Hezbollah trying to demoralize the Lebanese Army

My latest at Townhall.com:

Arrest warrants were issued Saturday for 11 Lebanese soldiers over the shooting deaths of several Hezbollah and Amal rioters during last week’s clashes in Beirut (the clashes instigated by Hezbollah, which also spread to other areas around the country). Six civilians were also arrested and charged with, among other things, “bearing unlicensed firearms.”

Investigations continue, more arrests will probably follow, and Mahmoud Koumati, the deputy commander of Hezbollah’s political-wing, has called for the execution of anyone found guilty.

WHAT’S SAD is that the arrests of the soldiers – three officers and eight enlisted men – may have been a sacrifice on the part of the Lebanese Army (LA) leadership in an attempt to salvage the hope that Gen. Michel Sleiman might become Lebanon’s next president (The country has been without a president since November, and the complexities of Lebanese politics, death threats from Hezbollah, and the equally threatening hand of Iran and Syria have created an environment that makes it nearly impossible for the parliament to elect a chief executive.).

WHAT’S SADDER is that Hezbollah – the increasingly dangerous Iranian-funded, Syrian-backed, Lebanese-based terrorist army – has been pushing for the legitimate Lebanese army and police to fall on their swords since the rioting ended last week.

Hezbollah contends the clashes stemmed from “protests” over electricity shortages in Hezbollah zones of Beirut: Keep in mind Hezbollah often launches protests over electricity shortages, the rising cost of bread, the rising of a full moon, whatever – any opportunity to block roads, burn tires, and generally test and probe legitimate army and police defenses – but conveniently arranges those protests to coincide with other events like last week’s summit between Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.

Lebanese Army insiders and a parliamentary official have said the “so-called protests” last week had more sinister objectives.
…

Full story here.

Sounds of soldiers training

Working here in my office on a cloudy, drizzling wet morning here in  Columbia, S.C.; listening to the distant staccato of machinegun fire as U.S. Army recruits – God bless them all — train in the rain at nearby Fort Jackson.

First military pilot flies F-35 Lightning II

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. James “Flipper” Kromberg made history today as the first military pilot to fly the F-35 Lightning II, taking the fighter up through a series of maneuvers, and marking the aircraft’s 26^th flight.

Lockheed Martin has more.

Al Qaeda No. 3 Commander Killed

The AP is reporting:

“Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan who was blamed for bombing a base while Vice President Cheney was visiting last year, has been killed in Pakistan, according to a militant Web site [Al-Ekhlaas].

“Al-Libi was a key link between the Taliban and al-Qaida and was listed among the Americans’ 12 most-wanted men with a bounty of $200,000 on his head.”

More on Qassem

According to The Guardian:

“Sheikh Naim Qassem, [Hizballah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah's] deputy, pledged at a Beirut rally on Wednesday to hold on to the organisation’s two Israeli captives for as long as it takes to do a deal. ‘It makes no difference how many men we have to sacrifice,’ he said.”

Slipping beneath the radar screen

Hizballah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, has reportedly threatened to “carry out additional kidnappings of Israel Defense Forces soldiers.”

Read story here.

Let’s not forget, this is the same terrorist leader who – in his book, “Hizballah: The Story from Within” – justifies the use of suicide bombers:

“The weapon of martyrdom is the main and pivotal weapon on which we can rely. …” — NQ

Lovely.

What makes Qassem particularly dangerous – aside from the fact that he is second-in-command of one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist armies – is that there are some political leaders in this country who have tried to convince the American public that Hizbollah is nothing more than a political party in Lebanon; and very few Americans as a percentage have even heard of Naim Qassem.

The Defense Rusts

Excellent piece on military spending in
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY:

“After a Missouri Air National Guard F-15 came apart in early November, the Air Force grounded its fleet of 450 F-15Cs. At a time when Russia was resuming its long-range bomber patrols that it had curtailed after our victory in the Cold War, the Canadian air force volunteered its F-18s to patrol the skies over and near Alaska.

We ought to be ashamed, just as we ought to worry that no presidential candidate has made an issue of a steady decline in military capability. The Democrats will say this is because we have spent too much on Iraq. Even if true, that’s no reason to spend too little defending against other threats.

Our lack of capability is a direct legacy of the Clinton years. While President Bush has reversed Clinton’s failure to confront America’s enemies, he has not had time while fighting the war on terror to reverse the damage done to the military Clinton loathed.

As China builds and Russia rearms, we face other threats than just al-Qaida. …”

Read more here.

A very big gun

… that fires without traditional “explosive” propellant. 

According to DoD, U.S. Navy Set to Break Electromagnetic Railgun Record:

The Office of Naval Research will test fire an electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, Va. on Jan. 31, 2008, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST. The gun will be fired at over 10 megajoules of energy – a power level never before achieved by an EMRG.

“Hezbollah’s dark hand”

Yesterday’s piece in the Washington Times by Tom Harb, secretary general of the Committee for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559:

“…Groups like Hezbollah, al Qaeda and others continue to wage such blood-and-fire campaigns against civilian populations. They know it works because the threat alone is often enough to manipulate the press, too, thus frightening them so that they will act, or react, in a certain way as well.

“Today, however, terrorist groups have become more sophisticated and their tactics do not always begin with something so overtly terrorizing. In the case of Hezbollah, there is a new and far more sinister weapon in its arsenal which begins with the media itself and utilizes Hezbollah’s ability to influence and even control it….”

Read it here.

The growing threat of Hezbollah

Following are three separate articles published yesterday on the growing threat of Hezbollah:

• My Townhall.com column for January, “Hezbollah’s bags of cash.”
• My piece, “Making murder look clean,” at WorldNetDaily.
• My piece, “Connecting the dots,” at World Defense Review.

I was also quoted Sunday in Al Seyassah (one of Kuwait’s leading newspapers, also published in Lebanon and Egypt).

Translated text follows:

“I’m convinced Hezbollah is directly involved — one way or another — in Friday’s assassination of Internal Security Forces Capt. Wissam Eid,” says W. Thomas Smith Jr., a former U.S. Marine and current director of the Counterterrorism Research Center of the Family Security Foundation (an American public defense information organization). “This was an operation coordinated and conducted out of Hezbollah’s so-called ‘operation room,’ which is directed by Syria and Iran. This was an effort to eliminate any connection between all the assassinations since the murder of Mr. Rafik al-Hariri in 2005.”

Smith adds, “Even if any of these latest assassinations — conducted against top political, military, and now a key national police official — were determined to be the work of another terrorist cell or organization based in Lebanon, they could not have been accomplished in the meticulously planned and coordinated manner in which these killings have been executed without the direct operational support of Hezbollah.”

More to come, including Tom Harb’s piece, “Hezbollah’s dark hand” in yesterday’s Washington Times.

WTSjr