Officially, no one knows who killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri besides the murderers and those who assisted them. But that hasn't stopped the pro-Syrian Lebanese government from trying to scotch accusatory rumors fingering the logical perpetrators. As the New York Times' Hassan M. Fattah reports, Lebanon's interior minister Suleiman Franjieh "maintained that the explosion was the work of a suicide car bomber." But the "growing opposition" to Syria's occupation of Lebanon "points to evidence that the bomb was more likely to have been buried and set off remotely." Writes Fattah,
Defining the cause is critical to trying to determine what role, if any, Syria played in the assassination. If the assassination was carried out by the simple means of a suicide bomber, the government's logic goes, the involvement of Al Qaeda would be indicated, tending to exonerate Syria. But if it was a result of a remote-controlled bomb, opposition figures says, the involvement of sophisticated agents, probably tied to Syria, would be likely.
Fattah adds the kicker,
Any finding of a probably Syrian role, the opposition leaders add, would be likely to bring the full force of international pressure on Syria to pull its forces out of Lebanon.
The fact that the explosion left a crater 30 feet wide and 10 feet deep in the Corniche, Beirut's waterfront boulevard, indicates that the bomb was probably larger than your normal suicide sedan. At least one American living in the city thinks so--Andrew Exum, who wrote an interesting op-ed piece in Wednesday Times. Exum, a former Army Ranger captain who saw action in Iraq last year, describes the blast site:
I couldn't help but marvel for a moment at the audacity of the attack and the meticulous planning involved. The Corniche at this point takes a sharp turn, forcing cars to slow. The men who placed the bomb surely knew this. In addition, the building across from the St. George [Hotel] was also under construction and uninhabited, so any collateral damage to civilians would have been minimal. Further down the Corniche, the road is wider and would have been choked with pedestrians. Whoever planned this attack had been calculating as well as ruthless.
Former Capt. Exum climbed above the crater and looked down at the scene.
It was easily 25 yards wide and at least three deep. To create a hole that size, you would have to fill a large truck or van with high explosives, first re-enforcing the shock absorbers to accommodate all the extra weight.
Witnesses did not report a "large truck or van." In fact, as Fattah reports, people claimed the death car was "hurled into the air, suggesting that the blast rose vertically, as with an underground bomb and not laterally," as would have happened had the explosion erupted from the side.
Al Jazeera reports, however, it received a videotape Monday night from someone named Ahmad Abu Adas, who claimed to belong to a previously unknown terrorist group called "Victory and Jihad in Greater Syria." (A multitude of sins, it seems, are being disguised by these "previous unknown terrorist groups.") In the tape, Adas declared his intention to kill Hariri for his "support of the Saudi royal family." He has since disappeared, after leaving a note telling his mother that he was off to "fight the infidels."
Fattah quotes a neighbor of Adas: "We thought that he was probably going to Iraq or Palestine to fight. He was not a very clever kid to do something like this on his own, though. If he did the bombing he had to have someone behind him."
Not necessarily. What makes this "neighbor" think he or she knows more than Syrian/Lebanese officials? Plenty of political assassins have operated without handlers or a support network. Take Lee Harvey Oswald, for example--everyone knows he acted alone, right?
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