Hezbos in America: 'This is a Significant and Troubling Development'

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey seems genuinely surprised to discover we have enemies in our midst. Uh, Bob, I'm not in the Senate and I know this stuff. What's your excuse?

Three Lebanese nationals and one U.S. resident were charged yesterday with attempting to obtain 1,200 M4 military assault weapons for Hezbollah, in the second set of such charges in as many days from Philadelphia.

An alleged Hezbollah arms dealer was arrested in Philadelphia on Saturday, and U.S. Attorney Michael L. Levy said, "We are dealing with two different groups trying to buy M4s."

Three of the four men charged yesterday are still in Lebanon. A fourth man, identified as Moussa Ali Hamdan of Brooklyn, N.Y., is also overseas, according to prosecutors. Apprehending them is likely to be problematic.

Both the earlier allegation - that the Hezbollah arms supplier attempted to buy Stinger antiaircraft missiles and other weapons - and yesterday's charges grew out of the same investigative effort by the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said a senior ICE official in Washington.

The new case involves an informant who the indictment indicates has resided in Philadelphia.

The senior ICE official said the investigations were significant because "this one is the first in a while in which we've seen direct [attempted] arms sales."

Curiously, the story makes no mention of the primary sponsors of Hezbollah, namely Iran. Still, it's disturbing to find out the Democrat Casey is so apparently clueless we have terror moles in this country.

Welcome to reality, Bob.

An additional six men also indicted in the latest case allegedly participated in the purchase and transportation of stolen cell phones, laptops, computer games, and automobiles. They are from Brooklyn; Staten Island, N.Y.; Michigan, and Plainsboro, N.J., and do not face charges that they acted to support Hezbollah.

Five of those men are in custody in Philadelphia.

On the charges of supporting Hezbollah, the indictment says Dib Hani Harb of Beirut e-mailed the "cooperating witness" and asked for photographs of firearms available. On June 20, the informant met with a Hezbollah official and discussed selling weapons.

Three days later, Harb and a second Lebanese national, Hassan Hodroj, allegedly said they would buy 1,200 M4s for $1,800 per weapon. The indictment does not allege that any weapons changed hands.

The informant also discussed the sale of counterfeit U.S. currency, and in April met in Florida with Harb, who allegedly told him Hezbollah worked "18 to 20 hours a day counterfeiting many currencies."

In September, about $9,200 in fake currency allegedly was mailed to the informant in Philadelphia.

Harb and a third Lebanese, Hasan Antar Karaki, also allegedly supplied the informant with two fake passports, one for the United Kingdom, the other for Canada. The allegations are that the men raised money for Hezbollah by producing and selling fake passports.

Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said the latest charges "seem to confirm a new avenue of support from, of all places, inside the United States. This is a significant and troubling development."

Syrian Suspect Arrested in al-Hariri Assassination

Some shocker, huh, that Syria was likely behind the murder of Rafik al-Hariri?

A MAIN suspect in the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri has been arrested in the United Arab Emirates, an Arab television station reports.

UAE-based Al Arabiya said Mohammed Zuhair al-Siddiq was arrested in the emirate of Sharjah and was being held by UAE security authorities. It gave no more details.

An international court convened in The Hague in March to try suspects in the murder, four years after the politician's death.

Hariri and 22 other people were killed in a car bomb blast in Beirut on February 14, 2005 that sparked an international outcry.

Many anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians accused Syria of being behind the bombing, a charge Damascus denied. But the protests and political pressure that mounted after the killing forced Syria to withdraw forces it had maintained in its smaller neighbour since 1976.

This guy was charged several years ago while residing in France, although some French judges wouldn't allow an extradition.

The whereabouts of Siddiq, a former Syrian intelligence officer, have been unknown since March 2008 when he left France.

Lebanon's prosecutors believed Siddiq had an indirect role in the February 14, 2005, killing of Hariri and 22 others, and they charged him with murder in October 2005.

Siddiq was arrested in a Paris suburb that month after an international arrest warrant was issued for him, but French judges rejected Beirut's extradition request because they received no guarantees he would not face the death penalty.

He was freed in 2006.

There's some French-style justice for you.

Cousin of 9/11 Hijacker an Israeli Spy?

Wow, this ought to really fire up the 9/11 conspiracy kooks, who never need much evidence of anything at all to get worked up.

Just imagine what they'll come up with when they find out the cousin of 9/11 hijacker Ziad al-Jarrah may have allegedly been an Israeli spy the past 25 years.

The Loose Change clowns must be wetting themselves.

For 25 years, Ali al-Jarrah managed to live on both sides of the bitterest divide running through this region. To friends and neighbors, he was an earnest supporter of the Palestinian cause, an affable, white-haired family man who worked as an administrator at a nearby school.

To Israel, he appears to have been a valued spy, sending reports and taking clandestine photographs of Palestinian groups and Hezbollah since 1983.

Now he sits in a Lebanese prison cell, accused by the authorities of betraying his country to an enemy state. Months after his arrest, his friends and former colleagues are still in shock over the extent of his deceptions: the carefully disguised trips abroad, the unexplained cash, the secret second wife.

Lebanese investigators say he has confessed to a career of espionage spectacular in its scope and longevity, a real-life John le Carré novel. Many intelligence agents are said to operate in the civil chaos of Lebanon, but Mr. Jarrah’s arrest has shed a rare light onto a world of spying and subversion that usually persists in secret.

Mr. Jarrah’s first wife maintains that he was tortured, and is innocent; requests to interview him were denied.

From his home in this Bekaa Valley village, Mr. Jarrah, 50, traveled often to Syria and to south Lebanon, where he photographed roads and convoys that might have been used to transport weapons to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, investigators say. He spoke with his handlers by satellite phone, receiving “dead drops” of money, cameras and listening devices. Occasionally, on the pretext of a business trip, he traveled to Belgium and Italy, received an Israeli passport, and flew to Israel, where he was debriefed at length, investigators say.

At the start of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli officials called Mr. Jarrah to reassure him that his village would be spared and that he should stay at home, investigators said.

He was finally arrested last July by Hezbollah, which now has perhaps the most powerful intelligence apparatus in this country. It handed him to the Lebanese military — along with his brother Yusuf, who is accused of helping him spy — and he awaits trial by a military court.

Several current and former military officials agreed to provide details about his case on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss it before the trial began. Their accounts tallied with details provided by Mr. Jarrah’s relatives and former colleagues.

It is not the family’s first brush with notoriety. One of Mr. Jarrah’s cousins, Ziad al-Jarrah, was among the 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, though the men were 20 years apart in age and do not appear to have known each other well.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, declined to discuss Mr. Jarrah’s situation, saying, “It is not our practice to publicly talk about any such allegations in this case or in any case.”

Update: Well, that didn't take long.

Cousin Of Alleged 9/11 Hijacker Exposed As Israeli Spy

Which other members of the Jarrah family were working for Israel as intelligence assets? Surely not Ziad al-Jarrah, one of the infamous “laughing hijackers” and the alleged pilot of Flight 93?

Al-Jarrah’s paper passport was one of those that miraculously survived to be legible, apparently avoiding being consumed by fires that were so intense that it took over 6 months just to identify the actual victims of Flight 93.

Israeli intelligence connections to 9/11 can be traced back to the five “dancing Israelis” who were witnessed setting up video camera equipment pointed at the World Trade Center in New York before the first plane hit the tower. The men were seen jumping and high-fiving with shouts of “joy and mockery” as Flight 11 and Flight 175 slammed into the buildings. They were later seen posing for photographs in front of the debris.

Cue the Twilight Zone music.

Hezbollah Now Firmly in Control of Lebanon

There is no other way to say it or try to sugar coat it.

They now have veto power over anything the elected government wants to do.

The ruling party led by Fuad Siniora caved into the demands, portrayed as a deal brokered by Arab mediators from Saudi Arabia, made by Hezbollah while getting nothing in return. I predict very dark days ahead for the large Christian population inside of Lebanon and, really, for any Sunni Muslims, since Hezbollah is a Shiite sect.

Of course Iran and Syria were the first to send their congratulations.

I wonder what kind of pie-in-the-sky statement the Obamamessiah will make about this if any. Given his complete lack of knowledge of anything outside of Chicago, I doubt he even realizes what possible dire consequences this agreement has. Iran has, once again through its proxies, managed to take over a country with impunity. Now with both Lebanon and Syria basically Iranian satellite nations, and more western governments deciding that Hamas is just a little bitty terrorist group and therefore worthy of talking to, Israel is once again back in the crosshairs.

The only thing that can delay the looming conflict between Israel and its neighbors again is if the Hamas and Hezbollah gangs go after each other, which would probably be short-lived since their hatred of Israel is greater then their hatred of each other. After they get rid of Israel they will return to the job of settling their centuries-old conflict over which group is the true descendants of the blood god they worship.

Nancy Pelosi was unavailable for comment

Gateway Pundit is doing all of the heavy lifting on reporting of the Hezbollah takeover of Beirut, but I shamelessly lifted this picture and caption from his site. Be sure to visit his site for all the details.
A Hezbollah gunman poses as he flashes a victory sign after putting up posters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and taking over of an office of the Future group loyal to Saad al-Hariri Majority leader, in the Rass al-Naba'a area in Beirut May 9, 2008. (REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)

Arabs Suffering from Americanophobia

Clearly this is a mental disorder of some kind for which they should seek treatment. Though considering most of the media and Democrat Party also hate this country, I can't say I'm too surprised by these numbers.

Eight out of 10 Arabs have an unfavorable view of the United States and only six percent believe the U.S. troop build-up in Iraq in the last year has worked, said a poll of six Arab countries released on Monday.

The poll by the University of Maryland and Zogby International, also found most Arabs did not see U.S. foe Iran as a threat and they sympathized more with Hamas in the Palestinian Territories than U.S.-backed Fatah.

"There is a growing mistrust and lack of confidence in the United States," said Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor in charge of the annual poll.

The survey canvassed the opinions of about 4,000 people over the past month in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. It has a margin of error of about 1.6 percent.

Of those polled, 83 percent had an unfavorable view of the United States and 70 percent had no confidence in the superpower.

I wonder how long it will take for some idiot Democrat to cite this poll as evidence the world hates us?

Meanwhile, in a related development, a new poll released today by JWF Associates reveals 98% of the American public hate pollsters, wish they would go live in some Arab country and just STFU.

Soul Searching by Oil Ticks

The funny part about this Reuters dispatch is it suggests that these Saudi scumbags actually have souls.

Saudis at Iraq, Lebanon battles embarrass homeland

Obviously, having 15 of the 19 9/11 monsters coming from Saudi Arabia wasn't sufficient embarrassment, now they're exporting a good portion of the jihadists to Iraq and Lebanon.

Don't buy their BS for a nanosecond.

RIYADH, July 19 (Reuters) - Recent reports suggesting there are significant numbers of Saudis fighting alongside Islamist militant groups in Iraq and Lebanon have provoked embarrassment and soul-searching in Saudi Arabia.

Iraq's National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie said this week that Iraq had tried 160 Saudis for involvement in violence, and a report in a U.S. newspaper said 45 percent of foreigners fighting in Iraq were Saudis.

Lebanese officials say dozens of Saudis are among militants of the Fatah al-Islam militant group which has been battling the army for two months in a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon. The Saudi-owned Arabic press has countered the reports, citing officials who say the numbers are exaggerated in both Iraq and Lebanon.

Columnists are once again wrestling with the issue of the Saudi role in global Islamist militancy, an issue which first came up after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 where 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi nationals.

"The question raised since the 9/11 terrorist attacks is whether Saudis, once known as the most peace-loving people, are aware that they have become an international problem?" wrote Abdel-Rahman al-Rashed in Asharq al-Awsat newspaper this week. "Why Saudis, we may ask? Because they are mentally and politically prepared to act like time bombs that can be manipulated by regimes with dangerous political agendas."

Foreign Jihadists Flood Into Lebanon

Instead of going to die in Iraq, foreign jihadists are now entering Lebanon from Syria.

NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon -- Heavily armed foreign jihadists have been entering Lebanon from Syria from around the time Western authorities noticed a drop in the infiltration of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq, Lebanese officials say.

Syrian authorities, hoping to disrupt Lebanon so they can reassert control of the country, "have stopped sending [the jihadists] to Iraq and are now sending them here," charged Mohammed Salam, a specialist in Palestinian affairs in Lebanon. "They sent those people to die in Lebanon."

Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, commander of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces, said about half of the militants who have been battling Lebanese forces in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp outside Tripoli for nine days had fought previously in Iraq.

"They are very dangerous," he said in an interview. "We have no choice, we have to combat them."

Not surprising that they've stopped coming into Iraq, as they are now opening a new front. Is anyone doing anything to stop the flow?

Officials traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said before Miss Rice's meeting with her Syrian counterpart in Egypt early this month that Syria appeared to be taking "positive" steps to guard its border with Iraq, resulting in a reduced number of jihadists crossing the border.

But U.N. officials running the Nahr el-Bared camp told The Washington Times that a large band of foreigners carrying mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons entered the camp in a group several months ago.

That is near the time that infiltration of militants from Syria into Iraq fell off, according to Lebanese authorities, who suspect the jihadists were simply redirected by Damascus.

Read the rest.

Nancy Pelosi, off traipsing around Europe declaring the end of times due to global warming, was unavailable for comment.

Al-Zawahiri Urges Exporting Jihad

Brave jihadi warrior Ayman Al-Zawahiri, in hiding for the past five years, speaks out and urges his fellow maniacs to widen their terror war around the Middle East. Yet another reason for Democrats to wave the white flag and run for cover.

THE deputy leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has urged supporters in Iraq to extend their “holy war” to other Middle Eastern countries.

In a letter sent to the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in the past few weeks, Zawahiri claims that it is defeating US forces and urges followers to expand their campaign of terror.

He conjures a vision of an Islamic state comprising Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, where Al-Qaeda has already gained its first footholds.

The goal of an Islamic “greater Syria”, first outlined by Zawahiri two years ago, is detailed in the letter amid growing concern about the activities of new groups under Al-Qaeda’s influence in the countries concerned.

Noted in this report is some the mutants currently fighting Lebanese forces were trained in Iraq.

In Lebanon yesterday, Islamist militants of various nationalities from Fatah al-Islam were holding out under renewed army bombardment in Nahr al-Bared camp near Tripoli. Many fought and trained in Iraq.

The little-known Jaish al-Islam claims to be holding Alan John-ston, the BBC journalist, in Gaza, where militants disillusioned with Hamas are said to be drifting to Al-Qaeda.

Jaish al-Islam has demanded the release of a woman who tried to blow herself up during the 2005 bombing of a wedding reception in the Jordanian capital of Amman, an operation ordered by Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

More at Gateway Pundit.

U.S. Ships Arms to Lebanon While Terrorists Talk Trash

These guys do know how tho play the propaganda game, and Reuters dutifully plays along.

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon (Reuters) - The United States sent more ammunition on Saturday to Lebanon, whose army is struggling to defeat a group of heavily armed Islamist militants holed up inside a Palestinian refugee camp.

The militant Fatah al-Islam group, which has vowed to fight to the death, said in a statement the U.S. military supplies included nerve gas and cluster bombs.

"If they use unconventional weapons against us, we will respond with unconventional attacks everywhere," said the statement, read by the group's spokesman Abu Salim Taha.

A Lebanese military spokesman said he had no reaction to "these false allegations which are not worth commenting on."

Later, a purported leader of Fatah al-Islam issued a new threat in videotaped message carried on Al Jazeera television.

The group would fight "the Jews, the Americans and their loyalists," Shaker al-Abssi said, referring to Lebanese leaders.

Three U.S. Air Force cargo planes had earlier landed at Beirut's airport and unloaded ammunition and other equipment for the army, airport sources said. Six planes carrying similar military aid from the U.S. and Arab allies arrived on Friday.

Lebanese Troops Battle Islamist Savages

No doubt the friends of Nancy Pelosi have a hand in this.

At least 19 people were killed in fierce gunbattles that erupted in Lebanon on Sunday between soldiers and fighters from a shadowy Islamic extremist group accused of links to Al-Qaeda.

Lebanese troops launched an assault on a building in Tripoli where militants from
Fatah al-Islam were holed up after a morning of deadly shootouts in the northern port city and and a nearby Palestinian refugee camp.

An army spokesman said 11 soldiers had lost their lives in the fighting -- the deadliest such clashes for seven years -- while seven gunmen were reported killed along with a civilian who was caught in the crossfire when troops attacked the building in Tripoli.

Lebanon sent in troop reinforcements to contain the battles which erupted at dawn in Tripoli and around the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, a Fatah al-Islam stronghold.

Naturally, Pelosi's good friends denied any involvement. We can always trust them, right?

Syria, the former power broker in Lebanon, announced it had closed two border posts into its smaller neighbour because of the violence.

Russia expressed deep concern, saying: "Such an upsurge of violence in an already tense situation in Lebanon gives rise to deep anxiety."

Lebanese authorities have accused Fatah al-Islam, a splinter group said to be ideologically close to Osama bin Laden's network, of working for the Syrian intelligence services.

This report says 21 are dead.

UPDATE: The death toll is now 38.