Taking a break from test-writing, I turn on C-span and hear Seymour Hersch say we will never know who killed Rafik Hariri. But I remembered the report named names. Next break, I turn to Instapundit who links this:
The final, edited version quoted a witness as saying that the plot to kill Mr Hariri was hatched by unnamed “senior Lebanese and Syrian officials”. But the undoctored version named those officials as “Maher al-Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamal al-Sayyed”.
(Ah – a certain order and clarity – for these are the President’s brother, brother-in-law & the Commander of Syrian intelligence) Of course, this has been known since Thursday and C-span taped Hersch before. But Hersch would have seemed more prescient if Annan’s editing had stood. (“The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.”) Perhaps just such moments make the UN more determined to control the net: It’s chaos when people know too much, isn’t it?
It’s great news that the undoctored report went public anyway.
Could some of the named Syrians also be connected to Annan in the oil-for-food scandal or some other such sellout?
of course the value of the report is only if it has any hard factual evidence rather than probable cause.
now i dont see the hard evidence, and doesnt matter how anyone looks at this it would have been the most stupid thing for the syrians to have done after 10 years of being in lebanon. none of it makes any political sense .. except for the usa/israel and the uk ..
wendy mann, Syrian fascists are always looking for free legal representation and public relations, and you obviously have presented an excellent application. You really ought to present yourself at the embassy.
Darn, that Annan character steams me!
The U.N. has rotted under his watch. A confab of Swiss-based progressive “interest groups,” a baker’s dozen of Non-Aligned dictators, a cascade of French and Russian trade groups, and a murder of crowing global media interests have hijacked this world-deliberative body.
And Annan has pimped for it all. He should have resigned the day the French returned to “save” Rwanda.
-Steve
What do the Germans get out of it?