Israeli Watch

And they only know about this now? Amazing how their sophisticated “intelligence’ failed to detect this earlier.

Israel probably violated the terms of its purchase of U.S.-made cluster bombs, U.S. officials say, but - unlike the last time Israel used the deadly munitions in Lebanon - it’s unlikely to face repercussions.

The Bush administration delivered a classified report to Congress on Monday on Israel’s use of the cluster bombs in civilian areas last summer in its war against Hezbollah.

The report was preliminary, but State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, despite his use of just about every qualifier in the thesaurus, made it clear that Israel probably was on the wrong side of the contract.

“It was the determination based on the facts that we in the preliminary finding - I have to emphasize ‘preliminary,’ it’s not a final judgment - that there may likely could have been some violations of that agreement,” McCormack told reporters.

He would not explain further, and spokesmen for Congress members who received the report were similarly circumspect, citing its classified status.