THE TRUTH ISN'T ALWAYS WHAT YOU SEE

Recent reports show babies being taken from the rubble in Lebanon. One dead baby was shown several times with different time stamps on the pix. It appears to have been staged. Other times, leaders are allowed to give propaganda unquestioned. Hardly news.

What you see on the TV these days is endless destruction and suffering by the Lebanese. The suffering by Israel is shown as small in proportion. What isn't shown as passionately are the endless attacks on Jews. All the terrorism over the last few years. Bombed busses, bombed restaurants, bombed clubs. Not missiles targeted at the instruments of war, missiles aimed at random, just HOPING they hit civilians. There is also terrorism aimed at their own people - human beings placed in danger to be used as human shields to be used to influence naive westerners. Not only via missiles, strapped-on bombs, but textbooks and gatherings that are unvarnished hate. People did not believe Mein Kampf. It is too bad they didn't. People today do not believe Islamic Fundamentalists. It is too bad they aren't.

Hitler was selective in what he showed and cowed a nation. A senior Christian friend who lived in Hitler's Germany told us that Hitler didn't bother you as long as you left him alone. The same is true today. No one bothers the silent majority. They bother those who care enough to challenge the evils of our time.

Our nation's opinions are formed by selective media clips that are based more upon a priori politics than on a search for truth. Demonstrations in the streets of Baghdad play well. Clips of progress in the everyday lives of Iraqis do not. What you SEE isn't always what you get.