Bob Graham on Hardball: US should target Hezbollah after Al-Qaeda

He has said this repeatedly and several other people have equated Hamas and Hezbollah with Al-Qaeda. What is their rationale? How is Hezbollah anymore of a threat to the United States than the IRA, Basque Separatists, FARC, and the other terrorist groups that target foreign nations?

And he is the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, so he would know.

Why is he more hardline on this issue than Bush and Likud?

He's ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Keeping tabs on terrorist groups is part of his job. You certainly don't want the Republicans in total control of these issues, do you?

Why did he single out Hezbollah and Hamas?

If he knows anything, then he should have been on top of the ball as well as Dumbo and have seen this coming.

All he's doing right now is speaking from his narrow view of the world and his own prejuidices.

He was having lunch with the ISI intelligence chief, who wired money to Mohammad Atta...

After all, Al-qeada is now stronger than ever thanks to Dumbo's incompetence. Lte's screw this up first before we go screw something else up.

:shrug:

He opposed Iraq as a distraction from the War on Terrorism yet he jumped on the "bomb Syria" bandwagon after Iraq.

He has never advocating "bombing Syria" as the process by which the US should fight the WOT. He has been for prosecuting the dissmantaling of fanatical islamist networks more thouroughly which include many in Syria

He called for "surgical strikes" against Syria.

Here is a quick link about his call for attacking Syria:

http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.11.22/news1.html

"People like me." What does that mean?

they are terrorists largely , and they are part of the Jihadist cesspool.

Graham knows full well that they should be held acountable and that they are part of the problem currently.

Hezbollah is as much a threat to America as the other terrorist groups I mentioned.

Radical Islamists are operating in at least a dozen countries. Why are Hezbollah and Hamas deemed more threatening than the other ones?

Actually, they largely formed in response to the IDF's 20-year occupation of Southern Lebanon. Since the IDF withdrew, they have been rather quiet, except for the times when a wayward IDF bulldozer ventures across the border.

attack terrist he go after the shrub and his new CIA.

Intervention in foreign conflicts comes with a high price. If we interevene and fight Israel's war against Hezbollah and Hamas for it, we will face intense blowback from the Arab world. We should allow Israel and any other country to do whatever it takes to fight terrorism but we should not uneccessarily intervene in the wars of others.

Fine. I'm OK with that.

... to fight for them.

This appears to be the sticking point in the above replies.

The debate about "should Israel do XYZ" is different to that about
"should the USA do XYZ". I'm still waiting to see information that
will show how Hezbullah are a threat to the USA.

Mind you, I'm still waiting to see information that shows how Iraq
was a threat to the USA ...

If Britain had asked for help against the IRA, would your support
have been:
1) "allow Britain to do whatever it takes to fight terrorism"
2) allow IRA fund-raising to take place in Boston bars
3) bomb the goddamn terrorists

(Note to Padraig & other DUers: I recognise that the IRA issue is no
longer active but needed an example of another "ally" that had problems
with another "terrorist" organisation.)

Nihil

terrorism." That is how you get countries invaded and over 500 young Americans killed on the basis of blatant lies.

There are principles and concepts, including international law, that "we" operate within and require that others do the same. Otherwise, you are no better than the terrorists you are fighting, who don't abide by such rules.

It is applied in a scattershot fashion and enables nations like China and Syria to invade and conquer nations while criticizing Israel for self defense.

Hezbollah orchestrated the kidnap of hostages such as Terry Anderson, Tom Sutherland, David Jacobsen, the Reverend Benjamin Weir, Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, Terry Waite, John McCarthy, Brian Keenan and countless others during the 1980s in Lebanon. And they were responsible for the kidnapping and torture of CIA Station Chief William Buckley.

So yes, they have posed a threat to Americans and American interests previously. And they continue to do so.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1571/49_17/81790761/p1/article.jhtml
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/americas/11/07/terror.triborder/

And, even if Hezbollah wasn’t a predominant threat, one of the main weaknesses in US foreign policy is that the Republican Party has consistently failed to hold those who have committed atrocities against US –and international citizens-accountable in the past. Reagan knew who took the hostages in Iran, yet evidence suggests that he negotiated with them and subsequently sold arms to them. Reagan knew who was behind the US marine barracks attacks in Lebanon but simply turned a blind eye to hunting down and apprehending them. Reagan/Bush knew who were taking the hostages but didn’t seem to make any effort to hold them accountable for their actions. Bush II is pussyfooting around on Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden and isn’t making any genuine effort to hunting them down –preferring instead to focus on a pointless and unnecessary war in Iraq. Once they learned they could get away with such things under Reagan and Bush, it only made the terrorists bolder and gave them an opportunity to explore new initiatives. We need to take firm and decisive action against the REAL terrorists –even those who may have committed atrocities in the past

Not to mention that terrorist masterminds such as Imad Mugniyeh are still operating at the present time

You seem to be making unsupported statements and generalizations about different groups and their aims. Many of these groups are extremely violent and dangerous, but the posters point above still holds: There are many violent terrorist groups that could be pursued, yet Graham focuses on just one.

First, at least some of those you mention by name were not even American, they were British. And Graham is not an MP, he is an American elected representative. Second, McCarthy was not held hostage by Hezbollah, but by another fundamentalist Muslim group (He was also British, not American).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/8/newsid_2492000/2492499.stm

So, before making sweeping statements, at least get the facts straight. Google is a wonderful tool.

Google is indeed a wonderful search engine and that is predominantly the reason that I rely on it so much.

So perhaps that’s why I found this article on there:

******************************************************************8*
During his captivity, Anderson was often blindfolded so he could not see his jailers' faces. On his recent trip, he sat face-to-face with the organization blamed for his kidnapping -- Hezbollah, the "Party of God."
Anderson asked Sayyid Hassan Nasrullah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, what he thought of hostage-taking. The former hostage was confronted with polite indifference.
I'm not saying whether their methods were good or not, right or wrong," Nasrullah said. "These actions were short-term, with short-term objectives, and I hope that they will not happen again."
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9611/29/anderson/


McCarthy and Keenan were held with Anderson during at least two interludes during their kidnapping –which suggests to me that Hezbollah had control of McCarthy during at least some point during his abduction.

Also Imad Mugniyeh, who is widely acknowledged to be the main mastermind behind the kidnappings of the western hostages, was a key official in Hezbollah during that time and indeed remains so until the present day.

http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/terrorists/termugniyah.htm
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1571/49_17/81790761/p1/article.jhtml

I also know that Hezbollah wasn’t solely responsible for the abduction of all the hostages in Lebanon during the 1980s –Alec Collett, Philip Padfield, Leigh Douglas and the four university professors held during this interlude were held by copycat kidnappers-but this doesn’t change the fact that they were responsible for the majority of the kidnappings –and not to mention the hijacking of TWA and other such terrorist activities. And therefore they constitute a legitimate threat to America and the world’s national security.

And true, McCarthy and Waite were British, -and perhaps therefore my words during my previous post should have been that “Hezbollah poses a threat to American and international interests”-and I know very well that Graham is a Senator and not an MP. But this doesn’t change the fact that Hezbollah has targeted both British and American interests and therefore constitutes and equal threat to both.

It is true that there are many violent extremist groups to go after –Abu Sayef for one-but Hezbollah is definitely one of the major threats to US interests both in and outside the Middle East. For what it’s worth, I disagree with Graham that it should be the sole focus after pursuing Al-Qaeda but it certainly should be one of the predominant ones

of his income and power depend on keeping the war machine fed. I certainly hope he is not VP. He is unfit.

Who is the idiot?