Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

Didn't they just ask for them?

[Ibby]

Did I say they COULD carpet bomb it? No. I said they didn't.

[Undertoad]

US prohibits flight of Iranian missiles to Syria

• July 15: Three days after the war began, a source tipped off U.S. intelligence about an imminent shipment of missiles from Iran to Hezbollah.

• July 19: A spy satellite photographed Iranian crews loading three missile launchers and eight crates, each normally used to carry a Chinese-designed C-802 Noor missile, aboard a transport plane at Mehrabad air base near Tehran. Israel says Hezbollah fired a C-802, a precision-guided anti-ship cruise missile, at an Israeli warship off Lebanon's coast on July 14.

• July 20: The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane left for Damascus, but Iraqi air-traffic controllers denied it permission to enter Iraq's airspace. The Iranian flight crew then requested permission to fly over Turkey. Turkish controllers granted permission — but only if the plane would land for an inspection. The plane returned to Tehran, where the military cargo was unloaded.

• July 22: The plane flew humanitarian aid to Damascus after stopping for inspection in Turkey.

Originally Posted by tw

Israel expected to drive out Hezbollah in two weeks. Massive military equipment from that airport and carried south was not going to resupply Hezbollah.

Riiight, because there are no Hezbollah in Beirut, so nobody would be available to transfer the weapons to trucks.

Closer to the coastal war zone: Damascus or Beirut?

Well maybe they only had aluminum tubes in those crates.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

"Illegal invasions of Cambodia, Laos..."

Communist propaganda trope alert. The Gulf of Tonkin was not, of course, an invasion, but a skirmish. Something put a hole in the C. Turner Joy, and I doubt any and all conspiracy theories about it. Communists shoot at Americans so routinely it's practically a stereotype.

"Murdering Maronites and Druze?" First I've heard of it. Nah, tw, you'll prostitute your integrity to any imaginable degree, just because you don't believe democracies are an improvement over nondemocracies. That is why your brain is sick, and you exhibit your symptoms in all your posts. You live in a democracy, you jerk.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Actually, any ground-attack platform can carpet-bomb. It's a mere matter of piling enough explosives densely enough onto a target position. Submunition weapons, which are to carpet bombing what a throw rug is to wall-to-wall, are a more weapon-efficient tool for carpet bombing, and you can find references to trying to clear unexploded submunitions out of the battle areas in today's newspapers -- an AP wire, for instance, headlined "Explosives pose danger to refugees returning to south Lebanon."

[Hippikos]

The Gulf of Tonkin was not, of course, an invasion, but a skirmish.

The Gulf of Tonkin was a hoax...

Carpet bombs are old fashioned, it´s cluster bombs today.

[DanaC]

N-Ireland somehow found a way out of the quigmire. Not by bombing Ireland or the UK, but by negotiation, even if that means that one need to talk to (former) terrorists..

I agreed with most of what you said, but in fairness, I really don't think we'd have gone to the table had they not lobbed the odd bomb in our direction.

I remember every Christmas we'd get a tad worried on the mainland. The IRA usually phoned through warnings to give a chance for evacuation, but occassionally things went wrong. Several times, when I was working in a shopping centre we were evacuated due to bomb threats (false). It was damnably inconvenient and hurt the Christmas trade quite badly.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Hippikos, one thing I do as a matter of policy is disbelieve conspiracy theories, especially conspiracy theories wrt wars between the United States and the unfreeworlders.

Conspiracy theory by nature is never the simplest nor the most coherent explanation of events. It's a product of frustrated romanticism, and habitually attributes to ongoing malice what is more simply accounted for by, well, stupidity. Remember that in politics, sometimes all that is presented is a choice of blunders.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Occam's Razor can't always be applied, especially in the Middle east. It's way more complicated than white hats/black hats. Just ask a painter how many whites and blacks there are, to get a feel for it.

[DanaC]

unfreeworlders

Approaching Unfreeworld. Raise shields and open a communications channel!

[Hippikos]

The theory lies in the revelation that LBJ said to McNamara "When we got through with all the firing, we concluded maybe they hadn't fired at all." Kind of Swift Boat Lies avant la lettre.

Remember that in politics, sometimes all that is presented is a choice of blunders.

Which is painfully visible in the ME currently .

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I've never met a conspiracy theory that wasn't cut to shreds by Occam's Razor.

I believe the Swifties, for I have not heard they have been refuted on any point of fact. And nobody remembers processing Kerry's Purple Heart citations, either.

Dana, just where do you come off sneering and smartassing? Have you ever lived in a totalitarian society, sister? I have. I didn't like it, and count myself fortunate that I had the option to quit. The lesson it taught me was that while there are places for totalitarian organizations within a society -- armies, whose totalitarian organization permits them to function even when heavily damaged -- that it is absolutely no way to organize a nation that's worth living in.

Too many people around here have never even tried to discover this for themselves. The least you could bloody do is reread 1984.

[headsplice]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerilla

I believe the Swifties, for I have not heard they have been refuted on any point of fact. And nobody remembers processing Kerry's Purple Heart citations, either.

Well, here ya go

[Undertoad]

In two posts in this thread, and one post in another thread, tw suggests that Israel bombs Red Cross ambulances.

In #276 he said

Instead Israel declared anyone in Lebanon as Hezbollah and attack everyone in Lebanon - including intentional attacks on well marked Red Cross ambulances. Not just Red Crescent. Israel also routinely attacks well marked Red Crosses.

Well marked, he says twice. That suggests that he saw this widely-circulated picture, which the IDF missile hit right smack in the middle of the cross:



Unforgettable, no?

Guess what.

http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident was perhaps the most damning of all the evidence against Israel, and the most morally indefensible. Other incidents were open to debate: in those cases where Israel bombed buildings that turned out to have civilians inside, Israel claimed either that it didn't know the building was occupied, or that it was trying to hit a Hezbollah stronghold elsewhere in the same building; or that the strike was a mistake, an errant missile. But targeting clearly marked ambulances, and hitting them directly -- there's no possible excuse for that. So this specific incident contributed to the outrage over the war, eventually causing Israel to stand down.

Which makes it all the more shocking to learn that the attack on the ambulances most likely never occurred, and that the "evidence" supporting the claim is in fact a hoax.

Read the original article and you will not doubt what they say.

Once again the entire thing is a setup.

[glatt]

I love the internet. Good find UT.