Alarming

I'm very, very alarmed over the assasination of Rafik Hariri, primarily because of the impetus it gives US hawks eager to expand the "War on Terror." Of course I had to watch Fox this afternoon just to hear what they were saying, and sure enough there was a blowhard general being interviewed who said we should send "a message" to both Iran and Syria right now by launching airstrikes, including bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles, and there was much sneering over the Iranian/Syrian "accord" today. David Asman--as usual "fair and balanced," was in accord that an aerial assault would "get their attention."

Can we clean up one mess before starting another?

Funny, with the anti-Syrian rhetoric overheating, I seem unable to find many mainstream media mentions of the fact that the US has been shipping prisoners to Syria where they can be tortured "legally." I seem to recall Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defending this policy at his confirmation hearings as well.

And yet we have to overthrow the Syrian regime because they torture and support terror? It seems like we've got some 'splainin' to do ourselves.

Five or ten years from now we'll find out who actually blew up Harari, much as we found out later the Vincennes story; was it the new Pentagon covert ops team? Was it bin Laden trying to provoke us into widening the war? Was it a kabal of Isreali extremists? Who the fuck knows? The CIA has been involved in car bomb assassinations before--most notably in Beirut when they hoped to whack Fadlallah but missed. The Syrians, widely blamed for the incident, almost certainly have the least to gain from it, but they may have done it anyway.