The Bloody Road to Damascus

The skeptical attitude of this blog toward United Nations investigations is well known, so it will be of no shock to you that I do not look forward with optimism to the October 25 report to the Security Council by Detlev Mehlis on the assassination of Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri. Still, Mr. Mehlis must have received quite a shock at word of the “suicide” of Ghazi Kanaan. Whether the Syrian interior minister cum spymaster voluntarily put a bullet to his head or, as Debka hints, was coerced to do so, is certainly beyond my competence to say, even wearing my mystery writer hat. But what irony that this death occurred within hours of an interview with Bashar al-Assad by the ever dictator-complaisant Christiane Amanpour. One wonders whether the lack of genuine follow-up questions in her interview is simply ignorance of the bloody history of the Alawites or a corporate strategy by CNN to ignore it. As we know, with Saddam, it was a deliberate choice.

UPDATE: Dennis Ross does not believe Kanaan’s death a suicide.