Accountability and teh Fog of War.

 Anybody remember when George Bush and Colin Powell lied us into war with Iraq because they were convinced Saddam had yellowcake?

Powell used information that intelligence officials assured him was credible. There were reconnaissance photos, elaborate maps and charts, and even taped phone conversations between senior members of Iraq's military.

 That was 20 years ago last February. I remember still, do you, or were you a child then?

Senior U.S. officials said Friday that they remain confident that Hamas and Palestinian militants have been operating under the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza, even as the Israeli military has struggled to produce proof to back its assertion that Hamas was using the hospital and its patients as human shields. 

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence, said intercepted communications between fighters operating in Gaza showed that Hamas has been using hospitals as command centers and ammunition depots. 

While the Biden administration has cautioned Israel not to use airstrikes against the hospital, where thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge, it has also backed Israel’s contention that the hospital has been used by Hamas. 

On Tuesday, John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to provide details about the source of the U.S. intelligence, first reported by The Wall Street Journal. “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad — J.I.D. — members operate a command and control node from Al-Shifa, in Gaza City,” Mr. Kirby said. “They have stored weapons there, and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility.” 

After storming the hospital, Israeli military officials on Thursday showed journalists, including reporters from The New York Times, a stone and concrete shaft with a staircase descending into the earth as evidence of a Hamas military facility under the hospital. 

The visit did not settle the question of whether Hamas has been using Al-Shifa, as Israel has said. 

— Helene Cooper and Julian E. Barnes

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And there's this:

Almost 48 hours after entering Gaza’s largest medical complex, the Israeli military escorted journalists from The New York Times through a landscape of wartime destruction Thursday night to a stone-and-concrete shaft on its grounds with a staircase descending into the earth — evidence, it said, of a Hamas military facility under the hospital. 

But Col. Elad Tsury, commander of Israel’s Seventh Brigade, said Israeli forces, fearing booby traps, had not ventured down the shaft at the hospital, Al-Shifa. He said it had been discovered earlier in the day under a pile of sand on the northern perimeter of the complex. 

In the darkness, it was unclear where the shaft led or how deep it went, although the military said it had sent a drone down at least several meters. Electrical wiring was visible inside, along with a metal staircase. 

The controlled visit will not settle the question of whether Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that rules Gaza, has been using Al-Shifa Hospital to hide weapons and command centers, as Israel has said. 

The claim is central to Israel’s defense of the death toll caused by its military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 11,000 people, according to Gazan health officials. Israeli officials say that the extreme loss of life has been caused in part by Hamas’s decision to hide its military fortifications and command centers inside civilian infrastructure like Al-Shifa. 

Hamas denies the accusation and says Israel is committing war crimes by targeting civilian facilities such as hospitals. The Israeli military has said that Hamas used a vast maze of tunnels underneath the hospital as a secret base, but since announcing early Wednesday that its troops had entered the grounds, the military has yet to present public documentation of such an extensive network. 

As the international community increasingly demands protections for civilians in Gaza, Israel is under pressure to demonstrate that the hospital — and the tunnel network it said it concealed — were important enough military targets to justify the immense cost in Palestinian lives. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israeli forces had found proof of their allegations about Al-Shifa. There were “a lot of terrorists there,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio, but “they fled as our forces approached the hospital.” 

“We found a lot of weapons — a lot,” he added. “We found a lot of ammunition. We found bombs. We found on level minus-two a command and control center of Hamas, with military encoded encryption.”

 Colonel Tsury acknowledged the pressure on Israel to show evidence of Hamas activity at the hospital, but said it might be days before troops descended the shaft. 

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If it were my child being held hostage?  I would want Israeli soldiers in that tunnel trying to figure out where it leads -- and to whom.  IF not soldiers, who?  A dog? A drone?  please, there are human beings' lives at stake... You'd think the soldiers would be juiced -- even at the risk of their own lives -- to keep going, pressing ahead to bring anybody left living home...

I get that it takes time, and you want to proceed cautiously. But bringing in reporters, on a PR tour to justify your findings, and then telling them you have not even descended into the tunnel yet?  Where are your freakin' priorities?

The only way to justify the deaths of so many Gazan civilans was because you were recklessly pursuing the return of your own people.  Now, when the time for fighting militants, not innocents, is here, you are afraid to learn where that tunnel leads?