Thursday, July 20, 2006
Credibility
Two days ago, I watched Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres being interviewed on MSNBC, and denying categorically that Israel had any intention of entering Lebanon. The next day, Israeli troops crossed the border into Lebanon (albeit in a limited manner).
Yesterday, all over the news was the claim that Israel had dropped 23 tons of bombs on a "senior leadership bunker" in Beirut. Hizballah denied it, claiming that "the strike hit a building that was under construction for a mosque." Today CNN's Alessio Vinci, along with other reporters, visited the site, and reported that, as far as they could tell, the site was, you guessed it, a mosque under construction.
For credibility, though, not much could surpass this claim:
[Capt. Jacob] Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman] said Israel had hit "1,000 targets in the last eight days -- 20 percent were missile-launching sites and the rest were control and command centers, missiles and so forth."That "and so forth" sure hides a lot of crimes, since we know that factories, roads, bridges, ports, fuel tanks, apartment buildings, partially build mosques, and a whole host of other things fall into that category that we're presumably supposed to believe were "legitimate" targets.
We report, you decide.
