Free Republic

A loud blast was heard, and a plume of smoke could be seen rising late on Tuesday above the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, a stronghold of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, a Reuters witness said. The city has been on edge for days ahead of an anticipated Israeli attack in retaliation for a strike on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights that killed a dozen Druze children and teenagers. Israel and the United States have blamed Hezbollah for the attack. Hezbollah has denied responsibility.

Hizbullah’s deputy secretary-general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, asserted over the weekend that it was not in Europe’s interest to be “subordinate to the United States.” In a statement released Sunday, Qassem said: “I say to the European countries, if you want to enjoy distinction (in the region), then you should not scrutinize the resistance movements in the region, especially those in occupied Palestine, by describing them as terrorists.” He added that labeling these movements as terrorist would mean that the Europeans would “lose the people in this region.” “Now that the Oslo Accords and the Madrid (Peace Conference) have died,” he...

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.” Asher helped establish and...