According to a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, "The Redirection," the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had been assembling a region-wide army of extremist-mercenaries to battle Hezbollah in Lebanon, destabilize and overthrow Syria, and create a united front against Iran.
The forces recruited for this effort would come from the ranks of the CIA-created "Arab foreign legion," Al Qaeda itself - extremist groups fresh back from fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, including listed terror organizations like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) from Libya.
Hersh's 2007 report exposed the groundwork for the very violence unfolding in Syria today, and now Lebanon. Forces to destabilize Syria were primarily to be staged in northern Lebanon, as explained in the article, and indeed the heaviest fighting over the last year has been seen in the Syrian city of Homs, just across the border from northern Lebanon. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and his government have been, since the beginning of the violence, attempting to illustrate just this - explained in detail in 2007, and demonstratively being carried out today, with responsibility for deadly bombings being claimed by terrorists, the Pentagon itself admitting Al Qaeda is present in Syria, and reports indicating foreign fighters, weapons, and cash are flowing over Syria's borders.
Now, the very staging ground in northern Lebanon being used to destabilize neighboring Syria has erupted into violence. Not by Syrian troops crossing the border, but by indigenous Lebanese factions facing off against each other. News is trickling out slowly and the Western media appears intent on keeping the violence as nebulous and confused as possible, but initial information indicates that extremist groups backed by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are fighting factions connected to Hezbollah. Extremist leaders across the region are attempting to frame the violence as "Sunni verses Shi'ia," a ploy Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned against back in 2007:
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to...
