First Door on the Left

It’s time to break out the tin foil hats.

I do not understand why people who are so willing to believe stuff like this have such a difficult time believing that the Bush administration planned and staged the attacks of 9/11/01.

It appears that Israel’s word is almost as good as Pat Roberts’.

Israeli Strikes Resume After Brief Lull

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, hours after agreeing to temporarily halt raids while investigating a bombing that killed nearly 60 Lebanese civilians, mostly women and children seeking shelter.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to a 48-hour halt in the airstrikes beginning at 2 a.m. Monday while the military concludes its inquiry into the attack on the south Lebanese village of Qana.

But Israel left open the option it might hit targets to stop imminent attacks or if the military completed its inquiry within 48 hours.

Monday’s airstrikes near the village of Taibe were meant to protect ground forces operating in the area and were not targeting anyone or anything specific, the army said.

In a second airstrike around the port city of Tyre, Israel accidentally killed a Lebanese soldier when it hit a car that it believed was carrying a senior Hezbollah official, the Israeli army said. Lebanese security officials said the soldier was killed by a rocket strike from a drone aircraft.

The Israeli army justified the action, saying the leader believed to have been in the car was a threat to Israel. Instead, the car was carrying a Lebanese army officer and soldiers.

“They were, of course, not the targets and we regret the incident,” the army said.

It does not sound to me that either strike was needed to stop imminent attacks nor have I been able to find any announcement that the Israeli military has completed its investigation into the Qana incident.

A country, much like a man, is really only as good as its word.

Israel OKs Suspension of Aerial Activity

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel has agreed to a 48-hour suspension of aerial activity in south Lebanon while it investigates an attack on a Lebanese village that killed a number of children, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Sunday.

The airstrike killed at least 56 Lebanese, mostly women and children, when it leveled a building where they had taken shelter. The deadliest attack in nearly three weeks of warfare forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cut short a Mideast mission and increased world pressure on the United States to back an end to the fighting.

The stunning bloodshed pushed American peace efforts to a crucial juncture, as fury at the United States flared in Lebanon, which said it no longer would negotiate a U.S. peace package without an unconditional cease-fire. U.N. chief Kofi Annan sharply criticized world leaders – implicitly Washington – for ignoring his previous calls to stop the violence.

The attack in the village of Qana brought Lebanon’s confirmed death toll to more than 510. Throughout the day, workers pulled dirt-covered bodies of young boys and girls – dressed in the shorts and T-shirts they had been sleeping in – out of the rubble of the three-story building.

Two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, had gathered for shelter from another night of Israeli bombardment in the border area when the 1 a.m. strike brought the building down.

It may be tin foil hat time for some on the right who are now espousing the theory that Hezbolla explosives brought the apartment building in Qana down and not an Israeli airstrike. The are saying that the airstrike occurred at 1:00 a.m. and the building did not collapse until 8:00 a.m.

Interesting theory. But if that is the case, I’m wondering why the people inside the building did not vacate it after the airstrike. Did they just sit there for seven hours waiting for it to fall down on them? Somehow I do not think so.

From The Jerusalem Post:

On Sunday evening, Air Force Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel reported that some 150 rockets had been fired from Qana over the past 20 days.

Speaking to reporters, Eshel added that Hizbullah rocket launchers were hidden in civilian buildings in the village. He proceeded to show video footage of rocket launchers being driven into the village following launches.

Eshel also pointed out that the building was hit sometime around midnight Saturday night and didn’t collapse until about 8 a.m. Sunday morning, leaving an unusual gap in the timing of the events which the IDF was investigating.

“It’s possible that inside the house, something or other was being stored that caused an explosion – something that we didn’t succeed in blowing up in the [initial] attack and that perhaps was left over there,” Eshel said. “I say this very cautiously, because I currently don’t have the faintest idea what the explanation for this gap could be.”

Some of the comments attached to the Post article are stunning. For example, “Charlie – USA” had this to say:

Hezbollah moved their injured terrorists out of the building and replaced them with women and children detonated the remaining explosives in the building knowing that it would generate the current world outcry. They will stop at nothing even the murder of their own women and children to advance their goal to destroy the Jewish state. The Europeans are all to ready to support them in this.

Wow. That’s it. Just wow.