Posted on 08/06/2006 11:13:02 AM PDT by do the dhue
A handful of money scams uncovered across the United States in recent years bearing Hezbollah's fingerprints have some experts worried that if orders were given to launch a terror attack against the U.S. the means are in place to do so.
The FBI has made Hezbollah a central target of its counterterrorism efforts, setting up a unit dedicated to tracking the group and assigning agents to develop sources in Lebanese and other Middle Eastern communities across the country, report National Security Correspondent Dan Ephron and Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff in the August 14 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, August 7).
Security officials worry that if Hezbollah does one day decide to strike, it can exploit an already-existing network in this country.
"You often see in these groups that people who deal in finances also have military backgrounds," Chris Hamilton, who was the FBI's unit chief for Palestinian investigations until last year, tells Newsweek. "The fact is, they have the ability [to attack] in the United States."
American screw-tightening on Iran over its nuclear program, might prompt Hezbollah to issue such an order. Iran is Hezbollah's main political and financial backer.
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"It would be enough for the Iranian leadership to say the word for Hezbollah to launch an attack," Congressman Ed Royce, a Republican from California who chairs the House subcommittee on international terrorism and non-proliferation, tells Newsweek.
Support for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah runs high in Lebanese communities across the country, and it spikes when Israel's war with Hizbullah or with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza heats up. But Arab-American leaders complain law enforcers are too quick to equate the pride some expatriots take in Hezbollah's stand against Israel --or even just the sympathy they feel for the Lebanese people-with support for terrorism.
"Any time somebody sends money to somebody in Lebanon, the [prosecutors] say it's for Hezbollah," said Maurice Herskovic, who initially represented one of the defendants in a recent case in Detroit.
Law enforcers say there's been no sign the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, with all the Arab anger it stirs against America, will goad the group into action against the U.S.
Hezbollah has not targeted Americans since the 1980s, when attacks on a Marine barracks in Lebanon and on the U.S. Embassy there killed more than 300 people.
Maybe if the Washington government had managed our borders, we might not have such a possibility...to say nothing of 9/11.
Peace and pandering at any price...even 3000 lives on 9/11.
And by "Hezbollah" they mean "Iran." Looks like sufficient reason for the US to press for Hez's elimination.
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/
Hezbollah Rockets kill 12 in Israel
Duuugh Dearborn Mich...
They can, but they won't. They got a big surprise just after 9-11, when they learned that their analysis of American public sentiment wasn't as accurate as they thought. Right now I'd say they're biding their time for the next Democrat administration.
LOL
LOL!
I wonder, if this is true, why they wouldn't have attacked already.
Hm... no content except 'there's a threat!". Must be budget time again.
The borders are being managed. Two border agents were just found guilty and will be sentenced August 22nd if the islamonazis don't blow us up before the sentencing.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1678755/posts
Do you know if we have done anything to keep people from over staying their VISAs?
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Best I can answer that is that I have seen nothing that says the State Department is doing ANYTHING about expired visa holders who are still here. What worries me more, is the people that are here, that State does not even know about, and that number is WAY over the 10 million mark.
We decided to allow the mass immigration of Islam into our homeland and now we confront the obvious and predicable result, Islamic terror.
Watch and listen to what is being done and said in the ME. August 22nd is the day MoHAMhead supposedly went to his heaven.
Hezbollah is just offering to do the job that al-Qaeda cannot, or will not, do.
And don't think for an instant, they have not been trying to build the capability over the past five years. For all we know, they may have quite a bit of the infrastructure in place for a broad strike. Sure, the FBI has been extremely diligent, and Homeland Security has tied up a lot of the loopholes that could have given them more cover, but was it really necessary for the entire world to know that the phone search capabilities of certain agencies were so well developed? Representatives of the various Islamic militant activities outside the US who are trying to make contact with persons within the US, or phone calls being made from within the US to Islamic militants outside our borders, are certainly of great and abiding interest to those who would be expected to act as first line of defense.
The greatest of weapons of mass destruction may well turn out to be a series of electronic fund transfers between specific individuals, and certain agencies whose entire interest seems to be the disabling of US capacity to respond and effectively act upon information that a concerted action is about to take place.
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