Interesting News and Posts - 2 March 2008

Giovanni Tiepolo, Rinaldo Leaving the Garden of Armida, 1770

A Rose By Any Other Name is a heartbreaking site. The site very tastefully pays homage and honor to the service of our fallen soldiers. Everyone needs to be visiting this site. In the words of Lawrence Binyon:

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

The Irish Elk pays tribute to a great man, William F. Buckley.

And from honor to dishonor, at Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, the move is afoot to delink Matt Drudge for breaking the story on Prince Harry in Afghanistan. I couldn’t agree more. More at Blonde Sagacity.

The single best line of the day is a thought on Obaminations from Debbie at RightTruth: "I'm wondering how much 'hope' the voters can take home from a pack of lies?" The Conservative Cat purrs about the strategy to claim Obama transcends mere politics – thus inoculating him from criticsm on policy and his socialist ideology. Bookworm Room is maintaining an Obama Watch. According to the Velvet Hammer, in a very good post with a lot of links, those Obaminations will lead in an unwanted direction indeed. Brain Droppings has more on the company Obama keeps.

At No Oil For Pacifists, the top ten Hillary Clinton campaign slogans. Heh.

The new Democratic meme is that progress in Iraq as coming at too high a cost in money. Reuters is reporting the incredibly high costs claimed by economist Joseph Stiglitz. They just neglect to mention he is a Democrat, he has contributed the maximum to Obama’s campaign, and he has been approached by Obama for a spot in the White House. A great post by JammieWearingFools.

A mini-round-up from Bizzy Blog: CBS still has not learned the lessons of Rathergate, Barack is locking up the mosque vote in Ohio, and the NAFTA mouthings of our Democratic candidates are the penultimate in highly damaging unilateral foreign policy.

The ethnic cleansing must be stopped. I am not speaking of Dafur or the former Yugoslavia, I am talking about the cleansing of non-Muslims from Luton in the UK. Lionheart has the tale and links to the video. Meanwhile, from Dinah Lord, it looks like the UK police force now appears ready to assist with the madness.

In the 1930’s, Germany openly rearmed in violation of its international agreements while the West dithered. Villagers with Torches describes what appears to be history repeating itself now with Iran accelerating its nuclear program. Thus, when Obama says he will hold talks with Ahmedinejad, I am left with the distinct analogy to Neville Chamberlin. And in a twist of irony, Obama will hold talks with Ahmedinejad, yet he will not appear on Fox News.

I am always amazed at the common cause between two groups that should be natural enemies – the narcissistic far left who want no rules and see no reality and the Islamic Salafists who would enslave or kill them in a moment were they ever to gain ascendancy. The Barking Moonbat Early Warning System is ringing the danger bells on yet another instance – this time the chattering classes of the UK feting Hezbollah associates.

So what happens when Israel responds to continuous mass rocket attacks from the elected government in Gaza? Crusader Rabbit notes how news reports are a tad one sided on all of this. It is disgusting. And within the same rubric on one-sidedness, interfaith dialogue means different things to different people. Muslims believe that proselytizing must only be in one direction. MK has the story. And from Soccer Dad, the push by radicals to outlaw criticism of Islam has been around for some time.

Big Lizards has a fascinating post on Chinese Take Out and the Olympics. At best, China has real problems with quality control, and at worst, is deliberate in its actions.

At Done With Mirrors, the fascinating etymology of "economy."

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Master Terrorist Imad Mughniyeh Assassinated

The assassination of Imad Mughniyeh is a very big victory in the war on terror. Mughniyeh worked for al Qaeda, Iran, Fatah and was the number 2 man in Hezbollah. Short of bin Laden, Mughniyeh probably has more American blood on his hands than any other terrorist. His career spanned more than a quarter of a century, until he was killed today in a car bombing in Damascus.



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For those who know the history of terrorism, the name of Imad Mughniyeh is immediately recognizable. Born in 1960, he is known to have been behind the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy, and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks, which killed over 350, as well as the 1992 bombings of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Lebanon in the 1980s. He has been hunted by the U.S. since he engineered the kidnapping, torture and murder of CIA Lebanese Station Chief William Buckley in 1984. According to ex-CIA agent Robert Baer:

Mugniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable. He only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn’t just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail that we have been after since 1983

And here is what an Israeli Intelligence had to say about Mughniyeh in 2001, speculating that he had been part of the planning along with al Qaeda for 9-11:

. . . Mughniyeh is probably the world’s most wanted outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognisable. . .

"We’ve only got scraps of information, not the full picture," admits one intelligence source, "but it was good enough for us to send a warning six weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was expected. One of our indications suggested that Imad Mughniyeh met with some of his dormant agents on secret trips to Germany. We believe that the operational brains behind the New-York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, . . .

. . . "Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mughniyeh," says an Israeli who knows Mughniyeh . "The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation."

. . . Mughniyeh, 48, is a "sick man", says an intelligence officer who was in charge of his file. He is considered by Western intelligence agencies as the most dangerous active terrorist today. He is wanted by several governments and the Americans have put a $2m reward on his head.

. . . It was the assassination of one man in March 1984 that is said to have made Mughniyeh the CIA’s most wanted terrorist. Mughniyeh allegedly kidnapped the head of the CIA station in Beirut, William Buckley. The kidnapping triggered what later became known as ‘Irangate’, when the Americans tried to exchange Buckley (and others) with arms for Iran. However, the attempt ended in a fiasco. By one unconfirmed account, Mughniyeh tortured and killed Buckley with his own hands.

A year later, in a combined CIA/Mossad operation, a powerful car bomb went off at the entrance to the house of Hizbullah’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Seventy-five people were killed. One of them was his brother. Hunted by the CIA and the Mossad, Mughniyeh hid in Iran.

In February 1992, Israeli helicopter gunships attacked the convoy of the then head of Hizbullah, Sheikh Abas Musawi, in South Lebanon. Musawi, his wife and children were killed and the revenge attack followed a month later. According to press reports, Mughniyeh was called back into action and, in a well-planned and devastating attack, his people blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina. The building was demolished and 92 were killed. Only last year, after a long investigation, did Argentina issue a warrant for Mughniyeh’s arrest.

The reprisal for the attack in Argentina came in December 1994, when a car bomb went off in a southern Shi’ite suburb of Beirut. Four people were killed. One of them was called Mughniyeh, but to the deep disappointment of those Israelis who planted the bomb it was the wrong one. Mughniyeh’s life was saved, but his other brother Fuad was killed. Mughniyeh waited for his opportunity for revenge.

. . . How to counter this kind of terrorism? "To fight these bastards you don’t need a military attack," said an experienced Israeli commando officer. "You only need to adopt Israel’s assassination policy."

Read the entire article. The assassination today of Mughniyeh, in Damascus by a car bomb is suspected to be the handiwork of Mossad. See here for more. Israel is declining comment.

A report in the Lebanese newspaper Ya Liban comments dryly:

An explosion rocked the Kferssouseh neighborhood in Damascus - near the Iranian school Tuesday evening

One person was killed as a result of the explosion .

No one declared responsibility .

The news about an explosion in Syria came as a big shock to many people in Lebanon. All the explosions for the past 3 years occurred in Lebanon and Syria was blamed for all of them . . .

And there is much more in a series of article in the Jerusalem Post about Mughniye's history of terrorism and his assassination. See here and here.

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