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  In December, one of Lebanon's most outspoken and respected political commentators and lawmakers Gibran Tueni, who long campaigned for the ouster of Syria from Lebanon, was assassinated.  Within hours of the explosion, the Druze politician Walid Jumblatt, whose own father is alleged to have been killed by Syrians, was pointing a finger at the Syrian regime. He didn't need any proof of who was behind this terrible crime. As far as Jumblatt was concerned, it was a slam dunk.

  Syria has refuted all the accusations against the leading members of its regime but is committed to cooperating with UN investigators.

  At the same time, the UN's special investigator Detlev Mehlis, charged with digging the dirt on the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri that took place last February, has on the one hand told the Security Council that at least six more months were needed to reach an outcome while on the other, he has been telling reporters that Syria was the perpetrator and has expressed his opinion that the assassinations were linked.

  Mehlis has behaved unprofessionally from the start, treating as gospel the testimony of less than credible witnesses and presenting reports to the UNSC jam packed with inconsistencies and outright bias against Syria. Faced with so much global criticism, he has quit the investigation. A Belgian national Serge Brammatz, who is a deputy judge in The Hague, replaces him.

  During his time as public prosecutor in Germany, Mehlis investigated the 1986 bombing of a German discotheque and based his conclusions on coded intercepts of messages between Libyans based in Germany and their home country.

  These damning messages were exposed by former Mossad agent and whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky as having been fabricated by his masters. It was this erroneous report generated by Mehlis, billed as "irrefutable proof" of Libyan wrongdoing, which was presented as the justification for the Reagan administration's bombing of Libya when the President's daughter was killed.

  The case against Syria is even flimsier. This time Mehlis has based his conclusions largely on the testimony of a rogue, who recanted his accusations on Syrian television. There is little, if any, forensic evidence.

  Zuhair Ibn Mohammed Said Saddik is a deserter and an embezzler, who was introduced to Mahlis by Rifaat Al-Assad, the Syrian President's uncle, known to have designs on the Syrian leadership himself.

  Saddik was exposed by the German magazine Der Spiegal, which reported Saddik having called his brother in Paris to say, "Good news! I've become a millionaire".

  As interested parties were shaking their heads over the lack of credible witnesses, out of the woodwork – or to be more precise his palatial Paris home, where he lives in luxurious exile - comes former Syrian Vice-President Abdel-Hakim Khaddam to stir the pot.

  Interviewed by Al-Arabiya on December 30, Khaddam announced that President Al-Assad had threatened Hariri before the assassination. "Assad monopolizes power, he is the sole ruler and there is no law in Syria except personal interests," Khaddam added.

  But Khaddam's motives are seriously in question as the New York Times points out in its January 1 leader.

  "Khaddam's comments can also be seen as a last swipe at Mr. Assad, who was at odds with Mr. Khaddam and other members of the so-called 'Old Guard' that for decades surrounded Mr. Assad's father President Hafez Al Assad, until his death in 2000. Mr. Khaddam was widely regarded as the architect of Syria's policy in Lebanon but had grown critical of many of the policies of the young president, and was forced to resign as Vice-President last summer."

  The Syrian Parliament is up in arms and has called for Khaddam to be prosecuted for treason. Many commentators are suggesting that the former Vice-President is a Syrian Ahmad Chalabi or Ayad Allawi, out to grab back power on the back of an American tank.

  During this phase of the investigation, nobody can know whether or not the Syrian government ordered the assassination of either Rafiq Hariri or Gibran Tueni, but, surely, we shouldn't jump to conclusions while the jury is still out. Yet, this is exactly what is happening fuelled by the 'nudge nudge, wink wink' Mehlis' statements.

  For the sake of argument, let's play 'devil's advocate' here and put forward a few reasons why Syria would not have involved itself with the murder of such high-profile Lebanese figures using such high-profile methods.

  Since its strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq, Syria has been in the eye of the American storm. George W. Bush has accused Syria of being "an obstacle to peace and an obstacle to change". It's also been accused of opening its borders to Iraqi insurgents, harbouring Al Qaeda terrorists, storing Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction, transmitting weapons to the Iraqi resistance, giving succour to Palestinian militant groups and interfering in the internal politics of Lebanon.

  Syria says its borders are too long and porous to police and has asked for America's help to police them to no avail. Until recently, it has cooperated with the US with its 'War on Terror' and was responsible for handing over one of America's most wanted, a half brother of Saddam. Syria also maintains it has closed down the Damascus offices of Palestinian groups.

  Syria has been termed 'a low hanging fruit' ripe for invasion, and the overthrow of the Baathist regime has long been touted as a must by Israeli, British and US neo-con documents. Take a look at this:

  "In order to facilitate the action of the liberation forces, to reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organize and direct its military actions, to keep losses and destruction to a minimum and to bring about the desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention. For that, Damascus must be made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments.

  The CIA and its British counterpart would "use their capabilities in both the psychological and the action fields to increase tension," while the overthrow of the regime would mean the financing of a committee for a free Syria and the arming of different political factions to give them paramilitary capabilities.

  This recently unearthed document is dated 1957 and was approved by the then US president Dwight Eisenhower and the British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.

  Then as far back as 1982, a document written on behalf of the World Zionist Council titled "A Strategy for Israel" demands the overthrow of the Baathists and rejects the land for peace principle.

  In 1996, "Clean Break: a strategy for securing the realm" was penned by prominent neo-cons on behalf of former Israeli Prime Minister and new leader of the Lukud Benjamin Netanyahu. This, too, calls for the weakening of Syria, while a similar theme is pursued in the 2000 Project for a New American Century paper.

  The Syrian government is aware that it is hardly flavour of the decade in the eyes of the Superpower, which is itching to get its foot in the door of Damascus, so why would Syria wish to draw unfavourable attention to itself by murdering a popular Lebanese politician and entrepreneur just as it was about to quit Lebanon? What was the motive here?

  But let's suppose that Syria did have a motive, why would its agents have needed to use a bomb to kill Hariri, requiring extensive planning and coordination, when a sniper's bullet would have done just as well?

  According to the first Mehlis report, Syrian and Lebanese intelligence were monitoring Hariri's every move and listening in to his phone calls. So in that case, a perfectly positioned sniper would have made a cleaner job of things and far less people would have had to be in on the game.

  Okay, Hariri's murder could have been the work of lowly regime cretins who felt they had impunity and didn't care where fingers subsequently pointed, but why in heaven's name would they repeat this mistake in light of the heat that Syria is already facing by killing Tueni?

  There is certainly a lot more to this than meets the eye, yet the US is eager to believe that Syria was behind these killings and others as such as scenario nicely fits in to its anti-Syrian agenda.

  In the meantime, a large section of the Lebanese population is outraged. It's understandable that Lebanese emotions are high after years of Syrian occupation when they were often made to feel like strangers in their own land. Yet, they too, are unwittingly playing into neo-con ambitions, while Israeli and American fifth-columnists are all over the country deliberately raising the ante.

  Trish Schuh writing on CounterPunch has investigated how kerosene is being poured on the embers of Lebanese anger against Syria by foreign interventionists.

  In an article titled "Faking the case against Syria", she says she interviewed a founder of the Martyrs' Square tent city and asked about US-Israeli sponsorship of the 'Independence Intifadah'.

  "Surrounded by red-and-white Lebanese flags soldier Michael Sweiden of the Lebanese Forces emphasized that he was a Christian Lebanese. 'We love Israel', he told me. 'Israel helps us. Israel is like our mother'.

  Years before its role in the so-called Cedar Revolution – a term coined by US Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, a signatory to the Project for a New American Century – Israel awarded citizenship and grants of up to US$10,000 to South Army Lebanon Army soldiers who collaborated with the Israeli Defense Forces during Lebanon's civil…, she writes.

  Furthermore, the New York Post has revealed that both the CIA and European intelligence services have been providing cash to organizers of Lebanese anti-Syrian protests to put pressure on Bashar Al-Assad. 

  Schuh also describes covert US influence in Lebanon via Ziad Abdel Nour, the son of wealthy Lebanese parliamentarian Khalil Abdel Nour. The President of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USFL), Ziad Abdel Nour has twinned his organization with the American Enterprise Institute, which organizes conferences for major American Jewish organizations and lobbies, says Schuh.

  Nour is also linked to the World Lebanese Organization, which advocates the Israeli re-occupation of South Lebanon, claims the writer, who interviewed the USFL President over the phone.

  When Schuh asked Nour last November about the Syrian crisis, he was unequivocal. "I don't give a damn. I don't give a damn, frankly. This Bashar Al Assad – Emil Lahoud regime is going to go whether it's true or not. When we went to Iraq whether there were weapons of mass destruction or not, the key is we won. And Saddam is out. Whatever we want will happen.

  "Iran? We will not let Iran become a nuclear power. We'll find a way… we'll find an excuse to get rid of Iran. And I don't care what the excuse is. There is no room for rogue states in the world. Whether we lie about it, or invent something, or we don't, I don't care. The end justifies the means.

  Schuh says Nour boasted about his association with the CIA, saying, "Look, I have access to the top classified information from the CIA from all over the world. They call me. I advise them. I know exactly what's going on and this will happen."

  Nour was then asked whether his policy was merely trading Syrian control for American or Israeli control.

  "I have…we have…absolutely no problem with heavy US involvement in Lebanon," Schuh quotes Nour as saying. "On an economic level, military level, political level, or security level…whatever it is. Israel is the 51^st state of the United States. Let Lebanon be the 52^nd state and if the Arabs don't like it, tough luck."

  Israel has a record of organizing what are known as 'false flag' operations and extra-judicial assassinations and so it is hardly inconceivable that the Mossad could be engaged in ratcheting up anti-Syrian sentiments by framing Damascus.

  For instance, Israel recently decorated Egyptian-born Jews, who were instrumental in what came to be known as the Lavon Affair whereby in the 1950s bombs were placed in British and American sites in the hope that the US would blame the Egyptian government and side with Israel against Gamal Abdel Nasser.

  Then there was the Israeli bombing of an American ship the SS Liberty in 1967, which many believe was done so as to implicate Egypt, whereas, unfortunately for the Israelis, an Egyptian ship was in the vicinity and helped rescue the Americans, who are inconvenient eyewitness to the attack today.

  There is also evidence that the Americans were guilty of similar tactics in the Gulf of Tonkin so as to trigger the Vietnam War, and readers might like to Google for information on the aborted Operation Northwoods when according to author James Bamford in his book "Body of Secrets" documents prove that the US was planning fake terror attacks on its own citizens to bring them on board a planned war with Cuba.

  Again, I am not implying that either the US or Israel was behind the slaying of Hariri or Tueni but both do have a motive for turning the Lebanese population against their Syrian cousins and for heating up world opinion against Damascus.

  Syrian advocates also ask why the Hariri case was put before the Security Council when the assassination is a matter for Lebanon and Syria.

  Politicians have been murdered around the world for centuries but those crimes are subject to internal investigation and not handed over to the international community.

  For instance, the UN didn't get involved with the death of Salvador Allende, the shooting of Anwar Al-Sadat, the murder of the wheel-chair bound Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin or the poisoning of Viktor Yuschenko.

  Neither did that erstwhile chamber concern itself with the mysterious death of Yasser Arafat, while after all these years, we still don't know who was behind the killing of John Kennedy. So why is the UN investigating Syria and threatening a sovereign country with sanctions or worse?

  If elements in the Syrian government were, indeed, behind the deaths of Rafiq Hariri and Gibran Tueni, this is contemptible and the perpetrators should be held to account. Both victims were good people who strove to make their country a better place and they did not deserve to suffer such a horrendous end to their lives.

  But if we look beyond the tragic deaths of these fine individuals, we will see that there is a much bigger scenario at play; a scenario, which if left unchecked, threatens to destabilize the region and pit Arab against Arab.

  In fact, this is the core of the neo-con plan. They want Arabs against Arabs. The last thing they do want is Arab unity because if the Arab world stood together, they could not have control of the region's natural resources and Israel would be enfeebled.

  The reality is this. Lebanon and Syria are neighbours. Their economies are inextricably entwined as are their cultures and traditions. Many large families are split between Lebanon and Syria and neither country is going to go away. They will always share a border. So, in this case, wouldn't it make sense for both Lebanon and Syria to put a lid on old feuds and engage in a process of forgiveness and reconciliation based, let's say, on the South African model?

  But whatever the state of Syrian Lebanese relations, US and Israeli influences are destined to make them worse no matter in which kind of friendly terms those influences are couched.

  For the region, the demonizing of Syria is dangerous. Al-Assad is engaged in gathering together powerful friends in case his country is attacked. Russian parliamentarians believe that Russia would take Syria's side during any conflict with the US.

  Shamil Sultanov said "If Russia is to choose sides between its two stragetic allies, it will undoubtedly, take Syria's side. Nikolai Leonov believes it is beneficial for the US to accuse Syria of murdering Hariri. "Indeed, Syria is an excellent oil corridor with access to deep-water Mediterranean ports," he said, adding, "Besides this is a good pretext to distract the world community's attention from the events in Iraq." 

  Remember this! It isn't democracy that the US and Israel are seeking for Lebanon but the furthering of their own self-interest and regional hegemony. Mehlis and his reports are nothing but a distraction in a nefarious plan. And if events run to course, the only winners here are the United States and its client state Israel. Are they going to shed tears if Lebanon and Syria are fragmented and chaotic? What do you think?