Debunking Qana Conspiracy Theories

It's good to see someone in the MSM taking the right-wing Qana massacre conspiracy-theory wingnuts to task over all of the garbage they've been spewing since Sunday. These people, who include many prominent right-wing American bloggers, remind me of those who still believe that Saddam had WMDs (a number that has increased to 50% lately) and that Saddam had something to do with 9/11 even though their Dear Leader Bush has told them repeatedly that this was not the case (although he hasn't exactly done a good job of that, has he?).

The attacks from those defending Israel's military misadventures in Lebanon have even gone so far as to accuse major news agencies of conspiring to fake time stamps on their photos of the dead Lebanese civilians at Qana (some of whom now claim to be experts on rigor mortis), asserting that the media are covering up the Qana bombings which, they believe, were done by Hezbollah - not the IDF. Those news agencies have responded, categorically denying those smears.

Many still believe that Hezbollah was firing from the Qana building or its immediate area, despite the fact that the IDF itself has now admitted there was no such activity in the area on that day.

As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.

When you look at the list of some of the right-wing bloggers questioning the facts of the Qana massacre, as presented by Ynetnews, you see the usual suspects who are often on top of disseminating the worst type of hysterical propaganda:

Many other blogs have taken up the task of analyzing the photographs and news headlines from Qana, southern Lebanon, and the Middle East, including: Little Green Footballs, Hotair.com, Ms. Underestimated, American columnist Michelle Malkin, and The Riehl World View.

That the media has to waste its time debunking their rants shows what a disruptive force they've actually become. Karl Rove and the Pentagon psyops bunch must be proud of their minions on the blogosphere although they probably didn't think their delusions would be challenged quite so soon by those in the real press.

Regardless, the conspiracy theories are already out there and just as it's impossible to convince people that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, many will simply believe forever that the Qana massacre was a staged event by Hezbollah which now has the international media complicit in its so-called plans to change world opinion about Israel.

Further reading: Glenn Greenwald has more about this insane state of affairs.