Txsleuth, I jost got here. Are you certain that Hersh said something about Iran wanting a Sunni crescent? That makes no sense, as Iran is Shia!
I am so glad you pointed that out.
I realized my mistake...and have been trying to figure out how to "fix it"..without confusing people that may not have read the original post.
Yes..Miss M...you are very correct, I transposed Sunni and Shiite in that post.
Thank you..thank you for pointing that out!!
here is the relevant part, with highlighting
So essentially, I quote -- I saw Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, and he described it this way, as fitna, the Arab word for civil war. As far as he is concerned, we are interested in recreating what's happening in Iraq in Lebanon, that is, Sunni versus Shia.
And in looking into that story -- and I saw him in December -- I found this. That we have been pumping money, a great deal of money, without Congressional authority, without any Congressional oversight -- Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia is putting up some of this money -- for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we think that the -- we want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.
They call it the "Shiite Crescent." And a lot of this money, and I can't tell you with absolute assurance how, exactly when and how, but this money has gotten into the hands, among other places, in Lebanon, into the hands of three, at least three jihadist groups.
There's three Sunni jihadist groups whose main claim to fame inside Lebanon right now is that they are very tough. These are people connected to al Qaida who want to take on Hezbollah. So this government, at the minimum, we may not directly be funneling money to them, but we certainly know that these groups exist.
My government, which arrests al Qaida every place it can find them and sends -- some of them are in Guantanamo and other places, is sitting back while the Lebanese government we support, the government of Prime Minister Siniora, is providing arms and sustenance to three jihadist groups whose sole function seems to me and to the people that talk to me in our government, to be there in case there is a real shoot-'em-up with Hezbollah and we really get into some sort of serious major conflict between the Sunni government and Hezbollah, which is largely Shia, who are basically -- as you know, there is a coalition headed by Hezbollah that is challenging the government right now, demonstrations, sit-ins. There has been some violence.
So America, my country, without telling Congress, using funds not appropriated, I don't know where, but my sources believe much of the money obviously came from Iraq, where there's all kinds of piles of loose money, pools of cash that could be used for covert operations.
All of this should be investigated by Congress, by the way, and I trust it will be. In my talking to the membership, members there, they are very upset that they know nothing about this. And they have great many suspicions.
It's easy to see from this why the fast post by sleuth got the Shiite and Sunni backwards. As she said Hersh was talking in a very circular and confused manner. I wish we had an edit function for our posts short of getting the mods to do something. I know her feeling of wanting to go back and correct something I posted in a rush but not wanting to confuse matters further.
I do think that it is significant that Nasrallah is his source on this. He is a tool of the enemies of America and has been his entire career. I had a Spanish teacher in High School who was the senior military intelligence analyst for the region that include My Lai. "Exposing" that "massacre" was Hersh's claim to fame. This teach agreed that the troops had killed lots of people there, but he denied that they were "innocent civilians." He said that he knew from first hand knowledge that the village of My Lai sat on top of a major underground VC/North Vietnamese supply base and staging area and that everyone in that village was part of the terrorist operation (he didn't use that word at the time) that was slaughtering South Vietnamese villagers who opposed the communists by the thousands.
Someday someone will break that story and, if people like Hersh or Jon Carry are still alive, they will be given a Mussolini retirement party.