BEIRUT Febr. 19, 2005 -- Lebanon said it is searching  or 6 persons that left for Australia from Beirut airport just hours after the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri in the downtown of Beirut, leaving trace of TNT explosives on their seats in the plane.

The Lebanese minister of justice Adnan Adoum said those persons have links to what he called "extremist circles" but without disclosing their identity or giving more details in order, as he stated, to preserve the course of investigations.

At the beginning, the Lebanese authorities expected the hypothesis of the suicide operation but the size of destruction which was inflected by the explosion had gradually brought in the hypothesis of the use of strong explosives implanted on the road taken by Hariri's procession.

Lebanon appealed for the experience of Switzerland in identifying the explosives and the DNA.

Lebanon, Politics, 2/19/2005

Lebanon 'thwarts al-Qaeda plot'
BBC News - Sept. 22, 2004

President of the Republic General Emile Lahoud has assured everyone that Lebanon is well off despite all pressures exerted on it.

On the implementation of UN resolution 1559, president Lahoud considered that its implementation would threaten Lebanon's unity and endanger its stability. "What is presently needed is the full implementation of all other resolutions that proceeded 1559. Once this is made, the implementation of 1559 would automatically follow."

President Lahoud, who supported the right to return for Palestinians to their homelands, said implementing UN resolution 1559, before implementing all other relevant resolutions means targeting Palestinians and forcing them to settle in their host countries.

Lebanon-Israel, Politics, 7/20/2004
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud condemned the crime of assassinating one of the Lebanese National Resistance men.

Ghaleb Awali, an official of the Hezbollah militia, was killed in a car blast in the southern suburb of Beirut
 Hassan Ammar (AP)

In a statement issued by the Media Department at the Lebanese Presidency, Lahoud said this crime is violation on Lebanon and it contradicts the principles Put by UN in south Lebanon, particularly the blue borderline.

He held Israel responsible for this crime. In this regard, Lebanese Premier Rafic Hariri denounced the assassination of Ghaleb al-Awali. He expressed hope that investigations will bring those responsible to justice.

Previous Stories:
Berri calls for pressuring Israel to dismantle wall (7/7/2004)
Nasrullah and the Lebanese resistance (7/6/2004)
Lebanon files a complaint to the UN security council over the Israeli raid (6/9/2004)
Israeli raid on a previous Palestinian position to the south of Beirut (6/8/2004)
UNIFIL complained against Israel (5/12/2004)
Mofaz refrains talking about prisoners exchange (5/6/2004)
Israeli planes bombard south Lebanon (5/6/2004)

The IAEA and Mohammed el-Baradei say there is "No evidence for nuclear activity in Syria, contrary to early allegations by US Undersecretary of State, Bolton.

Israel threatens to attack Syria due to the killing of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah following the crisis which started one day after the assassination of Ghaleb Awali. Washington has called for restraint from all sides.

The adulation showered on another Arab tyrant, Yasser Arafat, is part and parcel of the same syndrome. We don't care how many people they have murdered, or how many terrorist atrocities they have committed. We are only too happy to shake their blood-stained hands, and help them perpetuate their regimes and oppress their people, usher them into the Oval Office and recommend them for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Hopefully those days are over. This time Bashar Assad has overplayed his hand. The world is not prepared to condone rule by assassination, just as it is not prepared to accept terrorism. Maybe this time Lebanon will be set free and Hezbollah will be disarmed. Maybe a step will be taken to bring peace between Israel and Lebanon closer.

              Declarations by
The Government of Lebanon in Exile
                Jerusalem

Updated: February 2, 2004

ONLY a few hours after Israeli helicopters had staged their first raid over the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday, Hizbollah's local Manar (Lighthouse) television station showed an intriguing film, an interview with a Lebanese man, his face pixillated to avoid recognition but his voice all too audible as he recounted his life as an Israeli agent in southern Lebanon. He had, he said, married a woman who lived in the Israeli occupation zone in the far south of the country -- the strip of territory held by Israeli troops since 1978 -- and had been recruited by Israel on a visit to his wife's village.

Lebanon 1982-1984

It was unclear whether the man was a prisoner or a defector, but his information was specific. For months he had lived in the area north of Israel's occupation zone, amassing details of Hizbollah's movements and equipment. On a set of photographic maps provided by the Israelis, he had carefully marked the home of each Hizbollah member. He had communicated this information, he said, through an E-mail system that operated on Israeli-provided equipment which he kept hidden in the cabinet of his television set.

Amid the blood and rhetoric of this latest, wearingly familiar, war in Lebanon, Hizbollah was sending two messages over its TV station: that the historical background to the conflict is being ignored -- in some cases deliberately -- and that the Israelis had been planning this operation for months, just as Hizbollah itself had been working out its own methods of confronting the coming Israeli assault.

A Never Ending Story ... Republican nor Democrat Leadership in WH!

US support for Israel has resulted in the oil nations of the Middle East being driven into the Russian sphere of influence. Barely able to hold onto Iraq, the US cannot fight and win a war against Russia for access to oil reserves.

The Neocons have not only sacrificed the lives of 2000 young Americans for Israel, they have sacrificed the nation's economy by making us the enemy of those nations whose oil we depended on.  

Iran Says Contracts With Russia Could Reach $10bn
Posted Nov 7, 2005 09:58 AM PST

● Hariri Assassination By Suicide Truck Bomb  Mitsubishi Stolen in Japan

● Norman J. Pattiz - Chairman BBG Middle East Committee
Bush singled out Pattiz for his "perseverance and dedication to the project." The 'project' being the production of Arab-language propaganda for two new media outlets: The Al-hurrah satellite television network, and Radio Sawa.

BURNING CANDLES

  «« click on pic to enlarge

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

They are a prominent group of Washington conservative intellectuals who helped incubate the ideas behind the Bush administration's war in Iraq. Now, they are pressing for regime change in neighboring Syria and Iran. At the center of their passions is Lebanon, a country once riven by sectarian violence, where pro-Western, Christian, and free-market forces hope to rise again.

In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush declared, "The gravest danger facing America and the world is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons." Building to his point, he offered a grim reckoning to the people of Iraq: "Your enemy is not surrounding your country - your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation."

It is no secret that many of the ideas that launched the war in Iraq - intertwining weapons of mass destruction and terrorism as evil twins, scorn for the sovereignty of disgraced governments, and belief in the transforming force of American power - have been nurtured and refined at the American Enterprise Institute, a 60-year old Washington think tank. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces, AEI Vice President Danielle Pletka gave a blunt summation of the institute's neo-conservative philosophy: "The question of whether we have the right to go in and remove a dictator ought to be a part of our thinking."

Now, nearly a month into the American occupation of Iraq, many neoconservatives have set their sights on Syria and Iran. The government of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, in particular, has felt the ire of the Bush administration in the wake of allegations that it provided Saddam Hussein with night-vision equipment and allowed volunteer anti-American fighters cross its border to join the war in Iraq. American officials and neoconservative intellectuals have also charged that Syria is pursuing a chemical and biological weapons program.

In recent days, the administration has tempered its hostility, allowing Secretary of State Colin Powell to pursue diplomacy in Damascus. But Syria remains noncommittal on one key U.S. demand: ending support for Hezbollah, an Islamic militia in southern Lebanon that Washington regards as a terrorist group.

One of the most enthusiastic proponents of Syrian regime change is Michael Ledeen, an AEI scholar. In 1985, as a consultant to the National Security Council, he set up meetings between Israelis and a group of international arms dealers to help broker the arms-for-hostage deal with Iran. In an article posted to AEI's Web site on April 30, Ledeen warned that Syria and Iran will try to implement a "second Lebanon strategy" in Iraq by sponsoring thousands of suicide bombers ready to carry out attacks against U.S. and British soldiers. In an op/ed article in Canada's National Post in early April, Ledeen wrote, "It's time to bring down the other terror masters. Faster, please."

"Hezbollah is the world's leading terrorist group," charges Ledeen. "They're an Iranian-created group housed in Syrian-occupied Lebanon."

Animosity towards Hezbollah - thought to be responsible for the deaths of 241 American marines killed in a 1983 suicide bombing operation - runs deep in the current administration. "They have a blood debt to us," Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage is reported to have said last year. "We're not going to forget it."

Lebanon, it turns out, is something of a pivot point for the neoconservatives' hopes and fears for the Middle East. Near the end of the Clinton presidency, a group of intellectuals, business people, and retired military officials who called themselves the Lebanon Study group signed their names to a 48-page document called "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role - May 2000."

PLEASE READ LAST LINK

Military force. Finally, the use of force needs to be considered. The Vietnam legacy and the sour memories of dead American Marines in Beirut notwithstanding, the United States has entered a new era of undisputed military supremacy coupled with an appreciable drop in human losses on the battlefield. The Gulf War of 1991 and the war over Kosovo of 1999 represented watersheds, not only in the annals of military history, but also because they demonstrated that the United States can act to defend its interests and its principles without the specter of huge casualties.

This opens the door to a similar decision to act for Lebanon's endangered freedoms and pluralism. But this opportunity may not wait, for as weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities spread, the risks of such action will rapidly grow. If there is to be decisive action, it will have to be sooner rather than later.

SIGNATORIES - Ziad Abdelnour - Elliott Abrams - Samir Bustany - John Castle - Angelo Codevilla - Raymond Debbane - Paula Dobriansky - Alan Dowty - Leon Edney - Nabil El - Eliot Engel (D-NY) - Philip Epstein - Douglas Feith - Frank Gaffney - Richard Hellman - Jesse Helms (R-SC) - Jeane Kirkpatrick - Habib Malik - Steven Merker - Daniel Nassif - Richard Perle - Daniel Pipes - Nina Rosenwald - Steven Rothman (D-NJ) - William Rouhana - Michael Rubin - Charles Sahyoun - Jim Saxton (R-NJ) - Donn Starry - David Steinmann - David Wurmser  

Report of the Lebanon Study Group - May 2000 - Daniel Pipes and Ziad Abdelnour, Co-Chairs

Elie Hobeika, a key witness in the Sabra-Chatila war crimes case being pursued in a Belgian court against Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, was blown up outside his house in Beirut on Jan. 24, 2002, together with three bodyguards and a civilian bystander. The car-bomb was the work of professional assassins in the employ of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. The explosion occured two days after Hobeika agreed to give evidence against Sharon in Belgium. Hobeika had met Belgian Senators Josy Dubie and Vincent van Quickenborne in east Beirut, agreeing to be a witness at any trial of Sharon for the Sabra and Chatila massacre.

Elie Hobeika

Belgian lawyers seeking to indict Sharon expressed their "profound shock" at Hobeika's murder. "Mr Hobeika had several times expressed his wish to assist the Belgian inquiry on the massacres at Sabra and Chatila," a statement from the Belgian lawyers said. "His determination to do so was reported widely on the eve of his assassination. The elimination of the key protagonist who offered to assist with the inquiry is an obvious attempt to undermine our case."

Marwan Hamadeh, the Lebanese minister for refugees stated,"My initial evaluation is that of course Israel doesn't want witnesses against it in this historic case in Belgium..." Israeli Prime Minister Sharon dismissed the charges: "I am simply saying, from our point of view, we have no link to this subject at all, and this is not worthy of a comment," Sharon told reporters.

When a people lost 6,000,000 lives in Nazi Germany, where does its new nation place the boundary for collateral damage?

  ««  click pic for Powell's site

Additional reading: Victor Ostrovsky: How Mossad Got America to Bomb Libya & Vanunu's Case - Israel Nuclear Power

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."