Just when you thought Israel’s international reputation had hit rock bottom: Red Cross Condemns Israel.

The daring rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from FARC terrorists misused the Red Cross symbol in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

A member of the military mission that tricked Colombian rebels into freeing 15 hostages wore the insignia of the International Red Cross during the operation, President Alvaro Uribe said Wednesday.

Mr. Uribe said his government had apologized to the Red Cross for the incident, which he called an unauthorized error by a nervous soldier. “An officer mistakenly and contrary to orders … put a piece of cloth on his vest that carried the symbol of the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Mr. Uribe said in a speech in Bogota.

A fleeting image of a portion of the cloth is visible in video taken of the operation by an agent posing as a cameraman that was officially released.

Use of the Red Cross symbol in such a military operation would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions that protect the relief organization’s reputation for neutrality in conflicts.

There’s no “appear” to it.

One hesitates to overstate matters given the stakes involved.  The rescue of these hostages is an unmitigated good.   Further, I believe Uribe when he says it was done contrary to orders.

Still, this is a serious matter.   Having soldiers pose as relief workers or journalists is illegal because, otherwise, no one would recognize the sanctity of those people and they would be in danger.  Using the Red Cross is particularly egregious because it could deny captured soldiers and their families the benefits of visits to ensure humane treatment.

Recall Clara Barton’s words from 1878:

A confederation of Relief Societies in different countries, acting under the Geneva Convention, carries on its work under the sign of the Red Cross. The aim of these societies is to ameliorate the condition of wounded soldiers in the armies in campaign on land or sea, and to furnish relief in cases of great national calamity.

The societies had their rise in the conviction of certain philanthropic men, that the official sanitary service in wars is usually insufficient, and that the charity of the people, which at such times exhibits itself munificently, should be organized for the best possible utilization. An International Public Conference was called at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1863, which, though it had not an official character, brought together representatives from a number of governments. At this conference a treaty was drawn up, afterwards remodeled and improved, which twenty-five governments have signed.

The treaty provides for the neutrality of all sanitary supplies, ambulances, surgeons, nurses, attendants, and the sick or wounded men, and their safe conduct, when they bear the sign of the organization, viz: the Red Cross.

This only works if people trust that only legitimate relief workers seek sanctuary behind the Red Cross symbol.

Woodrow Wilson Red Cross Poster:  Sparacus Education:  Red Cross

Terrorists have attacked a vehicle belonging to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut; at least three people are dead.

An explosion targeted a U.S. Embassy vehicle Tuesday in northern Beirut, killing at least three Lebanese and injuring an American bystander and a local embassy employee, U.S. and Lebanese officials said. The blast, which damaged the armored SUV and several other vehicles, took place just ahead of a farewell reception for the American ambassador at a hotel in central Beirut.

No Americans were in the car, which was carrying two Lebanese employees of the embassy, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington. There were conflicting accounts of the death toll, with the State Department, from information provided by the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, saying four people had been killed and Lebanese authorities saying that only three had died.

The bombing — which came as President Bush toured the Mideast — was the first attack on U.S. diplomatic interests in Lebanon since the 1980s, when the country saw some of the deadliest terror attacks against Americans in U.S. history.

Lovely.

Reeling from news portraying the company as reckless killers, Blackwater USA has changed its corporate logo.

In the private security business that has made Blackwater USA virtually a household name, being tough is part of the game. Not just for its rifle-carrying contractors but also for its corporate logo.

Well, not anymore. The well-armed men remain, but the company’s roughneck logo — a bear’s paw print in a red crosshairs, under lettering that looks to have been ripped from a fifth of Jim Beam — has undergone a publicity-conscious, corporate scrubbing.

The company said the decision to update its logo was made long before Sept. 16, the day a Blackwater team guarding a State Department convoy in Baghdad fatally shot 17 Iraqis near a bustling traffic circle. But the new logo did not appear on Blackwater’s Web site (www.blackwaterusa.com), until after the incident, a Blackwater spokeswoman said.

The rifle-scope crosshairs so obvious in the old Blackwater logo have been reduced to a set of horizontal elipses that bracket, but no longer enclose, the paw print, which has also changed to more closely resemble an actual bear-paw imprint. The original Blackwater logo had thick white serif lettering draped over the crosshairs on a menacing black field. The new logo separates the image and the letters, which now appear in buttoned-down sans-serif black and slightly italicized on a white field.

Though the red elipses in the new logo retain the horizontal crosshairs, the overall look is far less “kick your butt” and much more “quarterly report,” some branding experts said. The new logo, which began to appear on some Blackwater material in late July, may also speak volumes about the company’s desire to begin its second decade on a more anodyne note. “I would say it’s a highly significant change; they’re repositioning themselves,” said Lauren Miller, the owner of MDesign, a graphic design firm in New York. “The old logo suggests that they’re targeting people. The new logo is a more ambiguous, more safe corporate logo.” “The subtle changes mean everything here,” Ms. Miller said, “by eliminating the scope of a sniper’s rifle.”

Indeed, the new logo is more evocative of the Clemson Tigers than a mercenary outfit.

The editors and readers of Danger Room have been submitting their own suggestions, which Sharon Weinberger has collected. My favorites:

She’s accepting new submissions and tallying the votes for those currently on display.

Today’s WaPo fronts the story of the most interrogators of WWII, who had a reunion yesterday at Fort Hunt. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the focus is on those who spoke out about the war in Iraq and the interrogation techniques now being used.

For six decades, they held their silence. The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners’ cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them. “We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army’s Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “I feel like the military is using us to say, ‘We did spooky stuff then, so it’s okay to do it now,’ ” said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.

When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece. “I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war,” said Weiss, chairman of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human rights and trademark lawyer in New York City.

The veterans of P.O. Box 1142, a top-secret installation in Fairfax County that went only by its postal code name, were brought back to Fort Hunt by park rangers who are piecing together a portrait of what happened there during the war.

Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks, before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators were refugees from the Third Reich.

“We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice,” said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark.

The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor. “During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone,” said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. “We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

The degree to which the men quoted here are representative of the group is unknowable from the piece, of course. Reporters will naturally focus on controversy and the vets supportive of current policy are much less interesting. Still, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen these sorts of criticisms from professional interrogators.

Stephen Budiansky had a superb piece in the Atlantic Monthly a couple of years ago (exerpted at OTB at the time) noting that the most successful interrogators on both sides in WWII used psychology rather than torture to get information.

The brutality of the fighting in the Pacific and the suicidal fanaticism of the Japanese had created a general assumption that only the sternest measures would get Japanese prisoners to divulge anything. Moran countered that in his and others’ experience, strong-arm tactics simply did not work. Stripping a prisoner of his dignity, treating him as a still-dangerous threat, forcing him to stand at attention and flanking him with guards throughout his interrogation—in other words, emphasizing that “we are his to-be-respected and august enemies and conquerors”—invariably backfired. It made the prisoner “so conscious of his present position and that he was a captured soldier vs. enemy intelligence” that it “played right into [the] hands” of those who were determined not to give away anything of military importance.

[...]

Every soldier, Moran observed, has a “story” he desperately wants to tell. The interrogator’s job is to provide the atmosphere that allows the prisoner to tell it.

[...]

Moran spoke fluent Japanese, but more important, he was thoroughly familiar with Japanese culture, having spent forty years in Japan as a missionary. He used this knowledge for one of his standard gambits: making a prisoner homesick. “This line has infinite possibilities,” he explained. “If you know anything about Japanese history, art, politics, athletics, famous places, department stores, eating places, etc. etc. a conversation may be relatively interminable.” Moran emphasized that a detailed knowledge of technical military terms and the like was less important than a command of idiomatic phrases and cultural references that allow the interviewer to achieve “the first and most important victory”—getting “into the mind and into the heart” of the prisoner and achieving an “intellectual and spiritual” rapport with him.

I share Phil Carter’s hope that we can learn from the experiences of the men of Fort Hunt and others who went before.

I think that sometimes, we forget how bad these guys had it. We think that we’re the first ones in American history to face an existential threat; that the world really changed and became more dangerous on 9/11/01, and that we’ve never been here before. But, in fact, we have been here before. Our nation has faced existential threats in its short history, like the Civil War and WWII, and we’ve prevailed. History offers many lessons for today about how we might view these threats, and respond in a way consistent with our nation’s core values.

Yes, jihadist terrorists are different in important ways than the soldiers of Germany and Japan. But human nature remains constant.

A terrorist plot on Fort Dix has been thwarted, AP reports.

Six men were planning to attack the Fort Dix Army base and “kill as many soldiers as possible,” federal authorities said Tuesday.

The men, Yugoslav nationals, were arrested early Tuesday, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the United States Attorney’s Office in New Jersey.

Like Steven Taylor, my initial take is that these are just some yahoos rather than part of something truly dangerous.

Indeed, Fort Dix strikes me as a strange target, given that it’s not exactly the nerve center of the American defense grid. According to their Web site, here’s what they have:

• 1079th Garrison Support Unit
• Fort Dix NCO Academy
• Air Mobility Warfare Center
• American Red Cross
• Kelley Reserve Center
• Liberty Brigade ROTC
• Federal Bureau of Prisons
• Headquarters New Jersey Army & Air National Guard
• U.S. Coast Guard, Atlantic Strike Team
• New Jersey Youth Challenge Program
• U.S. MEPCOM Fort Dix
• Navy Expeditionary Combat Command
• Joint Personal Property Shipping Office

We’ll learn more soon, I imagine, as to who these men are, what their motivations were, and how serious the threat was. One thing we know for sure, though: This proves conclusively that we need to keep Eastern European immigrants out of the country.

UPDATE: The plot thickens. An updated version of the AP story at YahooNews reports that, “four of the men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one in Jordan and one in Turkey. Five of them lived in Cherry Hill, 10 miles east of Philadelphia and 20 miles southwest of Fort Dix.” Given that Muslim Bosnia was part of “the former Yugoslavia,” — and that it would seem unlikely that four Slovenians or Orthodox Serbs would join up with two Muslims — we’re likely dealing with Islamists. That does not, of course, preclude their simply being nuts.

Commenter legion points to a CNN story saying these men were “either U.S. citizens or living illegally in the United States.” Via Mexico, no doubt.

Tony Snow tells the press: “They are not charged with being members of an international terrorism organization. At least at this point, there is no evidence that they received direction from international terror organizations. However, their involvement in weapons training, operational surveillance and discussions about killing American military personnel warranted a strong law enforcement response.”

Yeah, I’d say so.

Also, here’s a clue as to “why Ft. Dix?”

Fort Dix is used to train soldiers, particularly reservists. In 1999, it sheltered more than 4,000 ethnic Albanian refugees during the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

After that war, refugees were allowed to return to the U.N.-run province of Kosovo in Serbia or to seek permanent residency in the United States. The U.N. Security Council is considering whether to approve a plan to grant Kosovo independence from Serbia under the supervision of the European Union and the United States.

UPDATE: Rusty Shackleford believes discussions of whether these men are part of a formal network “misses the point of al Qaeda 3.0. Anyone can be ‘al Qaeda’ now just by claiming to be, that’s the nature of a non-hierarchical network.”

There’s something to that, to be sure. Still, for a concept to have any use as a heuristic, it needs to have a meaningful parameters. It remains to be seen whether these guys turn out to be serious terrorists in any significant sense.

UPDATE: The federal prosecutors seem to think they are.

Officials said the group had a collection of jihadist videos, including video of the last will and testament of two of the 19 hijackers from the September 11, 2001, attacks and video of Osama bin Laden calling Muslims to jihad. The men also showed videos to each other of killings of U.S. military personnel around the world, officials said. “They watched the blowing off of the arm of a United States Marine, and the room burst out into laughter,” Christie said.

The men are believed to have been “inspired” by international terrorist groups, but not directly linked to a specific organization, he said.

He said defendant Shain Duka was heard on tape saying, “We can do a lot of damage with seven people. We can do big things.”

A law enforcement source told CNN the group played paintball and test fired weapons as part of their training. “These guys were clearly committed to the task they had set before them,” Fran Townsend, the White House’s homeland security adviser, told CNN.

Their goal was to figure out how to kill as many American soldiers as possible, [New Jersey U.S. Attorney Christopher J.] Christie said. The men had surveyed a number of bases but settled on Fort Dix because one of the defendants said he knew the base “like the back of his hand” because he had delivered pizza there, Christie said. “They were at the point where they wanted to obtain the automatic weapons that would be the final piece in their plan… to create carnage at Fort Dix,” Christie said. “I think it could have been a disaster,” he said. “These people were ready for martyrdom.”

Given that they were attacking an Army base, they’d have gotten that for sure.

Thieves trying to steal gas from a pipeline in Lagos, Nigeria have caused an explosion that has killed over 200 people.

At least 200 people were killed Tuesday when a pipeline carrying petroleum products exploded in Nigeria’s biggest city of Lagos, a Red Cross official said. The death toll was expected to rise. Ige Oladimeji, a senior official for the Nigerian Red Cross, said his workers had documented “over 200 and still counting.” “We can only recognize them through the skulls, the bodies are scattered over the ground,” he said.

Hundreds of bodies could be seen jumbled and fused together in the raging flames at the blast site. Intense heat kept rescue workers back, as smoke billowed over the heavily populated Adule Egba neighborhood. The blast shook the neighborhood after dawn, Nigerian Red Cross spokesman Umar Mairiga said. Raging fires were hindering further recovery, he said. Many people had been injured, he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what was flowing through the pipe. Witnesses said people had rushed to the ruptured pipeline to collect fuel when the flames ignited. Nigerians often tap into pipelines carrying refined fuel, scooping up the raw product in buckets or plastic bags. Spilled fuel spreading in pools sometimes ignites, immolating people nearby. In May, more than 150 people died in a similar explosion in Lagos.

Incredible.

Madonna is causing a bit of a stir in Europe with her latest concert stunt–appearing in a mock crucifixion as part of her concert tour–leading German officials to consider pressing charges against the pop star:

German prosecutors are threatening to monitor Madonna’s weekend concert in Duesseldorf to see if she repeats her mock crucifixion scene.

The crucifixion scene, which drew fire from religious leaders in Rome earlier this month, features the pop star wearing a crown of fake thorns and performing on a mirrored cross.

Johannes Mocken, a spokesman for prosecutors in Duesseldorf, said Tuesday that authorities would be watching her concert on Sunday to see if legal action is warranted.

Hopefully the German authorities have clear rules to go by to determine this… or, perhaps not:

The crucifixion scene could be construed as insulting religious beliefs, he said, but he admitted it might also be permitted under laws protecting artistic freedom.

You’ve got to love “balancing” theories of rights.

American audiences won’t be missing out on the scene regardless (assuming, of course, Madonna avoids jail in the meantime): NBC has decided to air it as part of a concert during November sweeps.

Several in the blogosphere are pointing to a Jerusalem Post piece entitled “Hizbullah committing war crimes.”

Hizbullah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said Saturday. “Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war.” “Most of the attacks appear to have been directed at civilian areas and have hit pedestrians, hospitals, schools, homes and businesses,” the humanitarian organization’s website stated.

While it’s hardly disputable that Hezbollah is committing war crimes, it’s hardly news. After all, murdering civilians is the sine qua non for terrorist groups.

However, supporters of Israel in this conflict should probably not cite Human Rights Watch. If one actually goes to the website in question, one will find numerous reports on this conflict:

HRW reports:

• Israel/Lebanon: Hezbollah Must End Attacks on Civilians
• Israel/Lebanon: End Indiscriminate Strikes on Civilians
  Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes
• Lebanon/Israel: IDF Fails to Explain Qana Bombing
  Independent International Inquiry Required
• Lebanon: Hezbollah Rocket Attacks on Haifa Designed to Kill Civilians
  Anti-personnel Ball Bearings Meant to Harm “Soft” Targets

External reports linked on HRW front page:

• “Fog of War Is No Cover for Causing Civilian Deaths”
• Peter Bouckaert on the New Report: Fatal Strikes (Video)

Particularly illuminating: Questions and Answers on Hostilities Between Israel and Hezbollah

Some excerpts:

What is Hezbollah’s status in relation to the conflict?

Hezbollah is an organized political Islamist group based in Lebanon, with a military arm and a civilian arm, and is represented in the Lebanese parliament and government. As such a group, and as a party to the conflict with Israel, it is bound to conduct hostilities in compliance with customary international humanitarian law and Common Article 3, which as stated above applies to conflicts that are not interstate but between a state and a non-state actor. As is explicitly stated in Common Article 3, and made clear by the commentaries of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the application of the provisions of Common Article 3, as well as customary international law, to Hezbollah does not affect its legal status.

Was Hezbollah’s capture of Israeli soldiers lawful?

The targeting and capture of enemy soldiers is allowed under international humanitarian law. However, captured combatants must in all circumstances be treated humanely.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nassrallah has stated that the captured soldiers will be used to negotiate the release of Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab prisoners from Israel. The use of captives who are no longer involved in the conflict for this purpose constitutes hostage-taking. Hostage-taking as part of an armed conflict is strictly forbidden under international law, by both Common Article 3 and customary international law, and is a war crime.

Which targets are Israel and Hezbollah entitled to attack under international humanitarian law?

Two fundamental tenets of international humanitarian law are those of “civilian immunity” and the principle of “distinction.” They impose a duty to distinguish at all times in the conduct of hostilities between combatants and civilians, and to target only the former. It is forbidden in any circumstance to direct attacks against civilians; indeed, as noted, to do so intentionally amounts to a war crime.

It is also generally forbidden to direct attacks against what are called “civilian objects,” such as homes and apartments, places of worship, hospitals, schools or cultural monuments, unless they are being used for military purposes. Military objects that are legitimately subject to attack are those that make an “effective” contribution to military action and whose destruction, capture or neutralization offers a “definite military advantage.” Where there is doubt about the nature of an object, it must be presumed to be civilian.

The mere fact that an object has civilian uses does not necessarily render it immune from attack. It, too, can be targeted if it makes an “effective” contribution to the enemy’s military activities and its destruction, capture or neutralization offers a “definite military advantage” to the attacking side in the circumstances ruling at the time. However, such “dual use” objects might also be protected by the principle of proportionality, described below.

Even when a target is serving a military purpose, precautions must always be taken to protect civilians.

Now, there shouldn’t be any question as to moral equivalency. Hezbollah violates international law as a modus vivende and Israel is doing so only under duress. Then again, it is fighting a war that is asymmetric not only in military technology but also in propaganda. Hezbollah enhances its cause when it kills non-Muslim civilians; Israel loses ground every time it kills civilians.

It happened today in the southern Lebanon village of Qana:

Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed “great sorrow” for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at Israel, and said he would not halt the army’s operation.

The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike in Qana, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Lebanon in a setback for diplomatic efforts to end hostilities. She was to return to the U.S. Monday morning, abruptly breaking off her diplomatic mission in the Mideast.

Before the airstrike, Olmert told Rice he needed 10-14 days to finish the offensive in Lebanon, according to a senior Israeli government official. The two said they would meet again Sunday evening.

“We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents this morning,” Olmert said said during Israel’s weekly Cabinet meeting, according to a participant in the meeting. “We will continue the activity and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called an emergency Security Council meeting Sunday at the request of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora

The council was expected to discuss a French-sponsored draft resolution spelling out a series of steps meant to resolve the crisis, including an immediate halt to fighting.

Rice said she had called Saniora to postpone her visit to Lebanon; angry Lebanese officials said it was their government that called off the meeting.

Israeli said it targeted Qana because it was a base for hundreds of rockets launched at Israeli, including 40 that injured five Israelis on Sunday. Israel said it had warned civilians several days before to leave the village.

“One must understand the Hezbollah is using their own civilian population as human shields,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir. “The Israeli defense forces dropped leaflets and warned the civilian population to leave the place because the Hezbollah turned it into a war zone.”

But while the civilized world mourns the loss of these innocents, Hezbollah celebrates a huge victory in its propaganda war against Israel. Truly sick.

Responding to the attacks on this morning’s Meet The Press, Israel’s U.N. ambassador Dan Gillerman made it very clear that this “serves no one’s purpose except for Hezbollah and Iran” and that it was the direct result of Hezbollah’s use of civilians as human shields. And as Gillerman so eloquently puts it, “there will not be peace until the terrorists learn to love their children more than they hate us.” Watch it:

Meanwhile, Australia’s Herald Sun has exclusive photos of Hezbollah using crowded suburban areas as bases from which to launch rockets into Israel. Proof, it would seem to me, that it is Hezbollah which is directly responsible for the lives lost by Israeli counter strikes.

UPDATE: What some others are saying…

Tigerhawk on civilian casualties and dual racism:

There is not yet any reason to doubt Israel on this. Nevertheless, leaders of countries that have done worse are protesting, and Condoleezza Rice has postponed her next trip. They are pandering to the worldwide hatred of Israel. On the facts known this morning, culpability may just as easily lie with Hezbollah. Of course, it should never go unsaid that Hezbollah targets Israeli civilians without even bothering to justify its attacks on them as incidental to a military purpose. Killing Jews is quite sufficient, thank you very much. Every launch of every Hezbollah rocket into every Israeli city should earn similar denunciations, but they do not. Why? The dual racism that holds Israel to a higher standard than the rest of the world, and Arabs to a lower one. And, by the way, no profession is more culpable in the perpetuation of this dual racism than journalism. Even politicians do a better job of trying to play it fair.

Much in this most troubled part of the world would become more clear if we just held everybody to the same standard of behavior. It can be a high standard or a low standard, but let’s just agree on what it is. Does the intent to kill civilians matter, or not? Does the wearing of uniforms matter, or not? Should an army prosecute those of its soldiers who violate law and morality, or hail them as heroes? Let us shake off this habit of giving insurgents a pass in these things because it seems useless to condemn them. It is not. It is corrosive to our civilization, not their’s, when we uphold their values at the expense of our own.

Alexandra von Maltzan:

I am sorry for the horrific human suffering created in the bombing of Qana, southern Lebanon today, but if these people do not care for human life they endanger, why should Israel sacrifice their own which they do care about? Hezbollah has been using Qana as a base for launching hundreds of rockets at Israel, happily waiting for the bitter memory of the Operation Grapes of Wrath propaganda to do their dirty work for them. The people there should be horrified and disgusted at what Hezbollah are doing, and at the inability and unwillingness of their own cowardly Government to disarm Hezbollah, instead of allowing the MSM to portray Hezbollah as some kind of liberating heroes. Israel cannot be blamed for loss of life in these circumstances.

Michelle Malkin notes that the U.N. headquarters in Beirut has been attacked.

Rick Moran: All That’s Missing Are The Pom-Poms

Allah Pundit questions the timing of the Qana building collapse.

Today’s New York Times fronts a story entitled “‘Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid.”

Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion. A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance. There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee. And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement. “The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Such an outcome was feared soon after Congress passed the initial hurricane relief package, as officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross acknowledged that their systems were overwhelmed and tried to create new ones on the fly. “We did, in fact, put into place never-before-used and untested processes,” Donna M. Dannels, acting deputy director of recovery at FEMA, told a House panel this month. “Clearly, because they were untested, they were more subject to error and fraud.”

Officials in Washington say they recognized that a certain amount of fraud or improper payments is inevitable in any major disaster, as the government’s mission is to rapidly distribute emergency aid. They typically send out excessive payments that represent 1 percent to 3 percent of the relief distributed, money they then ask people to give back. What was not understood until now was just how large these numbers could become.

Truly a shame, if entirely predictable. While some of the blame here falls on FEMA, DHS, and the administration, it’s mostly just the nature of sympathy politics. By rushing to dump billions of dollars on the problem to demonstrate that “we care” about the victims of disasters and to avoid accusations of moving too slowly, we dumped money out there without normal safeguards.

Given the nature of the disaster, it may have been entirely reasonable to take people’s word for the fact that they’d lost children, for example. But this created a climate where sleazy people with no conscience could take advantage of “free money.”

Max Boot argues that those overly concerned about “torture” have apparently never been to boot camp:

HOLD THE PRESSES. I’ve discovered that the use of torture by the U.S. government is far more pervasive than previously believed. There are major facilities all over the country where thousands of men and women who have not committed any crime are held for prolonged periods while subjected to physical and psychological coercion that violates every tenet of the Geneva Convention.

They are routinely made to stand for long periods in uncomfortable positions. They are made to walk for hours while wearing heavy loads on their backs. They are bullied by martinets who get in their faces and yell insults at them. They are hit and often knocked down with clubs known as pugil sticks. They are denied sleep for more than a day at a time. They are forced to inhale tear gas. They are prevented from seeing friends or family. Some are traumatized by this treatment. Others are injured. A few even die.

Should Amnesty International or the International Committee of the Red Cross want to investigate these human-rights abuses, they could visit Parris Island, S.C., Camp Pendleton, Calif., Ft. Benning, Ga., Ft. Jackson, S.C., and other bases where the Army and Marines train recruits. It’s worth keeping in mind how roughly the U.S. government treats its own defenders before we get too worked up over the treatment of captured terrorists.

It’s an amusing point but, as Kevin Drum observes, rather strained. As with comparisons to fraternity initiations, pointing out ways in which acceptable things are unlike unacceptable things obscures the ways they are different.

For one thing, military recruits and fraternity pledges undergo their rituals willingly.

More importantly, the approved techniques employed on prisoners goes well beyond those used in tolerated “weeding out” rituals.

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

Mild variations of the some of these techniques are used in hazing rituals and certainly, military training often involves being cold and wet but that’s because combat operations often take place in cold, rainy conditions. In the case of the military, such rigorous training is carefully monitored by trained professionals who have the well being of the recruit in highest regard. In the case of college initiations, they’re often handled by immature sadists and the subject of increasing controversy.

Further, as Boot admits later in the article, much harsher techniques have been used in some cases–and not just by the amateurs at Abu Ghraib.

Update: Glenn Reynolds has an excellent roundup of articles on the subject. His argument that we should be precise and discriminating in the use of the emotionally charged term “torture” is right, although we both agree that things that fall short of that standard may still be morally questionable and counterproductive.

This OpinionJournal op-ed is worth reading as well.

Related:

Torture: A Bad Idea
It’s the Torture, Stupid
Senate Compromise on Detainee Rights, Torture
Canadian Court Allows Bush Torture Prosecution
U.K. to Deport Islamist Radicals, Possibly Even Citizens
Another Prison Torture Scandal
Guantanamo: Torture or No Torture?
Gitmo Analogies
Truth Extraction: Honey Beats Vinegar
In Defense of Rendition
Outsourcing Torture

Egypt thwarts democracy forum

Thwart is an emotion-laden word. Is it justified?

A U.S.-backed conference to promote Middle East democracy ended in chaos yesterday, with Egyptians leaving early after blocking Bush administration proposals to subsidize groups that promote political reform.
A draft declaration on democratic and economic principles that was to be released in a closing press conference was shelved instead because of Egyptian objections.
With U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice present, Egypt Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit left early.
“We didn’t withdraw” from the conference, Mr. Gheit said later. “What happened is that the meeting took so long, more than it was scheduled.”

Ok, they had discount airline tickets they had to get to – I’m not making fun here as I’ve come across this in the past – some countries encourage saving money by prebooking (most companies do too). I used to work with a foreign ministry with a set budget, an if we could help them save money, the bigger the party at the end of their fiscal year.

The U.S. State Department and others describe nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, as both humanitarian aid organizations, such as the Red Cross, and lesser-known advocacy groups that promote political reform.
Egypt wanted the statement to stipulate that those organizations be “legally registered” under each country’s laws. U.S. officials said the requirement would undermine the purpose of the statement.

OK, free speech is OK, so long as it isn’t from those that don’t disagree with us. Meanwhile, Egypt is one of the top foreign aid recipients from the USA.

Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for their opposition to the Bush Administration unsuccessful efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

IAEA, ElBaradei Share Nobel Peace Prize (AP)

Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency that he heads won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. ElBaradei, a 63-year-old lawyer from Egypt, has headed the U.N. nuclear agency as it grappled with the crisis in Iraq and the ongoing efforts to prevent North Korea and Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Nobel Committee said ElBaradei and the IAEA should be recognized for addressing one of the greatest dangers facing the world. “At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its director general.”

ElBaradei, who was reappointed last month to a third term, has had to contend with U.S. opposition to his tenure. Much of the opposition stemmed from Washington’s perception that he was being too soft on Iran for not declaring it in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. That stance blocked a U.S. bid to haul Tehran before the U.N. Security Council for more than two years.

He also refused to endorse Washington’s contention that Iran was working to make nuclear weapons and disputed U.S. assertions that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq had an active atomic weapons program — both claims that remain unproven, despite growing suspicions about Tehran’s nuclear agenda.

In recent years especially, the Nobel committee has awarded the Peace Prize on rather dubious grounds, often to make a political statement rather than to recognize general achievement. There were certainly better choices this year.

Still, while the likes of Yasir Arafat show up on the list from time-to-time, most of the recipients are indeed worthy. Jimmy Carter won for the wrong reasons in 2003 but almost certainly deserved the prize for other efforts, notably the Camp David Accords and his efforts at monitoring elections overseas. A full list of Peace Prize winners are in the extended entry.

Update: ElBaradei: Peace Prize a “shot in the arm” (Reuters)

U.N. nuclear watchdog head Mohamed ElBaradei said on Friday winning the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize would give him and his agency a much-needed “shot in the arm” as they tackle nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea. ElBaradei said he had been certain he would not win, despite being favored, because he had not received the traditional advance telephone call from the Nobel Committee. He only learned of his win while watching the televised ceremony.

The 63-year-old Egyptian lawyer and the International Atomic Energy Agency won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to prevent both the spread of nuclear weapons, to new states and to terrorists, and to ensure safe civilian use of nuclear energy.

“The award sends a very strong message: ‘Keep doing what you are doing — be impartial, act with integrity’, and that is what we intend to do,” ElBaradei told a news conference in Vienna.

I’m not sure that’s the message sent by this award.

Note: The hyperlinks don’t work, as they are truncated and attempt to find the pages at OTB rather than the Nobel site.
1901 Peace, Henry Dunant
         Peace, Frédéric Passy
1902 Peace, Élie Ducommun
         Peace, Albert Gobat
1903 Peace, Randal Cremer
1904 Peace, Institute of International Law
1905 Peace, Bertha von Suttner
1906 Peace, Theodore Roosevelt
1907 Peace, Ernesto Teodoro Moneta
         Peace, Louis Renault
1908 Peace, Klas Pontus Arnoldson
         Peace, Fredrik Bajer
1909 Peace, Auguste Beernaert
         Peace, Paul Henri d’Estournelles de Constant
1910 Peace, Permanent International Peace Bureau
1911 Peace, Tobias Asser
         Peace, Alfred Fried
1912 Peace, Elihu Root
1913 Peace, Henri La Fontaine
1917 Peace, International Committee of the Red Cross
1919 Peace, Woodrow Wilson
1920 Peace, Léon Bourgeois
1921 Peace, Hjalmar Branting
         Peace, Christian Lange
1922 Peace, Fridtjof Nansen
1925 Peace, Sir Austen Chamberlain
         Peace, Charles G. Dawes
1926 Peace, Aristide Briand
         Peace, Gustav Stresemann
1927 Peace, Ferdinand Buisson
         Peace, Ludwig Quidde
1929 Peace, Frank B. Kellogg
1930 Peace, Nathan Söderblom
1931 Peace, Jane Addams
         Peace, Nicholas Murray Butler
1933 Peace, Sir Norman Angell
1934 Peace, Arthur Henderson
1935 Peace, Carl von Ossietzky
1936 Peace, Carlos Saavedra Lamas
1937 Peace, Robert Cecil
1938 Peace, Nansen International Office for Refugees
1944 Peace, International Committee of the Red Cross
1945 Peace, Cordell Hull
1946 Peace, Emily Greene Balch
         Peace, John R. Mott
1947 Peace, Friends Service Council
         Peace, American Friends Service Committee
1949 Peace, Lord Boyd Orr
1950 Peace, Ralph Bunche
1951 Peace, Léon Jouhaux
1952 Peace, Albert Schweitzer
1953 Peace, George C. Marshall
1954 Peace, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
1957 Peace, Lester Bowles Pearson
1958 Peace, Georges Pire
1959 Peace, Philip Noel-Baker
1960 Peace, Albert Lutuli
1961 Peace, Dag Hammarskjöld
1962 Peace, Linus Pauling
1963 Peace, International Committee of the Red Cross
         Peace, League of Red Cross Societies
1964 Peace, Martin Luther King
1965 Peace, United Nations Children’s Fund
1968 Peace, René Cassin
1969 Peace, International Labour Organization
1970 Peace, Norman Borlaug
1971 Peace, Willy Brandt
1973 Peace, Le Duc Tho
         Peace, Henry Kissinger
1974 Peace, Seán MacBride
         Peace, Eisaku Sato
1975 Peace, Andrei Sakharov
1976 Peace, Mairead Corrigan
         Peace, Betty Williams
1977 Peace, Amnesty International
1978 Peace, Anwar al-Sadat
         Peace, Menachem Begin
1979 Peace, Mother Teresa
1980 Peace, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
1981 Peace, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
1982 Peace, Alfonso García Robles
         Peace, Alva Myrdal
1983 Peace, Lech Walesa
1984 Peace, Desmond Tutu
1985 Peace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
1986 Peace, Elie Wiesel
1987 Peace, Oscar Arias Sánchez
1988 Peace, United Nations Peacekeeping Forces
1989 Peace, The 14th Dalai Lama
1990 Peace, Mikhail Gorbachev
1991 Peace, Aung San Suu Kyi
1992 Peace, Rigoberta Menchú Tum
1993 Peace, F.W. de Klerk
         Peace, Nelson Mandela
1994 Peace, Yasser Arafat
         Peace, Shimon Peres
         Peace, Yitzhak Rabin
1995 Peace, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
         Peace, Joseph Rotblat
1996 Peace, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo
         Peace, José Ramos-Horta
1997 Peace, International Campaign to Ban Landmines
         Peace, Jody Williams
1998 Peace, John Hume
         Peace, David Trimble
1999 Peace, Médecins Sans Frontières
2000 Peace, Kim Dae-jung
2001 Peace, United Nations
         Peace, Kofi Annan
2002 Peace, Jimmy Carter
2003 Peace, Shirin Ebadi
2004 Peace, Wangari Maathai
2005 Peace, Mohamed ElBaradei
         Peace, International Atomic Energy Agency

FEMA will, for the first time, reimburse churches along with other groups that provided relief services to hurricane victims.

FEMA Plans to Reimburse Faith Groups for Aid (WaPo, A1)

After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. FEMA officials said it would mark the first time that the government has made large-scale payments to religious groups for helping to cope with a domestic natural disaster.

“I believe it’s appropriate for the federal government to assist the faith community because of the scale and scope of the effort and how long it’s lasting,” said Joe Becker, senior vice president for preparedness and response with the Red Cross.

Civil liberties groups called the decision a violation of the traditional boundary between church and state, accusing FEMA of trying to restore its battered reputation by playing to religious conservatives. “What really frosts me about all this is, here is an administration that didn’t do its job and now is trying to dig itself out by making right-wing groups happy,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

FEMA officials said religious organizations would be eligible for payments only if they operated emergency shelters, food distribution centers or medical facilities at the request of state or local governments in the three states that have declared emergencies — Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In those cases, “a wide range of costs would be available for reimbursement, including labor costs incurred in excess of normal operations, rent for the facility and delivery of essential needs like food and water,” FEMA spokesman Eugene Kinerney said in an e-mail.

For churches, synagogues and mosques that have taken in hurricane survivors, FEMA’s decision presents a quandary. Some said they were eager to get the money and had begun tallying their costs, from electric bills to worn carpets. Others said they probably would not apply for the funds, fearing donations would dry up if the public came to believe they were receiving government handouts. “Volunteer labor is just that: volunteer,” said the Rev. Robert E. Reccord, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. “We would never ask the government to pay for it.”

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, religious charities rushed in to provide emergency services, often acting more quickly and efficiently than the government. Relief workers in the stricken states estimate that 500,000 people have taken refuge in facilities run by religious groups.

[...]

For some individual churches, however, reimbursement is very appealing. At Christus Victor Lutheran Church in Ocean Springs, Miss., as many as 200 evacuees and volunteer workers have been sleeping each night in the sanctuary and Sunday school classrooms. The church’s entrance hall is a Red Cross reception area and medical clinic. As many as 400 people a day are eating in the fellowship hall.

Suzie Harvey, the parish administrator, said the church was asked by the Red Cross and local officials to serve as a shelter. The church’s leadership agreed immediately, without anticipating that nearly a quarter of its 650 members would be rendered homeless and in no position to contribute funds. “This was just something we had to do,” she said. “Later we realized we have no income coming in.”

Harvey said the electric bill has skyrocketed, water is being used round-the-clock and there has been “20 years of wear on the carpet in one month.” When FEMA makes money available, she said, the church definitely will apply.

While I have some misgivings about this, there hardly seems to be a government entanglement in religious matters involved here. The Supreme Court has long ruled that church groups must be treated on par with other groups. If Habitat for Humanity gets a tax break or government subsidy, then the Salvation Army must get the same treatment if it is engaged in the same activity.

Lynn is the media’s go-to guy for these kind of stories. Because he has “Rev.” in front of his name, the casual reader gets the impression “even mainstream preachers oppose this policy.” In fact, Lynn’s entire career is opposition to even nominal intermingling of faith and public life.

I am somewhat uneasy about this policy, not on religious separation grounds, but on general public policy ones. Is this a one-shot deal, or can charity groups now perform services and demand taxpayer reimbursement? And if they’re getting tax-exempt status for the donations that come in, only to get reimbursed by the taxpayer, aren’t they essentially double dipping? By the same, those who donate to these groups and then get a tax write-off for it are essentially being subsidized in their pursuits by taxpayers who chose not to donate to those particular charities. Note, though, that these concerns apply whether we’re talking about the Red Cross, the local soup kitchen, or the Knights of Columbus.