The View From The Top

A former Bush adviser on 9/11, Iraq and the lessons of five tumultuous years — for the president and the public.

By Michael Gerson, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
Newsweek

Teens Cope With Unwanted Pregnancies Better Than Abortions, Study Shows

By Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com

UK: Plot to bomb US-bound planes foiled

Britain bans hand luggage fearing use of liquid explosives; 21 arrested

Reuters

Israel-Hezbollah conflict

Hezbollah propagandists successfully have exploited the Western press. They have employed both outright anti-Semitic lies about "war crimes" (as in this incredible Reuters photo fabrication of bombing in Beirut — although the press agency evidently learned from Dan Rather's experience, and quickly killed the photo after the fabrication was exposed by the Little Green Footballs blog) and more subtle intimidation of the members of the Fourth Estate. Time magazine stringer Christopher Allbritton, writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, casually illustrated this latter technique: "To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one."

— TCS Daily, 8/8/06


[President of Venezuela] Chavez rounded on Israel at the weekend, accusing the Jewish state of committing a "new Holocaust".

"Israel has gone mad. It's attacking, doing the same thing to the Palestinian and Lebanese people that they have criticised — and with reason — the Holocaust. But this is a new Holocaust."

The Venezuelan president has also angered Israel by showing support for Iran, which backs Hezbollah and has said the answer to the crisis in Lebanon is the elimination of Israel.

During a visit to Tehran at the end of last month, Mr Chavez said Venezuela would "stand by Iran at any time and under any condition".

— BBC News, 9/8/06


Militant fires from civilian position (photo)
— Associated Press, 9/8/06

Media bias in Lebanon: Rubes fall for the oldest trick in the book

By Jules Crittenden, Editor
Boston Herald

The Reuters Photo Scandal: A Taxonomy of Fraud

A comprehensive overview of the four types of photo fraud committed by Reuters, August, 2006.

ZombieTime

Israel's "Greatest Generation"

The Huffington Post
By Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School Professor

Institutional Failure at Reuters

By Thomas Lifson
RealClearPolitics

Lebanon Is Not a Victim

By Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School Professor
The Huffington Post

Like Father, Like Son

Vietnam hero and Senator JOHN MCCAIN has unyieldingly backed the Iraq war. Now son Jimmy is heading to boot camp and, maybe, to battle.

By Massimo Calabresi
Time

Shipment of African Uranium Intercepted en Route to Iran

By Jon Swain, David Leppard and Brian Johnson-Thomas
Sunday Times

Israel-Hezbollah conflict

Hezbollah's spokesperson Hassan Ezzedin "If they go from Sheba'a, we will not stop fighting them. Our goal is to liberate the 1948 borders of Palestine… [Jews] can go back to Germany or wherever they came from.”

— New Yorker, 14/10/02


[T]he January 20, 2005 UN Secretary-General's report on Lebanon stated rather emphatically: "The continually asserted position of the Government of Lebanon that the Blue Line is not valid in the Shab'a farms area is not compatible with Security Council resolutions. The Council has recognized the Blue Line as valid for purposes of confirming Israel’s withdrawal pursuant to resolution 425 (1978). The Government of Lebanon should heed the Council’s repeated calls for the parties to respect the Blue Line in its entirety."

— UN Press Release SC/8299, 28/1/05


On May 19, 2005, an off-the-record senior diplomat at a Brookings Institution luncheon reported that: "in drawing the 'Blue Line' in 2000, the United Nations looked at more than ninety different maps of the region. Only one of them — which was deemed a forgery — showed the Shebaa Farms as Lebanese."

— Brookings Institution, 19/5/05


Nancy Soderberg, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, made a similar observation on July 21, 2006. She wrote that: "When it was clear the Israelis were going to withdraw fully from Lebanon, Syrian and Lebanese officials fabricated the fiction that this small, sparsely populated area was part of Lebanon. They even produced a crudely fabricated map to back up the dubious claim. I and United Nations officials went into the map room in the United Nations and looked at all the maps of the region in the files for decades. All showed the Shebaa Farms clearly in Syria."

— Florida-Times Union, 21/7/06


[T]he Lebanese parliamentary speaker, a prominent Shiite who has been negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah, rejected the U.S.-French draft U.N. cease-fire resolution on Sunday because it did not include the government’s plan for ending the fighting.

…

“Lebanon, all of Lebanon, rejects any talks or any draft resolution that does not include the seven-point government framework,” Berri said at a news conference in Beirut.

…

The U.S.-French proposal, which was expected to go to the floor of the U.N. Security Council early this week, calls for Hezbollah to stop all military operations and for Israel to stop its offensive drive against Lebanon. The proposal would allow Israel to strike back if Hezbollah were to break a cease-fire.

— Associated Press, 6/8/06


Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem stood next to his Lebanese counterpart and declared Israel would never defeat the hardened guerrilla force.

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“As Syria’s foreign minister I hope to be a soldier in the resistance,” said Moallem, the first top Syrian official to visit Lebanon since Damascus ended a 29-year military presence in Lebanon last year.

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Iran on Sunday gave its ally Hezbollah a green light to keep fighting in Lebanon, saying that the United States cannot be a mediator in the crisis because of its support for Israel.

Many in the U.S., Europe, the Arab world and Israel accuse Iran of fueling the warfare in Lebanon through Hezbollah, in a bid to show its regional strength. …

— Associated Press, 6/8/06

Island of decency

By Michael Coren
Toronto Sun

Draft truce calls for ‘full cessation of hostilities’

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel. …

…

Israel "is an illegitimate regime, there is no legal basis for its existence," he said.

…

Ahmadinejad also rejected proposals for deploying international troops along the Israeli-Lebanese border to separate the warring parties.

— Associated Press, 3/8/06


The U.S. and France agreed Saturday on a draft Security Council resolution that seeks a full halt to fighting in Lebanon ….

…

Hezbollah warned it won’t abide by the resolution unless Israel withdraws from Lebanon entirely ….

…

The draft’s chief goal is to ensure that southern Lebanon does not slip back into the same state it was in before Israel’s offensive, which began after Hezbollah guerrillas raided northern Israel on July 12 in fighting that left eight soldiers dead and two captured.

…

The U.S. and France had to compromise to get the draft adopted.

Washington backed off its demand for a package of immediate steps, including the deployment of the international force in conjunction with a cease-fire.

France gave up its desire for a blanket halt to violence, agreeing for the resolution to give Israel the right to conduct defensive operations — a term that the Israeli military could interpret broadly in response to any Hezbollah attack.

The draft made no direct demand for the release of the two captured Israeli soldiers. It only emphasized the need to address the causes “that have given rise to the current crisis,” including freeing the abductees.

The Security Council has made the same demands previously — most recently with resolution 1559 in September 2004 — but Hezbollah has refused to obey.

…

While meeting fierce resistance in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army claimed progress. Commanders said Israeli troops had knocked out half of Hezbollah’s long-range rockets and seized positions in or near 20 towns and villages as part its drive to carve out a five-mile zone along the border free of Hezbollah fighters.

— MSNBC, 5/8/06


Hamas, which swept a January parliamentary election, is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. International donors have cut funds to the Palestinian government, calling on Hamas to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept past interim peace deals.

— Reuters, 5/8/06


Israel hopes … its ability to withstand an onslaught of nearly 2,500 Hezbollah rockets will send a strong message of defiance to its enemies.

“Israeli society showed the myth of a weak society is not true,” said Efraim Inbar, a professor of political studies at the Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “I think the region will pay attention.”

…

The conflict in Lebanon has reinforced Israelis’ deeply ingrained feeling that they are surrounded by enemies who want them dead, bringing a rare sense of clarity to a national psyche….

Most Israelis believe winning the war — and being perceived as winning it — is essential for the Jewish state’s long-term security.

— Associated Press, 4/8/06


That leaves me to contemplate Yasir Arafat’s comment when the 1973 war ended with the Egyptian Army surrounded in the Sinai and the Israelis at the gates of Damascus. “You forget,” he told me after I remarked that a military solution didn’t look too promising for the Arab nations. “The Crusades took 200 years.” What time frame is anyone contemplating here?

— Newsweek, 4/8/06

Debunking 9/11 Myths

Introduction

By David Dunbar and Brad Reagan
Popular Mechanics

IDF: We assumed building in Qana to be empty

IDF investigation reveals Qana residents warned repeatedly to leave area. IDF sources: Had we known building was occupied by civilians, we would not have attacked it.

By Efrat Weiss
Ynetnews

Israel-Hezbollah conflict

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized for the civilian deaths in Saturday’s strike, in which 56 people, mostly women and children, were killed.

“I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for all deaths of children or women in Qana,” he said. “We did not search them out. … They were not our enemies and we did not look for them.”

But he insisted Israel had no choice but to fight.

“There is no cease-fire, there will be no cease-fire,” he said. “We are determined to succeed in this struggle. We will not give up on our goal to live a life free of terror.”

The Israeli onslaught was sparked when Hezbollah snatched two soldiers and killed three others in a cross-border raid July 12.

…

Israel carried out two other airstrikes. One killed a Lebanese soldier in his car outside Tyre, prompting Israel to express its regrets, saying it had believed the vehicle was carrying a senior Hezbollah official. The other strike hit the main Lebanon-Syria border crossing for the third day in a row.

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The guerrilla group did not shoot a single rocket into Israel as of early evening, a remarkable turnaround for an area that had been hit by dozens of missiles each day during the offensive.

— MSNBC, 31/7/06


The attack, the deepest strike north by Israel so far, was led by commandos who flew in by helicopter before dawn, capturing five Hezbollah guerrillas and killing at least 10, said Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz.

Witnesses said the Israeli forces partially destroyed the Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek, which residents said is financed by an Iranian charity close to Hezbollah.

…

The Israel air force deputy commander, Col. Yochanan Loker, described the site as "a Hezbollah headquarters located inside the hospital. … Weapons were found within the hospital — in offices, in drawers."

Israel has not released the identities of those captured. When asked by The Associated Press whether any were "big fish," Olmert said: "They are tasty fishes."

…

Commandos also took away computers, disks and documents for intelligence analysis, said army Col. Nitzan Alon, who led the Israeli ground forces on the mission. As they swept the building, they came under fire by anti-tank missiles from nearby buildings.

Israeli jets fired missiles at the surrounding guerrilla force as the fighting at the hospital raged, the military said.

…

In Geneva, the U.N. World Food Program said Israel had agreed to permit two oil tankers to sail into Lebanon to ease a growing fuel crisis. Many gas stations have long lines or are shuttered, and aid officials fear fuel shortages could also hurt food production. Power and water outages also have become common, especially across the south.

— Associated Press, 2/8/06

Bloggers raise questions about Kana

D Izenberg, J Siegel-Itzkovich and N Rosen
The Jerusalem Post

Stage-Managed Massacre

By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com

Agonizing Choices for an Israeli Fighter Pilot

After the deadly Qana strike, a veteran pilot tells TIME of the wrenching everyday decisions whether to attack what could be the enemy or innocent civilians.

By Tim McGirk
Time.com

Fearful of Arab Backlash, EU Refuses to Add Hezbollah to List of Terror Groups

Vital Perspective