Where Liberty Dwells, there is my country » Islamic fundamentalist terrorism

Little Rock Jihadist Admits He Is a Jihadist

BenjaminFranklin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:53:24 +0000

Abdul Muhammed attacked a recruiting station last year, killing one soldier and wounding another.

He now admits he was a jihadist here.

The Obama administration is hushing it up. But the American people realize they are less secure under Obama with his disastrous policies toward terrorism.

The Ft. Hood Report Has Been Released: Political Correctness Kills (Once Again)

BenjaminFranklin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:49:55 +0000

On Friday, the Pentagon’s report on the Ft. Hood terrorist attack was released. U.S. Army officers are punished. Their careers ruined because they did not call attention to Maj. Hasan’s jihadism. Of course, to do so before the attack would have ended their careers due to the politically correct requirement for diversity.

The Left has got the country in a death-grip. This has to change. The military is responsible for the security of the United States. War is too serious for political correctness and the social engineering of the Let.

If this does not change immediately, the West is doomed.

H. Thomas Hayden has an excellent summary here:

owhere in the report does it mention the threat posed by Al Qaeda and nowhere does it mention influences that caused the “self-radicalization.”

There is nothing on why it happened.

The only revealing piece of information in the “Executive Summary: Overview,” is that “DoD force protection programs are NOT focused on internal threats.”

In its 86 rambling pages they treat “the alleged perpetrator,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter with references to the Columbine massacre and the new civilian police force concept of neutralizing an “Active Shooter.”

The report did flirt at saying that any attempt to call attention to Maj. Hasan’s radicalism and prevent his promotion could be perceived as reflecting poorly on his superior officers and maybe have negative influence on their careers.

There is another DoD report, which is classified and not available to the public, where one can only hope that DoD recognizes the role “political correctness” played in this tragedy.

Political correctness and the absence of profiling is going to get more American killed until someone in Congress says enough is enough and do something to stop this nonsense.

Europe Retreats in the Face of Islam: The Perfect Metaphor

BenjaminFranklin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:35:40 +0000

Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail has a great op ed you should read. She hits the nail on the head:

There were other Muslim bad guys on the loose last week. One was an axe-wielding Somali who broke into the house of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. The cartoonist has been under constant threat of death since he drew an infamous caricature of the Prophet Mohammed nearly five years ago. His house has been turned into a fortress, with surveillance cameras, steel doors, bulletproof windows and a safe room, to which he retreated with his small grandchild.

The rights of foreigners are scrupulously protected in Denmark. The Somali man had won an asylum case and received a residency permit, even though he had known ties to al-Qaeda. Another man, a Tunisian, was implicated in a different plot to kill the cartoonist. He was released last week after efforts to expel him from Denmark were rejected by an immigration board.

Neither Barack Obama nor anybody else in authority is willing to state the plain and simple facts: that Islamism is on the rise worldwide, that the vast majority of terrorists who attack the West are young Muslim men, that such young men are a demographic time bomb in the Islamic world, that no security system can ever stop them all. Instead of telling us to hold our bladders, maybe they should start to tell the truth – even if it costs my maple-syrup-weary sister a job.

What strikes me is that the cartoonist retreated into his room, and waited to be protected by the police. That make senses. It also captures the problem. One day, Europe is going to find that there is no longer a safe room into which it can retreat. It will then realize it should have confronted the threat when it had a chance, rather than retreating.

2009: The Year in Terrorism–The Underwear-Bomber Is Only One of Many

BenjaminFranklin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:35:08 +0000

While the Obama administration’s reaction to the Christmas Day underwear-bomber varies from a big yawn to try find a way to blame the Bush administration, it is import to review 2009–The Year In Terror. Here is a partial summary from–surpise–Time magazine. Even the Leftist media can’t sweep Islamic fundamentalist terrorism under the rug completely.

“There appears to be an increase in [terrorist] activity in the U.S.,”
warns Jenkins, who calculates that there have been 32 terror-related
“events” on these shores since 9/11, and that 12 of those occurred in
2009. (See the top 10 inept terrorist plots.)

Some of the more noteworthy “events” of 2009:

• In January, Bryant Neal Vinas, a Long Island convert to Islam, plead
guilty to helping al-Qaeda in a plot to blow up a train in Penn Station.

• Late in 2008, Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali-American college student from
Minneapolis, became the first American suicide bomber on record when
he killed 29 people in an attack in Somalia. Earlier in the year, the
FBI had revealed that at least 20 Somali-Americans from the
Minneapolis area had traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, a radical
militia tied to al-Qaeda. Five Somali-Americans are believed to have
died in fighting there this year, and Somali officials say at least
one more unnamed American citizen has become a suicide bomber on
behalf of al-Shabab. (See pictures of a Jihadist’s journey.)

• In June, Abdulhakim Muhammed, an Arkansas convert to Islam, was
accused of killing one soldier and wounding another in an attack at a
military recruitment center in Little Rock.

• In September, an Illinois man, Michael Finton, who converted to
Islam in prison, was accused of trying to blow up a Federal building
in Springfield.

• In October, David Coleman Headley, a Chicago businessman, was
arrested for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on a Danish
newspaper that had published controversial cartoons mocking the
Prophet Muhammed. (Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian resident of
Chicago was also arrested in connection with the same plot.) Headley
was later additionally charged with abetting the Mumbai terrorist
attack of November 2008. (Read “The Chicago Suspect: Are Pakistani
Jihadis Going Global?.”)

• In November, Maj. Nidal Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who
had grown up in the U.S., was accused of going on a shooting spree at
Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 30. (Read “The FBI Probe: What Went
Wrong at Fort Hood?.”)

• Also in November, eight Somali-American men from Minnesota were
charged with terrorism-related counts involving al-Shabaab. Six other
had been charged previously. Most of the men were charged in absentia
because they remain in Somalia, along with dozens of Somali-Americans
who are believed to have joined the Qaeda-linked militia.

• And earlier this month, five men from the Washington, D.C., area
were detained in Pakistan, where local officials say they had been
trying to join the fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Ramy
Zamzam, said to be the leader of the group, is a Howard University
dental student; two others are sons of businessmen.

• Some other cases involve legal residents who are not U.S. citizens,
such as Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan suspect arrested in Denver and
charged with a plot to bomb targets in New York, and Jordanian Hosam
Smadi, arrested in Dallas, accused of trying blow up a skyscraper.
(Read “Three Key Questions About Zazi and Terrorism.”)

Terrorism experts and Muslim community leaders caution that the spurt
in such events doesn’t necessarily add up to a trend. For one thing,
the cases are unconnected. “Each case has its own special
circumstances,” says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations.

Nor is there likely to be wide-scale extremism in the American Muslim
community. Jenkins points out that that there’s “no underground
network, and no deep reservoir of resentment.” Hooper notes that the
problem “is not coming from rhetoric within the community; it’s not
the case that young men are being radicalized in American mosques.”

Indeed, one of the lessons of 2009 is that the Internet can suffice as
a recruitment tool for extremists. From Smadi to the Virginia Five,
many of the men accused of terrorist-related activities in the past
year first made contact with jihadist groups online, officials say.
“More and more people are going online to find inspiration,” says
Danny Coulson, a former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI.

Jihadist recruiters have grown increasingly sophisticated in their use
of the Internet, and many of them specifically target American
audiences. Extremist e-preachers such as Anwar al-Awlaki, an American
living in Yemen who exchanged e-mails with Maj. Hasan, communicate in
English, which makes them more accessible to American Muslims.
Pakistani authorities believe the Virginia Five were recruited by a
man known as Saifullah, who communicated mainly through e-mails.

Not all jihadi recruiters want their American recruits to travel
abroad for training or to join existing groups. “They’ve figured out
that people who travel to Pakistan or Afghanistan or Somalia are
probably being watched by the authorities,” says Coulson. “So they’ll
just encourage you to act independently, without direct affiliation
with any group. That makes it harder for law enforcement.”

The good news: If recruiters can use the Internet, so too can U.S.
intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Terrorism experts say U.S.
authorities have become much better at finding plotters online, and
putting them under surveillance. Smadi, for instance, was first
spotted on a jihadi website.

It is long past time for Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano to resign. Obama should too. Counting down the days until we can vote against Obama and his minions. If there is not a successful attack, in a few weeks, the enhanced “security measures” will be muted. People will forget about the threat, and the politically correct push to close Gitmo, and avoid “racial profiling” will be back in force. The Left does not want to fight the war on terror, since it cuts against the Leftist agenda. The Left does so only when it is forced to do so, temporarily, by al Qaeda.

Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorist Attack Thwarted by Dutchman and Luck

BenjaminFranklin — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:27:22 +0000

On Christmas Day, a Nigerian jihadist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tries to blow up Northwest Flight #253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. A quick-thinking Dutchman, the terrorist’s incompetence, and, no doubt, some luck helped too. The West has a serious problem, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, that our elites want to sweep under the rug.

The terrorists are not going to stop, and they will become ever-more innovative as they exploit the seems in air security.

John Leonard at Americanthinker.com provides a chronology of terrorist dry-runs and suspicious acts since 1999.

Chronology of Pattern Behavior

Once the point had been reached where additional information is no
longer forthcoming about these two flights in the foreseeable future,
I didn’t know where to look for more information. An experienced
reporter working on these stories suggested I turn my attention
backwards to seeing whether any dots could be connected to incidents
on past flights.

America West Flight 90 — Nov 19, 1999. In this pre-September 11th
incident, two passengers speaking Arabic roamed the plane without
permission and attempted to enter the cockpit in what has been
described by the 9/11 commission in their report as a dry run.
“Students” Muhammed al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan al-Shalawi were placed in
custody and removed from the flight. Bomb-sniffing dogs were brought
to search the plane. The airline was sued for discrimination, but the
case was dismissed.

Northwest Flight 327 — Jun 29, 2004. Described by flight marshals as
a terrorist dry run, thirteen men of Syrian descent changed seats,
congregated in the aisles, used the bathrooms excessively, appeared
nervous, and behaved in a strange manner long enough to draw attention
and concern from fellow passengers. Air marshals on the plane
instructed the flight crew to radio ahead for law enforcement to meet
the plane when it landed in Los Angeles.

US Airways Flight 300 — November 20, 2006. The infamous case of the
flying imams, who allegedly changed seats in order to take control of
every entry and exit route from the plane, ignored their assigned
seats, requested unnecessary seat belt extensions, and disrupted the
flight. The unused seat belt extenders were left lying on the airplane
floor. Hmmm. Webbed strap belts with metal heads attached — why would
anyone be concerned about that? Who worries about customers acting
strangely who make obviously unnecessary and unusual special requests?

The imams were removed from the plane but cried discrimination after
the fact. They sued the airline and received an undisclosed
settlement. CAIR and the imams declared victory.

AirTran Flight 175 — Jan 1, 2009. According to an article published
by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, nine Muslims traveling to an
Islamic conference were removed from the plane after two members of
the group allegedly engaged in a debate about the safest location to
sit in the event of a bombing on the plane. The conversation alarmed
other passengers, who alerted the flight crew and caused the plane to
be diverted. According to Doug Hagmann in the Canada Free Press:

[N]one of the remaining 95 passengers made it to their ultimate
destinations on time, AirTran refunded some tickets and made other
booking arrangements due to the incident, which cost the airline
dearly in time, money, and passenger goodwill.

A press release from AirTran found at EuroInvestor.co.ukincredibly
reported that AirTran actually rewarded the nine Muslims who disrupted
the flight, saying:

The airline has refunded the air fares of the nine passengers detained
for questioning, has agreed to reimburse the passengers for expenses
incurred by taking another airline and has also offered to transport
the passengers home to Washington, DC, free of charge.

So let me get this straight: the nine Muslims who caused the flight
delay and scared other passengers profited from their misconduct?
Their airfare was refunded and they got a free flight home? Sounds
like a pretty good deal to me…is this a great country, or what?

United flight 22 — September 28, 2009. According to the KTLA.com, two
men of apparent Middle Eastern descentwere removed from a flight at
LAX, and the flight was delayed while the bomb squad searched the
plane. An article in the LA Times reported the incident as follows:
A law enforcement source said at least one of the men ran into a
restroom on the plane and appeared to hide while the New York-bound
jet was taxiing on the runway, according to the source, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.
AirTran 297 — Nov 17, 2009. A group of ethnic passengers used
electronic devices on tarmac preparing for takeoff, changed seats,
moved around, ignored flight attendants’ instructions, and caused
flight delay as the plane returned to terminal.

UA 227 — Dec 9, 2009. A group of passengers believed to be of Middle
Eastern descent changed seats and allegedly moved other passengers’
luggage at the gate while the plane prepared for departure, prompting
their removal from the flight and bomb-sniffing dogs to check the
baggage.

Two possibilities that come immediately to mind are either that these
incidents are orchestrated as a ploy to create a scenario to litigate
for profit like the imams from US Airways Flight 300 — or something
more sinister is in the works. In the aftermath of Fort Hood, can we
afford to ignore warning signs of abnormal or pattern behavior any
longer?

It is clear that CAIR, the threat of lawsuits, and political correctness united to make us less safe. We were fortunate this time.

We call on the Obama administration to declare a new policy, not just protecting but praising, those who speak up when they witness Muslims or others behaving in a suspicious manner.

Ft. Hood Killer Malik Nadal Hasan Is A Terrorist

BenjaminFranklin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:52:43 +0000

The horrible terrorist attack at Ft. Hood yesterday should shock the country. As of this writing, thirteen people have been killed and 31 wounded in an attack conducted by Islamic fundamentalist terrorist, U.S. Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan. Media reports are still contradictory about his motivations. Expect this: most in the Old Media will attempt to whitewash this event, blaming it on anything but Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism.

Victor Davis Hanson and Mark Steyn provide thoughtful commentary. Hanson observes that at least 20 Islamic fundamentalist terror plots have been broken up post-9/11 to 2009. I would say at least twenty, probably closer to 30.

What has not been well covered so far is lack of outrage among the American people. This heinous act should have the American people howling in outrage that this individual would dare attack American soldiers in the American homeland.

Americans should ask fundamental questions: ”Who is guy and how did he get into the country?” The costs of multiculturalism, open borders, and the loss of traditional American identity have been enormous.

One cost was incurred yet again: Attacks against Americans by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in America have become common. The realization by the American people that these attacks are a result of the policies of the Left, is a huge risk for the Left. They need the American people to keep quiet until they are done replacing them. That sinister effort is still is still in progress, and nothing may be allowed to upset it.

Old media are aware of this risk, as are the FBI, and Obama administration officials, so they will act to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible. The official line will triumph: ”This was an isolated incident,” “Anyone could have done it,” and all of the usual excuses. It is up to New Media to hold them accountable and, more importantly, to force the recognition that not anyone could have done it and it is not an isolated incident. Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is alive and well in the United States, and we should continue to expect it to thrive as long as the Left has Western societies in their death-grip.

What Is Worrisome about the Jakarta Bombings

BenjaminFranklin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:36:54 +0000

Two hotels were bombed in Jakarta on July 17. Jemaah Islamiyah or a spin off was probably responsible. What is particularly worrying is that the suicide bombers checked into the hotels, bringing the bomb-making equipment and explosives with them, and assembled them in one or both hotels.

That is a new development and one that is, of course, worrisome.

Bad news for travelers: From now on, we should expect to have our luggage searched when checking into hotels.