Piling on the Left

Over the past few weeks, there has been more damning evidence come out against the Left and what it proclaims to stand for than I can count. Hell, half the time I feel like I'm on information overload. "What? They did WHAT? How? When? Crap, they did it again! Didn't they learn the first time?"

This just adds to that pile.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry was delegated to investigate who knew what about corruption in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq. The report has now been made public by a Swedish radio station. It says that Ole Kolby, Norway's U.N. ambassador at the time and head of the sanctions committee, knew about the program's corruption but "remained quiet for fear of angering Iraq and big companies involved in the program."

In short, they knew there was some backdoor hankey-pankey going on with Saddam and several countries, but the didn't let anyone know what they knew for fear of upsetting people.

Huh? Gosh, for people who claim to care about the rule of law (I mean, this is the group that was screeching about "International Law" for months leading up to the invasion of Iraq) they really play fast and loose with the facts when it suits their politics, don't they?

This is reminiscent of the recent admission by Kevin Drum, a rather prominent liberal, especially on the web, that he refrains from writing about the threat posed by Iran because doing so would help the Bush administration. One wonders how much of the "reality" reported in the news is influenced by the determination of both politicians and journalists not to mention the facts that tend to support the reasonableness of, and necessity for, the Bush administration's policies.

Um, yep. At this point, nothing that comes out of the Left should be taken as the truth until it's been double, triple, and quadruple checked by at least three people. They can't be trusted to tell the truth at all until it suits their politics, and most of the time you can't even trust them then.

Also, Mr. Volokh comments on the decline of Amnesty International. (Via Instapundit)

"[In a report accusing Israel of war crimes, Amnesty International] accused Israel of applying an overly broad interpretation of what constituted a military objective when it attacked power plants, bridges, main roads, seaports and Beirut's international airport, all of which are 'presumed to be civilian.'"

"Presumed to be civilian". Tell me, are the terrorists also "presumed to be civilian" since they don't wear uniforms and operate out of civilian centers? Volokh comments thusly:

I'm no military expert, but every book, movie, documentary, etc., I've ever seen on war assumes that at least bridges [how many WWII movies have a scene focused on taking a bridge?], roads and seaports are important military targets, and in modern times I'd have to put airports on that list, too. The idea that a country at war can't attack the enemy's resupply routes (at least until it has direct evidence that there is a particular military shipment arriving) has nothing to do with human rights or war crimes, and a lot to do with a pacifist attitude that seeks to make war, regardless of the justification for it or the restraint in prosecuting it [at least if it's a Western country doing it], an international "crime."

Bridges, roads, seaports and airports, when used to resupply an attacking force, no longer are "civilian". By their very use, they have become military targets. Much like using a hospital, school or religious building as a base of military operations allows the destruction of those buildings under the Geneva Convention, when you use an object for military purposes you make it a military target. This is basic level, privates-learn-this-in-basic-training kind of stuff. The fact that an agency supposedly devoted to protecting civilians can't even bother to read the damn Geneva Conventions and learn what is and is not permitted speaks volumes about that agency.

But then, I'll give a shit about world opinion when they focus on holding terrorists accountable more than they focus on condemning Israel.