“Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists and maybe Al Qaeda is actually the B-team,” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said recently. “They’re on the list and their time will come. There is no question about. They have a blood debt to us and we’re not going to forget it. It’s all in good time.” Although Armitage was referring to Hizballah’s place within the U.S.-led war on terrorism, his sentiment—the “blood debt”—may have a more personal intensity. Armitage had served as Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration and during the rash of violence against U.S. forces acting as peacekeepers in the early 1980s amidst Lebanon’s civil war and the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. In 1983, 241 U.S. Marines were killed when a suicide bomber associated with Hizballah destroyed their barracks in Beirut. Prior to the attacks of September 11th , 2001, the Marine barracks bombing had been the single deadliest terrorist attack against Americans. Also prior to September 11th, Hizballah terrorism is thought to have killed more than three hundred Americans, more than any other terrorist group.

Senator Bob Graham, a former member and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has argued that Hizballah poses a more immediate threat than Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. “In my opinion, there’s no question that Hezbollah is the greater threat, and yes, we should go after it first and go after it before we go to war with Iraq.”

Kalashnikovs into Plowshares – Full Report