This MSNBC story (Hat-tip: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses) is for all the people that think that we can just contain the “tiny minority of extremists” in the Muslim world to Iraq and the Middle East. How very naive. It also shows why whenever you hear an elected official claim that putting a wall on the southern border with Mexico is “too expensive” or “will cause tensions”, that they are very heavily influenced by lobbyists and not by concern for your safety or the welfare of the United States.
Does anyone recall how quickly we as a nation put a steel oil pipeline in this country during WWII? It stretches hundreds of a miles, across swamps and mountains and deserts and was completed in a mere months and at tremendous cost, but it helped win the war. I fail to see how in the hell our politicians can keep lying about the possibility of a fence or wall on the border. GET IT DONE, CONGRESS! Here’s a better reason than even the Mexicans have given us:
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it, according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the continent.
From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.
An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.
U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.
They are men like Mustafa Khalil Meri, a young Arab Muslim whom Telemundo interviewed in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city and the center of the Tri-border region. There is nothing particularly distinctive about him, but beneath the everyday T-shirt he wears beats the heart of a devoted Hezbollah militiaman.
‘If he attacks Iran, in two minutes Bush is dead,’ Meri said. ‘We are Muslims. I am Hezbollah. We are Muslims, and we will defend our countries at any time they are attacked.’
U.S. and South American officials warn that Meri’s is more than a rhetorical threat.
It is surprisingly easy to move across borders in the Triple Frontier, where motorbikes are permitted to cross without documents. A smuggler can bike from Paraguay into Brazil and return without ever being asked for a passport, and it is not much harder for cars and trucks.
The implications of such lawlessness could be dire, U.S. and Paraguayan officials said. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Hezbollah militiamen would raise no suspicions because they have Latin American passports, speak Spanish and look like Hispanic tourists.
I can tell you from personal experience that this statement is not hyperbole. Arab Muslims dressed in Mexican-style clothing are almost impossible to recognize as Arabs until you hear them speak or are within range close enough to see their faces. And now many of them are learning Spanish to further hide their true nature. You can bank on it that Hezbollah and other Islamist terror organizations have been and are continuing to exploit these weaknesses in U.S. defenses. I’ve been hearing of Muslims crossing the border for years now.
The CIA singles out the Mexican border as an especially inviting target for Hezbollah operatives. ‘Many alien smuggling networks that facilitate the movement of non-Mexicans have established links to Muslim communities in Mexico,’ its Counter Terrorism Center said in a 2004 threat paper.
‘Non-Mexicans often are more difficult to intercept because they typically pay high-end smugglers a large sum of money to efficiently assist them across the border, rather than haphazardly traverse it on their own.’
Deadly legacy of a lawless frontier
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Tri-border has become a top-level, if little-publicized, concern for Washington, particularly as tension mounts with Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor. Paraguayan government officials told Telemundo that CIA operatives and agents of Israel’s Mossad security force were known to be in the region seeking to neutralize what they believe could be an imminent threat.
But long before that, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies regarded the region as a ‘free zone for significant criminal activity, including people who are organized to commit acts of terrorism,’ Louis Freeh, then the director of the FBI, said in 1998.
Edward Luttwak, a counterterrorism expert with the Pentagon’s National Security Study Group, described the Tri-border as the most important base for Hezbollah outside Lebanon itself, home to ‘a community of dangerous fanatics that send their money for financial support to Hezbollah.’
‘People kill with that, and they have planned terrorist attacks from there,’ said Luttwak, who has been a terrorism consultant to the CIA and the National Security Council. ‘The northern region of Argentina, the eastern region of Paraguay and even Brazil are large terrains, and they have an organized training and recruitment camp for terrorists.’
‘Our experience is that if you see one roach, there are a lot more,’ said Frank Urbancic, principal deputy director of the State Department’s counterterrorism office, who has spent most of his career in the Middle East.
Much more to read here.
Podcasts Archive
We are in a world war and real estate in the United States is vulnerable this time.
Why do we refuse to connect the dots? The dots are so numerous now that the page is black, as black as the flag of Jihad that the True Believers want to see flying over the White House.
They will not stop until they win or until they can no longer launch attacks. Why can’t we admit this?
Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear would easily have guessed this type of horror was coming to the US even before Dwarf-Thug-in-Chief of Iran visited with his pal, Chavez! The newspaper and TV photos of them were sickening, showing their evil grinning faces! Are Americans in the US intending to continue with their heads stuck in the sand? Are they intending to continue their bleats of ignorance and lack of just plain common sense? As long as Americans in the US continue with their blind stupidity there cannot ever be any hope of salvaging our nation, the ONCE Great USA! WAKE UP!!!
I suppose the reason why the three countries in that area do nothing about this is because they figure this is a fight between jihadists and the US and it doesn’t affect them (it probably doesn’t hurt that people are most likely being paid off to lay off of this scum). Wrong. If the US collapses thanks to Islamania the rest of the hemisphere goes down with it. A lot of the people in the region might not like the US for various reasons but they would be worse off without it being around. Too bad they don’t get it. But then again, too many people in the US don’t get it either.