[source]
Palestinian mourners vowed to avenge Israel
Look, guys, there’s no need to avenge a successful raid.
[source]
Members of Seoul’s small Muslim community filed past rows of riot police to attend prayers Friday amid bomb threats and an angry backlash over the beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq.
Yeah, I remember how the riot police were required in the xenophobic USA after the 11 Sep attacks, the protective custody for Muslims and burned mosques… If only we could learn from other, more tolerant nations.
[source]
Sitting with his family in the shade, Qassim didn’t say much but occasionally rested his head on his mother’s shoulder. “It hurts,” he whispered.
His mother, wounded by shrapnel in her left leg, held Abdullah on her lap. Stripped down to his underwear in the 120-degree heat, the baby had small shrapnel wounds on his left thigh.
Qassim’s father, Talmasan, a 39-year-old police lieutenant colonel, blamed U.S. troops for the attack on his family.
“I asked the Iraqi civil defense soldier whether it was safe to drive past the Americans, and he said ‘yes.’ A few seconds later we were fired on,” he said, standing next to his car. The front passenger window was shattered and the door pockmarked by gunfire.
“You know how they (the Americans) are, they just shoot at anyone,” said Talmasan Qassim, who had been trying to get his family to a safer area when they were shot at. [emphasis added]
Since when do you get shrapnel wounds from gunfire? Is this the reporter being stupid or being set up? Or both? The deeper problem is that reporting from Iraq is so bad that there’s no way to tell.
[source]
The New York Times, less than a week after demanding apologies from George Bush and Dick Cheney for supposedly misleading Americans on ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, publishes a report detailing even more ties and evidence of collaboration between Saddam and bin Laden (via Power Line):
Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990’s were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.
This is an interesting tidbit, but it’s not really different from the Plame affair. Big Media is about processing and using other people’s information, not their own.
Iran made good on recent threats yesterday and announced that it will resume building equipment essential for a nuclear weapons program, despite its agreement with three major European powers.
The decision does not violate international treaties that allow Tehran to make centrifuge parts for peaceful nuclear energy. But the move does break an agreement Iran signed with France, Britain and Germany, in which it promised to suspend nuclear efforts as a goodwill gesture toward earning trade incentives with the European Union.
European officials and arms-control specialists called Iran’s move a major setback and a reflection of the difficulties faced by those working to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions as evidence mounts that the country is concealing information from international inspectors.
Hands up every one who was surprised by this, except for the EUlite and their sycophants.
Arafat issued the call at a lighting ceremony for a symbolic Olympic torch at his headquarters in Ramallah.
“On the occasion of lighting the Palestinian Olympic torch, I declare our respect and commitment for an Olympic Truce, which I signed in my besieged office,” Arafat said.
“We hope that the revival of the ancient and noble Greek tradition will help in creating a world that enjoys peace, justice and security for the coming generations,” he said.
A senior Israeli official dismissed Arafat’s offer, accusing the Palestinian leader of being behind the killings of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
“Arafat’s Olympic torch is a torch of death. There is a big difference between what Arafat says and what he does,” the official said.
But wait — if Arafat can issue this truce, doesn’t that mean that the terrorists are under his control?
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In what was probably the most psychologically revealing moment of the battle [in Najaf], [American] infantrymen fought six hours for the possession of one damaged Humvee, of no tactical value, simply so that the network news would not have the satisfaction of displaying the piece of junk in the hands of Sadr’s men. The enemy understood the rules of engagement too well, but from the other side.
This is what our media has come to - forcing our military to risk lives in order to avoid bad visuals on the evening news. Not to win, not to perserve, but just to keep American reporters from smearing our efforts in Iraq by hyping a trivial loss of equipment.
I’m trying to not descend to their level by using intemperate language, but I’m sure thinking it.