The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

I read this article in the NRO, and the author actually made some interesting arguments. "Basically," he said, "I am questioning the premise that [global warming] is a problem rather than an opportunity." Does he have a point?

Global warming is great. Granted, maybe it isn’t really happening, and if it is there are strong reasons to doubt that humans have anything to do with it. But if the world is warming, I say “bravo.” People in most parts of the globe should have no objection to a warmer, wetter climate. If the aliens were watching they’d conclude we were making our planet more habitable on purpose.

Granted, there will be some negative impacts in marginal areas. Some rare plant and animal species, hyper-adapted to highly specific climate conditions or micobiotic zones, are already unable to cope with the change. Many may go extinct; some already have. That’s tough, but chalk it up to bad evolutionary choices. When those rigidly specialist species bet everything on a small part of the world in hopes it would never change, they made a very bad bargain. For our part, we have air conditioners, lightweight fabrics, and sunscreen. Why infinitely adaptable humanity has to pay the price for the evolutionary shortsightedness of other life forms is beyond me.

• Pharmaceutical companies have made a fortune off of AIDS. As tropical diseases like malaria begin to spread in wealthy, formerly-temperate countries those same companies will make billions selling medicines that formerly went to countries that couldn't pay premium prices.
  
• Construction companies have made big bucks "rebuilding" Iraq and New Orleans. Imagine how much work they'll have when every coastal city in the world needs to be protected from tidal surges or rebuilt inland. Again, this won't be the usual mass destruction happening to dirt poor people in the tropics; it will be happening to people who can afford to pay premium prices.
  
• Energy companies have wanted to drill for oil on the Arctic coastal shelf for decades but have been prevented by their inability to work among moving ice flows. No ice flows, no problem.
  
• Do I need to explain what a couple billion people forced to move will do for the real estate market?

An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words "We will not be silent" before boarding a flight at New York.

Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.

[...]

He said he had cleared security at John F Kennedy airport for a flight back to his home in California when he was approached by two men who wanted to check his ID and boarding pass.

Mr Jarrar said he was told a number of passengers had complained about his T-shirt - apparently concerned at what the Arabic phrase meant - and asked him to remove it.

He refused, arguing that the slogan was not offensive and citing his constitutional rights to free expression.

Mr Jarrar later told a New York radio station: "I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes and I know that these things happen.

"But I'm shocked that they happened to me here, in the US."

[...]

"We Will Not Be Silent" is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.

It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.

I love these kinds of stories, 'cause we're just getting them all over the place: Waistlines continue to grow in the United States. Another crisis story here, ladies and gentlemen, from our old buddies at the Associated Press. "The gravy train -- make that the sausage, biscuits, and gravy train -- just keep [sic] on rolling in most of America last year." Thirty-one states showing an increase in obesity. Mississippi continued to lead the way; an estimated 30 percent of adults there are considered obese, an increase of 1.1 percentage points when compared with last year's report. Indeed, "the five states with the highest obesity rates are Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Kentucky -- exhibit much higher rates of poverty than the national norm. Meanwhile, the five states with the lowest obesity have less poverty. They are Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont."

[...]

I think you might then say that the obesity crisis could be the fault of government, liberal government.

[...]

This is what happens when you let the left run things. We've been beat about the head. There are hungry people everywhere. UNICEF got it all started. We've seen the babies with the extended tummies, the walking skeletons, told that kids can't learn unless they're fed. We've been guilted into pouring resources on the problem. And now, now, the latest crisis is that there is obesity among those who are impoverished. Because we are sympathetic, we are compassionate people, we have responded by letting our government literally feed these people to the point of obesity.

At least here in America, didn't teach them how to fish, we gave them the fish. Didn't teach them how to butcher a -- slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter.

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we're learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he's still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.

In some ways, this is a "Best of" list, in others it is a "My favourites" list.

The way I made it was to think what books I would buy for a young person (let's say a niece or nephew going off to college) as an introduction to SF - in other words: where to start when entering this genre. Another way I thought was to think of a long list of SF works that can be used (once pared down to a manageable size) in teaching a course "Science Fiction for Biologists."

President Bush, right-wing pundits, and cranky old wingnut gaffers on C-SPAN's call-in shows insist on referring to the opposition party as the "Democrat Party." They know that's not the name of the party, but like a six-year-old on a sugar jag, they keep doing it because they know it pisses some people off. It also pretty much sums up the level of Neener-Neener political discourse coming out of the GOP. I suppose we could counter by referring to the "Republic Party," which has a slightly fascist tone to it, but it would only be playing their game. Besides, the only name that I want to attach to them in November is "Loser."

There are no atheists in foxholes," the old saw goes. The line, attributed to a WWII chaplain, has since been uttered countless times by grunts, chaplains and news anchors. But an increasingly vocal group of activists and soldiers--atheist soldiers--disagrees. "It's a denial of our contributions," says Master Sgt. Kathleen Johnson, who founded the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers and who will be deployed to Iraq this fall. "A lot of people manage to serve without having to call on a higher power."

It's an ongoing battle. Just last month Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said, "Agnostics, atheists and bigots suddenly lose all that when their life is on the line."

Atheist groups reacted swiftly, releasing a statement that "Nonbelievers are serving, and have served, in our nation's military with distinction!"

The National Guard said it received about 20 letters objecting to Blum's statement, and said his comments were "intended to clearly illustrate the positive spirit of camaraderie, human understanding and inclusion of our fine men and women in the National Guard."

Yesterday, a federal judge in Michigan issued "a sweeping rebuke of the once-secret domestic-surveillance effort the White House authorized following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." The ruling was "a significant blow to Bush’s attempts to expand presidential powers," but you wouldn’t know that by watching last evening’s network newscasts.

All three major TV networks led their evening news with stories on JonBenet Ramsey’s death and the comments made by arrested teacher John Mark Karr. The networks offered multiple segments and numerous expert analyses to provide in-depth coverage on the legal case. The NSA decision received only a passing mention from two of the newscasts, while ABC devoted a full segment to it.

Still, ABC devoted twice as much time to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story. More egregiously, CBS offered seven times as much airtime to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story, while NBC devoted 15 times more airtime. Below is a comparison of the allocation of time made by each network:

NETWORK	RAMSEY SEGMENT	NSA SEGMENT
NBC	7:39	0:27
CBS	3:23	0:25
ABC	4:03	2:00

As CBS host Bob Schieffer wrapped up the Ramsey segment, he reassured the audience, "We'll stay on this case. That’s for sure."

Troy Lee Gentry, half of the country music duo Montgomery Gentry, has been charged with killing a tame bear and then making it look as if it was a hunting trophy, authorities said on Wednesday.

[...]

According to an indictment unsealed this week, in October 2004 Gentry paid $4,650 to shoot the "trophy-caliber" bear named "Cubby" at the Minnesota Wildlife Connection in northern Minnesota, which advertises itself as a place where animals can be photographed in the wild.

After using a bow and arrow to kill the animal inside its pen, Gentry and the owner of the preserve tagged the bear and registered it with the state as if it had been killed in the wild. A videotape was edited to make it appear that Gentry had hunted down the bear.

I've spent my entire life in the Northwest among hunting people. Most of my male relatives hunted and many of my friends do. Though I don't hunt myself, I did learn safe gun handling at a very early age. My father was a cowboy and was very serious about such things. Every so often one of my friends takes me out target shooting, just to make sure I remember which end of the gun to point away from myself (despite their best efforts, I remain a terrible shot. I blame my vision; they blame my attention span). Consequently, I'm not especially impressed with the tales of Cheney's "hunting trips."

Every hunter I know hunts for food or as an excuse to spend a day in the woods. A large percentage of the meat I ate growing up was game: deer, elk, moose, caribou, and, once, bear. With that background, I find trophy hunting a little creepy, and what Cheney does, not hunting at all. As

the Humane Society noted after a 2003 "hunting" trip of Cheney's:
Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.

"This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States.

This is not hunting. It's not really sport unless you call it something like "organic skeet shooting." It's blood sport. Cheney killed "70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks" in one afternoon. There's no way he was planning to eat all of those birds. The object is simply to rack up an impressive kill score. Real hunting involves--well--hunting for things, actually walking around and looking for game, not loitering around the buffet, making small talk, and waiting for the help to hold something in front of your gun so you can shoot it.

This kind of mass game killing was popular among Europe's royals before the First World War. It forms a fairly convincing data point for any argument comparing the current United States to a decadent imperial power. The Bushes are our Habsburgs and the Cheneys are our Bathorys.

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the U.S. government's domestic eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately.

In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, -- who is based in Detroit, Michigan -- struck down the National Security Agency's program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

According to The Associated Press, Taylor is the first judge to rule the eavesdropping program unconstitutional.

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent power" must derive from that Constitution.

The No. 5 U.S. carrier, which has slashed most employees' pay and is looking to cut jobs as it prepares to exit bankruptcy, put the tips in a booklet handed out to about 50 workers and posted for a time on its employee Web site.

[...]

Northwest spokesman Roman Blahoski said some employees who received the handbook had taken issue with a couple of the items. "We agree that some of these suggestions and tips ... were a bit insensitive," Blahoski told Reuters.

The four-page booklet, "Preparing for a Financial Setback" contained suggestions such as shopping in thrift stores, taking "a date for a walk along the beach or in the woods" and not being "shy about pulling something you like out of the trash."

The booklet was part of a 150-page packet to ground workers, such as baggage handlers, whose jobs will likely be cut after their union agreed to allow the airline to outsource some of their work, Blahoski said.

Descendants of extinct mammals like the giant woolly mammoth might one day walk the Earth again.

It isn't exactly Jurassic Park, but Japanese researchers are looking at the possibility of using sperm from frozen animals to inseminate living relatives.

So far they've succeeded with mice--some frozen as long as 15 years--and lead researcher Dr. Atsuo Ogura says he would like to try experiments in larger animals.

"In this study, the rates of success with sperm from 15 year-frozen bodies were much higher than we expected. So the likelihood of mammoths revival would be higher than we expected before," Ogura said in an interview via e-mail.

Less enthusiastic was Dr. Peter Mazur, a biologist at the University of Tennessee who has worked with frozen eggs and sperm and is a past president of the Society for Cryobiology.

[...]

"The storage temperature of frozen mammoths is not nearly low enough to prevent the chemical degradation of their DNA over hundreds of thousands of years," he commented. And "even if the temperature were low enough to prevent chemical degradation, that would not prevent serious damage over those time periods from background radiation, which includes cosmic rays."

Even if there are no explicit incentives to participate, inmates may still interpret a request to participate as an implied order. It is unethical to create a situation in which prisoners may sign on to a risky research project out of fear of reprisal (well-founded, or not). Prisoners often lack access to basic medical care and may be pressured into accepting experimental treatments because they can't obtain standard medical care.

Then there's the thorny issue of payment. On the one hand, free research subjects are frequently paid for their participation. If free subjects are getting paid, prisoners deserve the going rate. However, paying prisoners raises its own ethical complications. Risky medical experiments might be disproportionately attractive to people who have no other opportunities to make money.

Unlike children, prisoners are social outcasts. The institutional review board is not a loving parent who weighs the costs and benefits for individuals. Even the most thorough and conscientious committee would be making calculations on behalf large numbers of strangers from a marginalized group. The decisions of the review boards may be colored by society's disdain for prisoners. I doubt these committees will be as solicitous of the well-being of inmates as individual parents are about the welfare of their sick children.

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport planned to give 11 boxes of surrendered items to the city's human services department, which will give the unopened bottles of shampoo, toothpaste and other items to homeless shelters, airport spokeswoman Lexie Van Haren said.

In Pennsylvania, state officials were considering pulling some discarded items for a state program that resells on eBay any items of value relinquished at airport security checkpoints, said Edward Myslewicz, spokesman for the General Services Department.

Texas highway patrol officers carried out one of their strangest rescues after a truck carrying 25 penguins, an octopus and exotic fish overturned.
The unusual load was being transported from Indianapolis Zoo to the Texas tourist attraction Moody Gardens in Galveston when the accident happened.

Four of the penguins and some of the tropical fish died, while the driver and passenger sustained minor injuries.

[...]

One rockhopper penguin died in the crash and a further three gentoo penguins were killed by oncoming traffic.

"The rest of the penguins kind of stayed together in a ditch," he said.

The octopus - who, like the fish, was being transported in a plastic bag - appeared unharmed, officials said.

Trooper Richard Buchanan said it was the first traffic accident he had ever handled involving penguins, and added that things could have been worse.

"There was another truck full of snakes and alligators that was an hour ahead of them," he said. "So luckily we didn't have to deal with the alligators."

You've got $100 of found money. You decide to take a road trip.

• Destination?
  
• Music choices?
  
• Companion?

HOWARD KURTZ: And joining us now... Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for "The Washington Post" and author of the new book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq."

Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

The California beermaker who brought the world He'brew, Miraculous Jewbilation and Genesis Ale has come up with a new brew commemorating the late Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce on the 40th anniversary of his death.

Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A. has hit more than 1,000 stores in 25 states in a tribute to Bruce, the ground-breaking comic and social critic who died on August 3, 1966, at age 40.

The beer is made with "obscene amounts of malts and hops," says a statement from Shmaltz Brewing Co., in reference to Bruce's arrests for obscenity in his standup act.

Hezbollah was using Lebanese children as involuntary human shields--surely a war crime. Hezbollah was preventing civilians--who had been repeatedly warned by Israel to leave the battle zone--from moving out of harm's way. Hezbollah sympathizers were shown on TV defiantly tearing up the Israeli leaflets, as if to say "we're staying" Hezbollah had refused to build bomb shelters for ordinary civilians--only for their own leaders. Hezbollah knew (and Israel didn't) that children were in the so-called safe house. That is why it deliberately used the safe house as a shield behind which to five rockets at Israel. Hezbollah used its rocket launchers as "bait" to induce Israel to fire at them in order to increase the chances that Israel's rocket would misfire and hit the "safe house".

From rising sea levels to stifling heat waves, the effects of global warming are shaping up to be a worldwide buzz kill.

But brewers in Greenland appear to be going with the flow by harnessing one of their homeland's fastest growing—but least celebrated—natural resources: melted Arctic ice.

On July 31 a team of canny entrepreneurs unveiled Greenland Beer, an ale brewed with water melted from Greenland's ice cap, at a public tasting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Staffed by indigenous Greenlanders and located some 390 miles (625 kilometers) south of the Arctic Circle, Greenland Brewhouse is the world's first Inuit microbrewery.

And if reaction from tipplers at the tasting was any indication, the brewers may be on to something. Electrician Flemming Larsen described the ale to the Associated Press as "smooth, soft, but not bitter … different from most other beer."

"Maybe that is because it's ice-cap water," he said.

On his Fox News program, Bill O'Reilly called Mel Gibson's recent anti-Semitic comments "inexcusable," but said it is "more important" to discuss the "point where the media and individual Americans start to enjoy the suffering of rich and powerful people." Guest Geraldo Rivera later suggested that O'Reilly refer to "that schmuck from MSNBC," apparently MSNBC host Keith Olbermann; Rivera added that the "schmuck from MSNBC" is a "lowlife." Rivera also asserted that Comedy Central hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert "make a living putting on video of old ladies slipping on ice and people laughing" and that they "exist in a small little place where they count for nothing."

People interested in campaigning for Lieberman in the Democratic Primary will have lodging accommodations paid for (by his campaign), as well as food and transportation.

Brazil's air force and navy will transport more than 100 penguins to Antarctica next month after the flightless birds were stranded on Rio de Janeiro beaches.

Penguins arrive from the Antarctic Circle on ice floes that melt in the vicinity of Brazil's shore and the birds wash up on Rio beaches every winter. Typically many of the birds are sent to local zoos.

A plane carrying equipment for an Antarctic naval base will take the penguins to Brazil's southernmost region next month, an air force spokesman said Monday. They will continue their journey on a naval ship, which will release them into the ocean in their Antarctic habitat.

Apparently the only thing more valuable than dead Jewish kids to militant Islamist terrorist is dead Muslim kids for which the deaths they can blame on the Israelis. I have never seen a group of people more willing to sacrifice their own children to advance their ideology...

That building didn't fall for eight hours after it was hit. What do you bet that the Hezbos finished the job that the Israeli bomb did not actually complete? What do you bet they killed their own people for the PR aspect? These people cannot compete militarily with any industrialized nation, so they have to fight the PR and the spin war. And it is amazing to me to see how easily the duped US and world media is.

[...]

Every bit of it is staged and the still photographers know it. Yet they send these pictures out without saying all of this is being staged for us.