Who killed Hariri?

I've been trying to get back to this story for a couple of days. Between having to actually do some work, and blogger acting like a fool, I've not been able to get anything posted (sorry about yesterday - blogger wouldn't publish anything all day long - hopefully today it'll publish everything I tried to post yesterday). It's perhaps just as well on the subject of Rafik Hariri though, as this way, I have managed to collect numerous bits and put them together for one (long) post. (I'm sorry, but you're going to have to make your way to the end of it to get the full shock. Particularly interesting is the news from the Lebanese paper.)

Following up...Kurt Nimmo comments:

“No matter where else you look, no one else had anything to gain except Israel and the U.S. because [al-Hariri’s] death could cause some possible upset in Lebanese politics and life,” writes Sam Hamod (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8060.htm ). “Most Middle East experts in the Arab and Muslim worlds believe Israeli hands were at work in the killing of former Prime Minister of Lebanon.” Hamod continues:

Harriri’s killing, like so many of those in Iraq, is the work of either the Israeli dark ops or American mercenaries who have been hired out to kill people who are progressive in the Arab and Muslim worlds. That is why in Lebanon today, people know that it was not some dissident “Islamist group” (that no one has heard of, nor does anyone believe actually exists) who allegedly took credit for the deed, and in Iraq, where the religious leaders among the Sunni and Shi’a are telling their people not to revenge themselves on one another, because they know the killings are professional jobs being done by people from outside Iraq, namely, Israel and America. The parallels are evident to experts, but these experts will not be allowed on American media. But, Professor Rime Allaf, of the Royal Institute in England is correct, this was the work of an intelligence agency—and we damn well know who the only two would be—because they are the only two to gain by this deed, Israel or America.

[...]

Okay, here's what I can get out of this. I have no previous knowledge of any affairs of either government, but what I'm reading is that Lebanon's ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri's position was that he wanted Syrian troops out of Lebanon, and the current prime minister looks more favorably toward Syria. At least that's what I'm reading in western sources, but Aljazeera has a report that makes Hariri's position much less clear.

Hariri was blown up by a bomb on Monday that took some other people out as well. The U.S. immediately (via Condi the Lip) implicated Syria (deflecting the spotlight?) and withdrew the U.S. ambassador from Syria. Was that necessary? Considering the saber rattling toward Syria for the past couple of years, it looks a whole lot more like a U.S. plot to get the action going. The Lip is saying that Syria's presence in Lebanon is responsible for this action. Pot, meet kettle.

Why are the approximately 15,000 Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon under agreement by the two countries responsible for terrorist acts and need to be removed when 150,000 American troops on Iraqi soil still killing Iraqis are not responsible for terrorist acts in that country and need to stay? It's just too obvious. So why does she make the claim? These are the kinds of things that make it more suspect to me that the U.S. is responsible for Hariri's killing - because, every time BushCo pulls some despicable act, they first claim their opponent is doing it. It's a pattern as reliable as the sun rising in the east.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher parroted the pronouncement:

"Syria maintains a sizeable presence of military and intelligence officials in Lebanon, in contravention of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559," Boucher said in the statement. "Yesterday's bombing calls into question the stated reason behind this presence of Syrian security forces: Lebanon's internal security. The Lebanese people must be free to express their political preferences and choose their own representatives, without intimidation and the threat of violence."

[...]

Rice said that U.S./Syria relations are currently "not improving but are worsening."

But our problems with the Syrian Government are not new," Rice added. "We would hope that the Syrian Government would take the opportunity of this signal from the United States to review where we are in the relationship and to try to put our relations on a better path."
  Mens News Daily article

Isn't it funny how that works? Somebody gets blown up in Lebanon, and the U.S. has been slighted. And a country that in no way has yet been implicated (if it ever will be) in the killing is responsible for slighting us. Substitute Syria for Iraq and Hariri for the twin towers, and you have the whole 9/11-to-invasion scenario repeating. Only this wasn't even a killing on our own turf. You have to admit, BushCo has brass ones.

McClellan gets a piece of this action, of course:

Syria was the prime topic of discussion at the White House with Press Secretary Scott McClellan telling reporters that the assassination of Hariri was a "disturbing development."

"[W]e've made it clear to Syria that we expect Syria to act in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolution calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops and the disbanding of militias," McClellan said. "We also have made it very clear to Syria that we want them to use their influence to prevent the kind of terrorist attack that took place yesterday from happening."

Christ. Syria, who, as I said before, has an agreement with Lebanon to station troops there, needs to get out now because somebody - no one knows who - killed an ex-prime minister. Where over the globe do we have troops stationed and where some politicians get murdered? Should we be pulling our troops out of those countries (my answer, of course, is, yes indeed). But, even though they are to get out of Lebanon, Syria is responsible for using their influence to prevent terrorist attacks in Lebanon!

Syria's ambassador to the U.S., Imad Moustapha, is not impressed.

"Whenever the United States came to Syria asking us for assistance ... we immediately engaged with the United States," Moustapha said.

"This has included our support for the elections in Iraq, our securing the borders. We have done everything possible to secure the borders between Syria and Iraq."

[...]

Moustapha dismissed the argument that Syrian troops could have stopped Hariri's assassination by a massive bomb in downtown Beirut."Our troops are not in any major Lebanese city," he said.

"Definitely not in Beirut. They have been out of Beirut for at least two years."You have 150,000 troops in Iraq and you can't stop acts of terrorism. We have 13,000 troops (in Lebanon)."

Moustapha said that if Lebanon's government -- the current one or the one to be elected in May -- asks Syrian forces to leave, "We will leave immediately. We will not blink an eye."
  CNN article

Now get this....from the Daily Star - a Lebanese paper - dated February 14 - the morning of the day that Hariri was blown to bits:

Syria ready to begin troop withdrawal from Lebanon

BEIRUT: Syria is ready to begin a large scale withdrawal of the 15,000 troops it has stationed in Lebanon before May's parliamentary elections.

Diplomatic sources in Paris said UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told French President Jacques Chirac that Syria is about to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and that a first withdrawal to Dahr al-Baidar, Mdayrej, and Ain-Dara (Lebanese border villages) will be completed before the elections.
  article

Do you suppose that might have been the trigger to put the assassination plan in action? And check this further piece of that article:

On Sunday London-based Al Hayat newspaper cited diplomatic sources in Paris saying the message carried by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen to Damascus last week contained a strong warning to Syrian president Bashar Assad not to interfere in Lebanon's upcoming elections.

The UN warned Assad that any attempts to harm opposition members, naming former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt, would lead to a "total, final and irrevocable divorce with the international community."

[...]

Lebanese observers said that any agreement of the international community on Larsen's suggestions is mainly linked to his meetings this week with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and European officials.

[...]

Commenting at the weekend [Ed. Before the assassination] on accusations by Lebanese President Emile Lahoud that the U.S. was using Lebanon to "stab Syria in the back" U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman said: "Our policy is not that of the United States but that of the international law."

Yes, we've been noting how very respectful of international law the U.S. is.

So, the UN has just delivered a strong warning, specifically naming Hariri, to Syria that any interference would lead to the most serious consequences, at a time when Syria has been trying to appease the U.S., and Syria's response is to do exactly what will bring about those consequences?!?

At any rate, whether the U.S. was responsible for the murder - which I would stake as the obvious bet - The Lip and our official actions are sure to only foment more anti-Syrian fervor in Lebanon, and then we can say we have to go in there and free those people. Isn't that handy?

[December 22, 2004] The infamous 1996 "Clean Break" policy paper written for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, co-authored by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and a full coven of neocons now ensconced in the national security bureaucracy, is clear on this one point: Syria is the main problem. As the frontline state standing in the way of Zionist expansionism, Syria, according to Netanyahu's former American advisors, must be confronted, and humbled: in their view, the road to Damascus clearly runs through Baghdad.
  Justin Raimondo article

(Thanks to Peter Lee for sending me the information about Syria's planned troop withdrawal.)