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For an update on this post, see here. Certainly, the photographs are distressing, and indeed they are meant to be. As this piece tells us: Until recent years, images of civilian casualties in wars often took days to appear in newspapers, but now they can be captured and transmitted around the world to newspaper Web sites, where they are posted immediately, adding to the shock value that sketchy words by reporters often cannot capture. This happened again Sunday morning in the case of the Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana that left dozens dead, reportedly at...

In Arabic it says: ""The massacre of children in Qana 2, is the gift of Rice. The clever bombs..Stupid," Banner appeard in downtown Beirut. Fifty-two people were killed, many of them sleeping children, when Israeli warplanes blitzed the Lebanese village of Qana, triggering global outrage and warnings of retribution for a "war crime" as a ceasefire appeared more remote than ever.(AFP/Ramzi Haidar)

And Other Thoughts About the End Game for Newspapers in a Fully Digital Age By Scott Donaton Dow Jones will reassess its news delivery - New York Times headline, July 14, 2006 Wall Street Journal folds print edition in media-world stunner - New York Times headline, date to be determined Wow, they're going to do it. Or at least they're going to think about doing it. That's the first Many traditional media executives can't admit that they will have to explore the possibility that there are more reader-friendly and cost-efficient ways to produce and distribute their content than in print....

Defense lawyers for Saddam Hussein released a letter on Thursday that he recently wrote in prison that attempts to persuade the American people to demand a troop pullout because President Bush misled them into the Iraq war. The 5,000-word letter is a rambling treatise outlining what Mr. Hussein asserts are the false reasons that the Bush administration used to justify the war in Iraq, from weapons of mass destruction to Iraqi links with Al Qaeda. Mr. Hussein blames Iran and pro-Israel interests for helping lead the Americans into war. He invokes the specter of Vietnam and the spirit of Mao...

FORMER CIA operative Valerie Plame is the new Paula Jones -- if with national security credentials and Washington Beltway savoir-faire. Both women filed iffy lawsuits that seemed more designed to discredit a president than to prevail in a court of law. Jones never could prove that then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton hurt her career as a state worker after he allegedly sexually harassed her. Hence, there were no economic damages, as Judge Susan Webber Wright noted when she ruled against Jones. The suit filed last week by Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, against Bush biggies -- Veep Dick...

This is probably one of the most terribly disturbing photoessays you will see -- And Michelle's commentary makes it even more so. The anger I feel upon viewing this and reading the title and text of the review can only be described as seething. I know not the god referred to in the pictures; it certainly is not the Judeo-Christian God. Click the link and view the presentation and then read the description of the photoessay below. Which Side is the NY Times On?

Little Green Footballs notes one of the New York Times' "memorable photographs," which was taken by Times photographer Joao Silva. Silva was in the room with a “Mahdi Army” sniper who was trying to kill American soldiers: The Times' commentary on the photo, by Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally: "Right there with the Mahdi army. Incredible courage." We have written before about the wire services' use of Iraqi stringers who appear to be members of, or at the least friendly with, terrorist groups. This is a step beyond that, as Silva isn't just an anonymous stringer, but is...

US MILITARY officials fear that religious hurdles in exhuming the body of a teenage girl could complicate the prosecution of American soldiers accused of raping and murdering her. The officials said a vigorous prosecution was essential and punishment should be severe if the five servicemen and one former soldier were convicted. Five soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division are accused of raping and murdering Abeer al-Janabi near the town of Mahmoudiya on March 12. A sixth soldier is accused of failing to report the crime. Three of her family members were also killed in the assault. The victim's male relatives...

Plamegate: Mystery SolvedBy Kenneth R. TimmermanFrontPageMagazine.com | July 13, 2006 Finally some straight talk on the Valerie Plame case, thanks to Robert Novak, the conservative columnist who first revealed the identity of the not-so-covert CIA officer three years ago. Novak’s July 14, 2003, column on the much-disputed trip to Niger by Plame’s husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, triggered an FBI investigation, a federal grand jury, and eventually the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who indicted top White House aid Scooter Libby for perjury along the way. At issue was whether Saddam Hussein ever sent a buying team to Niger...

Slain soldier's brother skeptical of group's claim He doubts that Menchaca, a 2nd soldier could have been linked to rape suspects HARLINGEN - The brother of slain Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca said Tuesday that he is skeptical of an al-Qaida-linked group's claim that it killed Menchaca and another U.S. soldier more than three months after troops from their unit allegedly raped and killed a young Iraqi woman. Julio Cesar Vasquez, the older brother of Menchaca, said he does not think the suspected al-Qaida insurgents could have linked the two slain soldiers to the rape suspects. ''It could be, but how...

Iraq will ask the United Nations to end immunity from local law for U.S. troops, the human rights minister said on Monday, as the military named five soldiers charged in a rape-murder case that has outraged Iraqis. In an interview a week after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded a review of foreign troops' immunity, Wigdan Michael said work on it was now under way and a request could be ready by next month to go to the U.N. Security Council, under whose mandate U.S.-led forces are in control of Iraq. "We're very serious about this," she said, blaming a lack...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh is canceling his international travel plans in the near future, saying he doesn't want to be "framed" by U.S. Customs officials after last week's incident when he was detained for more than three hours for possession of Viagra prescribed in his doctor's name. "It takes one time, and I've got red flags up, and I'm not going to put myself in the position of being framed," Limbaugh said today on his national radio broadcast. "With all this partisanship that's out there, I'm just not going to make it easy for people...

"I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography. Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition. The press, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on September 3. Journalists have delved deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty...

Remember back in early 2000 when the normally stiff and dour Al Gore began appearing in public wearing denim jeans and a big flashy smile on his face while darting his head in a fashion reminiscent of Ronald Reagan? What happened was that Al Gore was FAKING confidence. Oh yes, the appearance was there all right but it was disturbingly off-kilter. Much as he tried, you could sense that Al Gore was FAKING it mainly because he didn't REALLY feel confident. Well, much the same thing is going on with the DUmmies. Although it is still 4 months from...

Susan Estrich just summed-up the Left's attitude toward today's NY Times' publishing top secret info on the Justice Department's bank record monitoring of terrorists' financing: 'The US Constitution absolutely protects a reporter's and a paper's right to publish top secret military information.' Further: 'One of the reasons Bush is low in the polls is that the president has lost the respect of the press.' This is the party that plans to retake Congress. Utterly clueless and angry enough to destroy us for spite.

snip…Privates Tucker and Menchaca were not simply ambushed, taken prisoner and killed. "The torture was something unnatural," said Major General Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim of Iraq's Defense Ministry, hinting at the state of the soldiers' remains. The corpses were so mutilated that they could be positively identified only through DNA testing. Here, then, is the enemy we face in Iraq: not nationalists or extremists or even fanatics, but something like a band of real-life Hannibal Lecters for whom human slaughter is both business and religious fulfillment. Following the killing, an Internet statement said to be from the Mujahadeen Shura Council...

On Fox right now

CAIRO, Egypt - The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq killed two U.S. soldiers whom the group abducted last week, an insurgent umbrella group said in a Web statement posted Tuesday. The statement, which could not be authenticated, said the two soldiers were "slaughtered," suggesting they had been beheaded by Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. The Arabic word used in the statement, "nahr," is used for the slaughtering of sheep by cutting the throat and has been used in past statements to refer to beheadings. The claim of responsibility was posted on an Islamic militant Web site where insurgent groups regularly post...

June 13, 2006, 6:44 a.m. No Indictment of Rove in CIA-Leak CaseProsecutor Patrick Fitzgerald makes a decision. By Byron York Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed top White House adviser Karl Rove that Rove will not face indictment in the CIA-leak investigation, National Review Online has learned. The word came yesterday, when Fitzgerald told Rove lawyer Robert Luskin that he, Fitzgerald, did not plan to seek charges against Rove. This morning, Luskin released a brief statement:  On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove. In deference to...