An American Warning

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Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

The Benevolent US Military: A Review of ?The Reluctant Communist?
2008-04-30 18:32:00
I am a sucker for stories about Americans who find themselves on the wrong side of armed geopolitical disputes. I still maintain that the most fascinating saga to come out of 9/11 was John Walker Lindh, the young California drifter who found himself in Afghanistan, fighting for the Taliban, circa 2001. In the end, Lindh received a humanitarian gesture from the U.S. Department of Justice - a 20 year sentence. It could have been far, far worse. When he is released, John will be younger than I am now....(read more)
More About: Military , Review , US Military , Communist

State Department Terrorism report
2008-04-30 15:49:00
The State Department ’s Annual terrorism report is being released today. Following is the text of the Department announcement. -0- Special Press Briefing and Release: Country Report s on Terrorism 2007 The Department of State will release the annual Congressionally mandated Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 on Wednesday, April 30 at 11:00 a.m. Coordinator of the Office for Counterterrorism Dell L. Dailey and Deputy Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Russ Travers will provide opening...(read more)
More About: State Department

Petraeus Hearing Should Focus on Three Fronts, One Long War
2008-04-30 14:59:00
During the upcoming confirmation hearings, senators from both sides of the aisle should make clear to the incoming the U.S. Central Command commander that winning all three fronts is vital to American interests and that they will do everything in their power to support accomplishing these goals....(read more)
More About: Middle East , Focus , Long , Petraeus , Hearing

NEFA: Interview of Turkish Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) Fighter "Abu Yasir al-
2008-04-29 20:49:00
The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated an interview of a Turkish Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) fighter . According to the IJU, Abu Yasir Al-Turki “left everything he had in Turkey, following the verse of Allah c.c. to do Jihad, migrated to live the life of the companions of Muhammed, and is presently fighting in the ranks of the Islamic Jihad Alliance.” During the interview, Al-Turki comments, “America and its allies have woken up a sleeping giant. I mean they re-lit the fire...(read more)
More About: Interview

Switzerland siding with Iran
2008-04-29 20:30:00
While the European Union or I should say individual member countries have recently toughened up their stance on Iran , one country is going towards the opposite direction: I am talking about the "neutral" Switzerland . I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times on that topic. You can read it here . Here is an excerpt: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter went to Damascus last week to meet with Hamas' Khaled Meshaal, a man accused of terrorism by the United States, Israel and the European Union....(read more)

Morgan Spurlock's Search for Bin Laden
2008-04-29 18:33:00
I went to the new Morgan Spurlock documentary, as I try to keep up with anything related to counterterrorism. I was not particularly taken by his earlier movie, “Supersize Me,” though I was forced to sit through several DVD screenings because my wife liked it so much. Even then, I still doubted his thesis - that McDonald’s can kill you - in part because there were people featured in the movie who gorged on Big Macs all their lives and seemed no worse for wear. My attitude was kind...(read more)
More About: Search , Bin Laden , Laden

Cigarettes and the Criminal/Terrorist Nexus
2008-04-29 17:54:00
The minority staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security has, as first reported by Fox News, posted an interesting report on the ties between cigarette smuggling and terrorism. The report focuses primarily on smuggling in New York and the billions of dollars in lost revenues suffered from illicit cigarette sales. But in fact, the smuggling and sales of cigarettes have long been one of the primary life-blood sources of criminals and, increasingly, of terrorist activities. The criminal-terrorist...(read more)
More About: Cigarettes , Terrorist , Criminal

Blowing Away Stereotypes
2008-04-29 04:00:00
Barack Obama just cannot make his comments about "bitter" small-town Americans who "cling to" guns or religion go away. And now the Wall Street Journal's Arthur Brooks makes a fact-based case for just how wrong Obama's comments are. According to the story , gun owners are happier in general than non-gun owning Americans. They earn more money and spend less time feeling "outraged" over the actions of others. Based on the tens of thousands of gun owners I've met, I'd say...(read more)
More About: Stereotypes

Summary of April 15 Panel on Outlook for Iran & U.S.
2008-04-28 17:55:00
At a panel on Capitol Hill on April 15, Contributing Experts Matthew Levitt and Walid Phares , along with Prof. Yonah Alexander and Dr. Milton Hoenig, discussed the range of options available to the U.S. and the West in dealing with Iran in a panel titled, "Iran and the United States: Outlook for the Next Decade?" The event was co-sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation; the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies, the International Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute...(read more)
More About: Panel , Summary

The United States and Mexico: Helping One Another, Helping Ourselves
2008-04-28 12:45:00
The United States and Mexico share many of the same problems, including immigration challenges, inadequate border security, and drug smuggling. The two nations do not adequately collaborate to address these issues, despite common goals: defeating the drug cartels, economic development, and finding solutions to America's immigration crisis and broken border....(read more)
More About: Immigration

Britain's first Jihadi 'Lone Wolf' bomber?
2008-04-28 07:10:00
Big time terrorism plots are always big news whereas more subtle and interesting trends are often recorded as footnotes. One such footnote occurred over Christmas 2007 in the British city of Birmingham. A 38-year-old man, Hassan Muhammed Sabri Al Tabbakh of Syrian origin was arrested by local police on terrorism charges. He is accused of stockpiling chemicals and information on how to construct a bomb. He appears to have acted alone and this continues to be a conspiracy of one. Further, details may...(read more)
More About: Lone , Wolf , Bomber

Possible Complications From the Jihad Lexicon Business
2008-04-27 02:41:00
Bill West's post (immediately below) hits on something I started worrying about today as I thought more about the practical implications of the State Department's decision to forbid government employees from publicly using the terms jihad and mujaheddin . Plenty of post-9/11 indictments contain these words. They are also in the names of terrorist organizations. How is this going to work where the government employee is a prosecutor or FBI agent responsible for describing a defendant's words? I first...(read more)
More About: Business , Jihad

Real World Complications From the Jihad Lexicon Business
2008-04-27 02:41:00
Bill West's post (immediately below) hits on something I started worrying about today as I thought more about the practical implications of the State Department's decision to forbid government employees from publicly using the terms jihad and mujaheddin . Plenty of post-9/11 indictments contain these words. They are also in the names of terrorist organizations. How is this going to work where the government employee is a prosecutor or FBI agent responsible for describing a defendant's words? I first...(read more)
More About: Business , World , Jihad , Real

Palestinian Islamic ?Internal Struggle? Claims Responsibility for Murdering
2008-04-26 20:33:00
The AP has reported three terrorist organizations...well, in the official PC lexicon of the Bush Administration, extremist groups...have claimed responsibility for the Friday shooting attack at a factory in Nitzanei Shalom, Israel that left two security guards dead. Among those claiming responsibility was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). But wait...”Jihad” is now a forbidden word in the Federal counter-terrorism vocabulary because our fearless Federal Leaders have bought into the...(read more)
More About: Internal , Claims

Lingo Voodoo Fed Style - Deja Vu All Over Again
2008-04-26 00:28:00
It was the late 1970s and I was a rookie INS agent working the streets of Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs of D.C. Jimmy Carter was President. His Immigration Commissioner was a political crony from Texas named Leonel Castillo. Castillo, like all modern-day INS Commissioners and even their current ICE Assistant Secretary variants, had virtually no law enforcement and no immigration law experience. Castillo had supervised a human resources development program for a neighborhood day care association...(read more)
More About: Style , Voodoo

India Reaches Out
2008-04-25 23:53:00
This column is another in the ongoing series on the terrorist threat to India and the surrounding region by Frank Hyland and Animesh Roul. Realizing the benefits that accrue to nations that operate within a large, active international “web” of Counter-Terrorism (CT) relationships, India is taking a number of steps to improve the way it combats terrorism. The steps are an acknowledgement that terrorism has morphed into a quite different phenomenon than the indigenous groups largely confined...(read more)

Deep Divisions in the Islamist World
2008-04-25 22:54:00
One of the more interesting things to me in the recent spate of statements by Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders is al Qaeda's need now to constantly and viciously attack other Islamist tendencies, particularly Iran and Shities, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Brotherhood-linked Hamas. In addition to the attacks, the recent communications show two things: a clear awareness of current events, and the ability to comment on them quickly; and a clear lack of understanding of how the world really...(read more)
More About: World , Deep

The New American Lexicon: Jihad, We Hardly Knew You
2008-04-25 22:36:00
Doug Farah, Steve Coughlin, and I have written about the efforts to replace jihad as a descriptive term for what we are fighting. In view of the reported decision by the State Department to reward these efforts, I do not want to belabor the point or my position (other than to note that there are plenty of human rights victims in countries that operate according to Shari’ah law who have much to say about whether the non-violent “striving” meaning of jihad results in innocuous statecraft)....(read more)
More About: Jihad , American

NEFA Foundation: The Impact of the Zarqawi Legacy in North Africa
2008-04-25 20:52:00
The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated video footage of a recent Al-Qaida suicide bombing in eastern Algeria targeting a local military barracks in the town of Dellys. The footage includes the "martyrdom" will of the bomber (a young teenager who nicknamed himself "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi al-Asimi"), scenes from his education at the Abu Ibrahim Mustafa terrorist training camp in North Africa , and the actual execution of the attack itself. During his final will, "Abu Musab" called upon Muslim...(read more)
More About: North Africa , Legacy

Immunity? That's A Problem
2008-04-25 18:02:00
In response to Andrew Cochran's latest post "No FISA? No Problem ," the reason why no one has come up with a concrete example of an intelligence investigation suffering due to Congress' unwillingness to enact FISA reform is simple: this information - who the U.S. is currently targeting its FISA methods on - is classified, and therefore not subject to public discussion. The bill is hung up for one reason: disagreements over whether it should include retroactive immunity for telecoms. If telecoms that...(read more)
More About: Immunity

Who is America Fighting - Jihadists or Extremists?
2008-04-25 06:30:00
Now we officially know the answer - the U.S. Government states that America is definitely not fighting "jihadists", based on new guidelines directing federal agencies not to even use the term "jihadist" . So who is America fighting? Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells us: "the enemy is extremism". A. National Counter Terrorism Center Memo and DHS Report on Terminology Associated Press reported today that the Extremist Messaging Branch at the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) prepared a memorandum...(read more)
More About: Fighting , Jihadists

A Lawless City
2008-04-25 04:00:00
The news out of Philadelphia seems to be changing every day. Mayor Michael Nutter signs gun-control bills and tells the local police to enforce them. The NRA receives a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of the law, but at the same time the district attorney says she won't enforce them. But Nutter says he's going to try to convince her to prosecute people who violate these ordinances. What do Philadelphians think about this? If columnist Christine Flowers of the Philadelphia Daily...(read more)
More About: City , Lawless

No FISA? No Problem...
2008-04-24 23:29:00
As a follow-up and partial rebuttal to Dennis Lormel's post on the need for a new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA ), I invite readers to review recent public statements and testimony by leading counter-terrorism officials in the Bush Administration. Review the public remarks by Deputy NSC Advisor for Combating Terrorism Juan Zarate yesterday at the Washington Institute ; review the testimony by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes Daniel Glaser last week...(read more)
More About: Problem

Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Again Stokes the Islamists' Fire
2008-04-24 22:06:00
Last month, I wrote on the importance to global security of then-pending elections in Malaysia , followed afterwards by Zachary Abuza's analysis of the gains by Islamists . The ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, has tenuously remained in power, and earlier this month demonstrated its commitment to counter-terrorism efforts by handing over two alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah to Indonesia, as reported here by Kenneth Conboy . Badawi's predecessor, former Prime Minister Mahathir...(read more)
More About: Fire

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)…Out of Sight, Out of Mind
2008-04-24 21:55:00
In February, The House of Representatives failed to follow the Senates lead and vote to pass FISA legislation. Instead, they chose to allow this valuable intelligence collection tool to expire. In so doing, they made the intelligence collection capability of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies more difficult and time consuming. In this context, time is the enemy of the government and the ally of terrorists. However you assess this situation, it is an impediment to national security. Terrorists...(read more)
More About: Surveillance , Intelligence , Mind , Foreign , Sight

UK Court Invalidates Terrorist Asset Freezing Regime as Unconstitutional
2008-04-24 19:54:00
Today, the UK's high court invalidated the country's asset freezing regime against terrorists, ruling it to be unconstitutional. The ruling has been described as devastating to the UK's strategy against terrorism. It was based on the court finding that the UK government could not simply implement UN Security Council resolutions directly, but had to go to Parliament first to get them authorized. It is not clear from initial reports whether this means that the government is supposed to go to Parliament...(read more)
More About: Terrorist , Court , Asset , Unconstitutional

Good News / Bad News Concerning US VISIT
2008-04-24 03:17:00
The Department of Homeland Security will reportedly be issuing regulations requiring commercial airlines and cruise lines to begin collecting the biometric identifiers, notably digital fingerprints and photographs, of foreign travelers as they depart the United States. This is an effort to make the departure control half of the US VISIT border information gathering and analysis system work. This departure control segment has been lagging in development for years, and Congress has mandated its completion...(read more)
More About: News , Good News , Bad News , Good , Visit

The Soaring Price of Oil and Terrorism
2008-04-24 00:06:00
A few days ago, when oil was just $115.00 per barrel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that the price of oil was still “unrealistically low,” and that “Oil … needs to discover its real value." And, within a few days the market seemed to comply driving the price up to $120.00 per barrel! The effects of this spiraling oil price on the US and world economy has been staggering, and the impact will continue to be intensified as the price of oil works its way through...(read more)
More About: Terrorism , Price , Soaring

Winning the War on Terror: Marking Success and Confronting Challenges
2008-04-23 21:26:00
On April 23, 2008, Deputy National Security Advisor Juan Zarate addressed The Washington Institute where he laid out the administration's strategy, successess and issues requiring an ongoing and long term commitment. His full comments are available here ....(read more)
More About: War On Terror , Terror , Success , Winning

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Political Process (U.S. Version)
2008-04-23 21:10:00
Doug Farah's post about the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (GMBDR) item in which the Muslim Brotherhood gives written advice on how to vote Islamic is quite disturbing. The most ominous thing is that they appear to be doing this within the U.S., even as we speak. Coincidentally, the GMBDR contains another article about how an American Muslim organization has asked one of the Presidential candidates to avoid referring to "Islamic terrorism," as if religion is irrelevant to the violent actions...(read more)
More About: Political , Process