I remember Jonah Goldberg was roundly paddled the last time he used his LA Times perch to sling shit at Al Gore. So I'm surprised that this current column has gone unremarked. It's much worse.
[continued]
It appeared in the LA Times (and elsewhere) four days ago. It's a hit piece on the UN. Nothing unusual: a sausage-string of flacid arguments, cured with snotty levity. (i.e.: "U.N. is a history of unrelenting failure. Oh, not in immunizing kids and feeding starving people. The U.N. gets a passing grade there..." [Thanks Jonah! -U.N.])
Then, in the sixth paragraph:
In 2000, blue helmets videotaped Hezbollah kidnapping three Israeli soldiers (one of them an Israeli Arab). The video could have been useful in rescuing the soldiers. But, for eight months, the U.N. troops angrily denied even having the tape. When forced to admit they did, they refused to release it because that might compromise their "neutrality."
Did Goldberg just accuse the UN of complicity in the kidnapping (and eventual murder) of three Israeli soldiers? Well, yes. But he didn't feel this claim was so remarkable that his readers might be interested in seeing any evidence. So I (almost certainly) duplicated his investigation.
Here's
an example of the sort of thing Goldberg probably considered a source. (If it isn't, then God only know what is.) Ten seconds' evaluation tell us a sensational headline has been tacked onto an article that plainly contradicts it.
In five more minutes we learn that the videotape in question is actually a tape of
two abandoned cars discovered
the next day. Not quite the same thing, but never mind.
Two minutes more and we know that, disingenuous headlines not withstanding, no one (until now) had been stupid enough to plainly claim the UN taped a kidnapping and then obstructed the rescue mission.
But anyway, blatantly false, slanderous accusations go unremarked for days on the op-ed pages of the LA Times. They've already been read and believed by hundreds of thousands of people, probably including their author. It's Frankfurtian bullshit and it's very dangerous when it becomes the news.
Please read Goldberg's article, do the research he didn't (seven minutes), then write the LA Times and ask them to stop publishing this sog.