LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
February 17/08

Bible Reading of the day.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 5,43-48. You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect

Interview with the Shiite Mufti Ali Al Amin from Naharnet
Sayed Ali al-Amin Urges Hizbullah Not to Lead Lebanon 'To the Bottom'/Naharnet 16/02/08

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
WLCUIR/Imad Mugniah is an international terrorist and march 14th to provide an explanatation. 16.02/08
Terror Incorporated - Hezbollah's Global Islamic Web. Mark Silverberg. 16/02/08
In praise of cowardice.NowLebanon Site. 16/02/08
New US Middle East policy in 2009? Don't bet on it-By Michael Young. 16/02/08
Iran can uphold the Islamic Revolution's tenets or recreate dissent that inspired it-The Daily Star. 16/02/08
Tough Men without a Nation-Ghassan Charbel.16/02/08
Nasrallah-Aoun: Putting a face to the other-Al-Ahram Weekly -16/02/08

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for February 16/08
Perez: Nasrallah is Threat to Lebanese-Naharnet
Arab Suspects Likely Involved in Mughniyeh Killing-Naharnet
Saniora: Open War on Israel Harms Hizbullah, Islamic, Arab Causes-Naharnet
Lebanese daily: Hizbullah raises alertness in south Lebanon-Jerusalem Post
Syria 'Directly Responsible' for Lebanon Crisis, Satterfield-Naharnet
Bush Discusses Lebanon with Saud al-Faisal-Naharnet
Soldiers Allegedly Wounded in Confrontation with Rioters-Naharnet
Hariri: Feb. 14 Rally leads to Presidential Election-Naharnet
Geagea Criticizes Nasrallah's War Declaration-Naharnet
UNIFIL complained of Israeli violations of Lebanese territories’-Ynetnews
Iran joins Syria in hunt for killers of militant-International Herald Tribune
The Two Lebanons-Naharnet
The New War Sparked by Mughniyeh's Assassination-Naharnet
Feb. 14 Rally Opens Door to International Pressures-Naharnet
US: Syria 'directly responsible' for Lebanese deadlock-Daily Star
Analysts expect Hizbullah to deal 'major blow' to Israel-Daily Star
Syria, Iran and Hizbullah launch probe into Mughniyeh killing-Daily Star
Graziano reports Israel's border violations to UN-Daily Star
Ban creates management team for Special Tribunal-Daily Star
Fadlallah blames US for prolonging political crisis-Daily Star
Earthquake sparks panic in Lebanon, injures 10-Daily Star
EC humanitarian aid department's post-war operations come to an end-Daily Star
A new struggle for life after war in Tyre-Daily Star
Beirut artist takes on theme of emigration - and runs with it-Daily Star
Magnitude 5 Earthquake Strikes Lebanon-The Associated Press
Hezbollah appoints successor to slain commander-Reuters
Syria 'to name Mughniyeh killer'-BBC News
Syria ready to blame Israel for Hezbollah assassination-Sydney Morning Herald
FBI's terror squads on post-Hezbollah alert-Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Iran's Foreign Minister meets Hamas and Jihadi chiefs in Syria-Times of India
Syria 'directly responsible' for situation in Lebanon: US official-AFP
Iran, Syria Probe Mughniyeh Killing-AP
Israel Bracing for Hizbullah Wrath-Naharnet
Hariri: Feb. 14 Rally leads to Presidential Election-Naharnet
Geagea Criticizes Nasrallah's War Declaration-Naharnet

Saniora: Open War on Israel Harms Hizbullah, Islamic, Arab Causes
Naharnet/Prime Minister Fouad Saniora said Lebanon has no interest in an "open war" on Israel worldwide, saying this would harm Hizbullah as well as Islamic and Arab causes."I don't believe we have an interest to wage an open war worldwide because this would be harmful to Hizbullah as well as to the Islamic and Arab causes," Saniora said in a late Friday interview with Fututre News TV. "We have had an earlier experience. We must not repeat this experience," Saniora said in reference to the 2006 war between Israeli and Hizbullah. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday declared "open war" on Israel worldwide after accusing the Jewish state of killing his top commander Imad Mughniyeh outside the battleground.
"I believe that Nasrallah's so called "open war" declaration was misinterpreted," Saniora said. Going back to the 2006 summer war issue, Saniora said he did "what was to serve my country and I don't regret any decision I took." He accused Hizbullah of contradicting itself by labelling the government "illegitimate," yet at the same time demanding financial compensation for the damages of the July war. On the political crisis in Lebanon, Saniora said that the government will stay as long as it has the majority's confidence. Saniora urged Nasrallah as well as FPM leader Gen. Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to "do what is best for an independent, Arab, free, diverse Lebanon." He called for electing a president followed by resumption of roundtable talks.
"Lebanon can't be built except through constructive and continuous dialogue between its factions."
On relations between Iran and Syria, Saniora said Lebanon must contribute in brokering a historical reconciliation between Tehran and the Arab world.
"We have deep-rooted cultural and historical relationships with Iran. We reject any attack on Iran, yet we reject its attempts to dominate Lebanon," Saniora explained.
"We don't want Lebanon to become an arena for regional conflicts.
"We seek excellent relationships with all Arab nations and on top with sisterly Syria.
"We demanded Syrian troops withdrawal from Lebanon but not to replaced by American or Iranian or French or Israeli hegemony.
"Lebanon is an independent country and must be dealt with accordingly.
Saniora urged Nasrallah to stop accusations of treason against the majority March 14 Forces.
"We must stop accusing each other of treachery and start building trust with Hizbullah.
Saniora reiterated that the Arab League initiative stripped the parliamentary majority of its ability to impose its policies and the opposition of its ability to block decision-making "but they rejected it." He said electing a president before the upcoming Arab Summit was essential.
"Should the Arab summit be held without Lebanese participation? I leave the decision for the Arabs. Beirut, 16 Feb 08, 08:31

Sayed Ali al-Amin Urges Hizbullah Not to Lead Lebanon 'To the Bottom'
By Dalia Nehme- Naharnet/
A ranking Shiite Muslim Cleric accused Hizbullah of lacking harmony with the aspirations of the Shiite community and attempting to isolate it from the remaining Lebanese factions.
The remark was made by Sayyed Ali al-Alin, the Mufti of Tyre and Mount Amel, in an interview with Naharnet.
"Aspirations of the Shiite community are not different from the other communities … but performance of the political front (Hizbullah) that controls the state of affairs within the Shiite community is not in harmony with the community's aspirants," al-Amin said.
"Such a performance isolates the Shiite community and implies that the community is a source of fear or concern to others," he added in reference to Hizbullah.
Such a behavior, according to al-Amin "implies that the Shiite community is linked to regional agendas and not interested in national agendas."
The Shiite community supported Hizbullah "in confronting Israel, but not to be an obstacle facing the state of Lebanon," he said.
He accused Hizbullah of "hurling Lebanon into the bottom of a pit" if it was serious in its open war declaration against Israel.
"Lebanon and the Lebanese People would encounter great dangers. That is why Hizbullah should consider this issue thoroughly because it should not drag all the Lebanese to a battle that concerns only the party and not all the Lebanese."
Al-Amin cautioned that "chaos in Lebanon would benefit no body, the main side that would suffer from chaos, in addition to the Lebanese, is Syria."
Chaos, he added, "would open the gate wide to internationalization in Lebanon and the region."
He urged citizens of Hizbullah strongholds in south Beirut and south Lebanon to penetrate the "walls of factionalism to join the nation and joint existence as
Preached by Imam Moussa Sadre." Beirut, 15 Feb 08, 20:37

Arab Suspects Likely Involved in Mughniyeh Killing
Naharnet/The pro-opposition daily al-Akhbar on Saturday reported that Syrian authorities have been able to arrest a number of Arab suspects believed involved in the killing of top Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh.
Al-Akhbar said official Syrian sources refused to comment on the report which said the Arab suspects were "not civilian." Citing well-informed sources, al-Akhbar said "security services operating in Arab countries have provided support to the criminals." It said that Iranian statements and the fact that Palestinian factions were put on high alert raise the possibility of a "harsh confrontation" with Israel soon. Iran's state news agency, IRNA, had said Syria and Tehran will conduct a joint investigation into the car bombing that killed Mughniyeh.
But an official Syrian information source on Saturday denied "formation of a joint Syrian-Iranian-Hizbullah committee," the state-run news agency, SANA reported.
In quoted the source as saying that only Syrian authorities are conducting the investigation into the Mughniyeh's assassination. Mughniyeh, the suspected mastermind of 1980s attacks on the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon that killed hundreds of Americans, was killed Tuesday night in the Syrian capital Damascus.
Iran and Hizbullah blamed Israel but the Israelis denied involvement. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed in a eulogy to Mughniyeh on Thursday that his Shiite group would retaliate against Israeli targets anywhere in the world.
An Iranian television station aired Friday what it said was mobile phone video footage of the blast that killed Mughniyeh. The grainy, dark images appeared to have been taken moments after his car blew up. They show a vehicle engulfed in flames on a street at night and several people, apparently bystanders, running by. It was not possible to see whether anyone was in the vehicle in the footage taken from a distance and lasting a few seconds.
The video was shown on Iran's state-run Arabic channel, Al-Alam. The station did not say how it obtained the footage.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki met in Damascus Friday with Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa to discuss the killing.
"We discussed the terrorist crime that led to the martyrdom of one of the most senior commanders in the Lebanese Islamic Resistance, martyr Imad Mughniyeh," Mottaki told reporters after the meeting. In Tehran, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheik Attar said that during Mottaki's visit to Damascus, which began Thursday, Iran and Syria agreed to form a joint investigation team to "look into the root causes and dimensions of the assassination to identify the perpetrators of this dirty crime," IRNA reported. Syria has not said who it believes was behind the blast. On Thursday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said he expected the perpetrators to be identified soon.
Mughniyeh was said to be one of the most elusive and notorious Hizbullah commanders, believed to have masterminded suicide bombings in Lebanon during the 1974-1990 civil war that killed hundreds of Americans and French, as well as hostage takings of Westerners and 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. In the 1990s, he went into hiding, and Western and Israeli intelligence accuse him of planning suicide bombings against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Argentina that killed more than 100 people. Over the past 15 years, he is believed to have moved in secret between Lebanon, Iran and Syria. Mottaki attended Mughniyeh's funeral in Beirut on Thursday and met later in the day with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus to discuss the killing. On Friday, he held talks with the Damascus-based leaders of the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In Iran, powerful politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani condemned the United States and Israel for welcoming Mughniyeh's killing.
"The countries that hoisted the banner of the international campaign against terrorism are today rejoicing over this terrorist act that led to the martyrdom of this great personality," said Rafsanjani, a former president who now heads the Expediency Council, a powerful clerical body.
"They lost the remainder of their blotted reputation after this last state-sponsored assassination, since they expressed happiness over a terrorist act," he told worshippers in a Friday prayer sermon at Tehran University, IRNA reported. During Friday prayers in Baghdad, worshippers were read a statement issued Thursday by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr saying Mughniyeh "became a martyr of world Islamic resistance." Al-Sadr declared a three-day mourning period for Mughniyeh.(Naharnet-AP) Beirut, 16 Feb 08, 11:12

Syria 'Directly Responsible' for Lebanon Crisis, Satterfield
Naharnet/A senior U.S. state department official lashed out at Syria accusing it of being "directly responsible" for the political crisis in Lebanon and the accompanying violence. "I would describe the situation as one of continuing blockage and the continued eruption of violence in Lebanon ... We regard Syria as directly responsible for this situation," said David Satterfield, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's representative for Iraq.
"The role Syria has to play is very simple: to allow the Lebanese to proceed with free elections. It's not a complicated proposition," he said.
Satterfield had talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy's foreign affairs advisor Jean-David Levitte and officials from the French foreign ministry.
He said Damascus had taken action to reduce the number of anti-American insurgents passing into Iraq from Syria, but had done so mainly for its own internal reasons. "These are dangerous individuals. They are individuals fundamentally threatening to Syria's interests as well. They are not good people to have in your country. "Syria we believe did take certain steps (but) we do not believe the Syrians have taken any steps for the sake of Iraq to constrain this flow. Whatever they have done has been solely for the regime's own security purposes," he said.(AFP) Beirut, 16 Feb 08, 08:02

Soldiers Allegedly Wounded in Confrontation with Rioters
Naharnet/At least 11 Lebanese soldiers were allegedly wounded in a confrontation with rioters in Beirut, according to radio reports. The army command, however, did not issue any communiqué regarding the alleged development. The report said 10 privates and a captain were being treated at the military hospital from wounds suffered while trying to prevent rioters from smashing cars in the Abdul Nasser square of Beirut the day before. The report said rioters attacked soldiers with batons wounding the soldiers and inflicting damage to eight U.S.-made M-16 assault rifles. The rioters, the radio report claimed, were supporters of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's AMAL movement. Beirut, 15 Feb 08, 20:09

Bush Discusses Lebanon with Saud al-Faisal
Naharnet/U.S. President George Bush held talks in Washington on Friday with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on what was expected to touch on Lebanon and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, officials said. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Bush planned to meet the Saudi foreign minister in the Oval Office in the morning, with another official confirming that the meeting actually took place. Bush "looks forward to discussing with him a wide range of regional issues including the president's recent trip to the Middle East, to the region, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the situation in Lebanon," Stanzel said.
A spokeswoman for the National Security Council later confirmed that the meeting between the president and Prince Saud took place but declined to provide any details about what was discussed. The Saudi embassy in Washington also declined to comment.
Prince Saud, whose country is the world's biggest oil producer, joined Bush last November in Annapolis, Maryland for an international conference to launch the first serious Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in seven years. A U.S. official who was not privy to the meeting told AFP that U.S. and Arab officials have recently discussed key issues concerning Beirut, including U.N. plans to set up a Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
The international court is designed to try suspects in the murders of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik Hariri and 22 others in a massive bombing on February 14, 2005. It will also look into attacks against other anti-Syrian figures. "The U.S. has discussed the Lebanon tribunal with a number of Arab allies in recent days," including funding for it, according to the official who asked not to be named. On the third anniversary of Hariri's death, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the United States intends to double its pledge to the tribunal's first year budget from seven million dollars to 14 million dollars. Washington suspects Syria of having assassinated anti-Syrian figures like journalists, lawmakers and security officials in a bid to destabilize Lebanon and regain the influence it once had there. The deadlock in Lebanon over electing a new president has also been a topic of U.S. concern. "In the last several weeks there have been a number of discussions between American, European and members of the Arab League on Lebanon," the U.S. official said. David Satterfield, a senior State Department official who deals with Iraq, said in Paris Friday that Syria was "directly responsible" for the political crisis in Lebanon and the accompanying violence.
"The role Syria has to play is very simple: to allow the Lebanese to proceed with free elections. It's not a complicated proposition," he said.
Satterfield also said Damascus had taken action to reduce the number of anti-American insurgents passing into Iraq from Syria, but had done so mainly for its own internal reasons.(AFP) Beirut, 16 Feb 08, 08:22

Perez: Nasrallah is Threat to Lebanese
Naharnet/Israeli President Shimon Perez said that Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah poses a threat to the Lebanese people and accused him of controlling Lebanon's destiny. Perez' remarks came during a meeting with Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim on Friday. He also accused Nasrallah of preventing the Lebanese from electing a president, adding that Hizbullah was seeking to "turn Lebanon into part of the Iranian dream."Perez said the problem with Hizbullah was "not with Israel but with Israel but Lebanon itself."On the summer 2006 war between Hizbullah and Israel, Perez said Nasrallah "achieved nothing."
"Instead, he (Nasrallah) brought enormous damage to Lebanon," Perez said. Beirut, 16 Feb 08, 09:43

Nasrallah-Aoun: Putting a face to the other
Naharnet/Hanady Salman* writes from Beirut on a tale of two Lebanons
It was an event that this country has never witnessed before. Not that the country has not witnessed many unique events in its history.
However, on 6 February 2008, the Secretary-General of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah, and the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, Michel Aoun, appeared on television together to explain the "Agreement of Understanding" they had signed two years before. Watching the two men, who differ on almost every issue, sitting together, talking to each other, and, mostly, listening to each other, is an unprecedented sight in Lebanon.
Nasrallah is a sheikh and a Shia sayed, or descendant of the prophet. He grew up in a poor Christian neighbourhood that he had to leave with his family when the Lebanese Civil War started in the mid-1970s.
He moved between South Lebanon, Baalbak, Najaf in Iraq, and Qom in Iran for a while, studied Islam, became a sheikh, fought the Israelis in the south during the 1982 invasion, and was one of the founders of an organisation that grew to force Israel out of Lebanon in 2000 and defeat the main goal of the deadly war it launched in July 2006, namely to destroy Hizbullah.
When Nasrallah was born in 1960, Michel Aoun was training to become a lieutenant in the Lebanese army he had joined in 1955. Aoun was born in 1935 to a lower-middle-class family that struggled to pay his tuition fees at the prestigious Freres School. The Civil War drove him out of the neighbourhood of Haret Hreik in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the same neighbourhood that Hizbullah chose some decades later for its headquarters.
Aoun learnt French, English, Spanish and Italian. During his military career, he travelled to many Western countries, where he spent considerable amounts of time training, mostly in France and the US. His daughters grew up in upper-middle-class Lebanese circles.
In 1984, when Nasrallah was fighting the Israelis in South Lebanon, Aoun became commander-in-chief of the Lebanese army. And in 1990, when the Syrians led Aoun out of the country, Hizbullah was preparing to join the Lebanese parliament and become a "legal" and established component of the country's political scene.
During the 15 years Aoun spent in exile in France, Nasrallah's presence on the Lebanese scene grew in prominence and popularity. In 1992, he was elected secretary-general of Hizbullah; in 1997, his elder son Hadi was killed during a battle with the Israelis in South Lebanon; in 2000, Lebanon celebrated the Israeli withdrawal, mostly thanks to Hizbullah's efforts. The man himself, though, was confined to a sort of self-imposed house arrest in the southern suburbs of Beirut for security reasons.
During the same 15 years, Aoun founded the Free Patriotic Movement and lobbied for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in international circles. This was the same Syrian presence that facilitated Nasrallah's accomplishments back home.
These are two men who lived in a country where they were never supposed to meet, not even accidentally. They would not even walk on the same streets, meet the same people, speak the same language in their homes, go to the same restaurants, or shop at the same places. They don't even have the same accent.
People with different backgrounds are not supposed to meet in Lebanon. You can grow up in Beirut, visit Paris 300 times, and die before you even think of seeing [the northern province of] Akkar. And you can live and die in Bint Jbeil in the South, and spend your whole life cherishing the memory of the only visit you ever paid to Baalbak in the Bekaa.
This separation is not about different religious or political backgrounds. Rich Christians and rich Muslims are "best friends". Their kids go to the same schools, wear the same brands, ski together, and spend summers in the same countries. Their wives carry the same three-figure price-tagged bags, go to the same beauty parlours, and fancy the same luxurious restaurants. And the men like doing business together, keeping the money in the same circles, lobbying together to keep things the way they are.
Only poor Lebanese never meet in this country. The Christian neighbourhood of Ain Al-Rumaneh is just one street away from the Shia neighbourhood of Shayyah. This is a deadly street and one that witnessed the ugliest atrocities of the Civil War. This is a street that regularly witnesses clashes between people living on both sides.
Yet, families on both sides never get to know how similar they are: all struggling lower-middle-class families who can barely make ends meet. Their bitterness, their anger, goes in the wrong direction. For "the Other" is not someone who lives differently. The Other is someone who is very similar to themselves.
It was on this street that Nasrallah and Aoun met publicly two years ago and announced they had decided to join efforts to achieve common goals, at least to achieve the goals they both have in common. Neither man asked the other to change radically. Neither ignored how different the other was.
Back then, most people in the country thought it was a bad joke, or at best a tactical move to embarrass opponents. However, no one then knew that this move would have to face a cruel test in the shape of a war that in few weeks left at least 1,200 people dead, one million displaced, and a country half destroyed and totally divided. No one believed the agreement would withstand such a test.
Yet, Aoun's followers opened their houses to Nasrallah's followers fleeing the Israeli fire and destruction. In these houses, both sides came to see how similar they were: the Other had a face now, a name, a few kids, tears and smiles. Putting a face to the Other was what it was.
Regardless of what Aoun and Nasrallah represent politically, these are two men who have come a long way. Like few before them, they each decided to give up a little, to find common ground, and to take it from there. They say their ultimate goal is to build a country where the citizen is king. This is what they explicitly said last Wednesday. Nasrallah said he will never "want to establish an Islamic republic in Lebanon and disturb its diversity, which is the same diversity that allows" him to be what he wants to be. Aoun said that he wants a country of equal citizens. This is a first, and not only in Lebanon. Leaders who want the citizen to be king?
Well, today at least in Lebanon two leaders went on record to announce that the concept of citizenship, with all that it entails, had found a tiny place on their busy agendas.
* The writer is managing editor of As-Safir newspaper.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

The World Council of the Cedars Revolution
Representing the hopes and aspirations of many millions of Lebanese in Lebanon and throughout the Diaspora
2300 M Street, NW, Suite 800 , Washington , DC , USA 20037
Phone + 1 202 416 1819, Fax + 1 202 293 3083
www.cedarsrevolution.org cedarsrevolution@gmail.com
Press release
Imad Mignieh is an international terrorist and The Lebanese cabinet & March 14 have an explanation to provide to the public
Washington DC, Cedars News, Feb 16th, 2008
The Director of the US Council for the Cedars Revolution issued the following statement
We, as Lebanese Americans do consider Hezbollah as a Terrorist Organization, which has taken the lives of many American lives since 1983. We also consider Hezbollah as a Terror group which has been involved in an alliance with the Syrian regime responsible for the occupation of our mother country Lebanon and for a series of Terror assassinations aimed at legislators, journalists, politicians, and military and security commanders.
We consider Hezbollah as responsible for the war against the Cedars Revolution and for violence against the Lebanese People. We wish to see this organization disarmed and the international terrorists within its ranks brought to justice.
We have been surprised and offended to see the head of the Lebanese cabinet which we have been supporting and politicians members of the March 14 Coalition expressing their political condolences to the leadership of Hezbollah for the death of international terrorist Imad Mughnieh. While his Terror wars on the regional level and inside Lebanon are behind the violence he got involved with, and while his wars are not of Lebanon 's business, he was also responsible for the campaign of violence against Lebanese citizens.
The Lebanese cabinet and March 14 have an explanation to provide to the public of the Cedars Revolution, to the Lebanese Diaspora and to the Lebanese American community. The US Council of the Cedars Revolution request a formal explanation about the rationale behind the act of solidarity with international terrorism practiced by the Lebanese cabinet and the March 14 Alliance.
Attorney John Hajjar
Director, US Council of the Cedars Revolution
www.cedarsrevolution.net

Tough Men without a Nation
Ghassan Charbel
Al Hayat - 15/02/08//
Much will be written about yesterday's events in Lebanon…in both Squares…Analysts and commentators will go far in reading the lines and between the lines. It is no exaggeration to say that some of what was said was important and serious. Perhaps some of what was said goes beyond Lebanon's endurance.
Much will be written on the events at Martyrs Square. It will be said that the March 14 Movement has succeeded in turning February 14 into another March 14 and that it has finally settled the debate over popular majority. It will also be said that the movement has regained its capacity to speak as a parliamentary and popular majority at the same time and that the blows it had been dealt over the past three years have not scattered its supporters nor reduced their numbers.
It will be written that the Martyrs Square was packed with crowds of participants, that the streets leading to Beirut were jammed with waves of demonstrators who flocked to the Square even if the weather slowed them down or postponed their arrival. It will be said that March 14 has settled the issue of popular majority in the absence of General Michel Aoun and his movement and that he is the biggest loser because he quit the majority which has remained a majority without him.
It will also be said that the crowd has confirmed the birth of a new popular leadership in Lebanon, that is Saad Hariri, and that his leadership goes beyond that of his late father, being much stronger, and much more evident as it has reached once restricted areas. It will also be pointed out that Saad's success in combining an overwhelming leadership in his own confession and a significant presence in other sects while maintaining the arsenal of international contacts that he inherited from his late father will turn him into a major player in the Lebanese equation just as the case was with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in his respective context.
A remarkable Christian participation at the Martyrs Square will also be mentioned. It was a remarkable participation amidst a boycott by General Michel Aoun who now resides on the other bank. Some will write that the General lost yesterday one of his most important cards and that he will no longer sound convincing when he talks about stealing seats and representation. There will be those who offer interpretations. They will say that the General's handling of the issue of the vacant presidency has undermined his position among the Christians and that the campaigns directed at the Maronite Patriarch had reflected negatively on him even if it was not he who had launched the toughest and most vicious of those campaigns.
Much will also be written on the events in the other square in the southern suburb, the Dahiya….on what it means for Israel to succeed in assassinating Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, on the meaning of the place and timing of the assassination, and the success of the executors to reveal the identity of the master of disguise…how it successfully tracked and hunted him down. Things will be written about the participation of Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the funeral and the feelings of the president and the Supreme Leader.
Much will be written on what Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said at the funeral of Hajj Radwan. Analysts will be busy with his talk on an "open war," accusing Israel of violating the "natural limits of the battlefield," the assertion that Hezbollah is ready to face any new Israeli aggression and his looking at Mughniyeh's assassination as an extension of the July War.
Many commentators will wonder about the nature of the response and its whereabouts, about the assassination and its relationship to the postponed American-Iranian dialogue over Iraq, whether the Iraqi scene will witness some of the retaliations for Mughniyeh's assassination, as his death represents a blatant challenge to Hezbollah as well as to Iran and Syria. A few will ask whether the confrontation will spill over from the Lebanese and Iraqi fronts into other scenes, which would put us in front of a much more dangerous situation since we live in the post-9/11 world. This is not to mention that Mughniyeh's assassination and the method in which it was carried out make it difficult to keep an operation of this type without a response, especially at a time when Israel is talking about regaining its deterrence capacity.
Amidst the ocean of questions and analysis, two truths emerge to the surface. The first is that the success of the March 14 Movement to confirm its popularity is insufficient to save the republic, unless it reaches a settlement with the other camp. The second truth is that Hezbollah's ability to wage open war will be much costlier if the Lebanese scene remain open to the possibilities of strife and civil war. With the lack of a half-way settlement, Lebanon will be nothing but the "Lebanese Battlefield." The worst that could happen is that the language of separation and the temptation of divorce may become stronger, and one day the parties would awake too late to discover that each of them is stronger in his own part of the nation - tough men without a nation

In praise of cowardice
NowLebanon Site
February 15, 2008
http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=30958&MID=10&PID=2
Even the keenest of observations can sometimes turn into a cliché. Rare were those who failed to highlight the deep disconnect on Thursday between those Lebanese commemorating the assassination of Rafik Hariri and those burying Imad Mugniyah in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Fine, Lebanon is a divided country, even in death. We really do get the point. Then again, many people were quite disturbed to hear the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt declare in an interview earlier this week that it was impossible to coexist with Hezbollah, and that a friendly divorce was in order. They were even more disturbed to hear him say last weekend that if the opposition wanted war, then the majority would welcome a war.
But then what happened? Hassan Nasrallah made a speech at the Mugniyah funeral that made Jumblatt sound like a prophet.
The secretary general declared that the killing of Mugniyah meant that the party’s next move would be the elimination of Israel – no less. He said that if Israel wanted an open war, then Hezbollah would give it one, implying that the scope of that war would extend beyond
Lebanon, just as Israel’s killing of Mugniyah had. And Nasrallah said Mugniyah’s death would only lead to the emergence of thousands of Mugniyahs.
We can understand that Hezbollah was profoundly angry with the assassination of a senior operative (one whom the party claimed for so long didn’t exist). We can accept that Nasrallah needed to rally the troops and show that Hezbollah would continue unfazed, despite its loss. But as Lebanese we have to wonder what he meant about an open war and the elimination of Israel. We really don’t care for Israel any more than others do, but are we to understand that everyone in Lebanon will now have to pay a harsh price in the upcoming apocalypse because Hezbollah has unilaterally decided to exact revenge for a murder in Damascus?
Actually, let us rephrase. Are we to understand that Lebanon will be in the vanguard of efforts to eliminate Israel (an activity that, we worry, might take some time), while every other Arab country sits on the sidelines and yawns? If we’re lucky, Bashar al-Assad might again call the Arab leaders “half-men” for failing to come to Lebanon’s assistance. And we’ll be too touched to remind the Syrian leader that during the summer 2006 war, his regime was secretly involved in unofficial contacts with Israel.
But back to Hassan Nasrallah. We intend to have more courage than Michel Aoun in defending our right to disagree with Hezbollah (the same Aoun who called the Mugniyah killing “an aggression against Syria and Lebanon and an expansion of the field of terrorism”). The fact is, Nasrallah has no authority or right to carry us into a new war of his own making. If he wants to erase Israel from the map, fine, but don’t involve us. Our reading of the balance of forces, like our experience, tells us that we’re the ones who will be deleted long before Israel feels any pain. Are we cowards? Weaklings? Darned right we are, and we have no intention of changing, especially when Hezbollah’s regional patrons are no better.
Nasrallah doesn’t want a national divorce, but he wants the weakest of Arab states to engage in perpetual war until Israel is no more; he wants our society to be built entirely on a scaffolding of resistance; and he wants us all to embrace his scheme in the name of unity. Thanks, but no thanks. We reject so self-centered a strategy. We’re sorry for your loss, Sayyed, but we’ve had enough of war, and enough of people clamoring for “revolution until victory.” At this point, we’re familiar with the taste of dust.

Terror Incorporated - Hezbollah's Global Islamic Web
 Mark Silverberg
15 Feb 2008
“If they (the Jews) gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
Lebanese Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (Beirut Daily Star)
“All the world is a battlefield open in front of us…..It is Jihad for sake of Allah and will last until our religion prevails from Spain to Iraq…. every participant in the crime will pay the price.” (filmed in front of a photo of the World Trade Center)
Ayman al-Zawahiri (al Qaeda), July 27, 2006
The "A-Team" of Terror
With more than fifty Hezbollah terror cells believed to be spread across the globe (especially in South America and Africa) and capable of being activated and used to strike at Israeli or Jewish targets in retaliation for Tuesday’s assassination of Hezbollah arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh in Syria, senior American, European and Israeli intelligence officials are now keeping their respective cells under deep surveillance.
Hezbollah operatives have already entered the U.S. through our southern border and according to recent reports have scoped twenty targets that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasts could "end Anglo-Saxon civilization." Hezbollah spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli went further in a Reuters interview: "We have 2,000 volunteers (read: "suicide bombers")……... They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardize 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 III … we welcome it"
and Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, often referred to as Hezbollah's spiritual leader, has already exhorted his followers to confront "American interests everywhere" if the United States attacks Iran.
These are not idle threats from a powerless organization. Since 1984 Iran has created Hezbollah branches in more than 20 countries including the U.S. Shortly after the September 11th attacks, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, stated that Hezbollah is "believed to have the largest embedded terrorist network inside the U.S."
Today, American law enforcement officials are concerned the terrorist group, which has so far focused on fund-raising and other support activities inside the United States, could activate its American sleeper cells in solidarity with Iran and rein havoc in this country. References to cooperation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah abound in the September 11th Commission's final report, suggesting that the boundary between Shiite and Sunni is not as pronounced as some analysts and academics might otherwise believe. As the Commission noted within the context of cooperation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah's Iranian masters: "In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support - even if only training - for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States."1
Although the organization has yet to launch an attack on U.S. soil, its overseas activities are far from benign. One purpose has been to raise money and smuggle arms to Hezbollah terrorists (often through criminal activities ranging from credit-card fraud to cigarette smuggling). The other however, 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.2
Lessons from Lebanon
There has never been any question about Hezbollah’s world-view. Hezbollah's founding document calls for Islamic rule in Lebanon, an end to Western imperialism in the Middle East, and the destruction of the State of Israel. The indoctrination of its children in how to become “martyrs” (read: human grenades), its terrorist training camps in Iran and southern Lebanon, its criminal fundraising activities around the world, its mosques and Al Manor (its television station) all exist for these purposes alone. For these reasons, it endorses the taking of hostages, suicide in jihad operations and "the duty of all Muslims to engage in Islamic jihad if it ensures the ultimate goal [of] inflicting losses on the enemy” 3 and has done everything in its power to foment civil war between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq through its use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in mosques, marketplaces and public gathering places.
With the exception of al Qaeda's attack on 9/11, no other foreign terrorist organization has been more lethal for Americans than Hezbollah. The terrorist organization has cells on every continent, and its operatives have committed horrifying attacks as far away as Argentina. It was Hezbollah, that "pioneered" the use of suicide bombing, and its history of slaughtering Americans is long, sordid and from the American perspective, unavenged.
On April 18, 1983, a Hezbollah suicide bomber drove a van filled with explosives into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killing 63 persons including 16 Americans.
On October 23, 1983, Hezbollah suicide bombers destroyed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killing 241 American Marines and 58 French soldiers. At the time, Hezbollah leader Shaykh Husayn Al-Musawi praised the bombing by declaring, "I salute this good act and bow to the spirits of the martyrs."
On March 16, 1984, as Iran's top Hezbollah agent in Beirut, Mugniyeh took CIA station chief William Buckley hostage and tortured him to death after extracting whatever information he could.
On September 20, 1984, the U.S. embassy annex near Beirut was attacked by Hezbollah suicide bombers killing 14 people including 2 Americans.
In December 1984, Hezbollah hijacked a Kuwaiti airliner and two American passengers employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development were "sorted out" by the hijackers and murdered.
In June 1985, Hezbollah hijacked TWA Flight 847, brutally murdered American Navy diver Robert Stethem and dumped his lifeless body on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport.
In 1988, Mugniyeh kidnapped, tortured and publicly hanged Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins who was on peacekeeping duty in Lebanon.
On March 17, 1992, Hezbollah coordinated the attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina (killing 29 people) and later, on July 18, 1994, Hezbollah bombed the Argentina-Israeli Mutual Association (AIMA) building in Buenos Aires wounding 300 persons and killing another 86.
On July 25, 1996, Hezbollah's fingerprints were traced to the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that claimed another 19 Americans lives.
Hezbollah also maintains terror cells and infrastructure throughout Europe. In particular, the organization uses Europe as an operational launching pad for its operatives to enter Israel in order to conduct attacks, assist other operatives and conduct surveillance and collect intelligence on Israeli targets. For example, Ghulam Mahmud Qawqa, a Hezbollah agent who had engineered several attacks in Jerusalem and was captured in 2003 by Israeli police, admitted that he had been working with numerous Hezbollah cells in Europe to initiate a continent wide campaign against Israeli and Jewish targets for Hezbollah leadership.
Germany has also been a key fund raising center for Hezbollah. Most of the funds come from charitable organizations and are officially earmarked for Hezbollah’s social welfare work. In 2002, Germany closed down two charitable organizations raising money for Hezbollah - the al-Shahid Social Relief Institution, which was the German branch of a Lebanese charitable organization, and the al-Aqsa Fund, a Hamas front that also raised funds for Hezbollah. 4
In addition to the U.S., Hezbollah operatives have been found in France, Spain, Cyprus, Singapore, the "tri-border" region of South America (see below), and the Philippines, as well as in more familiar operational theaters in Europe and the Middle East. The movement draws on these cells to raise money, prepare the logistic infrastructure for attacks, disseminate propaganda, and otherwise ensure that the organization remains robust and ready to strike.
Al Manar (“The Beacon”)
A 2006 Report on Hezbollah issued by the Anti-Defamation League has also drawn attention to the manner in which Hezbollah disseminates its message world-wide. Reaching a global audience approaching fifteen million people, Hezbollah’s television station Al Manar preaches hate and violence to its global audience and is used to incite terror against Americans and Israelis, disseminating anti-Semitic and anti-American programming and glorifying suicide bombers across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. The Al-Manar Web site, which has included information on how to contribute funds to the “resistance” in “Israeli occupied lands,” allows a viewer to read news releases and view streaming video over the Internet. The site formerly resided on a server in Hoboken, New Jersey - at least ten Hezbollah-associated Web sites have moved from or been shut down by Web-hosting companies in the U.S. and Canada.
Blood Trade
Investigators searching the homes of the suicide bombers in the Casablanca attacks of May 2003 discovered documents inspired by the sermons of radical Islamist ideologue Abu Qatada. These sermons, among other things, justified criminal fundraising activity provided that the money was used to finance jihad. This has provided Hezbollah with the necessary religious justification for establishing a global web of criminal enterprises in support of terrorism.
A General Accounting Office (GAO) Report published on December 12, 2003 confirmed that Hezbollah earns and transfers millions of dollars for terrorist purposes through an elaborate global criminal network involving precious stones, metals, drugs, smuggling, extortion and the manufacture and export of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, American dollars and automotive products. In Lebanon in 2003, for example, $1.2M worth of counterfeit brake pads and shock absorbers were seized, the profits for which were earmarked for Hezbollah. 5 The organization not only uses Lebanon's Beka’a Valley poppy crop for funds (much as al Qaeda used Afghanistan's poppy crop for the financing its global jihad effort), but it uses the revenues to buy support from Israeli Arabs who are prepared to carry out operations against Israel. 6 It also employs front companies and phony businesses to funnel cash or extortion taxes to subsidize its terrorist networks.
In Africa for the past five years, Hezbollah has raised millions of dollars by selling diamonds in Europe mined in Sierra Leone. The U.S. Embassy in Freetown has published a report to the effect that rough diamonds worth $70M to $100M are smuggled out of the country each year for the purpose of buying and smuggling weapons for terrorist activities. The UN and Belgian police believe that Hezbollah sold at least $19M of the stones on the Antwerp diamond market in the year before the September 11, 2001 attacks. 7
In South America, the tri-border region (formed by the cities of Puerto Igauzu, Argentina; Foz do Iguazu, Brazil; and Ciudad del Este, Paraguay) has also proven to be a literal "gold mine" for Hezbollah's global criminal enterprises, and one of the most successful of its financiers was Assad Ahmad Barakat. Barakat was part owner of Galeria Page, one of Ciudad del Este’s largest shopping malls. Evidence at his trial disclosed that he had used the mall and his wholesale import-export businesses as a front to recruit Hezbollah volunteers and as a large source of financial support for terrorist activities including the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA bombings in Argentina in the mid-1990s.
As deputy to a Hezbollah financial director, Ali Kazan, Barakat served as a treasurer for Hezbollah in the region, carried contributions to Lebanon for the group, and was the primary liaison for Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah. He used his company, Barakat Import Export Ltda. to raise millions of dollars for Hezbollah in Lebanon by mortgaging the company in order to borrow money from a bank in what turned out to be a fraud scheme. Barakat was also involved in a counterfeiting ring that distributed fake U.S. dollars that generated cash to fund Hezbollah operations in the Middle East.
After his arrest in June 2002, Paraguayan authorities recovered a video of Hezbollah military operations from a personal computer in one of Barakat's stores. The footage depicted the detonation of explosives, some of which showed people dying from these explosions. Another file included Hezbollah military orders for each town and village in southern Lebanon. Barakat is also known to have relayed information to and from Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon and, at their request, sought sensitive information about the activities of Arabs in the tri-border area.
In particular, he procured information about Arab community members who traveled to the United States or Israel and transmitted that information to Hezbollah's Foreign Relations Department in Lebanon. He also regularly hosted and attended meetings of senior Hezbollah tri-border area leaders. According to information available to the U.S. government, he attended a meeting of the area's Hezbollah members in the fall of 2000 in Brazil where Hezbollah members discussed their intentions to identify, locate and assassinate former members of the Army of South Lebanon and Israelis. 8
In June 2004, Barakat was designated as the key terrorist financier in South America using financial crime from counterfeiting to extortion to generate funding for Hezbollah. He is currently serving six and a half years in a Paraguay prison for tax evasion. Francis X. Taylor, the State Department’s coordinator for counter terrorism, noted in testimony to Congress on October 10, 2001 that the tri-border region had a “long-standing presence of Islamic extremist organizations” and named Hezbollah specifically as being involved in “fundraising activities and proselytizing among the large expatriate population from the Middle East.”
There are also an increasing number of reports of strategic and logistical cooperation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah in the area. Al Qaeda’s desire to bring the jihad to the United States makes the proximity of South America all the more appealing - especially with the knowledge that illegal access into America from both Mexico and Canada is far easier than through normal immigration channels. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage testified before a joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee that Hezbollah now has a capacity similar to al Qaeda to organize a mega-attack against U.S. targets and he noted its presence in South America. Other administration officials have asserted that over the long term, Hezbollah may be more dangerous to the United States than al Qaeda so the fears expressed recently by the FBI and Homeland Security officials concerning "sleeper cells" on U.S. soil are not unwarranted.
In the U.S., there are at least a dozen Hezbollah cells across the United States, each including a hard core of several dozen suspected terrorists (primarily in Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Boston), a number with military training in Hezbollah camps - plus hundreds of supporters. The concern is that Hezbollah - among other groups - may have implanted U.S.-based sleepers not only to raise money, but also to orchestrate an attack if and when the timing is right. And it is that fear that keeps U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials up at night. Hezbollah's infrastructure within the U.S. has mostly given financial and logistic support for a focused and successful guerilla war against Israel. As a fighting force in America, however, Hezbollah's sleepers have yet to be tested.
What is known is that programs of Hezbollah's Al-Manor television station have aired on Detroit's Channel 23, and Hezbollah calendars have been distributed through the Islamic Center of America (ICA) in Detroit. Detroit, in fact, is home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States and several individuals from that community have already pleaded guilty to "providing material support to terrorists." 9 Hezbollah is especially popular in Dearborn, where Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab American News, considers members of Hezbollah - along with Hamas and other jihadist groups – as ”freedom fighters” and shopkeepers are tuned in to Al Jazeera on a constant basis. As Diana West wryly noted: “To find TVs in the heartland tuned in to this station today is roughly akin to coming across an American town, circa 1942, tuned in to Axis propagandists Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw.” 10
But it is Hezbollah's illicit enterprises in America that have drawn the attention of our security and intelligence agencies. A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation into a pseudo-ephedrine smuggling scam in the American Midwest led investigators to Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries including bank accounts tied to Hezbollah and Hamas. 11 DEA chief Asa Hutchinson confirmed: "a significant portion of some of the sales are sent to the Middle East to benefit terrorist organizations." A senior U.S. law enforcement official added, "There is a significant amount of money moved out of the United States attributed to fraud that goes to terrorism" and American supporters of Hezbollah are the source. In March 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, a Lebanese citizen living in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to raise money for Hezbollah. Kourani admitted hosting meetings at his home where donations for Hezbollah were solicited by a guest speaker from Lebanon. According to the indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury in Michigan in January 2004, Kourani was a “member, fighter, recruiter and fund-raiser for Hezbollah.” 12
But a much more sophisticated plan to raise funds for Hezbollah was already well underway in North Carolina by then. In a detailed 85-page federal affidavit, filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in July 2002, Mohammad and Chawki Hammoud, two brothers, were involved in a Hezbollah support cell in Charlotte, North Carolina, and were subsequently found guilty of a variety of criminal charges including funding Hezbollah activities from the proceeds of an interstate cigarette smuggling ring. On February 28, 2003, Mohammad Hammoud received an extraordinary 155 years in prison for racketeering and "material support" of Hezbollah. Seven other defendants plead guilty to a variety of charges including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, cigarette smuggling, bank scams, bribery, credit card fraud, immigration fraud, identity theft, tax evasion, and money laundering. The cell had used so many identities that investigators had to dig through a mind-boggling 500 accounts to follow the money trail.
They relied on fraudulent Social Security numbers, passed bad checks, used stolen credit cards, passed stolen goods via mail drops, and engaged in forgery. Tax returns from cell members were exercises in creative accounting. Hammoud had made bank deposits in 1997 totaling $737,318, but reported total wages of just $24,693. The next year, another conspirator deposited $90,903, but listed no income at all. Hammoud's cousin owned a house-painting company, employed illegal aliens to staff it, paid them under the table, and skipped on taxes! But credit card scams were their specialty. One of the Charlotte Hezbollah cell members adopted the identities of Middle Eastern students after graduation, expanded their credit card limits to the maximum, and then racked up half a million dollars on the cards before disappearing without paying them off. His phone had four different rings - each one for a different identity, and he used so many false names that he had to pull a book out of a friend's safe and study it before going to the bank. 13
The Hammoud case began innocuously enough in 1995. A local sheriff's detective Bob Fromme, working off-duty as a security guard at JR Tobacco Warehouse in Statesville, N.C., grew suspicious when he saw a group of Middle Eastern men repeatedly buying hundreds of cartons of cigarettes apiece. Each week, Hammoud and his support cell would pack three to four minivans full with cigarettes, each load reportedly worth some $13,000. Copying an old Mafia scam, the men then ran vanloads of cigarettes from North Carolina (taxed at only 50 cents a carton) to Michigan (where the tax was $7.50 a carton), and illegally pocketed the difference. Fromme persuaded the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to investigate. Just as they were poised to bring charges, the FBI swooped in and took over - linking the smuggling operation to the Hezbollah cell that Hammoud headed.
It is estimated that, between 1996 and 1999, they bought nearly $300,000 worth of cigarettes on ten credit cards. By the time of their arrest, the smugglers had accumulated some $8M - nearly a quarter of that pure profit. A substantial portion was then transferred in Vancouver, Canada to a Canadian Hezbollah operative who used the money to fund shipments of a wide range of “dual use” military gear to Hezbollah headquarters in Lebanon. The gear included night-vision goggles, GPS devices, mine detectors, radar, laser range finders, blasting equipment, and sophisticated software.
Hammoud’s entry into America was typical. Refused a visa by the U.S. Embassy in Syria, he made his way to Venezuela, bought a fake visa for $200, and in 1992 flew to New York, where he demanded asylum, then promptly disappeared. He followed a family member to Charlotte, where he ended up delivering pizzas for Domino's. The rest, as they say, is history.
Investigations subsequently disclosed that eight of the key suspects in the Charlotte case hailed from the same neighborhood of south Beirut, a longtime Hezbollah stronghold. Hammoud, by age 15, was serving in the Hezbollah militia. The case outlined against the cell was about fund-raising, but there was enough evidence seized in the course of the investigation to justify a legitimate concern about terrorism in general. Evidence gathered in the case included photos of Hammoud brandishing an automatic rifle in Hezbollah headquarters and holding rocket launchers in Lebanon. Also seized from Hammoud's house was a videotape of Hezbollah men with explosive belts around their waist "and the interpretation of the chanting was: ‘We pledge to detonate ourselves to shake the ground under the feet of our enemies, America and Israel.’" 14
Conclusion
An al Qaeda computer that had been used by bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders until they fled Kabul in the face of advancing American and Northern Alliance forces sheds light upon its intentions for America. It contained an unfinished justification of the 9/11 attacks. The essay, "The Truth about the New Crusade: A Ruling on the Killing of Women and Children of the Non-Believers," was written by Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who worked with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in organizing the September 11th attacks. It argued that "the sanctity of women, children, and the elderly is not absolute" and concluded that "in killing Americans who are ordinarily off limits, Muslims should not exceed four million non-combatants, or render more than ten million of them homeless" and they mean what they say. It is all part of the global Islamic jihad where the death of millions of civilians can be justified on the grounds that they are subhuman infidels. 15 While Sunnis have no great affection for heretic Shiites, or visa-versa, when it comes to infidels, apostates and the global Islamic jihad, there is very little ideological space that divides them. It is that alliance that challenges the Free World.
If to save itself from a humiliating defeat, Hezbollah unleashes chemical and/ or biological weapons against Israel, it is likely that the use of such weapons would not be limited to Israel alone. Geniis are difficult to put back into their bottles once they have emerged. If we have learned anything in the post 9/11 world, it is that the security paradigm of the past - the oceans and our "technological edge" would keep us safe - no longer applies in the age of mega-terror especially when the agents of terror live among us and are dedicated to the destruction of our way of life.

Not if, but how
Hezbollah threatens to retaliate for the murder of its top commander
Nicholas Blanford, Special to NOW Lebanon ,
February 16, 2008
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivering a speech broadcast on Manar TV during the funeral of Imad Mugniyah. (AFP/Manar TV)
Hezbollah will miss the organizational capabilities of Imad Mugniyah as it ponders the best means of retaliating for the death of its senior and veteran militant.
After all, it was allegedly Mugniyah who oversaw the planning of the last two major acts of revenge for Israeli operations against Hezbollah – the bombings in Buenos Aires of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in March 1992 and July 1994 respectively, which together killed over 100 people.
The bombing of the Israeli Embassy was claimed by Islamic Jihad (of 1980s kidnapping fame, not the Palestinian version) in revenge for the assassination a month earlier of Sayyed Abbas Moussawi, the then-Hezbollah secretary general, who was killed along with his family and bodyguards in an Israeli helicopter attack.
The Jewish cultural center was blown up six weeks after an Israeli air strike killed more than 40 recruits in the Bekaa, an unprecedented number of casualties in a single raid.
Hezbollah has apparently already replaced Mugniyah, probably with one of his deputies. Mugniyah’s successor has not been publicly named, of course, but it is possible that he could be either Talal Hamiyah or Ibrahim Aqil.
Hamiyah, from a powerful clan in the Bekaa, worked closely with Mugniyah in the 1980s kidnapping operations and was responsible for striking deals for the release of some of the minor hostages. In the 1990s, Hamiyah was alleged to have worked with Saudi Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported Shia group that was accused of the 1996 Khobar Towers military residence bombing in which 17 Americans were killed.
Ibrahim Aqil, a veteran and highly-respected resistance commander, was originally a member of Hussein Moussawi’s Islamic Amal formed in 1982. His name has been linked to the 1982 suicide bombing of the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, a 1983 assassination attempt against then-Lebanese Prime Minister Shafiq Wazzan, and to the bombing of the US Marine barracks in October 1983. In the mid 1990s, Aqil was thought to be Hezbollah’s chief of weapons, logistics and training before going on to command the southern front against Israel. He narrowly survived an Israeli helicopter attack on his car in February 2000, and was later alleged to have been involved in the abduction of three Israeli soldiers from the Shebaa Farms in October 2000.
For those who still harbored doubts, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, made it abundantly clear at Mugniyah’s funeral on Thursday that the party will respond to the militant’s assassination, and that it will probably be an overseas reprisal.
“You have killed Hajj Imad outside the recognized battle zone,” Nasrallah said, addressing Israel and referring to Lebanon’s borders.
“With regard to this killing, considering the date, place and style, Zionists: If you want this kind of open war, then let the entire world listen: Let it be an open war.”
Western intelligence agencies have long held the view that Hezbollah has global reach through networks based in Lebanese Shia communities scattered around the world.
“I know there is a debate about this, but not among those of us who have seen the intelligence material. We know Hezbollah has global reach,” a former FBI counter-terrorism officer once told the author.
Most of these cells are engaged in fundraising, but they also keep potential targets under surveillance, according to these intelligence sources. In 2002, a secret FBI briefing to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that while Hezbollah had the assets to conduct attacks in the US, its “extensive fundraising” activities reduced the chances of such a decision being made.
Hezbollah has always denied it possesses global reach, although Nasrallah once told the author in an interview that the party does have “supporters” who could strike if the organization was threatened.
“There are many people throughout the world who love Hezbollah, who like Hezbollah, and who support Hezbollah. Some may not sit idly by when seeing a brutal aggression against Lebanon,” he said.
US intelligence sources suspect that Hezbollah has contingency plans for attacks against a list of targets around the world, which can be implemented quickly if a rapid retaliation is required. The two Buenos Aires bombings occurred only a month and six weeks after the respective Israeli attacks.
Following Mugniyah’s assassination, Israeli embassies around the world went on alert, and the Israeli army beefed up its presence along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
However, the retaliation is unlikely to emanate along the Lebanon-Israel border. Analysts suspect that it will consist of a qualitative attack that leaves the Israelis knowing they have been subject to retaliation for Mugniyah’s murder but still granting Hezbollah plausible deniability. Some analysts believe that Hezbollah could refrain from a large-scale bombing of an Israeli target, like an embassy, and will choose a more significant target with a greater shock value.
“I think they will possibly try to do something more spectacular. It won’t be a matter of scale, but the choice of target; something innovative,” Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah specialist at the Swedish Defense College, told NOW Lebanon.
Timur Goksel, lecturer on international relations in Beirut and long-serving UNIFIL official in South Lebanon, agreed that Hezbollah would select a “high-profile target.”
“I don’t think Hezbollah will go for a big bombing, [but] probably an assassination,” he said. “This is something that Hezbollah cannot let pass. Mugniyah was too much of a symbol.”