Joint Mossad & CIA operation Killed Imad Mughniyeh

TIMES OF ISRAEL ARTICLE ‘Imad Mughniyeh killed in joint Mossad, CIA operation’ US operatives were on the ground, but the bomb was triggered in Tel Aviv, according to The Washington Post By Times of Israel staff January 31, 2015, 8:27 am Imad Mughniyeh, the senior Hezbollah commander who died in a bomb blast in Damascus on February 12, 2008, was reportedly assassinated in a joint Mossad-CIA operation that required approval from former president George W. Bush. The US built the bomb and had CIA spotters on the ground in the Syrian capital tailing Mughniyeh, but the explosion that killed him was triggered remotely from Israel, according to a report in The Washington Post late Friday. [Find that hard to believe.] “The way it was set up, the US could object and call it off, but it could not execute,” a former US intelligence official told the newspaper, adding that the CIA tested the bomb to ensure a contained blast that would cause no collateral damage. The US official said it was important for Israel to be the one to pull the trigger that killed Mughniyeh. “It was revenge,” he said. Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, was implicated in some of the terror group’s major attacks including the 1992 bombing at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA building in the Argentinian capital, in which 85 were killed. The senior Hezbollah official was also involved in the 1983 bombing at the US embassy in Beirut, the killing in 1994 of the CIA’s Lebanon chief William F. Buckly and the 1996 bombing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In the years after the US invasion if Iraq, Mughniyeh was responsible for the arming and training of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq who carried out deadly attacks on American troops — all of which put him at the top of the US’s wanted list. The Bush administration regarded Hezbollah, and Mughniyeh, as a top threat to the US, according to the report. “There was an open license to find, fix and finish Mughniyeh and anybody affiliated with him,” a former US official who was stationed in Baghdad told The Washington Post. In a 2007 speech, Bush singled out Syria and Iran, Hezbollah’s backers and closest allies “These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq,” he vowed. Nevertheless, the CIA had get to special approval from Bush to carry out the operation to kill Mughniyeh with the US attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the national security adviser and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department all signing off on the plan. One former intelligence official said getting the authorization was a “rigorous and tedious” process. Intelligence officials had to show that he, and Hezbollah were a continuing threat to the US. “The decision was we had to have absolute confirmation that it was self-defense,” was former US intelligence official was quoted as saying. “All I can say is that as long as he drew breath, he was a threat, whether in Lebanon, Iraq or anywhere else. He was a very intelligent, dedicated, effective operator on the black side,” former US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, told the paper. http://www.timesofisrael.com/imad-mughniyeh-killed-in-joint-mossad-cia-operation/ COMMENT Getting various US departments to sign off on an assassination still makes it an assassination by USA, which is an extra-judicial killing, I believe. Find it hard to believe that guy was responsible for everything they claim he was responsible for, like he's some Middle Eastern super-villain. Assassinated at the flick of a switch from Tel Aviv just doesn't sound credible.  Whoever flicked that switch was there, I reckon.