JERUSALEM – The giant Hezbollah rally that drew nearly half a million purported supporters of Syria's occupation of Lebanon actually was a staged hoax with non-Lebanese citizens, Syrian workers, students and municipal employees coerced into joining the protest, former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview this morning. "Yesterday's huge protest calling for Syria to stay made it look to the world like a large segment of the Lebanese population actually wants to live under Syrian occupation," said Aoun, speaking to WND from Paris. "But the protest wasn't what it appeared to be. It was an elaborately staged affair."
MORE - AS ALWAYS AT JIHAD WATCH - AND MORE BELOW ---- SCROLL DOWN...
UPDATE: I saw a report on CNN filed by Brent Sadler - their Beirut bureau chief - who edited-in clips from alJazeera which he said were interviews with some of the MANY Syrians who were BUSED IN FOR THE HIZBALLAH RALLY!
When CNN posts a written version of this on-line, I'll post a link to it. (BTW: do you think that CNN is playing footsy with Hizballah in order to protect their Beirut bureau - the way they ADMITTED they did with Saddam to protect their Baghdad bureau? Just asking...)
UPDATE #2: This just in from the AP -
The group [Hizballah] mobilized its supporters in the heavily Shiite regions of the Bekaa and the south, with loudspeakers urging followers to travel to Beirut for the protest. The leading Beirut daily An-Nahar, which has been critical of Syria, reported that convoys of Syrians were being brought across the border in buses to take part but that could not be confirmed.Opposition leaders, who have been courting Hezbollah's support in their effort to oust Syrian troops, accused Lebanese intelligence agents of exercising pressure on municipalities, public schools and institutions to drive the numbers up.
Stay tuned! Oh, before I sign off, there's this: some estimates (one used in the AP report cited above, as a matter of fact) now put the crowd at around ONLY 200,000 - NOT a very good figure considering how many Syrians and Palestinian Arabs were there!
