HT Wizbang

New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen, Katrina or not, according to Paul at Wizbang.

RBT

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The Katrina Video Congress Didn't Want You To See

Note: This is going to stay at the top for about 2 hours. Scroll down for more Wizbang content.

I'm going to warn you now. If you've only heard the news from the mainstream media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is wrong. If you think you already know everything there is to know about Katrina, then you can safely ignore this post. - If the sum total of your interest in New Orleans flooding is to bash Nagin or Bush, then please... Go to where your intellect will be more appreciated. If you'd like to have your whole understanding of the Great Flood of New Orleans changed, hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

We've all heard the story, in the early morning hours of Aug 29, 2005, the Category 4 Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, overwhelming the New Orleans levee system and flooding the city. If you read Wizbang, you've known since early October of 2005 this story was fatally flawed.

In the months since Katrina, we've learned that the storm was a Category 1 by the time she hit New Orleans. No "Super Hurricane," just an average storm. We've also learned that the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System was not overwhelmed by Katrina, it collapsed. Causing the Corps of Engineers admit they flooded New Orleans not Katrina... An admission that got scant little media coverage. The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural disaster but a man made one.

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HT LGF

An example of medieval misogyny of male hegemonic Islamofascist rule.

RBT

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Iran's Execution Of A Teenage Girl

Here’s a documentary from BBC2, on the appalling execution by Iran of a 16-year old girl, Atefah Sahaaleh, for violating shari’a law. LGF covered this story of medieval misogyny in 2004: Justice in the Islamic Republic.

See LGF link for YouTube video.

HT The American Thinker

As President Bush said, "Hezbollah, of course, has got a fantastic propaganda machine, and they're claiming victories . . ." Now that the dust has settled, here is a definitive analysis of the battle between the Israeli IDF and the Iranian/Syrian backed Hezbollah.

Was this the Spanish Civil War all over again? Will the world yet again equivocate in the face of Evil? Or will it take premptive action minimizing the losses or will it wait and suffer the great losses of global warfare?

There is no moral equivalence of Islamofascism. It must be outed for the failed ideology it is. It must be discredited and destroyed by the universal truth of the free will of men and women.

RBT

*****

Prelude to Apocalypse
August 27th, 2006

Contrary to what is now the accepted wisdom in the media, Hezb’allah in its recent offensive against Israel neither “badly bloodied the Israel Defense Force,” nor “fought it to a standstill” in Southern Lebanon. In fact, the opposite is the case. By any legitimate measure Hezb’allah was handed a resounding military defeat by the IDF in the recent fighting, and while the cancer that is Hezb’allah was not cured by Israel’s soldiers, it was put into remission.

Hezb’allah is not your father’s terrorist organization. This is not a group of loosely affiliated cells of would-be hijackers or suicide bombers. Hezb’allah is a terrorist army, trained like an army, organized like an army, funded and equipped like an army, with one glaring difference. The main use of its arsenal was terror aimed at Israel’s civilian population while hiding behind Lebanon’s civilian population. Its intent was to cause maximum civilian casualties amongst both. This was not by accident. This was by design.

This was Hezb’allah’s war, planned and prepared for six years, funded by close to a billion dollars by Iran, aided by Syria. One of the great benefits to the West to come out of this war (if they choose not to turn a blind eye to it) is the certain knowledge that Hezb’allah is Iran’s terrorist operational arm. It is the terrorist extension of Iran’s expressed foreign policy.

It is not a coincidence that Hezb’allah launched its totally unprovoked attack across Israel’s internationally recognized border, killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers and dragging Lebanon and Israel into a war which neither one wanted at exactly the moment when the international community had issued its ultimatum to Iran. That ultimatum was: “Cease your efforts to develop nuclear weapons or face the sanctions of the International Community.” Iran’s response was Hezb’allah’s war.

Even a cursory examination of Hezb’allah’s statements, captured documents, the weapons it procured over six years and instantly deployed, provides an insight into their war aims and the battle plan to achieve those aims. Hezb’allah announced in the clearest possible way that it was its intent to turn Southern Lebanon into a graveyard for the IDF. This was not mere rhetoric. It was their plan.

Hezb’allah’s Sigfried Line

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The Press as Hezb’allah’s Tool

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Hezb’allah’s Military Failure

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Misapprehension of Casualties

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Israel’s War Aims Achieved

Its a terrorist capital within a capital in Beirut, its command and control center and infrastructure were in ruins. In the end it sought and accepted a cease fire resolution in the United Nations which provided the framework for Israel to achieve all of its stated war aims.

This last point is of no minor consequence both in terms of what Israel achieved and failed to achieve in the counter offensive it waged against Hezb’allah. I can speak to this subject with some degree of expertise since I was one of the people tasked with putting into a simple declarative sentence what the IDF’s mission was as handed down to it by Israel’s democratically elected political leaders. The sentence defining the IDF’s mission read as follows.

“To bring about the conditions on the ground which will enable the International Community and the government of Lebanon to live up to their obligations under UN resolution 1559, to end the rocket attacks against Israel’s civilian population in the North and to bring about the release of Israel’s kidnapped soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regeve.”

That was the IDF’s stated mission and that is exactly what it did.

Whether as a result of the decisions of its political leadership and general staff, or in spite of them, Israel’s soldiers, sailors and airmen brought about the conditions on the ground which enabled a U.N. Resolution that, on the face of it, provided for the implementation of the majority of UN Resolution 1559, called for the extension of Lebanon’s sovereignty and the deployment of its army along Israel’s border for the first time in thirty years, and called for a fifteen thousand troop strong U.N. force to back up the Lebanese army and help it disarm Hezb’allah, as well as enforce an arms embargo on its terrorist army.

France, in recognition of its special relationship with Lebanon would boldly announce that it would head up such a force with thousands of its troops. Instead it landed fifty soldiers in rubber dinghies; until shamed by Italy into upping its ante. What of the International Community and the Government of Lebanon, in whom Israel’s political leadership placed so much faith to turn their words into actions? To use the applicable Yiddish phrase: gornischt (nothing).

Just as the Spanish Civil War was a preview of what European Fascism had in store for the world, so do I believe, that Iran’s offensive against Israel carried out by its Terrorist Army operational arm, was a preview of what Islamofacsism has in store not only for the West but for the moderate regimes of the Middle East, which in case anyone forgot to notice, controls the oil on which the West survives.

What they failed to gain militarily they accomplished through the manipulation of the Western Media, which were their willing dupes and through the ineptitude and weakness, if not down right appeasement of the political leadership of the International community. This has all but guaranteed that this war will be but round one.

The Larger Stakes

The soldiers of the IDF bought their country’s and the International Community’s political leadership a chance to keep the Iranian/Hezb’allah cancer in remission. If that opportunity is squandered, no future Israeli political leadership will dare to limit its war aims again to simply creating conditions on the ground that will enable the International Community not just to protect Israel’s legitimate rights and interests but their own. When one is faced with an apocalyptic fascist enemy which not only employs a terrorist foreign legion to do its bidding, but seeks to acquire nuclear weapons which it clearly announces will be part of its strategy to wipe you and your country, your family and all your loved ones off the face of the earth, there is no proportional response.

If this indeed was the equivalent of the Spanish Civil War, then the world must know that what followed was one last chance before the abyss. For the Jewish people and the State of Israel, that abyss contains the very Holocaust which Ahmadinijad both denies and vows to complete. We will not accommodate the International Community by acquiescing to our own destruction.

This situation, however, is not just Israel’s problem. We are but the Little Satan. America and the West to the Islamofascists are the great Satan. It would be a simple matter indeed for Iran, in flexing its muscles against America, to dispatch Hezb’allah terrorists to Northern Mexico. There, equipped with little more than the very same rockets used to target Haifa, Hezb’allah could target Los Angeles. Now picture that scenario with even a modest nuclear payload. It would no longer be a question of how we stop terrorists from getting into the United States. With the same rocketry they used against Israeli citizens, Iran’s terrorist army would only need to get into Northern Mexico in order to hit America’s second largest city with a nuclear device. What then would America do? Invade Mexico?

If through appeasement the West fails to take action to prevent the conflagration which looms on the horizon, then let there be no doubt that its flames will engulf us all. For its part, this time Israel must be ready, and it must entrust its fate into no one’s hands but its own.

Dan Gordon is the writer of such films as The Hurricane, Murder in the First, Wyatt Earp, and The Assignment. He served as a captain in the reserves in the IDF during the recent war.

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