Man have I been snowed! I was reading stories this morning regarding the death of Imad Mughniyeh, the militant accused of attacks that left hundreds of Americans and Israelis dead, including a U.S. Navy diver during the infamous 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner, has been killed, Hezbollah said Wednesday. Wait a minute, the date, all the Reagan braggadocio, it really got me to thinking and reevaluating all the war mongering BS we are fed today in his venerable name?
First, The militant group blamed Israel for the assassination — a charge the Jewish state denied — but it did not say how he died. However, Middle East media reported he was killed in a recent car bomb in Syria. This is supposed to be a major blow to Hezbollah, which fought Israel in the summer 2006 war in Lebanon, and its Iranian and Syrian backers. Mughniyeh, who had been in hiding for years, was among the fugitives indicted in the United States for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. He was also suspected of masterminding attacks on the U.S. Embassy and the Marine base in Lebanon that killed more than 260 Americans in the 1980s when he was then the Iranian-backed Hezbollah's security chief. The plot is thickening! Just remember these Islamists leaders are like a hydra. You kill one and more crop up. This is no victory except for the so called Islamist terrorists.
First, The militant group blamed Israel for the assassination — a charge the Jewish state denied — but it did not say how he died. However, Middle East media reported he was killed in a recent car bomb in Syria. This is supposed to be a major blow to Hezbollah, which fought Israel in the summer 2006 war in Lebanon, and its Iranian and Syrian backers. Mughniyeh, who had been in hiding for years, was among the fugitives indicted in the United States for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. He was also suspected of masterminding attacks on the U.S. Embassy and the Marine base in Lebanon that killed more than 260 Americans in the 1980s when he was then the Iranian-backed Hezbollah's security chief. The plot is thickening! Just remember these Islamists leaders are like a hydra. You kill one and more crop up. This is no victory except for the so called Islamist terrorists.
Mughniyeh, 45, was also the reputed leader of a group that held Westerners hostage in Lebanon, among them journalist Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press chief Middle East correspondent who was held captive for six years. Mughniyeh is on an FBI wanted list with a $25 million bounty on his head. The bounty is equal to that the U.S. has put for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. a Lebanese television station, said Mughniyeh was attending a ceremony at the Iranian school in Damascus and was killed as he left the function. Iran celebrated the anniversary of its Islamic revolution this week. If Israel proves to be involved in the assassination it would mark a bold move by the Israelis inside Syria and could draw Hezbollah retaliation. Hezbollah did not threaten immediate revenge. The assassination also sends a powerful warning to the Damascus-based leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group which is backed by Iran. In 2004, a Hamas activist survived a similar bombing that destroyed his vehicle on a Damascus street shortly after he and his family stepped out. Hamas condemned the assassination.
"We condemn this crime and we emphasize the Muslim nation must rise up to confront the Zionist devil which is back by the Americans," said Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Samir Abu Zuhri. The announcement of his death said Mughniyeh for 20 years has been the target of "Zionists and oppressors" — in Hezbollah and Iranian parlance a reference to Israel and the United States. Mughniyeh was Hezbollah security chief during a turbulent period in Lebanon's civil war. Little has been known about him since the end of the 15-year conflict and Hezbollah has regularly refused to talk about him. Wednesday's announcement of his death was the first mention of him in years. But American intelligence officials have described Mughniyeh as Hezbollah's operations chief, who was believed to have moved between Lebanon, Syria and Iran in disguise. In 2006, Mughniyeh was reported to have met with hard line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Syria. Tehran and the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards have never publicly disclosed the extent of their links with their protégé Hezbollah. Reagan's terrorist just killed by Israel
* Now a thought and a reminder! Intelligence sources described Mughniyeh as one of the craftiest and deadliest terrorists in the world who managed to elude capture for decades by changing his appearance and covering his footsteps. Western intelligence agencies long suspected Mughniyeh in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 63 people, according to a 2001 CNN report. He also was suspected in the truck bombing that year of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, an attack that killed 241 people and preceded the U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon.
** Before the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. officials had blamed Mughniyeh for the deaths of more Americans around the world than any other terror suspect, CNN reported in 2001. A month after the attacks in the U.S., the FBI debuted its Most Wanted Terrorists list with Mughniyeh on it. Mughniyeh was not suspected of involvement in 9/11, but he was a role model for bin Laden, who used the 1983 Marine barracks bombing as a standard, CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said. "Because if you think about the attack, pretty much immediately afterward President Reagan ordered the United States out of Lebanon, and so that's the model bin Laden wanted to implement everywhere -- attack the United States in places like Yemen or in Kenya, or in Tanzania, or even the United States itself, and it will pull out of the Middle East," Bergen said. Reagan responsible for Bin Laden and 9/11
