For the life of me, I'm trying to understand what Israel had to gain in this "prisoner exchange." To be a prisoner exchange, don't all the parties in question have to still be alive? It was really a remains exchange where Israel has to turn over a breathing, living terrorist to boot.

ROSH HANIKRA, Israel (CNN) -- Israeli forensic experts have begun trying to identify the remains of what are believed to be two captured Israeli soldiers, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Hezbollah officials handed over two black coffins to Red Cross officials, who will carry them over the border to Israel.

If forensics experts determine that the remains are those of Staff Sgt. Ehud Goldwasser and Sgt. First Class Eldad Regev, Israel will turn over to Hezbollah five Lebanese prisoners -- including convicted murderer Samir Kuntar, whom many Israelis consider the embodiment of evil.

Israel is also returning the remains of 199 fighters from Lebanon who Israel says were killed in clashes over the years. Nineteen coffins were being transferred onto Red Cross trucks and sent to the Lebanese side, the Israeli military said.

The forensic determination is expected to take several hours.

The Israel Defense Forces said it would not comment on the transfer until it was complete.

"The IDF has yet to complete the process of identifying the soldiers' remains and will therefore make no comments about the process conclusions until those are completed and the families of the soldiers are notified," it said in a statement. Watch as coffins are delivered »

The transfer began shortly before 10 a.m. Israel time (3 a.m. ET) at the Rosh Hanikra crossing in western Galilee, which the army had declared a closed military zone a day earlier.

The swap caps a tireless campaign by the soldiers' families to bring them home. It also ends decades of resistance by the Israeli government, which wanted to use Kuntar as a bargaining chip to obtain information about a missing airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.

The Shiite militia Hezbollah cast the swap as a victory for all Lebanese, with one official calling it "an official admission of defeat."

...A member of the Palestine Liberation Front, Kuntar led a group of four men who entered Israel from Lebanon by boat in 1979. They killed a police officer who came across them. Then they took a 28-year-old man and his 4-year-old daughter hostage.

Kuntar shot the father dead at close range in front of his daughter and tossed his body in the sea. He then smashed the girl's head, killing her, too. In addition, a 2-year-old girl from the same family suffocated as her mother tried to stop her from crying while they hid during the violence.

Kuntar was sentenced to 542 years in prison.

...A day before the transfer, Goldwasser's father, Shlomo, held out hope about his son's fate.

"They were kidnapped alive. [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nassrallah swears on it the first day that he announced to the world he kidnapped two soldiers alive," the father said. "If tomorrow he brings them in coffins, it means that he killed them -- his words. It means that they killed them, and if he killed them I am waiting for him to be punished."
The poor father. This is a just exchange? Hezbollah is absolutely correct, this is in fact a victory for them.

Labels: Hezbollah, Israel

The reported killing of master-terrorist Imad Mugniyah is a very big deal -- much bigger than being reported -- even bigger than the capture of 9-11 mastermind Khalid Mohammed.

Mugniyah was one of the torch bearers for the original fathers of Islamic terrorism, was fully supported by the Iranian government, and had a web of connections to other terror masters including Osama bin Laden (as early as 1994, showing OBL the ropes a bit).

That last bit is of course being completely downplayed by our media.

You remember that film Syriana - the lead character George Clooney played was Bob Baer, a CIA agent who became obsessed with Mugniyah and the embassy/barracks bombing in Lebanon (his book, See No Evil, cited by the movie as its basis disappointingly had nothing to do with the movie [instead was an anti-oil screed].) Anyway, Baer called him "the master terrorist, the grail that we have been after since 1983."

Israel's denying the hit on "the grail." I hope that means our SpecOps got him. Be nice to have some confidence in our spy abilities -- for a change.

Thomas Joscelyn summarizes what he likewise notes is the lack of coverage on Mugniyah's connections to al Qaeda:

But here is something that none of the press accounts I've read today have reported: Imad Mugniyah played an instrumental role in al Qaeda's rise. I detailed Mugniyah's role in al Qaeda's terror in Iran's Proxy War Against America, a short book published by the Claremont Institute last year. I won't go into all of the details again in this post, but here is a quick summary of the relationship:

• Mugniyah met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the early 1990's. The two agreed to work together against their common enemies, including America. Al Qaeda operatives were then trained by Mugniyah and other Hezbollah trainers, as well as Iranian personnel, in Sudan, Lebanon, and Iran. Both the Clinton administration, in its first two indictments of al Qaeda and bin Laden, and the 9/11 Commission found significant evidence of this early collaboration.

• According to Bob Baer, a long-time CIA operative who tracked Mugniyah for years, one of Mugniyah's goons facilitated the travel of an al Qaeda operative en route to the November 19, 1995, bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The bombing was among al Qaeda's earliest operations.

• There is no real doubt that Iran and Mugniyah's Hezbollah were primarily responsible for the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. But the 9/11 Commission also found evidence that al Qaeda may have played some role. Intelligence indicates that al Qaeda was planning a similar operation in the months prior. And afterwards, in telephone conversations that were evidently intercepted, Osama bin Laden received congratulations from his fellow terrorists, including Ayman al Zawahiri.

• Al Qaeda's August 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were modeled after Mugniyah's bombings in Lebanon in 1983. According to the 9/11 Commission, bin Laden asked Mugniyah for help in executing such attacks and Mugniyah agreed to provide his assistance. Thereafter, al Qaeda adopted Hezbollah's modus operandi: simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers. Al Qaeda's August 7, 1998, bombings directly mirrored Hezbollah's simultaneous strike against the U.S. Marine barracks and a headquarters for French paratroopers on October 23, 1983. In fact, the 9/11 Commission found that some of the terrorists responsible for the embassy bombings were trained by Hezbollah. This is a crucial point: al Qaeda's most successful attack prior to 9/11--the August 7, 1998, embassy bombings--was modeled after Hezbollah's operations.

• After the 9/11 attacks, Bob Baer immediately suspected that Mugniyah and his masters had played some role. (I also discussed this in a previous article, "Sy Hersh's Overactive Imagination".) Amazingly, the 9/11 Commission found that senior Hezbollah operatives were aware of and facilitated the travel of many of the 9/11 hijackers. This evidence was so "disturbing" that the Commission called for a further investigation into the matter. Although he was not named by the Commission directly, Mugniyah was reportedly one of the senior Hezbollah terrorists involved.

• There are reports, although unconfirmed, that Mugniyah may have helped senior al Qaeda operatives flee Afghanistan in late 2001.

There is much more to this story, which can be found in my short book on the topic: Iran's Proxy War Against America.

Labels: al qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, terrorism

[NY Sun] A report by Secretary-General Ban links a Qaeda-affiliated group in Lebanon to Syrian intelligence.

The information, included in a report released yesterday, is based largely on a letter to Mr. Ban written by Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon. The letter draws upon information gathered during the interrogation of captured leaders of a group known as Fatah al-Islam, and from data found in a Palestinian Arab refugee camp in northern Lebanon, Nahr el-Bared, where the group mounted a rebellion against Lebanon's government in the summer.
To this Thomas Smith explains the relevance of the Syrian "war room," or council of "Syrian intelligence operatives in Lebanon, elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (also in Lebanon), and Lebanon-based Hezbollah," all under the domain of legendary Islamic terrorist leader Imad Fayez Mugniyah, whom according to Stratfor:

Notorious Hezbollah leader Imad Fayez Mugniyah has been tasked by the Iranian government to organize cells of Shiite operatives in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to carry out attacks in the event of war against Iran, a source reported Oct. 25. Without any guarantees that potential negotiations with the United States over Iraq would result in a comprehensive agreement, Iran needs a variety of levers to demonstrate to its Arab neighbors that cooperating in a U.S. attack against Iran comes with risks.

Labels: al qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran, Islamic extremism, syria

Pat Dollard, another great embedded journalist and Hollywood film maker, has a post on his site to remember the 24th anniversary of the Iranian-Hezbollah bombing of our US Marine barracks base that murdered 241 US servicemen. Islamic extremism and terrorist proxy wars were with us long before September 11, 2001. It just took us a while to realize that. And, sadly, many still don't.

Labels: Hezbollah, Iran, terrorism, war on terror

ON the heels of news that US troops have captured Iranian backed terrorists in Iraq, comes this plea from Sen. Joe Lieberman.

While some will no doubt claim that Iran is only attacking U.S. soldiers in Iraq because they are deployed there--and that the solution, therefore, is to withdraw them--Iran's parallel proxy attacks against moderate Palestinians, Afghans and Lebanese directly rebut such claims.

Iran is acting aggressively and consistently to undermine moderate regimes in the Middle East, establish itself as the dominant regional power and reshape the region in its own ideological image. The involvement of Hezbollah in Iraq, just revealed by Gen. Bergner, illustrates precisely how interconnected are the different threats and challenges we face in the region. The fanatical government of Iran is the common denominator that links them together.

No responsible leader in Washington desires conflict with Iran. But every leader has a responsibility to acknowledge the evidence that the U.S. military has now put before us: The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East.

America now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior, including the immediate cessation of its training and equipping extremists who are killing our troops.
Read the whole thing.

Labels: Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Lieberman, terrorism

[Iranian Daily Etemad-e Meli, via MEMRI.org] Hizbullah Deputy Secretary-General Na'im Qasim has said that Hizbullah would not disarm even if Israel withdrew from the Sheb'a Farms.

He said that this was because there would still be a need to liberate the prisoners being held in Israel, and to confront the danger that presents to Lebanon.
If you don't recall your Shebba Farms history, the term was never a political hotpoint until Hezbullah made it one.

After decades of pressure from the United Nations and the West, Israel conceded and withdrew from Southern Lebanon. The international community and UN certified in 2000 that Israel's withdraw from Lebanon was complete based on borders previously accepted by all parties. It was only after that certification that Israel's enemies decided that Sheeba Farms was still "occupied" and thus any peace null and void.

Neither Syria, Lebanon nor Hezbollah had ever cited Israel's existence at Shebba as a factor prior to 2000. Thus, Hezbollah uses Shebba Farms as an excuse to continue launching rocket attacks at Israel.

Israel could withdraw to Tel Aviv and Hezbollah would no doubt claim that land as theirs. Indeed, they have -- their leader stating previously that "Palestine" was all the land from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.

Labels: Hezbollah, Israel, Shebba Farms