Beirut Vets inspiration for Haditha Colonel

At Haditha Hearing, Dueling Views of a Battalion Commander

By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

Published: June 8, 2007

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., June 7 — Through three combat deployments in Iraq, a Bronze Star and numerous combat ribbons, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani’s Marine Corps career has been defined, it seems, by terrorist bombs.

Lenny Ignelzi/Associated Press

The Marines are deciding whether Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani should undergo a court-martial.

In October 1983, news of the attack by Muslim extremists on a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 service members compelled Colonel Chessani, then a teenager from Rangely, Colo., to embrace Christianity and, later, to follow two brothers into the service. In November 2005, Colonel Chessani was a battalion commander in Haditha, Iraq, when a roadside bomb planted by Sunni Arab insurgents killed one of his marines and wounded two others.

Infantrymen under his command, seeking to engage the enemy, instead killed 24 civilians. Last year, the Marine Corps charged Colonel Chessani, 43, and three other officers with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the episode properly and relieved him of his command.

In a military hearing into whether he should face a formal court-martial, witnesses and military documents have helped paint two contradictory portraits of Colonel Chessani, the highest-ranking Marine officer charged since the Iraq war began more than four years ago.

On one side, battalion officers and enlisted men testifying under oath described Colonel Chessani, who at the time of the Haditha killings was on his third combat tour in Iraq, as a physically courageous leader whose integrity was beyond question.

“Lieutenant Colonel Chessani is by far the strongest moral leader I’ve ever worked with,” Sgt. Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion’s senior noncommissioned officer, testified last week. Maj. Samuel H. Carrasco, the Third Battalion’s operations officer, said Colonel Chessani’s “truthfulness is beyond reproach.” On Tuesday, Colonel Chessani’s adjutant, First Lt. Mark E. Towers, called him “a godly man” who spent a half-hour every morning in Iraq quietly reading the Bible in his quarters.

On the other side, Marine prosecutors have used testimony from Colonel Chessani’s subordinate and superior officers to portray him as a touchy and incurious field commander who, instead of investigating, sent deceptive reports about the Haditha killings up the chain of command.

Colonel Chessani never asked for a detailed briefing about how and why the marines killed 24 civilians, according to testimony, and did not inspect the scene of the killings, despite a report to superiors that he had.

Three months later, responding to questions about the civilian deaths from a Time magazine reporter, Colonel Chessani sent an e-mail message to his regimental commander that inaccurately stated that several AK-47s were found in a home where marines had killed several women and children, military documents show.

Major Carrasco, under questioning from prosecutors, also described Colonel Chessani as angrily shouting, “My men are not murderers!” after Major Carrasco and another battalion officer advised him, on Jan. 29, 2006, to open an inquiry into the killings.

Amid all the courtroom characterizations of him during the past week, Colonel Chessani, slightly built and with thinning gray hair, sat stone-faced at the defense table in his desert fatigues, jotting notes but rarely talking even to his lawyers.

By all accounts, including his own sworn statements to military investigators examining his response to the civilian killings, Colonel Chessani anguished over the casualties his marines suffered that day in Haditha — the most violent and chaotic day in the battalion’s combat tour.

From a command post about seven miles from Haditha, he viewed insurgent movements via video from an aerial drone and directed several attacks and counterattacks by marines against insurgents in residential areas around the city, according to testimony this week. Colonel Chessani visited one battle site later that day, but did not inspect the homes where 19 of the 24 civilians were killed by grenades and rifle fire.

In a sworn statement to military investigators in March 2006, Colonel Chessani said he never suspected that the killings were improper under the American laws of war, because they followed an attack by insurgents that, he believed, was intended to provoke lethal return fire by marines in a residential area.

“I believe the enemy picked the ground where he wanted to attack us,” Colonel Chessani said in a statement dated March 20, which has not been officially released. “They were — they had set this up so that there would be collateral damage.”

He later added, “Enemy had picked the place, he had picked the time and the location for a reason. I believed he made a definite choice in where it was and thought that, you know, he wanted to make us look bad.”

Marine prosecutors have suggested that Colonel Chessani was, in fact, so intent on not letting insurgents use the civilian deaths against the marines that he ignored evidence that his troops, under sporadic small-arms fire, had violated rules of engagement in killing civilians in their homes.

In a statement he gave on March 26, 2006, to an investigator from Naval Criminal Investigative Service from the base in Asad, Iraq, Colonel Chessani admitted, in stoical, confessional language, that he could have trained his marines better.

“Looking back, I could have done a better job preparing the marines for this deployment as it relates to R.O.E. training,” his statement said, using the abbreviation for rules of engagement. That might have included using live-fire training that required infantrymen to discern enemy targets from civilians.

Perhaps the most important arbiter of Colonel Chessani’s actions in Haditha is Col. Christopher Conlin, the investigating officer who will recommend whether the charges should proceed to a court-martial. Colonel Conlin, a former Iraq battalion commander presiding over his first military hearing, has made several comments that suggest a critical view of Colonel Chessani.

For example, last week, Colonel Conlin told a witness that many other battalion commanders would have joined their troops in the battle area on the day of combat in November 2005, instead of remaining miles away.

On Tuesday, Colonel Conlin asked Lieutenant Towers, who was a battalion legal adviser in Iraq in 2005, if a report by Colonel Chessani’s staff to the regiment stating that the colonel had examined the scene of the civilian casualties “implied that he went there.”

Lieutenant Towers answered firmly, “Yes, sir.”

Iran, winner, and still , the world champion of terriorism!

* Author: Farid N. Ghadry
* News Date: 2/20/07
* Source: The Washington Times

The Syrian regime is just as complicit as Iran in moving forward hostile activities specifically designed to kill Americans. The evidence is there and widely acknowledged by those in the know, but U.S. political and military leadership have proved hesitant to publicly pursue a tandem case against both Iran and Syria, despite the very prominent linkages that exist between the two in fermenting a wide spectrum of terror operations targeting U.S. forces.

The recent implication of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Qods Force in facilitating the movement of deadly weapons and “super” IEDs specially designed to inflict maximum casualties and penetrate armor speaks to only one half of the real story.
Regional intelligence services and inside sources from within Sunni officer corps opposed to the Assad regime have identified major foreign-fighter training camps in northern Syria and just outside Damascus overseen by Syrian Military Intelligence and run by former Iraqi Ba’athi Generals and senior Saddam Fedayeen commanders.
One major foreign fighter camp exists in the Latakia province in northern Syria, a mountainous area replete with Syrian Military Intelligence facilities and wide swaths of ostensibly government property closed to the public. The Iraqi officer in charge there is one Maj. Gen. Majid Sulayman. Yet another such camp exists 40 kilometers to the west of the border town of Qamishli, which lies in the Kurdish area in the northeastern tip of Syria bordering Iraq and Turkey; it is run by Maj. Gen. Qays al-Adhami. The al-Shaybani camp lies 30 kilometers south of Damascus and also trains foreign fighters. The al-Ikhals camp lies in the heart of the Qaysun mountain range near Damascus.
The al Qaeda connection is not that far removed. Arab papers report that the recent movement of large numbers of al Qaeda in Iraq fighters from Syria into Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon and Beirut are sounding alarm bells that the Syrian security services are preparing to use these heavily armed and visibly well-funded cells to launch attacks against the anti-Syrian democratic government of Lebanon.
These cells are directed by Syrian extremists such as Shakir Absi, Abu Qa Qa, Sheikh Hashem Minqara and Abu-Khalid Imlah, who have historical ties with Syrian intelligence; all were formerly imprisoned in special detention centers run by the Political Security Directorate and then suddenly released by the good graces of Syrian security around the same time in 2005. Absi and Imlah maintain the strongest ties to Syrian intelligence. Absi — a former officer in the Syrian air force — and Imlah — the former head of SMI — supported Fatah al-Intifadah — who later created his own Fatah al-Islam offshoot.
What’s more, European security services are warning that senior al Qaeda leadership figures Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi and Atiyah Abdul-Rahman have tasked al Qaeda assets in the Levant to prepare for major international operations targeting Western Europe and even the U.S homeland. Operational planning is said to be progressing with potential targets already cased out. And these are just the Sunni extremists that the Syrians support.
Mr. Chizari, one of the major IRGC commanders netted by Coalition Forces in December, was present in Damascus a month prior to his capture where he was meeting with senior Syrian leadership and the Lebanese Hezbollah officials in charge of a specially designated “Force 2800″ which focuses on supporting fellow radical Shi’ite groups like the ones responsible for the recent kidnapping and execution of four U.S. soldiers in Karbala.
Mr. Chizari is the deputy for Iraq operations to Brig. Gen. Qasim Soleimani, who in turn heads Qods Force external operations and is strategic guide to IRGC activities in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. The super IEDs, also known as explosive formed penetrators, would never have proliferated so widely in Iraq had it not been for the work of IRGC officials like Gen. Soleimani and Mr. Chizari. Gen. Soleimani’s other right-hand man, Ja’afar al-Ibrahimi, aka Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, also attended these meetings. Muhandis is a senior Badr Brigade operator with close ties to Hezbollah and a central node to the IRGC supply network to anti-U.S. Shi’ite militias in Iraq. Mr. Muhandis was also recently identified by the United States as being behind the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in the early 1980s as well.
The Syrian-Iranian regime terror connection is further underscored by Gen. Soleimani’s participation in high-level discussions on a monthly basis with Syrian leadership, including Assad’s brother and brother-in law.
Imad Mugniyeh, the infamous Hezbollah special operations super-terrorist who still retains a $5 million bounty on his head — placed by the FBI due to his role in planning the Marine barrack and embassy bombings in Beirut in 1982 — is also said to attend these meetings. Sources say that Mugniyeh was designated by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah as the head of Force 2800.
The case is apparent and it goes beyond the circumstantial. The Syrian regime is not merely dabbling in terror sponsorship in an ad hoc manner. This is a concerted and strategic effort designed to inflict the maximum punishment upon the United States and its allies, not just in the region but across the globe.
The full scope and depth of regime involvement in enabling acts of self-sustaining terror might never be known. But enough indicators have subsequently arisen within the shadow of Iran’s own pernicious designs against the United States and struggling democratic allies in the Arab world, to realize that, left unchecked, we might find ourselves suddenly overwhelmed and outflanked by an enemy that, for the sake of expediency, was ignored.

Farid N. Ghadry is president of the Reform Party of Syria.

Fatwa what Fatwa?

Debbie Schlussel has a great article about the Iman who issued the Fatwa against our Brothers in Beirut

His friend, Hezbollah spiritual leader and Specially Designated Global Terrorist, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, is the man who gave the fatwa (religious decree) okaying the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, murdering over 241 Americans.

They Paved Hallowed Ground and put up a Parking Lot.

Frequent Flier
Asleep in Exhaustion, on a Sofa or on Pavement


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By ASHLEIGH BANFIELD
Published: January 16, 2007

I USED to think that being a war correspondent was one of the most difficult jobs in TV journalism. It is, without a doubt, the most dangerous one.
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Ashleigh Banfield on assignment in Tehran. She is now a co-anchor on Court TV News.

Before I flew to Islamabad in September 2001 to cover the American war on terror, the president of NBC News warned me about the perils of covering a conflict. “This is one of the most refused assignments in the history of NBC News,” he said.

As a precaution, and in concert with no fewer than three other executives, we agreed it would be a good idea to tone down my blond highlights to avoid standing out.

But it was the airline I credit for going native. After my luggage disappeared en route, I visited a local store and bought scarves and the traditional dresses called Salwar-kameez. Noting the Pakistani soldiers barricading our hotel, I felt much safer blending in with the locals, and after a while other Western reporters — particularly women — began to do the same thing.

Clothing wasn’t the only thing not to be taken for granted. So was sleep. I have slept in cars on my way to interviews. I’ve fallen asleep underneath the camera, between all-night live shots. I even took a nap on the sofa in the office of former Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres. It was rather embarrassing when he walked in, woke me up and told me it was time to do the interview.

Perhaps the worst, and most uncomfortable, place I have ever fallen asleep was in a parking lot in Beirut. I was working on a story about the United States Marine barracks that were bombed in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war. The authorities had decided to level the barracks and pave over the area, leaving it a nondescript parking lot. There is no reference to the 241 marines who were killed there.

When we arrived, the police barred us from rolling until they had verified our official permission. After a 12-hour flight and a lot of waiting, I was so exhausted I simply laid my head on the concrete and fell asleep. No blanket, no pillow, no pride. I woke up to the police clearing us out. They refused to let us get the pictures.

But last year, I discovered that being a war correspondent is not the most difficult job on earth. Traveling with a 12-pound baby is.

Just recently I was on my way from New York to Fort Myers, Fla., carrying a diaper bag, a stroller, a car seat, a bag filled with toys, bottles and formula and my now 1-year-old son, Fischer. At the checkpoint, an agent ordered me to disassemble the stroller and put it through the X-ray machine. That proved to be virtually impossible while holding my son.

“Could you please hold him for me?” I asked. “I can’t break down the stroller without your help.”

The agent shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

“It’s either that, or we put my son through the X-ray machine.”

Seeing the absurdity of the situation, the agent grinned and held Fischer for me. If he could navigate a baby through airport security, he may have a future as a war correspondent.

By Ashleigh Banfield, as told to Christopher Elliott. E-Mail: elliott@nytimes.com.

Christmas in Beirut Lebanon 1983

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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. •

Copyright New Orleans Publishing Group, L.L.C.

In our Backyard..............

Two charged with providing Hezbollah TV in New York Mon Nov 20, 2:53 PM ET



NEW YORK (AFP) - Two men have been charged with terrorist offences in New York for allegedly providing access to a television station banned in the United States and linked to the Shiite militia group Hezbollah, prosecutors said.


Pakistani-born Javed Iqbal, 42, and US citizen Saleh Elahwal, 53, are accused of conspiring to provide viewers with satellite broadcasts by Al-Manar, an Arabic-language station seen as a mouthpiece for the Lebanese group.

They face a sentence of up to 110 years in jail if convicted on the charges of providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organisation.

According to prosecutors, Iqbal and Elahwal ran a satellite television business and allegedly offered to provide Al-Manar to an undercover agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
The station, which was listed as a terrorist entity by US authorities in March, allegedly paid thousands of dollars to Iqbal's firm in return.

Iqbal was arrested on related charges in August.

Court documents released at the time said that Iqbal was interviewed at New York's Kennedy airport in May on returning from a trip to Lebanon.

An FBI agent entered his satellite television store some two weeks later, when Iqbal was alleged to have offered broadcasts of the banned channel.

The indictment further alleges that the two shipped satellite receivers to Al-Manar.

"Javed Iqbal and Saleh Elahwal engaged in transactions that support the terrorist organisations Hezbollah and Al-Manar, and did so for financial profit," US attorney Michael Garcia said in a statement.

"As terrorist organisations become more sophisticated, it is critical that we respond using all the enforcement tools the law provides."

Terror: Iran's Chief Export

(Thanks to Threats Watch)

From Somalia and al-Qaeda to Hamas and American Hizballah Cells
By Steve Schippert

One might ask: “Why should the average American bother reading yet another lengthy report on the threat posed by Iran?” Or, more to the point: “Why should I care? Why should I be concerned? Iran is in the Middle East and seems bent on Israel.”

The answer is because Iran’s Hizballah has active terrorist cells in the United States. This, coupled with Iran’s role as the Central Banker of International Terrorism, should compel the average American to take Iranian threats seriously – such as Ahmadinejad’s recent open Jihad ultimatum to Europe. Created by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and responsible for (among other attacks) the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut which killed nearly 300, Hizballah’s presence in the United States is well documented. While Iran openly states that the ‘Zionist Regime’ should be “wiped off the map” and pledges to do just that – as do Hamas and others – even Israel is referred to as the ‘Little Satan’ while America remains the ‘Great Satan.’

Hezbollah, Samir Kuntar, Leon Klinghoffer

Remember the Achille Lauro? An innocent American was murdered by Hezbollah backed Samir Kuntar, now resting comfortably in an Israeli Prison. We know the evil that we fight, but here is it's face

Islamic Reformists -- A Matter of Life and Death

By
Robert T. Jordan

For modern Muslim reformists, a 21st Century interpretation of the Qur'an assures that: Man was created free, with a mind and a mission on earth to do good and avoid evil. His allegiance is to God and no one else. God will judge man for his deeds in the hereafter –- not anyone else. Man bears full responsibility for his deeds. Thus, freedom and responsibility means accountability. If these are the bases of the relationship with God Almighty, it should be the bases for all human relations in this world as well.

As Islamic fascist groups, such as Al Aqsa, Abu Sayaf, The Egyptian Brotherhood, HAMAS, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, rein terrorism throughout the world, the question arises as to why Islam’s moderates do not restrain this supposedly minority faction that high jacked their religion.

I posed these questions at a church briefing about Islam by an Arab Christian convert. “What happened to the Islamic reformists? Why aren’t the Islamic moderates responding with outrage?”

Our guest speaker smiled wryly, making a motion as if casting a fishing line into the water. “They are in the pond,” he said. “And al-Qaeda fishes for them. If they do not covert, they are killed.”

What I was referring to is a struggling group of moderate Moslems who urge fellow Moslems to initiate a modern interpretation of the Qur'anic text that would be in harmony with 21st Century ethics and civil thought.

The reformists base their call for Moslems to respect freedom of thought upon their interpretation that Allah (God) refrained from providing any worldly punishment any deviation or change of heart or mind on matters of religious faith. They assert that any penalty for such would be the province of God on judgment day.

Advocating Servility

Saad E. Ibrahim, in his article: Democratization and Islamic Reformation, points to many Qur'anic verses where Mohammad is commanded to abstain from harsh manners in advocating the new faith of Islam:

"Invite all to the way of the Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching, and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious, for the Lord knoweth best, who have strayed from His path." [Verse 125, Sura 16, al Nahl] "Those who spend freely, whether in prosperity or in adversity; who restrain anger, and pardon all men; for God loves those who do good." [Verse 134, Sura 3, Al Omran]

“In the last ten years, Muslim militants killed thirty times more fellow Muslims than non-Muslims. In other words, the wrath of Islamic zealots is more directed against other Muslims, whom they consider ‘corrupt’ or ‘decadent’.’” Ibrahim says. “The question, therefore, is, what are the roots of this madness, and whether something can be done about it?”

But Islamist radicals want to ignore these parts of the Qur'an. They want to take all of Islam back to the 7th Century’s strict punitive controls and ignore any parts of the Qur'an that support freedom and equality other than their limited view.

Former Tunisian Education Minister Mohammed al-Sharafi told a gathering of Moslem moderates in 2004 that, "if a child learns an idealized view of the past that sanctifies its history and tradition, then looks around and sees in society what goes against what he's learned, he will have some sort of a schizophrenia that might lead to violence." This disconnect is easily exploited as the terrorist leaders prey upon naïve youths to sacrifice themselves for their idealized goal of one global theocratic state.

Ibrahim wonders which version of the Qur'an will be taught to future generations.

The Charter of Medina

The Charter of Medina embodies the Prophet Mohammed's understanding and practice of pluralism. Upon his flight from Mecca to Yathrib in 622, he proposed a new name for it -- "civicus," or "medina" in Arabic. Muslim newcomers were to co-exist peacefully with non-Muslim communities and tribes in the same city. A written Charter negotiated and signed by the elders of 17 distinct groups in Civicus (The Charter of Medina) asserts the basic values and rights of the peaceful coexistence, including:

• Freedom of religious belief and worship for each and all;
• equality in all worldly rights and obligations,
• communal settlement of disputes, and
• shared responsibility in the defense of Civicus against outsider threats.

Coming nearly six centuries before the Magna Carta (1215), the Charter of Medina is probably the earliest formulation of the basis of what later on defined "civil society."

Conservative Reaction to Reform

Where Islamic reformists see peace and harmony in their modern interpretations of the Qur'an, conservative activists see danger. Ibrahim points out that conservatives closely allied with the heads of Islamic governments control all media and education. They also use Islamic law to proscribe, intimidate and persecute any reformists brave enough to speak out.

Ibrahim explains that the militant Islamists response to the reformist movement of the 1970s was to take direct action against the reformists by intimidating, assaulting or assassinating them.

“Two dramatic cases in point were the kidnapping and killing of Sheikh al Dhabi in July 1977 and the assassination in daylight of Dr. Faray Fouda, shortly after a public debate with an arch-conservative sheikh in June 1992,” Ibrahim explains: “Worse still is when the arch-conservatives incite the state to persecute Islamic reformists. The most dramatic case in point is the execution of four leading Sudanese Islamic reformists, known as the Republican Brothers, in January 1985, on charges of ‘heresy’ and ‘apostasy’. Their religious crime was their public rejection of the Shari'aa, as handed down from the ulama of ten centuries ago.”

What Must Be Done

The Islamic reformists stress that the Qur'an must be reinterpreted from an “ancient” 10th Century understanding into modern terms that harmonize with current thought.

They point to the dark periods of Christianity, such as the Inquisition and the crusades, when church and state were inseparable. They point out that “pure spirituality” came within the Christian faith only after the Reformation, which introduced the concept of separation of church and state.

That will only come through a democratization of Islamic governments that adopt concepts of individual liberty and the separation between religious belief and governmental law.

But democracy alone is not the answer. As seen in Palestine and Lebanon, democratic elections may be co-opted when fanatical factions are capable of unduly influencing the process by external support and influence.

The seeds of moderate thought and individual freedom cannot thrive very well in the hostile environment of Islamic fascism. But evidence exists that the planted seeds only need encouragement and support to flourish. The alternative is enslavement or death.

(Robert Jordan is a Former PAO Major with the United States Marine Corps and Beirut Veteran)

A Warning on Terriorism

Major Warns of Terrorism
U.S. Marine Jordan tells of surviving suicide bombing
By Masha Rifkin
Sep 18 2006
Deckhead: U.S. Marine Jordan tells of surviving suicide bombing

On October 23, 1983, a Hezbollah suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives to Beirut International Airport, where the U.S. Marines had set up their headquarters. Once outside of the barracks, the suicide bomber detonated his explosives, resulting in the deaths of over 241 servicemen. Major Robert Jordan, a former marine and homeland security expert who spoke yesterday about his experiences, was one of the few survivors of the attack.
At the time, Lebanon was in the midst of a civil war and had asked the Marines to intervene and evacuate the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

According to Jordan, the Marines had just begun to succeed in this task, when Hezbollah thought they would be able to silence them and send them home with their tail between their legs.

“This was the moment of truth,” Jordan said referring to the aforementioned attack. “We were being tested culturally, politically and militarily.” Soon after the attack, President Ronald Reagan decided to withdraw from Lebanon — an action that Jordan disagreed with. “Folks, we failed that test,” he criticized. “[If we had passed it] there might not have been a Gulf War, or Somalia or Kosovo.”

Jordan explained that Islamists “do not want to compromise, they want to re-establish the caliphate as it was in 1675.” To all those who view negotiation as the only solution to conflict, Jordan said, “War is a failure of diplomacy, and we should use it sparingly. But when it is used, it should involve only total force and total victory.”

Jordan emphasized that terrorism is real and is a continuous threat. “People are afraid to point fingers and make accusations … but we have to get back to reality.” He said that while the American public argues over whether or not the Bush Administration entered Iraq for oil, Iran and other Islamist nations are “using oil money to finance terrorism.”

According to Jordan, many Americans sit too complacently denying the idea of Islamo-fascism, while future terrorists infiltrate our society and universities. “As weird as it sounds, Osama bin Laden did us a favor — he exposed what’s going on,” Jordan said. Still, Jordan believes the American public forgets too quickly. One should “be open minded enough to educate oneself to the reality of what’s going on. There are people in the world who don’t care about you and me…just power and control,” he stressed.

“This one is for all the marbles,” Jordan continued. If Americans stay on their path of denial, Islamism will soon infiltrate American society, and we will be given “three choices: convert to Islam, pay a huge punitive tax for living under their regime, or [Islamists] will be happy to liberate your head.”

So what can we do to make sure that our heads and necks stay attached? “You should not be intimidated or terrified by terrorism,” Jordan reiterated. “You should understand it.” In his lecture, Jordan paraphrased a quote by Thomas Jefferson: “It is criminal for our generation to pass on our duties and obligations to the next.” Jordan expressed that his generation had failed in that regard — by the marines’ failure to finish their job in 1983 and in other instances. Now, our generation and the generations of our children and grandchildren have received the burden of living in, and attempting to eradicate, the time of terrorism.

“Your responsibility is to teach future generations.” He further explained that he is “tapped” into the Department of Homeland Security and sees regularly how terrorist plots are neutralized: “People like you and me see suspicious activity and send it in to the authorities.” He then described, “Specialists then analyze those that are deemed of the most importance.”
Jordan continued that moderate Muslims, who understand the regime they live in, are either silenced or killed, but to successfully win the war on terror, their voices must be supported. He referenced a friend who said, “They are in the pond — and al-Qaeda is fishing for them.”

Overall, students seemed to react positively to the lecture.

“It was interesting to hear the perspective of someone from the military community and therefore personally and intimately involved in the Middle East conflict,” said Daniel Balson ’07.

Tatyana Rozenberg ’07 said, “It was very refreshing to have someone like Major Jordan on campus. It seems most people today, especially on college campuses, are blind to the reality of what’s going on.”

By Masha Rifkin at Sep 18 2006 - 11:31pm