Meet Damien Cave

I have noticed that the New York Times has a new fellow covering Syria from Lebanon as of late.  I have noticed that he is particularly ignorant of the subject that he is covering--more so than the other new members of the Middle East correspondents of the Times dispatched to cover Syria from Lebanon and New York City and Washington, DC.  So I asked around and learned--you guessed it--that the man has absolutely no background in the Middle East and knows none of the languages of the region.  Prior to his Middle East assignment, he was a reporter for Rolling Stone and covered local politics in New York City and Newark, New Jersey.  I kid you not.  He also had a stint in covering Latin America.  I am not making this up.  This explains why he is so particularly clueless and ignorant and why he relies on the Hariri press office in everything he writes on Lebanon and Syria.  Today, he has a piece.  He says:  "The evidence presented against Mr. Samaha has been considerable."  How does Mr. Rolling Stone Damien knows about the evidence when no evidence has been presented thus far?  It is sealed and secret and no member of the press has seen it, although the pro-Hariri,pro-Saudi Intelligence Branch organization has briefed Mr. Cave among others.  Then he says: "Hezbollah defended Mr. Samaha until investigators described the evidence."  Again, like everything you read about Hizbullah in the Times, it is not true. There was not one single statement by Hizbullah defending Samahah, not one.  I am sure that he was told that by his Hariri contacts, but they forgot to tell him that there was one statement by Muhammad Ra`d (leader of the parliamentary bloc of Hizbullah) in which he raised doubts about the credibility of the Intelligence Branch, without naming it. But his statement did not defend Samahah, and for that several March 8 types criticized Hizbullah.  It is cute that the New York Times, which ignored Israeli bombings of Lebanon from the 1950s till 2006, is now suddenly attentive to the plight of this village suffering from Syrian gunfire. But the story ignored the role of Free Syrian Army gangs in the area: neither the Syrian regime nor the Free Syrian Army gangs care about the Lebanese and Syrian civilians in their crossfire.