Smart Bombs Away!

[Update below]

Targeted Israeli "smart bombs" killed five Indian soldiers at a UN field post today:

Five Indian soldiers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in south Lebanon were killed in Israeli shelling on Tuesday evening.

"One aerial bomb directly impacted the building and shelter in the base of the United Nations Observer Group in Lebanon in the area of Khiam," said Milos Strugar, a UNIFIL spokesman.

But the Israeli attacks on UN observers are not limited to today. Yesterday, an Israeli tank round wounded four Ghanian soldiers at another UN post. Al jazeera notes that UN officials said that four Indian soldiers were killed.* No word about the discrepency yet.

With sanctimony dripping off his furry moustache, John Bolton noted,

We're obviously very sorry about that.

It doesn't seem very obvious to me that Yosemite Bolton is at all that sorry about much of anything, not even that embarrassment of a moustache. And one wonders about the hundreds of dead Lebanese civilians and the nearly one million refugees created, in part, by Bolton's veto of a UN resolution that would have demanded cessation of hostilities in Gaza. In fact, Bolten's veto followed shortly on the heels of Hezbollah's abduction of 2 Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese-Israeli border and the dawn air strikes by the IDF on Lebanon's southern territory. It cannot be coincidence that it was only after the veto that Israel intesified the attacks on Lebanon's cities and infrastructure considerably, something which has not subsided to date.

Meanwhile, the Saudis have amped up the rhetoric with King Abdullah saying,

Saudi Arabia warns everybody that if the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no other option but war.

This hardly sounds like a man willing to do US bidding, as imagined within the dislocated thoughts of Bill Kristol. Though the Saudi king's words sound rather forboding, Prime Minister Olmert has said that Israel fully intends to continue its assault but that

Israel has no intention of harming the Lebanese population and that Israel is fighting against the Hezbollah terrorist organization and not against the Lebanese government or its citizens.

This after attacks on not only the Lebanese government and its citizens but now the UN and the Red Cross. Apparently, Olmert can act with impunity, continue the attacks and kill as many as it takes to bring down Hezbollah simply because Israel didn't "intend" any of it.

Update: It certainly does appear that Al Jazeera got the call wrong about who exactly comprised the doomed UN post. Further reporting confirms that it was four and none of them were Indian at all. They were Chinese, Canadian, Austria and Finland.

But to add another infuriating and highly suspicious element to the tale is that the UN observer post apparently had contacted the Israelis ten times -- ten times -- requesting a halt to the shelling around the post. It was after all these pleas that a "precision guided bomb" took out the station and killed the UN observers, something Israel said it "deeply regrets." What to make of such monumental bullshit? Why take out a UN observation post during a highly controversial military action? If I had to guess -- and it's not much of a guess -- I'd say the Israelis were doing something they didn't want observed.

*Further noted is that UNIFIL was first formed after Israel 1978 invasion of southern Lebanon. Apparently, US Ambassador John Bolten is correct about the UN: they are of no importance, especially to the likes of John Bolten and the IDF.