Scudsupmtions

Watching the development of the story concerning Hezbollah and Scud missiles has been an object lesson in how speculation can be spun into established fact. I first heard the rumor from sources in Washington about three weeks before the story was broken in Kuwait’s Al Rai Al Aam. The newspaper essentially claimed that Syria had transferred Scud rockets to Hezbollah. Israel, it continued, had come close to bombing an arms convoy, but deferred at the last moment due to American promises to diplomatically push the issue with the Syrians. The Al Rai Al Aam piece was followed a day later by a larger story in The Wall Street Journal, which covered much of the same ground but included confirmation on the Scud transfer from an American source. Yet for all the fuss it has generated, details of the alleged transfer are unclear and have become mired in conflicting intelligence information,