Soccer Dad

What Is Hezbollah Doing On The US-Mexican Border?

Did they take a wrong turn at Beirut?

Hardly.

I wrote a post last month about how the drug trafficking of both Hezbollah and Hamas has been documented in testimony before Congress, by the DEA and in the media--in South America.

Now Hezbollah has moved north:

Mexico foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to establish a network in South America, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Hezbollah operatives employed Mexicans nationals with family ties to Lebanon to set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West, the Al-Seyassah daily said.

According to the report, Mexican police mounted a surveillance operation on the group's leader, Jameel Nasr, who traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hezbollah commanders there.

Among others who have brought up Hezbollah's involvement in the drug trade:

In June, a U.S. congresswoman wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to warn that Hezbollah was increasing its presence in Central and South America.

In her letter, Congresswoman Sue Myrick called on the U.S. to work with Mexican forces, as there was intelligence that Hezbollah was working in conjunction with Mexican drug cartels on the U.S.-Mexico border.

...In February a U.S. court in Miami indicted three men for raising funds for Hezbollah, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization.

According to a Fox News article, there have already been clear indications of a Hezbollah presence in the area:

A 2006 House Homeland Security Committee report further noted that Hezbollah members have already been caught entering the United States via Mexico, suggesting expanded activity. The report cited as one example the case of Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, the brother of a Hezbollah chief, who in 2005 pleaded guilty to providing material support to Hezbollah after being smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border and settling in Dearborn, Mich.

Read the whole thing.

Hezbollah--which has no trouble dealing in illegal drugs, regardless of the strictures of the Koran--has a history of killing Americans:

• In April 1983, Hizbullah exploded a truck in front of the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon--killing 63 employees, including the Middle East CIA director. 120 were wounded.
  
• In October 1983, a Hizbullah suicide bomber blew up an American barracks in the Beirut airport, killing 241 U.S. Marines in their sleep and wounding another 81.
  
• In December, the American embassy in Kuwait was bombed.
  
• In March 1984, the CIA station chief in Lebanon, William Buckley, was kidnapped by Hizbullah and then murdered.
  
• Buckley was the fourth American to be kidnapped in Beirut, and many more suffered the same fate between 1982 and 1992 (though not all died or were killed in captivity).
  
• In September 1984, the U.S. embassy annex near Beirut was hit by yet another truck bomb (also traced to Hizbullah).
  
• In December 1984, a Kuwaiti airliner was hijacked and two American passengers employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development were murdered.
  
• The following June, Hizbullah operatives hijacked still another airliner, TWA flight 847. An American naval officer aboard the plane was shot, and his body was hurled onto the tarmac. 
  
  [Condensed from World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win, by Norman Podhoretz]

Regardless of how the Obama administration wants to label the war on terror, the question is what measures will it take to defend the US from the threat of Hezbollah operating right across the US border?

by Daled Amos