"Israeli Strikes On Qana Ambulances" MSM Stories Look Fake, Too

Dan's story is kind of involved, with discrepancies and suddenly disappearing and reappearing second ambulances, but just check the photos.

Missile strike?

By one of those special safety non-flammable missiles those crafty Jews like to use?

I don't know if it was hit by a missile or not. I'm know nothing about such matters. I imagine a missile causing a "huge expolsion" with lots of fire would leave, you know, fire damage. Scorching. And maybe would have knocked loose one of those filmsy jump-seats on the van's sides. Or, you know, damaged the cusions in any fashion.

I also know that the MSM accepts claims from sources known not to be credible far more readily than claims from fairly credible sources such as the US and Israeli government. (Note-- fairly credible.)

Hey, any story that helps the cause is the TRUTH as far as the MSM is concerned.

Aren't We Getting Into Charlie Sheen "It sure looked like a controlled demolition to me" Area Here?: Allah suggested this the other day, with regard to stories debunking the Qana apartment building strike, but I continue to say the answer is "No."

For one thing, we have seen this bullshit throughout the Arab world so many times it's, literally, not even funny anymore. They are implacable (and crude) propagandists.

For another thing -- there is no independent media in these countries! The big secret, which isn't a secret at all, is that due to budget cutting and a general aversion by most (note: most) of the press corps to do any reportage from any location not adjacent to the nearest Intercontinental Hotel swimming pool, most "foreign news collection" is done via highly suspect, often state-run or at least funded and influenced local media outfits, or by small-salary no-name local stringers.

I'm going to state this is as fact, and I don't need a cite for this: Second only to embassy staffs, the "freelance international reporter corps" is the organization most heavily infested by spies and paid propaganda operatives (and terrorists).

Always has been. Always will be. Third is probably "charity organizations" and NGO's.

Twenty years or so years ago the US picked up an illegal Soviet spy in the US. ("Illegal" meaning a true covert op, without the paper-thin cover of diplomatic status.) The Soviets immediately retalliated by picking up one of our supposed "spies," and offering an exchange.

That man was, of course, a reporter.

Now, I won't say I know for a fact that he was a spy. But I will say that when the Soviets went looking for someone to arrest to trade for their man, they went right for a reporter. He may have been a spy, he may have just done a favor for a CIA man once, he may have just been a plain-old reporter the Soviets picked up on a lark.

Even if they grabbed an innocent as lamb guy (which strikes me as less than likely, because every country knows of a certain number of spies within its borders they tolerate as the cost of doing business), they knew the right group to pluck a likely suspect from.

Reporters make great spies, as their job demands they do a lot of spy-like things. Ask questions, go to places others wouldn't go, cultivate contacts with shady people.

The NYT proves on a weekly basis the two jobs sometimes seem all but indistinguishable.

So, no, I don't think it's paranoid to ask for a great deal of sketpicism about "reportage" from these "local stringers," many of whom are getting paid more money by foreign governments and paramilitary organizations than they are by AP.

But the MSM has to print something, and they don't want to pay more to put American journalists in the area, and they sure the hell don't want to announce on their front pages, "WARNING: Reportage from foreign stringers may be highly unreliable and possibly outright propaganda paid for by a foreign government or terrorist organization."

And so they just run on the front page, as if the stories have been vetted as carefully as stories about our government.

Update: JunkYardBlog finds a pic of a car actually hit by an Israeli missile. The damage to the car is a bit more extensive than a bit of torn shammy roof-lining.

See-Dub thinks the Lebanese might be equipping their vehicles with Gurneys of Missile Protection, +5. I would argue that it's more likely they're paying mages to cast Bigby's Missile Bitch-Slapping Hand.

A reader who sounds like he knows what he's talking about adds his opinion after the jump.

Reader Richard McEnroe seems to doubt this was a missile strike:

Look, the Cobra and Apache helicopters the US and Israel use fire three kinds of missile: TOW, Hellfire and volley-fired pods of 2.75 inch/70mm rockets. TOW and Hellfire use large shaped charge warheads designed to punch through the armor of main battle tanks with enough force to explode fuel and ammunition inside. If one of those hits an unarmored ambulance, there IS no ambulance.

The small pod-fired rockets (the US version is called Hydra but the practical differences between the different rockets of the same general caliber are notional at most) use a smaller warhead, roughly ten pounds. If one of these hits an unarmored vehicle, it will pop it wide open.

There is one variant of US rocket submuntion that releases a number of smaller, grenade-size charges; I don't know if Israel uses it. It is an imprecise weapon that is usually fired in salvos to blanket a large area. If those were used to target an unarmored ambulance the entire area around them would be blasted, not just the vehicle.

posted by Ace at 10:52 PM

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