Hariri Reportedly Assassinated To Make Way For Large US Air Base In Lebanon
Wayne Madsen | 26.10.2005 21:13 | Analysis | World
According to high-level Lebanese intelligence sources-Christian and Muslim-former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was reportedly assassinated in a sophisticated explosion-by-wire bombing authorized by the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's Likud government in "Israel".
There are also strong indications that the Hariri assassination was carried out by the same rogue Syrian intelligence agents used in the 2002 car bombing assassination of Lebanese Christian leader Elie Hobeika, who was prepared to testify against Sharon in a Brussels human rights court. That case involved the Israeli Prime Minister's role in the 1982 massacre by Israeli troops of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut. The Hariri assasination used wire-bombing technology because Hariri's security personnel used electronic countermeasures to fend off a remote control bomb using wireless means. It has been revealed that the Bush administration has used Syrian intelligence agents to torture al Qaeda suspects through the program known as "extraordinary rendition."
Hariri, a pan-Arabist and Lebanese nationalist, was known to adamantly oppose the construction of a major U.S. air base in the north of Lebanon. The United States wants Syrian troops completely out of Lebanon before construction of the base is initiated. Hariri's meetings with Hezbollah shortly before his death also angered Washington and Jerusalem, according to the Lebanese intelligence sources.
Washington and Jerusalem media experts spun Hariri's assassination as being the work of Syrian intelligence on orders from President Bashar Assad. However, a number of Middle East political observers in Washington claim that Hariri's assassination was not in the interests of Assad, but that the Bush and Sharon administrations had everything to gain from it, including the popular Lebanese uprising against the Syrian occupation.
Lebanese intelligence sources report that even without a formal agreement with Lebanon, the contract for the northern Lebanese air base has been let by the Pentagon to Jacobs Engineering Group of Pasadena, California. Other construction support will be provided by Bechtel Corporation.
Jacobs Engineering and Jacobs Sverdrup are currently contracted for work in Saudi Arabia for Aramco, Iraq for the U.S. occupation authority, Bosnia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Lebanese air base is reportedly to be used as a transit and logistics hub for U.S. forces in Iraq and as a rest and relaxation location for U.S. troops in the region. In addition, the Lebanese base will be used to protect U.S. oil pipelines in the region (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Mosul/Kirkuk-Ceyhan) as well as to destabilize the Assad government in Syria. The size of the planned air base reportedly is on the scale of the massive American Al Udeid air base in Qatar.
A number of intelligence sources have reported that assassinations of foreign leaders like Hariri and Hobeika are ultimately authorized by two key White House officials, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams. In addition, Abrams is the key liaison between the White House and Sharon's office for such covert operations, including political assassinations.
"Abrams is the guy they [the Israelis] go to for a wink and a nod for such ops," reported one key source.
Hariri, a pan-Arabist and Lebanese nationalist, was known to adamantly oppose the construction of a major U.S. air base in the north of Lebanon. The United States wants Syrian troops completely out of Lebanon before construction of the base is initiated. Hariri's meetings with Hezbollah shortly before his death also angered Washington and Jerusalem, according to the Lebanese intelligence sources.
Washington and Jerusalem media experts spun Hariri's assassination as being the work of Syrian intelligence on orders from President Bashar Assad. However, a number of Middle East political observers in Washington claim that Hariri's assassination was not in the interests of Assad, but that the Bush and Sharon administrations had everything to gain from it, including the popular Lebanese uprising against the Syrian occupation.
Lebanese intelligence sources report that even without a formal agreement with Lebanon, the contract for the northern Lebanese air base has been let by the Pentagon to Jacobs Engineering Group of Pasadena, California. Other construction support will be provided by Bechtel Corporation.
Jacobs Engineering and Jacobs Sverdrup are currently contracted for work in Saudi Arabia for Aramco, Iraq for the U.S. occupation authority, Bosnia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Lebanese air base is reportedly to be used as a transit and logistics hub for U.S. forces in Iraq and as a rest and relaxation location for U.S. troops in the region. In addition, the Lebanese base will be used to protect U.S. oil pipelines in the region (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Mosul/Kirkuk-Ceyhan) as well as to destabilize the Assad government in Syria. The size of the planned air base reportedly is on the scale of the massive American Al Udeid air base in Qatar.
A number of intelligence sources have reported that assassinations of foreign leaders like Hariri and Hobeika are ultimately authorized by two key White House officials, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams. In addition, Abrams is the key liaison between the White House and Sharon's office for such covert operations, including political assassinations.
"Abrams is the guy they [the Israelis] go to for a wink and a nod for such ops," reported one key source.
Wayne Madsen
Comments
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Inject some actual evidence please
26.10.2005 23:44
Sadly to say if you rearrange facts and throw in a bit of supposition then you can draw any conclusion you want. If the supposition here was backed up with fact as opposed to unsourced claims then this article would be news. Unfortunately it is not, so is a waste of your efforts typing it up.
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead
Inside Scoop
27.10.2005 08:10
Read the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh's recent work.
It's On The Record
Everything makes sense now
27.10.2005 23:35
Big chap, was he? They could have just asked him to move.
Zorro
Remember This?
28.10.2005 06:06
Targets have not yet been ascertained
By Nayla Assaf
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
BEIRUT: Newspaper reports that an Israeli spy ring was trying to assassinate top officials here were confirmed Tuesday. But there was no confirmation as to reports that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hizbullah resistance movement, was among the targets.
Hizbullah would not comment on the arrests, but a top judicial source did confirm them and said that three people were now in custody and two others were on the run.
This came after Public Prosecutor Adnan Addoum told Reuters no such case had been referred to the judiciary, and that "this was media talk."
In its front-page story on Tuesday, As-Safir daily had reported that a Palestinian woman in her 40s was in custody for having established the ring.
Also, according to Reuters, Israel declined to comment.
As-Safir said that the woman was arrested after one of her would-be recruits warned Hizbullah. It also reported that she was plotting to kill Nasrallah using explosives and poison.
On Tuesday, a higher judicial source confirmed the arrests. The source said the ring was plotting to execute explosions and assassinations in several areas in Lebanon.
The source confirmed the arrests of three people: a Palestinian woman, a Lebanese man and an Egyptian worker established here and said that they are being questioned by the judiciary and under the supervision of the state prosecutor's office and the military prosecutor's office.
Two others, identified as Walid, are reportedly part of the ring and still on the run.
"The Mossad had begun building the ring months ago with the help of the Palestinian woman ... who holds a Tunisian passport because she is married to a Tunisian national," the Judicial source added.
According to the same source, the woman, a merchant of Israeli clothes and jewelry identified only as Jamal M, was hired by the Mossad in Tunis.
She reportedly later recruited the Lebanese, identified as Kamal A., from the Southern village of Naameh.
The same woman reportedly then met the alleged Egyptian spy and recruited him after she had become his lover.
She was reportedly about to blow-up the Al-Bashaer radio station in the Beirut southern suburb of Haret Hreik, which is affiliated with Fadlallah and the Holy Koran station, which belongs to the higher Sunni authority, Dar al-Fatwa.
"She was also tasked with recruiting Shiite collaborators from the southern suburbs in order to assassinate a leading figure from that area," the source added, without mentioning the identity of the figure.
Also, State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum and Military Public Prosecutor Jean Fahd had reportedly held an extraordinary meeting on Monday evening regarding the matter.
Read the recent work of The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh. He has inside access - and a will to use it - like no other Western journalist writing these days. He's exposed the current Covert Wars occuring in both Iran and Syria at this very moment, the motivations of the Neo-Cons/Fascists, and the BILLIONS plundered from Iraq, used to buy a new Iraqi Puppet Regime, but the wider MSM has its blinders tightly on.
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