Archive for the 'Terrorism' Category

I consider this to be the equivalent of human shields:

The IDF has found that Hizbullah is preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon. Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN representatives from entering, who are trying to help residents leave. In two villages, exchanges of fire between residents and Hizbullah have broken out. (Hanan Greenberg)

There isn’t a Nickel’s worth of difference between pulling a child in front of you to block a bullet and what Hezbollah is doing right now in Lebanon.  It is all the same.  They are cowardly, villainous scoundrels and they deserve to die.

I consider this to be the equivalent of human shields:

The IDF has found that Hizbullah is preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon. Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN representatives from entering, who are trying to help residents leave. In two villages, exchanges of fire between residents and Hizbullah have broken out. (Hanan Greenberg)

There isn’t a Nickel’s worth of difference between pulling a child in front of you to block a bullet and what Hezbollah is doing right now in Lebanon.  It is all the same.  They are cowardly, villainous scoundrels and they deserve to die.

On July 16 I posted “Are we Prepared for Hezbollah Attacks in the U.S.?”

I followed up with “Hezbollah Reiterates Threat to Attack U.S. Interests Around Globe.”

The Counterterrorism Blog has a good entry by Walid Phares entitled “To Repeat: Are we Ready for Hizbollah Attacks in the U.S.”

Blogs of War has a piece entitled Hezbollah in America.

Michelle Malkin has more on this developing story with pictures of militant rumblings in San Francisco.

It looks like Israel is trying to destroy Hezbollah’s capabilities with a sanitized air campaign (it will fail).  It also looks like the U.S. is blinking and giving Israel another week.  If this happens, Hezbollah will come out on the other end of this whole thing politically stronger, and we will face down Hezbollah not just in the middle east, but on our own home soil.  We will not close down our borders because the Senate lacks the will, and we will have no defense against Hezbollah cells in the U.S. before the real battle begins.  The attacks on 9/11 by Al Qaida were just a prelude to the coming battle with radical Islam.  Al Qaida was the bench team.  Hezbollah is the first string.

You think the U.S. will wake from our slumber before the war begins?

Editorial Remark: Edited to correct typographical error in title line from “Treat” to “Threat.”  Hmmm … Hezbollah … trick or treat indeed.

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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.

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?

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

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Jihad Watch is reporting that the recent bombing of the commuter rail in Bombay, India, has the appearance of being Kashmir Jihadists.  If so, then we should look for tensions over the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan to heat up again.

Remember the most recent spate of tensions there?  India and Pakistan almost went to war over Kashmir (all the while, the U.S. was courting Pakistan in order to gain assistance with the war in Afghanistan).  While I think that Dick Armitage is mostly a lackey, he apparently managed to suppress the tensions and pull a nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan back from the brink of war.

It would be better for world stability if this was an internal affair within India rather than the work of Muslim terrorists.  Michelle Malkin thinks that this is possible (reference here).

We’ll see.

 **** UPDATE #1 ****

The arrests make it currently look like it is Islamic Terrorists.  From Fox News:

The Indian home minister said on Indian television that authorities had information of an attack but did not know when or where it was to occur.

“There is no information about who is behind these blasts,

Permit a novice to weigh in on the recent SCOTUS decision.  This 185 page document should make for interesting bed time reading, which I will do later.  For the time being, it appears that:

1. The rage we feel at the “justices” of the left, who have given us some of the worst decisions ever made (and who, by the way, I predict will be reversed on many things in the coming years), is justified.
2. This rage should not cloud our judgment as to what the decision really says.

This decision has no teeth.  First of all, the SCOTUS Blog says:

The Court expressly declared that it was not questioning the government’s power to hold Salim Ahmed Hamdan “for the duration of active hostilities

A new strategy is becoming apparent with Al Qaida in Iraq, the Taliban and Al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  This new strategy is working hand-in-glove with the left in America.

The Counterterrorism Blog has a very interesting commentary on the most recently released statement of Zawahiri.  As an editorial note, I have stopped dismissing these media releases as the rantings of an unhinged, deranged old coot, and I have started paying close attention to the contents.  I probably should have done this far sooner than I did.

Zawahiri tells us — whether by accident or intent — his strategy for the future.

Al Qaida number two, Dr Ayman Zawahiri issued a new tape calling on the Afghans to “rise against the Infidels (Kuffars) and their agents (the Karzai Government).” Following are few points of analysis and evaluation:

1) Attacking the US for its “killing of innocent Afghans and torture of Muslims.”

وندد الظواهري