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We blogged a few days ago (Are we Prepared for Hezbollah Attacks in the U.S.?) on Hezbollah cells in the U.S. awaiting orders to attack people and infrastructure.  Today Reuters reports:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide.

“We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year,” said Iranian Hizbollah’s spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.

“They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardise Israel and America’s interests. We are only waiting for the Supreme Leader’s green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War Three … we welcome it,” he said.

Will we allow these thugs to dictate our national security and foreign policy?

**** UPDATE ****

The U.S. has given Israel one more week to inflict maximum damage to Hezbollah.  This is too bizarre to be true!  I feel like I am in an episode of the Twilight Zone.  In other news, the FBI is concerned about Hezbollah members on U.S. soil and what they will do if the violence escalate.  Of course, we blogged on this several days ago.

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The Jerusalem Post is reporting that:

Forty to fifty percent of Hizbullah’s military capability has been destroyed in the six days of the IDF counter-attack following last Wednesday’s Hizbullah raid in northern Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The IDF, it is understood, believes it needs another week or so minimum to achieve its military goals in terms of alleviating Hizbullah’s capacity to threaten Israel. 

My question: how would they know this without boots on the ground?  Here is the problem.  As long as Hezbollah has men with AK-47s who can run around screaming Allahu Akbar after this is all over, they will claim victory.  This absolutely has to be a grand slam by Israel.  There is no in between, and I fear that Israel holds the fate of the war on terror in their hands.  Radical, militant Islam is emboldened, or it is defeated, and this battle will prove decisive.

Will Israel send boots in, or will they try to do this with sanitized air power and stand-off weapons like artillery?  How will they know about those thousands of rockets inside of homes, buried in the hillsides …

Still watching.

**** UPDATE #1 ****

Iran says through the AP:

TEHRAN, Iran – No part of Israel is safe in the current fighting with Lebanon, Iran’s parliamentary speaker warned Tuesday, referring to the range of guerrilla rockets.

Speaking to a crowd of thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators in Palestine Square, Tehran, Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel told Israelis: “The towns you have built in northern Palestine (Israel) are within the range of the brave Lebanese children. No part of Israel will be safe.”

While the speaker is not among the most influential office-bearers in Iran, Haddad Adel’s comments call into question the Tehran government’s official position that it is not involved in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon. 

There is nothing called into question because there is no question.  Iran is behind it all.

Still watching …

**** UPDATE #2 ****

Bill Roggio over at the Counterterrorism Blog has a roundup of information related to a potential new “buffer zone” right at the border.  It appears that the calculus is not an overwhelming destruction of Hezbollah:

Israel is currently signaling it is interested in establishing a buffer zone on the Israeli border, and not planning a major ground invasion of Lebanon and a large scale advance into the Bekaa Valley. “One of the aims of the [military] operation is to establish a security area in Lebanon, without the presence of IDF soldiers,” Defense Minister Amir Peretz said. “Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz declared that the IDF currently had much better alternatives than to launch a major ground incursion into Lebanon,” reports the Jerusalem Post.

The post ends by saying:

The continual launch of longer range rockets into Israel may change the calculus. Today, the Israeli Air Force destroyed “at least one long-range Iranian missile capable of hitting Tel Aviv.”

I rather hope that Israel revisits the calculus of the current battle.  I am not entirely sure what one long range missile has to do with anything?

***** UPDATE #3 *****

The Washington Times has a good piece on Israeli air capabilities:

Israel is in the best position militarily in its history to mount air strikes against Iran, after a decade of buying U.S.-produced long-range aircraft, penetrating bombs and aerial refueling tankers.
    Tel Aviv has ratcheted up the volume in attacking the hard-line Islamic regime as it fights the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In the past, Israeli politicians have talked openly of attacking Iranian nuclear sites to prevent the U.S.-designated terror state from building atomic warheads.
    Israel has purchased 25 $84 million F-15I (I for Israel) Ra’am, a special version of the U.S. F-15E long-range interdiction bomber. It also is buying 102 of another long-range tactical jet, the $45 million F-16I Sufa. About 60 have been delivered.
    The Jewish state also is buying 500 U.S. BLU-109 “bunker buster” bombs that could penetrate the concrete protection around some of Iran’s underground facilities, such as the uranium enrichment site at Natanz. The final piece of the enterprise is a fleet of B-707 air-to-air refuelers that could nurse strike aircraft as they made the 900-mile-plus trip inside Iran, dropped their bombs and returned to Israel.
    “They have the capability to strike Iran,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, a former fighter pilot who has trained with Israelis. “It would be limited, though. They could do 30 to 40 ‘aim points’ in the array. I’m not worried about them hitting the targets. They will suffer losses, but they are capable of doing it.” 

The piece goes on to discuss the fact that Israel has pressured the U.S. on Iran and potential nuclear weapons.

Still watching … and wondering if and when Iran will be dealt with and by whom?

**** UPDATE #4 ****

A view from Israel.  Saul Singer writes a piece carried over at NRO today.  A tantalizing paragraph follows:

Not a single mayor, or even a man-on-the-street can be found, even in the bomb shelters of our bombarded cities, who wants this war to stop a moment before the IDF has finished the job, and the threat from the north is permanently erased.

While the secularists want to bury it, ignore it, deny it and otherwise erase the memory of it, America has Christianity as its roots.  It is at its foundation a Christian nation.  This is true not only in the cultural morays, but in the system of laws we follow down to the customary expectations for smaller social units such as family and church.  One case in point would be the expectation for honesty.

The idea of honesty is embedded in our professional organizations, state licenses, medical system, judicial system, voting system, tax collection system, and most if not all other social “systems” in our country.  While it is recognized that sin has affected man and thus we all need to be wary rather than gullible, it is common to see dishonesty as a scandal.  It isn’t a good thing to get caught with your “hand in the cookie jar,” or cheating on an examination, or lying on a resume, or cutting corners in your profession.  People do it, but it is still generally understood to be morally wrong, and so this understanding suppresses the practice of it.  This understanding comes from our heritage.

We have treated Iraqi testimony and statements essentially like we would the testimony of Americans (i.e., assume that there is a general expectation of honesty).  This may be a fatal flaw in how we see the country of Iraq (or in fact, the entire middle east).  I have posted before on the fact that I believe that we can find someone to testify to just about anything in at least certain sections of Iraq (when speaking of so-called U.S. “atrocities”).  See Truth or Consequences in Iraq, for example.  But until reading what I did today, I did not know how ingrained deceipt was in Iraqi culture.  In my search of Haditha coverage during my “Haditha Roundups,” I don’t know how I missed this perspective entitled “Haditha: Reasonable Doubt.”  I will quote from it at length:

There is a possibility that Iraqi eyewitness sources’ credibility may fall apart in the event of a trial. It has happened before in similar cases. The reasons are deep rooted in tribal culture.

A British case which speaks directly to the credibility of tribal witnesses and to the Islamic tribal tradition of “blood money

I have said before that I wanted to write a post on “100 Reasons that McCain will Never be President.”  It would simply be too wearisome to write, but I will give a little primer on this subject as well as a few links that may clear up some things.

First, read a commentary out of the L.A. Times (hat tip to Polipundit) entitled “The hunt for the real McCain.”  Then, go over and look at a Slate commentary entitled “The Closet McCain.”  Then, go read Mark Levin’s “John McCain, Weak on Defense.”  Finally, go read “The Liberal Case for McCain.”

Here are some points to ponder for anyone who truly considers themselves to be conservative:

1. He is in favor of government-funded embryonic stem-cell research.
2. He has said, “certainly in the short term or even in the long term, I would not support the repeal of Roe vs. Wade.”
3. With Joe Lieberman he co-sponsored legislation to close the gun-show loophole and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in compliance with Kyoto accords.
4. He was one of only six Republican Senators to vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment.
5. He betrayed his party to join the so-called “gang of fourteen” to end the filibuster threat of judicial nominees.
6. He supported the Dubai port deal.
7. He was the father of the manifestly unconstitutional campaign finance reform.
8. He is an open-border advocate (i.e., he favors the amnesty program and increased legal immigration, legal immigration that in the end would make illegal immigration unnecessary, another way of saying that he supports the Senate immigration bill).
9. He has led an effort to diminish the traditional war-power authority of the President.
10. He is no friend of religious conservatives, having said that he would kick the religious-right leaders “right in the ass.”

Well, this is only ten reasons John McCain will never be President (i.e., he will not get the Republican nomination — ever).  I’m winded now, so I will catalogue the other 90 reasons for a later time.

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In followup to my commentary “Israel Hesitating on Hezbollah,” I would point to a good analysis entitled Israel-Hezbollah Fighting Yet to Reach its Zenith.  The commentary begins:

The fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has still not reached its zenith. The Israel Defense Forces’ operational plans against the Shi’ite organizations have not yet been carried out. The next two days are the most critical and a lot depends on whether Tehran decides to take a chance and authorize Hezbollah to launch long-range missiles with more powerful warheads. This is a capability Hezbollah still retains, despite the heavy blows it has suffered in the IDF air strikes. 

It appears that our initial assessment was correct, that this is a staged and progressive response, but also an incomplete one.  I still doubt that Hezbollah will be utterly destroyed.  Further, the U.S. may put pressure to accept U.N. peacekeepers (Putin has said he would consider them), and Israel may cave to international pressure.

This would be profoundly stolid and dense.  The U.N. has proven for decades that they are impotent to the point of being laughingstocks, and Hezbollah has proven for decades that they will not stop until Israel is destroyed.

What is Israel waiting on?

**** UPDATE ****

Michele Malkin is blogging on Israel-Hezbollah.  She has a link to a recent article “Israel Hammers at Lebanese Infrastructure,” which discusses the recent incursion of infantry into southern Lebanon but the rapid withdrawal of the same.  This is about the most schizophrenic thing I have ever seen.

**** UPDATE #2 ****

Ehud Olmert appears defiant.  It is hard to know what their intentions are.  Also, minor typographical and editorial corrections to original post.  Not enough coffee before posting …

**** UPDATE #3 ****

Matt Drudge is reporting:

Israeli police detain Al Jazeera Jerusalem bureau chief for second time in two days
Mon Jul 17 2006 08:15:48 ETIsraeli police on Monday detained the Jerusalem bureau chief of the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera for the second time in two days, the journalist told Israel Radio as he was being taken into custody for questioning.

It is a sign of the times.  Why are they concerned about Al-Jazeera informing Hezbollah about the efficiency of their target aquisition and hitting (even if accidentally by showing footage)?  Because they appear to be treating this as a low-intensity conflict.  I can be persuaded otherwise, but it seems that Israel is concerned about tape footage assisting Hezbollah when they should already have been inside southern Lebanon dismantling Hezbollah.  Israel appears on the surface to be weak in this fight when police are hounding so-called “journalists” rather than tanks destroying Hezbollah installations.

**** UPDATE #4 ****

Hezbollah rejects cease-fire talky-talk.

Michael Fumento sent me a note linking to an update of his “Band of Brothers” article (The Weekly Standard).  Go on over to his web site and take a look at both his blog and two newsletters directly from Ramadi.  Oh, by the way.  Michael intends to go back to Ramadi in September.

Band of Brothers Update

Michael Fumento sent me a note linking to an update of his “Band of Brothers” article (The Weekly Standard).  Go on over to his web site and take a look at both his blog and two newsletters directly from Ramadi.  Oh, by the way.  Michael intends to go back to Ramadi in September.

Band of Brothers Update

FNC is just reporting that Israeli rockets have for the first time in this conflict hit Lebanese military installations and killed Lebanese soldiers.  I have watched for several days now wondering what Israel is doing.  It would appear that they are attempting to make the balance of Lebanon learn the very hard way that it is going to be hurtful to allow Hezbollah to occupy southern Lebanon, thus forcing Lebanese troops to pick a fight with Hezbollah.  However, the Strategy Page reminds us that there was civil war in Lebanon for years:

July 16, 2006: Iran aside, there hasn’t been a really noisy response from the Moslem world about Israel’s military operations against Lebanon. Notably subdued is the response from the Arab countries; it’s mostly been mumbling about the plight of the Palestinians and such. Could this mean that the principal Arab leaders are not all that unhappy to see Hizbollah get it in the neck? After all, most of the Arabs are Sunni, while Hizbollah and Iran are Shia. The exception that proves the rule is Syria, which has a Shia leadership. But most Arabs fear Iran, not because most Iranians are Shia, but because Iranians are not Arabs. Iran has been the regional superpower for over three thousand years. Iran is building nuclear weapons. Iran is backing Shia Arab factions in Iraq that would support turning Iraq into an Iranian ally. Also scary is the fact that Iran is currently run by a religious dictatorship. Most Arabs have noted how that worked in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan and want no part of it. Worse, the Iranian religious leadership believes that they would do a better job running the Hejaz (the region of Saudi Arabia containing Mecca and Medina and the most holy places in Islam). For centuries, the Turks kept the Iranians out of the Hejaz. But who would keep nuclear armed Iranians out? Perhaps worst of all, what if Iran tried attacking Israel with nukes, and both nations went at it with nuclear weapons. Iran has loudly proclaimed its aim of destroying Israel, but Israel has nuclear weapons, and no desire to be destroyed. The Arabs would be caught in the middle of all this.The Sunni Arab world always saw Hizbollah as an Iranian branch office on the Mediterranean. Hizbollah was also seen as one of the reasons the Lebanese civil war, that began in 1975, went on for so long (until 1990, when everyone called it quits, mainly because of sheer exhaustion). Sunni Arabs also take a dim view of how the Shia Alawite sect has controlled Syria (a majority Sunni country) for two generations. The Syrian Alawites hang on via subsidies from Iran. Sunni Arabs have always despised Shia, and would like to see the Lebanese and Syrian Shia put in their place (subordinate, very subordinate). Having Israel do a lot of the heavy lifting is seen as an added bonus.The increasing openness of the Lebanese government about wanting to disarm militias may have sparked Hizbollah’s cross-border raid into Israel. Hizbollah leadership may have decided that the best way to avoid being disarmed was to provoke a crisis with Israel. There’s a chance that all Lebanese would unite to defend against the Israeli attacks. In the wake of that, Hizbollah would again be national heroes, not a private, Islamic radical militia run by Iranian religious fanatics. 

Is it not possible that Israel, which seems to know everything about everything in the middle east because of its intelligence capabilities, does not know or see that the Lebanese government cannot force Hezbollah out?  They have tried, and it led to the civil war that existed for so many years.

Also while watching FNC, I found myself in agreement with Maj. Bob Bevelacqua.  It seems strange.  I have always found him to be an unceasingly obnoxious, preening, arrogant know-it-all, self-proclaimed expert on everything in the world, usually giving commentary that ends up running counter to the administration’s positions (e.g., I have heard him side with Sen. Kennedy before).  But on this I agree.  He was livid over Israel’s targeting of Lebanese infrastructure, essentially saying that it will effect changes that are directly contrary to their aim.

I believe that Israel has a small window of opportunity.  This window seems even to be there with the rest of the middle east.  It seems that everyone would give them a pass, so to speak, to go in and destroy Hezbollah.  But right now they are targeting Lebanese infrastructure and military installations.

The strategy is puzzling to say the least, and perhaps deadly in the worst case.  Israel cannot let this opportunity slip away without massive changes in the nature and makeup of southern Lebanon.  If these changes do not result from this exchange, Hezbollah will be strengthened, they will claim victory, they will be completely unopposed in Lebanon, Iran and Syria will escape without so much as their proxy being taken out, the focus will have been taken away from the Syria/Iran connection to terror and the Iranian nuclear program, and radical Islam over the middle east and beyond will feel a sense of accomplishment over not just the survival of the Shia version of UBL (Nasrallah), but the victorious challenge he made to Israel and the U.S.

Time is slipping away.  What is Israel doing?  Exchanging rocket for rocket and targeting infrastructure that has absolutely nothing to do with Hezbollah?

It is time to unleash the dogs of war.  Will they do it?

On July 11 I posted a press release by Joseph Casas (along with a little editorial commentary), attorney to John Jodka, detailing the difficulty in defending a case in which they have not even been able to get experts to the alleged scene of the crime.  But just prior to this press release came another article I should have picked up on, published in the North County Times – The Californian.  We learn, among other things that:

Civilian attorneys for eight Camp Pendleton men accused of murdering an Iraqi civilian in April said Tuesday that military lawyers assigned to assist their clients have been too busy to provide much help on the cases.

The seven Marines and one Navy corpsman have hired civilian attorneys in addition to being assigned military counsel, the latter of whom are said to be bogged down with large caseloads.

“(It’s) the issue of the moment, one which prompted a scream from me this weekend,” Carlsbad-based attorney David Brahms, a retired Marine general hired to represent Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington, said Tuesday. “The government proudly proclaims that they have given each of the eight (accused men) two military counsel.

“It’s a bit illusory because neither of the counsel offered to me have the time to do anything.”

Brahms said the two military defense attorneys are well-qualified and eager to assist. But one of the men, Brahms said, is a Miramar-based Marine with about 30 other cases on his plate. The other is based in Rhode Island and is in the middle of moving his family to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Jane Siegel, one of two private attorneys hired to represent Pfc. John Jodka III, an Encinitas native, said the lack of help thus far could affect their ability to defend the men against a team of what she said were top-flight military prosecutors.

“It is ridiculous to say that there is equity in counsel,” Siegel said. “There are five experienced prosecutors with nothing else to do, sitting in offices and working these cases, and we are still in the starting blocks waiting (for the assigned attorneys to be made available).”

…..

Siegel, a retired Marine colonel, said that one of the military attorneys assigned to assist in Jodka’s case is a reservist who is not slated to return to duty until Aug. 1.

No firm date for the Article 32 hearings has been set, Gibson said, adding that he was uncertain how the sessions would be sequenced. The hearings will determine if their clients will face trial.

Attorney Victor Kelley, representing Thomas, said he believed that about half of the hearings could get pushed back to September because of the defense work that remains to be done.

Siegel also said that she and her co-counsel, Joseph Casas, would like to delay the hearings until they can speak with witnesses from the men’s battalion.

Among the things we learn is that the press release by Joseph Casas was on point.  It didn’t turn to the left or the right or exaggerate in the least — it was straight and true.  Also among the things we learn is that the civilian lawyers cannot get even the most basic of help from the Marines in order to prepare the defense of the Pendleton 8, to wit, the lawyers defending the Pendleton 8 have not even been able to debrief the witnesses, and their clients are in a death penalty case.

The whole time, the Pendleton 8 are sitting in the brig while their case might be suffering irreparable prejudicial harm.  I said it in the last post … I’ll say it in this post.  I don’t know what happened in Hamdania.  But I do know one thing.  This just isn’t right.

You might notice that I am posting this in two categories: war and politics.  I will continue posting in both categories until the end of the case.  If the Pendleton 8 are found guilty and the case seems to me to have been straight and true, I will leave all posts concerning the Pendleton 8 alone.  The posts belong in both categories.  But if they are found innocent, I will go back and delete the “war” category and ensure that all posts are in only the “politics” category.  Why?  Because this whole thing will have been entirely political.

It has been widely known for some time that Hezbollah has been funded by Iran, but that they also have members and supporters in the U.S.  Some of these supporters have worked hard at raising monies for Hezbollah.  But the presence of Hezbollah cells in the U.S. goes far beyond financial resourcing of the main Hezbollah forces in souther Lebanon.  A Washington Times Editorial from May 20, 2005 notes that:

Although the organization has yet to launch an attack on U.S. soil, its U.S. activities are far from benign. Its work in this country has two major purposes: One is to raise money and smuggle arms to Hezbollah fighters, often by criminal activities ranging from credit-card fraud to cigarette smuggling; and the other is to conduct surveillance behind enemy lines, with a possible eye toward launching attacks on U.S. targets in the event of an armed conflict between the United States and Tehran. Like his backers in Iran, Hezbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah routinely denounces the United States and Israel as his organization’s main enemies. Given the events of September 11, and given Hezbollah’s own record of kidnapping, torturing and killing Americans when it has had the opportunity, we ignore the group’s operations in this country at our peril. 

This admonition is especially salient as we face off the Iranians over potential nuclear weapons.  Lest we think that since Hezbollah’s primary enemy is Israel they are not also focused on the U.S., Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has some words for us:

“The people of the region will receive [America] with rifles, blood, arms, martyrdom and martyrdom operations,” Nasrallah said in a speech delivered a week before the war began. His remarks were broadcast on Al Manar, the group’s Beirut-based satellite television station.“In the past, when the Marines were in Beirut, we screamed, ‘Death to America!’ ” Nasrallah said. “Today, when the region is being filled with hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, ‘Death to America!’ was, is and will stay our slogan.”

As to their capability, funding, training and motivation, no one should doubt that they are capable of much more than Al Qaida has been able to perpetrate thus far.

Many terrorism analysts and experts rate Hezbollah as the best organized and most competant Islamist terrorist organization in the world.  With an annual budget of likely well over $100 million coming from Iran, Syria and its criminal organzations in the West, it boasts more than 25,000 men under arms.  Having pushed Israel out of its security zone in southern Lebanon and the American and French peacekeepers our of Beirut, they are arguably the most successful terrorist organization of the modern era.

The events of 9/11 actually were somewhat of a thorn in the side of Hezbollah, causing focus on terrorism — including Hezbollah — when Nasrallah would rather have had the opportunity to prepare for his jihad without the pot being stirred up by Al Qaida.  His positon is:

Let the entire world hear me.  Our hostility to the great Satan [American] is absolute … regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, “Death to America” will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan.  Death to America!

At least seven Hezbollah operations have been uncovered by the FBI and State Department (see here).  There are even Hezbollah operations in Latin America, and a Mexican smuggling ring that specializes in getting new terrorists across the border.

Now we learn yesterday — July 15 — the following information from the London Times:

IRAN’S president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended a meeting in Syria earlier this year with one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, according to intelligence experts and a former national security official in Washington.

US officials and Israel intelligence sources believe Imad Mugniyeh, the Lebanese commander of Hezbollah’s overseas operations, has taken charge of plotting Iran’s retaliation against western targets should President George W Bush order a strike on Iranian nuclear sites.

Mugniyeh is on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists