December 2, 2007
AS NEW REPUBLIC ON AMERICAN ATROCITIES... (via Brad S):
A Note to Readers (W. Thomas Smith Jr., 11/.30/07, National Review)
Some unfinished business from before the Thanksgiving holiday: A reporter recently contacted NRO questioning the accuracy of two blog posts I filed for “The Tank” while I was in Lebanon this past September and October. [...]On September 25, I filed a post, in which I described a “sprawling Hezbollah tent city” near the Lebanese parliament as being occupied by “some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen”: According to the e-mail, my detractors said that, “…there are rarely 200 people there at all — much less ‘heavily armed,’” and, “…at least once a week I walk or jog through this area. I have never seen a civilian carrying a weapon.”
I can’t possibly know what someone else saw or witnessed or where they were jogging or on what day. But I do know this: The Hezbollah camp in late September — and up until the time I left in mid-October — was huge (“sprawling”). And though the tents were very large and many of them closed, I saw at least two AK-47s there with my own eyes. And this from a moving vehicle on the highway above the camp. And in my way of thinking, if a guy’s got an AK-47, he’s “heavily armed.”
Did I physically see and count 200 men carrying weapons? No. If I mistakenly conveyed that impression to my readers, I apologize. I saw lots of men, lots of them carrying walkie-talkie radios, and a tent city that could have easily housed many more than 200. I also saw weapons, as did others in the vehicle with me. And I was informed by very reliable sources that Hezbollah does indeed store arms inside the tents.
...so National Review on Hezbollah. An editor's desire for a story to be true does not make it so. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 2, 2007 6:50 PM
The Left loves the use of tu quoque to excuse their behavior. After four months, they've finally got their example. Expect them to beat this horse for weeks despite one being in the print edition which as been around for a century, and the other being on a weblog which few if any read or even know about.
All this really means is that poor Franklin Foer could have saved the bother writing those interminable 14 pages if he'd just waited a few more days.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at December 2, 2007 10:50 PMHow many American soldiers act the way Beauchamp described them? Very few. Out of those in Iraq, perhaps a couple of hundred.
How many rockets has Hezbollah fired into Israel? How many Lebanese have they killed? How many Americans?
Your comparison puts you in the place of the IAEA ("weapons - no we didn't see any weapons"). While Smith shouldn't have printed a number without at least attempting a count, your naivete on Hezbollah rivals Al-Baredei.
Posted by: ratbert at December 3, 2007 12:37 AMWhat ratbert said.
Posted by: PapayaSF at December 3, 2007 1:09 AMRodger ratbert. The difference between what was seen and what was reported was a matter of sloppy writing, failing to distinguish between the observed and the inferred. the writer sees tents consistent with hundreds of troops, sees some walking about under arms, and infers that large numbers of armed fighteers are present. The poor chap would have benefitted by a better literacy teacher in grade school.
This was not the same as the New Republic problem, which involved fabrication of the detained observations.
Posted by: Lou Gots at December 3, 2007 4:07 AMNo less a foreign policy "professional" than Richard Armitage has publicly testified that we have a blood debt to collect from Hezbollah.
That doesn't excuse this guy's mistake, but it shames your insinuation.
Posted by: jim hamlen at December 3, 2007 8:13 AMExactly. There's an honest case to be made against either American liberation of Iraq or Hezbollah. Ideologues buy and sell the dishonest case, because they've been blinded.
Posted by: oj at December 3, 2007 9:12 AM