Same tactics and deceit, new country

<Seymour> Hersh recently got hold of a copy of the United Nations interim report by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. The document cited "converging evidence" that senior levels of the Syrian government were involved in the murder.

But according to Hersh, the Mehlis report is built on the same anemic foundations as Powell’s UN presentation in February, 2003. "He is relying on intercepts of an unnamed source inside the Iranian air force, someone without inside stuff. It’s not empirical." On the basis of this thin evidence, he says, the Bush administration is campaigning at the UN for sanctions on Syria.