Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Iranian paid $125,000 for Olympic no show

Iran have given judo world champion Arash Miresmaeili a $125,000 reward, saying he sacrificed a gold medal at the Athens Olympics by refusing to fight an Israeli, a sports official says.

State television showed Miresmaeili at an award ceremony receiving the same sum as Iranian Hossein Rezazadeh, who took the super-heavyweight weightlifting gold at the second Olympics in succession.

'He would definitely have won a gold medal if he had taken part,' the sports official, who declined to be named, said on Tuesday.

'By refusing to fight, Miresmaeili followed the policies of the country,' the official added.

Iran has refused to recognise the Jewish state's right to exist since its 1979 Islamic revolution.

The International Judo Federation had considered a sanction against Miresmaeili during the Games but concluded that he had been overweight for the fight and could not have taken part.

The International Olympic Committee also did not take any action.

Qureia:: Hamas killing kids in revenge would be justified

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia warned Israel that its air strike Tuesday that killed 14 Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip will invite a response from the group, adding that any retaliation for the killings will be justified.

'This crime cannot be accepted ... No crime goes unpunished,' Qureia said at a meeting of the Palestinian Cabinet. 'For sure there will be retaliation, and the retaliation will be justified if it happens.'"

Saudi Women Come Out Against Terrorist Internet Magazine - Arab News

RIYADH, 7September 2004 — A cross-section of Saudi women has come out strongly against the launch of a new Internet magazine targeting Saudi and other Arab women as well as children in the Al-Qaeda-inspired drive against “infidels in the Arabian Peninsula.”

They said that by calling on women to join in the preparations for Jihad, the deviant group was straying away from the path of Islam, which stands for mercy, compassion, tolerance and justice.

“What do they want to achieve?” asked radio journalist and broadcaster Samar Fatany from Jeddah. “They really need to think about the consequences of their actions. What they are preaching is extremism and revenge which are totally un-Islamic.”

She was confident that the website would have no adverse impact on Saudi women who are “God-fearing and in no way influenced by misguided teachings.”

According to Fatany, the situation reflects the weakness of the Arab world and the inaction on the part of the international community to stand up for justice and peace. She said the “unjust US foreign policy on the one hand and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians on the other have also been responsible for breeding such negative tendencies in the region.”

Another Saudi female journalist Hala Al-Nasser said the promoters of the Internet magazine were giving a twist to the concept of Jihad. “To me, Jihad means constant struggle and perseverance with oneself for the cause of peace.” She said Saudi women would not be attracted by the kind of message being put out on their website.

The newly launched online magazine declares that its mission is to “push our children to the battlefield, like Al-Khansaa.”

Umm Raad Al-Tamimi, the promoter of the magazine, further declares that another of their objective is to teach women how to contribute to jihad, or holy war.

The monthly, published by the “Women’s Information Office in the Arabian Peninsula,” advocates the ideology of Osama Bin Laden: “Drive infidels from the Arabian Peninsula,” or Saudi Arabia, which is home to Islam’s holiest sites, Makkah and Madinah.

Named after a female Arab poet belonging to the pre- and early Islamic eras, the magazine appears to be the first of its kind targeting women and their children for jihad.

“Close ranks on the side of our men,” orders the publication, which also allocates space for alleged Al-Qaeda “martyrs” in Saudi Arabia.

Al-Khansaa, a companion of the Prophet (peace be upon him), is remembered for her eulogies, particularly the one written for her brother Sakhr who died in a tribal feud. She later sent her four sons for jihad. All of them were martyred.

“We will stand up, veiled and in abaya (black cloak), arms in hand, our children on our laps and the Book of Allah and Sunnah of the Prophet as our guide. The blood of our husbands and the bodies of our children are an offering to God,” says the editorial in the first edition.

One of the founders of the publication was Al-Qaeda’s former chief in Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Al-Muqrin, killed in an encounter with the police in June. The journal carries a section entitled “Women’s Camp (Muaskar)”, which is reminiscent of Al-Qaeda’s military online magazine “Muaskar Al-Battar.”

Analysis / A deadly common denominator

By Ze'ev Schiff

There is a line connecting this weekend's mass murder in a school in North Ossetia, the ongoing genocide in Sudan, the bomb blasts on Madrid trains, the bombing of Istanbul synagogues and the suicide bombings in Be'er Sheva. That line is Islamic - for the most part Arab - terrorism and it endangers world peace, particularly as some of the organizations involved are trying to acquire nonconventional weapons, including nuclear arms.
This is not necessarily a 'clash of civilizations,' as a number of academic experts claim, because Islamic terrorists are carrying out murderous attacks against Muslims in Sudan, and against Muslim regimes such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. There is no chance of dealing with such terror without international cooperation. But such a combined effort cannot take place when most members of the United Nations support 'justified terrorism' if it is carried out in the form of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, while a blind eye is turned to the fact that countries like Syria and Iran fund terror operations and harbor the culprits. The massacre in North Ossetia also shows that there is no 'good' or 'bad' terrorism. It is also no coincidence that the last to offer assistance to those being butchered by Arab militias in Sudan are the Arab countries, including its neighbors.

The murder of children by terrorists in North Ossetia is shocking because of the large number of victims, but few remember the trauma of the attack against an Israeli school in Ma'alot nearly 30 years ago. Similarly, in that case, Palestinian terrorists took over the school and held scores of pupils hostage. Like in North Ossetia, the Ma'alot rescue effort hit a snag. The toll was 25 dead, among them 21 pupils. In both cases the murderers presented themselves and were recognized as freedom fighters.

The tendency is now to divert attention from the murderers to the failed attempt of the Russian forces that were rescuing the hostages. The root of the evil, and of the act of terrorism against civilians, lies in the premeditated takeover of the school, and the fact that the pupils were held hostage and were threatened with death if the colleagues of the terrorists were not released from Russian prisons.

The rescue operation in Russia has raised many questions because this is not the first time that dozens of hostages have been lost in that country as a result of an unimaginative and poorly executed action. In October 2002, more than 120 hostages were killed when Russian special forces stormed a Moscow theater where Chechen terrorists held hundreds of civilians. But the theater was only the second-choice target of the terrorists: The primary target had been a nuclear plant, but tight security there deterred them from carrying out their attack."

IDF begins work on southern section of separation fence

Defense Ministry bulldozers, supported by security guards and a military jeep, began yesterday to prepare the ground for the construction of the southern section of the separation fence, in the Hebron Hills area. The preparation work comes five days after Palestinian suicide bombers from the Hebron area carried out a terror attack in Be'er Sheva that killed 16 people.
Security sources confirmed that work had started on a 40-kilometer stretch of fence southwest of Hebron; but the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the work wasn't related to last week's attack. The bombing has put pressure on the government to speed up construction of the fence, which has been delayed by a series of legal challenges.

At this stage, the bulldozers are working on a six-kilometer segment, with the final route of the fence in the area yet to be agreed on. As published last week in Haaretz, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is at odds with some members of the defense establishment over the route of the southern section of the fence. Sharon wants the fence in the southern Hebron Hills area to be moved further to the north of the Green Line.

Security sources told Haaretz yesterday that in light of the delays in the construction of the fence, it is not expected to be completed before 2006."

Hebron's middle classes choose America rather than martyrdom

Tareq Natsha is fresh out of secondary school and about to join a growing exodus: young, middle-class Palestinians who are leaving their West Bank homes with their families' blessing and moving abroad, to escape from the clutches of the terrorist group Hamas.

Better-off parents in cities such as Hebron, a centre of Hamas recruitment for recent 'martyrdom' operations, are increasingly fearful of losing their children to the militants.

Tareq, 18, is planning to move to the United States - to most immigrants a land of opportunity, but to him a place of refuge from the Hamas recruiters, whom he fears will otherwise force him to join their ranks.

'Many families have lost their children for nothing,' he said.

'More and more families are now trying to get their kids out of here to give them a chance to live in peace. They are afraid that if they stay they may come under the influence of Hamas.'

At first glance Hebron's al-Jama neighbourhood does not appear to be a natural recruiting ground for the Palestinian militant groups.

With its large spacious houses, smart cars and vineyards spread out over undulating hills, the district is a pocket of relative prosperity.

There are subtle signs, however, that the violent Palestinian struggle against Israel is inflicting a heavy toll here.

On three sides of Tareq's family home are patches of flattened ground where the Israeli army has levelled the family homes of young suicide bombers.

Since the start of the latest Palestinian uprising four years ago, 11 young men living in al-Jama have met premature deaths while carrying out suicide bombings and gun attacks. Two bombers who killed 16 people in Be'er Sheva last week came from al-Jama.

As Tareq sat in the spacious living room of his family's three-bedroom house, where a portrait of his late father, a lawyer, hangs alongside elaborate Palestinian tapestries, he acknowledged that Hamas had had extraordinary success in secretly recruiting and persuading young middle-class men to die for the cause.

One of them was his friend, Basem Takhouri, a 19-year-old student and the son of a well-off shop owner, who blew up himself and 16 other people on a Jerusalem bus a year ago.

'Basem was a quiet person,' said Tareq. 'It was unexpected. Of course there is plenty of anger towards Israel over the occupation, the killings, the checkpoints and so on. But Hamas has been able to brainwash these young men.'

The response of dozens of young men from Hebron's middle-class families has been to flee the spreading influence of Hamas - which is now reaching beyond its usual recruiting ground in the ranks of poor and dispossessed Palestinians from the refugee camps.

Tareq's older brother, Sami, 21, also plans to move to the US - following another brother, Rami, 26. Yet another brother, Basel, 27, is already in France.

Sami said that those who cannot escape resent those who do, but added: 'It is hard, but we have no choice. We have to make a future for ourselves, and the best way for us to do that now is to go somewhere else.'"

The Unique Depravity of Modern Islamic Terror

It is the new reality of this current age that innocents are specifically targeted by Muslim terrorists in the name of some Islamic cause. The war on terror can be won only if the widespread ideological support for terrorism found in the Muslim world and some quarters of the West can be transformed into widespread condemnation. Nearly all nationalist movements - from the American revolutionaries to the Irish Republican Army - have had enough restraint to avoid the systematic murder of children. But there is something dysfunctional within the soul of modern Islam and its supporters that deems such depravity acceptable. (Wall Street Journal editorial)

Israeli spy satellite launch fails at cost of $100m

The attempt to launch the spy satellite Ofek-6 failed yesterday when the Shavit rocket carrying the payload on its tip malfunctioned in its third and final stage.

Ofek-6 was expected to provide Israel with intelligence data on countries of the 'third tier,' particularly Iran, who pose a threat with their ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.

The loss of the satellite is expected to delay Israel's plans for more sophisticated surveillance of long-distance threats, as well as an early warning of the launch of ballistic missiles from enemy territory.

The financial damage as a result of the loss is estimated at $100 million, but what is of greater concern at Israel Aircraft Industries, the maker of the Shavit rocket and the Ofek series of satellites, is that the reputation of its products is damaged on the international market."

Arafat and old guard are running out of time

There was a time when it was impossible to escape the sight of his rubbery, stubbled features beaming down from half the walls in town.

Ramallah was Yasser Arafat's capital, the administrative seat of the Palestinian Authority, which came into being 10 years ago on a tide of optimism. Last week there was not a single portrait to be seen.

Yasser Arafat: no political gains

Among his subjects, hope for the future has all but evaporated and Mr Arafat sits in the battered compound in a corner of the city where he has lived for more than three years, afraid to leave in case the Israelis block his return.

At the rusty gates one Palestinian did speak up for his leader. 'The reason there are no posters is that he does not wish to brag,' said Rami Snobr, a young guard. 'He is in the heart of his people with or without pictures.'

The view of Imad Muna, an East Jerusalem bookseller, is more typical of the voices being heard in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 'Arafat should go immediately,' he said. 'This is not a political opinion. This is not an extremist opinion. It's the opinion of the majority of people.'

After a decade of misrule Palestinians seem to have lost faith in their president. Gratitude at his achievement in keeping their cause alive and reluctance to criticise for fear of giving comfort to Israel once shielded him from direct attack but no longer.

Hamas Leaders Apparently Quit Damascus, Says Israel

Hamas leaders have apparently quit Damascus following Israeli threats to target them for assassination in retaliation for a Palestinian double suicide bombing last week, Israel's defense minister said on Monday.

But Shaul Mofaz, who joined the cabinet after serving as army chief, said: 'They will not be free. We will chase them down everywhere.'

A Hamas spokesman in Gaza dismissed Mofaz's remarks as 'Israeli propaganda' but declined to comment on the whereabouts of the Damascus-based leaders except to say they visited other Arab countries from time to time."

Naomi Ragen: Who is the Enemy?

I have not been able to recover from the terrorist attack in Beslan. Terrorism is not the enemy. Terrorism is a tactic of the enemy. Who, then, is the enemy that fights all those who identify with the civilized world -- the world in which children and their mothers are cherished and protected, even in war? The world in which school buildings, and ambulances, and hospitals, and holy places are respected and left out of armed conflicts as neutral zones? The world in which children are taught to love thy neighbor, even if he is different and follows another religion? A world in which there can be no excuse for wiring a school building with explosives, starving children and shooting them and their mothers in the back when they cry, and finally blowing up the roof over their heads, burying hundreds in rubble?

The enemy is the man who shot Tali Hatuel when she was nine months pregnant and then shot her four little girls in the head at point blank range. The enemy is the man who blew up elderly Holocaust survivors at their Passover Seder in Netanya. The enemy is the man who blew up the nightclub in Bali, who laid the bombs on the train tracks in Madrid. The enemy is the political framework that train this man and rewarded him. The enemy is the country or countries that financed the political framework. The enemy is the leader of these countries.

The enemy is the religious leaders of these countries, who did not teach their people right from wrong. The enemy is the congregations who sat through the hate-mongering sermons. The enemy is the head of the family who went home and beat his wife, and strapped suicide belts on his sons, and slit the throats of his daughter and sister for supposed violations of the family honor. The enemy is the child who grows up in such a culture and becomes one of its perpetrators.

The enemy is the Western nations who turn a blind eye, looking to excuse this behavior so it will not have to do anything about it. The Sunday Telegraph, Le Monde, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Bild, all claiming the problem is that the Russian government has brought this on itself by angering the Chechans. It is the victim who is to blame. Just as Israelis deserve what they get. Tali Hatuel deserved what she got. Her little girls. The little children of Beslan. The only way to stop the murderers of children from murdering is to give into their demands, these newspapers claim [http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/06/202.html]

I disagree. The only way to stop murderers from murdering is to destroy them.

And if you say this is impossible, I say: think back sixty years. The Thousand Year Reich is the dust of history. We destroyed their leaders, their governments, their buildings, their youth movements, their philosophy. We destroyed it all. We didn't negotiate. We didn't appease. We didn't try to show them our softer side. We uprooted the evil from mankind, because no negotiations, no fence, no signed agreement,no borders, no words were effective against them.

Long before September 11, I wrote to this list: If an Israeli grandmother and her grandchild are not safe in a playground, than no grandmother and no grandchild anywhere in the world are safe in a playground.

If the children of Beslan were not safe in their school, then no child and no school is safe anywhere in the world. Until this enemy is destroyed root and branch, without mercy or equivocation.

The breakdown in morality which we witness everyday is finally engulfing us. Those in the Western news media who call armed terrorists, men who wire schools with explosives and murder women and children, 'hostage-takers' and 'militants' are setting themselves up to mourn their own children.

A generation ago, fifty million people died because the reaction of their governments and their religious leaders and their press came too late. The Neville Chamberlains saw to that. Too late. And for us, who have our Shimon Peres', and our Yossi Beilins, and our Chiracs, and our Kofi Anans, and Michael Moores and John Kerrys will it also be too late?

For the children of Beslan, the answer is yes. And for your children?

Copyright Naomi Ragen, 2004."

Vandals paint swastikas on tombs in eastern France

Vandals spray-painted red swastikas and the initials 'SS' on four family tombs with Jewish-sounding names in a cemetery in eastern France, police said Monday.

ISRAEL EYES LEBANON AS POSSIBLE PEACE PARTNER

Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom suggested that Israel may establish diplomatic channels with Lebanon if the Lebanese government imposes law and order in the war-torn south and disarms the Shi’ite terror group Hizbullah. In the long run, Shalom said Lebanon and Israel may enter peace talks, which is Israel’s goal, according to the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayyat.

Shalom’s remarks were made after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last week condemning Syria's continued interference in neighboring Lebanon, though it did not mention Syria by name. Syria has some 15,000 troops stationed in Lebanon.

The resolution was submitted a day before Lebanon made a Syrian-backed amendment to its constitution that allows the incumbent president Emile Lahoud, who has Damascus’s support, to remain in office for an additional three years.

Shalom said there is no disagreement between Israel and Lebanon and that if Lebanon was a free state with international backing and negotiated with Israel, he does not think anything should stop the two countries from reaching an agreement.

DEBKAfile - World Muslim Brotherhood Calls to Arms to Thwart Gaza Evacuation

At 78, the fiery Egyptian preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi is a household name in the Muslim Arab world, commanding great respect as a leading theologian and star status for his religious phone-in program over Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic television station. Jailed repeatedly in his home country for inciting religious violence, he operates out of Qatar as a member of the supreme Shura council of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in most Middle East countries, and heads a European Islamic canonical law council. In his broadcasts, the radical preacher publicly champions suicide terrorism against Israeli civilians. All the same, British law enforcement authorities saw no need to hamper Qaradawi’s activities when he landed in Britain this week.

The business that brought him to London is revealed here exclusively by DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources. The preacher placed before a World Muslim Brotherhood conference a working document drawn up at “a secret meeting of the movement” somewhere in the Middle East, calling on all brethren in the Muslim world to rise up and foil Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and, most of all, to combat any potential Egyptian or Jordanian role in its implementation. The Brotherhood was exhorted to resort “to all means available.”

The London conference endorsed the resolution and stressed its importance by adding: “No power can prevent the Brotherhood from thwarting this scheme, even if it entails direct and open confrontation with the governments of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. The struggle will be uncompromising.”

This is the first time in many years that the Muslim Brotherhood, ideological soul-mates of al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the Middle East and Europe, has crossed the line between radical doctrinal rhetoric and operational violence, threatening Israel, the Palestinian areas - and Arab governments too - with a campaign of terror.

This sensitive information was relayed to two White House officials, Stephen Hadley and Elliot Abrams, when they met Sharon and other Israeli officials in Tel Aviv Tuesday, July 13, according to DEBKAfile’s political sources. It explains the sudden absence of Egyptian emissaries from contacts with Sharon on the future of his disengagement initiative. Cairo, ever prone to Islamic fundamentalist outbreaks, is loath to take the lid off a fresh wave, especially during the potentially volatile period of regime transition from the ailing president Hosni Mubarak to his son Gemal. Jordan is likewise playing down its support for Sharon’s plan. King Abdullah has enough worries from the danger of Iraqi guerrilla war spillover and clandestine al Qaeda activity without giving the Muslim Brotherhood’s broad and influential Jordanian membership a pretext for opening yet another front against the throne in Amman.

On the other hand, the Palestinian Hamas, Jihad Islami and factions of the popular resistance committees, are bound by the Brotherhood’s decision to fight tooth and nail against Egyptian or Jordanian attempts to establish a security presence in Palestinian areas. This circumstance leaves former Gaza strongman Muhammed Dahlan with little option but to shelve his dreams of ruling the territory and return to his studies in London.

According to our Middle East sources the Muslim Brotherhood found ten reasons for their change of course:

1. Withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will relieve the Israeli government of a heavy burden.

2. It will thrust the Palestinian leadership to the sidelines of government in the two territories. Already Arafat is forced to pretend to kowtow to Egyptian intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman.

3. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak offered Sharon guarantees to preserve calm in the Gaza Strip after Israel’s withdrawal.

4. Instead of opening the way to further major Israeli withdrawals on the West Bank, Sharon’s disengagement will slow the process down.

5. The West Bank’s future will be up for grabs and Israel will have a free hand to exercise its will in the territory including finishing the construction of its defense barrier.

6. Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip would turn the clock back to the discredited solution-in-stages resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

7. The disengagement plan would reduce any Palestinian state that does emerge to the status of Arab protectorate rather than independent state.

8. Political or government changes in Israel could cause the plan to be ditched at any moment before or during execution.

9. Egypt was refused guarantees specifying Israeli political and military conduct in return for Cairo’s assistance in implementing disengagement.

10. All these considerations lay bare the perils inherent in Sharon’s plan and underline the urgency of thwarting it any price.

The prime minister’s office in Jerusalem is fully aware of the new terrorist peril posed by the many-branched Moslem Brotherhood and the almost certain loss of Egyptian and Jordanian security forces as vital props for keeping Palestinian terror in check. Yet Sharon shows no sign of being put off his determination to push ahead, and opposition leader Shimon Peres, co-architect of the failed 1993 Oslo Accords, continues to intone that withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is essential to Israel’s security. Neither have made any reference to the fact that the terrorist threat emanating from land evacuated by Israeli forces will have intensified manifold with the new Muslim Brotherhood threat. Al-Qaradawi will no doubt take full advantage of the broad Arab audience his popular program enjoys to propagate his message of violence far and wide.

Iran's promise: '80 seconds of hell'

On Saturday, June 26, only a few weeks ago, two security guards at the Iranian U.N. Mission were expelled from the United States, and allowed to sneak back to Tehran. The State Department says that they were "engaged in activities inconsistent with their duties." Sure. They were spies.

The pair had been observed by the FBI for months moving around Manhattan videotaping landmark buildings and other infrastructure. It took an alert transit police officer to arrest them when he saw them taking video images on the subway tracks. They claimed diplomatic immunity and were not charged with any crime.

In Tehran, as August began, the Islamic Republic's supreme guide Ali Khamenei, was answering questions from a hundred or so Islamic guidance officials, home from foreign postings for retraining. Most of his answers were trite slogans, but when he was asked, "Is our Islamic Republic at war against the United States," he paused before replying. "It is the United States that is at war against our Islamic Revolution."

However, Khamenei's own newspaper was even more direct. Writing this July, it said, "the White House's 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80 seconds of hell that will burn to ashes. Those who resist Iran will be struck from directions they never expected."

To these facts add that an Arab newspaper published in London and Beirut reported that an Iranian intelligence unit has established a center called "The Brigades of the Shahids of the Global Islamic Awakening," controlled by a Revolutionary Guards intelligence officer, Hassan Abbasi. The newspaper has a tape recording of Abbasi when he spoke of Iran's secret plans, which include "a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization."

Missile strikes

To bring this about, Abbasi said, "There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them." This Revolutionary Guard officer continued by saying, "Iran's missiles are now ready to strike at Western targets, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Ali Khamenei, we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations."

These are facts. Now let's consider the information coming in from Iraq where, day after day, our troops are being killed.

Most of the killing is now being done by Muslim militia -- Shi'ite Muslims -- in the cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Najaf. This militia appears to have some loyalty -- but not much -- to the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, but he is equally obviously not their paymaster.

The militias need weapons, ammunition, gas for their vehicles, food, water and everything else to fight the Iraqi police and our military. Just remember that these are Shi'ites. The Iranians, just over the border are also Shi'ites. So we needn't be surprised to learn that the word on the streets of Baghdad and Tehran is that they are providing millions of dollars every month for the "hot" war against the Americans.

The Iranian Shi'ites have during the past few weeks established relations with the Kurds in the north of Iraq and with the main Arab Sunni rebel group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And, every alliance is cemented with dollars.

25-year war

Iran has been at war with the United States since the mullahs ousted the shah's forces in 1979.

Iran's war against the United States has gone on for 25 years. It is past time that the ayatollahs, mullahs and imams begin to understand that there are limits to our tolerance and that our military might is by no means exhausted?

That February in 1979, the Revolutionary Guards invaded 27 U.S. listening posts in Iran that had been set up to monitor Soviet rocket tests. The posts were closed and our guys expelled.

That was enough for Democrat Jimmy Carter. He sent a wonderful letter to the Ayatollah Khomeini, praising him as "a man of God." And, in a show of goodwill, Carter lifted the ban he had imposed on arms exports to Iran.

A few days later, the Revolutionary Guards raided our embassy in Tehran and seized our diplomats as hostages for a year and a half. In April 1980, Carter tried a military rescue attempt, which ended in disaster with more Americans being killed.

Since then Iran has created one disaster after another. The Marine barracks in Beirut with 241 U.S. Marines killed, some 30 U.S. hostages taken in Lebanon, the torture-killing of the CIA's Middle Eastern chief and the generalized support of all America's enemies.

On July 27, Iranian Member of Parliament Hamid-Reza Katoziyan told a television audience "Muslims living in the U.S. are currently, in my opinion, in a special situation. Perhaps they do not walk the streets with weapons or attach bombs to themselves to carry out a suicide operation, but the thought is there."

And, one last fact: The 9/11 commission in its report poses a question, "September 11 was a day of unprecedented shock. The nation was unprepared. How can we avoid such a tragedy again?"

The answer has to be obvious. Ensure that Iran does not have the opportunity to make a first-strike against the U.S. and that Iran stops attempting to make Iraq a colony.