Smooth Stone

The IDF could have crippled the Hezbollah bastards, if they weren’t so worried about world opinion. From Strategic Assessment/Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University, The Next War with Hizbullah:

Hizbullah’s main operational goal prior to the July 2006 war was to conduct a war of attrition against the Israeli home front. Hizbullah invested most of its efforts in assembling an extensive missile system, including rockets with ranges of over 100 km, under the assumption that Israel would not conduct significant ground operations south of the Litani River. Most of the organization’s operational mass was concentrated in this area.

From the very beginning of the fighting, Hizbullah maintained a continuous bombardment of Israeli territory in order to wear down the Israeli home front. As Hizbullah had predicted, the IDF countered with massive airpower. Only a few ground-based operations were conducted, and primarily close to the border. At the same time, a number of weak points in Hizbullah’s operational preparations surfaced. The first was the IDF’s success in damaging its medium and long-range rocket systems.

The destruction of Hizbullah’s Zelzal rockets in Beirut in the first hours of fighting appears to have been especially painful.

From Inside Source at FBI Believed to Have Fed Secret Info to Hizbullah:

An illegal immigrant from Lebanon who became an agent for the FBI and CIA allegedly used her access to sensitive U.S. government secrets to help her brother-in-law, a suspected major fundraiser for the terrorist group Hizbullah, according to new details concerning a national security breach that emerged Wednesday. In court documents and interviews, federal authorities said Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, illegally accessed top-secret FBI investigative files on five occasions and most likely shared the information with the suspected Hizbullah operative. On Wednesday, prosecutors said Prouty illegally accessed the FBI’s Hizbullah investigative files in 2002 and 2003, at a time when she was a Washington, D.C.-based FBI field agent who was not working on Hizbullah cases. At the time, her sister’s husband, Talal Khalil Chahine, 51, was under investigation by the FBI in Detroit for suspected ties to Hizbullah.

Authorities now believe Prouty was illegally accessing the FBI files to determine for Chahine and perhaps others what the FBI knew about the group’s presence here, and that she accessed an investigative file on Chahine. At the time, Chahine was suspected of raising large sums of money for Hizbullah and of meeting with top Hizbullah leaders in Lebanon. The FBI began investigating Prouty after agents began hearing that Chahine, an influential power broker in Dearborn, had an inside source at the FBI who was feeding him information about its investigations into his activities and into Hizbullah.

For more on Nada Nadim Prouty, click here.

From U.S. Judge Orders Iran to Pay $2.65 Billion to 1983 Beirut Attack Families:

Iran must pay $2.65 billion to the families of the 241 U.S. service members killed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, a federal judge declared Friday. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth described his ruling as the largest-ever such judgment by an American court against another country. Iran has been blamed for supporting the militant group Hizbullah, which carried out the suicide bombing in Beirut. It was the worst terrorist act against U.S. targets until the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks.

How social engineering skills plus a Koran get Jews and Americans killed. Via Jihad Watch:

Whew. This story has everything: an illegal immigration angle, a Keystone Kops angle, an espionage angle, a moderate-Muslims-condemn-terror-or-do-they angle, and more. It would make a great movie. If this kind of thing doesn’t kill us first.

The illegal immigration angle is of course that illegal immigration is a national security issue, and that illegal immigrants have no business working for the FBI and the CIA. That in turn leads to the Keystone Kops angle: what on earth was the FBI and the CIA thinking, giving this woman key jobs? Of course, no one would dream of asking Nada Nadim Prouty or anyone like her sensitive questions about where they stand on the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism. Why, you’re automatically a bigot just for thinking that such questions should be asked. But when you don’t ask, of course, and make no effort to investigate in any other way, you don’t get answers.

The espionage angle: why did the FBI and CIA, clueless again, give her access to sensitive information? And of course finally there is the moderate-Muslims-condemn-terror-or-do-they angle: the FBI and CIA people who hired her were probably avid to get Muslims on staff so that they wouldn’t appear anti-Muslim, and she no doubt had pluperfect bona fides as a moderate. If she was then funnelling information to Hizballah, it only underscores the fact that there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim who rejects today’s jihad from one who subscribes to that jihad.

There is also the Arab American Institute link: last week I wrote about La Shish, the restaurant chain owned by Prouty’s brother, who has fled the country to escape indictment for evading taxes and sending the restaurant money to Hizballah (to the tune of $20 million). La Shish was one of the sponsors, despite this indictment, of the AAI’s recent conference, where Democratic presidential candidates and Ron Paul were falling all over themselves to condemn “racial profiling” — anti-terror efforts be damned — and grovel for the Arab vote. And now here comes yet more evidence of just whom they were groveling before.

“U.S. prosecutors: Illegal immigrant worked for FBI, CIA, stole info: Woman was sister-in-law of fugitive La Shish restaurant owner, stole info on investigation,” by David Ashenfelter for the Detroit Free Press (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

The sister-in-law of the indicted fugitive owner of the La Shish restaurant chain got sensitive jobs at the FBI and CIA, despite being an illegal immigrant, federal prosecutors said in court documents unsealed today in Detroit.

The woman, Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., also tapped into a sensitive FBI computer to find out what federal investigators knew about her, La Shish restaurant owner Talal Chahine, and her sister, who is married to Chahine.

Prosecutors said she took an unknown quantity of classified information home with her. It’s unclear what happened, or what she did with the information, prosecutors said.

The information pertained to a federal investigation of Chahine and his possible involvement with Hizballah, which has been declared a terrorist organization by the U.S State Department….

It may be unclear what she did with the classified information that she took home, but here’s a clue, from “Former FBI Agent Accused Of Leaking Info,” from CBS News (thanks again to Jeffrey Imm):

A woman who previously worked as an FBI agent and a CIA analyst is expected to plead guilty to charges she disclosed unauthorized information to people outside the government, CBS News has learned.

Sources say the woman, from Lebanon, entered the United States on a student visa and earned citizenship through a sham marriage.

While officials say there is no evidence of actual espionage and no evidence that she was working as a spy, she is accused of passing information to sympathizers of Hezbollah, a group the US has labeled a terrorist organization.

Some useful information comes also from “Prosecutors: LaShish owner’s sister-in-law infiltrated CIA, FBI,” by Paul Egan for The Detroit News (thanks yet again to Jeffrey Imm):

DETROIT — An illegal alien with links to Hezbollah penetrated the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI, federal prosecutors in Detroit said today.

Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., a sister-in-law of fugitive LaShish Restaurants owner Talal Chahine, pleaded guilty in federal court today to conspiracy to defraud the United States, unauthorized computer access, and naturalization fraud.

According to an information unsealed today, Lebanese-born Prouty gained U.S. citizenship in 1994 through a fraudulent marriage, joined the FBI’s Washington Field Office as special agent in 1999 and joined the CIA in June, 2003.

She resigned her CIA post, described as “mid-level,” last week, officials said.

Feel safer?

Here is the USDOJ document on this Muslim menace.

From Israel: Hizbullah Has Tripled Its Land-to-Sea Missile Arsenal:

Hizbullah has tripled its arsenal of C-802 land-to-sea missiles and has rehabilitated its strength north of the Litani River, according to information handed over by Israel to the UN and published in a UN report. During the war, a C-802 missile struck the INS Hanit off the Lebanese coast, killing four naval servicemen. The report states that Hizbullah’s long-range missile teams are deployed north of the Litani River, and that “most of the new missiles include [the Iranian-made] Zelzal and Fajr missiles that have a range of over 250 kilometers and are capable of hitting areas south of Tel Aviv.” Hizbullah also has established an anti-aircraft unit armed with surface-to-air missiles.

Of course they are planning something. From Hizbullah Show of Force in Christian East Beirut:

Hizbullah is rehearsing for something big. A few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 Hizbullah gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city. The operation served as a probing action to determine local reaction, and as an exercise to gauge the time required (speed, synchronization, etc.) to achieve control of key points. Amazingly, there was no response from the police or the army. Hizbullah is jamming cell-phone signals almost daily. Their lookouts are everywhere, and they are watching the people I’m with and me. Hizbullah is far better armed, equipped, and tactically proficient than most Americans might realize. They are terrorists to be sure, but they are also a very strong Iranian-trained guerrilla force and they seem to be getting a pass from far too many people in high places.

Via Daily Alert, from Iran Must Pay $2.6 Billion for ‘83 Attack on Marines in Lebanon:

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth Friday ordered Iran to pay more than $2.6 billion to nearly 1,000 family members and a handful of survivors of a 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon that killed 241 soldiers. Hizbullah carried out the suicide bombing on Oct. 23, 1983, but in a ruling in 2003, Lamberth found that Iran was “legally responsible” for supporting Hizbullah with financial and logistical support to carry out the attack.

See also U.S. Defense Secretary: Hizbullah Has Killed Hundreds of Americans:

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates told the Marine Corps Association on July 18, 2007: “I remember vividly a day in December 1991, when as CIA Director I – along with then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney – attended an arrival ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base. We were there to receive the remains of two men – two of our nation’s “bravest sons” – who had been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by terrorists in Lebanon. One was William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut. The other was Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins, who served with the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. These two Americans were murdered by the same Hizbullah-linked extremists who killed hundreds of Americans in 1983 at the Marine barracks and U.S. embassy in Beirut. It is important to remember that until the morning of September 11, 2001, Hizbullah had been responsible for the deaths of more Americans, our countrymen, than any other terrorist group in the world.”

Why is it when Muslims thugs buy tracts of land from Christians, it’s legal, but when Jews buy land from Arabs, it’s called “occupation”? From Hizbullah Buys Frontier Land to Attack Israel:

Hizbullah is buying up large tracts of land owned by Christians and other non-Shias in southern Lebanon as the militant group rebuilds its defenses in preparation for a new war with Israel. The forested wadis, or valleys, north of the Litani River make ideal terrain for Hizbullah’s brand of guerrilla warfare and, just 10 miles from the border, are within rocket range of Israeli cities. “Christians and Druze are selling land and moving out, while the Shia are moving in. There is an extraordinary demographic shift taking place,” said Edmund Rizk, a former Christian MP for the area. Wealthy Shia businessman Ali Tajeddine, who made his fortune trading diamonds in Sierra Leone, is said to be using Iranian funds to buy land from destitute villagers at up to four times the going rate.

Critics fear a grand scheme to create a strip of Shia-controlled land connecting southern Lebanon to Hizbullah’s other power center in the Bekaa Valley. “It is part of Hizbullah’s plan to create a state within a state,” said Walid Jumblatt, a Druze leader. He also pointed to the four-lane road being built to connect the Hizbullah stronghold of Nabatiye in the south to the western Bekaa. Banners openly proclaim the source of the road’s funding: “510 km of new roads paid for by the Iranian Organization for Sharing in the Building of Lebanon.”

More on the critical issue of Arab Muslim identity politics. From The Iran-Hizbullah Alliance:

Last week saw the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) warning of an increased likelihood that Hizbullah could attack U.S. soil if it, or Iran, feels directly threatened by the United States. Washington continues to take action against the organization, but given Hizbullah’s impressive fundraising capabilities and Iranian support, the task is challenging.

On July 18, 1994, a car bombing carried out by Hizbullah at Iran’s behest targeted the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a Jewish community organization, killing 85 and wounding more than 200.

In late 2006, an Argentinean special prosecutor released a detailed report on the AMIA bombing, issuing arrest warrants for high-level Iranian officials and Hizbullah members involved in the attack. According to a U.S. State Department assessment, “members of the Iranian government’s highest echelons planned out how the attack would occur and entrusted its execution to the Lebanese terrorist organization [Hizbullah].”

The bombing was an archetypal example of Iran’s direct sponsorship of Hizbullah. The Argentinean investigation concluded that Tehran transferred at least $152,812 to accounts controlled by Mohsen Rabbani, a Shiite cleric who at the time held diplomatic immunity as a cultural attache at the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires. Rabbani was responsible for coordinating logistical details and procuring materials (e.g., vehicles and explosives) for the attack.

Arrest warrants were issued for nine others, including former Iranian president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Hizballah operations chief Imad Mughniyeh. Rafsanjani was charged with “heading the intelligence office whose main function was to devise a preliminary plan to attack Argentina,” Mughniyeh with “overseeing the complex operations of Hizbullah overseas, and was a specialist in recruiting soldiers for foreign operations, reporting to no one else but Iran.”

Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department designated a parastatal Iranian organization as a key link between Tehran and Hizbullah, targeting the Iran-based Martyrs Foundation (Bonyad-e shahid) for “provid[ing] financial support to the families of killed or imprisoned Hizbullah and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] members.” In the U.S., a Martyrs Foundation satellite office in Dearborn, Michigan – the Goodwill Charitable Organization (GCO) – was also designated for instructing “Hizbullah members in the United States to send their contributions to GCO.”

We mustn’t forget that throughout our history, Jews have always stood at the graves of our enemies, and we will stand victorious once again because every enemy has an achilles heel. From Hizbullah Officer: We Would Have Given Up If Not for Cease-Fire:

“The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War],” a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Israel’s Channel 10 television on Tuesday. The officer said Hizbullah gunmen would have surrendered if the fighting last summer had continued for another ten days. He said the gunmen had been running low on food and water and faced rapidly diminishing arms supplies.