NewsMax

Bill Gertz

...Barack Obama is set to announce a new round of strategic nuclear warhead reductions in the near future as part of a disarmament agenda that could reduce U.S. strategic warheads to as few as 1,000 weapons.

The next round of U.S.-Russian arms talks would follow Obama's expected announcement that the United States' arsenal of strategic warheads can be reduced unilaterally to around 1,000 warheads. That position is expected as part of the Pentagon's long-delayed Nuclear Posture Review implementation study that Obama was expected to sign earlier this year.

Recent press reports have indicated that...Obama may make the cuts -- fully one-third of the nation's arsenal -- by executive action and without Congressional authorization.

Specialists on nuclear deterrence say further cuts beyond the 1,550 deployed warheads mandated by the 2010 New START arms treaty could undermine the United States' ability to deter nuclear powers like Russia and China, who have significant modernization programs for their nuclear arsenals underway.

Further cuts also are likely to embolden other non-nuclear states, including Japan, to consider building their own nuclear arsenals, analysts say.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney said the administration is seeking to unilaterally disarm U.S. nuclear forces, something that is "the most dangerous thing I have ever seen an American president attempt to do."

"This is not the time to embark on such a dangerous path, with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasing their nuclear forces," he said.

A U.S. official familiar with strategic nuclear policy said the delay in signing the implementation study may be the result of concerns among military commanders in charge of nuclear deterrence that China's nuclear arsenal is expanding more rapidly than anticipated,

Read more at newsmax.com ...

FrontPage Magazine

Daniel Greenfield

The best evidence of the unlamented death of the Arab Spring (2010-2013) was the nervous response in Washington D.C. to the Syrian crossing of the Red Line.

The Red Line had been set up so that Assad would eventually run afoul of it, whether by using chemical weapons or by taking the blame for chemical weapons use by the rebels; as the UN alleges happened. Once the Red Line was crossed, the Liberators of Libya would use the opportunity to enforce the will of the people; at least those people with Qatari RPGs and Turkish machine guns.

But instead of carving out a No Fly Zone and then telling the American people about it three days later, Obama blinked. No sooner did Assad supposedly cross the Red Line than Obama aides rushed out to explain that paying attention to the colorful line was misreading what Obama had really meant to say.

“How can we attack another country unless it’s in self-defense,” one official asked, with no sense of irony. “If he drops sarin on his own people, what’s that got to do with us?”

Two years ago, Obama had declared that he was the defender of Benghazi, protecting it against a massacre that was never going to happen. And once Benghazi was liberated to be under Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood rule, the man who had sent in the air force to protect Benghazi Islamist militias against Gaddafi, couldn’t be bothered to send in the planes to protect his diplomats against the militias.

The Arab Spring may have died on that September 11. Or it may have died when Obama’s aides rushed to retreat across the Red Line. But one thing is certain; it’s deader than Monty Python’s blue parrot.

Obama looked into the Syrian abyss and pulled back. Maybe the timing of the war would have been a distraction from amnesty and gun control, but more likely the responsibility-to-protectors just couldn’t sell anyone on their happy ending.

There is not one single place where a major Arab Spring transformation has led to a happy ending.

Egypt is a political, social and economic disaster. Obama had been counting on Islamists transforming Egypt into another Turkey on a slow and sensible schedule. But Morsi had a little too much in common with Obama. Like Obama, he couldn’t wait a decade to crush his opponents and enact repressive policies that would fracture the country. He could barely wait a month.

Egypt isn’t unique. Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, is just as shattered, and one Islamist government has already gone down to be replaced by another. The same tensions between liberals and Islamists are playing out in Morocco. Meanwhile countries like Bahrain or Yemen in the Saudi sphere of influence either suppressed domestic protests or engaged in ritual transfers of power.

The Arab Spring was truly tested in Libya. NATO went in and left behind a country overrun by terrorists whose instability endangers its diplomats, the entire region and the world. Most of the advocates of intervention in Libya understand that the same thing will happen in Syria, but on a much larger scale.

Assad may be the prisoner of Damascus, but so is everyone else. The Syrian Civil War has stalemated all the powers leaving them stuck in a holding pattern. Russia is stuck helping Assad, even though it wishes that a transition could be arranged at the negotiating table, and the NATO powers are stuck trying to arrange some sort of Syrian rebel alliance, even though they know it will just be a gang of militias using Sharia courts and RPGs to fight over bakeries and oil wells.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, sounding more desperate than ever, has argued that the only way to keep the Al Nusra Front from winning is to arm the moderate opposition. But Cameron knows that there is no moderate opposition. The only options are to choose from a palette of Islamist militias and hope that works out better than it did in Libya or to let Russia control a transition that will put one of its own allies into power. And for the moment, it looks as if Obama and Cameron are going along with that plan.

Whatever happens next, the Syrian Civil War isn’t going anywhere.

Western politicians and pundits completely misread the Arab Spring as a series of popular uprisings. In fact they were austerity protests hijacked by political activists backed by Western democracy establishment NGOs and Islamist plotters backed by Qatar and its Al Jazeera propaganda network.

The Arab Spring was a campaign by Sunni Islamist countries to overthrow the governments of secular countries. With most of those governments overthrown, with two notable exceptions, it has moved into its next phase as a religious war between Sunni Islamists and the Shiite alliance of Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Only an idiot would mistake Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda shooting it out in the ruins of Syrian cities for any kind of popular indigenous uprising. There are still calls to arm the moderate opposition, but how can there be a moderate opposition when Turkey and Qatar, the two big players of the war, are not moderate except in the imaginations of New York Times columnists?

And how then could the Arab Spring be moderate and democratic when its backers and planners were neither moderate nor democratic?

The dividing lines in the Middle East were never between democracies and dictatorships. They are the sectarian lines that divide Sunni from Shiite and the ethnic nationalisms that divide the old Persian and Turkish empires from the ragged bands of Arab conquerors.

The Arab Spring was not new. It was very old. It was as old as the Islamic conquests that transformed more open Arab cultures into Islamist tyrannies and then repeated the process in historical cycles. The pattern continued with the clashes between Islamists and Arabs giving way to fighting between Sunni and Shiite. And that fighting must inevitably give way to the next phase of Islamist infighting.

This isn’t a new phase of history that will transform the Middle East into some ethnic copy of Europe. It is the same old history of the region repeating itself again and again like footprints in the sand.

The Arab Spring is dead. It was dead a thousand years ago. It isn’t a new idea, but a very old war whose adherents are cursed to battle each other for eternity over the same power struggles.

The desert air breathes out mirages and generations of Westerners have found themselves caught in astonishing vistas of lost kingdoms and flourishing oases, but the harsh realities of war have a way of dissolving illusions.

The Western nations that bought the myth of the Arab Spring from the wily Qatari shopkeeper thought that they were purchasing democracy and stability, when they were actually buying a piece of an old civil war. Now they have a choice between fighting one more war in the hopes of saving an Arab Spring that never existed… or stepping back from the abyss.

Townhall.com

Guy Benson 

Much of the media and liberal establishment simply ignored yesterday's Benghazi hearings.  They were content to see, hear, and speak no evil -- which is typically the fastest way to kill a story in Washington.  Others framed the proceedings as just another quixotic, partisan effort to hype a long-resolved story.  Selling that template requires adherence to two fallacious assertions: First, that no major questions remain regarding the 9/11 terrorist assault on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya  -- and second, that no new information emerged from the whistle-blowers' hours-long testimony.  The former claim is outright insulting.  The latter betrays either aggressive ignorance or wishful thinking.  House Oversight Committee Republicans' focused questioning extracted quite a few nuggets of relevant information.  For their part, many committee Democrats were focused on unseemly efforts to attack, distract and smear -- all employed as they cynically groused about Republicans "politicizing" the investigation.  Cutting through the nonsense and dissembling, here's what we now know:

(1) Murdered US Ambassador Chris Stevens' second in command, Gregory Hicks, was instructed not to speak with a Congressional investigator by Sec. Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.  Hicks said he'd "never" faced a similar demand at any point during his distinguished 22-year diplomatic career. When he refused to comply with this request, the State Department dispatched an attorney to act as a "minder," who insisted on sitting in on all of Hicks' discussions with members of Congress (higher quality video is available here): 

(2) When Hicks began to voice strenuous objections to the administration's inaccurate talking points with State Department higher-ups, the administration turned hostile.  After being lavishly praised by the president and the Secretary of State for his performance under fire, Assistant Secretary of State Beth Jones instantly reversed course and launched into a "blistering critique" of Hicks' leadership.  He was subsequently "effectively demoted."  Hicks called Rice's talking points "stunning" and "embarrassing.

(3) Secretaries Clinton and Rice (the president's hand-selected messenger on Benghazi to the American people) repeatedly stated that the attack arose from "spontaneous protests" over an obscure YouTube video.  This was never true.  Hicks called the YouTube a "non-event" in Libya.  He and others on the ground -- including Amb. Stevens -- recognized the raid as a coordinated terrorist attack from the very beginning.  Hicks testified that he personally told Sec. Clinton as much at 2 am on the night of the attack, along with her senior staff.  [UPDATE - Rep. Trey Gowdy also revealed an email sent on 9/12 in which Assistant Sec. Jones confirmed to a Libyan official that the attack had been carried out by terrorist organization Ansar al-Sharia].  Days later, Rice recited bogus talking points on five American television networks, and Clinton denounced the video while standing next to the flag-draped coffins of the fallen.  Hicks said there he never mentioned any "spontaneous demonstrations" related to a video in his phone call with Clinton:

Questions: How, why, and by whom did the administration's talking points get scrubbed and re-written?  Why did the president refuse to identify the attack as terrorism in an interview with CBS News on September 12, and why did he allow Sec. Rice to disseminate patently false information on his behalf?

(4) A small, armed US force in Tripoli was told it did not have the authority to deploy to Benghazi in the midst of the attack.  Twice. Flight time between the two cities is less than an hour. Members of the would-be rescue contingent were "furious" over this obstruction.  The witnesses said they did not know who ultimately gave the "stand down" orders, or why.  If it was not the Commander-in-Chief calling the shots, why not, and where was he?  Whistle-blower Mark Thompson, a career counter-terrorism official at State, said he called the White House to request the immediate deployment of a Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) to Benghazi.  He was told it was "not the right time" to do so, then was cut out of the communications loop.

(5) The US' security chief in Libya, Eric Nordstrom, averred that Sec. Clinton "absolutely" would have been briefed on his (and Stevens') repeated requests for an increased security presence in Libya.  This claim undercut committee Democrats' nitpicking over whether Clinton's signature appeared on the memo denying those requests: 

Furthermore, the Benghazi compound was operating below the bare minimum global security standard for US diplomatic missions -- despite being in an exceedingly dangerous place, and having been subjected to previous attempted attacks.  Only the Secretary of State has the authority to grant exemptions for minimum security requirements.

(6) Amb. Stevens was stationed at the vulnerable Benghazi compound on a dangerous symbolic date at the behest of Sec. Clinton, who wished to make that diplomatic mission a permanent outpost.  This detail should only intensify questions as to why the consulate was so poorly protected (see item #7).

(7) Nordstrom stated that elements of the lightly-armed Libyan militia group tasked with protecting the consulate were "certainly" complicit in the attacks.  No US Marines were present at the time. Hicks estimated that at least 60 terrorists swarmed into the compound during the attack.  Eight months later, zero arrests have been made.

(8) A mortally wounded Amb. Stevens was taken to a hospital controlled by the Islamist extremist group (Ansar Al-Sharia) primarily responsible for the assault.  Administration officials initially pointed to locals rushing Stevens to a local hospital as evidence of local goodwill from protesters who didn't approve of the mob spinning out of control.  Hicks said the American contingent did not go to retrieve Stevens from said hospital during the fight because they were fearful that it was a trap.

(9) The US government did not seek permission from the Libyan government to fly any aircraft into Libyan airspace, aside from a drone.  The witnesses testified that they believe the Libyan government would have complied with any such request.  The fact that none was even made indicates that there was never a plan or intention to rush reinforcements to Benghazi.  This renders the "would they have made it on time?" argument largely irrelevant -- the facts in item #4 notwithstanding.  Another important point about the "they wouldn't have made it" defense: The assault lasted for eight hours and took place into two waves at two different compounds.  How could anyone have known how long the fighting would last?  How could they have anticipated that ex-Navy SEALs Woods and Doherty wouldn't have been able to stave off the enemy for a few more hours?  Help was not on the way.  It was never sent.

(10) Despite committee Democrats' repeated claims and leading questions, reduced funding or "austerity" had absolutely nothing to do with the inadequate security presence on the ground.  The State Department itself made this fact crystal clear at previous hearings, as did the administration's internal "ARB" review.  Why did multiple Democrats flog an obsolete, thoroughly-debunked explanation, if not to muddy the waters?

(11) Oversight Democrats tried to cast doubt on Mark Thompson's credibility, suggesting that he'd declined to participate in the administration's ARB probe.  Thompson corrected the record, noting that he "offered his services" to those investigators, who in turn did not invite him to testify.  Democrats also claimed that the House hearings were slanted because the leaders of the ARB investigation were not invited to participate.  In fact, Chairman Issa explicitly did invite them, as confirmed by letters obtained by ABC News.  They chose not to participate.  Democrats were dead wrong on both counts.

(12) During her Congressional testimony on Benghazi, Sec. Clinton memorably asked, "what difference does it make?" in regards to the provenance of the administration's incorrect talking points.  Gregory Hicks and Eric Nordstrom both attempted to answer that question.  Hicks did so in granular detail (the false explanation opened a nasty rift between the US and Libyan governments, impeding the FBI's investigation for weeks).  An emotional Nordstrom was more general (we lost friends; the truth matters):

One of the few points of bipartisan agreement was that the number of unresolved issues merit additional hearings on Benghazi.

FrontPage Magazine

Arnold Ahlert

New evidence reveals the Obama administration’s version of the events that took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was based on a tissue of lies. The Weekly Standard’s Steven Hayes has obtained a timeline and a series of emails revealing the self-serving efforts made by administration officials, who heavily edited CIA talking points about the attack that cost four Americans, including ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, their lives. Also revealed is who made the changes and why they made them.

The revelations are part of a report published by the five Republican Committee chairmen that has been largely dismissed by a calculatingly indifferent media, despite the reality that it includes direct quotes from administration officials, along with footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. Although the names of some officials have been omitted in some places, the Weekly Standard has confirmed the identity of two administration officials who authored two critical emails: one illuminating the reason for the editing itself and the other announcing a September 15 meeting of top administration officials, where the ultimate draft of the talking points would be finalized.

The two officials are State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland and White House national security official Ben Rhodes.

What they sought to obscure is the realty that while the initial attack was still taking place, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts, at 4:05 p.m and 6:08 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The former indicated an attack was taking place. The latter alert revealed that an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, Ansar al Sharia, was claiming credit for it. According to the House report, these alerts were widely circulated among administration officials, including those at the highest levels of government. Another cable sent by the CIA station chief in Libya the following day reveals that eyewitnesses confirmed that a terrorist attack involving the participation of Islamic jihadists had occurred.

It was exactly that reality the administration sought to obscure.

The Standard reveals the three versions of the edited talking points. Version 1 was distributed internally for comment at 11:15 a.m. on Friday, September 14. Key points include:

–The initial theory that the Benghazi attacks “were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo”;

–”Islamic extremists with ties to al Qa’ida participated”;

–Members of Ansar al Sharia “were involved”;

–”Wide availability of weapons and experienced fighters in Libya contributed to the lethality of the attacks”;

–”Five other attacks against foreign interests” had taken place since April, leading to the possibility that the consulate had been “previously surveilled”;

–The U.S. is “working w/Libyan authorities and intelligence partners” to bring those responsible to justice.

After this draft’s initial distribution, the CIA amended it, adding two more points. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy,” and “The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and Libya.” They also changed two talking points: the reference to “al Qa’ida” was removed, and Benghazi “attacks” became “demonstrations.”

An hour into the vetting process, the official confirmed by the Standard to be Victoria Nuland raised “serious concerns”–about the political impact, fearing that Congress would hammer the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.” Minor revisions followed, but they weren’t good enough for Nuland, who said the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” further warning that State Department officials would directly contact National Security Council (NSC) officials as a result. In a matter of moments, the House report noted, that “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” It was then that Ben Rhodes notified the various groups working on the points that a meeting would take place on September 15 to resolve their issues.

Version two of the report was put together at 9:45 a.m. on Saturday. According to officials with knowledge of what occurred at this meeting of the Deputies Committee, CIA deputy director Mike Morrel heavily edited this version, removing 148 of its 248 words. The entirety of the previous report was reduced to the “spontaneous attack” theory, followed by the idea that “this assessment may change as additional information is made available,” and that the “investigation is ongoing to help bring justice to those responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens.”

Less than two hours later, those three points became the bullet points in Version three, which became the final version of the administration’s talking points.

On Sunday, September 16, UN Ambassador Susan Rice was sent out by the administration to pitch the Muslim video canard. The following day, Nuland rose to Rice’s defense. “What I will say, though, is that Ambassador Rice, in her comments on every network over the weekend, was very clear, very precise, about what our initial assessment of what happened is. And this was not just her assessment, it was also an assessment you’ve heard in comments coming from the intelligence community, in comments coming from the White House.”

Yet even the redacted version of the talking points never mentioned anything about a video. Despite that reality, the administration, led by Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, continued to pitch that mendacious version of the events, inaugurating the Obama administration’s ongoing efforts to mislead the American public in the weeks leading up to the presidential election — weeks during which we were assured that al Qa’ida and terror were “on the run.”

At a press briefing last Friday, State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell declined to comment regarding Nuland’s involvement, and why critical details were edited out of the final draft. “We regularly discuss our public messaging with our interagency counterparts, that’s part of what happens in the interagency,” said Ventrell. “We’re not going to get into the details…of our internal deliberative process on these. We continue to be transparent with the congress, and have been, and shared thousands of documents. Talking points is something that they’ve looked into.”

Yet the “most transparent administration in history” provided the emails to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the stipulation that they would only be available for a limited time, and not turned over to the committees. That agreement was part of a political deal whereby Senate Republicans would not hold up the nomination of current CIA Director John Brennan.

As damning as these revelations are, they are far from the only problems the Obama administration faces in a scandal that can no longer be contained. Last Thursday, it was revealed that the State Department’s Office of Inspector General will be conducting an investigation of the Accountability Review Board’s (ARB) report, an outrageous whitewash whose central conclusion was the idea that “the tragic loss of life, injuries, and damage to U.S. facilities and property rests solely and completely with the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks.” According to well-placed sources, the IG wants to determine if the ARB declined to interview critical witnesses, who wanted to provide their accounts of Benghazi to the panel whose conclusions insulated top officials–including Hillary Clinton–for the “inadequate security” at the consulate.

Two of those whistleblowers, now revealed to be Gregory Hicks, Foreign Service Officer and former Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’Affairs in Libya, and Mark Thompson, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, are being represented by Washington attorneys Victoria Toensing and her husband Joseph DiGenova, respectively. Appearing on “Geraldo” Saturday night, Toensing told Rivera that “the things that her client will be saying will be contradictory to what the administration’s scenario was.” DiGenova promised that “what will come out of the hearing is that the Accountability Review Board conducted by General Pickering and Admiral Mullen will be proven to have been a cover-up–one of the worst jobs ever done in the history of governmental reporting…”

DiGenova further noted that nether Pickering or Mullen ever interviewed Hillary Clinton during their investigation, and that when Pickering was told he would have to deal with it, he became physically ill.

The third witness expected to testify is Eric Nordstrom, diplomatic security officer and former regional security officer in Libya. Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until two months before the attack, is the security officer who twice requested additional security in Benghazi before the attack. Nordstrom cited a chronology that included 200 security incidents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012, including 48 that occurred in Benghazi.

An equally explosive revelation emerged a week ago, when an anonymous U.S. special operator told Fox News the administration’s contention that no forces were available to get to Benghazi in time was also a lie. “I know for a fact that C 110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise, not in the region of northern Africa, but in Europe. And they had the ability to react and respond,” he contended. The C 110 is a 40-man special ops force reportedly capable of conducting rapid response and deployment. They were located only three-and-a-half hours away in Croatia on Sept. 11.

The operator revealed there were other members of special ops and other officials aware and involved, but that they would be “decapitated if they came forward with information that could affect high-level commanders.” The Fox source added that members of the special ops community feel betrayed, and believe that betrayal goes to the highest levels of the administration.

The administration apparently couldn’t care less. Last Tuesday at his press conference, [Alleged] President Obama claimed he was “unaware” of any effort to prevent whistleblowers from testifying. On the same day, Secretary of State John Kerry contended that there is “an enormous amount of misinformation out there.” ”We have to demythologize this issue and certainly depoliticize it,” Kerry told reporters at the State Department. “The American people deserve answers. I’m determined that this will be an accountable and open State Department as it has been in the past, and we will continue to do that, and we will provide answers.”

Kerry had previously expressed frustration with Republicans for refusing to accept the conclusions of the ARB. “Let’s get this done with, folks,” Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in testimony last month. “Let’s figure out what it is that’s missing, if it’s legitimate or isn’t. I don’t think anybody lied to anybody. And let’s find out exactly, together, what happened, because we got a lot more important things to move on to and get done.”

Last Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney echoed Kerry’s indifference. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “Benghazi happened a long time ago. We are unaware of any agency blocking an employee who would like to appear before Congress to provide information related to Benghazi.”

On Saturday, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, praised the State Department officials who have agreed to testify at the hearings. “They have critical information about what occurred before, during, and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks that differs on key points [from the administration,]” Issa said in a statement. “Our committee has been contacted by numerous other individuals who have direct knowledge of the Benghazi terrorist attack, but are not yet prepared to testify,” he added. “In many cases their principal reticence of appearing in public is their concern of retaliation at the hands of their respective employers,” Issa said.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell took issue with that characterization. “The State Department would never tolerate or sanction retaliation against whistleblowers on any issue, including this one,” Ventrell contended. “That’s an obligation we take very seriously, full stop.”

The country will find out exactly how seriously beginning Wednesday, when the House Oversight Committee resumes its hearings. It remains to be seen how mainstream media outlets, many of which have been more than willing to dismiss the investigation into the deaths of four Americans as a Republican conspiracy theory, will handle what is likely to be some of the most explosive testimony on the attack to date history. Benghazi may have happened “a long time ago,” but it is not going away anytime soon.

FrontPage Magazine 

Walid Shoebat

Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi, the Saudi national and initial “person of interest” in the Boston marathon massacre, now turns out to be innocent — or so we are told by our Department of Homeland Security. Researching Al-Harbi’s web of friends, meanwhile, yields some other very interesting discoveries:

Al-Harbi has a current friendship on Facebook with a man named Ibrahim al-Ghamidi. We researched the name Ibrahim Al-Ghamidi from the Arabic sources and found links in which one named Ibrahim Al-Ghamidi posted a terrorist training video. Obtaining photos of the Al-Ghamidi who posted the video seemed to match Al-Harbi’s friend except for a small scar on the right eye, which did not exist on Al-Harbi’s friend, so we need to keep in mind that we could have a case of two Ibrahim Al-Ghamidis who look the same.

Perhaps what is most disturbing is a post on Al-Ghamidi’s Facebook profile  that spread throughout the Arab world and has never been seen in the West until now (see here and here). He posts an interview prepared by his famed friend Mohammed Al-Awadi, a popular TV host at Alrai Kuwaiti TV, in which we gain a better understanding of why the United States has had some 200 attempted terror attacks on its soil since 9/11.

In order to provide terror training to his viewers, the host brought one of the world’s most renown female terrorists, Ahlam Tamimi, onto his show to teach Muslims worldwide on how to carefully infiltrate, plan and select locations — and carry out terrorist attacks in heavy population areas in order to maximize a civilian death toll. Tamimi tours the Arab media now and can provide such insight on how Muslims—both male and female—can become killing machines. Tamimi was released in an exchange deal regarding the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli who was held hostage by Hamas.

Al-Awadi introduced Tamimi not as a subject for an interview of some sort, but as an example to follow for all Muslims:

Al-Awadi: “I would like to introduce you as a role model not just for women, but for everyone.

The program aired several segments; yet Al-Ghamidi linked to the eighth segment only — the segment that covered recruitment, cell breakdown and terror preparedness. In this segment Tamimi first teaches Muslims how to best prepare their souls by preparing Muslims on how to abandon secular life and worldly things, then how to smuggle terrorists, plant explosives in condensed areas, watch, document statistics and monitor civilian movements in heavy-traffic areas.

“I studied all the ideologies of each [terrorist] group in order to decide which one I will join” she told Al-Awadi who supported everything she did.

“With my media card I was able to enter back and forth undetected to do journalistic interviews in Jerusalem in order to avoid detection by the Zionists.” (See 9:50)

Al-Awadi: “So you get in and out as a journalist” (10:09)

Tamimi: “Yes.” (10:10)

Al-Awadi: “Beautiful.” (10:11).

Tamimi: “Now I entered a [terrorist] cell. A cell is constructed by having a leader, then there are different groups each one is divided into itself.” (10:54)

Tamimi: “Of course, you do not know who is the leader.” (11:31)

Al-Awadi: “So the Sheikh approved and supervised?” (11:51)

Tamimi: “Of course, of course. (11:53) ……First I scouted places to decide where to carry out Jihadi operations. I would wander into Jerusalem to find the best spots to carry out these missions.” (12:05-12:11)

She proceeds:

First I would scout stores and major shopping malls, schools, restaurants. I would then present my findings to the leader of the cell. I would do a meticulous count on the numbers of people moving in these areas and study it mathematically. I would use my wrist watch and count how many were walking in an area within one hour. So I would make reports that if an operation is conducted in such and such area. Then I would estimate the numbers of casualties — in some cases my number would be 30 Israelis will die and other estimates it would be 50 Israelis that will die. So from this time to that time there would be 70 Israelis who entered this spot. So during lunch for example, from this time to that time, so many Zionists enter this area. The school for example, I would study the morning time when school children will enter. (12:40-13:37)

She continues:

Of course the second phase would be the Jihadi operation itself (14:05-14:11) …..I would take the components to be filled up with explosives to Abdullah Barghuti. He of course prepares the explosive charges. I would choose the device myself based on products that are most sold amongst the Zionists. So I would provide a report, for example, the best device is a favorite drink or product. So the explosive device is manufactured to look like this product. So the product on the outside would appear like something that easily looks like the products in the stores. And in the inside it would be a time bomb. Of course I learned how to operate one of these devices (14:18-14:50) . . .my other mission is to accompany suicide martyrs. (15:49-15:50)

Some previously translated clips might help Westerners understand what and who Al-Ghamidi was promoting: see here, here and here. And Tamimi also spreads her training messages throughout North Africa (see here).

Ibrahim Al-Ghamidi is a nasheed writer. Nasheed is an Islamic song. Not all nasheed are about Jihad, nevertheless, Al-Ghamidi has his share of Jihad nasheeds. Here is one of his nasheeds he wrote and sang supporting Jihad in Gaza:

Al-Ghamidi’s favorite, “O Martyr You Mesmerized My Soul,” is a favorite for Muslim terrorists (see an example here).

Tamami on the video posted by Al-Ghamidi and prepared by Alrai TV aired from Kuwait in which Mohammed Al-Awadi also tweets with Ghamidi — see Aug 17 here. In one tweet, Al-Awadi laments that Abdulmalek Abdul Muhsin al-Dawsari, a Saudi national, returned to writing secular songs. Al-Dawsari was the first Jihad nasheed songwriter and the pride of Muslim terrorists worldwide. He wrote what was probably the top number one Jihad song that circulates throughout the world of Islamic terrorists, “We will fight our battles with them”:

The lyrics sum up the Muslim terrorist call:

we’ll fight our battles with them,
we’ll go in multitudes to stop them
and we’ll bring back the taken right
 and we’ll push them with all our power
with the cutter weapon of right
we’ll set the land of the free ones free
we will bring back the purity to Jerusalem
after the disgrace and humiliation

and we’ll keep destroying their strong holds
with a huge voice that kept worrying them
and we’ll wipe the disgrace with our hands
and with full force we repel them

 we won’t accept any part being occupied
 we won’t let an inch for humiliation
the land will revolt and burn them all
there are volcanoes in the land that are boiling

Al-Ghamidi tweets Al-Awadi and promises to bring him to repentance as if it is from one nasheed writer to another, stating: “Sheikh, his name is Muhsin and I would like to dialogue with him.” Ibrahim Al-Ghamidi also corresponds with Shaykh Dr. Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni (see tweet Feb 20, 2013), a Saudi Mufti with nothing in English regarding support for terrorism, yet here he is giving a fatwa calling on terrorists in Iraq to attack and kill Americans in Fallhujah in Iraq:

And here he is condemning Usama Bin Laden on Prince Walid Bin Talal T.V Rotana, that is with one caveat; Bin Laden’s Jihad against the United States and Russia (see 49:55):

 The Ghamdi clan, on its official website Ghamid.com, displays a lengthy martyrs list entitled, “Ghamdis the Mujahideen,” priding themselves on having given up two of their young men (#3 Ahmed al Ghamdi and #4 Hamza Saleh al Ghamdi) to martyrdom when they destroyed the South Tower in Manhattan on 9/11. This does not even include Saeed al Ghamdi, who was one of the terrorist hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. His Last Will aired on Al Jazeera (yes, the same Al Jazeera that purchased Al Gore’s Current TV):

The Ghamdis who committed murder on 9/11, are listed as “martyrs” and “heroes” with comments like “definitely, sons to be proud of.” The Ghamdi martyrs list is too long to list in its entirety here, but perhaps we can include a few from the al-Qaeda martyrs list of the Muslims fallen in Afghanistan at the hands of the “American Crusaders”; #25 is Abdul-Rahman Ghamdi and #61 is Saeed Ghamdi and #134, Abu Zubayr Ghamdi.

Abdulrahman Al-Harbi, who became a controversial figure when he became the first suspect in the Boston bombing, had an interview with the Dubai TV host Daud Shiryani from MBC in which Shiryani drilled him, attempting to find FBI abuses against Muslims:

Al-Harbi was asked as to when the FBI interviewed him, to which Al-Harbi said:

“Immediately when I first arrived to the hospital.”

“I was interviewed for two hours” he told Shiryani.

“Was it the Boston Police or the FBI?”

“No, it was the FBI,” said Al-Harbi.

He continued: “They asked me from which country I was from and of course they were right to be suspicious because I …”

Immediately Shiryani interrupted him since the interview was intended to be the typical propaganda on FBI harassment and not some confession of some sort. Shiryani angrily said:

“I asked you if they interrogated you during or after you were medically examined. Did the FBI get permission from the doctor to question you?” (see 2:56)

“The FBI was on my side, it was the media that began to write about me.”

“Did the FBI film your home and your belongings and spread all this to the media?”

“Everything was fine until they went to my apartment and then the media began to talk.”

With 200 or so attempted terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, most of which were thwarted, it now becomes easy to understand the origin of these terrorist attacks and where they came from.

frontpagemag.com

Daniel Greenfield

On September 12, 2012, Obama stepped out into the Rose Garden and told the millions of Americans watching at home, “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”

More than half a year has passed since then and justice is nowhere in sight. The perpetrators of the attack openly walk the streets of Benghazi long after the FBI team sent there has gone home.

It may well be a coincidence that the first major successful terrorist attack comes as the administration plots a withdrawal from its second lost war. The Boston marathon massacre may have succeeded by a simple roll of the dice. Or it may have inaugurated a new series of terrorist attacks on the homefront.

For over a decade, Islamic terrorists who wanted to kill Americans headed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Obama’s grand security plan was to replace boots on the ground with drones carrying out pinprick strikes and then flying away again. It was a comfortable technocratic vision but it doesn’t account for what happens to all those fighters on the ground with no one left to fight and no reason to stick around except to act as drone targets.

Some have headed for Syria and others for North Africa. But the big question is how long will it be until they make another serious pass at the United States? Or have they made it already?

In Libya, Obama tried to avoid casualties by bombing from the air under the guise of a No Fly Zone. But once Gaddafi was dead and the zone was down, nothing protected the Americans in Benghazi. Obama had used the United Nations to sanction regime change, but without its sanction or the sanction of the Arab League, he refused to use air power to scare away the Salafist militias besieging the trapped Americans.

The new soft power strategy was big picture. It had nothing to offer the Americans fighting and dying while waiting for help to arrive.

Al Qaeda understood soft power as a weakness. Unlike the decrepit Clinton policy wonks, it was not impressed by the old strategy of refusing to engage while hiding behind the drones that were standing in for Bill Clinton’s favorite terrorist-fighting cruise missiles. It understood that limited engagement was not some bright and new philosophy, but an unwillingness to take casualties and inflict collateral damage.

“We will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people,” Obama announced in the Rose Garden and the terrorists laughed. They laughed because they had support from within the Libyan government. They laughed because the Libyan government had obstructed the arrival of rescue teams and denied the use of armed drones over Libyan airspace.

What sounded like a reasonable statement to an American audience was actually an admission that Obama would not act unilaterally to go after the killers. There would be no Abbottabad style raids. There was no reason to worry that they would wake up to find the Navy SEALS coming down on them.

Obama had been unwilling to flout the authority of the Libyan government to rescue the Americans in Benghazi. He was certainly not going to do it to find their killers.

The Jihadists had carefully assessed Obama’s weaknesses while searching for loopholes to exploit. In Afghanistan, the Taliban had outplayed him by refusing to negotiate. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood had outplayed him by claiming the mandate of the people. Iran had outplayed him by prolonging meaningless negotiations. Al Qaeda had outplayed him by using that same reliance on the meaningless formalities of international law.

Before the Boston bombing, Guantanamo Bay was in a virtual state of revolt with prisoners refusing to move to individual cells and covering up security cameras and windows to take control of sections of the prison. While some imprisoned terrorists staged hunger strikes, others wielded broomsticks and batons in clashes with guards.

In Guantanamo Bay, in Benghazi and Afghanistan and Mali and a hundred other places, the Jihadists were testing the nerve of their infidel opponents and probing for weaknesses. Weak opponents can be hemmed in by their own laws and hamstrung by their need to cling to the moral high ground. The greatest weapon of the terrorists is their ability to exploit our rules, leaving us unable to act.

As the surviving Boston bomber lies in his hospital bed, Republican senators and congressmen are calling on the administration to treat him as an enemy combatant. But the same administration that refused to violate Libyan airspace to rescue its own people is showing no signs that it is willing to push the envelope in Boston and transfer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev into military custody.

When Obama spoke in the Rose Garden on September 12, all he had to offer were worthless words spewed from a teleprompter. On April 15, he delivered much the same speech, with entire sentences seemingly lifted from the original. Once again there were vows of justice, tributes to the American spirit and all the other formalities of an administration covering up its failures with heaps of words.

The media cheers every one of Obama’s utterances, as do the Jihadists, but where the media sees strength, they see weakness.

The Taliban won in Afghanistan. The Muslim Brotherhood won in Egypt. Al Qaeda won in Benghazi. And they don’t intend to rest on their laurels. Whether or not the surviving Boston bomber was one of theirs, the old war that was put on hold when American troops went to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is about to go hot again as Al Qaeda franchises gain the spare resources and breathing room to develop and deploy the next generation of terrorist plots.

The United States is the only country in the world that rewards the weakness of its opponents. The opponents we face today lack any such chivalrous notions. They have exploited the weakness of our leaders in Afghanistan, Egypt and Libya. And they intend to exploit that weakness on American soil.

After September 11, President George W. Bush made it clear that the United States would do whatever it took to protect the homeland. This administration has sent the opposite message over and over again. The Clinton Administration’s ineptitude in dealing with the World Trade Center bombing and the African embassy bombings invited September 11. The Obama Administration’s ineptitude in Benghazi may have invited the marathon massacre of April 15.

Tom Hoefling

Sadly, many good, decent, well-meaning lovers of liberty have become a bit unbalanced by the events of last week in Watertown, Massachusetts. The massive law enforcement response to the bombings at the Boston Marathon, to the murder of an MIT police officer, to the explosive, bloody confrontation between police and the two bombers on the streets of Watertown, is being characterized in some quarters as illegal and unconstitutional. Most particularly, the searches which were conducted while the police were looking for the surviving terrorist seem to be troubling many. 

But, in fact, those searches were well within established constitutional parameters concerning what is and isn't a "reasonable" search . The authorities seem to have faithfully followed accepted legal practices and procedures .

First and foremost, those operations were designed to protect innocent human life, because that overriding concern must always precede concerns about privacy or property or lawyers. If impinged upon or destroyed, privacy or property can quickly be restored. But a life, once taken, is gone forever.

The God-given right to life is the supreme right, and it is unalienable. Constitutionally, apart from just war and justifiable homicide, the only way your life can be legitimately taken from you is if you are found guilty of a capital crime by a jury of your peers.

The right to liberty is also unalienable, but it is not without natural limits, limits that are prescribed by the natural rights of other individuals, and by the rights and security needs of the whole body of the people. When you enter into society, any society, but especially one that governs itself by the rule of law and constitutions, you have agreed to accept the limitations on your liberties that are inherent in balancing your rights and liberties against the rights and liberties of others. As the old saying goes, "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose."

We might also say that "your right to swing your door ends at my nose." Your important, absolutely legitimate, God-given right to the privacy of your home does not outweigh the rights of other individuals, of your neighbors, or of the whole community, to be secure in their lives, liberty, and property.

Your legitimate right to the privacy of your home also does not outweigh the right of law enforcement officers to be sure that they are not shot in the back as they pursue a dangerous terrorist. Cops are people too, and they bleed just like the rest of us. They also have rights, starting with the right to live.

The primary purpose of government is to protect the lives of the people. And that's exactly what law enforcement personnel did in Watertown. They fulfilled their purpose. The searches that were carried out were not only legal, as even the ACLU has admitted , they were absolutely necessary to protect the people in their homes, to protect other lives throughout the community, and perhaps even to protect other communities from further attacks. As important as the right to privacy is, it does NOT trump the right to life. (By the way, this is equally true if you're talking about heartless terrorists roaming the streets or heartless killers in the abortion clinics.)

Chances are extremely high that if a terrorist was running around the neighborhoods of the critics they would respond pretty much the same way that the people of Watertown responded. If the tranquility of their community were to be shattered, they would likely be working with police to bring about the speediest, safest resolution possible. They would also likely be giving voice to a heart of deep gratitude toward those who helped restore peace to their town, just as the people of Watertown and Boston have done.

Thank God for those who put themselves in harm's way to protect the innocent. Appreciate them, don't denigrate them. 

The founders of this republic were also willing to put their lives on the line to protect the lives and the liberty of their families and fellow countrymen. And they did. But I see no evidence that they thought that the rights to privacy and property trumped the right to life or the overall security needs of the entire community and nation. They had a balanced understanding of the concept of rights. They had a sense of proportion.

In May of 1781, during the American Revolution, when British troops commandeered her house for use as a military outpost, Rebecca Motte, whose husband had died early in the war, was living there with her children. Colonel Light Horse Henry Lee described the Motte estate as being “situated on a high and commanding hill...surrounded with a deep trench, along the interior margin of which was raised a strong and lofty parapet.” When the Americans finally surrounded the house, Mrs. Motte is said to have told Lee and General Francis Marion, “If it were a palace, it should go.” She presented a set of combustible arrows to him that were then used to set the roof on fire. The British promptly surrendered.

When the enemy attacked, Rebecca Motte put the lives of her fellow Americans and the needs of her country ahead of her own rights and material possessions. She kept her balance. She kept a sense of proportion. She understood what was truly important. May we follow her sterling example of reasonable, balanced patriotism and selflessness. 

FrontPage Magazine 

Matthew Vadum

Russian authorities warned the Obama administration repeatedly — not merely once — that Boston Marathon bombing mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev could be an Islamic terrorist, but those admonitions went unheeded in Washington, D.C.

It’s a depressingly familiar tale of intelligence failures, official lies, politically correct posturing, and bureaucratic bungles coming from an administration that has little interest in protecting Americans from the Islamic terrorist threat, a danger [Alleged] President Obama refuses even to acknowledge.

Time magazine previously reported that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) warned the U.S. government about Tsarnaev a single time two years ago, after he frequented a radical mosque in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, during a six-month visit to that politically unstable, jihadist-friendly Russian republic. The mosque is reportedly a terrorist hangout.

But the Boston Globe now reports there were several such warnings.

On Tuesday, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were told during a briefing closed to the public that Russia made “multiple contacts” with the United States regarding Tsarnaev, including “at least once since October 2011,’’ Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told reporters.

The FBI previously acknowledged its investigators interviewed Tsarnaev in early 2011 but did not determine him to be a threat. He was not placed on the “no-fly” list.

As FrontPage reported last September, FBI agents aren’t allowed to treat individuals associated with terrorist groups as potential threats to the nation.

The fact that a terrorism suspect is associated with a terrorist group officially means nothing, according to the FBI document, “Guiding Principles: Touchstone Document on Training.”

After first handcuffing FBI agents investigating terrorism, the “Touchstone” document also invokes the gods of political correctness by making agents afraid of asking useful questions that might produce actionable information.

“Training must emphasize that no investigative or intelligence collection activity may be based solely on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religious affiliation,” the Touchstone document reads, borrowing some language from civil rights legislation.

“Specifically, training must focus on behavioral indicators that have a potential nexus to terrorist or criminal activity, while making clear that religious expression, protest activity, and the espousing of political or ideological beliefs are constitutionally protected activities that must not be equated with terrorism or criminality absent other indicia of such offenses.”

It’s not that much of an exaggeration to say that the FBI could not have done anything about Tsarnaev unless he strapped on a suicide vest in front of them, called them “infidels,” and detailed his abominable plans. Diverting attention away from the Obama White House, the Boston Globe article fatuously editorializes that the new revelation of multiple warnings from the FSB raises “new questions about whether the FBI should have focused more attention on the suspected Boston Marathon bomber.”

After the closed-door briefing, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) criticized the multiple intelligence failures.

“This is troubling to me that this many years after the attacks on our country in 2001 that we still seem to have stovepipes that prevent information from being shared effectively,” Collins said, without elaborating.

Tsarnaev’s name had been entered into the “Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment” (TIDE), a classified database created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center. The system holds files on about 450,000 people U.S. officials regard as known, suspected, or potential terrorists worldwide.

The system is so large U.S. investigators do not routinely keep tabs on every individual listed there, according to a Reuters report. That explanation, however, seems a bit too convenient. The alternate explanation unexplored in the news item is that the Obama administration doesn’t care about terrorism.

This isn’t the first time someone flagged in the TIDE database has later been involved in an Islamic terrorist plot against the United States. Somehow Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian “Underwear Bomber,” got onboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day 2009 and tried to blow it out of the sky.

Months earlier his father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a prominent banker in Nigeria who visits the U.S. frequently, warned U.S. authorities of his son’s growing extremism and the possibility he might be involved in something untoward.

U.S. government officials said they didn’t put Abdulmutallab’s name on a “no-fly” list because they didn’t have sufficient derogatory information about him. In January last year he received four sentences of life imprisonment plus an additional 50 years.

Meanwhile, the Boston Herald reports that Massachusetts taxpayers were subsidizing the Boston Marathon bombers and their almost comically dysfunctional family as the two Tsarnaev brothers immersed themselves in the world of Islamic terrorism.

In the lead-up to the Boston attack he masterminded, now-decommissioned terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev added insult to injury by living large on state welfare benefits, leeching off the good people of the Bay State he despised so much.

“The news raises questions over whether Tsarnaev financed his radicalization on taxpayer money,” the newspaper observes.

Killed by police last Friday, Tamerlan received welfare benefits from an unknown start date until 2012. His wife and their three-year-old daughter also received those benefits. Tamerlan and his brother, the now-hospitalized bomber number two, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, also received welfare through their parents when they were younger.

Although Massachusetts Health and Human Services spokesman Alec Loftus said the Tsarnaevs “were not receiving transitional assistance benefits at the time” of the marathon bombing, he refused to provide details about the benefits the family was given.

Then there is the still unresolved matter of Saudi visa student Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi.

When Alharbi was hospitalized after being injured in the Boston bomb blast, the government reportedly labeled him a “suspect,” but soon watered down that description, calling him a “person of interest,” and eventually a mere “witness.”

But days after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to answer Congressman Jeff Duncan’s (R-S.C.) questions about the mysterious circumstances surrounding Alharbi (also spelled al-Harbi), she made a startling admission Tuesday while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Napolitano if Alharbi was on a watchlist, “and if so, how did he obtain a student visa?” She replied:

“He was not on a watchlist. What happened is — this student was, really when you back it out, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was never a subject. He was never even really a person of interest. Because he was being interviewed, he was at that point put on a watchlist, and then when it was quickly determined he had nothing to do with the bombing, the watch listing status was removed.”

If Napolitano has her watchlist facts right, this means the Obama administration puts individuals on watchlists when they are merely questioned as part of an investigation. This seems drastic and presumptuous, and if true, a new cause to alarm civil libertarians.

The media has reported conflicting information about whether Alharbi is or was at one point on the government’s “no-fly” list, and whether he is or was scheduled to be deported from the U.S.

Many questions remain about Alharbi and the confusing paper trail the government created around him.

Glenn Beck’s news website, The Blaze, previously reported that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center (NTC) created an “event” file on Alharbi under section 212 (3b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the part of the federal statute that deals with aliens involved in terrorism.

Then yesterday The Blaze updated this information, reporting that the NTIC event file described Alharbi as “armed and dangerous.”

“Alharbi was admitted into the country under a ‘special advisory option,’ which is usually reserved for visiting politicians, VIPs, or journalists,” according to The Blaze. “The event file cover page indicates he was granted his status without full vetting.”

Jihadists must be delighted that Saudi nationals will be eligible next year to receive preferential treatment from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) agency when they enter the United States.

Like travelers from Canada, Mexico, South Korea, the Netherlands, and soon Australia, travelers from Saudi Arabia will be able to skip the usual CBP lines at airports by providing their fingerprints and machine-readable passports at an automated kiosk, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports.

As the CBP puts it, the Global Entry “trusted traveler” program “allows expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the United States.”

Given the fact that the Obama administration denies Islamic terrorism is a major threat to the U.S. and has been aiding Islamist organizations in at least Libya, Egypt, and Syria, there is little reason to be reassured when CBP boasts that “[a]ll applicants undergo a rigorous background check and interview before enrollment.”

DHS Secretary Napolitano thinks allowing the Wahhabist kingdom that produced 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers to share in vetting Global Entry speed-pass applicants makes perfect sense.

“By enhancing collaboration with the government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel,” Napolitano said in January after meeting with Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.

But given Saudi Arabia’s long and odious track record as an incubator for jihadists and underwriter of terrorist operations, perhaps allowing the Saudis to join the exclusive Global Entry club isn’t such a good idea.

Maybe, at a minimum, we should make them wait in line at the airport like everyone else.

Frontpagemagazine

Daniel Greenfield

The day before the Marathon Massacre, the New York Times had scored plaudits for running an op-ed by one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards complaining about his hard life in Guantanamo Bay.

On April 14th, the paper of broken record paid 150 dollars to an Al Qaeda member for the opportunity to complain about being force fed during his hunger strike. On April 15th the bombs went off.

The attacks of September 11 introduced a dividing line. There was the world of September 10 and the world of September 11. There was no such clear dividing line when September 11 faded from memory and we returned to a September 10 world. Nor is there an exact date for when we will return to an April 14 world in which it is okay to pay a terrorist in exchange for his propaganda. But if the media has its way, that day can’t come soon enough.

A day after the bombings, media outlets wrote that a decade without terror had come to an end. But the terror had never stopped or paused. The FBI and local law enforcement had gone on breaking up terror plots to the skepticism and ridicule of the media which accused them of violating Muslim civil rights and manufacturing threats.

Some of those plots seemed laughable. A man setting up a car bomb near a Broadway theater where crowds waiting to see The Lion King musical, kids in tow, were lining up. Underwear bombers. Shoe bombers. It became fashionable to laugh at the silly crazies trying to kill people in ridiculous ways. Almost as silly as trying to hijack planes while armed only with box cutters and then ramming those planes into buildings.

Liberal urbanites stopped breathing sighs of relief every time a terror plot was broken up and turned on law enforcement. They were suspicions that these were just setups. Representatives of Muslim groups complained that law enforcement was taking confused kids and tricking them into terrorist plots that they never could have carried out on their own.

But there was only one way to find out.

Last year the Associated Press won a Pulitzer for its attack on the NYPD’s mosque surveillance program. But that was the April 14 mindset. Now after April 15, the police are once again heroes and any editorials from imprisoned terrorists complaining about the lack of new Harry Potter novels at Gitmo have temporarily been placed on hold. But the police know better than anyone that it will not take very long for them to go from the heroes to the villains.

The long spring in which Americans didn’t have to turn on the news and see bloody body parts everywhere was made possible by the dedicated work of the very people the media spent a decade undermining. The media was undermining them on April 14, but two days later it was acknowledging that the temporary peace brought about by the work of the very people they despised had made their temporary ignorance of terror possible.

We don’t know who perpetrated the Marathon Massacre, but many of the Muslim terrorist plots broken up by the authorities would have been as deadly. And there will be others like them in the future.

While law enforcement pores over the wreckage, the media is waiting for the time when it will once again be safe to pay terrorists for their propaganda. If the bomber turns out to be anything other than a Muslim terrorist, then they can turn the calendar back to April 14 when it was safe to support terrorists. If he turns out to be in any way associated with the right, then they can celebrate hitting propaganda pay dirt. But even if he’s only another Unabomber or another Bill Ayers, the false spring of April 14 will still beckon.

Three days later in the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman used Israel as an inspirational example of getting back to business as usual while leaving no reminders that an act of terror took place. Friedman wasn’t the only one to use Israel as an example, but it’s a very bad example. Israel’s peace process locked it into a cycle of terrorism. The threat of violence is constant and no one dwells on it.

A decade after the Hamas bombing that Friedman mentioned, Obama was able to pressure Israel into cutting a deal with Turkey that will help Hamas. That is the sort of terrible mistake that gets made when you don’t dwell on terror, but pick up the pieces and move on as quickly as you can.

Refusing to dwell on terror doesn’t defeat the terrorists. It locks you into an April 14 mentality where you strive to put April 15 out of your mind as fast as possible. To move past September 11 and all the other dates like it, you must learn how to stop them from happening again; rather than forgetting that they ever happened.

What Friedman really wants is to return to April 14 as soon as possible. And he’s not alone. Few people really want to live with terror. Even the liberal desire for a more conventional “white dude” bomber is perfectly understandable because that bomber, even if he is another Bill Ayers, is part of a more conventional and controllable world.

A homegrown monster, an Eric Rudolph, Bill Ayers, Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczynski, would be understandable. Even Charles Manson makes more sense to liberals than Mohammed Atta, Nidal Hasan, Najibullah Zazi, Faisal Shahzad or the legion of less familiar names who plotted to carry out their own terrorist atrocities.

They cannot be talked about in terms of class, race, gender or any of the other familiar lenses that the optometrists of the left put in the glasses with which they insist we see the world. They are at war with us.

And war changes everything. War ushers in a September 11 world. An April 15 world.

April 14 is a world where terrorism really isn’t that serious, but a terrorist hunger strike is. It’s a world where terrorists are goofy men with bombs in their underwear or their shoes, where global warming is the biggest threat to the human race and we all need to think more about our white privilege.

It’s the world that the New York Times understands.

The media narrative is built on preserving that world. September 11 dealt a blow to that world, but the wound has scabbed over and the old comfortable liberal verities have come back. Now the media has its fingers crossed hoping that another “white dude” will be led out and that he will have a motive dealing with abortion or race that fits comfortably into their worldview of good lefties and evil righties. What they fear is another Islamic terrorist, another promising twenty-something from Pakistan or the Middle East, with a middle class background and a graduate degree, reciting Koranic verses.

They don’t understand him, but they fear him. Not for his ability to kill them, but for his ability to destroy the world that they have built up. A world where left is right and right is wrong and diversity solves everything and the only thing we have to fear is being frightened of people who are different than us.

They fear that the long utopian dream that they fell into after the memories of September 11 faded has come to an end with another blast and another shout of Allah Akbar.

Fox News

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan –  Six American troops and civilians and an Afghan doctor were killed in attacks on Saturday in southern and eastern Afghanistan as the U.S. military's top officer began a weekend visit to the country, officials said.

In the south, three U.S. service members, two U.S. civilians and the doctor were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a car full of explosives just as a convoy with the international military coalition drove past another convoy of vehicles carrying the governor of Zabul province.

Another American civilian was killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said in a statement.

The attacks occurred the same day that U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Afghanistan for a visit aimed at assessing the level of training that American troops can provide to Afghan security forces after international combat forces complete their withdrawal at the end of 2014.

Those killed in Zabul province included three members of the military and two U.S. civilians, including at least one employee with the U.S. State Department, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement. Several other Americans and Afghans, possibly as many as nine, were wounded, the official said.

Read this story at foxnews.com ...