MAJ GENERAL SMITH TO SPEAK

NEWS RELEASE
PUBLIC INFORMATION DEPARTMENT
PO Box 567, Buies Creek, NC 27506
Tel: (910) 893-1224 w Fax: (910) 893-1922
Marine Corps general and author to be Barden lecturer

Maj.Gen.Ray L. Smith, USMC (Ret.) will be the featured speaker at Campbell University’s Barden Forum, Monday, Mar. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Hartness Lecture Hall of the Science building. Smith is the author of “The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division.” Free and open to the public, the lecture is sponsored by Campbell’s Department of Government, History and Justice.
A native of Oklahoma, Smith enlisted in the Marine Corps in Dec. 1965 and graduated as the Platoon and Series Honorman at San Diego in 1966. He graduated from Officers Candidate School in 1967. He was also selected to participate in the Bootstrap Program in 1978. Smith earned his bachelor’s degree in Asian Studies in 1980 and his master’s degree in Military Science from the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He also received a master’s degree in International Relations.
A decorated war veteran, Smith’s duty assignments included two tours in Vietnam. He also led troops into Grenada and Beirut as the commander of 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. In addition, his assignments included Japan and Korea. Smith ended his military career as commanding general of the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune N.C. He retired from the Marines in 1999. On his last day of active duty, Smith was a convocation speaker and received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Campbell University.
Smith currently serves as president of the board of directors of the Marine Corps Museum of the Carolinas and as a member of the board of Caring Communities. He has also served on the Jacksonville USO Executive Council and the board of directors of the Jacksonville-Onslow Area Chamber of Commerce. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame and received the Mack McKinney Award. In addition, he is a member of the North Carolina Advisory Commission on Military Affairs.
For more information about the General Smith lecture, contact Vicki Crowell (910) 893-1480 or (800) 334-4111, ext.1480.

MARINE VET PART OF BEIRUT HONOR GUARD

Duty still calls for former Marine at PTI
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GREENSBORO — Despite the planning, cutting through red tape and security clearances, Jim Carter encounters what the military calls the SNAFUs.

Recently, at Piedmont Triad International Airport, Carter arranged for the mother of a female Marine to get around the security screening and be poised at the gate to embrace her daughter, who was arriving for a break from Iraq.

Carter and the mother were supposed to meet at a certain place. They missed connections. Once they linked, the daughter had already reached the baggage carousel.

The emotional moment had been missed.

But that hasn't happened often, says Carter, who runs a virtual USO at PTI, although it's not in his mission statement as director of security, chief of communications and airport police reserve officer.

He tries to make reunions joyous for troops returning for brief breaks from the war. He seeks to dignify sad occasions for families whose loved ones arrive in caskets.

"Picture a former Marine carrying an Army captain's duffle bag to the car," Bettie Stocks Rhodes, of Reidsville, says in an e-mail to the News & Record after her son-in-law, Capt. Ben Shepherd, arrived from Iraq recently for a two-week stay.

"Efficiently, quietly and humbly, Jim Carter honors and assists soldiers arriving ...

"My deepest gratitude goes to Jim Carter, who continues to serve his country."

Carter was a sergeant and later a warrant officer in the Marines.

In helping military people and parents, he wants them to avoid what he encountered upon returning from a second tour in Vietnam in 1969.

At the airport in Los Angeles, a "flower child," he says, tried to cram a flower into the medals and ribbons on his uniform.

"Don't touch me or the uniform, and don't spit on me, and we'll get along fine," he recalled saying.

She uttered something about him being a baby killer.

Thousands of returning Vietnam veterans experienced similar hostility. Or they felt ignored.

Even though the war in Iraq may be as unpopular to some people as Vietnam, Carter hasn't witnessed the same hostility toward those fighting it.

He felt goose bumps when he watched a uniformed Marine lieutenant, his ankle broken from a chopper crash, refuse a wheelchair. He hobbled on crutches the length of the concourse. Travelers at gates arose in applause.

"I am glad people finally woke up," Carter says. "The troops out there are not the enemy."

He says his eyes welled when an airline pilot delayed departure until Marines in dress blues finished lifting a casket covered with an American flag and carried it to a hearse.

Carter always arranges for grieving families to be near the plane.

One woman, he says, ran "and kissed her son's casket."

The father of another dead Marine kept repeating: "I should have never let him out of my sight."

Later, Carter says, the man conceded that his son, who had re-enlisted, "died doing what he wanted to do."

Carter gave the Marines 27 years.

"I miss the heck out of the Corps," he says.

That's obvious from his office decor -- outfitted in Marine red and gold. It beats any Marine recruiting station. It's jammed with Marine plaques, figurines, models of the Iwo Jima statue, photos of his old units, recruiting posters, one of his former uniform jackets in a frame and posters bearing gung-ho slogans.

"It's God's job to judge the terrorists. It's our mission to arrange the meeting," a sticker on a desk drawer says.

He gets irritated at the geographical illiteracy of young Marines. They land at PTI and seek a cab to Camp Lejeune. They think the base is nearby, not 200 miles away.

"Do you have $300 for a cab to Lejeune," Carter asks them.

A dozen times he has driven Marines to the bus station and bought them a ticket to Lejeune. He warns they'd better repay him next payday. Only two have stiffed him.

The Alabama native quit high school to join the Marines in 1960, rose to sergeant and became a warrant officer in 1969. Later, he spent five years on the inspector and instructor staff with the Greensboro Marine Corps Reserve unit. The I&I staff are regular Marines who assist reservists.

During that time, 241 Marines were killed in 1983 during a terrorist attack on a barracks in Beirut, He and the I&I staff knocked on doors to tell two Greensboro-area parents their sons were dead. The staff served as honor guards at the casket arrivals and at the burials.

Parental reactions, he says, range from emotional outbreaks and anger to quiet acceptance. In the Beirut bombing, one woman believed that because her son's finger had been found, the rest of him was in a hospital recovering.

When Carter retired from the Marines in 1988, he returned to the area to a house he bought while on I&I duty and went to work for the airport police.

Homecomings on furloughs and leaves from Iraq are happy times, though the returns two weeks afterward aren't. When Shepherd, the captain whose duffel bag Carter had carried to the car when he arrived, had to return to the war, Carter was there. He says the captain slid a letter into the stroller of the baby he had seen for the first time when he came home.

Carter says he couldn't do what he does without the cooperation of airport manager Ted Johnson and others. He wishes he could do more -- and wishes some parents would, too.

"I'll see a soldier up there," he says, "and no one is with him. Someone should be there to see that person off."

Contact Jim Schlosser at 373-7081 or jschlosser@new-record.com

Iraq-Bound Marine Leaders Cram on Civics and Economics

Maj Gen Zilmer was Fox Company Captain in 1982 when we first went into Beirut.


By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: February 13, 2006

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Feb. 7 — Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer is busy these days poring over classified intelligence reports on the insurgency in Iraq's restive Anbar Province.
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The Reach of War
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But as General Zilmer, a 53-year-old veteran of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, prepares to take command this month of 30,000 marines and soldiers in what may be the most dangerous region in Iraq, he is also focusing on some less obvious projects.

Those include collecting information on the 10 largest employers in the province, the vast desert area west of Baghdad, trying to figure out how to ensure that local police officers and health workers there are being paid and thinking about the region's business challenges like an entrepreneur.

As new Marine commanders prepare to head to Iraq for a yearlong tour and gird for new battles there with insurgents, they say they must also put greater emphasis on helping the new Iraqi government provide essential city services, create jobs and promote local governmental control.

"Our focus of operations has been along security lines in the past, and they'll remain imperative," said General Zilmer, who as a young officer in the 1980's served in the Marine peacekeeping mission in Beirut. "That said, we think there are other things that also require attention to be successful, including economics and governance. These are all happening at once."

That philosophy fits neatly under the strategy of Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli of the Army, the new overall commander of daily operations in Iraq, who says the military must not shortchange reconstruction and democratization efforts even while it battles insurgents.

Here at this sprawling base north of San Diego, General Zilmer's 700-member staff from the First Marine Expeditionary Force has been taking that guidance to heart.

Last month, General Zilmer sponsored a two-day conference here to develop ideas on how to help speed reconstruction and the growth of civic organizations in Anbar, a contested region about the size of Arkansas that includes Falluja and Ramadi.

The 75 participants in the conference included military civil affairs specialists, specialists from the State and Commerce Departments, Iraqi business groups and an array of American private contractors who are working in Iraq. Practical tips, like those General Zilmer is studying, flowed from the meeting. Marines said they met contacts who could help them in Iraq.

"They'll be working in the most dangerous part of Iraq, and will need to have a lot of flexibility on the ground," said Frederick D. Barton, a specialist on reconstruction at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who attended the conference.

General Zilmer said an officer might be assigned to Amman, Jordan, to help promote job growth and business development in western Iraq. Marine commanders expressed support for establishing military-civilian provincial reconstruction teams in Anbar similar to those operating in Afghanistan and other parts of Iraq.

The Marines express hope that promoting economic gains and political growth in the impoverished region will dissuade Sunnis in Anbar from supporting the insurgency.

"This is all about converting those Iraqis on the fence," said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, who oversees all marines in Southwest Asia, including Iraq, from his headquarters here.

But Marine commanders say they face a shrinking window of opportunity. American influence is expected to diminish as Iraq's new government takes control. If Sunnis feel shut out of the political process by Shiite and Kurdish leaders, insurgent attacks are expected to increase, despite a series of operations last summer and fall in the Euphrates River Valley that commanders say disrupted the insurgents' ability to send suicide bombers into Baghdad and other major cities.

The 30,000 marines and soldiers in Anbar have represented about 20 percent of the total American force in Iraq since last April, but they also have suffered about 35 percent of the combat deaths in that period. Homemade bombs remain the No. 1 killer.

"I don't see it decreasing," said Brig. Gen. Robert B. Neller, a veteran of American military missions in Panama, Somalia and Bosnia and General Zilmer's deputy for operations, referring to the number of bombs. "It's clearly the weapon of choice."

To combat the insurgency, the Marines plan to increase the training of Iraqi soldiers, border guards and the police force, whose numbers in the province have grown to about 24,000 from a few thousand a year ago. "Some of them still have a long way to go," General Zilmer said, referring to the recruits.

With growing domestic pressure to reduce the number of American forces in Iraq, General Zilmer will command a staff that is about 500 marines smaller than that of the headquarters he is replacing. He and his deputies have been talking regularly with the departing command under Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson in Anbar since last summer, and they visited Iraq in October.

More than 60 percent of the marines under General Zilmer have previously served in Iraq or Afghanistan. They conducted training exercises in mock Iraqi villages in the nearby Mojave Desert, including tactics to counter roadside bombings. For his headquarters staff, General Zilmer had briefings prepared on Iraqi culture, geography and politics.

For now, General Zilmer discounts fears that simmering sectarian strife in Anbar could boil into civil war.

"The challenge," he said, "will be to demonstrate to them that there's some benefit to being a single people, to being an Iraqi people."

Hezbollah Boasts about Marine Killings!

Must-See Hezbollah TV: Part III
The MEMRI Report

By STEVEN STALINSKY
January 18, 2006

The 1983 attack on American Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 was Hezbollah's coming-out party. To this day, the attack is lauded on its TV channel Al-Manar. A Hezbollah "poet," Atef Moussa, appeared on May 22, 2005, and said,"Who says we are afraid of war? ... Who can compare to the men of Hezbollah? ... These enemies [the American military] turned out to be as light as cardboard. Bush knows it. Beirut remains dangerous for the Marines. Our proof is here, they left in shame. Our people sail the seas of martyrdom."

In an anti-American speech mocking the American military on March 8, 2005, Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Nasrallah, also referred to the attack: "I address the following to America ... to President Bush ... to Condoleezza Rice ... and to American-Lebanese field commander Satterfield ... Lebanon will not ... throw its heart to your soldiers' dogs so they will eat it ... You can make yourself heard by the commander of the American forces in the region, who is of Lebanese origin, John Abizaid ... Are you Lebanese afraid of the American naval fleets? These naval fleets have come in the past, and were defeated, and if they come again, they will be defeated again..."


As reported in the NY Sun direct quotes from Hezbollah TV

TWO TERRIORIST GROUPS CANNOT FIT INTO ONE COUNTRY

al-Qaeda Branching into Lebanon, Hezbollah Unimpressed
'The enemy of my enemy is cramping my style'
By Steve Schippert

Following al-Qaeda in Iraq’s recent claim of responsibility for late-December rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon, it appears that Lebanese security is taking steps with some haste to counter al-Qaeda’s ability to establish a foothold in Lebanon. It was reported Friday that Lebanese authorities had arrested 13 Al-Qaeda suspects in a sweep that netted them in different parts of the country. They were charged by a Lebanese military court with “establishing a gang to carry out terrorist acts, forging official and private documents and possessing unlicensed arms.”

Among the thirteen al-Qaeda suspects were seven Syrians, three Lebanese, a Saudi Arabian, a Jordanian and a Palestinian. Their statements under custody have been contradictory, as they appear to shift from claiming al-Qaeda membership to Jund al-Islam (the group claiming responsibility for the assassination of Rafik Hariri and twenty others in a February 2005 Beirut bombing) and vice versa. Their particular membership in one or the other group, at least in principle, should mean little, as neither of the groups issue membership badges, but rather are bonded by a shared ideology without a physical brand.

As al-Qaeda (including Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq) has increasingly indicated an intent to directly attack Israel, the leadership has chosen to establish a foothold in Lebanon and Gaza. Beirut’s Daily Star reported of an alleged al-Qaeda statement that warned the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon that they would face attacks from al-Qaeda if they did not conform to their ideology.

“We have been trying hard to enter the Sabra and Shatila camp, which is considered the symbol of Palestinian camps in Lebanon … Since this camp needs reform, you have to take these warnings seriously, because today we warn but tomorrow we will liquidate dozens of people…Our suicide bombings will target all the United Nations buildings inside and outside the camp, as well as agents such as [Palestinian officials] Abbas Zaki and Khaled Aref and several foreign embassies.”

The Palestinian residents of the camps seem to be summarily unimpressed with al-Qaeda’s apparent attempt to take control of reforming the camps in order to instill a Taliban-like rule. Said one Palestinian resident, “Osama bin Laden should go and fight the Zionists before coming here to reform the camps. We don’t live in an extremist Islamic country; Shatila is the camp of the martyrs, the camp of the struggle.” Regarding the direct threat to the UN buildings in the camps (clinics and schools), the man retorted, “Do they want to destroy them too?”

Hezbollah Shias also views the encroachment of Sunni al-Qaeda in Lebanon with wary eyes, quite happy to have another hand in attacking Israel, but quite displeased with the rise of militant Sunni Islam, especially on their own turf.

Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, warned al-Qaeda about setting up shop in Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon. Qassem said, “We don’t know how many [al-Qaeda are in Lebanon] and we don’t know their plans or if they intend to do operations here. It’s important to caution everyone not to make Lebanon an arena for settling scores. It will be a dangerous development if that happens.”

Meanwhile, Iraq’s Moqtada Sadr called for a settling of differences between Shi’ite and Sunni terrorist groups in an interview on Saudi Arabia’s al-Arabiya channel. He said, “The Islamic world is being subjected to a strong Western aggression that requires us to join forces…I am with any movement that is dedicated to the principles of Islam and justice and rejects oppression whether it is Hizbullah or Hamas.” Whether or not he would cede control of any territory he may hold dominance over to achieve that, as Hezbollah refuses to do, he did not say.

It is worthy of note the increasing level of Red-on-Red infighting throughout the region: In Iraq, in the West Bank and Gaza, and now, potentially, in Lebanon. As it continues to develop, al-Qaeda’s recent moves to diversify from Iraq and seek new targets appears to include direct moves on Israel, which means establishing and recruiting from areas that are already controlled by other groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (among others) in the Palestinian Territories. Many also expect that the first move by Iran in any hot conflict with the West will be to export terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East and enflame the entire region.

With all of them, the convergence point is Israel. But as diverse Sunni and Shi’ite groups of varying flavors of jihad begin to increasingly share the same battlespace, rather than the widely expected cooperation under the unifying Sun Tzu precept of ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, it is more likely that what will be quite commonly heard and seen is ‘The enemy of my enemy is cramping my style.’ Sheikh Naim Qassem revealed as much, tipping Hezbollah’s hand in advance.

An Old Enemy Resurfaces again in Lebanon

Wallid Jumblatt was active during the Beirut War, causing deaths , and injuries to the US Marines stationed in Beirut. Mr. Jumblatt, and his Druze faction, jump on whatever side appears to be winning. Mr. Jumblatt sided with the Syrians during the Marines time in Beirut, and actively fought against the United States. Now Mr. Jumblatt, seeing that the tide is turning, is making overtures towards the U.S. No thanks Mr. Jumblatt, you, and your Hezbollah cousins , will always be remembered as enemies of the United States Marines.

"No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy".







Jumblat Calls on America to Do in Syria What it Did in Iraq
CGGL Staff
Local Media
01/05/2006

Beirut, January 5: A syndicated columnist reported in an opinion piece published today in the Beirut Daily Star and partly carried in Arabic by other Beirut daily newspapers that Walid Jumblatt told him in a telephone interview, when asked what he wanted from America: "You came to Iraq & you can do the same thing in Syria."

The piece was written by David Ignatius, who opened up by referring to gangster movies. He spoke first of the television interview by former Syrian VP Abdel Halim Khaddam, whom he called an old mafia don and a turncoat, then turned his attention to Jumblatt.

To understand the latest turns of the screw in Syria and Lebanon, Ignatius wrote,  I spoke by telephone yesterday with Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Druze community and something of a warlord himself.

Ignatius added: The Druze leader is holed up in his ancestral fortress of Moukhtara, in the Chouf Mountains. Like other Lebanese I spoke with this week, he fears a deadly new attack by the Syrians that would attempt to trigger sectarian conflict in Lebanon -- and take the heat off Damascus. Jumblatt argues that the only stable outcome will be regime change in Syria -- a "Milosevic solution" that will bring Assad to justice through the United Nations.

What makes the Syria-Lebanon situation especially volatile, Jumblatt explained to Ignatius, is that it is linked to the radical new Iranian regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Jumblatt argued that Iran is using its alliance with Assad and Hezbollah in its larger strategic battles against Israel and the United States. "It's as if we are defending Iranian nuclear facilities from the border of Lebanon," he said.

Jumblatt said: "If Bush considers Lebanon one of his major achievements, now is the time to protect Lebanon," He told Ignatius: What can the United States do, realistically, to keep the Syria-Lebanon situation from exploding? The answer partly is to stick with the U.N. investigation that is slowly wrenching out the truth about Hariri's murder. The challenge for the United States, said Jumblat, is to help Lebanon become strong enough to resist Syrian hegemony. A potential breakthrough would be a U.S.-brokered agreement for Israeli withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms area along the Lebanon border, under a U.N. agreement that the territory belongs to Lebanon. That would give the struggling Lebanese government a symbolic victory -- and would undercut Hezbollah's rationale for maintaining its militia. That issue should be at the top of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's in-box as she starts the new year -- perhaps along with an old tape of "The Godfather."

Germany Frees Killer!!!!

Germany Frees Terrorist: Vielen Danken, Angela!
Dr. Joseph Hitti - 12/26/2005
That the German government has decided to release the Hezbollah terrorist Mohammad Ali Hamadi, one of two hijackers of TWA flight 847 who beat, shot to death, and dumped the body of unarmed, off-duty U.S. Navy serviceman Robert Dean Stethem in the summer of 1985 in Beirut, comes as no surprise. We have grown accustomed to European governments kissing the hands of criminals and appeasing them to no end, supposedly to confront violence with love, barbarity with civility, but really to appease, to trade one criminal for a hostage, and thus always cower in the face of terrorism.

What is unacceptable is for the new German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to secretly take this action without in the least informing the US government, which has sought to extradite Hamadi to the US to stand trial for the murder of serviceman Stethem. The German government also trashed its own justice system by releasing Hamadi after he served only 17 years of a life sentence without possibility of parole. This smacks of the lowliest form of international diplomacy and is a deplorable retreat in the fight against terrorism.

We need only remember that Hezbollah was for the most of the past two decades an Iranian terrorist organization operating mainly from South Lebanon, but with tentacles in Africa where it raised money in the diamond trade, in Latin America where it carried out such terrorist acts as the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and elsewhere. Now we learn that the quid pro quo of releasing the German hostage in Baghdad at the same time as Hamadi was let go in Germany is evidence that Hezbollah also has tentacles in the insurgency movement in Iraq. Not to mention the 1980s spate of bombings in Beirut against the US Embassy (twice), the French Embassy, the US Marines barracks, the French paratroopers compound, and the notorious kidnappings, murders, and occasional barterings – thanks to the good offices of the Syrian occupation – of Western hostages who were held in sub-humane conditions for years and years. Yes, we also hear and read that Hezbollah is eager to turn that “page” of its history and wants to become a respected political party with representatives in the Lebanese Parliament and ministers in the Lebanese government. But we thought that there are no statutes of limitations for crimes of this magnitude. Where is the conscience of the German people and the German government? Has the German nation sunk so low as to allow a murderer to go free only as in spite to George Bush’s policies? Is this where German diplomacy has ended? In fear of threats against Detlev Mehlis, the German investigator whose reports blamed Syria – whose only remaining ally in Lebanon today is Hezbollah – for the Hariri assassination?

We thought that, now that Lebanon is free of the Israeli and Syrian occupations, peace will return to this tormented country. Yet, of all Syria’s former allies in Lebanon – Jumblatt, Hariri himself, and all the other profiteers and high-flying pirates during the Syrian occupation – only Hezbollah and its sister organization Amal (who incidentally “negotiated” in 1985 the end of the TWA flight hijack) remain steadfast in their defense of Syria. In fact, the current Lebanese government is fractured today because the Hezbollah ministers refused last week to endorse the continuation of the UN investigations into the string of car bombings that have racked Lebanon and killed a number of prominent politicians and journalists. Hezbollah remains the only organization in Lebanon to reject progress towards a peaceful resolution of Lebanon’s border disputes between its two former occupiers, Israel and Syria. Those disputes center mainly on the Shebaa Farms, an outpost of a barren hill at the junction of the borders between the three countries. Belonging to Lebanon originally, the Shebaa Farms were annexed by Syria in the 1950s, back when Syria did not even recognize Lebanon’s right to exist as a sovereign and independent nation. Lebanon let it go, because it had no back to fight the Syrians over a barren hill. Then Israel conquered the Golan Heights, and with them the Shebaa Farms. Neither Syria nor Lebanon made any move to contest the status quo from 1956 to 1967 when the Farms turned from Syrian to Israeli hands, then again from 1967 to 2000 when Israel withdrew behind the 1949 Armistice Line – the official border between Lebanon and Israel. But suddenly, in 2000, having now lost the justification of its own occupation of Lebanon, Syria “remembered” that it pilfered the Shebaa Farms from Lebanon and decided to return them, thus implying that the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon was not complete.

So the endless limbo in which Lebanon finds itself today is still the making of a recalcitrant, disgruntled, foreign-paid Hezbollah who has no cards left to play: Terrorism has become too dangerous today; kidnapping foreign hostages isn’t cool either; even shelling northern Israeli villages does not pay any more. As a result, the importance, respectability and notoriety that Hezbollah garnered over decades of mayhem, lies, terror, of setting up a fiefdom within the Lebanese state and denying the Lebanese government access to the south of the country, of kidnapping ordinary Lebanese citizens and handing them to Syrian Intelligence where they continue to rot in jail to this day…all the exploits and feats on Hezbollah’s resume have become uncovered, and the emperor today has no clothes. There is nothing left for Lebanon to do to recover and begin the long road of rehabilitation and rebuilding but somehow get rid of the cancer and the nightmare that is Hezbollah. With its autonomous islands of training camps and military zones to which the Lebanese government has no access, Hezbollah continues to provide cover for Syrian operatives to proceed apace with their bombings of anti-Syrian politicians and journalists. Hezbollah has become the Trojan horse for the Syrian occupation of Lebanon to continue under a different guise.

Except that the “New European” German government of Angela Merkel has decided to give Hezbollah a fig leaf, to provide it with a lifeline for its waning respectability and a shot in the arm…Why? Out of fear. Out of the pragmatism of dealing and negotiating with terrorists that has shown time and again that it is a failed policy. Out of spite of George Bush. In protest over the American occupation of Iraq. All the reasons that once can conjure up at moments of anger such as this one cannot justify the abysmal moral delinquency of releasing the terrorist Hamadi and dispatching him straight to Beirut where Hezbollah will claim victory, where it will be vindicated yet again that terror pays and that Western nations are paper dolls. Remember that Arafat played the same cards and won. He bombed Western interests and burned Lebanon to the ground during the 1970s and 1980s, and was rewarded with Madrid and Oslo in the 1990s, and a Nobel Prize to boot! I imagine Abu-Musab Al-Zarqawi discussing this latest example of German diplomacy with his henchmen as a vindication of their strategy. Some people never learn. Vielen Danken, Angela!

A Christmas Story

CHRISTMAS IN BEIRUT
Journal Entries from the Battlefield

BY Brian G. Lukas

Editor’s note: The name Beirut became a one-word symbol for the war torn Middle East of the late 1970s. Civil war had erupted in Lebanon in 1975, the result of clashes between Christian and Muslim groups, including members of the Druse religious sect and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and had escalated over several years. In 1982, Israeli troops invaded Lebanon; the two countries had already fought south of Beirut. As well, Syria had occupied the country since 1976. In 1983, the United Nations dispatched a multinational peace-keeping force, including U.S. Marines, to Beirut. The Marines left Beirut within a year because of terrorist attacks; on Oct. 23,1983, a truck loaded with explosives crashed into the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit Headquarters compound, killing 241 Marines.

“The Marines in Beirut seem to have gotten lost in the history books . . . they had a difficult mission,” says TV photographer Brian Lukas. He, along with news anchorwoman Angela Hill and editorialist Phil Johnson, all of WWL-TV/Channel 4, traveled to Beirut in late 1983 to cover Louisiana Marines stationed there at Christmastime. Lukas kept journal entries of his tense times there, excerpted here.

Christmas 1983 was just a few weeks away. I would travel to Beirut with Angela Hill and Phil Johnson to film and edit stories on local Marines from the New Orleans area. It was a time before portable satellite uplinks and the Internet, so we carried videotaped messages from the Marines’ families back in the United States. Our ambitious itinerary also included production of a documentary about this war-torn area. But as fighting between the various factions escalated, that idea was abandoned. Armed militias set up roadblocks in various sections of Beirut. The Islamic Jihad decided to add another element to its arsenal of terror and brutality: kidnapping Westerners.

•If there is hell on earth, it is here in Beirut. At the same time that I arrived in Beirut, the French Embassy was hit by a car bomb, with 20 people killed. Later that night, a French military base was blasted by a bomb-laden truck. Ten French soldiers were killed, and 23 were hurt. The explosion lit up the whole area. Terror – it is sheer terror. I can see it on the faces of the residents who walk cautiously on the streets. Here in Beirut, teenagers carry assault rifles, mainly M-16s. On the streets, women cradle their children tightly in their arms, begging any Westerners for help. The city smells like death. There is a stench of rotting corpses and smoldering trash strewn about from buildings destroyed by the fighting in the streets. To realize the inhumanity of war, you have to look deep in the faces of the civilian population. Then, if you dare, look deep into their eyes. There you will find the horror of war absorbed deep within the soul. I look into many eyes here in Beirut.

•In the eyes of the young Marines, I can see the uneasy and uncomfortable situation they are in. The U.S. Marines’ position at the Beirut International Airport keeps them under daily sniper and artillery attack. I remember when I was in Washington, D.C., for a White House press function when many of these same Marines from the 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit invaded Grenada, a tiny island in the Caribbean. Now I am here in hell with them. The Marines, politically, are not invaders but are so-called “welcome guests,” strategically placed in Lebanon on a peace-keeping mission with the French and Italians as part of a multinational force. Our Marine contact is Capt. Dennis Brooks, the Marine public-information officer on the base, always “spring-loaded to say yes.” He remarked that the various militias near the Marine positions use their tanks like small arms fire: They quickly maneuver the tanks in firing position, release a shell and maneuver back quickly, then repeat the operation. Maximum destruction, I thought to myself. Total destruction was evident when we passed the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps – hundreds, perhaps thousands of Palestinians were killed here: men, women, and children. Our driver remarked, solemnly, that they were executed. The refugee camps are leveled, nothing remains, and where the victims of this civil war sought relief from the terror of war, only the bare reddish-brown earth remains visible from the nearby dusty road. Their graves are not even marked. It is as if they were never born.

•At night there is no time to dream; the evenings are fitful with the sounds of rifle fire. My bed is level with the window. Crazy, I thought, there are snipers on the roofs – one shot through the window and that’s it. I tried to sleep on the floor, but there is no sleep at night. The sounds of sniper fire and the thud of muffled mortar and artillery rounds are trying to find any “peace-keeper’s” position near the Avenue de Paris, the long, winding road facing the Mediterranean Sea.

•At one time Beirut played the Paris of the Middle East; now it plays a sorrowful tune of despair. My hotel in Beirut is owned by the Nassai family, Palestinian owners of the Commodore Hotel. The Commodore Hotel is on the Muslim side of Beirut. On the Christian side, the owner of the Alexandre failed to pay protection money to the thugs and every conceivable terrorist seeking consideration for the hotel’s existence. As a result, somebody exploded a huge car bomb in its parking lot, destroying the hotel. I couldn’t help but notice the line of cars ringing the Commodore Hotel here in Muslim West Beirut. Sometimes the cars were two or three deep. I quickly learned that these vehicles were buffers to prevent any car-bomb attacks on the Commodore. The ring of vehicles and payoffs couldn’t stop the instruments of distant destruction. My hotel room in the Commodore is on the fourth floor, room 405. I could not enter the room without noticing the shift in the door and several large cracks running down the length of the wall. A little later that day, I learned that room 405, my room, had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade just two weeks earlier.

•There is no sanctuary in this city. It’s a sad place and a sad time. Beirut is a city defined by fear, a city bisected by the green line – Christians in the East, Muslims in the West. This is a noisy, depressing, dangerous and disconcerting place to work. I tried not to sleep last night. It’s been several nights since I’ve had any sleep. The last thing I wanted was to be asleep when a car bomb went off and then to be buried under the rubble of concrete and steel from the top five floors. I often fall asleep at the dinner table. Veteran journalists from Europe and the U.S. networks in the hotel remark that this is one of the scariest wars they’ve covered. There is no “commuting” to this war; death and destruction are all around us.

Blackened pockmarks of war are carved into the façade of every building. The city is gravely wounded. And now a new threat is employed by the terrorists: They are kidnapping journalists and teachers at the American University in Beirut. A note was posted on the front bulletin board as we left the hotel. It was a warning from the Islamic Jihad. In very simple words, the note said that all Westerners must leave Beirut or “we will make the ground under your feet move.” It was a direct threat to destroy the hotel where the Western press reported the war. This is the same group that claimed responsibility for bombing the U.S. Marine base here in Beirut, and the U.S. embassies in Beirut and Kuwait.

•The war is escalating now. (A few months later, the Commodore Hotel would be completely destroyed by shelling and car bombs.) The American Embassy was heavily damaged by another car-bomb attack. Forty people were injured, and eight were killed in the suicide attack. The front of the embassy building, facing the seashore, is covered in what appears to be a seven-story green shroud. It hides the embassy’s exposed interior from probing eyes or people that pass through the zigzagged row of 55-gallon metal drums filled with dirt. The metal drums are defenses against another suicide attack. Marines are positioned throughout the building. Another contingent of Marines is stationed just across the street from the embassy. An American flag blew quietly in the wind next to a Marine guard watching the pedestrian movement in front of the embassy. The image of the American flag and the Marine standing with the sun setting on the Mediterranean Sea gave the drab gray seashore kind of a splendid appearance. In a melancholy way I felt a strong connection with home. The obvious presence of the American flag waving in the warm breeze made me feel very thankful that I live in and would return to the United States shortly. And if there is ever an image of the Marines in Beirut that will be forever stamped on my mind, it is that one single Marine and the American flag rippling in the wind next to him.

•On the corniche, in front of the American Embassy, the Marines are routinely targeted by snipers. It becomes very nerve-racking that at any time death may come by a sniper. As I filmed the area I noticed a small bunker with several Marines standing guard. One of them was Cpl. Brad Pellegrin from Slidell. It is the Christmas season, and he is making the best of a very bad situation by lining his bunker with makeshift ornaments. I forgot that we were nearing Christmas.

We were carrying messages from Cpl. Pellegrin’s family to give to him. It was a videotaped message to him from his wife, mother and child. As we showed the message to him I noticed an interesting effect on the other Marines . . . they gathered closer together to hear the family’s greeting to Brad. Closer the Marines came when Brad’s son said, “Daddy, I love you and miss you.” We played the videotape again and again. That’s when I realized that Brad’s family was now family to all the Marines that gathered to watch his videotape in front of the destroyed American Embassy. His family was their family; his son was their son or daughter. The Marines had a Christmas family now . . . and it was amazing to witness a little bit of loneliness disappear as they looked on. Christmas is family . . . even in Beirut.

•The makeshift Christmas ornaments lining the bunkers in front of the destroyed U.S. embassy were a welcome relief. It was a simple reminder of the hope that peace existed. Off in the distance, on the Mediterranean Sea, the sunset cast a shadow on the battleship New Jersey. The broad, flickering light from her was the firepower from her massive guns unleashed on the Druse militias, who rocketed the Marine base at the International Airport on Beirut’s southern edge. We would find out that a Marine was severely wounded; later he died.

•Overnight, hooded Shiite Muslims and their Druse allies drove Lebanese army units from most of their checkpoints on the Muslim West Beirut commercial thoroughfares and residential neighborhoods. I woke up to a very loud mechanical clanking just outside my hotel. The sounds of Lebanese military tanks rolling pass the hotel window quickly eliminated the little rest I hoped to get.

•Reports indicate at least 90 people killed last night and more than 300 wounded in the fighting; in just two days more than 160 people were killed, mostly civilians caught in the cross-fire. It’s a sickness – hatred is a cancer destroying everything here.

•At the Marine base this morning I could see the visible impact of the shelling by the U.S. 6th Fleet on the mountain range surrounding the base. Huge billows of smoke rose as the shells hit their targets. Cpls. Herbert McKnight and Greg Nelson, both from the New Orleans area, said the Marine base was shelled by rockets overnight. Herbert was stationed in a sandbag bunker on the rooftop of the base. This bunker, accessible only by a ladder, is the highest point on the Marine base. It also appears to be a very vulnerable position, an obvious target for a sniper. Cpl. Nelson, from Slidell, manned a .50-caliber machine gun overlooking the Kalda mountain range near the rear of the base. Cpl. Brian Campbell, only 19 years old and from Lafayette, was quickly unloading supplies from a helicopter. The copters didn’t stay long . . . they couldn’t – mortars usually found their targets. Brian, Greg and Herbert, these young Marines, were reminders that wars are fought by the very young, often placed in horrific circumstances and forced to grow up quickly. Several times I asked them to move their helmet up so I could see their eyes while filming. “Son, can you move your helmet up just a little?” I said. I would later say, “Marine, would you push your helmet back just a little?” Eighteen, 19 years old . . . here in hell, when others of their age are probably wrapping Christmas presents and acting goofy back home.

But on the Marine base at the Beirut International Airport, the one focal point no one can pass without some reflection of what happened months earlier is the huge crater. That crater once housed the Marines in a four story building. Every time I moved past it, I thought of the young men like Greg, Brian and Herbert, and then I said a small prayer for the families of the 241 Marines that died here.

•The Marine base alarm is sounding. The Druse militias are firing mortars now. In a few seconds, we must make the decision to stay on the Marine base during the shelling and miss our satellite deadline or leave and walk into the chaos and madness of the streets. We decide to leave. A condition-1 alert has been initiated . . . there are incoming mortar rounds in the distance, and the front gate will be locked shortly. The Marine base is the target.

We had to leave quickly. But as I left the Marine base I noticed a small memorial in front of the former Marine barracks. Despite the imminent danger, I couldn’t help but stop, notice and film the small bouquet of light blue flowers ringed around a Marine-issued camouflage hat. Above the flowers was a small, white sign facing east, toward the city of Beirut. The small sign simply described the Marines’ mission in Beirut: To the “24th MAU, they came in peace.”

It’s a dangerous world out there. •
December 2001 - Vol. 36 - Issue 3 - Page 36 - #363

Gold Star Mom, Beirut Veterans of America Mom

A group born of the grief of war weathers a tempest
Sunday, December 18, 2005
BY TOM FEENEY
Star-Ledger Staff



The American Gold Star Mothers is a wreath-laying, hospital-visiting group of mostly elderly women who have lost a son or daughter at war. At meetings, its members rise to pledge allegiance to the flag, pray for peace and freedom, and ask God to help them bear "the cross of sorrow."

Through a history that dates to the years after World War I, the group has been scrupulously apolitical.

So when Judith C. Young of Moorestown began her term this year as the group's national president, she didn't expect the 20,000 hateful e-mails or the nasty phone messages.

She didn't think her organization would become a piñata for veterans groups, politicians and editorial writers. And she never imagined fretting over whether a group of gold star moms in their 70s and 80s would be heckled during a candlelight ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

"We've never had this much controversy," Young said last week as she sat in an arm chair in her Burlington County home and looked back at the first half of her term. "I'm the first president who's ever had to deal with it. Aren't I lucky?"

Two controversies erupted around her this year.

The first was of the group's own doing. A Filipino woman from New York was deemed ineligible for membership after her son was killed in Iraq because she did not meet the group's American citizenship requirement.

Newspapers and veterans groups denounced the Gold Star Mothers. The criticism was so heated, moms who attended a ceremony at the Vietnam Memorial were escorted by a veterans group to shield them from potential hecklers.

The second was a simple matter of mistaken identity.

Cindy Sheehan is the California woman who camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch this summer in an unsuccessful effort to force him to discuss the war that took her son's life.

Sheehan's anti-war group is called "Gold Star Families for Peace" -- close enough to "American Gold Star Mothers" to confuse just about everyone.

Opponents of the war began calling Gold Star Mothers' Washington headquarters asking for Sheehan, Young said. The supporters called to angrily denounce the mothers on the mistaken belief they had become anti-war activists.

"I know we have some members who are against the war and who support Cindy Sheehan," Young said. "But we're a nonprofit, completely nonpolitical group. It didn't matter. We had all these people calling our office to tell us we were slime balls and dirt bags. It was crazy."


IN THE BEGINNING
The Gold Star has been a symbol of loss since World War I. That's when families first hung service banners in their windows with blue stars for each member serving in the armed forces. If a family member was killed in action, the blue star was covered with a gold one.

In 1928, after much planning, 25 women who lost sons in World War I formed a group to support each other and organize volunteer work at veterans hospitals. They took the name American Gold Star Mothers, Inc.

Young paid the terrible price for admission in 1983, when her son, Jeff, 22, was one of 241 Americans killed in an attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut. She keeps her son's picture on the wall of her dining room and a piece of stone from the barracks under a glass coffee table in her living room. She honors his memory by pouring her time and talents into the American Gold Star Mothers.

She became president of the group in June and will remain president until next July's national convention in Mount Laurel.

The controversies that swamped the Gold Star Mothers at the beginning of Young's term have cooled.

Young supported a successful effort at the convention in June to change the charter so a woman whose son or daughter dies fighting for the U.S. armed forces need not be a citizen to join the Gold Star Mothers. Two noncitizens, but not the Filipino mother, have joined so far.

The angry phone calls and e- mails have stopped, Young said.

"When it got to be a big stink, I thought, 'Well, fixing this is easy as apple pie -- let's just change the bylaws,'" said Georgianna Carter- Krell of Miami, a member of the board of directors and mother of a soldier killed in Vietnam. "We had our pride hurt and some hard feelings about the change, but I think we came out of it OK."

The other problem was not as easily solved. Sheehan certainly has a right to call herself a gold star mother, Carter-Krell said, so long as she doesn't use the name of the American Gold Star Mothers.

Young said the group has done what it can to distance itself from Sheehan. They have issued press releases and posted a statement on their Web site disavowing any association with Gold Star Families for Peace.


Young hopes she now can focus on the problems she expected to confront as president -- dwindling membership chief among them.

The American Gold Star Mothers had as many as 22,000 members in the years after World War II and the Korean War. Young and her husband, Jack, have a photograph of a Gold Star Mothers gathering at a Camden County banquet hall during that era.

There were dozens of more mothers at that local gathering than at national conventions now, she said.

Membership today stands at about 1,000.

The group includes younger mothers who suffered their losses in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia and Bosnia. But the relative peace after Vietnam caused membership to decline.

Most members are mothers of men and women who died in Vietnam. They are in their late 70s or older. Young, 65, is the first president whose son or daughter was killed after Vietnam.

The group has seen modest increases in membership recently as mothers of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq join.

Recruiting new members is touchy.

Young said she checks the Department of Defense Web site every day for news about casualties from New Jersey. When she finds one, she sends the parents a condolence card. She makes no effort to recruit the mother, but she does tuck a business card inside the envelope. That way, the mother will know how to contact her if she's interested.

"It's not a sad thing when we get together, not like a bereavement group," said Joan Curtin, of Howell, who received a card from Young after her son, Michael, became the first New Jerseyan to die in the war in Iraq, in March 2003. "I just like to go to be part of the kinship of women who know what I've gone through."

Curtin is among a few mothers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to join in New Jersey so far. Young thinks that will change with time.

"I've seen people handle the death of a child in different ways," she said. "Some want to plunge right in, but others are so consumed by grief they're not ready to go out and visit the local veterans hospital. We just want them to know that this group is here when they are ready."

Tom Feeney may be reached at (732) 761-8436 or tfeeney@starledger.com.

LEBANON: NO MOURNING FOR TUENI IN BEIRUT'S HEZBOLLAH AREAS








Beirut, 14 Dec. (AKI) - Nineteen-year-old Samer Qays, on Wednesday refused to join the thousands who on turned out to pay their last respects to murdered anti-Syrian politician Gibran Tueni. While Beirut's Christian districts came to a standstill for the funeral procession, life in the city's eastern, mostly Hezbollah dominated areas, like Qays's neighbourhood Haret Hreik, went on as usual. "Joining the procession today means believing the lies fabricated by the Israelis and the Americans," said Qays.

"Our martyrs are not those who work for the Americans," he said, pointing to the photographs of Hezbollah fighters killed in clashes with the Israeli army

"Syria has nothing to do with the attack against that journalist (Tueni), it is Israel that killed him."

Sharing this view is Abu Abbas, 67, a Shiite Muslim jeweller, whose shop is situated in the main street of Ghbeiri, a district near to Haret Hreik.

"Israel is behind all this, there is no doubt on that," says Abu Abbas, adding that it is the "Israelis who want to control Lebanon," and not the Syrians.

But another Ghbeir resident, Wassim al-Utr, 35, disagrees. "I think it was the Syrians [who killed Tueni]. Syria will not leave the country (Lebanon) without leaving it in flames".

Falafel vendor, Yusuf Kradiye, 31, a Sunni Muslim admits he does not know for certain who was behind the bomb attack that killed Tueni on Monday. "There are many who could profit from the attack. Maybe the Syrians, but also others. After all something seems wrong. It would be stupid for Syria to kill like this and leave its signature all over the place."

Some people chose to give more practical and less political reasons for not turning out with those laying Tueni to rest.

"How can I close my shop when we have been in an economic crisis for months? I work 14 hours a day and it's still not enough," said Yusuf Kradiyye.

Tueni was killed together with his driver and bystander when a bomb exploded in a Christian suburb of Beirut on Monday, the third political murder since former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in February.

The 48-year-old Tueni, was known for his scathing criticism of Syria's meddling in Lebanese politics, which he frequently denounced from the editorial pages of his an-Nahar newspaper, Lebanon's leading daily. Tueni recently moved to Paris after revealing that he had received death threats and believed he was on a hit-list. He was back in Beirut this week for what was meant to be a short visit.

Many Lebanese politicians have blamed Syria for Tueni's murder, but Damascus has denied any involvement.