"The Brashness of the Occupying Agents"
By: General Michel Aoun
(Translated by: Elias Bejjani)
19 December 1997

How are we to accurately depict the Lebanese regime officials today? With clear conscience and no hesitation, we can describe them as professional puppet agents of various rank. After what we have witnessed last week in Lebanon, we must acknowledge they have exceeded all reason.

As we have previously noted, the national peace has its foundation in national security, progress and general freedoms. Supposedly in the interest of national peace, using their dictatorship, Syrian-imposed Lebanese officials have bankrupted the country, destroyed freedoms, and even assaulted fellow Lebanese citizens. In the same vein, last week they banned a planned satellite T.V. interview with me, claiming that the broadcast would threaten the national peace. When Lebanese citizens protested publicly, they were arrested and the judiciary was used to manipulate and blackmail using fabricated cases to serve their own polluted political purpose. Courageous citizens challenged the information minister's stupid ban, a ban clearly infringing the Lebanese constitution and the people's rights.

The installed puppets made themselves sandbag-shields in front of the Syrian occupiers to deflect responsibility onto themselves, and in so doing personify the Syrian crimes. They did not act as they should have, by asking for the release of the hundreds of imprisoned Lebanese citizens in Syrian jails. What they did do is detain even more Lebanese in a cowardly demonstration of complete subservience to the Syrian occupation. How do we ask this corrupt Lebanese authority for justice when its top officials act like culprits?

• The Lebanese authority was entrusted to safeguard the nation's constitution, and instead, it has infringed on each and every clause.
  
• It was entrusted to establish justice, but has only brought revenge and repression.
  
• It was entrusted to protect freedom but confiscated it.
  
• It was assigned to practice national sovereignty but sold it.
  

Under this authority, national independence became only a memory. And to top it all, this past week, a law of amnesty was legislated to pardon all drug-related crime. They are emptying the jails of real criminals, to fill them with doctors, lawyers, academics, engineers, and students.

My dear fellow Lebanese citizens, these officials speak to you with the brash pomp of professional puppet agents, while inside, they are full of humiliation and disgrace.
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