Even Al Jazeera Calls It "Suicide"

 
The Syrians seem to have a gift for clumsy executions. One can surmise it's because they don't really care what anyone else believes as long as the target is taken out. Otherwise, what are we to think? That they're terminally stupid?

First Syria put out the word that Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan had committed suicide in his office last week. Of course, no one believed it, nor were we really expected to. A man doesn’t commit suicide by shooting himself several times, especially not this man.

But just in case we didn’t get it, they got out the ol’ trowel:

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa erred twice in his eulogy of Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan calling the suicide an "assassination."

Yes, we’re supposed to believe that’s some sort of Freudian slip, aren’t we? Stupid infidels, we’ll fall for anything.

But why trust just one “blunder” — maybe we needed to hear it again?

	Chief public attorney Muhammad al-Louji told a televised news conference in Damascus Thursday that Kanaan shot himself with a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. Al-Louji said an examination of the body and interviews with witnesses showed "Kanaan placed the tip of the revolver in his mouth and fired it."
	"The act of killing, pardon, assassination, occurred at his office in the Interior Ministry at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday. He had left 45 minutes earlier, got into his car and drove home. He spent a little time there before returning to the office," al-Louji said.

However he died, fact is he’s dead. And unmourned. Evidently, Kanaan lived fast and died hard, but he doesn't seem to have lived by the notion that one ought to leave a beautiful memory. Here’s a snippet from his long, busy life:

In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon amid a ferocious civil war between the country’s various communities: Christians, Druzes, Sunnis, Shias and Palestinians. Kanaan manipulated, intimidated or bribed militia leaders to favour Syria and managed to cause the failure of a US-brokered treaty between the Lebanese Government and Israel in 1983. His methods included assassinations, such as that of the Grand Mufti of the Sunnis, Hasan Khalid, in 1989. The large-scale cultivation of the opium poppy in the Bekaa Valley and trafficking heroin abroad made him and his mentors in Damascus extremely wealthy.

Even al Jazeera termed it 'suicide.'

Oh...in case you're wondering: the report on the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri is due out soon. Guess who they are probably going to finger? His name starts with "the late..."


Hat tip: Terrorism Unveiled