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Following are excerpts from an interview with Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on October 31, 2006.
Hassan Nasrallah: We consider the resistance in Iraq, or in any occupied country - and there is no doubt that Iraq is an occupied country – to be legitimate resistance, which is justified and appropriate. This is the appropriate course, which may lead to the liberation of Iraq, and we support and endorse this resistance. But we definitely distinguish between military operations that target the occupation forces and the operations, which we term "criminal," that target innocent Iraqi people, and that shed blood under illegitimate slogans.
[...]
When I talk about an [American] failure, I'm not saying that the Americans' plan for the region has collapsed, and that they are packing up their things and leaving, like what happened in the final days in Vietnam. But I would like to tell you clearly... I am one of those people who see a very clear picture. In our childhood... When we were young boys... I cannot forget the sight of the American forces leaving Vietnam in helicopters, which carried their officers and soldiers. Some Vietnamese, who had fought alongside the Americans, tried to climb into these helicopters, but the [Americans] threw them to the ground, abandoned them, and left. This is the sight I anticipate in our region, but I am not saying it will happen in months. It will take years. The Americans will gather their belongings and leave this region - the entire region. They have no future whatsoever in our region. They will leave the Middle East, and the Arab and Islamic worlds, like they left Vietnam. I advise all those who place their trust in the Americans to learn the lesson of Vietnam, and to learn the lesson of the South Lebanese Army with the Israelis, and to know that when the Americans lose this war – and lose it they will, Allah willing - they will abandon them to their fate, just like they did to all those who placed their trust in them throughout history.
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When I spoke at the rally on Friday, and said we have 20,000 missiles, they began saying: "There is chaos on the borders, and they can bring missiles in." This is not true. When I said that the resistance had more than 13,000 missiles, it, in fact, had more than 33,000 missiles. Now, when I talk about 20,000... For six years, we were preparing... or rather, anticipating a war some day - a vicious, large-scale, and dangerous war, knowing that the Israeli enemy would not keep silent after its defeat in 2000, and that the Israeli enemy would never accept an honorable, loyal, and serious Arab Lebanese resistance force as its neighbor in Lebanon. It was planning a war some day, and we were prepared for it. Now, we still possess what we had in the past. We were ready to fight for a long period of time, and we took into consideration the possibility of a siege by land, sea, and air.
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