A Word On The Ambulance Story

As Powerline here and Tim Blair here have linked this post of mine on the ambulance controversy, I want to make something very clear. I am not suggesting I buy the media's behavior in this incident, or necessarily their story. I am only pointing out what, to me, is the existence a hole in the roof of another ambulance allegedly attacked. That's a far cry from suggesting I know how it got there, or that I'm comfortable given that the media reporting this story had no access to the vehicle during the early reporting.

That said, even if we do accept the Age's current version, that in and of itself points out a press bias, of sorts. It would mean that rather than providing images of the vehicle in which individuals were allegedly injured, they opted to tell us all about a vehicle with a hole in the center of a Red Cross on its roof - IE Israel deliberately targeting Red Cross van, which I have never believed.

So, at the very least and by their own admission, they sought to inflame anti-Israeli sentiment, as opposed to informing their readership of the most relevant facts. I haven't somehow changed sides in the debate on this. I am merely trying to objectively convey any information I can gather from what is available.

That said, you might also want to hang me for this: I think Mark Steyn may have gotten it wrong when he refers to this image in a column. From what I have read, the fellow wasn't injured  in the upper body, he was injured below the waist. It's possible the blood was transferred to the shirt when it hung lower as it obviously would when he was sitting up while struck.

But I don't know, I wasn't there.

Lastly, I don't intend to be presumed to be pro-media, or least of all, pro-Hezbollah, or terror because I am able to remain objective in my own search for truth. Some commenter's appear to have that point of view.

Comments

[Maggie45]

Dan, I consider you to be rigorously honest, which is what we all NEED to be, no matter where the chips fall. Has nothing to do with being pro or con. Thank you.

[Ralph]

Dan, you had better check the photo on your link. It has now changed, and clearly shows that Mark Steyn was 100% correct.

Now please apologise like a good boy.

[geniusNZ]

Good on you dan.
Call it as you see it not how everyone else wants you to see it.

[Dan Riehl]

It has now changed

Nothing's changed. If you think someone sitting could be hit by a projectile coming in from above and hitting them in the leg area without spraying blood up to their shirt, you're foolish. No need to apologize. I'll just assume you're an idiot. Amazing, Israel acknowledged that incident and some people are determined to see something different in the reporting. If many on the Left have Bush derangement syndrome, some on the right are succumbing to MBS - media bias syndrome.

[SK]

I´ll point out a possible course of events from my view again:
http://factsfictionmiddleeast.blogspot.com/2006/09/attack-on-ambulances-on-july-13th.html

What really is in order is asking a material scientist about that whole rust issue. While tons of people have ruled out rust using conventional wisdom, we´re looking at a high explosive going off on the roof, with the resulting heating an bending of the roof. Unless one has witnessed similar events, it´s hard to speak with authority IMHO.

[Ralph]

No, Dan. It's time for you to take your blinkers off. Look at the photograph. Just look at it. Now - slowly - try to think.... How (yes, how) does the shirt get "spattered" and the undershirt remain clean? And that, by the way, is not a "spatter" pattern.

You have painted yourself into a corner regarding all of this. God knows why. The bottom line is that the media reports are grossly inaccurate, and can't be relied upon. You seem to be looking for "proof beyond reasonable doubt" that a complete hoax was perpetrated, when the real test is whether it is more likely than not that the media reports are false (ie proof on the balance of probabilities).

As for those who ask for IAF video of the incident, the fact that such video does not exist is consistent with the fact that the attack did not take place.

I am not an idiot, and I wrote once before that this particular series of posts does you no credit. It's pretty obvious that - like the MSM reporters (unfortunately) - you have nailed your colours to the mast and just can't find a way to back down.

For what it is worth, I (like thousands of others) have read every word of your and the other relevant posts. Yours are not persuasive. You are out of step with those who have done most of the work.

[harris]

I HOPE SOMEONE DOWNLOADED THE WHOLE YOUTUBE VIDEO. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT IT WAS MADE PRIVATE!!

[harris]

Note the newspaper scan here:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/missile_story_x/

Besides other questions: Note that the hole is appearently located at the right side at the rear of the roof. Is that consistent with the video?

[SK]

I HOPE SOMEONE DOWNLOADED THE WHOLE YOUTUBE VIDEO. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT IT WAS MADE PRIVATE!!
---
Another user apparently also uploaded it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8nX-NzeRhU
But it´s probably a good idea to save it now.

[harris]

another video:
"Was it Hamas?" (including part of interview):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzl-n5s-yC8

[Tom Blumer]

Dan, Thanks for the link.

Part of the reason I didn't mention for my belief in the staging -- earlier this week LGF noted that the Injured Reuters Associate Worked for Iran:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22301_Injured_Reuters_Associate_Worked_for_Iran&only

His info comes from a Jpost piece by Caroline Glick:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525961870&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

++++++++++++++++

Yet it is unclear why anyone should believe either Shana or Reuters. Shana told Reuters that as he was driving to the battle scene, "I suddenly saw fire and the doors of the jeep flew open." He claims to have been wounded by shrapnel in his hand and leg. These are minor injuries for someone whose vehicle was just hit by a missile.

But then, the photographs taken of his vehicle after the purported missile attack give no indication that the car was hit by anything. There is a gash on the roof. The hood is bent out of shape. But nothing seems to have been burned. Cars hit by missiles do not look like they have just been in a nasty accident. Cars hit by missiles are destroyed.

Yet the glass on the windshield and the windows of Shana's vehicle isn't even shattered. In the photographs taken of Shana on the way to the hospital in Gaza, he lies on a stretcher, eyes closed, arm extended in full pieta mode. He is not visibly bleeding although there are some blood stains on his shirt, but then his undershirt is completely white.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I added the above, plus a preceding paragraph this to my post.

The fact that Reuters and others were hemming and hawing about where Shana was from, as LGF indicated in an earlier linked post, adds more fuel to the idea that they would stage his injury, and perhaps the entire event.

Michelle Malkin has a great Hot Air vid that shows what happens when cars are hit by missiles -- they're turned into totally burned hunks of junk:

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/08/29/ambulances-for-jihad/

[dwpittelli]

I expect that something hit at or above or very near one of the ambulances that night. And I doubt very much that the injuries of the legless man and his family are faked, and speculating on that is likely to put egg on one's face.

However, it's also absurd for reporters to take at face value the notion that all of the family's injuries were caused while in the ambulance. Why were they in the ambulance in the first place? Why were they being transported from a town (Tibnin) which reportedly has a hospital, to Tyre?

Given the risks of night travel in South Lebanon with roads out and attacks ongoing, they were of course being transported because at least one of them was very severely injured (too severe for Tibnin's hospital) -- maybe, I don't know, with major shrapnel injury or the loss of a leg?

Why have no reporters asked which injuries the family already had prior to their ambulance ride? If you avoid all detail in your coverage, you allow your subjects to make whatever up they need to later to meet any objections.

[davidp]

G'day and thanks for the half speed video - it clarified things quite a lot for looking at the new photo in The Age (Melbourne, Australia).

One thing to notice in your still with the possible hold in the second ambulance: WHERE IS THE RED CROSS?
To spot the hole, we're working at the limits of resolving things on the video, but the cross also seems hard to see, consistent with it already being dirty and faded, and that's why the people in Tyre didn't want to show the top of the second ambulance (aswell as not wnating to show the rust around the hole in the roof). If anyone has July dated photo's of the roof of the second ambulance, this possibility can be confirmed or denied. In the absence of those photo's, I think it's because the people running the affair were hiding the state of the second ambulance's roof.
The new photo has a very dirty, very flaked and faded red cross.

By the way, has anyone seen the full 'filmed by a local' video or is only the ITV edited version available ?

[AMac]

There's another "dog that didn't bark" aspect to Sarah Smiles' report in The Age that hasn't been remarked on.

We (blog-readers only) have now been exposed to multiple instances of misconduct in the media's coverage of the Lebanon War. In particular, Western correspondents have been extensively handled and sometimes threatened by Hezbollah "minders". In the case of the bombing of the building in Qana, photojournalists participated in stage-managed "passion plays" in order to score the most heart-wrenching and graphically moving pictures.

All of this, without any effort to inform the audience of the compromises that reporters had agreed to in order to get the story--even after the journalists had left the areas under Hezbollah control.

Now we read Sarah Smiles in The Age. She reports on the results of a first-hand visit to the yard containing the ambulance documented at Zombietime's website, and another, more damaged ambulance as well. She writes

The Age visited the yard where the bombed out ambulances are now parked. This reporter saw the ambulance that Mr Fawaz was in. It appeared to have been hit by a weapon that punctured a huge hole through the back.

Yet she apparently came back from her visit with only a single low-res image of the new alleged Israeli target.

This South Lebanan yard was presumably in Hezbollah territory. Was it? Smiles doesn't say.
She was presumably accompanied by minders. Was she? Smiles doesn't say.
She presumably would have liked to have taken extensive photographic documentation of the scene. Is that what she wanted? Smiles doesn't say.

Was her access controlled by or impeded by her hypothetical Hezbollah minders? We have no way of knowing, but given the disgraceful pattern of reportage that Smiles' colleagues have readily agreed to, we can guess at answers to all these questions, and evaluate her credibility accordingly.