John Re..It's a big price to pay to take out a paper tiger that didn't support terrorism, at least not on a level of, say, Iran.
It was well known SH supported terrorism. Hezbollah,and The Arab Liberation Front' the main terrorist groups in Palestin were aligned with Iraq, had training camps there, and Saddam paid 25,000 to each suicide bomber.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48822,00.html
The men at the top table then opened Saddam's checkbook and, as the names of 47 martyrs were called, family representatives went up to sign for checks written in U.S. dollars.
Those of two suicide bombers were the first to be paid the new rate of $25,000 U.S. and those whose relatives had died in other clashes with the Israeli military were given $10,000 U.S. each.
The $500,000 U.S. doled out in this impoverished community yesterday means that the besieged Iraqi leader now has contributed more than $10 million to grieving Palestinian families since the new intifada began 18 months ago.
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I reached McGeough on his mobile phone in the West Bank this morning and asked if he snuck into this gruesome town hall meeting, held by a PLO faction aligned with Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party. I mean, who would let a foreign journalist see this sort of Iraqi-Palestinian blood partnership?
"I asked the Ramallah office of the Arab Liberation Front," McGeough said. "They said I could go."
He was welcomed. So the Palestinian Authority is blatantly exposing its terrorist funding from Iraq? To foreign reporters?
"You can interpret it in various ways. One way is that it is a deliberate way for Baghdad to escalate the suicide bombings."
washingtontimes.com
Iraqi: Hamas, Hezbollah operating in Iraq
By Lou Marano
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Hamas and Hezbollah are operating openly in southern Iraq, an Iraqi-American recently returned from the country said Thursday.
"I was surprised to see an office for Hamas in Nasariah, and also a Hezbollah office in Basra and Safwan," said Zainab Al-Suwaij, a Shiite Muslim native of Basra. "I was shocked to see their flag and their sign there, and I was wondering what is going on. Do we as an Iraqi people, who are emerging from the terror of Saddam after 35 years, need this in our country?"
She said Hezbollah has been operating in Safwan, a town on the Kuwait border, for about four months. "The building is secure with guards and weapons," she told a forum at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Al-Suwaij has been working in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development to rebuild the Iraqi school system and to implement women's empowerment programs. In 1991, at age 20, she joined in the failed uprising against Saddam Hussein and survived the fighting in Karbala before escaping the country. She is executive director of the American Islamic Conference, an organization founded after Sept. 11, 2001. The group states that American Muslims should play a leading role in rejecting Islamist radicalism and promoting democracy in the Muslim world.
Al-Suwaij said the political wings of Hamas and Hezbollah are recruiting Iraqi youth with seminars that impart their ideology. "Don't the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) or the (occupation) authorities there know about these offices?"
She said the occupation authorities and the CPA should close the offices. "These are not Iraqi groups," she said, and they are not geared to participatory democracy. "We know what their thoughts and ideas are."
Hezbollah is a militant Lebanese Shiite Islamist organization backed by Iran and Syria. Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a Palestinian Sunni fundamentalist group concentrated in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
"We need to put some limit, especially now, because the country is just emerging from a very difficult period," Al-Suwaij said. "We need democracy, but also we need to keep our people safe."
Al-Suwaij said Hamas and Hezbollah are taking advantage of the poverty of Iraqi children in the difficult postwar environment, paying the children to do their bidding. "I am worried about the younger generation," she said.
Al-Suwaij was asked how these offices are financed. "They are coming (into Iraq) with their own money," she replied, "because there's no money inside the country. They are trying to buy people."
She said Iraqi youth need to be educated in ways the various Iraqi ethnicities can live in harmony. "Having such groups in Iraq does not help our people, or help the children, emerging from the bad period and facing now a new struggle with these groups. What worries me is that the people won't get an opportunity to enjoy their freedom if groups like that have power."
Something as simple as youth centers can help mute the message of extremists, Al-Suwaij said.
She said Hamas and Hezbollah have been banned in Europe and the United States. The military wing of Hamas is banned in the EU, but efforts to ban its political wing have been resisted. During the war to topple Saddam Hussein last spring, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah called on the people of the Middle East to receive Americans with "rifles, blood, arms, and martyrdom operations." |
