On being Remembered

It's good to be remembered, it seems to be happening a lot lately......

President Bush Speaks at National Defense University on the War on Terror:

We meet at a time of great consequence for the security of our nation, a time when the defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom, a time with echoes in our history.

Twice in six decades, a sudden attack on the United States launched our country into a global conflict, and began a period of serious reflection on America's place in the world. The bombing of Pearl Harbor taught America that unopposed tyranny, even on far-away continents, could draw our country into a struggle for our own survival. And our reflection on that lesson led us to help build peaceful democracies in the ruins of tyranny, to unite free nations in the NATO Alliance, and to establish a firm commitment to peace in the Pacific that continues to this day.





The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 also revealed the outlines of a new world. In one way, that assault was the culmination of decades of escalating violence -- from the killing of U.S. Marines in Beirut, to the bombing at the World Trade Center, to the attacks on American embassies in Africa, to the attacks on the USS Cole. In another way, September the 11th provided a warning of future dangers -- of terror networks aided by outlaw regimes, and ideologies that incite the murder of the innocent, and biological and chemical and nuclear weapons that multiply destructive power.

Like an earlier generation, America is answering new dangers with firm resolve. No matter how long it takes, no matter how difficult the task, we will fight the enemy, and lift the shadow of fear, and lead free nations to victory.

Iran's Defence Minister has ties to the deaths of our Brothers!

Iran Focus

London, Aug. 14 - The nomination of a veteran commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as the new defence minister has been greeted with calls for an investigation into his possible ties to the suicide bombing of the U.S. Marines compound in Beirut airport in October 1983, which killed 241 Americans.

Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards, was in command of the IRGC expeditionary force in Lebanon when on October 23, 1983, at 6:22 a.m., a suicide bomber drove a large water delivery truck to the Beirut International Airport where the Marine Barracks was located. The bomber and his accomplices had hijacked the original truck on its way to the airport and sent another one, loaded with explosives, in its place.

After turning onto an access road leading to the compound, the driver rushed through a barbed-wire fence, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through the gate, and slammed into the lobby of the barracks. The huge explosion crumbled the four-story building, crushing the soldiers to death while they were sleeping.

All the windows at the airport control tower, half a mile away, shattered. A crater eight feet deep was carved into the earth, and 15 feet of rubble was all that remained of the four-story Marine barracks.

The attack killed 241 U.S. service members. The Americans quickly withdrew their forces from Lebanon and the suicide operation became a turning point in the increasing use of terrorism by radical Islamic fundamentalists across the world.

Two years ago, a U.S. federal court order identified the suicide bomber as Ismail Ascari, an Iranian national.

In July 1987, Iran’s then-Minister of Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rafiqdoost, said, “Both the TNT and the ideology which in one blast sent to hell 400 officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marines headquarters were provided by Iran”.

Rafiqdoost’s comments were published in the Tehran daily Ressalat on July 20, 1987.

Iran’s hard-line newspapers continue to feature stories that commemorate the Beirut bombing and the country’s Headquarters for Commemoration of Martyrs of Global Islamic Movement held a memorial ceremony in Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery last December to “honour the man who carried out the largest martyrdom-seeking operation against Global Arrogance [the United States and its allies]…and was able to kill more than 300 occupiers of Lebanon with his courageous operation in 1983”.

A U.S. Defense Department report on the Beirut attack said the force of the explosion “ripped the building from its foundation. The building then imploded upon itself”.

The U.S. court order described the blast as "the largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on the face of the Earth”. It was equal in force to between 15,000 and 21,000 pounds of TNT.

Now some terrorism experts want a thorough investigation by the U.S. or an international body to determine the role of Iran’s new defence minister in the attack.

“Those who are knowledgeable about the October 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut know that the Iranian regime was behind it”, said David Neil, a Middle East affairs analyst based in London. “Iran’s new defence minister was in command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards force in Lebanon at the time. This is acknowledged in his official biography that was carried by Iran’s government-owned news agencies today”.

Others agree.

“We must conduct a thorough investigation and bring the perpetrators and masterminds of that terrorist act to justice”, said Simon Bailey of the Gulf Intelligence Monitor. “For two decades, the Beirut bombing has been a landmark for terrorist impunity. Now is the time to change it”.

Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar joined the IRGC soon after it was formed in 1979, only days after the victory of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran. Almost immediately, Mohammad-Najjar took part in the bloody campaign to suppress the Kurdish uprising in western Iran in 1979.

After his return to Tehran, Mohammad-Najjar worked as a staff officer in the Central Command Headquarters of the IRGC. His performance in the opening stages of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980 won him quick promotion in IRGC, then a newly-formed army that relied more on ideological loyalty than military skills.

By 1982, the IRGC had turned the tide in the war against Iraq. After a succession of impressive battlefield victories, the Revolutionary Guards were now on the offensive. The new situation led the IRGC High Command to expand its operations in pursuit of export of Islamic revolution beyond Iraq. With Ayatollah Khomeini’s blessing, the Revolutionary Guards set up a Middle East Directorate and Mohammad-Najjar, who was a fluent Arabic speaker, became its commander.

The Middle East Directorate’s area of operation included Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and the Persian Gulf states. The IRGC sent a 1,500-man expeditionary force to Syria and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon in 1982 and played a key role in the formation of the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Mohammad-Najjar remained in command of IRGC’s Middle East operations until 1985. During those years, the IRGC expanded its presence and influence in Lebanon, both directly and through its proxies, and established active ties with radical Palestinian and Arab groups in the region.

Mohammad-Najjar’s forces were also actively expanding their clandestine presence in Iran’s southern neighbours, including Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Mohammad-Najjar became head of the IRGC’s Military Industries Organisation in 1985 and later developed the 320-mm “super mortars” that were intended for use by the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force for terrorist operations in Europe and the Middle East.

The choice of Mohammad-Najjar as Defence Minister by fellow Revolutionary Guards commander Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not surprising. President Ahmadinejad is closely allied with the top brass of the IRGC, who played a crucial role in ensuring his victory in the recent presidential elections.

Camp Lejeune is Famiiar with Mourning and Winning Battles

Camp Lejeune in North Carolina is familiar with mourning. This memorial honors the 241 Marines and sailors killed in Beirut in 1983.







N.C. base steadfast in face of casualties
Despite deadly ambush, respect remains for 'the Marine mission'
By Gary D. Robertson
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.04.2005



JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — The grim news that a roadside bomb killed 10 Marines in Iraq arrived at Camp Lejeune just days after President Bush outlined his strategy for victory, a speech delivered in the face of increasing calls to bring the troops home.
But even after learning about Thursday's ambush — the deadliest against U.S. troops in four months — this city's embrace of its Marines, their base and their job remains resolute.
"Even when people differ in opinions, you're still respectful to the Marine mission," said Pat McLane, a retired master gunnery sergeant from Jacksonville. "We're still going to take care of our Marines."

The 10 Marines assigned to the Lejeune-based 2nd Marine Division were on foot patrol outside Fallujah, a former insurgent stronghold, when a bomb fashioned from four large artillery shells exploded.

They attached to the unit once in Iraq; all those who died — with hometowns from Tomah, Wis., to Surprise, Ariz. — were from the 1st Marine Division, based at Twentynine Palms, Calif.
"The loss of any Marine life is always tragic. ... it makes for a somewhat somber mood," said 1st Lt. Christy Kercheval, a spokeswoman for the Twentynine Palms base. "But at the same time, just as the president said in his recent speech, the best way to honor the loss is to carry out the mission that they defended."
That the 10 Marines never spent time at Camp Lejeune, a sprawling base of 25,000 service members and the Corps' largest on the Atlantic coast, didn't matter in Jacksonville. They were Marines.

"We are one community and one family here," said Reid Flinchum, 65, who has lived in and around Jacksonville for more than 40 years.
It's a place familiar with mourning so many, so quickly. On March 23, 2003, during the earliest days of the ground war, nine Marines from Camp Lejeune died during an ambush as their company crossed a bridge at Nassiriyah.

And most of the 241 Marines and sailors who died in the Oct. 22, 1983, barracks attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, were based at Lejeune and the adjoining Marine Corps Air Station New River.
Bush came to Camp Lejeune within two weeks of the Nassiriyah attacks, cheered on by 20,000 Marines, their families and locals.

When Bush spoke Friday from the White House Rose Garden about the economy, he didn't mention the Marines' deaths, though White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the president had been briefed twice about the incident. Typically, Bush does not comment on specific losses in Iraq.

Support for the president and his Iraq policy remains high here.
"We all have our opinions, but the best capacity of a Marine is a mission accomplished," said Sgt. Paul Mancuso, 22, who returned two weeks ago from nine months in Iraq as a combat videographer.

The Associated Press

Thank You Mr. Denzel Washington!!!

I received this email the other day, I hope some other Hollywood Entertainers follow Mr. Washington's lead. He is a Great Actor and most of all, a Great American!





Don't know whether you heard about this

but Denzel Washington and his family visited

the troops at Brook Army Medical Center, in

San Antonio,Texas (BAMC) the other day. This

is where soldiers who have been evacuated from

Germany come to be hospitalized in the United

States, especially burn victims. There are some

buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher






House is a Hotel where soldiers' families can stay,

for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying

in the Hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses

on base, but as you can imagine, they are almost filled

most of the time.



While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave

him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how

much one of them would cost to build. He took his check

book out and wrote a check for the full amount right there

on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear

this story and want to get the word out to the American

public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.

THE CHURCH MEETS THE KILLERS!!

UNBELIEVABLE. WHEN WILL THE PRESBYTERIAN'S MEET WITH THE FAMILES OF THE BRAVE MEN WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN LEBANON? BEING A PROTESTANT, I AM ASHAMED AND SHOCKED.




WIESENTHAL CENTER: PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH’S APPROVAL OF HEZBOLLAH CONTACTS EMBOLDENS INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

The Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed its alarm that the decision by a leading mainline Protestant Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, to permit ongoing contacts with Hezbollah will further embolden international terrorism.

“Americans should be deeply troubled by PCUSA’s decision to permit ongoing contacts with Hezbollah, a terrorist organization in word and deed,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “It was disturbing enough that PCUSA officials met recently with Hezbollah’s Commander in Southern Lebanon. But to learn that future meetings would be sanctioned, even after Hezbollah launched unprovoked bloody attacks designed to kidnap Israelis, will only further embolden the forces of terrorism in the Holy Land, in Lebanon and around the world.”

Officials of the Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human Rights NGO had launched a protest after the Middle East Research Institute, published Lebanese media reports that a PCUSA delegation headed by Robert Morley, a retired professor from McCormick Theological Seminary and Father Nihad Tomeh, the Church’s Mideast liaison met with Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, Hezbollah’s commander in Southern Lebanon. The Church delegation reportedly wanted to learn more about Hezbollah’s charitable works and its "concern" for people.

"The people of Lebanon struggle mightily to reassert their independent democracy, Israel evacuates Gaza and continues negotiations with the Palestinian Authority towards a two-state solution, hundreds of thousands of Jordanians throng to the streets to denounce suicide bombers in Amman, but leaders of the PCUSA rush again to coddle up to Syria and Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists," charged Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center. "Their moral blindness is both arrogant and dangerous, seeking this meeting with Hezbollah even as the group plotted kidnapping and mayhem to blow up the quiet Lebanese-Israel border," Cooper continued.

At the meeting, Qaouk complained to the Presbyterian officials that U.S. policy towards Lebanon was dictated by Israel. Worley assured him that his delegation was blameless, because they had voted for Democratic Party. Worley also voiced his own complaint about how much PCUSA had suffered from Jewish organizations because its stand supporting divestment from companies doing business in the Jewish state.

"The latest photo op with a frontline terrorist leader confirms these Presbyterian leaders are pursuing a functionally antisemitic, punitive campaign against Israel, motivated not by hopes for peace but as a desire to weaken the Jewish state," said Rabbi Cooper.

"The Jewish community can only hope that fair-minded members of PCUSA will take back control of the moral compass of their movement before any further damage is done to the cause of Middle East peace, interfaith relations and the Presbyterian Church’s historic reputation," Cooper concluded.

PCUSA was the first mainline Protestant movement to call for divesting funds from Israel. A year ago, a PCUSA delegation also visited with Sheikh Qaouk in Lebanon. This led to the dismissal of two members of that delegation as well as condemnation by U.S. Congressional leaders, among others.

Now comes word from PCUSA’s interfaith coordinator Rev. Jay Rock that there would be new guidelines for its members. He explained, however, that “there will not be policies for or against meeting with any group, but we do have policies against the use of terrorism in any form.”


“But in fact, PCUSA’s dance with Hezbollah, a group funded and backed by the Iranian and Syrian regimes, only validates and rewards terrorists. In effect PCUSA is saying that it is fine to bring terrorists into civil discourse, so long as you don’t help them strap on the explosives belt,” Cooper concluded.

Hezbollah is designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. In addition, the distinction between the group’s political and terrorist wings was removed by General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands following an investigation into the groups social services apparatus.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036, or visit www.wiesenthal.com

Once again into the Breach!

Once again the Eighth Marines take up their deployment to the Middle East, We say God Bless each and every one of them on their deployment. Semper Fi Marines!!!


CAMP LEJEUNE, NC(Nov. 30, 2005) -- For the fourth time since the seismic events of 9/11, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is preparing to deploy abroad in support of the War on Terror.

In a ceremony Wednesday at Camp Lejeune’s W.P.T. Hill Field, the unit grew from its standing headquarters of some 100 Marines and sailors to a highly potent air-ground task force of 2,200, as the MEU took charge of its three major subordinate elements.

The re-activation formally launched an intensive six-month pre-deployment training cycle designed to prepare the MEU – arguably the nation’s premier crisis-response force – for a host of possible missions ranging from humanitarian assistance to full-scale combat.

Joining the MEU command element for roughly the next year were its designated air, ground and logistics components: Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 365, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, and MEU Service Support Group 24.

The MEU will conduct much of its training in and around Camp Lejeune, but the schedule also includes exercises at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia and in Norfolk, Va., where the MEU will hone its skills at operating in an urban environment. Additionally, the MEU will execute several sea drills aboard the amphibious assault ships Iwo Jima, Nashville and Whidbey Island, the naval vessels that will transport the MEU during its deployment.

While the MEU has been home since it completed a seven-month deployment to Iraq in February, it has not been idle. In early September, while busy assembling the pre-deployment training program, the MEU headquarters, BLT 1/8 and MSSG-24 were ordered to the U.S. Gulf Coast to aid recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The Marines spent nearly a month in the stricken region before returning to North Carolina to resume preparations for its scheduled deployment next spring.

The MEU heads into its latest round of workups with considerable combat experience. The MEU headquarters and MSSG-24 spent their last tour in Iraq south of Baghdad, taming the highly volatile “Triangle of Death,” while 1/8 played a leading role in the recapture of Fallujah in November. At the same time, HMM-365 logged its own seven-month stint in western Iraq.

Still, Col. Ronald Johnson, the MEU commander and himself a veteran of five tours in the Middle East, implored his Marines to guard against complacency and to make the most of every training opportunity.

“Time is our enemy,” he told them, repeating what has become a mantra. “No two deployments are the same. The battlefield is constantly evolving, and our adversaries are constantly thinking and adjusting. As we get ready to re-enter the arena, we must never forget how high the stakes are for our Marines, our families and our country.”

While the 24th MEU’s rich lineage traces back to the 1960s, it wasn’t until October 1983 that the unit, during a watershed deployment to Beirut, Lebanon, entered America’s consciousness.

In what remains the deadliest terrorist strike against Americans overseas, an explosives-laden truck barreled into the barracks housing the headquarters of BLT 1/8, the ground combat element of what was then called the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit. The attack killed 241 U.S. troops, including 220 Marines.

Throughout the 1990s, the 24th MEU distinguished itself in a number of high-profile but relatively low-intensity operations. These included Provide Comfort, the 1991 mission of mercy in support of Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq and Turkey; Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993; Support Democracy in Haiti in 1994; and Allied Force, NATO’s air campaign against Kosovo in 1999.

Its most heralded triumph came in June 1995 with the daring rescue of Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady, an F-16 pilot shot down over wartorn Bosnia who eluded capture for six days before Marines landed behind enemy lines to pluck him to safety.

The 24th MEU was in Kosovo on Sept. 11, 2001, wrapping up a six-month deployment dominated by training exercises with allied forces. Before it returned home, the MEU briefly supported Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Johnson, then serving as the operations officer for Task Force Tarawa and slated to take command of the 24th MEU later that year, tapped the MEU to help secure key terrain during the drive to Baghdad.

In June 2004, halfway through its last training cycle, the MEU was ordered to straight to Iraq as the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority prepared to hand political control of the country over to the interim Iraqi government.

While it’s too soon to know where the MEU will be sent next year, all eyes are clearly on Iraq.

“We have unfinished business over there, and we expect that’s where we’ll be needed most,” said Johnson. “But we’ll be ready for anything.”

The Teacher of the Homicide Bomber

Hezbollah learnt suicide bomb tactics from Iran - commander Sat. 26 Nov 2005



Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 26 – Lebanon’s Hezbollah group learnt suicide operation tactics from Iran, a senior officer of the Revolutionary Guards boasted.

Mohammad-Ali Samadi, the spokesman for a government-orchestrated campaign to recruit suicide bombers said that Iran first developed the tactic during its eight-year war with Iraq, which left over a million people dead.

Samadi’s organisation, the Headquarters to Commemorate the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, is run by the IRGC in an effort to recruit potential suicide bombers. At a recent rally in the city of Shahroud, north-eastern Iran, it claimed to have signed up 1,000 volunteers for suicide attacks against the West and Israel.

The former regime of Saddam Hussein, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia disseminated negative propaganda against suicide operations to keep them apart from Palestinian culture, Samadi said.

“Lebanese Hezbollah used its ties with Iran to adopt the Iranian model and utilised it successfully with light guns and light-weight short-range rockets”, the senior IRGC officer said.

In October, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and threatened the leaders of Muslim countries that developed ties with the Jewish state.

Earlier this month, Samadi told a state-run news agency that 50,000 people had enlisted for martyrdom-seeking operations throughout the country and were willing to attack targets on the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The group’s organisers previously said that their targets were three-fold; U.S.-led forces in Iraq, Jews in Israel, and Salman Rushdie, who still has a fatwa against him issue by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The American Thinker has a good article about our withdrawal from Iraq and Congressman Murtha (D) Pennsylvania. It seems there is a history here.

Former Commandant General PX Kelley Speaks out

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Don't Give Terrorists A Timetable

Letter to the Editor, Washington Post

Nov. 22, 2005, pg. 28

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/21/AR2005112101303.html

One of the most critical issues that members of Congress must address is
the wisdom of setting a schedule for our continued presence in Iraq. In
this regard, I would hope that they would look back to September 1983, when
both houses of Congress held War Powers Act hearings on our presence in
Beirut as part of a multinational force. I asked Congress then not to set a
schedule for our withdrawal from war-torn Lebanon. I said, "If the time is
too short, our enemies will wait us out; if it is too long, they will drive
us out."

My warning was ignored, and Congress passed a law that said that Marines
would stay for 18 more months. That in essence told the Iranians, the
Syrians, the Druze and the newly organized Hezbollah: "Put your plans on
hold for a year and a half."

On Oct. 23, 1983, they gave us their answer -- an 18-ton truck carrying the
equivalent of 18,000 pounds of TNT smashed into the headquarters of
Battalion Landing Team 2/8, and 241 of our most precious sons, who had done
nothing more than try to restore peace to a troubled country, were
murdered.

My message to Congress is simple: Never tell your enemies your plans.
Ambiguity in war is essential.

My personal message to our enemies is equally simple: If you continue your
barbaric acts of terrorism, you eventually will be punished -- count on it.
Let me close by reminding all Americans of the mission given to Muslim
terrorists by Osama bin Laden in 2001: "By God's leave, we call on every
Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God's command to
kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and
whenever he can."

Lest we forget!
P.X. Kelley, Arlington
The writer, a retired Marine Corps general, was commandant of the Corps
from 1983 to 1987.

Four Hezbollah terriorists killed

Israel Pundit has a great story on the recent incursion into Israel by Hezbollah.