K.S. Rajan (25
Nov 2011)
"CHINA and Hezbollah"
According to Revelation 16, China is going to meet its
doom at the battle of Armageddon. The 200 million man army will
be totally destroyed by the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ at
His Second Coming
The Washington Times Online Edition
Virginian indicted in sex trafficking
Republican presidential candidate Mitt
Romney, with Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, speaks Wednesday
to workers at Nationwide Insurance Co. in Des Moines, Iowa. Mr.
Romney is using a tough stance against illegal immigration to
separate himself from his rivals for the nomination. (Associated
Press)
Immigration a tough GOP sticking point
"Only senior citizens are saying they want to
move back, not the younger people," said Naoto Matsumura, who
has chosen to live in Japan's forbidden zone near the Fukushima
nuclear power plant. (Christopher Johnson/The Washington Times)
Nuclear winter awaits lone Japan resident
near crippled plant
**FILE** Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe
Arpaio (Associated Press)
Arpaio is next marked man for recall by
‘posse’ in Arizona
** FILE ** Mothers arrive to pick up their
children from Flowers School in Montgomery, Ala. (Associated
Press)
Alabama law takes bite out of pupil’s apple
for teacher
Illustration: Tax option by Alexander Hunter
for The Washington Times
MINITER & MINITER: Optional government
Washington Capitals left winger Jason Chimera
is rushed by teammates after scoring the game-winning goal
against the Winnipeg Jets in overtime Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011
in Washington. The Caps won 4-3. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Furious penalty kill backs Capitals’ 4-3 OT
win over Jets
Bernard Madoff
Victims’ revenge: Ponzi targets cheat the
taxman
Berwick
Temporary Medicare, Medicaid director quits
Newt Gingrich
MILLER: Newt’s substantive surge
Former Prince George's County Executive Jack
B. Johnson is scheduled for sentencing on Dec. 6. He faces up to
14 years in prison for accepting up to $1 million in bribes.
(The Washington Times)
$2,000 could buy former P.G. executive
Johnson, tapes reveal
Coolidge High School varsity football coach
Natalie Randolph is in her second year of coaching and some of
the novelty of a woman heading a boys football team has worn
off. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)
Coolidge’s Natalie Randolph is in charge on,
off the field
Waterman's Washington
DECKER & TRIPLETT: Israel beware: China arms Hezbollah
Beijing weapons proliferation benefits Iran and Islamic
terrorist groups
39 Comments and 7 Reactions|ShareTweet|Email|Print|
By Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II
-
The Washington Times
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Illustration: China weapons by Alexander Hunter for The
Washington TimesIllustration: China weapons by Alexander Hunter
for The Washington Times
The following is an excerpt from “Bowing to Beijing” (Regnery
Publishing, Nov. 14, 2011):
It doesn’t take a lot to exacerbate the broiling political
crisis in the Middle East, and Beijing’s international arm sales
pour fuel on the Muslim-Jewish fire. During the Second Lebanon
War, a Chinese C-802 anti-ship missile struck Israel’s INS Hanit
off the Lebanon coast. Four Israeli sailors were killed in the
incident - Yoni Hershkovitz from Haifa, Shai Atias from Rishon
Letzion, Tal Amgar from Ashdod and Dov Shtienshos from Carmiel.
The oldest was 37, the youngest just 19. All of them had
families.
The casualties could have been much worse. The majority of the
Hanit’s 80 crew members were sitting down to a “Sabbath eve
dinner, an error of complacency that ironically in retrospect
ended up saving lives.” Most of the crew was in the ship’s mess,
a central location away from the spot where the missile struck.
There could have been a more direct hit on the vessel. The Hanit
is a corvette (called a Saar 5 class ship by the Israeli navy),
which is substantially smaller than an American frigate or
destroyer. It’s about 1,200 tons loaded, built at the Ingalls
shipyard in Mississippi. The Chinese C-802 anti-ship missile is
a sea-skimmer, an advanced conventional weapon - not a ballistic
missile - and carried a 400-pound time-delayed
semi-armor-piercing high-explosive warhead that blew up near the
fan tail of the ship. As it was, the explosion caused
substantial damage, engulfing the aft section in flames and
caving in the ship’s helicopter pad. But the Hanit didn’t sink.
If the Chinese missile had struck amidships where most of the
ship’s company was eating, or had impacted at the water line,
many more crewmembers would have been killed or permanently
injured, and it’s unlikely the ship would have survived.
Fortuitously for the Hanit, a second C-802 fired at the same
time flew over the ship, zeroed in on a small freighter 40 miles
away, and sank it. A ship the size of the Hanit could never have
taken two missile hits.
Illustration: Bowing to BeijingIllustration: Bowing to Beijing
There was never any doubt about who fired the missiles. The
chief of the terrorist organization Hezbollah announced the
attack first, declaring, “You wanted all-out war - and that is
what you will get! You have no idea who you are dealing with!”
Israeli officials believe Hezbollah may have had its hand on the
lanyard, but Iranian specialists manned the firing batteries,
and Lebanon’s military radars provided the guidance for the
missile.
The Israeli Board of Inquiry determined that the Hanit suffered
no technical malfunctions prior to the attack. Rather, it
attributed the ship’s vulnerability to negligence by the
commander and other crewmembers. Apparently, the sailors had
such little apprehension of danger that a junior officer turned
off the ship’s defensive systems, rendering the Hanit
effectively blind to the threat. The ship’s captain lost his
command and other officers were disciplined.
The Chinese missile attack on the Hanit came about primarily due
to intelligence failures, but it highlighted a tragic blindness
in the Israeli military: It simply refused to believe that
Chinese authorities would put a dangerous missile system of this
magnitude in the hands of a nonstate actor. At the Board of
Inquiry, the Israeli navy commander explained that the prospect
of Chinese advanced conventional missiles in the hands of
Hezbollah seemed “unrealistic and imaginary.”
No one doubts that the Chinese have been and still are deeply
engaged in illicit nuclear-weapons assistance to numerous
countries. The bomb designs for the nuclear-weapon programs of
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya and Pakistan were
all Chinese. The People's Republic of China (PRC) is trading
nuclear-weapons designs to Iran for oil and, through front
companies, has funneled dual-use nuclear goods bought by North
Korea to Syria. Specialists in the field widely agree that China
also secretly trades in other types of weapons of mass
destruction (WMDs), ballistic missiles and advanced conventional
weapons.
Israeli military officials knew it as well. But they didn’t
understand what - advanced conventional weapons - China would
sell to whom - nonstate actors. They knew the Chinese sell WMDs
to rogue states like Iran or North Korea, but the Israelis, like
national-security policymakers in most of the free world,
assumed the PRC was just nasty, not crazy. Top Israeli security
officials evidently thought, “Even the Chinese would not go so
far as to arm terrorist groups with advanced conventional
weapons.” They were wrong. To be fair to the Israelis, surprise
attacks against America, like Pearl Harbor or Sept. 11, are
reminders that the Jewish state is not the first to tragically
underestimate its bloodthirsty opponents.
The C-802s fired by Hezbollah at the Israeli navy originated in
China either as fully manufactured missiles or as kits assembled
by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. At any time, the PRC could
have told the Iranians not to deliver them to any terrorist
organization, but Beijing obviously issued no such instructions.
The Chinese Communist Party simply thought the West and
certainly the United Nations would never call out China - a
permanent member of the U.N. Security Council - on its
skullduggery.
The arming of Hezbollah, like most of the PRC’s illicit weapons
trade, all boils down to money. Arms smuggling is highly
profitable, and the Chinese Communist families that control
Beijing’s end of the various arms-smuggling operations with the
North Koreans, Iranians or the Syrians would have gotten their
cut of whatever went down. As one expert recently noted, “Most
remaining proliferation disputes don’t pertain to the actions of
the government in Beijing, but to the practices of China’s
state-owned defense industries. The country’s large state-owned
enterprises (SOEs) are some of the world’s most prolific
exporters of weapons and dual-use technologies.” These SOEs are
dominated by the so-called Princelings, sons, daughters and
grandchildren of high-ranking officials who founded and ran the
Chinese Communist Party with Mao.
In a private briefing in Hong Kong, a Chinese arms dealer
described the relationship between the Chinese Communist elite
and Beijing’s arms-smuggling trade. According to him, this
lucrative business was carefully divided so that each family
received a share of the profits depending on where they are in
the Communist Party pecking order. His account immediately
brought to mind the mafia families in “The Godfather” movie
dividing up the New York crime scene. In discussing the most
important arms exporting firm in Beijing, “Polytechnologies
Inc.,” the gunrunner noted that the company’s officers were in
the same hierarchical relationship with one another as their
sponsors (fathers, fathers-in-law, and the like) were within the
Communist Party. He explained that this implied a deliberate
division of the arms-smuggling pie based on Party rank order. At
the time of the briefing, Polytechnologies was headed up by none
other than the son-in-law of Deng Xiaoping, the former leader of
China.
Brett M. Decker is editorial page editor of The Washington Times
and a former Hong Kong-based editor and writer for The Wall
Street Journal. William C. Triplett II is former chief
Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
bestselling co-author of “Year of the Rat” (Regnery, 1998).