Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Tuesday PM: Intelligence oversight -- the natives are restless
Filed my take on the rumbles I'm hearing on the Hill about intelligence oversight.
Bubbling under...
The London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, has an interview with Abdullah Qasir, the director of al-Manar TV; the channel affiliated with Hezbollah and designated a terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury in March.
Qasir says the station has gone underground, but continued to broadcast, despite ongoing targeting of its facilities by the Israeli military -- what analyst Bill Arkin has called "a continuing game of cat and mouse to keep it off the air."
Qasir says the station had contingency plans, because it expected to be targeted "From the moment we were classified by the Americans as a terrorist organization."
"We also expected this when we felt that the Israelis have set up more than one lobby whose main task is to hound al-Manar by filing complaints with European courts," Qasir went on. "We felt that we are targeted and that a day might come when we are targeted on the security and military levels."
UPDATE Weds AM: Seems the European Union has decided again not to list Hezbollah as a terror group.
Bubbling under...
The London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, has an interview with Abdullah Qasir, the director of al-Manar TV; the channel affiliated with Hezbollah and designated a terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury in March.
Qasir says the station has gone underground, but continued to broadcast, despite ongoing targeting of its facilities by the Israeli military -- what analyst Bill Arkin has called "a continuing game of cat and mouse to keep it off the air."
Qasir says the station had contingency plans, because it expected to be targeted "From the moment we were classified by the Americans as a terrorist organization."
"We also expected this when we felt that the Israelis have set up more than one lobby whose main task is to hound al-Manar by filing complaints with European courts," Qasir went on. "We felt that we are targeted and that a day might come when we are targeted on the security and military levels."
UPDATE Weds AM: Seems the European Union has decided again not to list Hezbollah as a terror group.
