:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 2.19.2005 ::
:: "Mystery Deepens Over Hariri Slaying" ::
BEIRUT, Lebanon - (AP) From traces of explosives supposedly collected off airline seats to the prospect a powerful bomb could have been planted beneath a Beirut street during recent road work, the mystery is deepening over who killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and how.
The Lebanese government and its Syrian supporters have been under intense domestic and international pressure to apprehend those responsible for the massive explosion that also killed 16 others and wounded more than 100 a week ago.
Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud said Saturday that his government would "study" a request by the United Nations to involve a team of international investigators, adding it was "keen" to cooperate with the international body.
Lebanon has asked Switzerland to send DNA and explosives experts but has rejected an internationally led inquiry, which was called for by Hariri's family, political opposition members, and France and the United States. The government has promised a thorough investigation and has condemned the attack.
An unsettled public has been pressing for answers sooner rather than later and military experts, politicians and citizens have been weighing in with their own theories about the Feb. 14 attack. Many Lebanese have little confidence in authorities who were unable to solve a string of assassinations during its 1975-1990 civil war.
Read more here.
ALSO
Lebanon's Sorrow
Hariri's Murderers Were Targeting Democracy
By Nora Boustany
The Washington Post
From his first year as Lebanon's prime minister, Rafiq Hariri knew he was a hunted man.
One day in 1993, about 10 months into his tenure, I went to interview Hariri at his art deco villa. As we talked, I noticed that he was barely listening to my questions. His face ashen and glistening with beads of sweat, he led me to a square garden behind the house to chat privately. But even then, as we strolled and conversed, he kept looking nervously over his shoulder.
He was just back from Damascus, where he and Lebanon's president and speaker of the parliament had been dressed down by Hafez Assad, Syria's president then, as though they were office boys who had spilled the coffee. The reason: The Lebanese leaders had sent their army into towns just north of Israel to disarm the Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah, which Assad felt was a useful tool of Syrian policy.
And while the Lebanese leaders had quickly pulled the army back, Hariri had good reason to be worried. That week, I learned later, two car bombs had been found along the road between his home in Koreitem near the sea and his office at the Serail near the center of Beirut.
For 20 years, Hariri had trod softly through the minefield of Lebanese politics, making deals at home while placating the Syrian overlords who treat Lebanon like a colony. But when he stopped doing business as usual, it all caught up to him.
Read more here.
AND
From The Sunday Herald Online
NEW FRONT IN THE WAR ON TERROR
With controversial diplomat John Negroponte installed as the all-powerful Director of National Intelligence, is the US about to switch from invasions to covert operations and dirty tricks? The assassination of the former Lebanese PM has aroused suspicions
posted by me
:: 6:44:00 PM [+] ::
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