LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS
BULLETIN
July 17/08
Bible Reading of the day.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to
Saint Matthew 11,25-27. At that time Jesus said in reply, "I give praise to you,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from
the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father,
such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my
Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
Free
Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
Hero's Welcome for Grisly Killers-By:
P. David Hornik. FrontPage.com 17/07/08
The War with Iran-By:
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. 17/07/08
Stabilizing the Middle East --
Then and Now.By: Bruce Walker 17/07/08
U.S. Says Iran Has Missile That
Could Hit Europe-By: NewsMax.com 17/07/08
The warrant for Sudan's leader
sends a message to many others-
The Daily Star 16/07/08
Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for July
17/08
Hezbollah delivers
remains of two Israeli soldiers-Reuters
Killer returns to Lebanon as a hero-Edmonton Sun
In Lebanon, red carpet laid out for convicted terrorist Samir Kuntar-Ha'aretz
-
Red Cross trucks arrive in Lebanon with bodies of terrorists-Jerusalem
Post
Prisoners, bodies have been swapped -- Hezbollah-Khabrein.info
Hizbollah delivers remains of two Israeli soldiers-Independent
Hezbollah Gains New Powers in Lebanese Government-theTrumpet.com
Europe should engage Syria but on condition it makes progress in ...Jewish
Telegraphic Agency
A look at key events in Lebanon-Israel conflict-International
Herald Tribune
For Israel, prisoner swap evokes raw memories-The Associated
Press
Syria and Lebanon, More Than Just Neighbors-Middle East Times
New Lebanese Equation: Christians’ Central Role-The Media Line
After
Photo-Taking Session, Cabinet Sets Policy Statement as a Priority-Naharnet
Germany: Prisoner Swap
Result of Agent's 'Protracted' Efforts-Naharnet
Sleiman says Lebanon is now
back on 'global map'
Moment of truth at hand for
prisoner swap-AFP
US Central Command officer
visits Lebanon, announces new funding-Daily
Star
Paris states support for 'UN
administration' of Shebaa Farms 'in principle-AFP
US to export cluster bombs
in bid to make its arsenal 'safer-Inter
Press Service-Daily Star
Berri, Jumblatt urge
Lebanese to welcome prisoners home-Daily
Star
Analysts: Deal shores up
Hizbullah's standing-AFP
Israeli commentators question
value of swap-AFP
Reaping the energy benefits
of the Mediterranean Union-Daily
Star
Hezbollah delivers remains of
two Israeli soldiers
Wed Jul 16, 7:52 AM
By Ayat Basma and Avida Landau
LEBANON/ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - Hezbollah handed the bodies of two Israeli
soldiers to the Red Cross on Wednesday to be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners
held by Israel in a deal viewed as a triumph by the Lebanese Shi'ite guerrilla
group.
Many Israelis see it as a painful necessity, two years after the soldiers'
capture sparked a 34-day war with Hezbollah that killed about 1,200 people in
Lebanon and 159 Israelis. Two black coffins were unloaded from a Hezbollah
vehicle at a U.N. peacekeeping base on the Israel-Lebanon border after a
Hezbollah official, Wafik Safa, disclosed for the first time that army
reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took the coffins to Israel.
The Israeli army later said it had identified the cadavers as those of its
missing men, Israel radio said. The report said Israeli generals were on the way
to notify the Goldwasser and Regev families.
"The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) ...
Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC," Safa said at the Naqoura border on
the Mediterranean coast. In a deal mediated by a U.N.-appointed German
intelligence officer, Israel was to free Qantar and four other prisoners said by
Hezbollah to be the last Lebanese captives in Israel.
If completed, the agreement will close a file that has motivated repeated
Hezbollah attempts over the past quarter century to capture Israelis to use as
bargaining counters. Qantar had been serving a life prison term for the deaths
of four Israelis, including a four-year-old girl and her father, in a 1979
Palestinian guerrilla attack on an Israeli town."It is not easy to see this,
although there was not much surprise to it. But ... confronting this reality was
difficult, yes," Shlomo Goldwasser told Israel radio. Zvi Regev said on Army
Radio: "It was a terrible thing to see, really terrible. I was always
optimistic, and I hoped all the time that I would meet Eldad and hug him."
Hezbollah's Safa said Israel had later handed over via the ICRC the bodies of
eight Hezbollah fighters slain in the 2006 war, and those of four Palestinians,
including Dalal Mughrabi, a woman guerrilla who led a 1978 raid on Israel.
The four were among the nearly 200 Arabs killed trying to attack Israel whose
bodies are to be transferred to Lebanon as part of the exchange. Hezbollah will
return the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in south Lebanon.
The deal also calls for Israel to release scores of Palestinian prisoners at a
later date as a gesture to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Hezbollah has dubbed the exchange "Operation Radwan," in honor of "Hajj Radwan,"
or Imad Moughniyah, the group's military commander who was assassinated in Syria
in February.
Yellow Hezbollah flags fluttered across south Lebanon and on the coastal highway
from Naqoura to Beirut. "Liberation of the captives: a new dawn for Lebanon and
Palestine," a banner read.
Israel denounced the planned festivities.
"Samir Qantar is a brutal murderer of children and anybody celebrating him as a
hero is trampling on basic human decency," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev.
For some Lebanese, the exchange demonstrated the futility of the devastating
conflict with Israel two summers ago.
"There shouldn't have been a war in 2006. A lot of lives were lost," said Rami
Nasereddine, an 18-year-old student in downtown Beirut. "It's good that the
prisoner exchange is taking place. Israel should have done that two years ago."
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said the prisoner swap strengthened its own
position in demanding the release of hundreds of long-serving prisoners in
exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured two years ago near the
Gaza Strip.
Israeli President Shimon Peres set the prisoner swap in motion on Tuesday by
pardoning Qantar, reviled in Israel for his role in the 1979 attack. Qantar,
aged 17 at the time, has said the father was shot by Israeli soldiers who also
wounded him, and that he does not remember what happened to the girl.
Peres said he felt "bitter and unbearable pain" at the decision, but that Israel
was obliged to retrieve its soldiers.
Olmert had described Qantar as the last bargaining chip for word on Israeli
airman Ron Arad, missing since he bailed out over Lebanon in 1986. Israel said a
report supplied by Hezbollah on Arad as part of the swap had failed to clarify
his fate.
The other Lebanese prisoners being freed along with Qantar, a Druze, were named
as Maher Qorani, Mohammad Srour, Hussein Suleiman and Khodr Zeidan. They were to
be welcomed with rallies and fireworks in Lebanon, which declared a public
holiday.
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Nadim Ladki in Beirut, Jeffrey Heller and
Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Alistair
Lyon; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Hero's Welcome for Grisly Killers
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Israel’s neighbors are gearing up for celebrations. For those Israelis who still
have the stamina to look, these events will again reveal the chasm between
Israel’s life-affirming Jewish-democratic culture and the unchanging Middle
Eastern jihad-and death-culture of its neighbors.
This week most of the Olmert government’s live-terrorists-for-dead-soldiers swap
with Hezbollah will be completed including the freeing of Samir Kuntar and four
other live, dangerous Lebanese terrorists.
As part of a 1979 terror attack in the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya, Kuntar
shot dead 28-year-old Danny Haran in front of his 4-year-old daughter Einat
Haran, then drowned Danny Haran in the sea to confirm the kill. Kuntar then
smashed Einat Haran’s head on rocks and crushed her skull with his rifle butt.
Yet Israeli analyst Jonathan Spyer noted that “the news of the planned swap has
been greeted with enthusiasm from politicians on both sides of the [Lebanese]
divide.”
Against the Hezbollah-led, mostly Shiite bloc stands the March 14
Sunni-Druze-Christian bloc. Yet new Christian president Michel Suleiman (whose
affiliation vis-à-vis the two blocs is a matter of dispute) and Sunni prime
minister Fuad Saniora (considered anti-Hezbollah) are poised to give Kuntar and
the other four terrorists a state welcome today at Beirut International Airport.
Saniora said Hezbollah’s “success … in the negotiations [with Israel] is a
national success for the party and for the struggle of the Lebanese because it
secured national goals.…”
As for Druze leader and sharp Hezbollah-foe Walid Jumblatt, he's planning to
visit Kuntar (also Druze) and congratulate him on his return, which he called a
“national occasion.” Spyer reports that “other March 14 leaders spoke in
similarly glowing terms.” The Lebanese daily As-Safir reported plans to make the
day of the terrorists’ return a national holiday. Already today the road from
the Israeli border to Sidon, and Kuntar's hometown of Abey, are hung with
banners.
Israeli Middle East scholar Barry Rubin notes that “no one in the
Arabic-speaking world will say a single negative word about Kuntar’s deed or his
being made a hero, despite a small liberal minority’s disgust.”
Also set to be delivered to Hezbollah by Israel, along with the remains of two
hundred other Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists, are the remains of a
Palestinian woman terrorist named Dalal Mughrabi. The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled
Abu Toameh reported, however, that the Palestinian Authority had asked Israel to
hand over Mughrabi’s remains to the PA instead.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official and close associate of PA president
Mahmoud Abbas, called Mughrabi “the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of
the most courageous operations in Israel” and said “we want to turn Dalal’s
funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration. The operation she carried
out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will
always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women’s struggle.”
What, then, did Dalal Mughrabi do? In what became known as the Coastal Road
massacre, on March 11, 1978—about a year before the attack Samir Kuntar took
part in—she led a group of eleven Palestinian terrorists who landed in
inflatable boats on a beach north of Tel Aviv, killed an American photographer
named Gail Rubin who was taking nature pictures nearby, and hijacked a bus along
the coastal highway.
After the Israeli army pursued the bus and finally stopped it, a gun battle
ensued between the soldiers and the terrorists during which the terrorists shot
passengers who tried to escape. Eventually Dalal Mughrabi blew up the bus, which
became a large firetrap, and the attack left thirty-six Israeli civilians dead
including thirteen children. Mughrabi and the other terrorists were killed;
seventy-one Israelis were wounded.
Toameh noted that “even if Israel refuse[d] to deliver Mughrabi’s remains to the
PA in Ramallah, Fatah officials said they were planning to hold big celebrations
throughout the West Bank to coincide with her funeral in Lebanon…. Since its
inception, the PA has honored Mughrabi by naming many schools and various
institutions after her. An article published in Thursday’s edition of the
PA-funded Al-Hayat Al-Jadedda newspaper hailed Mughrabi as a ‘living legend and
a wonderful example for all women.’”
It’s not a pretty picture, especially considering that Lebanon’s March 14 bloc
and the Palestinian Authority are considered moderate or relatively moderate
actors—in the former case with some justice, in the latter with none. Even among
the relative geopolitical moderates, let alone the rest, toward Israel a tribal
ethos prevails that regards grisly killers—alive or dead—as heroes for
emulation. It’s a reality that Israelis and those wishing to help Israel need to
face fully and without evasions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Tel Aviv. He
blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/. He can be reached at pdavidh2001@yahoo.com.
The War with Iran
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Last week’s Iranian missile tests prompted another round of fevered speculation
that war might erupt between Iran and the United States. Largely lost in the
frenzy is an unhappy fact: The Iranian mullahocracy has been at war with this
country since it came to power in 1979.
The problem is that the weapons available to Tehran for prosecuting its jihad
against “the Great Satan” are no longer simply truck bombs and suicide vests.
Its proxy army, Hezbollah, has taken over Lebanon and operates terror cells from
Iraq to Latin America and even inside the United States. With help from
Communist China and Russia, its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wields an
array of anti-ship missiles, mines and go-fast boats capable of discouraging oil
traffic from transiting the Straits of Hormuz – if not actually sealing that
vital waterway for protracted periods.
Not least, Iran is now armed with ballistic missiles of ever-longer range. Those
missiles have been developed with help from North Korea for the purpose of
delivering the nuclear weapons the mullahs have been developing covertly for
over 20 years. Once such weapons are in hand – perhaps just a matter of months
now – Tehran will be in a position to execute its threat to wipe Israel (a.k.a.
“the Little Satan”) off the map.
As a blue-ribbon commission told the House Armed Services Committee last
Thursday, moreover, by launching its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles off a
ship, the Iranian regime could soon be able to make good on another of its
oft-stated pledges: To bring about “a world without America.”
The commissioners warned (http://www.empcommission.org/reports.php) that, by
detonating a sea-launched nuclear weapon in space over the United States, Iran
could unleash an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would have a
“catastrophic” effect on much of the Nation’s energy infrastructure. In short
order, the ensuing lack of electricity would cause a devastating ripple effect
on our telecommunications, sanitation and water, transportation, food and health
care sectors and the Internet. Iranian missile tests suggest an emergent
capability to execute such an attack.
If we are already at war with the Iranian regime and the destructive power of
our enemy is about to increase exponentially, what can we do to about it? For
various reasons, it remains undesirable to use our own military force against
the mullahs if it can possibly be avoided. If that alternative is to be made
unnecessary, however, five things must be done as a matter of the utmost
urgency:
Three have to do with greatly intensifying the financial pressure on Tehran.
First, we need to discourage investments in companies that provide the advanced
technology and capital essential to the oil exports that underpin the Iranian
economy. The campaign aimed at divesting such stocks from private and public
pension fund portfolios and, instead, investing “terror-free” had a signal
victory last week when the head of the French oil conglomerate Total announced
that “Today, we would be taking too much political risk to invest in Iran.”
By moving billions of dollars into certified terror-free funds like those
offered by the United Missouri Bank, U.S. investors can effect more of this sort
of corporate behavior-modification. Senator Joseph Lieberman is expected shortly
to introduce legislation that will offer federal employees a terror-free
investment option in their Thrift Savings Plan. Every American should have such
a ready choice – and be encouraged to exercise it.
Second, we need to deflate the price of oil that is sustaining the Iranian
regime. We can do so by ending the monopoly oil-derived gasoline enjoys in the
global transportation sector. (This imperative is the subject of a hilarious
video by David and Jerry Zucker at www.NozzleRage.com.) By adopting an Open Fuel
Standard, Congress can set a standard assuring that new cars sold both in
America and the rest of the world will be capable of using alcohols that can be
made practically anywhere (for example, ethanol, methanol or butanol), as well
as gasoline. Long before vast numbers of such Flexible Fuel Vehicles are on the
roads, the OPEC cartel-induced speculative bubble that has contributed to the
recent run-up in the price per barrel of oil will be lanced.
Third, we must counter the effort being made by the Iranians and other Islamists
to use so-called Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) as a means to wage “financial
jihad” against us. Before SCF instruments proliferate further in our capital
markets, in the process legitimating and helping to underwrite the repressive,
anti-constitutional and subversive program the Iranian mullahs (among others)
call Shariah, that program must be recognized for what it is – sedition – and
prosecuted as such. The effect would be chilling for Iranian and other SCF
transactions in Western markets world-wide.
Fourth, we need to deploy as quickly as possible effective anti-missile defenses
– both in Europe and at sea. Russian objections notwithstanding, we cannot
afford to delay any further in protecting ourselves and our allies against EMP
and other missile-delivered threats.
Finally, we must mount an intensive, comprehensive and urgent effort to aid the
Iranian people in liberating themselves from the theocrats that have afflicted
their nation for nearly thirty years and made it a pariah internationally.
Supplying information technologies, assistance to students, teachers, unionists
and others willing to stand up to the regime, aid to restive minorities and
covert operations should all be in play.
By adopting these measures, we may yet be able to bring about regime change in
Iran – the only hope for avoiding full-fledged combat against the Islamic
Republic there. But we should be under no illusion: We will not avoid war; it
has been thrust upon us by the mullahs for many years now. We may, however, be
able to avoid the far worse condition they wish to inflict by unleashing the
weapons now coming into their arsenal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the founder, president, and CEO of The Center for
Security Policy. During the Reagan administration, Gaffney was the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security, the Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, and a Professional Staff
Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower
(R-Texas). He is a columnist for The Washington Times, Jewish World Review, and
Townhall.com and has also contributed to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The
New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science
Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and Newsday.
Stabilizing the Middle East -- Then and Now
By Bruce Walker
American Thinker | Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Fifty years ago, an American president successfully stood up against the Moslem
tide in the Middle East and won a victory. But the anniversary may pass
completely unnoticed by most of the media, and the lesson of that event remains
unlearned by most Americans.
On July 15, 1958, President Eisenhower began what was called "Operation Blue
Bat." President Chamoun of Lebanon, a Maronite Christian, had refused to side
with Arab Moslem nations against the West. The result was that within Lebanon,
supported by Syria, Muslims pushed for the end of the Chamoun administration
(and, tacitly, for an end to the middle course of democracy that Lebanon had
long pursued.)
The pro-Western government of Iraq had also just been toppled. The pro-Soviet
government that took its place would in time be overthrown by the Baathist
Party, establishing a direct link between the sort of government we are trying
to establish in Iraq today and the government that had existed in Iraq until
July 1958. Fifty years ago marked the unraveling of much of what we are living
with today in the Middle East.
Operation Blue Bat largely worked. By October of that year, American troops were
withdrawn. Another Maronite Christian replaced Chamoun as President of Lebanon
and the Prime Minister of Lebanon continued to be a Sunni Moslem (which had been
the successful modus vivendi between the half-Christian and half-Moslem
population of democratic Lebanon for years.)
During the next Arab-Israeli War, the Six Day War in 1967, Lebanon was neutral
-- it had fought against the new Israeli state in 1948. The Lebanese people
enjoyed the benefits of neutrality and the blessings of peace. We often talk
today of Israel being "the only working democracy in the Middle East," and,
alas, it is now. But fifty years ago, when America intervened directly with
military forces, there were two working democracies in the Middle East. Lebanon,
in fact, was the first working democracy in the Middle East. It achieved
independence in 1943, under the Free French.
When Lebanon worked, Christians and Moslems shared power in rough proportion to
their percentage of the population. Sunni and Shia, within the Moslem community,
also divided power, with the Prime Minister a Sunni and the Speaker a Shia. Like
so many political systems that ought not to have worked, it did work for many
decades. Mutual self-interest -- the profitability of the system to many power
brokers -- quite frankly helped Lebanon survive. It was not a perfectly pristine
polity, but rather a generally pro-Western, basically tolerant, essentially
democratic system that provided each confession within Lebanon with a "piece of
the pie."
In looking at Iraq today, we should see some rough similarities that ought to
encourage us. Although Iraq lacks a Christian population of size, and that
Christian population is increasingly persecuted (a fair issue for both
presidential candidates to take President Bush to task over), the Kurds are
religiously diverse and ethnically non-Arabs, which provides something vaguely
comparable to the Maronite Christian influence in Lebanon fifty years ago. Sunni
and Shia in Lebanon made a deal, just as Sunni and Shia in Iraq must.
American troops proved indispensable to keeping Lebanon from collapsing into a
wretched situation which would spiral downward into chaos and violence. This is
just like American troops restoring democracy to Iraq, halting the violence
which came when Baathist state terrorism ended. The vacuum of power in an
inherently unstable state like Lebanon or Iraq invites the bad guys to create
mischief which bedevils generations.
If a modest American military contingent stays in Iraq another fifty years, and
if Iraq remains a working democracy which suppresses terrorism and sides with
the West, then it will have been worth the blood, time and treasure.
If Eisenhower had kept troops in Lebanon -- if he had been invited fifty years
ago to do so -- what might Lebanon look like today? Syria, a fifth rate military
power, would never have tangled directly with the American military. The
Maronite population, once the majority of Lebanon, would have retained at least
a co-equal voice in Lebanese affairs, thwarting Moslem extremists. And instead
of just having to explain why Israel was a prosperous, free, peaceful democracy,
the enemies of human joy would have been compelled to explain also why a
Christian-Moslem nation just to the north of Israel was also prosperous, free
and peaceful.
We who resist the creep of totalitarianism and bloodlust around the globe need
to have hope. Lebanon was once a beacon of hope. Iraq may be that beacon
tomorrow. Fifty years ago, Lebanon was saved and Iraq was lost. One by one, we
must restore hope in freedom and in peace everywhere. Our world is filled with
men who dream nightmares and men who dream hope. One dream will prevail. Which
dream depends upon us, who can overwhelm evil, if we have the willpower. Fifty
years ago, in Lebanon, we had that willpower. Today, in Iraq, we must have that
willpower again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Walker is author of the book Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie.
U.S. Says Iran Has Missile That Could Hit Europe
By: NewsMax.com 17/07/08
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 9:59 PM
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said on Tuesday that Iran has the ability to launch a
ballistic missile capable of hitting sections of eastern and southern Europe.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told
reporters he believes Iran now has a missile with a range of 1,250 miles, but he
declined to say whether the weapon has been test-fired. Iran said last week it
conducted two missile tests involving a number of weapons including what Iranian
state television called a "new" Shahab-3 missile, a medium-range missile that
could be used to strike Israel. Tensions over Iran's missile arsenal and
accusations from the United States and its allies that Tehran is pursuing
nuclear weapons have roiled international financial markets with fears of a
possible military confrontation. Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons and says
its nuclear program is designed to produce electricity to increase its output of
oil and natural gas.
Older versions of the Shahab-3 have a 800-mile (1,300-km) range. But a new
extended version is believed to have a range of up to 1,250 miles, making it
capable of hitting targets as far away as Greece, Serbia, Romania and Belarus.
Iran is also developing a solid-fuel missile known as the Ashura with a range of
1,250 miles, according to the Pentagon.
U.S. officials and independent missile experts have said last week's tests
involved no new or enhanced technology, or even the latest generations of
missiles known to be in Iran's arsenal. Obering did not dispute those assertions
in a briefing for Pentagon officials on Tuesday.
But his description of Iran's missile capability was stronger than what U.S.
officials have said up to now.
"The Iranians themselves are describing ... a 2,000-km range missile launch,"
Obering said of last week's tests, adding that Iran also claimed to have such a
missile in November. "I believe, based on what I have seen, that they have the
ability to do that and to continue to advance in the future, based on what I
have seen so far from those (Iranian state media) reports and from the
intelligence reports," he added.
"I won't go into detail as to what was fired when. That's something I think the
intel community should answer," he said.
The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, which monitors major weapons threats
to the United States and its allies, was more vague in its February 27 testimony
to the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Iran continues to develop and acquire
ballistic missiles that can hit Israel and central Europe, including Iranian
claims of an extended-range variant of the Shahab-3 and a new 2,000-km medium
range ballistic missile called the Ashura," DIA director Army Lt. Gen. Michael
Maples told the panel. U.S. officials and analysts dismissed last week's missile
tests as an angry Iranian response to recent military exercises including an
Israeli air exercise in June that some have called a rehearsal for an attack on
Iran. The Bush administration has used concern about Iranian missiles to press
forward with plans for a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech
Republic, capable of protecting both Europe and the United States from attack.
Washington and the Czech Republic signed an agreement last week to place
missile-tracking radar on Czech soil. U.S. officials are now hoping for a deal
to station the system's interceptor missiles in Poland. © 2008 Reuters. All
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