U.S. corporate media coverage of the Israeli assault on Lebanon was atrocious. One would think that all history of the conflict began with the Hezbollah incursion, in which nine Israeli soldiers were killed and two were captured. The 1980s Israeli invasion of Lebanon and two-decade occupation that gave rise to the Hezbollah movement — not to mention the cross-border raids by both sides over the past four years — was ignored. The massive bombardment that wreaked havoc on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, killed hundreds of innocents and threatens environmental disaster was treated as simply "Israel's right to defend itself."
Enter Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter who exposed the My Lai massacre, torture at Abu Ghraib and Pentagon plans to use nuclear bunker-buster weapons against Iran. According to Hersh's explosive New Yorker piece, long before the Hezbollah raid, a Vice President Cheney-led cabal pressured the Israelis to use a future incursion as an excuse to launch a "shock and awe" campaign in order to demonstrate to those within the Pentagon who contend otherwise that a massive air campaign against Iran would succeed in regime change. Don't hold your breath waiting for the mainstream media to pick up the Hersh story.
— Ernest A. Canning, Thousand Oaks
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