hariri update

* i havent been able to make sense of the haririkiri report. i cant find the report at the UN's website - praps cos it was goodfriday. it was sposed to be sent to the UNSC on thurs afternoon

* heres the nyt lede:

"A toughly worded United Nations report into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, concluded Thursday that heavy-handed Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs had created the polarizing tensions that led to his death and that a deeply flawed local investigation had obstructed efforts to find his killers."

but we dont get much useful information, and the article seems to be an exercise in obfuscation rather than illumination

"the government of Syria "bears primary responsibility for the political tension that preceded the assassination." It said Syria's interference in Lebanon was "heavy-handed and inflexible" which, combined with inept Lebanese security, was responsible for "political polarization" that "provided the backdrop" for the assassination."

i dont really know what that means.

and we are told:

" In what it called a case of "stark negligence," it noted that Mr. Hariri's security detail was cut to 8 people from 40 after he left office."

altho that seems kinda trite. its not difficult to imagine that a sitting president gets more security than an ex-president. and its not beyond the realm of possibility that a gazillionaire can afford his own security if he felt it appropriate.

and we are told that the crime scene was badly managed, which we've been told before - altho the emphasis seems to have changed:

" the crater created by the bomb was allowed to fill with water from a broken main, destroying evidence; people were permitted to move freely in and out of the crime scene and remove objects; and vehicles involved in the blast were removed, preventing proper ballistic analysis."

its not inconceivable that the explosion blew up the mains, and one would expect water would flow into the crater. thats what water does. the other stuff seems quite damning, altho they appear to have been de-emphasized - so we can only speculate at the mo... (which is mostly futile, but its all we've got at the mo)

as for destroying the crime scene, im reminded of the fact that the same thing happened at the wtc in nyc, where the stuff was shipped off to china for scrap...

and then we get this tantalizing sentence, nee paragraph.

"The report said the explosion had been caused by a ton of TNT, detonated most likely above ground."

which of course is the key... its not obvious how we can be sure that it was a ton of TNT if we arent sure whether it was subterranean or not. presumably the result is completely different if the tnt is buried - so its difficult to imagine being sure about one element, but not the other.

more to follow - im sure