So now Sen. Chuck Schumer is demanding that the British Government seek an immediate return of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi from Lybia to a Scottish jail. Good luck with that.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but when terrorists are organised, they’re easier to deal with:
The old al Qaeda is no more. At least 40 percent of its leadership circa 2001 has either been killed or captured. New faces have fared no better; since July 2008, 11 of the organization’s 20 most wanted have been put out of commission. And middle management is almost gone, many of them victims of Predator strikes. What remains is probably a hollow organization, represented by a core of insulated figureheads, such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, surrounded by eager cadres of jihadist newcomers. Before long, the West may just hold a barrel to al Qaeda’s collective forehead. Should it press the trigger?
Gut instinct and righteousness scream “yes!” But a better answer might be “not yet.” The world would be wise to keep al Qaeda alive, paradoxically enough, for security reasons. Like it or not, keeping a battered al Qaeda intact (if weak) is the world’s best hope of funneling Islamist fanatics into one social network — where they stand the best chance of being spotted, tracked, and contained. The alternative, destroying the terrorist group, would risk fragmenting al Qaeda into thousands of cells, and these will be much harder to follow and impossible to eradicate. It’s the counterterrorist’s dilemma, and the only real choice is the least unsavory: Al Qaeda must live.
The next goal must be to reduce the Taliban to the same condition, where it is so weakened that it’s actually useful to keep around.
They decided a physical pat-down search was too intrusive, so instead they came up with a full-body scan that produces an image of the passenger’s naked body. It’s hilarious how excited this woman is about their solution.
Osama’s first wife, Najwa, who separated from her husband a few days before 9/11 but remains married to him, tells the story of her life with the man in her memoir – “Growing Up bin Laden”. The book was co-written with one of Osama’s sons, Omar:
One night in Khartoum, Sudan, Osama bin Laden decides to take his family — four wives, 14 children — on a camping trip.
He drives into the desert, finds an isolated spot, then has his oldest sons dig ditches in the sand, long enough to fit each person. It’s the early 1990s, and bin Laden believes there’s a war coming between Muslims and the Western infidels. This is training.
“You must be gallant. Do not think about foxes or snakes,” he says. “Challenging trials are coming to us.”
Each child, including a few 1- and 2-year-olds, lies in a hollow. There is no water or food.
As night falls, a child’s voice whispers in the darkness, “I’m cold.”
“Cover yourself with dirt or grass,” bin Laden snaps. “You will be warm under what nature provides.”
Bin Laden’s first wife, Najwa, doesn’t like that idea, but, “I reminded myself that my husband knew much more about the big world than any of us. We were all pearls to my husband, and he wanted to protect us.”
That’s what it was like “Growing Up bin Laden,” the title of a forthcoming memoir (St. Martin’s Press) co-written by Najwa, who remains married to the monster, though she now lives apart from him in an undisclosed Middle Eastern location, with her fourth son — of 11 children — Omar.
It’s a world where women are never allowed outside the house, 12-year-old daughters are married off to 30-year-old al Qaeda fighters, pet dogs are used for target practice and the biggest household fight is over whether Islam allows refrigerators. “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ it ain’t. . . .
Najwa was almost perpetually pregnant, as Osama said it was important to make many warriors for Islam.
An interesting insight from bin Laden about the U.S. and Israel:
As for why bin Laden focused on America, he said: “Remember this: America and Israel are one bicycle with two wheels. The wooden wheel represents the United States. The steel wheel represents Israel. Omar, Israel is the stronger power of the two. Does a general attack the strongest line in battle? No, he concentrates on the weakest part of the line.”
He got that right.
The book will be released on October 27.
In case you thought Al Qaeda was a bunch of primitive cavemen:
A nuclear physicist at a major international atomic research centre has been arrested as a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist.
He is a researcher at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, in Switzerland.
The suspect is the elder of two brothers, aged 32 and 25, arrested in Vienne in South Eastern France on Thursday.
French intelligence sources said he was thought to have links with Al Qaeda’s North African wing and was suspected of suggesting European targets for terror attacks.
UPDATE: The would-be terrorist is a Frenchman of Algerian descent, and he planned to destroy a city the size of London by blowing up an oil refinery, and to kill some European politicians including including French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The threat he posed was so serious that the authorities feared a nuclear attack.
In the U.S., the denial-of-service attacks targeted the White House, Pentagon, New York Stock Exchange, National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, NASDAQ stock market and more. Many of these sites were paralyzed. The sites of the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission, Secret Service and other agencies were still reporting problems days after the attacks started.
I thought now that Obama had a cyber czar, America’s cyberspace was safe.
It happening in India, there is a possibility that leopards ate him. Another is that people who want to sabotage the nuclear power plant where he worked kidnapped him for information.
If he has been kidnapped, though, there are many places where he may be now. Al Qaeda has been trying to obtain WMDs of any kind for its next big strike. And I wonder how many of North Korea’s nuclear scientists look Korean.
TSA has a new requirement: travelers must buy airline tickets in the exact same name that appears on their government-issued IDs that they will show at security checkpoints. It’s the Secure Flight passenger identification program, and it’s supposed to lead to fewer misidentifications of flyers as those on terrorist watch lists. In the meantime, it’s guaranteed to lead to more frustrated people who will be delayed at the checkpoint because they forgot to include their middle name when buying the ticket.
Some people want whole-body-imaging scanners banned because they believe TSA officers could use them to make “naked virtual images of celebrities” and “make a fortune” off them. The ACLU is on the case, so it must be a worthy cause.
Daniel Andreas San Diego, 31 - animal rights activist, strict vegan, and most wanted terrorist
There are plenty of people who want to liberate the earth from human oppression, but you can’t get more extreme than trying to kill people to liberate cells:
The FBI for the first time has placed an animal rights activist on the bureau’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list.
The FBI announced Tuesday the addition of Daniel Andreas San Diego to the list, hoping a burst of international publicity associated with the move will help investigators find him after six years on the run.
San Diego, 31, may appear to be out of place on a terrorist list with familiar names like al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Adam Yahiye Gadahn. The “strict vegan,” according to the FBI, is charged with bombing two corporate offices in California in 2003. The blasts caused extensive property damage but no deaths.
Vegans eat no meat or any other food containing animal products.
Authorities allege San Diego bombed facilities in Emeryville and Pleasanton, California, because he believed the Chiron and Shaklee Corporations had ties to animal-testing labs.
After both bombings, e-mails from a group called “The Revolutionary Cells-Liberation Brigade” claimed responsibility for the acts.
The guy’s tattoos are a manifesto of militant environmentalism’s final goal:
According to an artist’s rendering of the body art, San Diego has one in the center of his chest of a burning hillside and the words “It only takes a spark” in a typewriter-style font.
An abdominal tattoo shows burning and collapsing buildings, while his back features a leafless tree rising from a road above buildings that are burning but still standing, the FBI says.
I wonder if these people will terminate their own existence if they ever achieve their goal of liberating nature from intelligent life. Nah, they’ll say their lives are important to ensure nature’s continued freedom.
And besides, there will be no intelligent life on earth anyway.
The owners of ground zero are saying that the 1776-foot tower being built there would be more practical to market under the former north tower’s name, One World Trade Center.
It’s not the name – it’s the place. They can name it Allah’s Glory, and it will still be perceived as a magnet for terror attacks.
The fighting is being done by flying robots instead of ground troops, but isn’t America, for all intents and purposes, at war in Pakistan?
Al Qaeda members at Guantanamo:
“Our religion is a religion of fear and terror to the enemies of God: the Jews, Christians and pagans. With God’s willing, we are terrorists to the bone.”
Do we take their own word for their intentions and motivation, or do we keep closing our ears?
Mexico has a big problem on its hands, and it’s America’s problem as well:
Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official added.
The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico’s two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers – an army that rivals Mexico’s armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.
“It’s moving to crisis proportions,” a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels’ “foot soldiers” are on a par with Mexico’s army of about 130,000.
The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past year, about 7,000 people have died – more than 1,000 in January alone. The conflict has become increasingly brutal, with victims beheaded and bodies dissolved in vats of acid.
Really, when you start out with a hit like that, where do you go from there?
Obama’s homeland security and intelligence priorities for next year are outlined here.
The more we now promise to be gentle, the bigger the stick later on we will have to carry, writes Victor Davis Hanson:
The last president to promise such a grandiose break from the American past [as Obama now promises] was Jimmy Carter. As he entered office in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam age, he lectured the world about human rights. Carter promised an end to America’s inordinate fears of communism, and vowed to show more kindness abroad — and as recompense earned in a mere three years the Soviets in Afghanistan, communist insurgencies in Central America, and American hostages in Tehran.
Plus – impulsiveness can be good:
Mrs. Clinton, it’s now your turn. We are not impulsive as you told the world. So you can stop apologizing for America’s recent behavior — unless you think the world would be a better place with the Taliban, and Saddam and his two boys in power. Or maybe Europe should have Schroeder and Chirac back, or Libya with nuclear weapons, or Khalid Sheik Mohammed freed from Guantanamo. Or maybe America shouldn’t have given that $15 billion for AIDs relief in Africa, or helped with earthquakes in Pakistan and tsunamis in Indonesia. Now all that was sorta impulsive.
An interesting analysis of what makes the West the West and what it must do to survive in the current conflict with Islamism.
The Washington Post reports:
A Pentagon review of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions but that prisoners in the highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social interaction, according to a government official who has read the 85-page document.
The report, which President Obama ordered, was prepared by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, and has been delivered to the White House. Obama requested the review as part of an executive order on the planned closure of the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, on the southeastern tip of Cuba.
Walsh’s report was a broad endorsement of the Pentagon’s management of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and it urged prison authorities to continue efforts across the system to maximize the ability of the detainees to socialize and practice their religion, according to the government official. “Continue to avoid actions that are disrespectful to the detainees,” Walsh wrote.
If you are commissioning a report on Gitmo conditions, why order the place closed before the report comes in? Or why order a report – which can conclude either way – if you are going to close Gitmo regardless?
(Via The Weekly Standard Blog.)
