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When EFFWIT doesn't donate a particular piece d'excellence to SMC then we simply have to appropriate it. Here's one such nationalized post.

There is some dispute in the American media over who is to blame for the escalation of events on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Some would say that the American people are being propagandized.

Two op-ed pieces in today's Washington Post perfectly lay out the battle lines in this skirmish in the information war.

Here is Sebastian Mallaby's take on what happened:

Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorists shower rockets on Northern Israel and carry out a raid that inflicts eight deaths and two abductions. Israel justifiably responds by bombing the headquarters of the Hezbollah leader, but it also rains fire on Beirut's airport, roads and apartment towers, destroying the props of a new and hopeful Lebanon.

Mallaby indicates here that Israel acted militarily only after Hezbollah rained missiles down on Israel and attacked on the ground.

It didn't happen that way.

Fawaz A. Gerges describes the events in a more accurate order:

The latest round of fighting erupted when Hezbollah, or Party of God, a Shiite resistance group (the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization), infiltrated the Lebanese-Israeli border and attacked an Israeli military post. Hezbollah fighters killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two.

Israel retaliated by attacking Lebanon's civilian infrastructure, including airports, bridges, seaports, electrical and water plants, communications centers, highways and other targets. It also imposed a full blockade on Lebanon by air, land and sea and sealed it from the rest of the world. More than 100 Lebanese civilians have died, and the numbers are increasing by the hour. Hezbollah struck back by firing rockets deep into northern Israel, hitting the port of Haifa and killing and wounding dozens of civilians and soldiers.

These two op-ed pieces adjoined each other on the same page. The Post here encourages the reader to select the version of the facts that best suits one's outlook.

Strict adherence to the truth is optional these days. Israel's disproportional response to the capture of the two soldiers has to be portrayed as justified.

Otherwise, the American people will not as readily support taking the war to Syria and Iran.