Their usual fall back when caught doing something: It was a translation error. Yeah, just like when it’s claimed Iran’s crazy man didn’t actually say “wipe” Israel off the map (It was a translation error!), but well-known Bush lapdogs like Reuters and The Associated Press stand by their translations.

The United Nations on Wednesday backtracked on a report that had quoted a Syrian official as saying an Israeli airstrike hit a nuclear facility in Syria, blaming an interpreter’s error for the purported comment that made headlines across the Middle East…

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA, quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry official as saying the representative was misquoted.

After more than seven hours of investigation Wednesday, U.N. officials agreed that was the case.

“There was an interpretation error made yesterday when the First Committee was in session,” U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said. “There was no use of the word nuclear.”

Amazingly convenient. The word “nuclear” is used no fewer than 149 times in the UN document, including multiple mentions by Arab states. Allah observes:

Do a word search in the UN document and see for yourself how many times the word “nuclear” was used during the meeting, including by Arabic-speaking diplomats from Kuwait and Lebanon. The interpreter got it right everywhere else in the document — but just happened to make a mistake at a fantastically sensitive part of the Syrian ambassador’s statement?

Convenient, isn’t it? The only time it was a “translation error” was when it negatively affected Syria, which happens to be the IAEA’s new deputy chair.