The folks at ouwet.com are doing an excellent job updating a post with bullet points of Nassrallah’s speech as it’s happening. Some of what he said is very interesting. Check it out.
For Arabic readers, find a more extensive coverage at Lebanonfiles.com.
Vigorous automatic gunshots are heard all over Beirut, “celebrating” Nassrallah’s speech.
And the most unconvincing defense for the FPM’s training pictures is this: “The pictures are very old, and they are taken from the cellphones of the arrested people”.
Just in case you thought that by “very old”, Mr. Aoun meant “civil war old”, you’d be excused to be perplexed by the cellphone dimension of the story. But don’t worry, the FPM has just what you need: Another excuse: The people in the picture -those girls and boys playing cowboys and Indians- are Mr. Aoun’s personal guard. Yeah, that should convince the skeptics.
Update: The story is changing again. Now their spokesperson is saying (H/T Ramzi) that the people in the picture “were just out having fun with real weapons but were not undergoing any military training as such,”, The Aounists are so freaked out they’re tripping all over each other with conflicting accounts.
So to recap: Those are very old photos taken on a cellphone for Aoun’s personal guards who are just having fun with real guns.
The discourse on militias arming and training in Lebanon is missing the big yellow elephant in the room: Hezbollah’s weapons.
So the FPM are training. Does it really matter? (more pictures)
A lot is being said and written about the arming and training of the various Lebanese parties. But it seems politically incorrect to point out that all this is happening because of Hezbollah’s weapons.
It is a fact: Hezbollah’s private army is the strongest in Lebanon. And no matter how many times the party claims that the weapons are only pointed against Israel, the rockets, like tactical nukes, are being used aggressively for leverage in Lebanese internal politics. A combination of kind words and big guns is not the same as kind words alone.
It would be foolish to expect the rest of the Lebanese, especially the ones politically against Hezbollah, to take Hezbollah’s reassurances at face value. After all, one never knows when their currently “wise” leadership passes to an expansionist nut-head who will decide that fighting the Lebanese is more rewarding than fighting the Israelis.
Politicians are wasting too much time politicking on whether the FPM, the LF or the PSP are training. But that is missing the bigger picture: The weapons are all the children of Ra3ed, Zilzal and Khaibar.
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