The Dangerously Incomplete Hariri Report
By Robert Parry
October 23, 2005
A new United Nations report implicates the Syrian government in the
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, giving a lift
to George W. Bush's demand for "regime change" in Damascus. But the
investigation has many holes, including failure to follow up on a mysterious
van connected to the Feb. 14 bombing.
The 54-page U.N. report concludes that the bomb that killed Hariri and 22
other people in Beirut was likely in a white Mitsubishi Canter Van that
closed in on the convoy of cars carrying Hariri and his entourage before a
suicide bomber detonated the powerful blast.
While the identity of the bomber remains a mystery, a Japanese forensic team
matched 44 of 69 pieces of the van's wreckage to Canter parts manufactured
by Mitsubishi Fuso Corp. and even identified the specific vehicle. The chain
of possession for that van thus would seem to be a crucial lead in
identifying the killers.
But on that central point, the U.N. investigation made little headway,
devoting only a few paragraphs to how the van ended up in Beirut. On page
42, the U.N. report states that the Japanese forensic team reported that the
van was traced back to Sagamihara City, Japan, where on Oct. 12, 2004, it
was stolen.
The U.N. report contains no details about the Japanese investigation of the
theft, nor does it indicate what Japanese police may have discovered about
the identity of the thieves or how they may have shipped the van from a
suburb of Tokyo to the Middle East in the four months before the Hariri
attack.
-cont.-
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/102205.html
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Doomed to defeat by the superior Allied forces, it was thought that the
forces of fascism had been routed and that the world was safe for democracy.
The irony is that the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government saved
many of the most hardened Nazi war criminals from a certain execution in
order to recruit them as scientists, spies and guerrilla warriors in the
anticipated war with the Soviet Union. And this had dire effects on our
country's democracy.
Many Americans may not be aware of this wide spread recruitment of SS and
Gestapo alumni into our intelligence agencies but it has had a profound
effect on the shaping of our domestic and foreign policy, often with ruinous
consequences. The legacy of this incorporation of Nazis into the CIA and
U.S. military has been a half a century of support for fascist regimes,
juntas, death squads, torture and the overthrow of democratically elected
governments around the world.
http://archive.democrats.com/view2.cfm?id=9099
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