mehlis report

The main conclusion of the Mehlis report:

“There is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate (Hariri) could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security official(s) and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services,"

"It is the Commission's view that the assassination on 14 February 2005 was carried out by a group with an extensive organization and considerable resources and capabilitie...The crime had been prepared over the course of several months. …Given the infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem, it would be difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge."

Alomg the same line of thinking...

Given the pervasive technical and human assets both the US and Israel have in Lebanon and in & around Damascus, is it conceivable that such an extensive operation could pass from planning to communicating (over mobile phones) to diabolic implementation over several months and by so multitude of conspirators, men and materiel, without anyone else ever getting a whiff of it?

The report did expose an intercept of a call between Berry ( Mr. X in the report) and Mr. Ghazali. Was that all that was intercepted?

It was widely known that many – including the French- had warned Hariri to take more precautions in recent months. He was adamant: “They don’t dare touch me” was his response even to the person charged with his security details. What was the source of his absolute confidence? Mohammed Al-Mashnouq (a confidan and a communication advisor of Hariri) is emphatic that, 4 months prior to the assassination, the U.S. had given Hariri an iron clad assurance that his life is not in danger. Has anybody misled Hariri? Did they bait the Syrians into their fateful blunder, as some would claim they baited Saddam into invading Kuwait? Was Hariri lured into false pretense of safety?

Or, in the run up to the assassination, did an interested party played on the siege mentality of the Syrians following the Iraq's invasion and fed them false reports of Hariri being in cohort with the enemies of Syria?