UN provides intel to Hezbolla

[fintstone]

The UN does it again. With friends like them...who needs enemies?

What did you do in the war, UNIFIL?
You broadcast Israeli troop movements.
by Lori Lowenthal Marcus
09/04/2006, Volume 011, Issue 47



DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time. But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N. source. The Israeli press--always eager to push the envelope--did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics. Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops, provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did. A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N.

Inquiries made of various Israeli military and government representatives and analysts yielded near unanimous agreement that at least some of UNIFIL's postings, in the words of one retired senior military analyst, "could have exposed Israeli soldiers to grave danger." These analysts, including a current high ranking military official, noted that the same intelligence would not have been provided by the U.N. about Israel's enemies.

Sure enough, a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever.

Compare the vague "various locations" language with this UNIFIL posting from July 25:

Yesterday and during last night, the IDF moved significant reinforcements, including a number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and infantry, to the area of Marun Al Ras inside Lebanese territory. The IDF advanced from that area north toward Bint Jubayl, and south towards Yarun.
Or with the posting on July 24, in which UNIFIL revealed that the IDF stationed between Marun Al Ras and Bint Jubayl were "significantly reinforced during the night and this morning with a number of tanks and armored personnel carriers."

This partiality is inconsistent not only with UNIFIL's mission but also with its own stated policies. In a telling incident just a few years back, UNIFIL vigorously insisted on its "neutral ity"--at Israel's expense.

On October 7, 2000, three IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah just yards from a UNIFIL shelter and dragged across the border into Lebanon, where they disappeared. The U.N. was thought to have videotaped the incident or its immediate aftermath. Rather than help Israel rescue its kidnapped soldiers by providing this evidence, however, the U.N. obstructed the Israeli investigation.

For months the Israeli government pleaded with the U.N. to turn over any videotape that might shed light on the location and condition of its missing men. And for nine months the U.N. stonewalled, insisting first that no such tape existed, then that just one tape existed, and eventually conceding that there were two more tapes. During those nine months, clips from the videotapes were shown on Syrian and Lebanese television.

Explaining their eventual about-face, U.N. officials said the decision had been made by the on-site commanders that it was not their responsibility to provide the material to Israel; indeed, that to do so would violate the peacekeeping mandate, which required "full impartiality and objectivity." The U.N. report on the incident was adamant that its force had "to ensure that military and other sensitive information remains in their domain and is not passed to parties to a conflict."

Stymied in its efforts to recover the men while they were still alive, Israel ultimately agreed to an exchange in January 2004: It released 429 Arab prisoners and detainees, among them convicted terrorists, and the bodies of 60 Lebanese decedents and members of Hezbollah, in exchange for the bodies of the three soldiers. Blame for the deaths of those three Israelis can be laid, at least in part, at the feet of the U.N., which went to the wall defending its inviolable pledge never to share military intelligence about one party with another.

UNIFIL has just done what it then vowed it could never do. Once again, it has acted to shield one side in the conflict and to harm the other. Why is this permitted? For that matter, how did the U.N. obtain such detailed and timely military intelligence in the first place, before broadcasting it for Israel's enemies to see?

[Tobra]

Because the UN wants Israel to not exist, I thought everyone knew that.

[fintstone]

And some wonder why we did not trust the UN to do the job in Iraq.

[Tobra]

Oh, they were doing a job over there, I should get a job like that

[Rodeo]

How's the search for those WMDs going fint?

Find em' yet?

[fintstone]

Yes. How is your work supporting the "modern minutemen" going?

[Rodeo]

Originally posted by fintstone
Yes. How is your work supporting the "modern minutemen" going?

Wow! Tell us about the all the WMD you finally found! I know they are "really really small" but if you can zoom in, post a pic or two?

Good work fint, you knew they were there all along, and you finally found them!

Who are the "modern minutemen?"

[RoninLB]

If anybody around here can distance themselves from worthless political rantings and would like to read a nice Adobie 6.0 Iraq WMD assessment Before the war that was performed for other coalition countries


http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2004/australia_iraq-wmd-intell_01mar04_chapter1.pdf



There is a mountain pass town where you can buy all sorts of war weapons. I think it's worded "Keeber Pass"? I have no idea if Syria's booby prizes from Saddam has made it to the counter tops yet?

[Overpaid Slacker]

What the Administration has told us that we've found includes 500 sarin- and mustard-gas-filled artillery shells, live botulinum toxin, cyanide salt, and nearly two tons of uranium. And I'm not taking another all-too-easy slap at the MSM for back-page publication of WMD discovery (in contrast to front-page, 36-point font headlines from agendists claiming we haven't).

This admin, for a variety of reasons it's not sharing, has kept WMD discoveries very quiet information. My guess is that Bush is using the info he has for purposes other than flagrant domestic political gain... which I understand "does not compute" to Liberals for whom political history stretches back only to William Jefferson Clinton.

“Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent,” states a June 21 declassified summary of a report from the National Ground Intelligence Center. “Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist. ... While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.”

“Iraq was not a WMD-free zone,” said House Intelligence chairman Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.). “Weapons have been discovered. More weapons exist.” Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) have pressured the administration to detail its WMD findings. But let one bare-faced-lying anti-Bush d'bag say "none have been found" and somehow, mysteriously, that becomes the mantra for the imbeciles. Not the fact that the House Intelligence Committee Chair says "there are plenty and there are more."

That info, and the hard facts can't get through those too buy with their fingers in their ears, eyes sqeezed shut, shouting "no WMD, no WMD, I can't hear you!!! I can't hear you!!! Bush LIED, Bush LIED!!! I can't hear you!!!"

Think that's a harsh characterization? I'll bet you can measure the time between this post and the next claim of "No WMD found in Iraq" as a matter of minutes. So what other explanation is there?

Anyway, back to those too-easily-forgotten 500 shells. It's only 500 shells, you say? And they're "degraded"!?! How much damage could they do? "You’re not talking about transferring hundreds to make an impact in New York, in a subway, or anything like that,” Hoekstra told reporters June 21. “One or two of these shells, the materials inside of these ... can be very, very deadly.” The "no WMD" deep thinkers must have been at a "warrantless searches are de facto illegal, and all we have to do is keep saying that to make it true" rally on June 21 and missed that disclosure.

Former weapons inspector David Kay declared on October 2, 2003 that U.S. personnel discovered “a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced.” This was, Kay said, “hidden in the home” of an Iraqi biological weapons researcher.

In January 2004, according to a New York Sun editorial published that June 1, a 7-pound block of cyanide salt popped up in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Baghdad safe house.

On May 2, 2004, U.S. forces in Iraq found a mustard-gas shell, rigged as an Improvised Explosive Device. The ISG dismissed this as “ineffective” due to improper storage. Of course, the effectiveness of Hussein’s weapons was not the issue.

He was supposed to prove they had been destroyed or open his facilities for inspection. How is this fundamental piece of information so conveniently tossed down the memory hole by the same people who fetishize esoteric details about W's dentistry decades ago? It's easier to tilt at windmills and employ an a la carte historical "discipline" than to have to read anything like UN resolutions or US Congressional records and then, like, remember them for a coupla years. So, here you go: the burden was always on the Iraqi regime to "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision" of its WMD stocks and programs, according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991.

Before the UN inspectors returned to Iraq in late 2002, Saddam's regime was suspected of possessing 8,500 litres of anthrax, a deadly agent that the Iraqis claimed to have destroyed. The U.N. view, published on March 6, 2003, was not only that Iraq still had anthrax, the inspectors increased their estimate for the volume of unaccounted anthrax from 8,500 litres to 10,000 litres. As Iraq could produce little evidence of either production or destruction, Hans Blix*'s team concluded that: "Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist."

Notice, oh, would be-jurists of the world, the phrase "still exist". The UN knew Iraq had huge stockpiles of the WMD anthrax and that he had used "between 13,000 and 19,500 chemical bombs between 1983 and 1988, involving 1,000 tons of chemical agents." None of which capacity or stockpiles had been proven destroyed, as required by UNSC Resolution 687, which is quoted in salient part above, for those of you who have already forgotten what it says. It was not for anybody to prove Hussein had WMD; anybody paying the least amount of attention (including Blix and the UN) knew that he did. It was for Hussein to prove that he'd destroyed them and his capacity for making them, or face the consequences. He chose consequences. And then ran and hid in hole.

Weapons sleuth Charles Duelfer told Fox News June 24, 2004: “We found, you know, 10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds.”

On July 6, 2004 the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that a joint effort with the Pentagon removed 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium from Iraq “that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program,” said a DOE statement. Those 3,894 pounds of uranium were in “powdered form, which is easily dispersed,” according to our DOE.

Remember all the media circus surrounding this revelation? I mean, it's uranium in a weaponizable form, possessed buy a man who has used WMD in the past (... albeit against his own people, so those WMD don't "count"). But no doubt with the encyclopedic knowledge you're bringing to the table here, you remember the front-page NYT, LAT and WaPo headlines, confirming uranium discoveries in Iraq, right?

Of course you don't. And it's just "unfair" to expect you to "know" anything that the MSM hasn't told you 100 times; like the "fact" that there have been no WMD found in Iraq.

Didn't have the time to make this any shorter. Need coffee.

JP

*Blix headed the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during 1981-1997, during which time , India, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan were developing nuclear weapons. It was on Blix's watch that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistan nuclear scientist, started trading nuclear technology and encouraging nuclear proliferation.

- A number of these quotes are from a Deroy Murdock piece exhorting the President to reveal what he safely could about WMD discoveries and intel. I personally don't care if the Pres reveals what we know about WMD in Iraq and/or their transfer prior to the war. It's obvious the pinheads won't listen anyway.

[Rodeo]

Wow. I really brought out the crazies on this one.

So fint and RoninLB and Slacker cling to the WMD myth.

Sometimes all you can do is shake your head in disbelief ...

[widebody911]

I guess they didn't want to RISC it?

[fintstone]

Originally posted by JanusCole
Fint, can you give us any intel ...

No. Not unless it is printed in the main stream media.

[tabs]

Finding old WMDs in Iraq is like finding loose change under the sofa cushions. U don't even know U have it.

[Rodeo]

Originally posted by fintstone
No. Not unless it is printed in the main stream media.

fint, what's up? Are you now working FOR the terrorist leaders of Iraq?

I thought you were AGAINST terrorism ... now you're working for the radical Muslims?

Man, you switch sides at the drop of a hat!

Just one more thing. Does Hizbollah let you hide your face behind menus, or do you have to use one of those towel things?

[hunter914]

Originally posted by Rodeo
fint, what's up? Are you now working FOR the terrorist leaders of Iraq?

I thought you were AGAINST terrorism ... now you're working for the radical Muslims?

Man, you switch sides at the drop of a hat!

Just one more thing. Does Hizbollah let you hide your face behind menus, or do you have to use one of those towel things?

he's been flip-flopping a lot lately, just more tap dancing jib-jab.

George Bush put it well when he said if you support Terrorists, you are considered a Terrorist and we will fight you with everything we've got. Problem is the Iraqi government is Terrorists supporting Terrorists with the kicker being they're all Democratically elected based on our Foreign Policy Initiatives. Oh, and they're doing it with U.S. taxpayer $.

So George Bush is funding Terrorism against the U.S. if you think about it.

No wonder he doesn't know what side to take, his noodle must be spinning more than Bill O'Reilly ever could.

But we're really all still waiting for him to bring in OBL, since he's leading the capture team, that is in his spare time building laser-equipped Boeings, and of course his good work here on OT.

Go get'em man, at least after you determine who you're supposed to get.

[Rodeo]

Only one thing is for certain ... when he "gets em", whoever it happens to be on that particular day, he won't bother with trials and evidence and all that wussy constitutional stuff.

One shot through the head. In the name of democracy.

[Tobra]

Originally posted by Rodeo
Wow. I really brought out the crazies on this one.

So fint and RoninLB and Slacker cling to the WMD myth.

Sometimes all you can do is shake your head in disbelief ...

No offense meant, but do you even read what you respond to, or is that too much trouble for you?

[Rodeo]

If you are suggesting that they are not clinging to the WMD myth, you are wrong. fint claims he actually found the the WMD! And slacker thinks Bush is keeping WMD discovery a secret, to foil the dreaded "liberals" (you know the liberals, they are the Americans that oppose sending our men and money to prop up the terrorist Iraqi government).

How about you, Tobra? Aren't you one of the "he moved the stuff to Syria" guys? Or are you with fint's theory that the WMD are "really small" and thus hard to locate? Or do you think the old, useless mustard gas is the WMD that was going to expose itself in the form of a mushroom cloud over NYC?

[coldstart]

Originally posted by Rodeo
If you are suggesting that they are not clinging to the WMD myth, you are wrong. fint claims he actually found the the WMD! And slacker thinks Bush is keeping WMD discovery a secret, to foil the dreaded "liberals" (you know the liberals, they are the Americans that oppose sending our men and money to prop up the terrorist Iraqi government).

How about you, Tobra? Aren't you one of the "he moved the stuff to Syria" guys? Or are you with fint's theory that the WMD are "really small" and thus hard to locate? Or do you think the old, useless mustard gas is the WMD that was going to expose itself in the form of a mushroom cloud over NYC?

Like Tobra asked, do you even read the responses? Firstly, this thread is about the UNIFIL's actions during the latest Lebanon conflict. For no particular reason you brought in WMD in Iraq. Personally, I have no clue as to whether or not there were WMD or whether Saddam was merely posturing that he had them or whether they were sent off to Syria or Bush is secretly hording them for his own private collection. But you are WAY off topic and your post irrelevant.

Secondly, the evidence that the UN discriminates against Israel, more than ANY other nation, is almost indisputable. Israel is a democratic nation. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Druze, etc. all get an equal vote to elect a representative government. there are multiple Arab members of their parliament. Not true in almost all of the Arab countries. Hell, you can't even find a Jew in most of those countries as they were thrown out on their a$$, after taking all their $$$ and possessions. More Jews were displaced by Arab countries than Palestinians. Side question: how come there are no displaced Jews camps?

[Rodeo]

Originally posted by coldstart
***Personally, I have no clue as to whether or not there were WMD or whether Saddam was merely posturing that he had them or whether they were sent off to Syria or Bush is secretly hording them for his own private collection. ***

Maybe you should check in with the US Weapons Inspectors, the UN Weapons Inspectors, the United States Army, the Crown Military, the British government, the United States Congress, or President Bush.

They all agree that there were no WMD.

Maybe you have information they don't?