The Wahhabi-Likudnik war of terror

[Jefferson23]

November 20, 2013

By Pepe Escobar

The double suicide bombing targeting the Iranian embassy in Beirut - with at least 23 people killed and 170 wounded - was a de facto terror attack happening on 11/19. Numerology-wise, naturally 9/11 comes to mind; and so the case of the Washington-declared war on terror metastasizing - largely conducted by oozy forms of Saudi "intelligence".

Yet don't expect the "West" to condemn this as terror. Look at the headlines; it's all normalized as "blasts" - as if children were playing with firecrackers.

Whether carried out by a hazy al-Qaeda-linked brigade or by Saudi spy chief Bandar bin Sultan's (aka Bandar Bush's) goons, the Beirut terror attack is essentially configured as a major, Saudi-enabled provocation. The larger Saudi agenda in Syria implies getting both Hezbollah and Iran to be pinned down inside Lebanon as well. If that happens, Israel also wins. Once again, here's another graphic illustration of the Likudnik House of Saud in action.

Nuance also applies. Bandar Bush's strategy, coordinated with jihadis, was to virtually beg for Hezbollah to fight inside Syria. When Hezbollah obliged, with only a few hundred fighters, the jihadis scurried away from the battlefield to implement plan B: blowing up innocent women and children in the streets of Lebanon.

in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-03-201113.html

[strikeforce]

1. i believe that you are delusional.

do you remember the 83 bombing in beirut that killed 240 young americans ?

[Jefferson23]

2. lol, okay/ n/t

[DICKERSON3870]

3. RE: "do you remember the 83 bombing in beirut that killed 240 young americans ?" ~ strikeforce

Last edited Sun Dec 15, 2013, 10:56 PM - Edit history (2)

MY REPLY: I do! As does Wikipedia. But you , apparently, do not remember it very well. You only seem to remember the parts you want to (and/or find it convenient to) remember.

FROM WIKIPEDIA (1983 Beirut barracks bombing):

(EXCERPTS) The Beirut Barracks Bombings (October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon) occurred during the Lebanese Civil War when two truck bombs struck separate buildings housing United States and French military forces—members of the Multinational Force (MNF) in Lebanon—killing 299 American and French servicemen. An obscure group calling itself 'Islamic Jihad' claimed responsibility for the bombings.[1] . . .

. . . On June 6, 1982, Israel initiated Operation "Peace for Galilee" and invaded Lebanon ostensibly to create a 40 km buffer zone between the PLO and Syrian forces in Lebanon and Israel.[23][24][25] The Israeli invasion was tacitly approved by the U.S., and the U.S. provided overt military support to Israel in the form of arms and matériel.[26] However, what the U.S. agreed to support and what Israel did were altogether two separate matters.[27][23] Nevertheless, the U.S.' 'apparent support' for Israel's invasion of Lebanon taken in conjunction with U.S. support for Lebanese President Bachir Gemayel and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) alienated many.[28] Bachir Gemayel was the legally elected president, but he was a partisan Maronite Christian and covert associate of Israel.[29] These factors served to disaffect the Lebanese Muslim and Druze communities in Lebanon. This animosity was made worse by the Phalangist, a right-wing, largely Maronite-Lebanese militia force closely associated with U.S. backed President Gemayel. The Phalangist militia was responsible for multiple, bloody attacks against the Muslim and Druze communities in Lebanon and for the 1982 atrocites committed in the PLO refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, while the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) provided security and looked on.[30][31] The Phalangist militia's attacks on Sabra and Shatila were puportedly a response to the September 14, 1982, assassination of President-elect Bachir Gemayel.[32][30][33] Amine Gemayel, Bachir's brother, succeeded Bachir as the elected president of Lebanon, and Amine continued to represent and advance Maronite interests.

All of this, according to Robert Fisk, served to generate ill will against the MNF among Lebanese Muslims and especially among the Shiites living in the slums of West Beirut and around the Beirut International Airport where the U.S. Marines were located. Lebanese Muslims were manipulated into believing the MNF, and the Americans in particular, were unfairly siding with the Maronite Christians in their attempt to dominate Lebanon.[34][35][36] Muslim feelings against the American presence were "exacerbated when counter-battery missiles lobbed by the U.S. Sixth Fleet hit innocent by-standers in the Druze-dominated Shuf mountains."[37]

Colonel Timothy J. Geraghty, the commander of the U.S. 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) deployed as peacekeepers in Beirut during the incident, has said that the American and the French headquarters were targeted primarily because of "who we were and what we represented"[38] and that,

It is noteworthy that the United States provided direct naval gunfire support [which fired a total of 360 5-inch rounds between 10:04 A.M. and 3:00 PM.] -- which I strongly opposed for a week -- to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq-al-Garb on September 19 and that the French conducted an air strike on September 23 in the Bekaa Valley. American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality, and I stated to my staff at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.[39]

The naval gunfire support Colonel Geraghty referenced was from four U.S. warships: the USS Virginia, USS Arthur W. Radford, USS Bowen, and USS John Rodgers. Prior to September 19, the USS Bowen had fired an interdiction mission on September 7, and the USS Bowen and USS John Rodgers had together fired another interdiction mission on September 16 to intimidate Syrian and Druze militia firing on the Marines.[40]

Some authors, including Thomas Friedman, point to the use of this naval gunfire on September 19 as the beginning point of the U.S. forces being seen as participants in the civil war rather than peace keepers and opening them up to retaliation.[41][42] In his memoir, General Colin Powell (at the time an assistant to Caspar Weinberger) noted, as Colonel Geraghty had already projected, that "When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American ‘referee’ had taken sides."[43] Some analysts subsequently criticized the decision to have U.S. warships shell Druze and Syrian forces. They claim that this action forced a shift in the previously neutral U.S. forces by convincing local Lebanese Muslims that the U.S. had sided with the Lebanese Christians.[44] . . .

SOURCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

[DICKERSON3870]

4. RE: "do you remember the 83 bombing in beirut that killed 240 young americans ?" ~ strikeforce

MY ADDITIONAL REPLY: Despite having recently celebrated his 90th birthday, the great Israeli

writer and peace activist, Uri Avnery, also remembers it. But then, very much unlike you, Uri Avnery remembers everything, whether it's convenient to, or not. EVERYTHING!

SEE: "The War of Lies", by Uri Avnery, gush-shalom.org, 09/06/12

(EXCERPTS) Thirty Years ago this week, the Israeli army crossed into Lebanon and started the most stupid war in Israel’s history. It lasted for 18 years. About 1500 Israeli soldiers and untold numbers of Lebanese and Palestinians were killed.
Almost all wars are based on lies. Lies are considered legitimate instruments of war. Lebanon War I (as it was later called) was a glorious example.
From beginning to end (if it has ended yet) it was a war of deceit and deception, falsehoods and fabrications.
THE LIES started with the official name: “Operation Peace in Galilee”.
If one asks Israelis now, 99.99% of them will say with all sincerity: “We had no choice. They launched katyushas at the Galilee from Lebanon every day. We had to stop them.” TV anchormen and anchorwomen, as well as former cabinet ministers have been repeating this throughout the week. Quite sincerely. Even people who were already adults at the time.
The simple fact is that for 11 months before the war, not a single shot was fired across the Israeli-Lebanese border. A cease-fire was in force and the Palestinians on the other side of the border kept it scrupulously. To everybody’s surprise, Yasser Arafat succeeded in imposing it on all the radical Palestinian factions, too.
At the end of May, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon met with Secretary of State Alexander Haig in Washington DC. He asked for American agreement to invade Lebanon. Haig said that the US could not allow it, unless there were a clear and internationally recognized provocation.
And lo and behold, the provocation was provided at once. Abu Nidal, the anti-Arafat and anti-PLO master terrorist, sent his own cousin to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London, who was grievously wounded.
In retaliation, Israel bombed Beirut and the Palestinians fired back, as expected. The Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, allowed Sharon to invade Lebanese territory up to 40 km, “to put the Galilee settlements out of reach of the katyushas.”
When one of the intelligence chiefs told Begin at the cabinet meeting that Abu Nidal’s organization was not a member of the PLO, Begin famously answered: “They are all PLO”.
General Matti Peled, my political associate at the time, firmly believed that Abu Nidal had acted as an agent of Sharon. So do all the Palestinians I know.
The lie “they shot at us every day” has taken such a hold on the public mind that it is nowadays useless to dispute it. It is an illuminating example of how a myth can take possession of the public mind, including even of people who had seen with their own eyes that the opposite was true.
NINE MONTHS before the war, Sharon told me about his plan for a New Middle East. . .
. . . His design for the region, as told me then (and which I published nine months before the war), was:
To attack Lebanon and install a Christian dictator who would serve Israel,
Drive the Syrians out of Lebanon,
Drive the Palestinians out of Lebanon into Syria, from where they would then be pushed by the Syrians into Jordan.
Get the Palestinians to carry out a revolution in Jordan, kick out King Hussein and turn Jordan into a Palestinian state,
Set up a functional arrangement under which the Palestinian state (in Jordan) would share power in the West Bank with Israel.
Being a single-minded operator, Sharon convinced Begin to start the war, telling him that the sole aim was to push the PLO 40 km back. . .

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1339170910/

[Alamuti Lotus]

5. that occurred in a vacuum, right? nothing else of interest going on at the time?

It is possible that those "young Americans" were there supporting the zionist invasion of the country--one that killed 10x more Lebanese civilians than 9/11. While this was going on, the navy was also busy bombarding civilian and military positions. I'm sure that these facts--tips of the iceberg, I assure you--had nothing to do with the bombing, however, and indeed--only the delusional would connect such non-existent dots.