Saturday, January 02, 2010
Top US Counterterrorism Official Says Al Qaeda and Other 'Extremists' Seek New Ways to Attack Nation
And scroll down or click here to watch the video of how Israeli airport security officers screen for terrorists. One of the experts interviewed for the piece makes a critically important point: Israeli counterterrorism personnel try to think like terrorists in order to prevent attacks and foil plots. No disrespect intended, but this reporter can't help but wonder if the Israelis' U.S. counterparts are nowadays being trained to think like lawyers.Obama Ties Nigerian 'Suspect' to Al Qaeda
Good news and bad news regarding U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to Islamist terrorism.
The good news is that the President has at last tied the Christmas Day passenger jet bomb plot to Al Qaeda.
The bad news is that Obama still refers to the captured Nigerian terrorist who tried to destroy the airliner as a "suspect."
“We’re learning more about the suspect,” Obama said in a taped address from Hawaii Saturday. “We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of Al Qaeda and that this group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”
The reason for Obama's use of "suspect" is that his administration has decided to treat non-U.S. terrorists who attack U.S. civilians as criminal suspects entitled to U.S. civilian court trials. Alien terrorists who attack troops are to be treated as enemy combatants entitled to military trials. The planned, $100 million civilian court trial in New York City of KSM and other Al Qaeda war criminals is the precedent-setting case.
So it seems that if the Taliban suicide bomber who massacred seven CIA employees and wounded several others at their forward base in Afghanistan had been stopped and taken prisoner before he blew himself up, he would have been sent to the U.S. for a civilian court trial. The victims included career officers--including the base chief--and civilian contractors, and it is not even entirely clear if CIA officers count as military victims with regard to the administration's bizarre jurisdictional decision.
Could that have been possible? If the bomber had been apprehended in time, would he have been treated like a ... suspect? A White House reporter should raise the question ASAP, as the American people--and the brave men and women who work for the CIA and other intelligence agencies--deserve to know the answer.
Another question worth asking: If the Christmas Day bomber had been killed instead of just stopped by passengers aboard the plane (forced to take matters into their own hands since the aircraft was not protected by a sky marshall and the terrorist had been allowed to fly in spite of being on a watch list and his own father's warning about his son's Islamist indoctrination and associations), would the passengers responsible for his death have been liable to criminal prosecution or a civilian law suit? In the Obama administration's upside-down world of trials and tribunals--and outreach to Islamism--anything is apparently possible. Just ask the three Navy SEALs who are accused of ... punching ... no kidding ... Ahmed Hashim Abed, the Iraqi terrorist monster behind the 2004 ambush and slaughter of four American security contractors whose charred bodies were hanged from a bridge in Fallujah. But that's another story.
By the way, is Abed getting a U.S. civilian court trial?
UPDATE: It now appears that the father of the Christmas Day passenger jet bomber is himself an Islamist--a leader of the movement to impose barbaric Islamic law (sharia) on Nigeria. Read all about it--here--at Atlas Shrugs.
The Obama administration's appeasement of Islamist Iran and Islamism in general--the efforts to identify and "engage" (code for appease and attempt to align with) supposedly moderate Islamists (a concept akin to perfidious proposals for negotiating with supposedly moderate Nazis during World War II that were thankfully rejected out of hand by President Franklin D. Roosevelt )--and to narrow the field of "unreconcilable" Islamists to Al Qaeda alone is backfiring big-time. The policy is emboldening and encouraging the enemy, and confusing and demoralizing the American people and its allies and friends--and armed forces.Friday, January 01, 2010
Perspective on North Korean Peace Wish
Krugman Rips into Chinese Mercantilism
Unemployment made in China. Read his Op-Ed essay here.Rising China Reality Check: 40 Million Poor Farmers
In 2010, Israeli Leaders Likely to Have to Choose Between Mass Death in Iran or Mass Death in Israel
Israel is seeking crippling sanctions on nuclear-arming Iran, as reported here.
Good luck with that. The Obama administration will talk tough--maybe. But it has no intention of pushing for the only truly tough measure--an energy blockade--that stands a chance of bringing the Islamonazi regime to its knees.
Barring a miracle--meaning a revolution in Iran--the regime will survive and nuclearize.
And Israel's leaders in 2010 will be forced to choose between allowing a second Holocaust--for Iran intends to annihilate the modern Jewish State that was reborn in the aftermath of the Nazis' genocidal war--and taking preemptive military action to prevent it from happening.
Assuming preemptive war is the only acceptable alternative, the real choice will be between launching conventional or nuclear strikes.
In other words, Israel's leaders will soon have to choose between mass death in Israel or mass death in Iran. Reason: Iran and its Islamonazi proxies, Hitlerian Hezbollah and Hamas, are loaded with missiles and rockets capable of striking Israel's main population centers. Iran's secular (but Islamizing) ally, Syria, which has missiles and chemical warheads, may or may not sit out a conflict.
Even preemptive nuclear strikes on Iran's nuclear and missile sites will probably not deter Hezbollah from unleashing its aerial arsenal because the Lebanese Shiite group is doomed without Iranian backing. At that point, Israel will have to choose between leveling most of Lebanon or letting Hezbollah level Haifa and a big part of Tel Aviv.
Given Iran's intention to also attack the United States with nuclear weapons--albeit in an indirect, deniable way, using terrorist proxies--U.S. leaders will themselves eventually have to choose between mass death in Iran or mass death in the U.S. But that's another story.
Again, regime change is the only way to avoid war with Iran. Miracles happen. Pray for one in 2010.
POSTSCRIPT: In the meantime, however, be sure to click here to read Jonathan Spyer's analysis of what's really happening in Iran. The end of the regime is not near, Spyer says. In fact, the fanatic faction around Iranian maniac-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad aims to revitalize the Islamist revolution by replacing the current clerical fascist system with a more streamlined, purely fascist one that is nevertheless still dedicated to promoting Islamist ideals at home and abroad. It seems that this group sees itself as even more Islamist than the missile-mad mullahs. Its mission, according to China Confidential analysts, is to hasten the advent of the Muslim messiah, meaning, Iran is in the grip of an apocalyptic band bent on acquiring--and using--atomic arms.
Sunday, 3 January 2010
Just one day after China Confidential called attention--scroll down or click here--to the wide range of possible specific terrorist threats that face New Yorkers as a result of the Obama administration's outrageous decision to stage a civilian court trial in the city for alien Al Qaeda war criminals, a top U.S. counterterrorism official warned in a statement that Al Qaeda and other "extremists" (the word terrorists has apparently been banned) are seeking new ways to launch attacks on U.S. soil. Read the AP story here.
Evan Ramstad puts North Korea's official editorial, proposing peaceful relations with the United States and a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, in perspective. Read it here.
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman asserts that "predatory" Chinese mercantilism will lead to the loss of more than a million American jobs.
Forty million Chinese farmers live below the poverty line, making less than $175 a year. Click here for the story.
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