I can’t sleep. I took two sleeping pills. They didn’t work. I can’t take any more, because I’m also using heart medicine. I tried playing internet poker, but I can’t focus. Right now there is nothing I can do. I have to wait till after the speech, which is at about lunch time here on the West coast. After that I have the meeting with the former police officer.
There is something I wanted to say a long time ago, but I didn’t have the time, because of my visit to Asia.
I would like to offer my deepest condolences to the family of my close friend and former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri. His death was a shock to me. I was horrified. I know exactly who did it and why. More about that later.
I called his family to tell them how shocked I was. I wanted to be present at the funeral, but the secret service vetoed that idea. It wasn’t safe, especially not with Hezbollah still armed to the teeth.
Mr. Hariri, lovingly called Mr. Lebanon by his fellow countrymen, was the driving force behind the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war. Lately he was also the driving force behind the movement to ask the Syrian government to pull its soldiers and secret service agents out of Lebanon.
That’s the reason the Syrians killed him. If Syria has to pull out of Lebanon, it will be pretty much encircled by enemy states. NATO member Turkey to the north, American troops in Iraq to the East, pro-American Jordan to the south (By the way Syria is occupying a large amount of Jordanian land, which King Abdullah wants back) and Israel to the south west.
The Syrian government killed Rafiq Hariri, because they are afraid that Lebanon would not just be sovereign if they pulled out their forces, but might in time be dominated by another power, be it Israel or the US, which is more likely.
Another reason is strategic depth. The capital of Syria is just a few miles from the border of Lebanon. And also just a few miles away from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Which is probably the reason Israel chose to occupy the Golan Heights. Standing on the mountains of the Golan Heights you can see Damascus in the distance. The Syrians know this. It’s a great deterrent against any Syrian adventurism.
This is the reason the Syrian government always uses the Hezbollah, a Lebanese group to attack Israel instead of attacking Israel itself.
Aside from a national defense dimension there is also the economic dimension. Syria has a hybrid half communist, half capitalist economic system. Syria is bankrupt and has been ever since the end of the Soviet Union. Without the economic power of Lebanon, Syria will fall apart economically.
Syria is also under economic sanctions by the US. Lebanon isn’t, so products Syria needs are bought by Lebanon, then transferred to Syria. There are also one million Syrians working in Lebanon. If they have to go back to Syria, Syria will see a lot of social problems with these unemployed young men.
In other words, without Lebanon, Syria will be boxed in from a military point of view and an economic point of view. Syria without Lebanon would be weak and exposed.
From the Syrian’s point of view Rafiq Hariri had to die, because he wanted them to leave. And he as a billionaire had the clout to gather international support for this idea. He was the one who asked the US and France to support United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls upon Syria to leave Lebanon.
Some US commentators say the Hariri murder might have been organized by Syria’s old guard without the knowledge of Syria’s young, inexperienced president Bashar Assad. This is an old myth dictators create to deflect responsibility.
Go back into history and you will see texts in old Roman books saying, the emperor had raised taxes for instance and the population, who didn’t want or dare attack the emperor for his mistake, they would say the emperor’s underlings had made the mistake without the emperor knowing.
I read books in which Germans, whose family members had been hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazi’s, said “If only Herr Hitler knew about this situation, he’d do something about it”. Well Herr Hitler knew about it and had actually ordered it.
It’s an old trick. The dictator can make mistakes and deflects taking responsibility by giving the impression he isn’t his own man and the population can criticize the dictator’s policies without criticizing him personally.
Bashar Assad ordered the death of Rafiq Hariri. Bashar Assad is in control of Syria.
People in the media should stop making up infantile excuses by saying the real power behind Bashar Assad killed Hariri. Assad is the power.
There are also people, who think you need to give Bashar Assad incentives to behave more responsibly, to make him stop supporting terrorists in Lebanon and Israel. This is nonsense. It took me almost eight years to understand that our way of thinking is not their way of thinking. Their way, I mean a country’s dictator’s way of thinking.
A dictator wants to stay in power. That’s all. A dictator doesn’t care about his population, war, peace. He only wants to stay in power. Everything else is negotiable.
You have to understand the Syrian tyranny. Syria’s president Bashar Assad belongs to a minority religious sect called the Alawis, a sub-group of Islam. The top government and army officials belong to the same sect, which only 10 percent of Syria belongs to. In other words 10 percent of the population is lording over the 80 percent of Syrians, who are Sunni Muslims.
Syria can not be a normal country, because that would mean, the minority Alawis giving up power to the vast majority of Sunnis. This is the reason, why Syria has to be always in a state of turmoil if Bashar Assad and his cronies want to stay in power.
As long as there is an external enemy, like Israel occupying the Golan Heights, as long as there is Turkey “occupying” according to Syria the province of Hatay, the Biblical Antioch, there are external enemies, which focus the majority populations’ attention on these external enemies.
Were these external enemies to disappear, the majority would have the time to consider their own plight. That is a dictator’s worst nightmare, because thinking about a problem and thinking about ways to solve the problem are very closely connected. This is the reason a minority government like Bashar Assad’s Syrian dictatorship needs chaos and turmoil to exist. It doesn’t want peace with its neighbors. It doesn’t want its people to be prosperous and content and have time to think about their situation.
The only way to stop Syria from being a constant threat and stop them from spreading chaos is to topple the minority government of Bashar Assad and let the majority of Syrians rule.
President Bush did this in Iraq and now that the majority Shia are in power, Iraq is looking inwards, trying to make the lives of its people better. That is what democracies do, they look inward instead of threatening their neighbors, the United States or Israel or the oil supply and with that the world economy. Majority rule means peace. Minority rule, like Bashar Assad’s dictatorship means chaos, terrorism and war.
Bill Clinton Daily Diary
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Bashar Assad ordered the death of Rafiq Hariri (Bill Clinton )
People in the media should stop making up infantile excuses by saying the real power behind Bashar Assad killed Hariri. Assad is the power
I can’t sleep. I took two sleeping pills. They didn’t work. I can’t take any more, because I’m also using heart medicine. I tried playing internet poker, but I can’t focus. Right now there is nothing I can do. I have to wait till after the speech, which is at about lunch time here on the West coast. After that I have the meeting with the former police officer.
There is something I wanted to say a long time ago, but I didn’t have the time, because of my visit to Asia.
I would like to offer my deepest condolences to the family of my close friend and former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri. His death was a shock to me. I was horrified. I know exactly who did it and why. More about that later.
I called his family to tell them how shocked I was. I wanted to be present at the funeral, but the secret service vetoed that idea. It wasn’t safe, especially not with Hezbollah still armed to the teeth.
Mr. Hariri, lovingly called Mr. Lebanon by his fellow countrymen, was the driving force behind the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war. Lately he was also the driving force behind the movement to ask the Syrian government to pull its soldiers and secret service agents out of Lebanon.
That’s the reason the Syrians killed him. If Syria has to pull out of Lebanon, it will be pretty much encircled by enemy states. NATO member Turkey to the north, American troops in Iraq to the East, pro-American Jordan to the south (By the way Syria is occupying a large amount of Jordanian land, which King Abdullah wants back) and Israel to the south west.
The Syrian government killed Rafiq Hariri, because they are afraid that Lebanon would not just be sovereign if they pulled out their forces, but might in time be dominated by another power, be it Israel or the US, which is more likely.
Another reason is strategic depth. The capital of Syria is just a few miles from the border of Lebanon. And also just a few miles away from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Which is probably the reason Israel chose to occupy the Golan Heights. Standing on the mountains of the Golan Heights you can see Damascus in the distance. The Syrians know this. It’s a great deterrent against any Syrian adventurism.
This is the reason the Syrian government always uses the Hezbollah, a Lebanese group to attack Israel instead of attacking Israel itself.
Aside from a national defense dimension there is also the economic dimension. Syria has a hybrid half communist, half capitalist economic system. Syria is bankrupt and has been ever since the end of the Soviet Union. Without the economic power of Lebanon, Syria will fall apart economically.
Syria is also under economic sanctions by the US. Lebanon isn’t, so products Syria needs are bought by Lebanon, then transferred to Syria. There are also one million Syrians working in Lebanon. If they have to go back to Syria, Syria will see a lot of social problems with these unemployed young men.
In other words, without Lebanon, Syria will be boxed in from a military point of view and an economic point of view. Syria without Lebanon would be weak and exposed.
From the Syrian’s point of view Rafiq Hariri had to die, because he wanted them to leave. And he as a billionaire had the clout to gather international support for this idea. He was the one who asked the US and France to support United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls upon Syria to leave Lebanon.
Some US commentators say the Hariri murder might have been organized by Syria’s old guard without the knowledge of Syria’s young, inexperienced president Bashar Assad. This is an old myth dictators create to deflect responsibility.
Go back into history and you will see texts in old Roman books saying, the emperor had raised taxes for instance and the population, who didn’t want or dare attack the emperor for his mistake, they would say the emperor’s underlings had made the mistake without the emperor knowing.
I read books in which Germans, whose family members had been hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazi’s, said “If only Herr Hitler knew about this situation, he’d do something about it”. Well Herr Hitler knew about it and had actually ordered it.
It’s an old trick. The dictator can make mistakes and deflects taking responsibility by giving the impression he isn’t his own man and the population can criticize the dictator’s policies without criticizing him personally.
Bashar Assad ordered the death of Rafiq Hariri. Bashar Assad is in control of Syria.
People in the media should stop making up infantile excuses by saying the real power behind Bashar Assad killed Hariri. Assad is the power.
There are also people, who think you need to give Bashar Assad incentives to behave more responsibly, to make him stop supporting terrorists in Lebanon and Israel. This is nonsense. It took me almost eight years to understand that our way of thinking is not their way of thinking. Their way, I mean a country’s dictator’s way of thinking.
A dictator wants to stay in power. That’s all. A dictator doesn’t care about his population, war, peace. He only wants to stay in power. Everything else is negotiable.
You have to understand the Syrian tyranny. Syria’s president Bashar Assad belongs to a minority religious sect called the Alawis, a sub-group of Islam. The top government and army officials belong to the same sect, which only 10 percent of Syria belongs to. In other words 10 percent of the population is lording over the 80 percent of Syrians, who are Sunni Muslims.
Syria can not be a normal country, because that would mean, the minority Alawis giving up power to the vast majority of Sunnis. This is the reason, why Syria has to be always in a state of turmoil if Bashar Assad and his cronies want to stay in power.
As long as there is an external enemy, like Israel occupying the Golan Heights, as long as there is Turkey “occupying” according to Syria the province of Hatay, the Biblical Antioch, there are external enemies, which focus the majority populations’ attention on these external enemies.
Were these external enemies to disappear, the majority would have the time to consider their own plight. That is a dictator’s worst nightmare, because thinking about a problem and thinking about ways to solve the problem are very closely connected. This is the reason a minority government like Bashar Assad’s Syrian dictatorship needs chaos and turmoil to exist. It doesn’t want peace with its neighbors. It doesn’t want its people to be prosperous and content and have time to think about their situation.
The only way to stop Syria from being a constant threat and stop them from spreading chaos is to topple the minority government of Bashar Assad and let the majority of Syrians rule.
President Bush did this in Iraq and now that the majority Shia are in power, Iraq is looking inwards, trying to make the lives of its people better. That is what democracies do, they look inward instead of threatening their neighbors, the United States or Israel or the oil supply and with that the world economy. Majority rule means peace. Minority rule, like Bashar Assad’s dictatorship means chaos, terrorism and war.
Bill Clinton Daily Diary
Author: Mark Dameli
Link: billclintondailydiary.blogspot.com/
Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 05:46 AM
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Comments
Disinfo
Now I'm certain you are on the other side.
With the enemy.
The Syrians didn't kill him and I think you know it.
Only the Israelis and the Americans could have benifited from this event which has 'western intelligence' all over it.
No one is so stupid to believe that this very popular man was killed by his friends, and not his enemies.
Got your number now, so I will treat you as yet another, more refined agent.
Don't forget your heart medicine.
Author: Sheepdog
Link:
Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 05:58 AM
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U.N. report points finger at Syria
A U.N. mission has recommended a new international investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's ex-Premier Rafik Hariri, charging the Lebanese authorities had bungled and systematically manipulated the on-the-scene probe at a waterfront resort in downtown Beirut Feb. 14.
But it warned that even an international investigation would be futile if the current commanders of the security forces in Lebanon remain in their posts, charging them with dereliction of duty in connection with Hariri's murder.
The report pointed a finger at Syria although stopped short of openly accusing the Assad regime of involvement in the killing, noting, instead, that Damascus was behind the political tension and weak security that led to Hariri's death with 19 other people, including six bodyguards.
"The government of Syria bears primary responsibility for the political tension that preceded the assassination," said the report from a fact-finding mission led by deputy Irish police commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, which spent a month in Beirut probing the murder.
"Clearly, Mr. Hariri's assassination took place on the backdrop of his power struggle with Syria, regardless of who carried out the assassination and with what aim," the report said.
It said the blast which shredded Hariri's motorcade as it drove by a beachside near the St. George bomb-scarred hotel was probably caused by a car-bomb rigged with 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of TNT.
"It is clear that the assassination took place in a political and security context marked by an acute polarization around the Syrian influence in Lebanon, and a failure of the Lebanese state to provide adequate protection," it said.
"There was a distinct lack of commitment on the part of the Lebanese authorities to investigate the crime effectively," it said, claiming there may have even been illegal manipulation of some evidence.
"The manner in which this element of the investigation was carried out displays at least gross negligence, possibly accompanied by criminal actions for which those responsible should be made accountable," it said.
Lebanese security services need new leadership and the proposed international probe to uncover Hariri's killers could fail if the same security bosses remained in place, the report said.
Opposition leaders in Lebanon are demanding the ouster of State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum plus the commanding generals of the nation's main security services, blaming them outright for Hariri's tragic death. They were also accused of manufacturing alibis and inventing scapegoats to absolve Syria from guilt.
In addition to the "distinct lack of commitment," the report said the Lebanese probe was not carried out "in accordance with acceptable international standards."
It detailed a host of flaws, including the disappearance of crucial evidence and tampering with the scene of the blast. Parts of a pickup truck were brought to the scene, placed in the crater and photographed as evidence, it said.
The report said investigative judges in Beirut had no control over the probe and even faulted police for not turning off a water main that flooded the blast crater and washed away vital evidence.
Studying the aftermath of the bombing, Fitzgerald's team also cast serious doubts on the legitimacy of a suspect in the bombing, a Palestinian named Ahmed Abu Adas, and a group that claimed responsibility, the little-known Support and Jihad in Syria and Lebanon.
Abu Adas did not possibly possess the skill, the equipment and the expertise to stage such an assassination operation, the report said.
Fitzgerald also faulted Syria for interfering in the governing of Lebanon "in a heavy-handed and inflexible manner." He said his investigators also received testimony that Syrian President Bashar Assad had threatened Hariri and leading opposition figure Walid Jumblat with physical harm.(AFP)
Author: SAM
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Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 06:58 AM
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now for another viewpoint
March -11, 2005—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.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/031105Madsen/031105madsen.html It smelled like western intelligence from the beginning.
Author: Sheepdog
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Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 10:37 AM
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madsen, heh
he aint the best roadmap around.
Author: baconburger
Link:
Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 11:10 AM
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another viewpoint
-The UN's Irish, Egyptian and Moroccan investigation team has now been joined by three Swiss bomb experts following the discovery that many of the smashed vehicles in Hariri's convoy were moved from the scene of the massacre only hours afterwards - and before there was time for an independent investigation. Yesterday, frogmen were sent into the sea off the Beirut Corniche to recover the wreckage of the one car in the Hariri convoy that was not taken away by the authorities because it was blasted over a hotel wall into the Mediterranean by the force of the explosion. If they successfully recover parts of the vehicle, they may be able to discover the nature of the explosives. First reports that Hariri was killed by a car bomb are now being challenged by evidence that the explosives - estimated at 600kg - could have been buried beneath the seafront avenue.-
http://www.newsgateway.ca/Hariri_assassination.htm I like the way the oppisition is keeping on this, so I have a bunch of different links to educate the reader.
Author: Sheepdog
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Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 11:18 AM
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fresca
Sheepdog's blaming the Jews again.
Our own resident racist schizophrenic.
Author: imagine that
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Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 01:02 PM
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no he's not
Sheepdog is sugesting that the Mossad did it.
Are all jews members of the Mossad? No. As all americans are not members of the CIA. And we should all know, they seem to favor assassination for their brand of terrorism.
Syria had nothing to gain from this act.
Israel and the CIA does. 'nuf said.
Author: reader
Link:
Posted: Monday March 28, 2005 01:15 PM
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Israeli Terrorism Against Lebanese
TheIsraeli forces have been committing all types of terrorism against the Lebanese people assassinating their leaders and massacring civilians for the past three decades. Israelis have formed, trained and sponsored terrorist groups that carried terrorist attacks against the Lebanese people, other Arab countries and Western interests in Lebanon and abroad.
Here is a part of what the Israeli Zionist regime have been committing in occupied Lebanon: