Again, you're probably right, Kevin. "Tasty" might not have been too, well, too "tasteful" of a word to use. Much better if, in looking for a long term solution to the war in the Mideast, he had said something like, ""Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Muslim regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented."

Doesn't sound "tasty," does it? Doesn't sound even a little bit like a "peaceful" solution, does it? In fact, it sounds a bit harsh, doesn't it?

Change "Muslim" to "Zionist" and you've got an exact quote from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/....ap/index.html


Go Figure.

Lo

Lo,

To be fair, I don't think Kevin ever compared Olmert to Ahmedinejad, or even implied it. One can oppose Israeli military actions without supporting, or even sympathizing with, its enemies.

- Daniel

P.S. It is common mantra of the right to speak of eliminating the Muslim regime in Tehran, so you do bring up an interesting parallel.

Repulsive as that is, they don't want to "wipe Iran off the map." They just want their Shah back.

Lo,

It was on CNN last night, about an hour or so after Zogby and the other guy. I've just gone onto CNN's website but have been unable to turn anything up in the transcripts of rather extensive coverage they did of the story, since unfortunately they keep it all as separate files, not one large searchable day. It may have been a segment from CNN International, which tends to show less Israel-friendly news. (The first day of the war, Wolf Blitzer completely skipped over the fact that anyone had been killed in Lebanon, while CNN International did see fit to mention it, leading to snarky commentary on Wonkette.com) Or it might have been during Anderson Cooper's show.

All I can report was that there were two guys in hospital beds, they said the first one was a male nurse shot in the raid (and he was still wearing standard blue hospital scrubs), talked with him briefly, and then they showed some footage of a blown up car.

I've looked at the websites you've pointed out and some others, and do have to say some things are definitely not adding up. Hezbollah said that the patients were all removed from the hospital on the 12th, but it's also said that the five people captured in the raid were all civilians, so I take all of their claims with the same grains of salt as I do the Israeli claims.

What would make sense is that while Hezbollah may have removed the regular patients from the hospital, they kept some of the staff on hand to both deal with their own injured as well as treat the captured Israeli soldiers, who were probably injured in the course of their capture. So it might also be be that everyone's telling the partial truth and the civilian "tasty fish" captured in the raid are doctors or other staff who treated the Israeli captives and thus could give some reasonably good intel at least as to their current state of health.

...or a really bad Dracula movie.

Robert Meyer

To be fair, I think I saw the segment you're talking about replayed late last night on CNN on a program called "24 Hours." At that time, before they showed the two alleged male nurses speaking, the commentator stated, "Like many stories coming from the Mideast, these stories have been unable to be verified."

I haven't worked in a hospital in two years and yet I tend to wear scrubs as often as possible. They're lightweight, cool and they're comfortable. More to the point, even when I worked in the hospital and wore standard blue scrubs on a daily basis, the point of fact is, I was not then, nor am I now, a nurse. Many, many people wear scrubs....it doesn't make them hospital, or even medical personnel. In my particualr hospital, our housekeepers, as well as our IT people wore color-coded scrubs - the colors were apparent to staff members, but not to visitors and a wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf.

As for Hezbollah stating that the five people captured in the raid were civilians, well, there are unfortunate "citizens" who are in the wrong place at the wrong time and there are heavily armed "civilians" who are die-hard, gorilla-styled Hezbollah supporters and I'm not sure that the Hezbollah spokespeople make a large distinction between the two when it comes to reporting injuries and/or casualities.

I think this whole exchange is my point, Kevin. There are two sides to every story and the fact that you consistantly report only on inflammatory stories coming from the side with which you believe is "right", well, it tends to makes you appear to be not only limited in your choice of reading sources but severely biased and/or anti-semitic as well.

And no, Daniel, Kevin didn't compare Olmert to Ahmedinejad... he didn't have to. What Kevin does, again consistantly, is totally ignore that there are two sides to this whole sad story. There are all kinds of sins in the world - there are sins of commission and there are sins of ommission. It's become quite noticable throughout this thread that most of the people on it, you and Dan and Roger in particular, tend to bend over backwards to recognize that each side has a vested interest and that each side has it's own "right" as well as it's own "wrong" and you all repeatedly hope for an ending which allows both sides to keep their lands, their lives, their beliefs, and their dignity.

Most of you do not "fan the flames," so to speak. Each time Kevin, or anyone else, posts an inflammatory unsubstantiated "news" story it makes me cringe in both fear and disgust. There are enough real horrors taking place on both sides - there is no need to add to them or to try to further sway public opinion by posting one-sided stories which are "unvarifiable" or just downright conjecture and/or lies....and unless I'm sadly mistaken, there can only be two reasons for anyone repeatedly doing so....one is ignorance and one is racism. Both make me feel quite sick inside.

Lo



[This message has been edited by Lo (edited August 04, 2006).]

Lo,

I'm going to plead ignorance here with a caveat: There are two reasons for ignorance. One is someone being too lazy to do their homework. The other is the result of someone being kept in the dark by other people deliberately hiding data for their own political purposes.

At the start of this war, I saw a note on Wonkette leading to an article at the Huffington Post, link here:

<A HREF="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/cnns-lebanon-problem_b_25031.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert
/cnns-lebanon-problem_b_25031.html</A>

In a nutshell, it said that CNN and especially Wolf Blitzer spent the day talking about a single Israeli death, while only once mentioning--in the international segment--that 45 Lebanese civilians had also been killed.

I can't be watching the news 24/7, so my reaction upon reading this was to conclude that Blitzer had been lying to me for his own political sympathies. I also concluded that anything coming out of Lebanon was likely going to be underreported and spun.

You yourself said that you did see the segment with the two guys in scrubs who claimed to be nurses. Why do you doubt them? There must be nurses somewhere in the country, and a hospital seems a sensible enough place to keep them. And a militia like Hezbollah must have some need for medical services.

I have trouble buying any army's claim that any male "of fighting age" is automatically an insurgent, a terrorist, etc. etc. The only time anyone admits to having killed a civilian it seems is when they kill a child, and even then they argue unless the kid was preverbal. If we believe everything an army says, we have to conclude that the entire country is filled with crazed fighters, which sounds delusional or at best paranoid.

I'll admit that I hadn't paid a damn bit of attention to Hezbollah before this conflict, but after looking at it, it looks like an IRA/Sinn Fein style organization, ranging from the proverbial crazed militants to the various civilian politicos trying to do their best for their cause (if not always in the best possible fashion) to the people who just vote for it because it provides for their community. Worse, I just read that Hezbollah got its start after the 1982 Israeli bombing of Beirut, and no, I don't know what that was about. Apart from remembering seeing a limp body being tossed out a window like a ragdoll when I was in high school with the news blurb "War Torn Bombing in Beirut" -- this macabre interlude coming during a commercial break for "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever -- I know next to nothing about it.

This war? Heart-on-my-sleeve moment here: My sympathies generally lie with the country getting bombed. I had a lot of sympathy for Israel during the Gulf War. However, bombing the shit out of a relatively peaceful country during tourist season? That really doesn't do it for me. And when a country's leader starts channeling C. Montgomery Burns and referring to people as "tasty fishes," I have less. Ditto when Israel's chosen spokeswench came out on tv and issued ritual "regrets" for dead Lebanese kids with the same glassy-eyed smile you'd use to announce the evening weather.

Obviously yes, Hezbollah was a problem, but since it was/is also part of the coalition government in south Lebananon, there had to have been some form of diplomatic solution.

We do know the numbers, but I agree with you: if you did an analysis of minutes-per-death, we would know more per Israeli than per Lebanese. I think I've seen a few pieces on Israelis who have died, far less than on the terrible, terrible price of war in Lebanon, but the scale of deaths is something like 10-1, and there might not yet be an hour on the Lebanese deaths for every six minutes on the Israelis.

I would add a caveat, however: there's mounting evidence that Hezbollah encourages the deaths of its countrymen. (Now there's something someone should do a feature on.) I mean beyond the obvious encouragement of hiding among the populace. Israel, by contrast, has spent years "hardening" buildings (you can't build a house in Northern Israel without a bomb shelter, I hear,) specifically because Israel is under constant attack. This, and the fact that Israel has pretty much evacuated the North (as opposed to cramming refugees into houses filled with explosives,) explains much of the difference.

Long story short: there's a story on the Israeli side as well as on the Lebanese side; to expect the time apportioned to each to directly mirror the death counts, marks the full import of this exchange as a body-bag-counting activity. As much as Hezbollah would like you to believe it is, it is not.

So, having read this, you have decided a priori to skew anything reported in the press to a compensatory anti-Israeli point of view. Upon reading your posts here, I doubt that point of view was absent on first seeing "Wonkette's" complaints.

The fact that Lebanese eyewitnesses said the hospital was "empty" has no bearing on the question? It's pretty clear that the Israelis were interested in Hezbollah operatives, not in shooting up a fully occupied "hospital," as we understand the word. But how was it ever reported at all on that dastardly CNN? And how was it not emphasized that the "hospital" seemed to have no patients?

I cannot emphasize enough my belief that those with strong opinions should pay more attention before a flash-point. But your point is valid - that Hezbollah does operate a variety of community interests in support of its terrorist activities. The IRA, however, did not demand that England be pushed out of the British Isles, just that they leave Ireland. This is a crucial point: Hezbollah's stated purpose is defense of Lebanon, but Hezbollah's pronouncements and teachings in their oh-so-community-minded schools, preaches genocide as a form of defending Lebanon.

Israel's concerns in Lebanon amounted to establishing a terror-free area in the South; they eventually got assurances, and went home. Meanwhile, eighteen different factions fought for the country, including the Christian, south-Lebanon based South Lebanon Army; Christian militias elsewhere collectively called Phalange; Nabih Berri's Shia Amal; Hezbollah (with occasional reported rifts between pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian bits, although I'm skeptical of that); the PLO (which was forced to depart as a result of Israeli actions,) Walid Jumblatt's Druze militia, and - no typo here - a cost of thousands. Syria and Israel both invaded the country, with Israel leaving in 2000, and Syria in 2005. Lebanon has had peaceful interludes (primarily as a Syrian vassal), it's true, and Beirut was once (as Mr. Haar put it) the Paris of the Middle East. They are a European-facing bit of the region, and it is sad to see them rebuild that reputation, and then lose it once again to their own extremists. Israel withdrew in 2000, on the premise that Hezbollah would be disarmed along with the other militias, and that Lebanon would responsibly patrol all her territory, including the bits rockets were being launched from. This never happened.

Does this help to see Israel's actions as other than sudden, brutal, repressive invasion?

Like Nazi Germany in 1944? You're going to have to develop a little more sophisticated eye; there are sometimes countervailing considerations, other than "but they're losing."

The argument from Simpsons catchphrase. I like it. So if you say you got a "big fish," using an analogy to fishing, a sport in which you get more to eat from a bigger fish, it's okay. But if it's a tasty fish -- not really that big, but with much to savor (we would imagine another level of analogy, perhaps refering to intel possessed by someone who himself is not a leader,) it's ghoulish? Again, this sort of analysis is no substitute for study of -- or for that matter, interest in -- the region and its peoples.

Spokemen and spokeswomen, or spokeswenches if you prefer, are not trained to emote while announcing official condolences. Please refer me to examples of government spokespeople who turn into soap opera actors when they are describing their governments' regrets, and I will take this complaint seriously. It's the second time you've trotted it out. It had no bearing the first time, but was politely ignored. I think it's time you assess realistically what the options of a government spokesperson are, when delivering a government's condolences -- or better, begin rationally examining the implications of a world full of terrorist rump states.

Yes, there is one. Sign an instrument of Israeli withdrawl. Israel did so. Hezbollah and Lebanon did so. Syria did so. This instrument has been breached by cross border attacks since it was signed. Israel has evidently lost faith in purely diplomatic solutions with no teeth. (I hope the "teeth" thing isn't too ghoulish.)

I understand how easy it is to see a morsel or two from the point of view from which one begins, and then to color all further observation with that morsel. But I strive (though perhaps it's not apparent) to take into account the problems with Israel's present actions. I do have to come to a conclusion, to support them or not, just as anyone who chooses to take a position does. I am not automatically on the side of Israel, but it is my belief that they are far more in the right than is recognized on the left.

Thanks again for the handy soapbox, and my regrets to those who suffer through my monologues. But in the words of Carlos Santana or someone, "He who remembers history is condemned to recite it."

Dan

Why do I doubt them?

1. Because it was a known and admitted "non-working hospital" and therefore there would be no need for nurses to be in said "non-working hospital." You don't leave your key medical staff in a hospital which has been vacated and abandoned. It's just not good medical or military strategy...you put them where you can use them....unless, of course, you're using them for something more important....like guarding weapons and protecting classified information.

2. For the same reasons you've stated above -
a. "The other is the result of someone being kept in the dark by other people deliberately hiding data for their own political purposes."
b. "I can't be watching the news 24/7, so my reaction upon reading this was to conclude that Blitzer had been lying to me for his own political sympathies."
c. "I also concluded that anything coming out of Lebanon was likely going to be underreported and spun."

If a, b and c are good enough reasons for you to doubt the things you hear on the news, then they are also good enough for me, no?

3. Nursing is a traditional "woman's" field, isn't it? Even in the USA...I can only imagine the horror an Arab man might feel at taking a "woman's" job. I will give you this --perhaps they were medics, which would make more sense in a way. Medic's are mostly males and unfortunately (for the sake of your arguement, anyhow) in a war-torn country, they are mostly military males. And I believe the only "military" in that hospital that night besides Israeli soldiers were Hezbollah soldiers.


If we believe everything an army says, we have to conclude that the entire country is filled with crazed fighters, which sounds delusional or at best paranoid.

From what I've read when it comes to Hezbollah and the people whose country they are attempting to run, you are either with them or you are against them. It would stand to reason that if you were "against" them, especailly if you were a military aged male, you would have made yourself scarce a long time ago....nothing like being caught between a rock and a hard place to make a man want to be elsewhere until the problem's solved. If the Prime Minister is afraid to disagree publically with Hezbollah, think of how much harder it must be for the man on the street to speak up against them.


"This war? Heart-on-my-sleeve moment here: My sympathies generally lie with the country getting bombed. I had a lot of sympathy for Israel during the Gulf War. However, bombing the shit out of a relatively peaceful country during tourist season?"

No sympathies for the Jews who have made peace treaty after peace treaty with people only to have those treaties ignored and mocked? No sympathies for the soldiers who were guarding their own borders on a warm summer's night in a time of relative peace...probably talking amongst themselves about their girlfriends, their new cars and/or their dinner plans for the weekend and were suddenly and brutally attacked, killed and kidnapped on their own land in their own country by a militia from another country with whom they had a "peaceful agreement" signed in the year 2000? No sympathy for a country which another country has vowed to "wipe off the face of the earth?"
I'm surprised at you, Kevin. If it's the underdog you're looking for, Israel was ready made for you.

I guess I differ from you in that I seldom sympathize with the instigators in anything. I figure, you started it, you better be prepared to finish it. The rules in our house were simple when my children were growing up...I find out you started a fight, you're gonna fight with me. I find out you finished a fight, or you fought on the behalf of someone smaller or more afraid, I'm gonna be right there fighting with you.

It stood us in good stead and I stick by it. If you start shit, you gotta be prepared to take shit coz eventually people are going to get tired of your shit and they're gonna give you shit back....in triplicate.

Hezbollah pushed and pushed and pushed....they pushed America long before they pushed Israel this time around. They pushed us bad when they bombed our marine barracks in Beruit in 1983 and killed 241 of OUR men...not Israeli men, Kevin, but AMERICAN men....ours. And we did nothing...which only lead Hezbollah to believe that all countries would roll over and play dead when faced with their particular brand of terrorism. By our inability or our refusal to respond to them at that time we helped teach them that people are afraid, countries are afraid, and that they could continue to use that fear to further their own causes.

Israel did not roll over this time. Good for them. I only wish we would have had the same courage 23 years ago...perhaps the Middle East would be in much better shape today if we had.

"Obviously yes, Hezbollah was a problem, but since it was/is also part of the coalition government in south Lebananon, there had to have been some form of diplomatic solution.

See above paragraph. Violence begets violence. As dozens of peace treaties in The Middle East are broken time and time again it begins to become apparent that you cannot speak peace to a people or a government which only speaks war...it is a language Hezbollah does not understand and one which they have consistantly refused to learn. If Israel has decided enough is enough and that it is time to speak the language of their self-professed enemies then so be it....how can they be blamed for eventually speaking a foreign language when it may be the only effective means of communication left to them?


Lo

Actually, Dan, it is again the Paris if the Middle East. It has a number of fancy shopping districts. Students at the AUB are dressed as if they were on fashion runways. Quite the bar scene (we went to one when we were there that had a transvestite belly dancer at the end of the night!) The Downtown has been beautifully rebuilt by Mr. Hariri, and its streets are lined with lively outdoor cafes, like Paris, except everyone is smoking arghiles. Of course a downside is that it is a bit materialistic. I do find myself feeling bad that I keep hoping that the city is unharmed even while so many people are dying.