NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT : THE DAMASCUS ASSASSINATION. U P D A T E D.

third rough draft

TOO EARLY

It’s too early to sort out the who and what of the assassination of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah in Damascus. And it’s really not that important that he died in terms of of the capabilities of the group and politically. They’ll be so many who are knowledgeable and eager to replace him. If anything, this assassination should further sharpen Hizbollah’s security procedures and those of Syria. (Unless Syria had something to do with it, “an inside job,” but I highly doubt it.)

Syria is exposed from so many directions: Iraq, with countless refugees coming through, who can include operatives of the harmful idiots, Jordan and Israel; Lebanon, where there's too much smoke that the harmful idiots and France -- and likely Jordan and Israel -- have set up a security apparatus, including intelligence and (I would think) bomb-making skills, on behalf of the Saudi State in that country. (See prior post.) Not to mention Turkey, especially its generals, who for all practical purposes are no different from Israeli generals, being so close to each other.

So it doesn’t surprise me that the so-called Syrian security shield has been pierced. What surprises me is that it hasn’t more often, what with such relatively open borders.

(Direct experience.

Years ago, before the invasion of Iraq, I traveled to Jordan on a bus from Beirut. I wanted to see the Syrian “desert" -- I saw it: it's full of olive trees; the rock had the color of volcano lava; the farmers had gathered that rock and built makeshift walls -- rab3aa -- with it to delineate property and clear it for the planting--

I didn’t witness any special security procedures at the Lebanese-Syrian border. A year or two ealier, I had gone over to Damascus with a friend’s father, A., to shop at Souk al-Hamidiyyah. The Syrian customs agents knew the friend’s father well from weekly trips that he and his late wife would take to shop in Damascus for their many children. Prices in Damascus were significantly lower than those in Beirut. The Syrians stamped our passports, including my American, so fast. I, my high school friend and his wife didn’t leave the car. All I saw was A. gathering our papers and passports and heading into the customs' building, then coming out.

A. was the best facilitator I had ever met. Only India has better facilitators at government agencies; these, according to a colleague, even serve you tea or coffee while facilitating. -- A. was so good that the police by the souk, all similarly-minted skinny and slender bedouin boys, allowed us to park illegally.

Wonder how much the facilitating cost A. both at the border and for parking. Just as A. can pay, so can others.)

NASRALLAH’S SPEECH AND ISRAEL’S INFLUENCE IN WASHINGTON

There’s no question that Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah in his speech focused almost exclusively on the Israelis. Why? Because --

(1) The Israelis are the more likely suspect; and

(2) even if they weren’t the ones who did the assassination, it helps his cause to focus on them since that would assist Hezbollah in further appealiing to the Arab Street and countering the ideology pushed along by some among the harmful idiots, the Saudis and the Jordanians to further the rift between the Arab Sunni and Arab Shia.

Now , why would he Israelis do it? They should know that so many, competent as they come, trained in Iran, and with a track record to recommend them, are able and willing to replace Mughniyah. And they should know , too, that Syria’s borders are pourous -- that it’s not much of an achievement to have pierced that so-called Syrian security shield. My friend's father could pierce it, so to speak, with some payment. So could others, with more payment. And even if it were an achievement, a doubtful proposition, what difference does that make?


KEEP UP THE SYMPATHETIC NETWORK IN THE COUNTRY OF THE HARMFUL IDIOTS.

I think the assassination was meant for US consumption more than for anything else. The Israelis in the end want to prove their usefulness to the harmful idiots as my friends' cats catch birds and mice, kill them, and leave them at the door step. The message: see, O dear American public, your government agencies can’t get Bin Laden, and we can get Mughniyyah.

More to the point: it’s absolutely important to a protectorate which has tied both its fate and its global status to the influence it possesses within the country of the harmful idiots that it be adored in that country and deemed so necessary. Not only by that country's people. More importantly: by wings within that country's foreign policy and defense bureaucracy, and by the concentric circles of associated elite. Operation such as the Mughniyah assassination are meant to impress those who are predisposed to believe that operations of the kind do make a difference, and assure that arguments on Israel’s behalf are made at each and every relevant meeting and in articles. Israel’s influence in the US has been at stake, especially after its disastrous under-achievement (defeat, really) in its war with Hizbollah in July of 2006, and the disastrous failure of the Jewish Right in Washington, which had played such a pivotal role in the horrendous decision to invade and dismantle Arab Iraq. Defeats and failures change courses for countries, including the United States. Without solid influence in Washington, Israel risks losing the Turkish generals, Russia, Sarkozi, and so many other countries and leaders who see it as able to achieve so much for them in the capital of the harmful idiots. Consider, for heaven’s sake if nothing else, that even prominent Saudi princes had sat in Israel’s lap to assure the harmful idiots’ support of their candidacy to become Crown Prince and King! (See prior posts.)

Nasrallah didn’t have on his mind Israel’s influence in the country of the harmful idiots when he made his speech. Instead likely he believed the superficial thesis that the Israelis did it either to impair Hizbollah’s ability to conduct military operations or as revenge for lending that party's hand to Palestinian Islamic nationalists. (I'm not singling out Hamas because I'm smelling (!) some tension between it on the one hand and, on the other, Iran and those fringe factions which Iran supports more directly.) With that in mind, he assured the Israelis that there will be continuity. Mughniyah, he said, “had accomplished with his brothers all his work and, as he leaves us today, as martyr, he doesn’t leave behind but little which needs to be done.” (My translation from Arabic.)

US and other foreign security agencies understood Nasrallah’s message correctly when it came to his promise to abandon “the rules” (unspoken) of engagement with Israel. That, as Israel had taken the war outside of Lebanon, so shall Hizbollah. Where will it strike? In Israel, most Arab observers believe. But that may not be so easy at a time of heightened vigilance. Talking probabilities, I think the more likely place for escalating away would be first Iraq, then Lebanon. (It could be anywhere, such as Argentina, where Hizbollah on March 17, 1992, about one month after Israel had assassinated its Secretary-General, Abbas al-Musawi, exploded a car bomb against the Israeli embassy in Argentina's capital, killing 29 and wounding tens of others.)


LINKAGE: U.S. PLANES AND COPTERS IN IRAQ

This newsletter has in the past stressed the issue of linkage: that, as part of the tarwidh (this term came later -- conditioning/taming) of the harmful idiots, Iran and Syria will not consider an Israeli transgression as independently planned and executed. They would link it to the harmful idiots. With linkage in mind, I believe US troops in Iraq would be the prime and most convenient target for retaliation for the Mughniyah assassination. These therefore should be on alert for retaliatory attacks. In particular, US copters and planes. Why? As part of the policy of tarwidh, the Iranians might inject a missile or two to relay to the harmful idiots the message that they could not afford escalating -- and that Mughniyah’s assassination was exactly that. It would matter little that Israel likely was the one who killed Mughniyyah in part to obtain results of this very kind: retaliation in Iraq that would (the Israelis would hope) bring about a larger American military retaliation against Iran -- a full-scale war. Which would bring along the draft and the full militarization of American society, a la Israel. That's the Israeli hope.

LINKAGE: U.S. CITIZENS, THE OPERATIVES OF THE HARMFUL IDIOTS, AND THOSE OF THE SAUDI STATE (see prior post) IN LEBANON.

While I do accept Nasrallah’s words and fully believe that Hizbollah will never jeopardize Lebanon’s unity as an Arab country, I wouldn’t put it past Hizbollah to launch a campaign to empty Lebanon of any and all US influence. Out of an abundance of caution, US citizens in Lebanon should be on the lookout. This is especially true for those who aren’t of Lebanese descent or, if they are, cannot back this up with fluency in Arabic. Why? Because indications are that we’re heading back to the scary 1980s, to a war among intelligence services, one where Iranian and Syrian intelligence might decide yet again to empty Lebanon of any and all U.S. influence.

Why return to the 1980s?

Because the alliance of the harmful idiots and the Israelis, with its silent Arab reactionary partners, continues to hit walls, especially after the summer of 2006. After that summer it had become abundantly clear that Israel had disappointed its harmful idiot sponsors and all the powers of Arab reaction. (The Saudi State in Lebanon had been rooting for Israel in that summer; but it learned better.) So the Israelis and their sponsors (likely) now want to try the Hizbollah-like route -- assassinations and what have you. It’ll become a war staged by intelligence services. Can the harmful idiots really match the masters at undercover warfare? Do they have suicide bombers of their own? Aren’t they bogged down and exposed in Iraq? And isn’t it that few believe them any longer or trust their judgement?

The Israelis likely want to dare the Iranians -- another attempt at entrapment -- to force a change in the discourse of the American presidential campaign. The Israelis are concerned that Obama will not sway their way against Iran. Even Clinton, a pro-Israel candidate who voted to grant George Bush the authority to invade, thus pleasing the Israelis and their fans, may be too hesitant to escalate with Iran. Israel is aware that both of these candidates had dispatched emissaries to Damascus.

But the Israelis, in assassinating Mughniyah, are hoping for too much from this assassination. Where things stand, the tax base has had it and wouldn't care the least about what the Israelis are doing. The matter is no longer in the hands of the concentric circles of elite who adore Israel and treat it as a privileged partner. Economic disturbances, intimately connected to the printing of currency associated with the Iraq Project, for which the Israelis and the Jewish Right are in part accountable, now supercede the importance of the Mughniyahs of this world. The masters at present no longer care about the mice in the field which the cats bring back dead. These "mice," after all, focus their unconventional warfare mostly on the Israelis in a conflict that's percieved as endless and asinine. As things stand, the politicians’ failure to tax, including for a hugely expensive war, the Federal Reserve’s continued lowering of interest rates, and the aversion to regulating runaway capitalism, have resulted in such financial turbulence that we should be buried in domestic crisis for the foreseeable future.

The cats and the mice can perform their acrobatics ad infinitum. But the Israelis and the Jewish Right shouldn't expect the harmful idiots to be able to mobilize the tax base for yet another hugely expensive war. Iran knows that. Hence its reluctance to do anything to help out the Israelis. Get it?



LINKAGE: THE PERSONALITIES OF THE SAUDI STATE IN LEBANON

Another target, though not an easy one, are the personalities of the Saudi State in Lebanon:

– Saad Hariri : I’m in the black so that Lebanon would be in the red; I AM the state, since my dad played such a pivotal role in bankrupting the de jure state, so that we can become billionaires, seventeen times over, and have the country of the harmful idiots and France protect my dad's legacy of pathological greed. (Hey, Nizbollah and Amal did equal harm by placing every Shia in Lebanon on the social security payroll. But Nasrallah didn't pocket a penny.)


-- Samir Geagea: I did massacre so many people, including Christians, but I did make so much money, and now the harmful idiots are adding to my wealth, training my men there and in France -- not to mention likely Israel and Jordan. True, I'm hated by most of the Lebanese, and certainly 70% of the Christians. But what does that matter when it comes to obtaining support from the harmful idiots to engage Hizbollah's rear lines and divert its guns away from Israel? And

--Walid Jumblatt: I too had murdered innocent Christians, but now I love them, since I have only 12 Druze left in Lebanon, so I need the Christians of the Shouf, but lucky for me, Saudi King Abdallah meets with me regularly and I return to Lebanon with millions of cheap dollars and solid Euros to build influence, just like my late dad had journeyed to Libya to do the same. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

What to watch for is that the Iranian-Syrian State in Lebanon might want to send the message louder and clearer to the harmful idiots, the backers of the Saudi State in Lebanon, that the Iranian-Syrian State can afford escalating in Lebanon, especially if Lebanon proves to be the place where the Mughniyah assassination had been hatched. Can the Saudi State? Or is that state once again counting on Israel and its promise to disturb things enough for the Saudi State to take over? Hope does spring eternal, doesn't it?

It’s really unclear who can and who cannot afford escalating. Likely, neither can. But should the Syrians and the Iranians determine that the operation in Damascus had been hatched in Lebanon -- I frankly don’t think they could afford not to retaliate in Lebanon. If they do so determine, then expect a flurry of assassinations of on-the-street operatives of the Saudi State, especially those trained abroad.

Iraq is another place where the assassination may have been hatched by the Israelis or the harmful idiots . Jordan is yet another possibility. But the Syrians might have to bite the bullet when it comes to Jordan until after the Arab summit. (See below.)


INTIMIDATE ARAB HEADS OF STATE

The harmful idiots and (or via) their Israelis could also have meant the assassination in Damascus to intimidate Arab heads of state and discourage them from attending the upcoming summit in that city, scheduled for next month. Especially that there’s disgruntlement by the Arab dependencies against the harmful idiots. These are placing so much pressure on them to line up against Iran and no pressure whatsoever on the apple of their eye to ease up on Gaza. Consider, for instance, Egyptian President Mubarak’s recent statements that the US troops in Iraq attract terrorism and threaten regional stability. What’s that all about? It reminds me of the “illegal occupation” statement by Saudi King Abdallah which had preceded Cheney’s visit to the Gulf in May 2007 -- blackmail, a threat against the United States that unless it fixed things up in Iraq, the Gulf would diversify its sources of security to include Russia and others.

(Note:

Saudi King Abdallah's blackmail had worked. The harmful idiots drew closer to the Sunni of Iraq. They're now arming them and paying them. But it didn’t have to work. Cheney and Bush could’ve set off US intelligence against the Gulf Arab leaders to subdue them. But the Cheney/Bush team had been so disillusioned with the Jewish Right about Iraq, the “thinking” crowd around them, who had promised them a cake walk, that they were ready to go back to their oil roots. Not to mention that the Pentagon just wasn’t crazy about getting into another Vietnam and forgo attention to parts of the world other than the Middle East.

Arab analysts have it wrong when they think that Cheney wants war with Iran and Rice wants negotiations -- and the threat of war -- with Iran. Neither pathetic failure really matters that much any longer. Truly: both have become eminently insignificant. At this stage the generals have the say, not anyone else. And the generals likely percieve a lack of comprehensive strategy towards the entire region of the Middle East -- other than the Jewish Right's Greater Middle East initiative or the National Security Queen's New Middle East. In the absence of such comprehencive strategy -- which would include a Palestinan state and Israeli withdrawal from all Arab occupied territory, it'd be unlikely to expect anything more than stop-gap measures from the Pentagon.)

Mubarak may have intended his statement (almost certainly coordinated with the Saudis) as a message to the harmful idiots: you rein in the apple of your eye in Gaza (and have it stop such sophomoric acts as cutting the communication cables north of Alexandria), or else we will withdraw our support for your stay in Iraq and draw closer to Iran. The Israelis are running around (Olmert to Germany and Barak to Turkey) to get approval for invading Gaza -- a bleak prospect for the Arab dependencies since their populace is certain to go berserk at such occurrence. That, these dependencies know, should make Iran yet more popular among the Arab Street.