Is Hugo Chavez suffering from delusional paranoia?

Typical headline from the corporate media: "Hugo Chavez Nuttily Claims the U.S. Gives South American Leaders Cancer". The article explains:

Yep, it's another controversial statement from Hugo Chavez -- but he really seems to dial up the Nut-O-Meter to 11 with this cancer conspiracy theory. Late yesterday Chavez decided to go on national TV and drop the mild suggestion (not an outright allegation, he insists!) that the U.S. maybe, just maybe, gave five current and former South American heads of state cancer. "It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now ... I don't know. I'm just reflecting," Chavez said, according to Reuters. "But this is very, very, very strange ... it's a bit difficult to explain this, to reason it, including using the law of probabilities." Cancer ray guns from space? Carcinogenic handshakes? Chavez's tin-foiled tale comes off of Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez cancer diagnosis being made public yesterday. She, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's ex-leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Chavez himself have all recently been diagnosed.   So, five is trend. That's all the science you need for a conspiracy theory. It couldn't possibily have anything to do with those leaders' average age being 61

Hahaha, laughable, isn't it?

Well, yes and no.  That five out of twenty Latin American leaders would have cancer at the same time is statistically irrelevant, if only because the of very small overall total (20).  I am fairly sure that the laws of probabilities have nothing at all to say about such a 'statistic'.

However, there is no need to talk about "cancer ray guns from space" or "carcinogenic handshakes".  Let me remind you of a few undeniable facts:

Fact: Both Apartheid South Africa and Israel have worked on ethnic bioweapons (see here and here).  In this case, the purpose of the weapons is to target specific ethnic groups, such as Black South Africans or non-Jews.  This is, in fact, harder to do than to target one specific individual.

Fact: The Russians have openly admitted that they killed the notorious Wahabi terrorist Ibn Al-Khattab by using a special poisoned letter whose toxic agent was specifically coded to harm only somebody with Khattab's DNA.  Many other people touched the letter and suffered no harm at all while Khattab died with 24 hours of touching the poisoned letter.

Fact: According to Cuban officials, the CIA attempted to kill Fidel Castro a total of 638 times.  This figure is probably bloated, but it is safe to assume that such attempts were numerous indeed.

Fact: the list of individuals assassinated by the CIA worldwide is too long to be compiled, but from 1967-1972 Phoenix Program to the quasi-simultaneous 1981 murders of Panamanian President Omar Torrijos and Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldós Aguilera, the CIA has a long history of assassinations of foreign leaders and an even longer history of overthrowing regimes it does not approve of.

Fact: Venezuela is, along with Cuba, Iran and the DPRK, one of the few countries deserving a special "task force" headed by a special "mission manager" officially tasked with "collective timely intelligence" independently of the CIA or the Department of State.

So what is there to laugh about?   The USA have the means, motive and opportunity and they have a long history of doing exactly that in similar circumstances.

None of this proves anything, of course.  In fact, if the USA is targeting Latin American leaders with genetic bioweapons this would be extremely hard to prove.  And one could even argue that the way Hugo Chavez has recently accumulated mistake after mistake does more damage to the Bolivarian Revolution and the ideals of "Chavismo" then any CIA plot (I personally get emails from some hard left-anachists friends who live in Venezuela who are totally disgusted by Chavez almost every week).

All I am saying is that Chavez's hypothesis (it's not even a theory) is not laughable or ridiculous at face value.  No, Hugo Chavez is not suffering from delusional paranoia and that there is no reason to ridicule Chavez over this statement. 

The Saker

Dubai police reveal more details about Mossad operation

Gulf News reports:

The assassins of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud Al Mabhouh, fled to the US and Israel after stops in Europe and Asia, the Dubai Police chief said on Sunday.

In the latest revelation on the killing, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told Gulf News: "Some of them [the killers] went to America and others to Israel."

Earlier, the police said that the assassins travelled to Europe and Asia, but their final destinations were not revealed.

Dahi had previously told Gulf News it would be “close to impossible” to arrest the suspects if they were found to be in Israel.

(click on attached photo for details of the Mossad team)

Meanwhile, preliminary forensic results have revealed that a drug was used to sedate Al Mabhouh before he was suffocated to death, Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Deputy Commandant of Dubai Police, said on Sunday.

He told a press conference that succinylcholine, also known as suxamethoniumchloride, was injected into his skin, traces of which were found on his leg.
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Addendum: in the meanwhile, check out the kind of nonsense the Israelis are counting on to improve the image of their universally despised country:

Hitman Says was Offered $25 Million to Kill Chavez

September 26th 2009, by Al Jazeera / Eva Golinger via Venezuela Analysis

During a recent news segment, Al Jazeera aired a video obtained from inside Colombia of an interview conducted by police investigators of incarcerated Colombian paramilitary assassin Geovanny Velasquéz Zambrano. During the interview, obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, the Colombian paramilitary confirmed that a "wealthy Venezuelan politician" named Manuel Rosales, offered him $25 million to assassinate President Chávez by any means. The conversation with Rosales took place at a secret meeting in 1999 with several Colombian paramilitary leaders. Rosales said that he personally would be in charge of the plan to assassinate President Chávez, though the money would come from several sources. The Colombian paramilitary forces involved in the assassination attempt first went for training in Catamumbo, on the border with Venezuela. But in 2004, approximately 100 Colombian paramilitary forces were detained in a farm outside of Caracas belonging to an opposition leader, Robert Alonso, who has often called for the violent overthrow of the Chávez administration. The Colombians were detained and accused of a plot to assassinate the President. They were found with military uniforms, weapons and sufficient ammunition to cause serious damage in the country. Robert Alonso, a Cuban-Venezuelan and brother of the famous actress Maria Conchita Alonso, fled in exile to Miami, where he has remained ever since, continuing to plot violently against President Chávez.

On the video aired by Al Jazeera, the Colombian paramilitary confirms that currently there are around 2500 Colombian paramilitary forces inside Venezuela with the objective of assassinating President Chávez and destabilizing the country.

Although assassination attempts against President Chávez have been denounced on several occasions, the international press and Venezuelan opposition have largely ridiculed such claims. Nevertheless, the presence of Colombian paramilitary members inside Venezuela is largely well known. This new revelation, from the mouth of one of the participants, confirms what Venezuela has been denouncing for some time: Colombia has been infiltrating paramilitary forces into the country to destabilize, from the inside, and assassinate the President, when and where possible. This information also confirms that Manuel Rosales did not flee Venezuela and request political asylum in Peru because he was facing corruption charges, but rather because he feared the truth would come out one day about his participation in a plot to assassinate the President. With this information, the Venezuelan government has the right to request Rosales' extradition from Peru, since political asylum cannot be granted to criminals.

See the original Al Jazeera segment here:

Blood and Champagne

by Uri Avnery

EVERY PEOPLE elevate the profession in which they excel.

If a person in the street were asked to name the area of enterprise in which we Israelis excel, his answer would probably be: Hi-Tech. And indeed, in this area we have recorded some impressive achievements. It seems as if hardly a day passes without an Israeli start-up company that was born in a garage being sold for hundreds of millions. Little Israel is one of the major hi-tech powers in the world.

But the profession in which Israel is not only one of the biggest, but the unchallenged Numero Uno is: liquidations.

This week this was proven once again. The Hebrew verb "lekhassel" - liquidate - in all its grammatical forms, currently dominates our public discourse. Respected professors debate with academic solemnity when to "liquidate" and whom. Used generals discuss with professional zeal the technicalities of "liquidation", its rules and methods. Shrewd politicians compete with each other about the number and status of the candidates for "liquidation".


INDEED, FOR a long time now there has not been such an orgy of jubilation and self-congratulation in the Israeli media as there was this week. Every reporter, every commentator, every political hack, every transient celeb interviewed on TV, on the radio and in the newspapers, was radiant with pride. We have done it! We have succeeded! We have "liquidated" Imad Mughniyeh!

He was a "terrorist". And not just a terrorist, a master terrorist! An arch-terrorist! The very king of terrorists! From hour to hour his stature grew, reaching gigantic proportions. Compared to him, Osama Bin-Laden is a mere beginner. The list of his exploits grew from news report to news report, from headline to headline.

There is and never has been anyone like him. For years he has kept out of sight. But our good boys - many, many good boys - have not neglected him for a moment. They worked day and night, weeks and months, years and decades, in order to trace him. They "knew him better than his friends, better than he knew himself" (verbatim quote from a respected Haaretz commentator, gloating like all his colleagues).

True, one killjoy Western commentator argued on Aljazeera that Mughniyeh had dropped from sight because he had ceased to be important, that his great days as a terrorist were in the 80s and 90s, when he hijacked a plane and brought down the Marine headquarters in Beirut and Israeli institutions abroad. Since Hizbullah has turned into a state-within-the-state, with a kind of regular army, he had - according to this version - outlived his usefulness.

But what the hell. Mughniyeh-the-person has disappeared, and Mughniyeh-the-legend has taken his place, a world-embracing mythological terrorist, who has long been marked as "a Son of Death" (i.e. a person to be killed) as declared on TV by another out-of-use general. His "liquidation" was a huge, almost supra-natural, achievement, much more important than Lebanon War II, in which we were not so very successful. The "liquidation" equals at least the glorious Entebbe exploit, if not more.

True, the Holy Book enjoins us: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth / Lest the Lord see it and it displeases him." (Proverbs 24:17) But this was not just any enemy, it was a super-super-enemy, and therefore the Lord will certainly excuse us for dancing with joy from talk-show to talk-show, from issue to issue, from speech to speech, as long as we do not distribute candies in the street - even if the Israeli government denies feebly that we were the ones who "liquidated" the man.


AS CHANCE would have it, the "liquidation" was carried out only a few days after I wrote an article about the inability of occupying powers to understand the inner logic of resistance organizations. Mughniyeh's "liquidation" is an outstanding example of this. (Of course, Israel gave up its occupation of South Lebanon some years ago, but the relationship between the parties has remained as it was.)

In the eyes of the Israeli leadership, the "liquidation" was a huge success. We have "cut off the head of the serpent" (another headline from Haaretz). We have inflicted on Hizbullah immense damage, so much that it cannot be repaired. "This is not revenge but prevention", as another of the guided reporters (Haaretz again) declared. This is such an important achievement, that it outweighs the inevitable revenge, whatever the number of victims-to-be.

In the eyes of Hizbullah, thing look quite different. The organization has acquired another precious asset: a national hero, whose name fills the air from Iran to Morocco. The "liquidated" Mughniyeh is worth more than the live Mughniyeh, irrespective of what his real status may have been at the end of his life.

Enough to remember what happened here in 1942, when the British "liquidated" Abraham Stern (a.k.a. Ya'ir): from his blood the Lehi organization (a.k.a. Stern Gang) was born and became perhaps the most efficient terrorist organization of the 20th century.

Therefore, Hizbullah has no interest at all in belittling the status of the liquidatee. On the contrary, Hassan Nasrallah, exactly like Ehud Olmert, has every interest in blowing up his stature to huge proportions.

If Hizbullah has lately been far from the all-Arab spotlight, it is now back with a bang. Almost every Arab station devoted hours to "the brother the martyr the commander Imad Mughniyeh al-Hajj Raduan".

In the struggle for Lebanon - the main battle that occupies Nasrallah - the organization has scored a great advantage. Multitudes joined the funeral, overshadowing the almost simultaneous memorial parade for his adversary, Rafiq al-Hariri. In his speech, Nasrallah described his opponents contemptuously as accomplices to the murder of the hero, despicable collaborators of Israel and the United States, and called upon them to leave the house and move to Tel Aviv or New York. He has gone up another notch in his struggle for domination of the Land of the Cedars.

And the main thing: the anger about the murder and the pride in the martyr will inspire another generation of youngsters, who will be ready to die for Allah and Nasrallah. The more Israeli propaganda enlarges the proportions of Mughniyeh, the more young Shiites will be inspired to follow his example.

The career of the man himself is interesting in this respect. When he was born in a Shiite village in South Lebanon, the Shiites there were a despised, downtrodden and impotent community. He joined the Palestinian Fatah organization, which dominated South Lebanon at the time, eventually becoming one of Yasser Arafat's bodyguards (I may even have seen him when I met Arafat in Beirut). But when Israel succeeded in driving the Fatah forces out of South Lebanon, Mughniyeh stayed behind and joined Hizbullah, the new fighting force that had sprung up as a direct result of the Israeli occupation.


ISRAEL NOW RESEMBLES the person whose neighbor overhead has dropped one boot on the floor, and who is waiting for the second boot to fall.

Everybody knows that there will be revenge. Nasrallah has promised this, adding that it could take place anywhere in the world. For a long time already, people in Israel believe Nasrallah much more than Olmert.

Israeli security organs are issuing dire warnings for people going abroad - to be on guard at every moment, not to be conspicuous, not to congregate with other Israelis, not to accept unusual invitations, etc. The media have magnified these warnings to the point of hysteria. In the Israeli embassies, security has been tightened. On the Northern border, too, an alert has been sounded - just a few days after Olmert boasted in the Knesset that, as a result of the war, the Northern border is now quieter than ever before.

Such worries are far from baseless. All the past "liquidations" of this kind have brought with them dire consequences:

- The classic example is, of course, the "liquidation" of Nasrallah's predecessor, Abbas Mussawi. He was killed in South Lebanon in 1992 by Apache gunships. All of Israel rejoiced. Then, too, the Champagne was flowing. In revenge, Hizbullah blew up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, as well as the Jewish community center there. The planner was, it is now alleged, Imad Mughniyeh. More than a hundred people perished. The main result: instead of the rather grey Mussawi, the sophisticated, masterly Nasrallah took over.

- Before that, Golda Meir ordered a series of "liquidations" to revenge the tragedy of the Israeli athletes in Munich (most of whom were actually killed by the inept German police trying to prevent their being flown to Algeria as hostages). Not one of the "liquidated" had anything to do with the outrage itself. They were PLO diplomatic representatives, sitting ducks in their offices. The matter is described at length in Stephen Spielberg's kitschy film "Munich". The result: the PLO became stronger and turned into a state-in-the-making, Yasser Arafat eventually returned to Palestine.

- The "liquidation" of Yahyah Ayyash in Gaza in 1996 resembles the Mughniyeh affair. It was carried out by means of a booby-trapped cellular telephone. Ayyash's dimensions, too, were blown up to giant proportions, so that he had become a legend already in his own lifetime. The nickname "the engineer" was attached to him because he prepared the explosive devices used by Hamas. Shimon Peres, who had succeeded to the Prime Ministership after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, believed that the "liquidation" would lend him huge popularity and get him re-elected. The opposite happened: Hamas reacted with a series of sensational suicide-bombings and brought Binyamin Netanyahu to power.

- Fathi Shikaki, head of Islamic Jihad, was "liquidated" in 1995 by a bicyclist who shot him down in a Malta street. The small organization was not eradicated, but on the contrary grew through its revenge actions. Today it is the group which is launching the Qassams at Sderot.

- Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al was actually being "liquidated" in a street in Amman by the injection of poison. The act was exposed and its perpetrators identified and a furious King Hussein compelled Israel to provide the antidote that saved his life. The "liquidators" were allowed to go home in return for the release of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmad Yassin from Israeli prison. As a result, Mash'al was promoted and is now the senior political leader of Hamas.

- Sheik Yassin himself, a paraplegic, was "liquidated" by attack helicopters while leaving a mosque after prayer. A previous attempt by bombing his home had failed. The sheik became a martyr in the eyes of the entire Arab world, and has served since as an inspiration for hundreds of Hamas attacks.


THE COMMON denominator of all these and many other actions is that they did not harm the organizations of the "liquidatees", but boomeranged. And all of them brought in their wake grievous revenge attacks.

The decision to carry out a "liquidation" resembles the decision that was taken to start the Second Lebanon War: not one of the deciders gives a damn for the suffering of the civilian population that inevitably falls victim to the revenge.

Why, then, are the "liquidations" carried out?

The response of one of the generals who was asked this question: "There is no unequivocal answer to this."

These words are dripping with Chutzpa: how can one decide on such an action when there is no unequivocal answer to the question of its being worth the price?

I suspect that the real reason is both political and psychological. Political, because it is always popular. After every "liquidation", there is much jubilation. When the revenge arrives, the public (and the media) do not see the connection between the"liquidation" and the response. Each is seen separately. Few people have the time and the inclination to think about it, when everybody is burning with fury about the latest murderous attack.

In the present situation, there is an additional political motivation: the army has no answer to the Qassams, nor has it any desire to get enmeshed in the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, with all the expected casualties. A sensational "liquidation" is a simple alternative.

The psychological reason is also clear: it is satisfying. True, the "liquidation" - as the word shows - is more appropriate for the underworld than for the security organs of a state. But it is a challenging and complex task, as in a Mafia film, which gives much satisfaction to the "liquidators". Ehud Barak, for example, was a liquidator from the start of his military career. When the "liquidation" ends in success, the executioners can raise glasses of champagne.

A mixture of blood, champagne and folly is an intoxicating but toxic cocktail.

Syria denies joint Syria/Iran/Hezbollah investigation

From the Palestinian Pundit blog:

"DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria denied Iranian claims that the two countries would conduct a joint investigation into the assassination of a top Hezbollah commander, the Syrian state news agency reported.

Imad Mughniyeh, who was one of the world's most wanted fugitives, was killed in a car bomb in the Syrian capital Tuesday night. He was accused of masterminding attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheik Attar announced the joint probe on Friday, according to Iran's official news agency.

But a Syrian official dismissed the report as "totally baseless" and said Damascus would conduct the investigation alone, Syria's state-run news agency reported late Friday. It did not name the official.....

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki met with senior Syrian officials in Damascus on Thursday and Friday to discuss Mughniyeh's assassination. Attar said Friday that Iran and Syria agreed to the joint investigation during Mottaki's visit....."

***
This is rather interesting. Earlier it was announced that not only Iran, but also Hizbullah were involved in the investigation. For example Al-Jazeera reported this: Hezbollah security team in Syria.

It seems that the Syrian regime has something to hide; otherwise why not cooperate with Hizbullah and Iran?
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Commentary: ok, now things are getting clearer. Assad probably got a call from his bosses in Jerusalem or Washington and is now reneging on his promise. He must have received some security guarantees to take such a risky step and openly defy Iran and Hezbollah. From the sorry scumbag who sold out the PKK and Ocalan to the Turks such duplicity was to be expected: why not kill Mughniyah and backstab Hezbollah? Except that Mughniyah was not Ocalan and Hezbollah is not the PKK: Hezbollah can - and will - fight back and retaliate. Ditto for Iran. And if Assad really thinks that the Empire can help and protect him he is as stupid as he is duplicitous.

Analysis and Request for Comments: who is behind the assassinations campaign in Lebanon?

Introduction: the latest assassination - Al-Manar reports:

Two years to the day to a bombing that killed Lebanese journalist Jibran Tueini, an explosion occurred in the Baabda area east of Beirut and claimed the life of Brigadier General Francois Hajj who heads the Lebanese Army Operations department. Four others were killed, presumably soldiers. The army command issued a statement confirming that Hajj had been killed in the explosion. "This morning, the criminal hand targeted head of army operations Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj with a bomb as he drove in his car opposite Baabda municipality, which led to his death along with a number of soldiers, and wounded others," said the statement.

Hajj had headed the grounded operations at the Nahr el-Bared camp, which ended in September with the army defeating the Fatah al-Islam militants. Hajj was tipped to replace the army's top commander General Michel Sleiman, who is the frontrunner to become Lebanon's next president. According to retired army Brigadier General Walid Sukkariyeh, martyr Hajj had an honorable history of patriotism. He had refused to cooperate with the Israelis during their occupation of Lebanon. Israeli occupation forces had bombed his car in his southern town of Rmeish and expelled to Beirut. In the late 80's Hajj was fighting along then army General Michel Aoun against Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces. According to Sukkariyeh, martyr Hajj was concerned over a rise of power by the Lebanese Forces. "I fear control by the Lebanese Forces and take vengeance on us," retired Brigadier General Sukkariyeh quoted martyr Hajj as saying.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea had earlier predicted that assassinations in the country have not ended. He proposed the Lebanese Army changes its doctrine. Changing the army doctrine means that Israel would no longer become an enemy state.

Brigadier General Hajj's assassination comes amid heightened tension on the political level over a delay to elect a new head of state.

Heroes Never Die

Family and friends of martyr Hajj reacted with grief and horror in his southern hometown of Rmeish, vowing he would always be remembered as a 'hero'.
"My son is a hero and heroes never die, he will remain alive in our hearts," cried Kafa al-Aalam, the mother of Brigadier General Francois el-Hajj. The 79-year-old woman beat her head in grief as other black-clad women attempted to calm her.
"I heard that there was an explosion, so I called him on his mobile. He did not answer, then I saw on television that my Francois is dead," she said. "He was due to marry his son over Christmas, he will never have to joy to see his son getting married.
"May God crush the hearts of all those who have crushed mine at the holiday season," she added, as female relatives embraced portraits of the 54-year-old slain general.

Hajj's 35-year-old sister, Esperance, wept silently as she recalled her brother as a loving man committed to his troops. "He was a very loving person. Why did they kill him? Because he was a hero? Because he fought against the terrorists," she said. In a nearby house belonging to Hajj's uncle, male relatives sat silently in the living room as villagers filed through to present their condolences. The general last came to his hometown on Tuesday, as he accompanied army chief Michel Sleiman on a tour of army positions and UN peacekeeping bases in the south.

Hajj is married to Lody Andraos. They have their son Elie, 25, their daughters Racha, 22, and Jessica, 20.

Hezbollah and Michel Aoun condemn assassination

Hezbollah issued a statement condemning the assassination of army Brigadier General martyr Francois Hajj. The statement denounced the assassination as a criminal act that targets the military institution and its role in preserving peace in the country. "The assassination targets the army and its doctrine that stipulates resisting occupation and adhering to independence," the statement said. Hezbollah's statement called for solidarity with the Lebanese army and working consistently and constructively to establish political agreement to save Lebanon from narrow considerations. "We are facing a severe national loss given that the martyr had been playing a patriotic role. We call for uncovering the circumstances of this crime and punishing the perpetrators." The statement offered Hezbollah's condolences to the military institution and the families of the martyrs.

The Head of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc MP General Michel Aoun condemned the assassination of Brigadier General Francois Hajj and lashed out at Fouad Saniora's government and his interior minister Hasan Sabaa. Aoun said that Sabaa's term has been marred by more than 15 assassination cases, none of which have been solved. Aoun also criticized "political children" for releasing irresponsible statements and accusing this or that side of the assassination. "We are used to seeing a group exploiting a political crime locally and internationally every time such assassinations take place. Exploiting the crime and evading responsibilities signal a conspiracy between the beneficiary from the crime and the perpetrators, who could be the same person," the general said.

Aoun also criticized international security and intelligence bodies that are helping Lebanon solve previous crimes. "We have to know who is behind the ongoing obstruction especially that we were close to reaching an understanding to elect a president next Monday. We have doubts that those protecting us are the ones killing us. I do not want to limit my accusation to one side, however the circumstances of the crime lead us to believe that the this has been a protected crime."

When asked about the recent escalatory position by the head of the "majority" MP Saad Hariri upon his return from Saudi Arabia, Aoun said: "I felt pessimism when I heard those recent political stances." Hariri had threatened to "take steps that can speed up elections" and said in a statement: "We will not fail to take action if a president were not elected. We know what we have to do." General Aoun whose facial expressions reflected his deep regret and anger at the crime, offered his sincere condolences to the Lebanese army and the families of the martyrs.
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Commentary:

It is quite obvious that Lebanon is undergoing a determined destabilization campaign. Currently, nobody seems to know for sure who might be behind these assassinations, although the Western corporate media usually points the finger at some nebulous "Islamists" or Syrian elements. Let me confess here that I do not know either "who done it". Still, I think some rational guesses can be made on the traditional crime-solving basis of 1) opportunity and 2) motive. Let's take the main actors one by one.

Christian Falangists: they definitely had the means (opportunity) to do so and most of these assassinations happened in areas controlled by these Falangists. Did they have a motive? Possibly. They are loosing power not only to the popularity of Hezbollah, but more generally to the Muslim birth rates in Lebanon. Still, to organize such a campaign of assassination would entail finding accomplices inside the Falange and not getting caught. This would be, I guess, rather dangerous and very difficult.

Hezollah: they are, by far, the most formidable force in Lebanon. Not only are they the most powerful and well-trained military force in Lebanon, but they also have the most sophisticated and capable intelligence apparatus of the entire Middle-East. Could they pull off such an assassination campaign? Undeniably. Hezbollah has an extremely effective counter-intelligence branch and their operational security has never been compromised, in particular at the higher levels (as far as I know). Hezbollah could count on Iranian support, but really, they would not need it at all, at least not inside Lebanon. How about motive? I would argue that Hezbollah has everything to loose from engaging in such assassinations. Hezbollah takes great pride from the fact that it never turned its guns on other Lebanese factions (with the exception of a minor Hezbollah-Amal clash once which was immediately contained). If any proof was ever found of Hezbollah's participation in these murders it would loose one of its most potent propaganda tools: the argument that it is solely a liberation movement for all the Lebanese people. Lastly, Hezbollah has nothing to gain from destabilizing Lebanon precisely at a time when it is about to be dropped in its hand as a ripe fruit. No a party on the rise like Hezbollah would be crazy to mess things up right now.

Syria: It is hard to estimate whether Syria really still has the means to organize such a campaign but let us assume that it might. Was is certain is that Syria now is in a very tough spot following the Hariri murder. I personally do not believe that Syria was behind this murder at all, but even if it was, the skillful exploitation of the Hariri assassination by the anti-Syrian forces (lead by the USA) resulted in such hell to pay for Assad and his regime that it would appear highly unlikely that they would ask for more. On balance, I would wager that Syria had neither motive nor opportunity to engage is such a systematic campaign.

Israel: Israel has a less than stellar record on assassinations and it badly screwed up so many times that it is hard to imagine for me that they could pull off nine murders in two years without really screwing it up again. Motive? You betcha Israel does. Destabilizing Lebanon, in particular at a time of the rise of the power of Hezbollah, would be trademark Israeli style. They could hope that a weakened Lebanon would also weaken Hezbollah and that should a civil war result and Hezbollah come to power as a result of it they would have the perfect pretext to continue bombing and raiding, if not re-trying an land operation.

USA: The USA's record on assisinating people is arguably marginally better then Israel's, but that does not apply to Lebanon where the USA has never been able to do much better than to subcontract its murders to the Falangists. Since the USA is not able to define its own foreign policy in the Middle-East but simply parrots whatever the Likud tells them to say, we can simply assume that if Israel has a motive, so does the USA.

Al-Qaeda: It is often overlooked that Al-Qaeda is becoming more and more powerful in Lebanon, not only under its own name, but under the name of its local franchise Fatah-Al-Islam. In fact, Hajj was chief of operations when Lebanon's army fought eventually defeated Fatah al-Islam (and destroyed Nahr al-Bared in the process). Wahabi Sunnis have been active all over Lebanon, including in the north, Beirut and Sidon in the south. Al-Qaeda has a reputation for good operational security and it can probably act somewhat 'under the radar' of most Lebanese security services which are used to other threats and targets. Al-Qaeda can only draw on many highly trained operators to direct or assist local assets. As for motive, Al-Qaeda would benefit more than any other faction from chaos in Lebanon as it has zero political prospectives in a stable situation.

Others: there are other interests and forces in the Middle-East and Lebanon, but I simply see no basis upon which to conclude that any one of them would have the motive and opportunity wage such a high-risk and high-visibility campaign in Lebanon. Therefore I will not even look any further into other more exotic culprits, at least until somebody provides me with a plausible reason to do so.

For all these reasons I guess my guess is that either Al-Qaeda or Israel are behind this terror campaign with, however, a preference for the Al-Qaeda theory. It is, of course, rather paradoxical to state that Al-Qaeda and Israel have the same political interests in Lebanon, but that paradox is only superficial. In reality they are both external forces who only care about Lebanon insomuch as it is a playground for their power schemes. They also both know that they have everything to loose from a stable and democratic Lebanon and everything to gain from chaos or civil war.

I might well be wrong in my guesses and I would welcome any comments, criticisms or insights of this short analysis.

The Saker

Pakistani dictator escapes assassination attempt (again)

(Reuters) - Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's plane was fired on as it took off on Friday from a military airfield in Rawalpindi, an intelligence officer said.

Musharraf's plane arrived safely in the southwestern town of Turbat, where the president visited flood victims. The military initially denied there had been any attack.

General Musharraf came to power in a military coup in 1999 and enraged Pakistani militant groups by abandoning support for the Taliban harboring al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after al Qaeda's attacks on the United States in 2001.

Militants were further angered by his pursuit of peace with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Here are some facts about previous attempts to kill the Pakistani leader:

* Musharraf narrowly escaped an attempt to kill him on December 14, 2003, when a bomb blew up a bridge in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, next to the capital Islamabad, minutes after his motorcade passed it. He described in his autobiography how the blast caused his car to fly into the air.

* On December 25, 2003, Musharraf survived a second attempt on his life within two weeks when suicide truck bombs were driven into his convoy on the same road a few days later. The president's heavily damaged car made it through the carnage to reach his home, with blood on its bodywork. Fourteen people were killed in the attack.

* Pakistan's Supreme Court in September 2006 upheld death sentences handed down to 12 men, including soldiers and civilians, convicted of taking part in the two attempts on his life. A man named Islam Siddiqui was hanged in August 2005 after being convicted of taking part in one of the attempts.

* Pakistan's military has said no senior officers were involved and that the principal planners were Abu Faraj Farj al Liby, the so-called al Qaeda "number three" and Amjad Farooqi, a Pakistani militant. Farooqi was gunned down in 2004.

* Pakistani intelligence officials said in May 2005 that they had foiled a conspiracy to kill Musharraf with a series of arrests, including the capture of Liby.

* A Pakistani court in October 2003 convicted three Islamist militants of involvement in an assassination plot against Musharraf in April 2002, handing down 10-year jail terms to each of them. The militants belonged to the al-Almi faction of Harkat-ul Mujahideen, a group also blamed for masterminding a suicide attack outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi the same year in which 12 Pakistanis died. The anti-terrorism court said the men had plotted to kill Musharraf on his way to address a public rally in Karachi.