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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
al-Guardian: Israel Killed Hariri
2005-02-24
If Syria killed Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister and mastermind of its revival after the civil war, it must be judged an act of political suicide. Syria is already under great international pressure from the US, France and Israel. To kill Hariri at this critical moment would be to destroy Syria's reputation once and for all and hand its enemies a weapon with which to deliver the blow that could finally destabilise the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down.
political suicide. yeah. right. syria is a masterful geopolitical chess player. sees ten moves ahead. would never, ever have considered killing Hariri. nope. never.
That's if it's pinned on Syria, of course. My guess is that there's an active witness elimination program underway. Check for auto accidents and missing persons. And look for new faces in Mosul...
So attributing responsibility for the murder to Syria is implausible. The murder is more likely to be the work of one of its many enemies.
Actually not. Syria's got its wet work people all over Lebanon — it's one of the things the Lebanese have been bitching about. I'd call them the first of many suspects. Just saying it would have been stoopid for them to do it doesn't eliminate them.
This is not to deny that Syria has made grave mistakes in Lebanon. Its military intelligence apparatus has interfered far too much in Lebanese affairs. A big mistake was to insist on changing the Lebanese constitution to extend the mandate of President Emile Lahoud - known for his absolute allegiance to Syria - for a further three years. Syria's military intelligence chief in Lebanon, General Rustum Ghazalah, was reported to have threatened and insulted Hariri to force him to accept the extension. This caused great exasperation among all communities in Lebanon. Hariri resigned as prime minister in protest.
This is not to deny that Syria has made grave mistakes in Lebanon. Wait. didn't we just say that they never commit political suicide? I'm confused now.
And both Hariri and Jumblatt were known to be on the Syrian poop list prior to the boom.
Syria appears to have recognised its mistake. President Bashar al-Assad last week sacked General Hassan Khalil, head of military intelligence, and replaced him with his own brother-in-law, General Asaf Shawkat. A purge of the military intelligence apparatus in Lebanon is expected to follow.
Is it me or doesn't it seem just a tad suspicious that this guy was fired right after Hariri was blowed up? Does the term "scapegoat" mean anything to anybody? Well, apparently not to al-guardian.
It remains to be seen whether this will calm Syria's opponents in Lebanon, who have declared a "democratic and peaceful intifada for independence" - in other words, a campaign of passive resistance to drive Syria out.
I doubt it greatly. If it does, it'll be one of the very few times in history that naming your brother-in-law head of military intelligence ever mollified anyone.
Hariri was not a diehard enemy of Syria. For 10 of the past 12 years he served as Lebanon's prime minister under Syria's aegis. A few days before his murder on February 14 he held a meeting with Syria's deputy foreign minister, Walid Muallim. They were reported to have discussed a forthcoming visit by Hariri to Damascus. Hariri had not officially joined the opposition in Lebanon, but was thought to be attempting to mediate between Syria and the opposition.
So, Hariri was warming up to make Syria his #1 enemy. Therefore, it stands to reason who did it. Doesn't it? Not to al-guardian, apparently
If Syria did not kill Hariri, who could have?
We still haven't eliminated Syria as a suspect. But let's go over the other candidates...
There is no shortage of potential candidates, including far-right Christians, anxious to rouse opinion against Syria and expel it from Lebanon; Islamist extremists who have not forgiven Syria its repression of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 80s; and, of course, Israel.
of course.
I'm not sure what Syria's repression of the Moose limb Brotherhood has to do with Hariri. I suppose there's still a Phalangist movement in Lebanon, but they're not a significant power bloc anymore, and both Christians and Sunnis seem to have united in mourning his passing.
Israel's ambition has long been to weaken Syria, sever its strategic alliance with Iran and destroy Hizbullah. Israel has great experience at "targeted assassinations" - not only in the Palestinian territories but across the Middle East. Over the years, it has sent hit teams to kill opponents in Beirut, Tunis, Malta, Amman and Damascus.
so Israel killed opponents. seems assad, not hariri would be on the list.
Nobody's mentioned Hezbollah as a suspect yet. I wonder why?
Syria, Hizbullah and Iran have stood up against US and Israeli hegemony over the region. Syria continues to demand that Israel return the Golan Heights, seized in 1967. Damascus will not allow Lebanon to conclude a separate peace with Israel unless its own claim is also addressed. Hizbullah, in turn, is possibly the only Arab force to have inflicted a defeat on Israel. Its guerrillas forced Israel out of south Lebanon after a 22-year occupation. Hizbullah continues to be a big irritant to Israel because it has acquired a deterrent capability. Israel can no longer attack Lebanon with impunity - as it did for decades - without risking a riposte from Hizbullah rockets.
The riposte from Hizbullah rockets is likely to be ineffective, while Israel's air force is perfectly capable, as they've demonstrated, of booming Damascus. It would be much more to Israel's advantage to rub out Nasrallah or Mullah Fudlullah than Hariri.
Iran's nuclear programme threatens to break Israel's regional monopoly of weapons of mass destruction, which is the main reason it is under immense pressure to abandon uranium enrichment.
Something which, again, has naught to do with Hariri. The writer is reaching here...
The US and Israel have been trying to rally international support against Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has condemned Iran as a prime sponsor of international terror. Syria has been condemned as a "destabilising" force in the region, and is in the dock because of Hariri's assassination. The US and Israel have also been urging European governments to declare Hizbullah a "terrorist organisation". France has its own quarrel with Syria, and President Jacques Chirac is outraged at the murder of his close friend Hariri, but Paris does not consider Hizbullah a terrorist organisation. For France, and for the vast majority of Arabs, Hizbullah is a national liberation movement as well as a big political actor in Lebanon. There is far more to this crisis than a struggle between rival clans in Lebanon.
this is as bad a conspiracy nutcase as I've ever seen. except this isn't simply on some internet website or the arab media. the unvarnished, biased vitriol this article spews is disgusting. therefore, so is the writer.
I also notice that al-Guardian didn't suggest once that al-Qaeda dunnit.
Posted by:PlanetDan

#5  I like the way that Dr Charles Krauthammer responded when asked about Hariri and Syria as suspect:

"If they didn't do it I'll stand on my head."

Chuck knows.
Posted by: .com   2005-02-24 6:13:51 PM  

#4  What a crock. I've been looking for a deeper meaning since Chirac seems to creepily be assisting us and I actually think there must be more to this story.

But even though I am hungry for scraps, the only thing Al Guardain left me with was a feeling that someone is desperately trying to get the nut-bag crowd to point away from Syria, Hezbollah, Al Q, by carelessly blaming their usual suspects, "far right Christians" and of course, Joos. But apparently even Al Guardian realized saying there were plenty of suspects to go around, but then just blaming the Christians and Joos was just a bit too obvious, even for their faithful, so to come up with a third to round out their "plenty of other suspects" they create another suspect almost cute in it's "complexity" - Islamists. But not Islamists because they are, you know, Islamists .... but because Syria was so mean to them, repressing the Muslim Brotherhood.

Poor Syria. Working so hard to put down the Islamist threat and doing so well until the Joos and Americans messed things up for them by killing Harari. If it hadn't happened they could all still be flying kites in their beautiful suburbs.

What I like about this is that if the Al Guardian puppets are being forced to grovel with such drivel as this, then it's clear that whoever killed Harari understands they are up the creek without a paddle.
Posted by: 2b   2005-02-24 5:40:16 PM  

#3  To kill Hariri at this critical moment would be to destroy Syria’s reputation once and for all and hand its enemies a weapon with which to deliver the blow that could finally destabilise the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down.

Unless they were able to frame someone else for Hariri's death, something al-G is trying to help with.
Posted by: Steve from Relto   2005-02-24 11:46:09 AM  

#2  Daniel Pipes reviews this column's author Patrick Seale's book Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. http://www.danielpipes.org/article/31
Seale is a talented political writer whose first book, The Struggle for Syria (1965) remains a minor classic of Middle East studies. All the more pity, then, that he sold out to become the Syrian regime's leading apologist in the West. Passages in Asad of Syria recall the old talent, for Seale can write deftly about the subject of his biography, Hafiz al-Asad, as well as the whole course of Syrian history. Also, Seale turns up much new information about Asad's life before he became president of Syria in 1970.

But two-thirds of the book deals with events since 1970, and here Seale provides not much new information and few insights. He paints a picture of Asad so hagiographic, the reader can only hope it was as painful for Seale to write as it is to read. Seale obsequiously swallows every lie put out by the hacks in Damascus, accepting even the claim that Nizar al-Hindawi, the man who tried to blow up an El Al plane in 1986, was a double agent controlled by Israel. With cruel audacity, he deems Asad-who in 1982 called out the air force to bomb the Syrian city of Hama, killing tens of thousands-a man who seems to "abhor violent confrontations." Similarly, he presents Asad, the Arab ruler with the greatest number of Arab enemies, as a "statesman" who best "represents the Arabs' aspirations to be masters of their own destiny."

Why does a university press consent to publish so obvious a whitewash? Was it naive or complicit? California is hardly the first university press to endorse Middle East thugs (Columbia University Press in recent years has made a sub-specialty of lauding the PLO), but Asad of Syria is perhaps the most disgraceful book yet to appear under the imprimatur of a major scholarly house.
Posted by: ed   2005-02-24 10:14:48 AM  

#1  AlG is nothing more than a Kool Aid stand.
Posted by: .com   2005-02-24 10:08:10 AM  

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