For background on ex-PM Rafik Hariri, Wikipedia has it, and this post by Kirk H. Sowell is a great primer to Lebanon.

I guess moral support really does help:

BEIRUT (Reuters) – President Bush (news – web sites) called on Syria on Thursday to withdraw its forces from Lebanon as Lebanese opposition leaders vowed to topple the country’s pro-Syrian leadership.
…
Voices from across Lebanon’s various ethnic and religious communities, encouraged by the tough anti-Syrian stance of the United States and France, are now telling Damascus and its local allies it is time to go.

“The day will come when we will get brooms and sweep away this dirt, the criminal authority, the terrorist authority,” Druze leader Walid Jumblatt told reporters at Hariri’s house. “This day will come soon and all of the Lebanese people will rise and send them to hell.”

Bush goes to Brussels next week to meet European Union (news – web sites) and NATO (news – web sites) leaders. European diplomats have said Syria will be near the top of the agenda for the talks.

“I look forward to working with my European friends on my upcoming trip to talk about how we can work together to convince the Syrians to make rational decisions,” he said.

Omar from Iraq the Model makes note of an Al-Jazeera poll being conducted:

Let’s widen the circle a little and move to some other current issues and I will start with the assassination of the Lebanese ex-PM, Al-Jazeera is now conducting a poll about the most likely parties to be behind for the assassination. The list of choices included the following:
Israeli agents, American agents, Lebanese rebels, Syrian rebels and “others”.
What’s new! The 1st two choices are characteristic of Al_Jazeera and conspiracy theorists and of course it’s not in any of these countries interest to kill a man who’s somehow in support of their vision about the Syrian role in Lebanon but the next two choices make no sense at all, that’s at least how I see it.

Why would “Syrian rebels” (who by definition are supposed to be opposing their government) kill the man who’s against the Syrian policies and the Syrian presence in Lebanon!?
And why would the “Lebanese rebels” target a man who’s currently not in power and considered himself part of the opposition!?
So, there remains one choice which is “others” that I have no idea to whom Al-Jazeera was trying to refer to, maybe the Iraqi intelligence?

The point I want to say here is that Al-Jazeera has omitted the only party that has the strong motives to perform such an attack which is the Syrian government and their allied terror groups of course. I personally strongly believe that Syria is involved in performing the attack or hiring some group to do it.

Currently the poll stands at 66% Syrian rebels, but don’t worry, they’ve made sure Israel is a close second. As an added bonus, the put up another one asking who you think benefited the most from the assassination.

It is being said that the murderer was a Palestinian, but the use of an anonymous source bugs me — especially since I’m not too familiar with this site:

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The suicide bomber who killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is a Palestinian member of an Islamic group linked to al-Qaida.

A security source, on condition of anonymity, identified the bomber as Ahmed Abu Adas, a Palestinian refugee who lived in the low-income Beirut neighborhood of Tarik Jadida.

Both Daniel Drezner and Democracy Project have links going out to editorials.

UPDATE: Here is an article by Robert Fisk, who was an eye witness to the crime scene. Or listen to it. (Via Keld Bach’s Press Cuttings, who also has some pictures posted. Here are more.) Undoubtedly, Belmont Club has invaluable analysis as well.

There are a fair share of bloggers speculating that it could be Israel or America. Judge for yourself.

NEWS: Even better than Google News, we’ve now got Lebanonwire. And the BBC has a roundup of quick comments from regional Arab papers.

LEGISLATION: Here is the text of UN Resolution 1559, which calls for fair elections in Lebanon. Other legislation to note is the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 and the 1990 Taif Agreement.

Did I mention Blogroll me?

COMMENTS: I didn’t expect this, but make sure to check out the comments. People left some very insightful responses.