The aggressive posture taken by the United States and Britain against Syria, based on unproved allegations from an inconclusive UN report of an unfinished investigation, reveals the Zionist agenda behind the policy decisions in Washington and London.

With more than 2,000 U.S. military personnel killed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and many times that number injured or maimed, a growing majority of Americans now believe the war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do.

A recent Harris poll taken in mid-October, shows that 66 percent of the American population disapproves of President George W. Bush’s handling of the war, while 53 percent thinks invading Iraq was a mistake.

With two out of three Americans opposed to Bush’s handling of the war, his public approval rating for the ill-advised, and legally questionable and unwinnable war in the Middle East is at its lowest point.

Given the U.S. public’s "gloomy opinions about Iraq," as Harris says, one might ask why the Bush administration seems eager to widen the conflict by threatening Syria.

The aggressive U.S. position against Syria in the UN Security Council is supposedly based on the findings of an inconclusive UN report about the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

The report, written by the German Detlev Mehlis with some 30 unnamed investigators from 17 nations, is, how-ever, not the real reason for the aggressive posture taken by the U.S. and British governments against Syria.

The Mehlis report is only a convenient tool being used by Washington and London in the execution of the Zionist agenda that dictates U.S. and British policymaking decisions in the Middle East. The Bush administration was clearly hostile to Syria before Hariri was assassinated.

"The Zionist Plan for the Middle East," translated from Hebrew by Israel Shahak, reveals the fundamental Israeli strategic plan for Syria. The plan, written by Oded Yinon, a former official with the Foreign Ministry of Israel, was published in a journal of the World Zionist Organization in 1982. The plan calls for the dissolution or balkanization of both Syria and Iraq.

"The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target," Yinon wrote. "Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present-day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shiite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes, who will set up a state, maybe even in our [sic] Golan, and certainly in the Hauran [southern Syria] and in northern Jordan."

Iraq was seen as the greater threat to Israel, with Syria coming close behind:

"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets," Yinon wrote in 1982. "Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel."

The aggressive U.S. position against Syria needs to be seen in the context of the Israeli agenda for the region. The neo-con policies of the Bush administration conform to that plan.

The Mehlis report contains allegations from unnamed witnesses but provides no solid evidence that Syria had anything to do with the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

"Until the investigation is completed, all new leads and evidence are fully analyzed, and an independent and impartial prosecution mechanism is set up, one cannot know the complete story of what happened, how it happened and who is responsible for the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder of 22 other innocent people," the report says. "Therefore, the presumption of innocence stands."

Since the release of the report, Syria has responded, though the U.S. press has been slow to publish the statement.

"I have declared that Syria is innocent of this crime, and I am ready to follow up action to bring to trial any Syrian who could be proved by concrete evidence to have had connection with this crime," Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an official letter to the governments in Washington, London and Paris.

"If Syria killed Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister and mastermind of its revival after the civil war, it must be judged an act of political suicide," Patrick Seale, a 30-year veteran British correspondent on the Middle East, wrote shortly after Hariri and nine others were killed when there was an explosion near his motorcade on Feb. 14, 2005.

"Why would Syria murder Hariri, the main architect of Lebanon’s postwar reconstruction and prosperity?" American Free Press asked when Hariri was killed. "And why would anybody murder Hariri in such a spectacular way?"

"Attributing responsibility for the murder to Syria is implausible," Seale wrote. "Hariri was not a diehard enemy of Syria. For 10 of the past 12 years he served as Lebanon’s prime minister under Syria’s aegis.

"To kill Hariri at this critical moment would be to destroy Syria’s reputation once and for all and hand its enemies a weapon with which to deliver the blow that could finally destabilize the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down," Seale wrote.

"The murder is more likely to be the work of one of its many enemies," Seale wrote. "Israel’s ambition has long been to weaken Syria, sever its strategic alliance with Iran and destroy Hezbollah."

The United States and Israel are trying to rally international support against Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, Seale says, because they resist U.S. and Israeli hegemony over the region. Hezbollah forced Israel out of south Lebanon and has a deterrent capability, which prevents Israel from attack-ing Lebanon with impunity.

"Iran’s nuclear program threatens to break Israel’s regional monopoly of weapons of mass destruction," Seale wrote, "which is the main reason it is under immense pres-sure to abandon uranium enrichment.

"Israel has great experience at ‘targeted assassinations,’ not only in the Palestinian territories but across the Middle East," wrote Seale. " Over the years, it has sent hit teams to kill opponents in Beirut, Tunis, Malta, Amman and Damascus."

The Mehlis investigation does not appear to have even considered the possibility of Israel being behind the Hariri assassination. The report claims an Iraqi suicide bomber driving a Mitsubishi van killed Hariri. A "witness" named "Saddik" told the commission that the Iraqi was led to believe that the target was Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Photographic evidence of the crater at the site of the bombing, however, suggests that the explosion was not caused by a car bomb. The crater is estimated to be between 35 to 50 feet in diameter and about 10 feet deep. A Russian study of surface explosions indicates five to 10 tons of TNT would be required to create such a crater.

Keith A. Holsapple, an expert on craters at the University of Washington, examined the photographs of the Beirut crater for AFP. "There is no doubt," Holsapple said, "at least a several-ton bomb would be required if it were delivered by a vehicle and detonated above the surface."

Photographs of the crater show buried water pipes thrust upward, suggesting the detonation occurred below the pavement. A damaged car can also be seen at the edge of the crater. If a massive surface explosion had caused the crater, this car should have been blown far back from the edge.

The initial plume of smoke that rose from the explosion was a light brownish color. This also suggests that the detonation occurred in the sandy soil beneath the street, from a buried explosive or a precision-guided missile with a delayed fuse, which is designed to cause cratering.

Christopher Bollyn is a much-traveled international journalist currently based in Chicago, serving as AFP’s Midwest bureau chief. He has written extensively on a wide variety of subjects including the controversy surrounding computerized voting systems, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the many unanswered questions surrounding the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

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