"Lebanon has refused to extradite to the United States four suspected Shia Hezbollah members believed to have carried out attacks against Americans in Beirut during the 1980s, judicial sources said on Saturday," reports the Khaleej Times. "Local media said that during her visit to Beirut earlier this week US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had made the demand to Prime Minister Foaud Seniora." It is interesting Condi would make such a demand, but then Straussian neocons know no bounds, ethically or legally, especially when it comes to pushing around small countries.

It's too bad Ronald Reagan is dead and buried. If alive, he might be held accountable for a few crimes of his own, crimes that make those allegedly committed by Imad Moughaniyeh, Hassan Ezzeddine, Ali Atwe, and Mohammed ali Hamadeh pale by way of comparison.

First, Reagan would be asked to answer for his decision to order the USS New Jersey, parked off the Lebanese coast, to hurl shells into towns around Beirut where refugees were fleeing the Israelis, who had illegally invaded the country and would ultimately slaughter 30,000 Lebanese. "The Lebanese did not forget [Reagan's] little gesture and not long after, on October 23, 1983, 264 US Marines in our security force paid with their lives for Reagan's act when a car bomb exploded next to their barracks," writes Edward Miller for the Coastal Post.

Second, another dead war criminal, CIA director William Casey, would be asked about the attempted murder of Sheik Muhammed Fedlallah, the spiritual leader of Lebanese Shi'ites and Hezbollah. Like the mob boss Casey was, he arranged to hit Fedlallah in retaliation for the Beirut Marine barracks bombing mentioned above. "Casey contracted out the job of retaliation to Saudi intelligence, which sent a car packed with explosives into a Beirut slum near Fadlallah's headquarters. A city block was devastated and more than 90 people were buried under the rubble," explains Robert I. Friedman. Of course, covertly killing people is nothing new for the CIA and the United States-the list of successful and failed assassinations include Iraqi General Abdul Karim Kassem, Congolese president Patrice Lumumba, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh, Cuban ruler Fidel Castro, democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende, Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi, and others.

A few years later, apparently suffering from pangs of guilt, ex-president Jimmy Carter told the New York Times: "You have only to go to Lebanon, to Syria, to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many peoples for the United States, because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers, women and children and farmers and housewives, in those villages around Beirut… as a result, we have become a kind of Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks."

Rice not only attempted to negate this history, not easily forgotten or forgiven by many Lebanese, by demanding the arrest and extradition of Moughaniyeh, Ezzeddine, Atwe, and Hamadeh, but also refused to accept the political situation in Lebanon by refusing to meet with the Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud, who is considered too close to Syria. "It's up to the Lebanese people to decide who will lead Lebanon," Rice said, ever so magnanimous, and then added she believes the Lebanese "want a state that is forward-looking," that is to say looking in the same direction the United States, under the control of belligerent Straussian neocons, is looking.