From the NY Sun:
An apparent discrepancy in the portrayal of events surrounding the deaths of four unarmed U.N. observers in Lebanon threatens to unravel Secretary-General Annan’s initial accusation that Israel “deliberately” targeted the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.
A Canadian U.N. observer, one of four killed at a UNIFIL position near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday, sent an e-mail to his former commander, a Canadian retired major-general, Lewis MacKenzie, in which he wrote that Hezbollah fighters were “all over” the U.N. position, Mr. MacKenzie said. Hezbollah troops, not the United Nations, were Israel’s target, the deceased observer wrote.
A senior U.N. peacekeeping operation official who briefed the press yesterday, however, said that on the day the deaths occurred, the only “known Hezbollah activity was 5 kilometers away.”The official’s briefing was conditioned on anonymity, but the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Jane Holl Lute, supplied the Security Council with similar information at an earlier briefing yesterday.
“To our knowledge, unlike the vicinity of some of our other patrol bases, Hezbollah firing was not taking place within the immediate vicinity” of the base that was hit Tuesday.
Based on reporting by the U.N.’s peacekeeping chief, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Mr. Annan alleged in Rome Tuesday that the incident was an apparent “deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. Observer post in southern Lebanon.” Although Mr. Annan began to backtrack yesterday, his spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said he stood by the accusation.
Mr. MacKenzie, who after retiring from the Canadian military became a politician, had a very different interpretation. “I happen to know” the now-deceased Canadian U.N. observer, Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, Mr. MacKenzie told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in a radio interview yesterday.
“We’ve received e-mails from him a few days ago and he was describing the fact that he was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position ‘for tactical necessity  not being targeted,’” Mr. MacKenzie said he wrote.
In one such e-mail, obtained by The New York Sun, Hess-von Kruedener wrote about heavy IDF artillery and aerial bombardment “within 2 meters of our position.” The Israeli shooting, he added, “has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity.”
The correspondence between the trooper and former commander amounted to “veiled speech in the military,” Mr. MacKenzie, who once commanded the U.N. troops in Bosnia, told the CBC. “What he was telling us was Hezbollah fighters were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them, and that’s a favorite trick by people who don’t have representation in the U.N. They use the U.N. as shields knowing that they cannot be punished for it.”
All’s I can say is, Jesus!
What’s this world coming to when one can no longer reliably pin every evil thing to some action of the Jews? And a Canadian functionary coming to their aid? Have Had you no decency, sir?
WHAT HAS CHIMPY MCHITLERBURTON DONE TO THE COMFORTABLE WORLD ORDER SO CONVENIENTLY AND PREDICTABLY RELIANT ON UBIQUITOUS ZIONIST SCAPEGOATING!—THE ONE THAT AL QAEDA IS STILL USING TO SUCH GREAT EFFECT?
Because without it, diplomats might actually have to, you know, work and stuff. Which leaves little time for lucrative side businesses.
No. This just will not do.
Meanwhile, STACLU has video, courtesy of Fausta’s blog, that is rather eye opening.
And Counterterrorism Blog is noting that the Taliban has come out in support of Hezbollah—joining al Qaeda, Iran, Syria, certain members of the UN leadership, some in the Lebanese military, and a number of European leftists and American “progressives” / hard left “activists” in a show of summertime Islamist / tribalist solidarity.
Which, man!—wouldn’t that be one wild picnic! Especially when one of the progressives forgets himself and pulls out a ham sandwich, or engages in a bit of perfectly natural same-sex hand holding…
Nobody is here?
I guess they went to the puppet show.
Stood by the accusation? The diplomatic body, the institutional pillar of diplomacy? It’s so french and nuancy…
Don Suber notes Canada ain’t buying it.
I suggest that they picnic on a Palestinian beach.
The Progressive Left and the Islamofascist are really strange idealogical bed fellows in this. It’s truly a study in the old saying “Are the enemies of my enemy, my friend or my enemy?”
Either way, I hope they don’t try to discuss that over a pulled pork sandwich on a oil rig at this years “Taliban and Lesbian Sheehan-a-palooza” or both side might inflame each other.
That would be a crying shame.
The Left has only 3 groups it would like discredited: the Christian Right, the Zionists and the Wahhabists. Everybody else is a distraction. Peace
You know what this means, don’t you? KKKarl Rove and the Jews have now joined forces!
Their combined powers not only allow them to manipulate the media, but reality itself! They’ve already gone back in time and planted one of their operatives in the Canadian military.
It’s like a team of comic book super-villains, but more evil … and less attractive in spandex costumes.
Jesus!!!
Just watched the video, so now the UN provides troop transport for Hizbollah? Makes me sick. How will Annan define this video? More importantly, why doesn’t the MSM show this?
So, I guess all of those leftist apologists for Wahabbism don’t need discrediting? Well, if they do, you’ve got some work to do, Imhotep.
Just as a point of interest . . . are Roman Catholics the Christian Right?
And yet you can only manage to discredit yourself.
Sad.
Today’s fax, Imhotep? Please.
Sorry, forgot to add Peace, ImpoTet
Impotent: Which left would that be? Your left or the other left? Peace.
I don’t know about Karl Rove in spandex. I guess it could work….
That’s a big fat crow that needs eating. Does Kofi have it in him to choke that down?
Ambassador Bolton, is the top 10 floors enough? Really?
That ambulance video needs as much circulation as possible.
I suspect that the ambulance is stolen, but it’s a war crime in that case.
Just the other day the steets of Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, and San Francsico were blocked by two million leftists marching against Wahhabism.
It choked me up, man. Kind of like when NOW and Mavis Leno publicly thanked Bush for freeing the women of Afghanistan.
Actually, if Rove has decent legs, he might be able to pull it off. And not too much of a pot belly…
tw: mans. Who’da thunk?
Leftists have always embraced murderous dictators. Stalin (the New York Times sucked up to him for years with fabulist Walter Duranty winning a Pulitzer for all the lies he told), Mao, and Castro to name just a few; why, liberal PM Chamberlin kissed Hitler so many times that the PM started to smell of sauer kraut! The pattern is unabated today.
I think the attraction is dictatorship. If liberals had a dictatorship, there would no pesky opposition to their allegedly brave vision of mankind, taxes, sexuality, property ownership, etc., etc. They have to embrace dictatorships; if they did not they would contradict the restrictions and regulatory complications that their worldview requires.
Jeff, I watched that video, and I couldn’t have planned a complex, multi-layered ambush better myself. Note how the fellow cries ‘Allahu Akhbar!’ and the ‘civilians’ fade to the side and the rocket fires.
Those guys were pretty darn good.
OT: Kerry (once again) just made a complete ass out of himself at the Bolton hearing.
Go John!!
Go Regis!!
Imhotep must be someone posing, right?
Diplomats, Eurotrash, lefties, DNC Chairmen…Feh. The movement’s no fun since we started letting just any one in.
Chavez. Pol Pot. Ho Chi Minh. Ortega. Mugabe.
Hell, ever since 1991, the left has been the staunchest defender of Saddam Hussein. The moment he became an opponent of the US, he became a darling of the “progressives”. I watched it happen with my own eyes back in college.
And who can forget Madeline Allbright dancing for Kim?
At least on the right people have the decency to admit a dictator’s a dictator and thug, even if he’s being supported out of expediency. I can’t recall any conservative ever using the repulsive “leader of his people” formula when referring to the subjects of a dictator.
Yeah, the left does have an unfortunate tendency to back losers, doesn’t it?
The Left = Death.
100 Million and counting.
Today’s Left is nearly identical with Islamofascists; fanatics of an intolerant, blasphemous faith. This has nothing to do with Muslims or Islam per say, but with the cult of immolation, the Aztecs in Turbans, even as it has not much to do with Democrats as folk but with the socialist apologists for murder and the petty authoritarians.
Bingo.
Jeff,
The bit about the ham sandwich and same sex hand holding mad me laugh. But then I remembered that men holding hands in Arab society does not mean the same as it does in the west and is fact quite normal.
Dan
I am sure the Canadians were just grousing because someone found their two chilled kegs of Molsons… and then those Hez-Lez were swarming all over them! Only the uptight Israeli’s would target a party like that… probably because they weren’t getting any…
Yes, Mister DD ‘Peter’son, normal for BUTTFUCKERS!
Yeah, Daniel, I was about to point out the same thing. Remember Pres. Bush being sniggerd at by the left for holding hands with that Saude king?
It’s the perfectly natural same sex butt fucking and noodle noshing that raises the islomists eyebrows…and scimitars.
Well, if some rumors about Michael Jackson are true, even those things aren’t taboo if you have the right connections. He seems to be enjoying his stay with the royalty of the Gulf.
But doing something with a Jew, well, that’s just disgusting. I mean, those Muslims do have standards, you know.
Which, man!â€â€wouldn’t that be one wild picnic! Especially when one of the progressives forgets himself and pulls out a ham sandwich, or engages in a bit of perfectly natural same-sex hand holding…
“Please pass the ketchup…”
The bit about the ham sandwich and same sex hand holding mad me laugh. But then I remembered that men holding hands in Arab society does not mean the same as it does in the west and is fact quite normal.
Dan, we used to note the above phenomenon every “Man Love Thursday” across Afghanistan – so it isn’t just Arabs…
A) Wouldn’t a tactical bombardment be, by definition, a deliberate bombardment.
B) He couldn’t exactly have written the e-mail AFTER he was killed.
C) Israel made a choice. They wanted to kill Hezbollah, they decided that the opportunity to kill Hezbollah was worth the deaths of UN personel and hundreds of Lebanese civilians.
D)Hezbollah attacked a military convoy of IDF SOLDIERS (I feel it is necessary to emphasize that point), bad idea, yes, but they were legitimate military targets. Israel’s response seems to be that anything goes if it might kill some Hezbollah.
It reminds me of the one-percent doctrine relating to Iraq – It’s justified to bomb Iraq to the stone-age and unleash hell on the Iraqi people if there is a one-percent chance that Saddam might at some point in the future develop “weapons related program activities.” This brings us to the question: is it really better to have a full blown war than a simmering peace? Maybe if you’re an idiot (no hard feelings Dubya and friends).
And a Canadian functionary coming to their aid?
Lewis MacKenzie has always been a stand-up guy. In any case, our government, as noted above, is having none of Kofi’s bullshit, the opposition parties and some of the media, however, are howling and foaming as usual.