By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press, 28 October 2005, 6:57 a.m.
The aggressive posture taken by the United States and Britain
against Syria, based on unproven allegations from an inconclusive
UN report of an unfinished investigation, clearly reveals the
Zionist agenda which motivates the policy decisions being made
in Washington and London.
With more than 2,000 U.S. military personnel killed during the
illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, and many times that
number injured or maimed, the majority of Americans now believe
the war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do.
A recent Harris poll taken in mid-October shows that 66 percent
of the American population disapproves of President George W.
Bush's handling of the war, while 53 percent thinks that invading
Iraq was the wrong thing to do.
With 2 out of 3 Americans opposed to Bush's war policy, his
public approval rating for the ill advised and legally challenged
war in the Middle East is at its lowest point - and going down.
Given the American public's "gloomy opinions about Iraq," as
Harris says, one might ask why the Bush administration seems
so eager to widen the conflict by threatening Syria?
The aggressive U.S. position taken against Syria in the United
Nations Security Council is supposedly based on the findings
of an inconclusive UN report about the assassination of Rafik
Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.
The UN report, written by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor
with a team of 30 un-named investigators from 17 nations, is,
however, not the real reason for the aggressive posture taken
by the U.S. and British governments against Syria.
The Mehlis report is only a convenient tool being used by Washington
and London in the execution of the Zionist agenda that dictates
U.S. and British policy making decisions in the Middle East.
The Bush administration, like those before it, was openly hostile
to Syria before Hariri was assassinated.
"The Zionist Plan for the Middle East," translated from the
Hebrew by the late Israel Shahak, reveals the fundamental Israeli
strategic plan for Syria - and the rest of the Middle East.
The Zionist plan, written by Oded Yinon, a former official with
the Foreign Ministry of Israel, was published in a journal of
the World Zionist Organization in 1982. The plan calls for the
dissolution, or Balkanization, of both Syria and Iraq.
"The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically
or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's
primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the
dissolution of the military power of those states serves as
the primary short term target," Yinon wrote. "Syria will fall
apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure,
into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that
there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni
state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile
to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state,
maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in
northern Jordan."
Israeli military planners viewed Iraq as a greater threat than
Syria:
"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the
other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets," Yinon
wrote. "Its dissolution is even more important for us than that
of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is
Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel."
The aggressive U.S. position against Syria needs to be seen
in the context of the Zionist agenda for the Middle East; the
agenda which motivates the Neo-Cons and the war policy of the
Bush administration.
INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY?
The Mehlis report contains allegations from un-named witnesses
but provides no solid evidence that Syria had anything to do
with the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik
Hariri.
"Until the investigation is completed, all new leads and evidence
are fully analyzed, and an independent and impartial prosecution
mechanism is set up, one cannot know the complete story of what
happened, how it happened and who is responsible for the assassination
of Rafik Hariri and the murder of 22 other innocent people,"
the report says. "Therefore, the presumption of innocence stands."
The Mehlis investigation, which began 4 months after the murder,
concludes with these words: "The Commission is of course of
the view that all people, including those charged with serious
crimes should be considered innocent until proven guilty following
a fair trial."
"I have declared that Syria is innocent of this crime, and I
am ready to follow up action to bring to trial any Syrian who
could be proved by concrete evidence to have had connection
with this crime," Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an official
letter to the governments in Washington, London and Paris.
"Detlev Mehlis wants a special Syrian inquiry," Syrian Foreign
Ministry legal adviser Riad Daudi told Aljazeera. "We are ready
to carry out this investigation. But Mr. Mehlis, who has never
made this kind of request before, must tell us exactly what
kind of inquiry he wants us to do," Daudi said.
POLITICAL SUICIDE
"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," Patrick Seale, a 30-year
veteran British correspondent on the Middle East, wrote shortly
after Hariri was killed when a unexplained explosion struck
his motorcade on February 14, 2005.
"Why would Syria murder Hariri, the main architect of Lebanon's
post-war reconstruction and prosperity?" American Free Press
asked when Hariri was killed. "And why would anybody murder
Hariri in such a spectacular way?"
"Attributing responsibility for the murder to Syria is implausible,"
Seale wrote. "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.
"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 destabilize
the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down," Seale
wrote. Seale is the author of several books on Syria including,
The Struggle for Syria, Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the
Middle East, and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
"The murder is more likely to be the work of one of its many
enemies," Seale wrote. He named Israel as being a likely suspect.
"Israel's ambition has long been to weaken Syria," Seale wrote,
"sever its strategic alliance with Iran and destroy Hizbullah."
The U.S. and Israel are trying to rally international support
against Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, Seale says, because they
stand up and resist U.S. and Israeli hegemony over the region.
Hizbullah forced Israel out of south Lebanon and has a deterrent
capability, which prevents Israel from attacking Lebanon with
impunity.
"Iran's nuclear program threatens to break Israel's regional
monopoly of weapons of mass destruction," Seale wrote, "which
is the main reason it is under immense pressure to abandon uranium
enrichment."
"Israel has great experience at 'targeted assassinations,' not
only in the Palestinian territories but across the Middle East,"
Seale wrote. " Over the years, it has sent hit teams to kill
opponents in Beirut, Tunis, Malta, Amman and Damascus."
In one targeted killing, the Israeli air force murdered the
spiritual head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic. "Reports from the scene said Sheikh
Yassin was being pushed in his wheelchair when he was directly
hit by a missile," the BBC reported on March 22, 2004.
The Mehlis investigation does not appear to have even considered
the possibility of Israel being behind the Hariri assassination.
The report claims that an Iraqi suicide bomber driving a Mitsubishi
Canter van killed Hariri. A "witness" named Saddik told the
commission that the Iraqi was led to believe that the target
was Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Photographic evidence of the crater, however, suggests that
the explosion was not caused by a car bomb. The crater is estimated
to be between 35-50 feet in diameter and about 10 feet deep.
A Russian study of surface explosions indicates that at least
5 to 10 tons of TNT would be required to create such a crater.
Keith A. Holsapple, an expert on craters at the University of
Washington, examined the photographs of the Beirut crater for
American Free Press. "There is no doubt," Holsapple said, "at
least a several ton bomb would be required if it were delivered
by a vehicle and detonated above the surface."
Photographs of the crater show buried water and sewage pipes
thrust upwards suggesting that the detonation occurred below
the pavement. A damaged car can also be seen at the very edge
of the crater. If a massive surface explosion had caused the
crater, this car should have been blown far back from the edge.
If a precision-guided missile was used to hit the Hariri convoy,
it could have targeted the car in the middle of the street,
passed through the vehicle and buried itself below the street
before exploding. This would have caused the crater and directed
the force of the blast upwards.
The three basic types of fusing for air-launched bombs are:
impact fuses, which detonate on contact with the target; impact
with delay, which explode a short time after the contact with
the target causing cratering and structural damage; and air
burst fuse, which detonates the bomb before it has hit a target
causing collateral damage to the general area.
"If you use a delay fuse that goes a millisecond or two milliseconds
under the ground, in fact the explosive - the fragmentation
doesn't go very far at all, and the explosive damage is created
mostly straight up, as opposed to out from the target, so you
can reduce the area that's affected," a senior defense official
of the U.S. Dept. of Defense said in March 2003.
The initial plume of smoke that rose from the explosion was
a light sandy color. This also suggests that the detonation
occurred in the sandy soil beneath the street, from a buried
explosive or a precision-guided missile with a delayed fuse,
which is designed to cause cratering.
Finis
PHOTO: The car beside the crater and the pipes that have been
thrust upwards argue against this crater having been caused
by surface car bomb, even of 5 to 10 tons. This photographic
evidence supports the theory that Hariri was killed by a laser-guided
missile delivered from an Israeli jet or drone at a high altitude
off the coast of Beirut.
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