Posted on 07/18/2006 10:58:12 AM PDT by BigFinn
One thing is lost in all the press coverage of the whining Americans who went to Lebanon of their own accord and now want us to pick up the tab to get them out.
THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS IN LEBANON ARE HEZBOLLAH SUPPORTERS.
Most of them are Shiite Muslims, many of whom hold dual U.S. and Lebanese citizenship. Many are anchor babies born here to Muslims in the U.S. illegally. Some are illegal aliens who became citizens through rubber-stamping Citizenship and Immigration Services (and its INS predecessor) coupled with political pressure by spineless politicians.
Of the 25,000 American citizens and green-card holders in Lebanon, at least 7,000 are from Dearborn, Michigan, the heart of Islamic America, and especially Shia Islam. These 7,000 are mostly Shi'ite Muslims who openly and strongly support Hezbollah. Ditto for many of the rest of the 25,000 that are there.
Many of the 7,000 plus Detroiters in Lebanon are active in Dearborn's Bint Jbeil cultural center (the Lebanese American Heritage Club also features mostly Hezbollah fans). Bint Jbeil is a Hezbollah-dominated city in the South of Lebanon, a frequent destination of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who is very at home there. Bint Jbeil is a frequent source of shellings on Northern Israel.
Bint Jbeil natives now living in our country so strongly support Hezbollah that they got Republican Congressman Joe Knollenberg (and his then top staffer, Paul Welday) and then-U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham to give Hezbollah forces in Southern about $86 million of our tax money, no strings.
Given this information, and the fact that several Shi'ite Muslim Lebanese U.S. citizens from Dearborn have been indicted and/or convicted of laundering money to Hezbollah, is it a good idea to rush to bring 25,000 such persons back to the U.S. at a time when Hezbollah is at war against our strongest U.S. ally? Does the fact, that Hezbollah numerous times--and especially now--has announced veiled and not-so-veiled intentions to attack Americans on U.S. soil, make the case to quickly bring these terror-sympathizing Americans back to U.S. soil? Many are individuals whose activity should have mandated prosecution and jail-time. But they are free because a spineless U.S. Attorney, Stephen Murphy III, and equally weak federal law enforcement chiefs of Michigan FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who pander to them.
These are people who hold U.S. citizenship but support a group that murdered over 300 U.S. Marines and civilians, some through torture; a group that is part of the Al-Qaeda network; a group that is training insurgent terrorists against our troops in Iraq and giving them IEDs to blow them up; a group that worked with Qaeda to bomb the Khobar Towers. Americans who support this group are not American. They merely possess the proper paperwork.
And they are very dangerous. One of them, Lola Elzein--a student at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and an officer of the Hezbollah-supporting Arab American PAC--threatened my life and that of my family members because I've written about the group's Detroit-area's extremist Hezbollah sympathizers. Hezbollah's violence has already arrived in America, and we don't need to pay to transport 25,000 of its sympathizers back to our shores.
Wile the government has announced it will charge these individuals for the expensive transport out of Lebanon to Cyprus back to the U.S., they feds say they will accept IOUs for that transport. Think we'll get the money back? Just ask the Katrina aid administrators.
Do you want your tax dollars to subsidize Hezbollah supporters' return to America? Are these the kind of U.S. citizens we badly need back in our country at this time?
Should Hezbollah supporters be transported on a ship named for one of the most heroic events in U.S. history, the U.S.S Iwo Jima? Should U.S. tax dollars fund the charter of commercial ships to transport the rest of these terror-sympathizers?
The instant answer from all freedom-loving Americans to these questions should be a loud "NO."
These people went to Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon of their own accord. And they were safe there because they support the terrorist group. Now, their fortune has changed. Tough.
It is not the responsibility of U.S. taxpayers to rescue terrorist-supporters who voluntarily went to a dangerous area . . . just because their whines are loud and annoying.
We are picking up the tab for this unfortunate rescue. U.S. funds used to rescue terrorist-sympathizers--YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
So is America too slow to get these undesirable U.S. citizens out of Lebanon? On the contrary, not slow enough.
Great post! I understand Ms. Schlussel speaks Arabic, too...
From her website....specifically her bio
Debbie Schlussel
DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL:
Conservative political commentator, radio talk show host, columnist, and attorney
Debbie Schlussel says the best article ever written about her (by Detroit Free Press reporter Julie Hinds) captures what she's about in a nutshell. Read it here.
Schlussel's unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism and a host of other issues make her a popular speaker and television and radio news talk show guest, both nationally & internationally. (Her online fan club is the Internet’s second largest for a political personality--behind only Ann Coulter.) She is a University of Michigan graduate and holds both Law and MBA degrees from the University of Wisconsin.
As both an attorney and a frequent New York Post and Jerusalem Post columnist, Schlussel's writings/commentary on radical Islam and her legal actions against radical Islamic parties have gotten a great deal of attention -- and results. Columns she's written in the New York Post and appearances she’s made on "O'Reilly Factor":
* caused FBI Director Robert Mueller to revoke an award to an American citizen who was a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist and was involved with a group with Al-Qaeda and Hamas ties (October 2003);
* caused Caribou Coffee to have its worst financial quarter ever, when Schlussel exposed the coffee chains radical Islamic ownership and leadership of Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (a supporter of homicide bombings), and caused Starbucks to have its best quarter, when Schlussel exposed the radical Muslim boycott of the Jewish-led chain (June/July 2002). Caribou Coffee's then-CEO, Don Dempsey, credited Schlussel with driving down sales and profits at his national coffee chain by calling him to the mat on Qaradawi, and her work on this issue was cited in Newsweek and Business Forward magazines;
* exposed Detroit's U.S. Attorney (the Justice Department's chief official in the heart of Islamic America), his secret dealings with Hamas money-launderers and terrorists the U.S. government had fought to deport (November 2003), and his efforts to overturn a guilty verdict against members of Detroit's Al-Qaeda sleeper cell and set them free (December 2003); and
* exposed billionaire hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and his Hip-Hop Summit Action Network's political/voter registration efforts on behalf of not only Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, but also radical Palestinian and anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activists and groups.
In 2002, radical Muslim University of Michigan Regent Candidate, Ismael Ahmed, credited Schlussel for his election defeat--when she exposed his tax-funded Arab organization’s financial and moral support of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists.
In 1998, Schlussel went undercover, dressed as a religious Muslim woman, to the Islamic Center of America, North America's largest mosque, and reported, in The Detroit News on its support for terrorism, and anti-American, anti-Semitic hate. She was interviewed and quoted by Rolling Stone about the mosque and its radical imam, Hassan Qazwini, who is frequently consulted by President Bush and was invited to his Crawford, Texas ranch. Qazwini was embarrassed by the radical speakers and anti-Semitic hate he fostered in his mosque, and refused to address it in newspaper interviews. Schlussel was even attacked for her work on terrorism by movie critic Roger Ebert in a 2005 syndicated movie review.
Schlussel, who speaks Hebrew, Arabic, French, and Russian, works closely with several Federal law enforcement agencies, consulting on fighting the domestic War on Terrorism, and has provided them with much useful information. She has gone undercover, infiltrating many Muslim organizations in the Detroit area (the heart of Islamic America), exposing their radical nature and support for terrorism. Schlussel continues to represent a very valuable Muslim confidential informant to several federal government agencies, who has been responsible for putting hundreds with terrorism connections behind bars. She also represented several whistleblowers who exposed terrorist operations now under investigation.
Schlussel was also the first journalist/columnist to expose Indicted Islamic Jihad frontman, Sami Al-Arian's visits to the Bush White House and photos with President Bush, as well as his campaign contributions to prominent U.S. Congressmen, including House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde. Al-Arian blamed Schlussel (because of her series of columns on Al-Arian in 2001) and FOX News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (on whose show Schlussel appeared, in October 2001, regarding Al-Arian) for his dismissal from the University of South Florida.
As an attorney, Schlussel represented University of Michigan students in a lawsuit against the University when it hosted Al-Arian as a speaker at a radical conference (a conference urging divestment from Israel) on campus, exposing him and other radical speakers, and putting them and their supporters on campus on the defensive.
You can read her popular twice-weekly online column, "Debbie Does Politics," on the Internet, at www.PoliticalUSA.com, where she is a Contributor/Columnist and her own website, debbieschlussel.com. Schlussel is also a frequent New York Post, Jerusalem Post, and Vancouver Province columnist. Her columns have often been read on the air by Rush Limbaugh, on whom she broke the Monday Night Football story. Schlussel's columns have also frequently appeared on the Knight-Ridder Newswire and in several major newspapers, including The Washington Times, The New York Post, The Jerusalem Post, The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Wisconsin State Journal. She has also written columns for FOXNews.com.
Schlussel has often been quoted in quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, USA Today, New York Post, New York Daily News, New York Newsday, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Sports Business Daily, The Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Indianapolis Star, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Kansas City Star, The Arizona Republic, San Jose Mercury News, The Austin Statesman, The Wisconsin State Journal, Charlotte Observer, National Post of Canada, McLean’s of Canada, Daily Telegraph of London, The Guardian U.K., The Vancouver Province, The Jerusalem Post, The Age of Australia, The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner, Associated Press, Knight-Ridder Wire, CanWest Global Wire, Golf World, CNN.com, and many other mainstream press publications.
Attacked as "Enemy #1" by Ms. Magazine ("Women to Watch . . . and Watch Out For," February/March 2001), Schlussel is a frequent guest on ABC's "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher," CBS' "Early Show," FOX News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor," "Hannity & Colmes," "FOX News Live," "Beyond the News," and "Judith Regan Tonight," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," "Buchanan & Press," "The Abrams Report with Dan Abrams," "Scarborough Country," and "MSNBC Live," CNN's "Crossfire," "Talk Back Live" and "Weekend Wrap," C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," ESPN's "Outside the Lines," FOX Sports Net's "Best Damn Sports Show Period," and the Nationally Syndicated "America’s Black Forum" (hosted by NFL on FOX's James Brown).
The Hotline, politics' and talk shows' most influential newsletter and online website, called Schlussel a "rising GOP pundit," and The Hotline's influential former columnist (and current "Hardball" producer) Howard Mortman wrote in his "Extreme Mortman" column that Schlussel is "one of the fastest rising young TV pundits today." The site's webcast of Schlussel was The Hotline's most viewed webcast ever.
In 2002-2003, Schlussel was the host of her own show, “The Debbie Schlussel Show,†on 97.1 FM, Detroit’s FM Talk Station (Infinity/CBS)--#1 in its time-slot. A regular on the nationally syndicated “The Howard Stern Show†(audience: 20 million every morning), Schlussel has frequently appeared on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,†the Sean Hannity, Mitch Albom, Larry Elder, and Tom Leykis nationally syndicated radio shows, ESPN Radio, Sporting News Radio, and has been a frequent contributor to nationally syndicated FOX Sports Radio.
On Election Night 2000 through 2001, Schlussel was the political analyst for Detroit’s CBS and UPN Television affiliates, and was a regular political commentator on the weekly series, “Flashpoint,†on Detroit’s NBC affiliate, WDIV-TV. In the past, Schlussel was a daily political commentator on the nationally syndicated (in 23 states) morning radio show, “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse,†a top Chicago morning show, where she successfully predicted John McCain’s win of the Michigan Republican Primary.
The granddaughter of immigrant Holocaust survivors, Schlussel’s mother was born in the former Nazi concentration of Bergen Belsen in Germany, and her father is a Vietnam-era Army Veteran. A frequent speaker at conservative, pro-Israel, and Jewish conferences, gatherings, college campuses, and events around the U.S. Schlussel was a featured speaker at the 2004 National Board Meeting of JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), 2004 National Conference of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), 2001 and 2002 NRA Annual Meetings, 2002 Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) Fraternity National Convention, and 2000 Toward Tradition Conference.
In 1988, Schlussel was the youngest female and youngest Jewish delegate to the Republican National Convention, a National Youth Vice Chairman of George H. W. Bush’s 1988 Presidential campaign, and a Youth Chairman of his 1989 Inauguration. An avid athlete who works out regularly, Schlussel won several medals in tennis, track and cross country running in the 1984 Maccabi Games (the Junior Jewish Olympics). In 1985, she was a finalist to represent the U.S. in tennis at the Maccabiah Games (Jewish Olympics) in Israel.
Schlussel worked for Fred Barnes, Editor of The Weekly Standard Magazine, host of FOX’s “Beltway Boys,†and Mort Kondracke, also of the “Beltway Boys†when Barnes and Kondracke were Senior Editors of The New Republic. Schlussel also worked in Washington for several Congressmen—including Rep. Phil Crane, Chairman of the powerful House Trade Subcommittee.
A lifelong conservative Republican activist, at the age of 21 and with all odds against her, Schlussel ran for the Michigan House of Representatives from the suburban Detroit area and lost by just one vote, the closest election in Michigan political history. In 1986-’87, Schlussel was awarded the title of “Outstanding Teen Age Republican in the Nation†and was honored by President Ronald Reagan. You can often hear or read Schlussel’s insightful commentary on various political and sports-related issues in many publications and on many major radio and television stations in many major-market cities.
Schlussel has literally worked on campaigns for conservative Republican candidates since she was in the sixth grade, when she worked on Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for President. A long-time member of Mensa, the high IQ society, Schlussel was a National Merit Scholar Finalist. She is the only female member of the Advisory Board of the Motor City Bowl, an NCAA Division I college football bowl game, played at the Pontiac Silverdome and Ford Field and has been featured in both “Who’s Who of Outstanding Young Americans†and “Who’s Who of Executives.â€
But do we really have an obligation to extricate them from Lebanon?
Why, yes, as a matter of fact, we do. If only that we may send them to a "rendition" location, to keep them from acting as a "fifth column" either within Lebanon, or other trouble spots throughout the world.
Including locations within the US.
She's an author, media commentator, and she's pretty hot. She's got blonde hair and big boobs. She's the last person you'd think would speak Arabic, but she does.
Strikes me as another raving perpetually indignant lunatic.
But these days we hear this kind of crap and the CORRECT response, the response that's conventional wisdom, is...tolerance.
I wish we weren't so afraid to charge people with treason for treasonous activity. As to these people, all I can say is I wish we'd have tighter standards for citizenship--say, if you stay a certain amount of time in a hostile country, you're outtahere.
Sounds like she's trying to stretch the 7,000 number into 25,000.
I've never seen her on any program but have read her columns on her website.
She provides more investigative facts than most columnists put together.
And she has a very attractive photo.
I don't even believe the 7000 number. 7000 from Dearborn, which also has a large Christian Arab population, including a huge Antiochian parish, does not translate into 7000 Hezbollah supporting Shi'ites, even if there are a lot of dual-citizenship Shi'ites in Dearborn. I'd lay better than even odds that some, and not just a handful, of the 7000 are from that parish and visiting family or Balamand Seminary.
My husband is a naturalized citizen (he was Canadian but was naturalized in his mid 40's.)
Anyhoo, it is my understanding that the US does not recognize Dual Citizenship. When my husband took his "oath", he in effect, renounced his Canadian citizenship.
However, these requirements differ from country to country, so in Canada he may be viewed as a dual citizen, but from the standpoint of the American government, he does not have dual citizenship.
Makes you wonder about the circumstances of these Lebanese claiming to have "dual citizenship."
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We'll know in a few days, but I've heard the number of Americans expected to evacuate is between 4,000 and 5,000. Whether the rest support Hizbollah, I can't imagine how anyone would know that, though clearly many Lebanese do. They may simply live in Lebanon.
I saw one estimate the other day that out of 25,000 "Americans" in Lebanon right now, no more than 20% of them have any intention of evacuating.
So they say. But religious persecution is often easy justification to let foreigners into the USA. Some can and will claim to be a Christian when it serves a purpose
(An awful lot of Americans with ties to Lebanon and dual citizenship are Christians who emigrated to escape persecution or pursue the American dream, but still have family back in the Old Country, and return to visit when times are peaceful. There are also a lot of Americans who go there because of church ties: the Maronite Patriarch is in Lebanon and the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch's seminary is in Lebanon.)
Thanks for bringing information and facts to the demagoguery that I find on this thread. The Maronite Patriarch (who lives in Lebanon) was in Chicago last week for the annual Maronite convention. He is now in Washington D.C. I'm sure he is not thrilled about American citizens of Lebanese descent being asked for reimbursement for the evacuation. Even Debbie's article mentions 7,000 of 25,000 dual citizens. Assuming she's correct, I'd say over 90% of the rest are Christians. Most Lebanese Shiaa immigrants went to Africa. Most Christian immigrants went to Western countries, especially France, the US, and Canada (there are about 600K Lebanese in Montreal). Had this happened last year, I would have been one of the people stuck there, and would have been slimed by Debbie and the rest of the people on this thread. Considering that I love the US more than the average US born American, and the amount of gratitude I and most Lebanese feel toward George W for his role in kicking out the Syrians, this is shameful.
"Quite frankly I doubt the report. An awful lot of Americans with ties to Lebanon and dual citizenship are Christians who emigrated to escape persecution or pursue the American dream, but still have family back in the Old Country, and return to visit when times are peaceful. There are also a lot of Americans who go there because of church ties: the Maronite Patriarch is in Lebanon and the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch's seminary is in Lebanon."
Every single person of Lebanese descent in my hometown is Maronite Catholic. Not a Muslim or Hezbollah supporter among them. And man can they throw a party.
LOL. Debbie must be kidding. Has this country ever paid any mind to what kind of people we allowed across our borders? For heaven's sake -- we had immigrants from the Soviet Union coming here during the height of the Cold War!
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