According to the Israeli news site Haaretz, IAF officials now say that that no missles were fired from that apartment complex that was destroyed over the weekend, killing at least 30.

“The deaths of dozens of civilians in an Israel Air Force attack on the southern Lebanese village of Qana marked a significant diplomatic turning point against Israel, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Tuesday.

The foreign minister said that following the events in Qana, Israel’s scope for political maneuvering had been reduced, as was the amount of European support Israel is receiving for its operation in Lebanese soil.

Livni said this change was exemplified in the “problematic” Russian and French stance towards Israel.

She said that despite the pictures of civilian casualties coming from Qana of it was important not to stray from implementing UN decision 1559.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to establish a state commission of inquiry into the killings at Qana.

As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.”

Ok, color me skeptical as after a slew of other reporting in the last few days to the contrary, this one story doesn’t necessary change my mind. Later we read:

“The IDF account and those of survivors present contradictory versions of the Qana deaths. The IDF said that there is an unexplained gap of about seven hours between the IAF strike and the first report that the building had collapsed. Residents’ accounts say only 10 minutes went by between the strike and the collapse.”

Again, we’ll wait for the IDF report, but a descrepancy between IAF and “residents” isn’t enough for my military mind to call it a day. Again the evidence presented over the weekend coupled without much more compelling testimony from those on the ground lends to the fact of some type Hezbollah involvement.

Rick Moran nonetheless cautions bloggers on the “Hezbollah did it meme”:

“First and foremost, those who are blogging this story should step back for a while and wait for the IDF report on the tragedy which should be forthcoming in the next couple of days. This appears to be one of those stories where the bloggers got ahead of the curve of information so far that speculation took on a life of its own and ended up making some wish they had held their fire.”

Perhaps, but again, I’m not a ready to accept this one story, accurate as it may be, as a complete reversal of the previous accounts, and thus call off the dogs. “If it walks like a duck……”

Secondly, while errant bombing happens, targeted munition strikes are pretty precise and hit their intended targets more often that not. If Israel targeted the building, then they most likely had good info on it, regardless if a missle fired that day or not, it had been fired from that vicinity in the past.

Again, let’s not forget that no one can dispute the fact that Hezbollah was in the neighborhood and in fact is weaved throughout Lebanon, and that is what is going to make this war a hard thing for those not accustomed to watching it. While I hope not, there might be a few more Qana’s to come. Like it or not even the best surgeon when they remove a cancer also remove good tissue surrounding it.

Israel is performing radical surgery.

The real danger is that in any modern war the horrors of the battle field are not going to translate well into the living room. It’s always going to look bad. When you have twenty-four hour wall to wall news coverage with the typical analysis/over analysis EVERYTHING get’s mucked up, and quite frankly it’s not intended to be “viewer friendly”. But you could imagine what modern day coverage would do to the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombings of WWII. It would be brutal.

That point being made, as I eluded to, people better get used to the fact that Israel – in spite of thinking to the contrary, or even “world opinion”, isn’t going to stop until they have finished the job they have begun. They simply cannot afford to back down now. Michael Lopez-Calderon in American Thinker writes

“Over whatever time remains before the conflict is forced to end, the IDF will take apart the Hezbollah terrorist-guerrillas that made the ultimate error of remaining in fixed positions. It is Hezbollah that is stoked in the passions and delusions of over-confidence. If Hezbollah takes comfort from fighting in fixed positions, they need only brush up on Napoleon, who said ‚Äúthe army that remains in its forts is beaten.‚Äù Or perhaps read up on how General Kuribayashi Tadamichi‚Äôs Japanese force of 21,000 at Iwo Jima was reduced by the United States Marines to just over 120 POWs (an additional 900 wounded were captured).

IDF Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsch, commander of the Galilee Division, summed up Israel’s piecemeal, probing strikes:

“When you fight a regular army, it’s different from fighting guerrillas. They are using everything they have extensively. They have been preparing for this for many years, and we are taking action to dismantle all of that. The government has given me plenty of time, and I intend to use it as long as it takes.”

This isn’t a “weekend war”, it’s only the beginning.

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