Reuters publishes Q+A on Syria's "interests" in Lebanon; no mention of Hezbollah and Assad efforts to kill UN investigation

Compiled by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Yara Bayoumy and David Cutler with editing by Alistair Lyon, Reuters runs one of its execrable "Q+A" series, this time on Syria's stranglehold interest in Lebanon.  After mischaracterizing Syria's 29-year military occupation in Lebanon as a "presence", the Reuters team notes that the UN originally implicated Syria in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri but is now expected to indict several members of Hezbollah for the killing.

News of the indictments last week led to a televised rant by Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah where he warned on the implications: "we won't allow the resistance to be degraded".

Reuters doesn't cite this veiled threat against the UN tribunal but does inform us:

Nasrallah's condemnation of the tribunal as "an Israeli project" drove up tensions in Lebanon.

Sure, it's always the Israelis who are creating tensions while the Lebanese government has:

advocated calm in an effort to avoid a repeat of the divisions that led to violence in 2008.

And no mention by Reuters in this trenchant analysis of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's call to quash the UN investigation as well.  Apparently, that doesn't fall under the umbrella of a Q+A on Syria's (imperial) interests in Lebanon.

We do learn however, that Reuters specializes in unsupported assertions and red herrings:

Syria, which has lost several wars with Israel, relies on Hezbollah guerrillas to thwart Israel's ambitions in Lebanon and fight a proxy conflict with the Jewish state.