David needs the umbrella to complete his Neville Chamberlain impersonation. In an Op Ed in today's Washington Post David Ignatius applauds the disastrous UN-brokered ceasefire:

The Lebanon war was damaging for Israel, the United States and, most of all, Lebanon itself. But it may have taught everyone a lesson that will be immensely important to the future of the Middle East: The solutions to the big problems that afflict the region are not military but political.

Meanwhile, the same edition of the Post reports Hezbollah's continued refusal to disarm. It's painfully obvious that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon without destroying Hezbollah will mean even greater suffering and bloodshed when the West finally decides to deal with the problem.

Thanks to some intrepid digging from commenters Lancelot and Harris at EU Referendum, another video of the events at Qana has been found. This is one that I have never seen before and really shows what was going on that day. It is truly a must see for anyone that believes that the photos at Qana were staged. It completely debunks the "our photographers do not set up photos" and "the rescuers were not holding up the children for photos" claims.

Believe it or not, it is a link from Wikipedia of all places. Here's the direct link to the video. If you can't the video to load through the direct link, go to Wikipedia and scroll down to External Links (Resources) and click on the first video listed. The video is approx 13 minutes long and does have a good bit of anchorperson commentary in Arabic. Also be advised that some of the images are graphic...

Pay close attention to this footage...

At 0:53 there is new footage of Mr. Green Helmet serving as director of the scene. He's standing over some victims and gesturing to someone off camera. One thing is for sure - he is in NO HURRY in this footage.

At 8:29 we see Mr. Green Helmet taking off for his run with the little girl in the multicolored pants. What makes this interesting is Mr. Green Helmet is standing still with the child, then turns and starts off at a quick pace. As Mr. GH turns, a cameraman crosses behind him. It is obvious that Mr. GH was posing with the child for the cameraman prior to his "run".

Obama showed up at his 50th town hall meeting to talk again about how SUV's are causing global warming. According to Drudge, Obama declared that part of the blame for the world's higher temperatures rests on gas guzzling vehicles. Obama says consumers can make the difference by switching to higher mileage hybrids.

Then he drove away in an SUV. At least you can't call him a limousine liberal.

His damage control countered with this: "The vehicle senator obama travels in while in illinois is a Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV), which can run on e85, a blended fuel made of 85 percent ethanol. So he in fact was practicing what he preached at the town hall meeting in Metropolis yesterday when he said we must drive fewer gas-guzzling vehicles."

That's only if you're filling it with e85, Obama. For the record that SUV gets "up to 16 MPG in the city" but that comes out to 14 MPG when you consider the decreased performance of e85. So actually he's guzzling more fuel if he uses e85.

Barack said switching to hybrids "would save more energy, do more for the environment..."
 
That statement is at odds with the truth. A hybrid Prius consumes more energy than a HUMMER. With the Sun ripping up the sky and evidence of global warming on Mars and Jupiter, Democrats are going to have a hard time pushing this talking point uphill past election day.

This is a classic MSM mistreatment of the US military. That it comes in the midst of war is distressing, but not unexpected from them, unfortunately.

The AP (it sure seems that they are more busy spinning than reporting stories these days, doesn't it?) has posted a story that The New York Times placed on their news feed today about how Military recruiters have "increasingly resorted to overly aggressive tactics" to get new recruits.

But, it seems that an undue focus in the report on the rhetoric obscures the fact that there really aren't that many abuses statistically. Certainly one abuse is too much (perfunctory exclamation over), but the tenor of the story is that there is some catastrophic rise in such abuse. The numbers, however, say differently, despite the overblown rhetoric.

I'll get to the good stuff in a minute. But before I tell you just how Mark Green went about slurring VP Cheney, President Bush and religious conservatives, let me explain why he went out of his way to defame them in the most obnoxious possible manner on this evening's Hardball.

Mark Green is about to lose to Andrew Cuomo in next month's New York Democratic primary for Attorney General. The latest poll has him eating Cuomo's dust by 18 points. And that was before the final nail in his coffin - yesterday's AFL-CIO endorsement of Cuomo. Green has a history of losing. He lost to Al D'Amato for senator. He did manage to get himself elected consumer commissioner of NYC, but then lost to Bloomberg for mayor. His impending loss to Cuomo will in all likliehood mark the end of his elective political career. Any future run could put him in Harold Stassen territory.

A friend e-mailed me that Mark Ambinder at The Hotline (formerly of the ABC News Political Unit) has his own analysis of the WashPost "macaca" mania -- Allen's campaign has upset the Post:

The death-knell for Republican candidates in Northern Virginia has been the active hostility of the Washington Post. Usually, a GOP candidate can neutralize the problem by neutralizing the Post -- not alienating the beat reporters and keeping the editorial page from beating the snare drum.

Two signs today that the Allen campaign has seriously angered the Post. First, there's the A1 placement of a story that is arguably interesting and compelling but not earthshatteringly newsy. Within the story, there's a hint that Allen's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams zoinked off the reporter who called him.

This past Sunday, on CBS’s morning show Sunday Morning, Nancy Giles offered commentary on the foiled terror plot in London, and noted that she takes no comfort that this plot was foiled. Additionally, she used her segment to opine that news of the terror plot is just a "distraction" from what she considers more important issues, and offers scathing criticism of the Department of Homeland Security.

Giles began:

"Thank God for Scotland Yard and the people of Great Britain, because I feel more protected by them than the agencies here at home..."

Scotland Yard indeed deserves credit for infiltrating this terror cell and disrupting the plot to blow up airplanes bound for the United States. But what about foiled terror plots here at home? Or the fact that there has not been a terrorist attack here in the U.S. since the tragedy of September 11, 2001? Giles never mentions the U.S. successes in the war on terrorism. Given these facts, it would seem the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the CIA and the entire intelligence community, and all others charged with protecting America from terrorism are doing a remarkable job in keeping us safe and are just as deserving of praise as Scotland Yard.

EU Referendum, the blog that has spent as much time as anyone exposing the almost certainly staged reporting out of Qana and the adventures of Green Helmet, posts on the mystery of the extra baby.

Ray Robison posted yesterday about the mystery of the wandering prayer rug.

Confederate Yankee brought us the mysterious wandering water bottle yesterday and calls shenanigans on the same photographer today.

Yesterday, The Jawa Report brought us the mystery of the deadly drink of water.

Caption: The body of a man lays on a road in southern Lebanon... shortly after gunfire was heard in the area. Israel began slowly pulling forces out ... the declared ceasefire has already been tested by various skirmishes between combative forces. (AP Photo/Riza Ozel, Anatolia)

When is a man considered something more than a man? It would seem that the bar is set infinitely high when dealing with Hezbullah, as I've tried to illustrate previously.

This photograph offers another prime example: The caption mentions nothing about the body lying next to the car, other than identifying it as a "body of a man."

Does the photographer bother to note that the "body" is wearing camouflage, and carrying what appears to be two AK-47's? Although to a casual observer, this would seem to indicate that the body belongs to a Hezbullah militant, our intrepid photographer doesn't seem interested in pursuing that line of thought... along with any thought of reminding the reader that only one side is really instigating skirmishes.

Many thanks to FR's PajamaTruthMafia for pointing this out!

Yesterday I quipped that I found Gatorade's new energy Drink "self-Propel," after discovering a series of three pictures by Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra. In those photos, a mysteriously mobile bottle of water appears and disappears beside an elderly injured woman that Bensemra said was waiting to be rescued, and was made to appear utterly alone.

The moving bottle and other suspicious elements in the photos lead me to believe that this series of photos, like so many already discovered coming from Arab Muslim stringers in Lebanon, were quite likely staged.

The curious composition of Bensemra's photos continued today, as this one was, err, unearthed in Yahoo's Photostream:

A Washington Post Editorial addressing a recent gaffe by Virginia Senator George Allen, actually mis-characterizes the incident. The line "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia" had nothing to do with anyone's race, or presumed country of origin. It followed directly on the heels of Allen lambasting opponent Webb for being off with the Hollywood elite. It was that contrast Allen was attempting to draw as you can see here.

The idea that holding up minorities to public scorn in front of an all-white crowd will elicit chortles and guffaws? (It did.) The idea that a candidate for public office can say "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!" to an American of Indian descent and really mean nothing offensive by it?

Most of the major American media had serious qualms about printing the Mohammed cartoons a while back. No major newspaper did as far as I can remember.

None of them seemed particularly outraged over a particularly vile cartoon by Wiley Miller, the creator of the syndicated strip Non Sequitur, which implied that Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia wants to enslave black Americans, and more specifically, his court colleague Clarence Thomas. (HT: Betsy Newmark)

In early July, Sen. Joe Biden joked before a C-SPAN camera that “you cannot go into a Dunkin Donuts of a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent.” Conservatives had a little fun with it, but said: a harmless slip, but if a Republican ever did it, the media would have a much different standard. That day is now. Sen. George Allen mocked an Indian-American Democratic volunteer as a "macaca," and the Post played it up on the front page, along with a very tendentious staff editorial to boot insisting Allen's racial "bullying" was beyond "the bounds of decency." Washington Post coverage of Biden? None. Not in the paper.

Although he's already proven he has no trouble getting his message out to the American media, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is launching his own blog. Reports the BBC:

The launch of www.ahmadinejad.ir was reported on state TV, which urged users to send in messages to the president.

Mr Ahmadinejad's first posting, entitled autobiography, tells of his childhood, Iran's Islamic revolution, and the country's war with Iraq.

The blog includes a poll asking if users think the US and Israel are trying to trigger a new world war. [...]

One of the interesting evidences of bias in the mainstream press is the way that all political discussions tend to be written from the point-of-view of "what do the Democrats need to do to win?" This New York Times "analysis" is just the latest example. All of the factors that you'd expect to see from a PR firm trying to help Democrats get elected are present.

Introductory paragraph framing the issue from the Democrats' perspective? Check.

After being outmaneuvered in the politics of national security in the last two elections, Democrats say they are determined not to cede the issue this year and are working to cast President Bush as having diminished the nation’s safety.

On Tuesday’s Good Morning America, Jake Tapper’s "exclusive" interview with Bill Clinton was little more than another friendly platform for the former president to attack the current administration. Tapper parroted Clinton’s "warning" for Republicans "hoping to use the London terror arrests to score political points," then failed to challenge any of Clinton’s litany of supposed Republican failures on national security. Moving on to discuss AIDS prevention, Tapper hyped up the work of Clinton’s foundation before asking this softball question regarding "concerns" about abstinence program funding requirements in President Bush’s AIDS initiative: "Do requirements like that hinder the progress of treating and combating AIDS?"

After months of encouraging media hype, incoming "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is now trying to downplay expectations that she'll bring viewers to the last-place network nightly.

Katie Couric won't be altering her look. She won't be going off to war merely to read the news while "standing somewhere in a flak jacket." And most of all, she isn't expecting any big "surge" in ratings for CBS Evening News With Katie Couric this fall.

As the network's promotional blitz for its new $60 million anchorwoman kicks into high gear, Couric, who will debut in her new role Sept. 5, yesterday launched a counter-campaign of sorts, ratcheting down expectations and softening the drumbeat of hype.

Has CBS's Mike Wallace gotten soft in his old age? His usual knock-out style was nowhere to be found during his interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, writes in the New York Sun:

Mr. Wallace, a familiar figure to American television viewers, prides himself on being a tenacious interviewer, unafraid to mix it up with the best of them.But for some reason, Mr. Wallace was hesitant in this interview, unwilling to press the wily Iranian president, and was thrown off stride by the tough, even snide, comebacks, including a threat to end the interview prematurely.

Moreover, Mr. Wallace seemed unexpectedly charmed, perhaps even won over, by the president, which also may have dulled his usually sharp instincts.

Thomas Ricks, The Washington Post’s Pentagon correspondent, appeared on the August 14 edition of "The Daily Show." Ricks, the author of the caustic new book "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq," told host Jon Stewart that journalists report the situation in Iraq far too optimistically:

Ricks: "I actually think the media probably has been too easy on the situation. I think it’s probably worse then the media says right now."

Stewart helpfully demonstrated the media’s hopeful tone when he replied, "You maybe believe this to be, maybe the greatest debacle in the history of American foreign policy?" As the MRC’s Tim Graham previously wondered, shouldn’t Washington Post readers question if Ricks’s daily coverage of Iraq will be colored by his extremely negative outlook? In the segment, which aired at 11:20PM, he stated the following about Fiasco’s title:

Journalists, the self-described writers of the first draft of history, often have a very tough time remembering it. I've lost count how many times I've heard the phrase "most ever," "biggest in history," "worst X ever" and so on.

The BBC provided the latest example of this historical short-sightedness in a not-exactly condemnatory (the Beeb never once calls him a dictator) profile of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, which as the WSJ's James Taranto noted yesterday, contained a major error:

Last Monday the BBC published a puff piece on Cuba's dictator titled "Fidel: The World Icon." Here's how it starts:

Cuba's President Fidel Castro--the world's longest-serving leader--turns 80 on 13 August. This week, we will be assessing his political life and his impact on the Caribbean island.