists hiding in trenches and spider holes, but it would almost certainly obscure their vision, no matter what kind of cover they were under.

The terrorists, knowing that American forces preferred to use the dense smoke of white phosphorus to screen attacks, would panic, fearing they were about to be overrun. As the evacuated their entrenched ambush positions, high explosive shells were the fired to kill the insurgents flushed out in the open.

White phosphorus munitions are a normal part of the inventory for NATO forces, among others, and there is nothing illegal in their use. Some have complained that white phosphorus weapons are illegally being used against civilians. Would it be more palatable of these civilians were killed with other munitions?

The simple fact of the matter is that Hezbollah, by purposefully integrating their positions into civilian neighborhoods, place the lives of Lebanon's civilians in danger. Lebanese Shiites that support Hezbollah and allow Hezbollah to build bunkers, storehouses, and sniper nests in their homes should not be surprised or appalled when the Israeli military targets that position.

The arguments are recycled, the evidence contrived; there is no credible evidence that chemical or white phosphorus weapons are being used to target Lebanese civilians, and it is telling that the media are all too willing to be led down this same path of lies again.

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July 25, 2006

Prepare the Virgins


The U.S. military has churned through the Taliban over the past month, killing more than 600 terrorists during Operation Mountain Thrust.

Why isn't this on the front page at CNN.com?

Don't be silly. That "800-lb marlin spears fisherman" story is so much more a pressing world event...

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July 24, 2006

The Silence of the Informed

Arlen Specter has written an Op-Ed in the Washington Post that is apparently giving the left side of the blogosphere convulsions this morning, entitled, Surveillance We Can Live With.

The section of Specter's editorial that seems to be giving most liberals fits is where Specter (according to them) misunderstands the Youngstown decision:


Critics complain that the bill acknowledges the president's inherent Article II power and does not insist on FISA's being the exclusive procedure for the authorization of wiretapping. They are wrong. The president's constitutional power either exists or does not exist, no matter what any statute may say. If the appellate court precedents cited above are correct, FISA is not the exclusive procedure. If the president's assertion of inherent executive authority meets the Fourth Amendment's "reasonableness" test, it provides an alternative legal basis for surveillance, however FISA may purport to limit presidential power. The bill does not accede to the president's claims of inherent presidential power; that is for the courts either to affirm or reject. It merely acknowledges them, to whatever extent they may exist.

Anonymous Liberal writes:

Good lord. Can someone please get Senator Specter a copy of Youngstown?

[snip]

Seriously, if Specter had written the above-quoted paragraph on a constitutional law exam, his professor would have flunked him. His description of the interplay between statutes and the president's article II authority runs contrary to the long-established Youngstown framework, which--as the Court's various opinions in Hamdan demonstrate--all nine of the current Supreme Court justices accept as controlling.

As Specter should know, there is a world of difference between what a president has the power to do in the absence of a statute and what he has the power to do in the face of a statutory prohibition. That's constitutional law 101.

Much has been made of Specter's willingness to legislate in the dark. He has, after all, agreed to sponsor legislation legalizing a program about which he has not even been briefed. But far more disturbing to me is his apparent inability to get his head around a basic principle of constitutional law. As I noted last week, the very wording and structure of his bill--like his op-ed--reflects a fundamental misconception of presidential authority. And there's really no excuse for that. Someone on Specter's staff really does need to sit him down and force him to read Youngstown. Or if he doesn't have time, footnote 23 of the Hamdan decision will suffice:


Whether or not the President has independent power, absent
congressional authorization, to convene military commissions,
he may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper
exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers.

Senator Specter, please pay special attention to the phrase "whether or not." That's the key. It doesn't matter whether the pre-FISA cases you cite in your op-ed held that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. A duly enacted statute, like FISA, may nevertheless place enforceable limits on the president's authority. This is not controversial.

If this as not controversial as Mr. Liberal and Marty Lederman state, then why is this issue still being debated at all?

Surely, if the issue is as cut-and-dried as these folks seem to suggest, then the army of NSA staff lawyers that specialize is this area of law and have reviewed the details and legality of the program would have condemned the program before it was implemented.

And yet, in the years before the program was exposed by the New York Times, not one patriotic NSA lawyer has "leaked" the damning details of the story to defend the nation.

Nor has the program been a concern for the man in charge of implementing it, General Michael Hayden, who knew its details. Nor has it apparently been a concern for the NSA team in charge of the program's implementation and monitoring. If the program was so clearly out of bounds as all of these expert pontificators suggest with their thorough lack of knowledge of the program, certainly some of the incriminating details of the program would have found their way to the Times. And yet, the literally dozens of people who know the program best, including the NSA lawyers that specialize in this are of law and the professionals that implemented it, a bevy of White House Counsel, and career Justice Department lawyers, have kept mum.

For that matter, the ten FISA Court judges that were briefed on the program have also kept quiet; surely if they had objections, they could have resigned from the court with no penalty, sending a very loud message. And yet, they have refused to do so.

Are we to assume, then, that all of these federal employees, many of which have public service dating back to prior Administrations, are so willing to give up essential liberties and are such Bush sycophants that they would willing engage in the undercutting of the U.S. Constitution?

This seems to be at the root of the libertarian and liberal allegation, in my non-legally-educated mind. In their ever-present desire to condemn the Administration, they presume that those who do know the program best are willing accomplices to the undermining of the nation. I could perhaps accept this explanation if so many people were not involved, but that is not the reality of the situation.

Uninformed doubters are of course free to object to the program quite strenuously as they have and certainly will continue to do, but from where I sit, the silence of the informed speaks volumes.

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"We are all Hezbollah now"

No, not this demonstration in London, but this equally shameless CNN reporting in Lebanon:


Politics creeps into the ward like the blood that runs on the floors. "Clearly he is Hezbollah," says one of the doctors outside the room -- sarcastically referring to 8-year-old Mahmood, whose screams can be heard from the hallway. His screams now blend with the wails of his mother, matching the baby's cries.

The hospital ward begins to teem with members of the international press. They all have blue flak jackets that say "press" on the front. They carry microphones, cameras, radios and satellite phones, and have local guides to translate.

Today, as I finish I am sitting in the same spot and the shells are still falling. Hezbollah rockets are firing toward northern Israel. I can imagine another reporter, in another flak jacket, standing over an 8-year old Israeli boy.

I'll finish by asking another question: Are any of us making a difference?

Certainly these "journalists" are trying to make a difference. CNN reports on this conflict have been reliably biased, and this is no exception, which becomes apparent if you read the rest of this article.

Focussing on the always sympathic victims, the women and young children killed and injured by Israeli bombs, the CNN reporter studiously avoids questioning the Lebanese Shia culture that supports and lionizes Hezbollah even now.

That would be too much like real, unbiased reporting, and we wouldn't want that, would we?

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Why Liberals Can't Win Wars

Ive seen some stupid posts reading liberal blogs, but with the exception of anything from Oliver Willis, this faux "we care about the troops" post from Billmon piggy-backing on Christian Science Monitor excretion (currently now offline—were they embarrassed of it?) might be the new gold standard:


Earlier this week I linked to a commentary from William S. Lind in which he warned that war with Iran could result in the loss of the 140,000 man army America currently has bogged down in Iraq. This may have seemed far-fetched, given the enormous military disparity between the two sides. But Col. Pat Lang, a former intelligence officer, explains how and why it could happen:


American troops all over central and northern Iraq are supplied with fuel, food, and ammunition by truck convoy from a supply base hundreds of miles away in Kuwait. All but a small amount of our soldiers' supplies come into the country over roads that pass through the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq . . .
Southern Iraq is thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian special operations forces working with Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades. Hostilities between Iran and the United States or a change in attitude toward US forces on the part of the Baghdad government could quickly turn the supply roads into a "shooting gallery" 400 to 800 miles long.
(Christian Science Monitor, via No Quarter)

There's a saying: Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics. And in the case of the U.S. Army, they talk it about a lot. This has been true almost as long as there's been a U.S. Army. During the 1944-45 campaign in Europe, for example, each U.S. division consumed 650 tons of food, gas, ammo and other supplies per day -- roughly three times what the German Army managed to get by on. Logistical requirements have only exploded since then. Those lobster tails they're eating at Camp Victory don't grow on the trees.

If the supply lines back to Kuwait were to be cut -- or even seriously interdicted -- the U.S. military presence in Iraq would quickly become untenable. I'm not even sure the Army could scrounge enough gas to keep the tanks and Humvees moving, given that Iraq already suffers from a severe refining capacity shortage and must import most of its gasoline from Kuwait.

He then breathlessly (and no doubt hopefully) adds:


In other words, in the event of a real world war -- as opposed to the kind that pundits pontificate about on Fox News -- Centcom would either have to "pacify" the transportation routes through southern Iraq quickly and ruthlessly (which might not be possible, given the troops available and the possibility some Iraqi units might turn on their putative allies) or try to evacuate some or most U.S. forces from Iraq, either by air or ground.

We're talking, on other words, about a potential debacle -- the worst U.S. military defeat since Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor? Err, no. Laughably, no.

Billmon, thank you for once again proving why when it comes to discussing military matters, liberals aren't ready to move up from the kid's table.

Here is the reality of the situation.

According to credible sources Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army may number as many as 10,000 Iraqi Shia militiamen possessing mainly small arms (AK-47, light machine guns, RPGs). Only perhaps a tenth of that force has even minimal military training. Even with Iranian Revolutionary Guards providing some more modern weaponry and training, the Madhi Army has decisively lost every conflict it has engaged in against coalition forces in the past two years, including recent raids carried out by Iraqi government forces. A Madhi Army of lightly armed, poorly trained, and poorly led militiamen cannot hope to perform the feats required to fulfill the sick fantasy shared by Billmon and the CSM. Presently, it is a bit more occupied with not getting erradicated like crabgrass.

But what if they had help?

The quote Billmon pulls from the CSM article speaks of the "Badr Brigades."

I see that the crack staff of the CSM and Billmon are really up with current events, as the Badr Brigades haven't been called that for three years now, restyling themselves the Badr Organization and joining in the political process as part of the United Iraqi Alliance coalition.

They've played a lead role in fighting the insurgency around Karbala, and while occasionally at odds with the British forces in southern Iraq and seen as a sectarian militia by most, it has neither the manpower nor the weaponry (even with covert Iranian Revolutionary Guards support) to pose a military threat should it suddenly decide to forego the gains it has made as part of the political process. The several thousand man organization is even more lightly armed than the Madhi Army.

So who, praytell, will supply the OPFOR in "a 'shooting gallery' 400 to 800 miles long" that Billmon so fears?

The only discernible force left is Iran proper, and indeed, Pentagon planners have envisioned and planned for a multiple responses to the scenario of Iranian forces made a stab across the southern tip of Iraq in an attempt to cut off U.S. forces.

Sadly, the loss of life would be tremendous in such a campaign, but the victor of such a struggle has never been in doubt.

The Iranian Army numbers 350,000 with 200,000 being poorly trained and equipped (by U.S. standards) conscripts. It has only one true armored division and two mechanized infantry divisions, with no real air force or Navy to speak of, and air defenses severely outmoded even with the recent addition of Soviet TOR-1 batteries.

Iranian tanks—mostly T-72 variants that originated in the 1970s and T-54/55s that were originally designed at the end of WWII—would be the tip of the Iranian spear. Along with the hundreds of mostly-outdated infantry fighting vehicles they can bring to bear, these would all be inviting targets for allied air forces that unquestioningly own the airspace in the region.

Any southern invasion by Iran would be a replay of the Highway of Death on a massive, tragic scale.

This wuld be nothing like another Pearl Harbor as Billmon so hysterically intones, and would far more likely be another highway 80 in the first Gulf War, or the closing of the Falaise pocket Todesgang, or "death road" of World War II that sealed the German defeat in Normandy.

Start to finish, such an invasion would last less than a week, causing a discernable wrinkle to the supply lines (which would simply reroute westward for a short time) but fail miserably in its primary aim, while losing the bulk of the military force projected into Iraq in the process.

Of course were the Iranian invasion and massacre to come to pass, rest assured Billmon to be among the first to call for war crimes trials against the United States for crushing the Iranian invasion.

Of course, he'd probably screw that up as well.

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July 21, 2006

Enough

Pajamas Media blogger Eugene writes amid the air raid sirens in Haifa:


A few minutes ago the sirens started again in the distance; they were so faint that we were only made aware of them by watching Haifa on TV. Like Pavlov's dogs we react to the stimuli dutifully, almost mindlessly. It's a second nature now. But this time it was different.

On the way down we heard a large boom, my neighbor phoned his daughter across town as soon as the radio announced that Haifa was hit. Up until now he seemed to me the calmest person down there, but his expression changed. "It hit near you? The windows exploded?" His arm unknowingly touches the wall to support himself, "don't cry, don't cry.. Are you ok?". He hangs up and with resolve says that he's going down there, no tears but he's already changed. With shaking fingers he calls somebody else about the car...

There is something in the American psyche that resulted from never having been on the receiving end of enemy fire. Our veterans of course knew that feeling. It haunts some, and filled others with a resolve to live each day to the fullest, as they knew how fleeting and precious each and every individual minute on this earth is. On September 11, 2001, we were jolted out of the false calm we had created for ourselves in this world.

For many, if not most, that feeling of immediacy slipped away when more attacks ceased to occur, and we mentally retreated to that safe place, that false illusion, that we held before.

"It" is something that happens "over there."

A 17-year-old Israeli listening to air raid sirens and not-so-distant explosions, the war is immediate for Eugene. "Over there" is across town, as people try to kill him for simply being born who and where he is.

We have no concept of that here, not really. Try as I might, I can't relate to rockets raining in from above, death hanging in the air on a contrail, wondering if those I care about—laugh with, love—are dead or dying.

And so we expect that despite all the signs of escalation—the reservists being called up, the troops massing at the border, the intensifying bombardment—that somehow, there will be someone who finds a reason to stop, to halt the madness, to call it all off before it is Too Late.

But it is too late. It has been for quite a while.

Hezbollah, backed by Iran and their puppet Syria, have passed some sort of a breaking point not easily defined where Israelis seem to have said enough.

As so the bombardment of Lebanon continues, and the troops mass, waiting for that moment when they surge over the border. They go rifle in hand, knowing that any moment could be their last, hoping their sacrifice will buy lives back home from an enemy that wishes to drive them into the sea.

They should show no quarter, take no prisoners, but be filled with a terrible resolve that there will be no "next time."

As Onkar Gate stated Wednesday from the Ayn Rand Institute (h/t Cox & Forkum):


To achieve peace in the Middle East, as in any region, there is a necessary principle that every party must learn: the initiation of force is evil. And the indispensable means of teaching it is to ensure that the initiating side is defeated and punished. Decisive retaliatory force must be wielded against the aggressor.

[snip]

If we truly seek peace, we must reverse this perverse lesson. We must proclaim the objective conditions of peace. This means declaring to Arab nations that Israel, as a free country, has a moral right to exist, that the Arabs and Palestinians are the initiators of the conflict and that aggression on their part is evil and will not be tolerated. And it means encouraging Israel not to negotiate and compromise with its current assailants, but to destroy them.
Only when the initiators of force learn that their actions lead not to world sympathy and political power, but to their own deaths, will peace be possible in the Middle East.

Eugene will never know peace a long as Hezbollah remains. Israel must crush Hezbollah, and Lebanon too, if it refuses to evict these terrorists in their midst. Many Lebanese will die in coming days, and many of them will be civilians, but only through that terrible lesson will they learn that allowing terrorism is supporting terrorism.

I simply hope that the survivors on both sides learn, so that this lesson does not have to be taught again soon.

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July 20, 2006

Deadly Harvest

As you sow, so shall you reap:


Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas Thursday as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons for a second straight day, and Israel hinted at a full-scale invasion.

Israeli warplanes also launched new airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, shortly after daybreak, followed by strikes in the guerrillas' heartland in the south and eastern Bekaa Valley.
The strikes followed bombings Wednesday that killed as many as 70 people, according to Lebanese television, making it the deadliest day since the fighting began July 12.

Russia sharply criticized Israel over its onslaught against Lebanon, now in its ninth day, sparked when Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Israel's actions have gone "far beyond the boundaries of an anti-terrorist operation" and repeating calls for an immediate cease-fire.

Russia is somewhat correct; this is "far beyond the boundaries of an anti-terrorist operation" as they claim. This is not an anti-terrorist operation, but a quite conventional war.

Would the Russian Foreign Ministry be so kind as to answer what their response would be Hezbollah launched over 1,600 rocket and mortar attacks deliberately targeting Russian civilians? What if Hezbollah had fired these same 1,600 missiles and mortar shells into France?

We know their answer in advance. Beirut would already resemble another Dresden or Hiroshima, and the few hundredShia dead now would number in the thousands.

I can find very little sympathy for the Lebanese Shia who have so closely embraced Hezbollah and their tactics over the past decades. Every suffering Shia child you see in a Lebanese hospital is there because Israel was forced to respond against Hezbollah's incessant attacks.

I have very little sympathy for so-called "civilian" populations that willingly support terrorist groups, whether that population are Lebanese Shias south of Beirut, Palestinians in Gaza, or Pashtun villages in the tribal areas of Pakistan. They accept and often celebrate the terrorists in their midst, accept their philosophies, share their goals, and their successes. The flip side of this is that they must embrace the repercussions against terrorism as well.

Terrorism cannot be eradicated as a tactic if the populations that support it do not pay the price for that support. Terrorism will die when the civilian breeding grounds of terrorist support shares in the pain that terrorism causes.

Lebanon's Hezbollah-supporting Shia are now feeling some of that pain both physically and politically. Whether or not it is enough for them to change their ways remains to be seen.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:42 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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July 19, 2006

The Toddler-Threatening, Sniper-Watching Community

And the spiral downwards towards terminal madness continues among the liberal elite:


I am still beyond anger at a recently published photo from New York Times Photographer Joao Silva of a Mahdi Militia sniper about to fire on American Soldiers.
Only by coincidence searching Memeorandum for other topics of the day did I come across this post by Glenn Greenwald. I felt compelled to ask him a question. Again I am stunned.
Here is my question:


Would you stand there and watch a terrorist shoot at Americans and take a picture?

Here was his answer:


Personally, I would not, because I'm not a jouranlist. But if I were a photographer assigned to that region and to cover the insurgency, of course I would. I'd want Americans to see the reality of the forces we are fighting, rather than suppressing their images...

Glenn Greenwald, ladies and gentlemen, stating in his own words that he would sit there and take pictures as a sniper tries to kill fellow Americans because it's just part of his job.

But don't question his...

Yeah. Whatever.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:23 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Hearts and Minds

Hezbollah might be trying to claim the title of "The World's Dumbest Terrorist Group."

Already decimated and mocked in continuous air and artillery strikes from the Israeli Defense Forces, roundly condemned by the international community and abandoned by prominent Arab nations in the region, Hezbollah seems intent on inflaming sentiment among the world's Christians and Israeli Arabs, killing several in rocket attacks on Nazareth.

Via Fox News:


A Hezbollah rocket slammed into a building Wednesday in the mainly Arab town of Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus, killing three people, including two children, Israeli authorities said.

Smoke billowed from the damaged a building and its roof appeared mostly destroyed, television footage showed. Local residents ran to the building and helped fire fighters unwind their water houses.
It was not immediately clear if any of the holy sites in the town were damaged.
Mohammed Assawi, who saw the attack, told Israel's Channel 10 that the rocket that killed the two children struck in the middle of a downtown street.

"It's a vacation and it's afternoon so where will they go if not to play in the streets?" he said. "It is unpleasant to say what we saw."

Police later said that a third person was killed and two other people were wounded.

Hezbollah has only two true friends remaining in Syria and Iran, and quite frankly, Syria's support could be made to waiver rather easily with targeted air strikes, destabilizing Assad's precarious regime.

I think Krauthammer is correct: the only correct exit strategy in Lebanon is over the grave of Hezbollah, and there are those that see this as a distinct possibility.

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July 18, 2006

Even Better the Second Time

I like this Rowan Scarborough article, though I liked it better when I wrote it almost seven months ago.

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Will Misfires

Over at The Corner this morning, John Podhoretz announced:


George Will Goes Nuclear

This may prove to be the most discussed op-ed of the year.

Actually, it isn't even the most discussed post of the day from Washington Post columnists, with Richard Cohen's "curl up and die" op-ed targeting Israel taking that dishonor.

Still, I read Will's column in the New York Post as J-Pod urged, and even after a re-reading, I wasn't duly impressed with any of this:


Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Rice called it "short-sighted" to judge the success of the administration's transformational ambitions by a "snapshot" of progress "some couple of years" into the transformation. She seems to consider today's turmoil preferable to the Middle East's "false stability" of the last 60 years, during which U.S. policy "turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces."

There is, however, a sense in which that argument creates a blind eye: It makes instability, no matter how pandemic or lethal, necessarily a sign of progress. Violence is vindication: Hamas and Hezbollah have, Rice says, "determined that it is time now to try and arrest the move toward moderate democratic forces in the Middle East."

But there also is democratic movement toward extremism. America's intervention was supposed to democratize Iraq which, by benign infection, would transform the region. Early on in the Iraq occupation, Rice argued that democratic institutions do not just spring from a hospitable political culture, they also can help create such a culture. Perhaps.

But elections have transformed Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories, and elections have turned Hezbollah into a significant faction in Lebanon's parliament, from which it operates as a state within the state. And as a possible harbinger of future horrors, last year's elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 19 percent of the seats in Egypt's parliament.

For a region cycling through periods of high intensity, short-duration wars, and low intensity, long duration slugfests, is the "false stability" Will speaks of worth maintaining? I suggest not, and I think that the turmoil would exist, triggered by Hamas and Hezbollah and the regimes in Syria and Iran that back them, whether or not we ever invaded Iraq at all in 2003.

Certainly, America wasn't invading any Arab or Persian nations in the 1948 War for Israeli Independence, The Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, or any of the other conflicts Israel has been engaged in during it's nearly 60 year modern history, and so Will's argument seems to fall short of the facts.

Will makes the false argument that instability is not required for progress in the region, an absurd position in science and politics. Whether we are discussing physical materials or a region in political stasis, a catalyst is needed to create change, and as that change occurred instability is a certainly. There is only stability in the inert and the dead, and quite frankly, I don't see Israel as willing to be either.

Yes, democracy can have bad results. People can elect bad leaders as easily as bad leaders can seize power on their own, but that does not invalidate the concept democracy, and in fact reinforced the importance of the vote. People can choose to make bad decisions and they must learn to live with the consequences of that decision. Hopefully, the Palestinians will learn that lesson over time, as will the Lebanese that helped Hezbollah into power, only to undo the progress of the past 15 years in less than a week.

Wil'ls column brings us nothing new, nothing astute, and rehashes arguments I've seen better written elsewhere by writers with far less renown.

Perhaps Will has attempted to go nuclear, but like a North Korean missile, he has fallen apart shortly after launch.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:43 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Cohen Blames Israel

You are an abomination. You are a mistake. You should have been aborted before birth, and now that you have been born, you deserve every beating you've gotten since, merely for daring to exist.

Or at least that seems to summarize Richard Cohen's feelings toward the Jews of Israel, while he can scarcely find a word to condemn Hezbollah, Hamas, or the other Islamists intent on Israeli genocide. Of course, don't take my word for it, when his will do:


The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

This is why the Israeli-Arab war, now transformed into the Israeli-Muslim war (Iran is not an Arab state), persists and widens. It is why the conflict mutates and festers. It is why Israel is now fighting an organization, Hezbollah, that did not exist 30 years ago and why Hezbollah is being supported by a nation, Iran, that was once a tacit ally of Israel's. The underlying, subterranean hatred of the Jewish state in the Islamic world just keeps bubbling to the surface. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and some other Arab countries may condemn Hezbollah, but I doubt the proverbial man in their street shares that view.

There is no point in condemning Hezbollah. Zealots are not amenable to reason. And there's not much point, either, in condemning Hamas. It is a fetid, anti-Semitic outfit whose organizing principle is hatred of Israel. There is, though, a point in cautioning Israel to exercise restraint -- not for the sake of its enemies but for itself. Whatever happens, Israel must not use its military might to win back what it has already chosen to lose...

That is as much of Cohen's "curl up and die" message to Israel as I felt like holding forth, though you are certainly well within your rights to read the whole thing if you must.

Sadly, Cohen's grasp of history is shown to be almost as weak as that of Iran's Holocaust-denying President Ahmadinejad.

Cohen rails against "the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims," in a land where Jews predated the very existence of Islam by more than two millennia. It was only during the first two centuries AD that the Jews were forced from their ancestral homes in Israel and into slavery around the world, and it wasn't until after then that Muslims usurped Israeli lands.

Cohen makes another asinine statement unsupported by the history he claims to be on the side of, when he states, "Whatever happens, Israel must not use its military might to win back what it has already chosen to lose..."

Poppycock.

If history has taught us anything about Islam, it is that Islam—a religion that dutifully separates the world into Dar al Islam (the House of Submission [to Allah]) and Dar al Harb (the House of War)—the only thing Muslim culture understands or respects is brute force. From Vienna to Tours to modern day wars along Islam's current borders, this lesson is repeated down through history to the present day.

Only overwhelming force and the crushing defeats it has visited upon its enemies have kept Israel alive thus far. Every retreat, every pullback, has led to more aggression from its neighbors.

Displaying a most selective grasp of history, he excretes a post almost Greenwaldian in its dishonesty.

"It is best," Cohen concludes, "for Israel to hunker down."

Forces that hunker down can never win wars, and at best they may merely survive. Israel deserves something far more than the mere survival Cohen is willing to grant them.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:02 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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July 17, 2006

Israel Must Escalate

Writing in Haaretz, Ze'ev Schiff makes what I think is a pretty good analysis when he says the Israel-Hezbollah War has not reached its peak:


The fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has still not reached its zenith. The Israel Defense Forces' operational plans against the Shi'ite organizations have not yet been carried out. The next two days are the most critical and a lot depends on whether Tehran decides to take a chance and authorize Hezbollah to launch long-range missiles with more powerful warheads. This is a capability Hezbollah still retains, despite the heavy blows it has suffered in the IDF air strikes.

On Sunday, Israel bore witness to the use of more powerful rockets against Haifa, which killed eight people and injured dozens more. The Syrian-made 220 mm rocket has a warhead weighing more than 50 kilograms. Hezbollah was supplied with these rockets as the Syrian armed forces were receiving them off the production lines. The decision to give Hezbollah the rockets was made when it was concluded that the group would be considered part of the Syrian army's overall emergency preparedness.

The risk to Iran is not military, but rather that Hezbollah would suffer such damage that it would no longer be counted as the sole external element of Iran's Islamic Revolution. It is difficult to assess what the Iranian leadership will decide. If it does opt for aggravating the situation, it will certainly encourage the Syrians to become involved in the confrontation, but all indications suggest that Damascus is not eager to get dragged into war.

Israel is also not interested in a third front, so long as Syria does not intervene in the fighting on the side of Hezbollah.

As the Counterterrorism Blog also noted, Hezbollah also has used the Iranian made and supplied 333 mm Raad missile. A Chinese-designed weapon the Raad is based upon the Silkworm, and can carry a 1100 lb warhead of conventional, chemical or nuclear design. It is not to be confused with the Iranian ATGM (antitank guided missile) of the same name that the Hezbollah may also try to use against Israeli Merkava tanks.

Israel is fighting Iran and Syria in the most thinly veiled proxy war of this young century, and Israel must decimate Hezbollah's rocket program if it is to survive.

More than six months ago analysts were predicting that apocalyptic sect running Iran may be trying to create an End Times conflagration to mesh with their 12th Imam eschatology. Much of the analysis and -speculation I've read since then has focused on the threat of long-range nuclear missiles fired from Iran, but it becomes increasingly more clear on a daily basis that Iranian forces and the most advanced Iranian weaponry are being deployed with Hezbollah on Israel's doorstep.

The nuclear deterrence theory of MAD (mutual assured destruction) was predicated upon the thought that bot sides would be able to get nuclear weapons airborne in the event of an attack, assuring both sides would suffer catastrophic losses. This theory was already turned on its head by those who theorize that the Iranian leadership is hoping precisely for that sort of exchange to bring about their hoped for End of Days.

But an Iran that has nuclear-capable missiles in southern Lebanon is another matter entirely, as it is an entirely more practical and worldly extension of Iran's hatred for Israel.

A well-timed and executed Iranian nuclear weapon first strike could easily be disguised as just another conventional Raad rocket attack like the ones that have already been fired on Israeli cities. Iran could conceivably and rather easily hide a crippling nuclear first strike in a barrage of Hezbollah missiles, incinerating the majority of the country before Israel even suspected it was under a nuclear attack.

For these reasons, Israel must not only beat Hezbollah back and rearrange another stalemate, it must continue on until Hezbollah in Lebanon is destroyed. To not follow through is to endanger the very existence of the nation, and to potentially invite an Iranian nuclear attack.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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July 15, 2006

"All the Troops That Are Fit To Kill"


madhi_sniper


A terrorist sniper is trying to kill U.S. soldiers, and the New York Times is literally right their with them.

Taking pictures.

Probably spotting.

But don't question their patriotism.

(h/t Protein Wisdom)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:37 PM | Comments (27) | Add Comment
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July 14, 2006

Have a Nice Day

At least one strategic operations think tank that reports to the Pentagon thinks that our near-term future may be found in the Bible:


For in my jealousy [and] in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel;

So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that [are] upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.

And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord GOD: every man's sword shall be against his brother.

And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that [are] with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.

Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I [am] the LORD.

Ezekiel 38:19-23

From Israel to India, nations with the power of the sun teeter on the brink of full engagement in the Fourth World War.

VII Inc. is a strategic planning company that in a January report, "Iranian President Ahmadinejad, Islamic Eschatology, and Near Term Implications," imagined an "Ezekiel 38" scenario in a where Syrian/Iranian missile attacks supported by Russia would rain "great hailstones, fire, and brimstone," upon Israel with such ferocity that Israel was forced into the nuclear response wanted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad, VII contends, is attempting to create a war that would be perceived as a major sign of the Mahdaviat, the Second Coming of the 12th Iman. He is, quite literally in a eschatological sense, attempting to bring about Armegeddon, and an Islamic version of the Rapture. Ahmadinejad wants to bring about the end of the world.

As Ahmadinejad said Sept 17, 2005 in front of the United Nations:


Dear Friends and Colleagues, from the beginning of time, humanity has longed for the day when justice, peace, equality and compassion envelop the world. All of us can contribute to the establishment of such a world. When that day comes, the ultimate promise of all Divine religions will be fulfilled with the emergence of a perfect human being who is heir to all prophets and pious men. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace.

O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.

As Iranian forces fire long-range rockets on Israel it seems quite apparent Ahmadinejad is willing to do all he can to hasten that emergence, and begin the end of man.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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July 13, 2006

Feeling the Tip of the Spear

As you've likely heard by now Israel has destroyed the runways at Beirut International Airport as part of a rapidly-evolving campaign against various Palestinian terrorist organizations. Some reports cited bombs, some rockets, some naval gunfire for the destruction of the runways, but nobody bothered to do a simple Google search to turn up this interesting purpose-built munition, the BLU-107 Durandal.

According to Wikipedia, it works like this:


Durandal is designed to be dropped from low altitudes. The fall of the bomb is retarded by a parachute. When, due to the parachute action, the bomb is vertical, it fires a rocket booster that accelerates it into the runway surface. The bomb explodes after it has penetrated below the surface. This results in a large and difficult to repair crater in the runway.

Israel has used it to great effect before.


A predecessor to Durandal was developed jointly by France and Israel during the 1960s to destroy air base runways. The weapon was used to devastating effect by the Israelis during the Six Day War.

One of these days, the Arab nations surrounding Israel are going to realize that they are still militarily no match for the IDF. As the situation in Lebanon continues to escalate and Syria becomes a more likely target, they might find out sooner rather than later.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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