BEYOND THE DROPZONE

YIKES! and a dangerous concession to the terrorists

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 14 May 2008 at 7:33 pm UTC

Reminds me of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz … except this is real-world scarier.

Even scarier — actually more disturbing — is the announcement earlier by Lebanon’s Information Minister Ghazi Aridi that the Lebanese Cabinet was revoking its previous decision to fire the security chief at Beirut International Airport (Remember. the security chief is reportedly either a member of Hezbollah or he has close ties to the terrorist group.). And apparently the government is also going to let Hezbollah keep its extensive telecommunications network operational.

So let’s boil it all down: The legitimate Lebanese government makes two national-security decisions about a full-blown Iranian-financed, Syrian-backed, Taliban-like, terrorist army operating on sovereign Lebanese territory. The terrorist army doesn’t like the decisions, so it responds with armed aggression against the Lebanese people. And so the Lebanese government — whose own national army and police forces barely fired a shot in the defense of Lebanon when Hezbollah attacked – says, “OK, we’re sorry. We reverse our decisions against you.”

According to the AP:

“Seconds after [Aridi’s] announcement, celebratory gunfire erupted south of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.“

Oh, and let’s not forget seven months ago — as I was reporting on this telecommunications system and other unreported or underreported activities by Hezbollah in Lebanon — I also described the southern suburbs of Beirut (Dahiyeh) as a “Hezbollah stronghold.” Those who tried their damndest to silence me, scoffed at my reference of Dahiyeh as a stronghold.

(cartoon by Michael Ramirez)

— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.

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LEBANON UPDATE: Bloodying Iran’s Foreign Legion

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 14 May 2008 at 3:45 am UTC

I posted a few hours ago at Family Security Matters:

“Regions of Lebanon burned overnight as Hezbollah continued its unjustified offensive against Lebanese civilians with virtual impunity. The exception being the underreported bloody nose the Iranian-Syrian-backed terrorist group suffered at the hands of the Druze in the Chouf Mountains.

“Today there reportedly are pockets of fighting, and Lebanon’s Future Movement leader Saad Hariri (son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri) — whose own life has been in great danger over the past week — has vowed not to surrender to Hezbollah or its supporters.

“I continue writing about the fighting in my piece ”Bloodying Iran’s Foreign Legion” in today’s Townhall.com.

“Prayers for our good friends and allies in Lebanon.”

Still no word yet from Sayyed Husseini (see previous post).

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Hezbollah is a terrorist group, not an “opposition” force

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 12 May 2008 at 1:14 am UTC

Hezbollah – an Iranian-funded Lebanon-based army of mass murderers (designated foreign terrorists by the U.S. government) – has been christened “the opposition” by several Western press organizations. And supporters of freedom and democracy in Lebanon want to know why.

“As we continue to witness the unfolding of events in Lebanon, I wonder why we are seeing and reading news stories infused with this new unsettling reference of the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis as nothing more than ‘an opposition force,’” says John Hajjar, U.S. director for the World Council of the Cedars Revolution. “Why can’t they be referred to by their proper and less-ambiguous nomenclature? They are terrorists, officially, and nothing more.”

Indeed, the so-called “opposition” – which includes Hezbollah (literally a terrorist army with a vast array of heavy weapons), members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Syrian intelligence and paramilitary operatives in Lebanon – are officially designated terrorists: As if anyone, who knows the extraordinarily dark history of these groups needs an official designation anyway.

The U.S. State Department has designated Hezbollah a “foreign terrorist organization,” and Iran and Syria as “state sponsors of terrorism.” And Treasury has designated Iran’s IRGC as a “supporter of terrorists.”

Interestingly, Al Jazeera (AJZ) – which almost always refers to Hezbollah either by its primary name or its militant-wing title, “Islamic Resistance” – has taken a deliberate approach in its recent reference of Hezbollah as an “opposition” force. It’s fairly obvious that AJZ is attempting to eradicate any negative “labeling” connotation surrounding Hezbollah; and – according to our media and counterterrorism sources – AJZ is doing so to appease sympathizers in the Arab world as Hezbollah continues to attack civilians in Lebanon. (Actually the entire Hezbollah organization is “militant,” similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, but we’ll save that for another piece.)

Funded by the oil industry of the Qatari regime, AJZ wants to protect – and perhaps enhance – Hezbollah’s legitimacy and credibility in the Arab world. Hezbollah is occupying and brutalizing those within the Sunni and Druze communities in Lebanon. This could have a backlash in the Arab world, particularly among the Sunni populations. Hence, a softer book-cover was deemed necessary.

None of this is really new in terms of Hezbollah’s and its sympathizers’ now-legendary media manipulation efforts. According to sources within the pro-democracy movement in Lebanon:

“We indicated months ago a massive Iranian propaganda effort was able to target major Western media outlets starting with their correspondents in Beirut [those correspondents were either threatened or bought with Iranian money]. We were warning about it in November. Now it is simply happening.”

George Chaya, director of the Lebanese Information Center in Argentina, which monitors Middle East Terrorism, has previously said:

“Hezbollah’s propagandists have been able to win the battle of information worldwide. They were able to influence newsrooms around the world and impose their lexicon. Readers from Berlin to Santiago de Chile think it is a classical confrontation between an opposition movement and a government. In reality it is a terrorist organization devouring a democracy.”

Nevertheless, the Associated Press, CNN, Agence France Presse, the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra network, and other news organizations have increasingly seen fit to use a label which – wittingly or not – soft-soaps one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups, Hezbollah (which up until the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization in the world); and the label attempts to “clean the faces,” as my Lebanese friends like to say, of rogue states like Iran and Syria.   

The Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis, as terrorism-expert Dr. Walid Phares often refers to it, is not simply an “opposition” movement. It is an international terrorist force.

And it is trying to cut the heart out of Lebanon.

— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.

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Counterterrorism Research Center - Open Sources

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 8 May 2008 at 3:30 pm UTC

The following is from the CRC (The Family Security Foundation):

CRC Open Sources
W. Thomas Smith, Jr.,
Director, Counterterrorism Research Center

In this week’s CRC Open Sources we first take a look at an oddity in the wake of last week’s airstrike against a known Al Qaeda target in Somalia. Then, we move on to the rapidly degrading situation in Lebanon, which we discussed yesterday in “Hezbollah continues ramp-up to war.”

SOMALIA

On Wednesday, April 30, I received a call (in the early evening) from one of my sources stating that we had just taken out an important Al Qaeda operative in an airstrike against his safe house about 300 miles north of Mogadishu. Touching base with additional sources, I quickly confirmed we had not only targeted Adan Hashi Ayro – one of AQ’s nine “most wanted” terrorists in East Africa – but we nailed him with an aircraft-launched JDAM (joint-direct-attack-munitions), basically a “smart bomb.”

It was an amazing story – we were informed and provided operational details (keeping it close to our chest) long before the Pentagon went public with it (And DoD never did go public with the op details. They never do.) – because of the seamless manner in which U.S. military forces rapidly took action on superb intelligence in a rapidly changing environment and got the bad guy, Ayro, and apparently one of his subordinate commanders.

We wrote about it at Human Events.

That was well over a week ago.

But yesterday, May 7, some bureaucrat at the U.S. State Department sent a document, “Somalia: Ensuring Long Term Peace and Stability,” to various members of the media, academia, the U.S. Defense Department, and the intelligence community listing State’s “most wanted” in East Africa.

Problem is the document was dated March 18 and Ayro was still listed on it. So we did some checking and there is in fact an updated version of the same document, dated May 2 (two days after we nailed Ayro

The updated version was the one that should have been sent. But guess what? Ayro was on that one too.

Makes you wonder who’s running things in the Africa Bureau. And it’s not just me who’s wondering: Sources are telling me that some senior officers in the Defense Department are also shaking their heads. And one source in the intelligence community told me last night:

“Isn’t it typical of our ‘colleagues’ at State? Sending around a two-month old ‘wanted poster’ featuring an HVT [high value target] whom the boys at the Pentagon successfully targeted last week? And then labeling the whole thing with a lengthy title because they don’t even want to call it what it is – a ‘wanted poster’? What a way to run a war on terror!”

Moving right along.

LEBANON

The situation in Lebanon – a crucial front for America and the West in the war on terror – continues to degrade, with Hezbollah increasingly gaining the upper-hand. The Lebanese Army leadership continues to exhibit its inability (or unwillingness) to aggressively confront the Iranian-funded Shiia terrorist army that continues to exist and thrive on sovereign Lebanese territory. And the government (including parliament) – unable to elect a president in months, and essentially held hostage by Hezbollah and its allies – continues to struggle to maintain cohesiveness in a rapidly fractioning environment. (Please read yesterday’s piece for background.)

This morning, the International Lebanese Committee for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 (which, among other points, calls for the disarming of all militias in Lebanon, including Hezbollah) sent a memo to Sir John Sawers, current president of the UN Security Council and the ambassador and permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the UN.

A portion of that memo, which was CCed to every member of the Security Council, reads:

“… in view of the fact that the command of the Lebanese Army -until the time of issuing this memo- didn’t deploy yet the necessary troops to free [Beirut International Airport] from militia control;

“… in view of the fact that the same militia – Hezbollah and its allies – have deployed their armed elements at different locations of the capital Beirut and other areas; and after having reviewed the statements made by [Prime Minister of Fouad Seniora] and Muslim Sunni Mufti Sheikh Mohamed Rachid Qabbani calling for rescue from Hezbollah Iranian terror;

“… in view of the fact the command of the Lebanese Army didn’t disarm the militias that have already penetrated Beirut;

“We, the International Lebanese Committee for the Implementation of UNSCR 1559, and after consultation with the secretariat general of the March 14 movement and Lebanese civil society NGOs, therefore call on the UN Security Council to act swiftly under UNSCR 1701, UNSCR 1559 and Chapter 7 to deploy UN forces at and around the Beirut International Airport to protect the security of passengers and workers and insure free passage for the civilian population as well as insuring communications for UNIFIL also deploy inside the capital Beirut to protect its civilian populations as well as its democratically elected institutions.

“We urge you to act as fast as possible to prevent a major escalation of violence…”

Read the entire memo here.

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Jihadism’s dangerous liaisons

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 18 March 2008 at 12:18 pm UTC

[Originally published at Townhall.com, 18 Mar 08]

Analysts with MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believe an elite force of Hamas fighters in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon will launch a coordinated attack against Israel within a few months, says author and espionage expert Gordon Thomas.

According to Thomas’s report published at World Net Daily’s G2 Bulletin:

“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are training hundreds of Hamas fighters to prepare for an all-out war this summer against Israel.
 
“The Gaza-based organization’s elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade will form the southern front of an attack against the Jewish state while Hezbollah will launch its simultaneous assault from southern Lebanon, according to MI6.”

Thomas contends the attacks would come at a time when the Bush White House is all but “spent,” and the Democrat and Republican parties are “looking inward to their conventions.”

No surprise there: Jihadists are patient opportunists. And terrorist allies like the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, and the Lebanon-based terrorist army, Hezbollah; as well as marginally – perhaps unlikely – connected terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are increasingly coordinating their efforts in campaigns against the West.

Few Americans are talking about any this: Most understand the danger of international terrorism, but few grasp the exponentially increasing danger associated with terror alliances. Problem is it’s not politically correct to discuss Islam’s house of war. The two Democrat presidential contenders seem to be more concerned about who is calling whom names, or who is best able to answer a telephone at 3:00 a.m. And the mainstream media is too busy soft-soaping or completely ignoring the facts about Islamic terrorism. Either that, or MSM reporters are too busy cheering some distorted revelation they have confusingly gleaned in a recent Pentagon report that – the MSM contends – shows no Saddam-Al Qaeda link in pre-war Iraq, when in fact the report reveals stark evidence there was.

But that was then. This is now, and the connections today must be our focus.

(more…)

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Turning a terrorist into a cult hero

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 21 February 2008 at 2:50 pm UTC

In what the Jerusalem Post refers to as “an uncommon act of journalistic contrition,” the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has issued a public apology “to anyone who was offended” by its reference of recently-killed terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyeh as a “great national leader.”

For once, a major Western media outlet did the right thing by admitting its complicity – perhaps unwitting collusion – in what is becoming a trend toward soft-soaping terrorists and their activities. But how could the BBC have come to this is in the first place?

It’s all part of a dangerous drift toward so-called fairness – not to be confused with free speech – wherein media companies increasingly are giving platforms, equal time, and – for some strange reason – objective deference to terrorists and terrorist organizations.

• Read entire column at Townhall.com.

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