Who killed Rafik al-Hariri?

Belmonst Club has an excellent round-up of speculation as to who may have been responsible for the Valentine's Day massacre of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

They conclude:

Hariri was protected against small-time assasination attemptions by the use of armored vehicles equipped with electronic sweeping devices. It can be safely assumed that the Lebanese billionaire could afford the best private security that money could buy. Those security forces would employ countersurveillance, deceptive scheduling and decoys. But those formidable defenses were defeated by a truly massive bomb of several hundred pounds possibly detonated by a suicider, hence the "martyrdom" operation referred to in the videotape. They must have been supported by a surveillance and intelligence operation of no mean quality. That combination of expertise, access to large quantities of explosive and ready money makes it almost certain that Hariri's killers were either state-sponsored or belonged to a very powerful terrorist organization. Moreover, if Hariri's death was intended to "send a message" it was one that had to be widely understood by the intended audience without additional embellishment.

The possible Lebanese-Syria connection in this case suggests that the bombing might be somehow related to the killings of Dale Stoffel and Joseph Wemple last December in Iraq.

Curiouser and curiouser …

UPDATE: The Economist (paid subscription required) points out another similarity between the bombing and the Stoffel-Wemple killings: "A previously unheard-of organisation, calling itself Victory and Jihad in Syria and Lebanon, sent a videotape to al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based broadcaster, saying that it had killed Mr Hariri because of his ties with Saudi Arabia. But this claim may well turn out to be false, and the group may not even exist."