Why, of course! Who else would have done it? From Big News Network, with thanks to Kemaste:
The Syrian Minister of Expatriates has hit back at claims her country was behind the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.When the blast hit, locals looked up into the sky for Israeli warplanes, Bouthaina Shaaban was quoted as saying by UPI.
Shaaben said Israeli planes violate Lebanese airspace almost daily.
She said Arabs were horrified watching the scenes of smoke and fire, burnt bodies, and damaged buildings in what she described as the most beautiful of Arab capitals. 'We have become quite accustomed to watching such scenes every day in Iraqi cities under American occupation, in the Palestinian territories over a century now, and in Beirut itself during the civil war that the Syrian cooperation with the Lebanese national forces put an end to,' she said.
'For Arabs, this atrocious murder looked like a shift planned and executed by the enemies of the nation, with utmost precision in identifying the target, the time and type of killing,' Shaaban told UPI.
Yeah, right. Like W actually has the gumption to to whack our enemies. He can't even get up steam to name them.
'..... in the Palestinian territories over a century now, .....' she said.
I did not know that Israel has been around for a century, and flying jets the whole time?
Ahh I wonder what happened to the theory here that the size of this explosion and its containment field came from under,came from under,came from under the street as the car was passing and a car bomb used for diversion tactics.
Yea the diversion tactic is for the western world to believe this car bomb theory,the planning,location,and timing have proven to be very convenient for an inside job.
They can say all they want till we get there and then they will be dead quiet.
This Syrian propaganda machine is killing me. These people are the nazis of the Middle East. They have informants in every square inch of Lebanon, yet they use every media outlet available to deflect blame onto Israel and the US. They have brain washed their populous, and they are reaching out to the liberal European masses and American left for sympathy. I have never seen a dictatorship lie so blatantly to the whole world as Syria does. The axis of evil has got to burn in hell.
Special Information Bulletin - Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S) February 15, 2005:
"The use of personal terrorism in Lebanon by Syria and its proxies"
http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/2_05/hariri.htm
Spare the Syrian propaganda. How can these people believe such hogwash? A look back into history might be an eye opener. Hitler failed. Japan failed. Jihad will fail, because brain-washed people fail to think for themselves.
Rumor has it that Syria embraced fleeing Nazi's in WWII and some are living there to this day ...
In Lebanon yesterday, there were accounts of “thousands” of people converging on Beirut’s Corniche, to protest the assassination of former PM Hariri and to blame Syria for his murder.
Damascus is pedalling to defuse the heightening tension in Lebanon; the Syrian-dominated Lebanese Government has accepted an inquest by the UN (instead of the Swiss Police) and has now said that it’ll acquiesce to “talks” with the “Parliamentary” Opposition - which shares but one common plank: for Syria to get out of their country, forthwith. On top, the Secretary of the Arab League, Amr Musa, recently advised that Damascus has told him that it’d accede to the implementation - “soon” - of portions of the execrable 1989 Taif Pact (one of whose options is withdrawal of the roughly 15,000 troops Syria’s garrisoned in its satellite, Lebanon).
Lebanon’s Defence Minister, though, reflexively rebuffed any such total military pull-out by Damascus, preferring (at maximum) that the Syrians “redeploy” - another of Taif’s alternatives. He proposed that they go into Lebanon’s own Beqaa Valley (the Middle East’s opprobrious “Terror Central”). - Thereby, Syria would largely avoid suffering the bitter Ignominy of having to leave Lebanese soil… and it can concomitantly remove its forces from public view!
What brews up in Lebanon, in the next days, weeks and months, will probably strongly shape the “War on Terror”, into the medium term. The choices are stark: either Damascus concedes cleanly over Lebanon, or eventually a civil war revives there, or a Jihad breaks out, or else there must be the imposition of draconian exercises in heavy, Fascist Syrian repression - retaining a silenced Lebanon beneath Damascus’ overlordship (if such harshness were to go unchallenged).
It does indeed look like it’ll be the latter, for the moment. Finally, though some “thousands” did attend and dissent in the city, the enormous crowds that the Lebanese political Opposition had hoped for (the size of Kiev’s or Tblisi’s) didn’t materialize in Beirut. The projected march and rally never took place; there were no popular demonstrations beyond the one spot in the capital, nor gatherings of any size on the international scene. Publicity in the media was meagre.
It’s hardly surprising that there was no big show of domestic sympathy on Tuesday. No doubt, the lack of it’s been consciously engineered, via routinely instilling fear into the polity and society - over the three decades of Damascus’ predatory occupation - by Syria’s ubiquitous security-apparats’ daily, hefty and systematic measures of coercion and intimidation of the Lebanese populace, and by its programatic subversion, corruption and co-option of the nation’s resources, institutions and instrumentalities - contemptuously harnessing the cover of Lebanon’s once-vaunted “Open Democracy” to wreak its terminal damage.
For years, besides its Army, Syria’s stationed in Lebanon a minimum of 10,000 police and security-agents (not touched upon in Taif). Some thousands more men, Iranian National Guards, are posted in the Beqaa and in southern Lebanon, encamped with their local host, Hezbollah. In addition to these fighters, Lebanon and Syria are rife with rejectionist “Palestinian” militants and a plethora of Jihadi squads, plus gangs of mercenary gunmen - ever since Damascus commenced letting citizens of any Arab land enter it without a prior visa, several years ago. Together with these miscellaneous thugs, count in Hezbollah, the other major Lebanese Shi’a militia, Amal, and radical elements from the Eastern Christian sector of Lebanon’s community, all backing the Lebanese Govt, i.e. the régime of Syria. (The Armenians are staying neutral.)
On the Opposition’s behalf, there are the Sunni minority, the Druse and the Maronites, whose quantity’s been diminishing by emigration for the past quarter-century. Even combined, these aren’t adequate in number to carry off any type of revolution against the entrenched Syrians. With the Opposition’s disappointing turn-out in Beirut, Syria now sees itself as free to re-tighten its control over Lebanon, to accelerate its production of WMDs and to increase its support for terrorism, mostly in Iraq and in “Palestine”, but across the region and internationally.