Is Lebanon Conflict the Fruit of Failed Cheney Scheme?

MAY 22, (LPAC)--Intelligence sources indicate that the Fatah al Islam group, behind the flare up of violence in Lebanon in recent days, is an outfit funded by Saudi princes and businessmen as part of Vice President Dick Cheney's ill-founded schemes to build military forces to challenge Hezbollah and Hamas. At the same time that Jordan's King Abdullah II was warning last November about the danger of three simultaneous civil wars in the region triggering a perpetual conflict, Vice President Cheney was scheming to conduct covert funding and arming of a variety of groups, to challenge Hezbollah and Hamas. According to both Washington and Egyptian sources, under the Cheney scheme, the Saudis were encouraged to provide weapons and other support to a number of Sunni groups in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories. In Lebanon, according to several sources, weapons began streaming into militias and security forces presumed to be allied with the government of Prime Minister Fouad Sinoura government against Hezbollah. The operation, these sources report, got out of control, as Saudi circles linked to Wahabi fundamentalists, provided a regular flow of arms to groups including the Fatah al Islam, particularly in the north of Lebanon.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Lebanese government circles, as well as Bush Administration officials have attempted to blame the recent violence in the Tripoli area and a nearby Palestinian refugee camp on the Syrian government, charging that the violence is aimed at blocking the establishment of a United Nations tribunal to probe the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Is this really an effort to coverup yet another colossal policy failure by Vice President Cheney--one that threatens to blow up Lebanon and the entire region into a perpetual war? What does National Security Council Middle East chief Elliot Abrams know about this mess, and the parallel efforts to trigger a Hamas versus Fatah civil war in the Palestinian territories?