Sunday morning.

Not supposed to be blogging this weekend.  Supposed to be playing with my kids.  Pictures like this from Qana, where more than half the victims were children, do not help.

Source:  al-Ghad

Sorry, no more.  When my boy wakes up from his nap, and my girl gets back from the coffeeshop, I'm going to hold them for a long, long time.   

Comments

[jinnilyyah]

fox announced the IDF has footage of the building being used as a hizb' launch site.
that is most probaballistically true.
and overfly would not show the interior of the building.

[Dirk]

I'm interested to see that a lot of the US media is taking up the Rice spin that SHE cancelled the meeting with the Lebanese PM, rather than him telling her she wasn't welcome!

[the aardvark]

jinnilyyah - I'm sure that makes the dad feel better.

[jinnilyyah]

it does not.

myself, i doubt the efficacy of israeli attacks on hizb' launch sites.
i think they shoot and scoot.
that is why the degradation of hizb' armament is progressing slowly.
i agree with yaman, that hizb' fighters are wary of civs.
hizb' leadership is not being degraded as rapidly thru assassination as the palestinians', for example.

also, considering that this is Qana, it is possible that hizb' deliberately drew israeli fire to the building to precipitate a PR event.
the israelis fell for it.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

most probaballistically true.

Huh? Least infinitesimally false.

[jinnilyyah]

nur, limit negative aleph0. ;)

[The Lounsbury]

Probabilistically true is a particularly arch and special way of saying "potentially true."

Or less specially, Hezbullah is launching its rockets from hard cover. As one would expect from any military force without air superiority.

On one hand, then, Israeli claims re the building being a launch site are plausible.

On the other hand, it is equally plausible, and "probabilistically true" to inappropriately pretend one has statistical data, to allow that a bomb either missed target or in fact a mistake was made.

All in all, such arguments are futile given the quality of information available from either side (and it should be noted that Israel also has military facilities in civilian areas - mere fact of logistic convenience really): agitprop and spin.

[jinnilyyah]

Hezbullah is launching its rockets from hard cover.

not, i believe, for the most part, because their ability to launch would be more degraded by now. they launched 160 katyushas sunday. my hypoth, (unsubstantiated by hard data, as you so graciously and elegantly point out), is that hizb' is using shoot and scoot to shape israeli targetting.

Qana is interesting in historical sense, the Qana massacre was an admitted targetting error.
It would be extremely cold-blooded of hizb' to draw fire on a building full of women and children, but the fact that it is Qana....the PR value is extreme.

[jinnilyyah]

not that it even matters.
AP could front pics of hizb' fighters tying women and children onto the top of mobile rocket launchers and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.
stupid, stupid, stupid.

[Sheerahkahn]

I would support the shoot and scoot, with the PR being an additional, unintended, bonus for Hezbullah.
And the reason for this is that Israel has Counter Battery Radar which allows for rapid identification and response to enemy artillery/missle launch. The radar picks up the round, the telemetry of the rounds arc crossed reference on a map, and you have the spot where the enemy's artillery is at.
After a few weeks of watching their artillery/missiles go "poof" whenever they were used, one could safely assume, with the addage that the members of Hezbullah have above average intelligence, that "we do this and the IDF responds a little too quickly" would encourage a change in tactics.
Warfare is pure Darwinism, and that is something that should be alarming to the Israelis if they ever give the future any thought.

[jinnilyyah]

L. is prolly right about the zelzals being in hardened sites, tho. their launchers can be mobile but are not speedy and are easily distinguished from civilian traffic even at night by their SAR signature.
and israel is claiming 2/3 destruction of zelzals.

yup, sheerahkahn, evolutionary theory of games.

[jinnilyyah]

AP could front pics of hizb' fighters tying women and children onto the top of mobile rocketlaunchers...

and the truly horrible thing that just occurred to me is that the IDF would still target them anyways, and apologize and say it was necessary later.
gods!

[Non-Arab Arab]

Arab-Israeli violence and solutions 101 for the perplexed:

Part 1:

http://nonarab-arab.blogspot.com/2006/07/part-1-arab-israeli-violence-101.html

Part 2:

http://nonarab-arab.blogspot.com/2006/07/part-2-arab-israeli-violence.html

[john harden]

all wars in this area are couz of hizbala ' you the lebnons have to stop this teror and you will live in peace with your israeli neighbours.

[Peter H]

From the BBC, July 27, 2006, three days before Qana II:

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon “said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops moved in.

He added that Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there could be considered a Hezbollah supporter.

“All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,” Mr Ramon said.

[Gameela]

but how can they do that when Israel is deliberately destroying bridges, roads and shooting at everything which is moving on them. Not mentioning targeting of even international trucks!!! Israel is so humane:)

[David Kane]

Don't want to bother Mark on his vacation, but isn't there a very good chance that this photo is "fake" in the sense that it was, at the very least, staged for the cameras? See EU Referendum for more