Zombie Rips HRW a New One

Zombietime is the archetype blogger. The best. I am sure you recall how zombie blew the lid off another blood libel against Israel this past summer here.

If you are not already familiar with the claims and counter-claims concerning the July 23, 2006 "Red Cross Ambulance Incident" at Qana, Lebanon, then this article will likely make little sense to you. If you have not yet done so, first invest the time to read my original report that started this discussion:
The Red Cross Ambulance Incident, at zombietime.com.

Next, read the entirety of Human Rights Watch's rebuttal of that essay:
The "Hoax" That Wasn't: The July 23 Qana Ambulance Attack, by Human Rights Watch.

I respect enormously the time, effort and dedication that Zombie devotes to the work. I, too, am an individual blogger and it is a passion for truth that compels us to the work.

Also, just to be clear: zombietime is a one-person website. I work alone, in my spare time, and receive no funding or support from any group, individual, or government. I have no connections of any kind to Israel. HRW, on the other hand, is a huge international organization with hundreds of employees and an annual budget of over $30 million. They devoted an immense amount of time, energy, money and manpower to this investigation. I do not have the resources, free time or political stature to go to Lebanon to inspect the scene on-site myself. All I can do is forensically analyze the evidence presented by others. This puts me at a disadvantage, which HRW points out repeatedly, dismissing my analysis as "armchair conjectures." If you, the reader, agree with this characterization, then you may as well stop reading now. 

UPDATE to The Red Cross Ambulance Incident here:

The Human Rights Watch Report

A Point-by-Point Examination of the Document Titled "The 'Hoax' That Wasn't"

What follows is an extraordinary, meticulously researched document that must be read for two reasons. First and most obvious, it utterly destroys the HRW false allegation and shows them to be the antisemitic tool that they are. But secondly and more importantly, this kind of reportage, is the future of news. The death knell for old time agenda-driven media reporting is deafening.

More on the latter can be found here. Wretchard does an extraordinary analysis of the continuing of the  blogosphere in his essay, The Blogosphere at War. It must for read for myriad reasons but particularly because he manages to wrangle the wild randomity and individuality of the blogs into a controlled kind of chaos that works and works extremely well at doing the real work of news gathering and dissemination.

I wrote this paper as an attempt to describe how the blogosphere works; to situate it vis-a-vis the mainstream media and to indicate some of the ways it can be used as a weapon of information warfare. The reader may find many of the ideas half-baked, and the reader would be right. But perhaps this flawed little monograph can contribute in some small way to a discussion of what the blogosphere is and what it's future might be. I truly believe that "it is possible that in the long run the global public will come to rely on fellow Internet users to learn about the world more than it will from professional journalists."

[...]

The blogosphere will turn its energies with equal ferocity to every side. Populated as it is by people from all walks of the ideological spectrum, the blogosphere itself has no inherent political bias. Bloggers with Left wing, Right Wing, Arab, Israeli, European and American, religious and atheistic viewpoints will be simultaneously scrutinizing every scrap of information that raises its head above the Event Horizon. The blogosphere is no one's friend. But it will be unkindest to the side which relies the most on cant and propaganda to spread its message.

"The political side which tells the most lies and falsehoods is likely to suffer more at its hands than one which hews more closely to the observable truth."

Comments

[Linda Morgan]

"...this kind of reportage, is the future of news. The death knell for old time agenda-driven media reporting is deafening."

Truer or more welcome words never spoken.

[Major Mike]

Pamela - Zombietime did a great rebuttal of the HRW "report" without even mentioning the single most damning evidence that most Air Force people would know: no aircraft, helicopter, or drone fires a missile from directly above a target. All targets for missiles are acquired and the missiles launched when the launching platform is in basically level flight. Therefore, the missiles strike the target from the side, not the top down. Only bombs have a trajectory that would cause a stike on the top rather than side of the vehicle.
The HRW report fails a "smell test" on so many levels as to be ludicrous on its face. Basically it boils down to physical evidence that doesn't support the conclusions, and statements that don't match the capabilities and methods of employment of any known weapons systems.
It seems a "real" journalist would have a field day investigating this hoax.
Are there none out there anymore?