Friends in High Places
NEAL – Press Release
Boston, Massachusetts – 17 June 2003

Press reports indicate that the Minister of Finance in the Lebanese government, Mr. Fuad Siniora, has been deemed persona non grata by the Bush administration and is denied entry into the US. The purported reason is that he donated money to the Al-Mabarrat Charity, which is classified by the US as a terrorist organization and is headed by the spiritual leader of Hezbollah Sheikh Fadlallah. The novelty here is not that the Minister had given money to a charity. The novelty is that the US government has finally taken action, even as that action only touches the tip of the iceberg of corruption and support of terrorism by the Syrian-made puppet regime in Beirut.

We encourage the US government, the Department of Homeland Security, and State Department in particular, to remain vigilant and take further actions against other Lebanese officials because they have ties to the Syrian terror regime, which not only nominates and approves those officials, but occasionally punishes them when they drift just a tad far from Syrian policy. The rocket attacks against Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s Future TV station a couple of days in the heart of Beirut clearly show the depth of Syria’s reach through its Mukhabarat Intelligence Services inside the Lebanese body politic. It also raises questions as to claims by the billionaire Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri and his herd of puppets in the Lebanese government that Lebanon is peaceful, stable, economically viable under foreign occupation, and free from terror when not even the Prime Minister can escape the rockets of the Syrian Mukhabarat who run the place.

Which brings us to the US Ambassador to Lebanon, Mr. Vincent Battle, who begins here in Boston a tour of major US cities to drum up business and promote “goodwill and business partnerships” between Lebanon and the US. We wonder which asinine American or Lebanese businessman would throw money to the dogs and invest a penny in Lebanon these days, while the country remains under the boots of the Syrian Stalinist army and the thugs of the Syrian Baath Party roaming the country launching rockets at the Lebanese Prime Minister? If the theater of the absurd is not in its heyday anymore, Lebanon remains its shining living relic.

Finally, the Lebanese Arabic daily As-Safir reported yesterday that several other members of the Lebanese government have also been deemed unworthy of stepping on US soil. For example, Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares and former Minister of Industry George Frem are on the non grata list because they allegedly “signed petitions to boycott American-made products” or “participated in events considered insulting to the US government and its officials”. However, these two individuals were able, still according to the As-safir, to reverse the ban through connections they have. Mr. Fares is yet another billionaire Lebanese regime official who has peddled his way to US influential circles by pretending to be a philanthropist and donating millions to such US universities as Tufts University in the Boston area and who is incidentally on record for having defended the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah. It is sad that in this day and age of Homeland Security, wealthy people like Issam Fares can still use contacts and connections to get themselves out of a reported link to anti-American activities, as if the lives and security of the American people can be bartered to the highest bidder among the corrupt of this world.

We are not concerned about the double standard applied to Mr. Fares and Mr. Siniora, should these reports be true. We are more concerned that corrupt Lebanese cronies who are in the employ of the Syrian Baath regime of Bashar Assad can still get away because they have connections in high places of the American government. One would think that the safety and security of the American people and the families of US soldiers who are fighting the war on terrorism deserve better.

Long Live Free Lebanon
New England American for Lebanon