Manchester bombing shows danger of homegrown terror

The terrorist bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester has intruded on the discussion of walls and travel bans in the United States. The unpleasant truth about terrorists is that it is too late to keep them out. They are already here.

The Manchester bomber was reported to be Salman Abedi, 22. According to The Telegraph, Abedi was born in Manchester to parents who immigrated from Libya. He was a British citizen who was educated locally in British schools and had only become radicalized recently.

The problem is the same in the United States. Many of the terrorist attacks carried out against Americans over the past few years were committed by American citizens. One of the first instances of homegrown terrorism was the 2009 Fort Hood massacre in which Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, a native of Virginia, murdered 13 people and wounded 32 others. Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernadino terrorists, was a natural born US citizen. His wife was a Pakistani national who had entered the country legally. Omar Mateen, the terrorist who attacked Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, was born in California. Many other terrorist attacks were also carried out by self-radicalized Muslims who were native-born US citizens.

A common denominator in many attacks is that the terrorist was the son of immigrant parents, but this is not true in all cases. For example, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who shot up a army recruiting office in Little Rock in 2009, was born Carlos Bledsoe to a family of Tennessee Baptists. Likewise, Zale Thompson, who attacked NYPD officers with a hatchet in 2014, was a convert to Islam.

Building a border wall or enforcing a travel ban will not protect Americans from terrorists who are also Americans. In the age of the internet, sermons of radical clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki and terrorist propaganda from groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are easily accessible online. Potential terrorists can become indoctrinated and plan attacks from the comfort of their own homes without training or direction from group leaders in the Middle East.

If citizenship is an “unreliable” indicator of terrorism, as a Department of Homeland Security report said last February, how can authorities identify and stop terrorists without simply waiting for them to strike? Security forces have several good options at their disposal to find and stop terrorists before they have a chance to kill.

First, jihadi websites provide a means for radical preachers and recruiters to cross borders easily. They should be monitored and/or shut down. Terrorist websites that attempt to incite terrorism or show propaganda videos of terrorist killings should be fair game for cyberattacks to take them offline. When jihadi websites are up and running, valuable intelligence might be gained if counterterrorism officials can determine who they are talking to. When prospective terrorists in the United States can be identified, they can be singled out for additional scrutiny.

There are valid civil liberty concerns about government surveillance, but constitutional freedoms don’t apply to foreign nationals broadcasting messages from outside the United States. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech don’t include the right to incite violence.

It is also necessary to develop a network of friendly Muslims to report radicals who use American mosques as recruiting centers. Some radical mosques have been hotbeds of terrorism in both Europe and the United States. For example, Fort Hood terrorist, Nidal Hasan had attended the same mosque in Falls Church, Va. as two of the September 11 hijackers. The imam was Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born al Qaeda spokesman, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Religious freedom should be respected, but a balance needs to be struck between tolerance for Muslims and disregarding dangerous and violent teachings.

Rather than a travel ban, authorities should closely monitor people who travel to terrorist hotspots. For example, the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, traveled to Dagestan, a Russian republic riddled with Islamic terrorism, but the FBI and counterterror agents never pieced together the available information to identify the men as a threat. Dagestan, formerly called Chechnya, is not on the list of countries subject to the travel ban. As American citizens, the Tsarnaevs would not have been prevented from reentering the US even if it had been.

An additional method for preventing terrorism is the use of sting operations. FBI stings, in which agents play the role of terror group handlers for prospective terrorists, have led to numerous arrests in recent years. The targets of the stings are often homegrown, lone wolf radicals whose posts on social media have caused concern. Some critics argue that the stings are entrapment, but the tactic is an important one for rooting out radicals who might otherwise be invisible until too late.

Finally, the immigration system should be reformed to tackle the problem of people who enter the country legally and then overstay their visa. Far more illegal immigrants overstay their visas than cross the Mexican border. According to the Department of Homeland Security, hundreds of thousands of visitors to the US stay illegally and there is currently no effective system to track and deport them. No one knows how many might be radicals.

The face of Islamic terrorism has changed since September 11. Attacks by foreign operatives who infiltrate into a country to carry out hijackings or bombings is increasingly rare due to heightened security at airports and borders. The next step is to address the threat of US citizens who have joined the radicals. Finding and stopping homegrown radicals is difficult, but it isn’t impossible.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Yemen suicide attack may have been intended for US warship

A Saudi frigate was attacked by Yemeni rebels in the Red Sea on Monday. Now Fox News is reporting that the attack, which left two Saudi sailors dead and three wounded, may have been intended for a US Navy warship.

The Saudi ship was originally believed to have been hit by a missile fired by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Based on a video of the attack, officials now believe that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber in a small boat. This is similar to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 which was carried out in the Yemeni port of Aden and killed 17 US sailors.

Fox reports that on the video of Monday’s attack, a voice can be heard shouting in Arabic, “Death to America, Death to Israel, Death to the Jews.” The recording prompted US defense analysts to believe that the attack may have been carried out as a practice run for an attack on a US ship or that the Saudi ship may have been misidentified as an American ship.

American ships do inhabit the Red Sea waters near Yemen. Last October, the USS Mason and the USS Ponce were attacked by anti-ship missiles in the same area. The USNI News reported that the Mason fired three defensive SM-2 missiles and a single Evolved Seasparrow missile to destroy the attacking Houthi missiles.

It is also possible that Monday’s attack was meant for the Saudi ship. Saudi Arabia leads a coalition of Gulf states in an intervention in Yemen to support Yemen’s government in its civil war. Yemen’s government is fighting al-Qaeda as well as the Houthi tribesmen, who are backed by Iran.

If Iran uses its proxy forces to attack an American ship, it would be a dramatic escalation scarcely a week after President Trump’s inauguration. The suicide attack came just as Iran launched a medium-range missile test in violation of President Obama’s nuclear deal and a UN resolution.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump's First Drone Strike Kills Three in Yemen

MQ-9 Reaper drone (Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguso  USAF/freestockphotos.biz)

The first drone strike of the new Trump Administration is reported to have occurred in Yemen. Local security and tribal officials told the Associated Press that the two strikes on Saturday, the day after President Trump’s inauguration, killed three al-Qaeda officials. The strikes reportedly killed Abu Anis al-Abi, an area field commander for al-Qaeda, and two others who were not identified by AP.

Drone strikes in Yemen are nothing new. Standoff missile attacks by the unmanned aircraft were the Obama Administration’s weapon of choice in the War on Terror. According to Newsweek, between January 2009 and December 2016, President Obama ordered 526 drone strikes in various countries.

It was a 2011 drone attack in Yemen ordered by Obama that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a member of al-Qaeda who was a US citizen. This attack in particular was criticized from both the right and left. Leftists have been critical of the drone war in general while many conservatives condemned the killing of an American citizen without a trial even though Awlaki was beyond the reach of the US criminal justice system.

Yemen’s role in the War on Terror goes back beyond the September 11 attacks. In October 2000, the USS Cole was attacked by al-Qaeda suicide bombers while on a refueling stop in Aden, killing 17 US sailors. The attack was one of several that foreshadowed the worst terror attack in US history.

Today, Yemen is engaged in a civil war that involves both al-Qaeda and Iran-backed Shia rebels from the Houthi tribe. A Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia is supporting forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is also backed by the US.

During the campaign, Trump supported drone strikes, saying, “The U.S. needs to use all means necessary to combat terrorism,” but argued that the US should not get involved in the Yemeni civil war. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

How Obama lost Iraq

The recent news out of Iraq is reminiscent of the dark days of 2004 before President Bush’s surge largely pacified the country. Earlier this month, Israel’s Debka File reported that ISIS, the Iraqi al Qaeda affiliate, had captured the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi from government forces. Fallujah was proclaimed the capitol of a new Islamic caliphate. On January 18, CNN reported another in a series of bomb attacks. The latest bombings killed 19 people and wounded at least 74.

Iraq’s slide back into chaos has its roots in 2011 when the last U.S. soldiers left the country. The Obama Administration and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had been engaged in months of negotiations in an attempt to reach a new status of forces agreement that would allow American soldiers to remain in Iraq to help support government forces. (The Bush Administration had signed a status of forces agreement that required U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011.) When these talks failed, the stage was set for President Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to remove U.S. forces and end the war in Iraq.

Unfortunately, as pointed out by the Atlanta Conservative Examiner, it was much easier to remove U.S. troops than to end the war. President Obama’s assumption was that American forces were the cause of the fighting in Iraq and that if American forces were removed, the war would end. That turned out not to be the case, partly because of Iran.

In the absence of Saddam Hussein, Iran has grown into a larger threat in the region. According to NBC News, relations between the two countries had been frosty for decades before the Iranian revolution in 1979. Iran, known as Persia until the 20^th century, is comprised primarily of Shia Muslims. The Shia also make up a majority of Iraq’s population even though Saddam and his ruling Baath party were Sunni. Saddam’s control of Iraq was threatened by the Islamist revolution in Iran, leading Saddam to invade Iran in 1980. The war dragged on for eight years.

After the U.S. toppled Saddam, the Iranians revealed that they were developing nuclear weapons. As the U.S. and its European allies worked to diplomatically halt the Iranian weapons program, Iran began aiding Shia militants in Iraq. As far back as 2006, ABC News reported that Iran was directly supplying Iranian made weapons to Iraqi militants. The Washington Post reported that coalition forces captured Iranian agents, suspected to be members of the Quds (Jerusalem) Force of the Revolutionary Guard, in Iraq. The New York Times reported on evidence that Iraqi Shiite fighters were being trained in Iran as late as 2010.

While the Obama and Bush Administrations reached out diplomatically to Iran, the Iranians were actively engaged in a proxy war against the U.S. and the Iraqi government. A look at history shows that Iran has actually been engaged in a shadow war against the United States since 1979. It was less than three years ago that federal agents disrupted an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. by blowing up a restaurant in the District of Columbia. Given the history of Iran with both Iraq and the United States, it is not surprising that the radical Islamist regime would move to fill the power vacuum left in Iraq as the U.S. withdraws.

The logical move to protect the U.S. gains in Iraq would have been to negotiate an extension to the status of forces agreement that would allow U.S. forces to remain and assist the Iraqi government in a limited capacity. This agreement would have been in the interest of both the United States, which wants stability in the Middle East, and Iraq, which needs to prevent a resurgence of sectarian violence in order to maintain control of the country.

In October 2011, Foreign Policy magazine reported that even though the Iraqi government had acceded to allowing 8,000 to 20,000 American soldiers to remain in Iraq, the status of forces talks fell apart over the issue of immunity for U.S. troops. The Obama Administration insisted that the immunity be granted in the treaty, something that was not politically possible for al-Maliki government and something that Bush Administration had not demanded in the previous status of forces agreement.

A former senior congressional staffer told Foreign Policy that a treaty agreement was never required. “An obvious fix for troop immunity is to put them all on the diplomatic list; that's done by notification to the Iraqi foreign ministry," he said. "If State says that this requires a treaty or a specific agreement by the Iraqi parliament as opposed to a statement by the Iraqi foreign ministry, it has its head up it’s a--."

In their 2012 debate, Paul Ryan charged that Vice President Joe Biden “was put in charge of those negotiations and he failed to get an agreement” according to the Washington Post. Biden denied the charge, but a month earlier the New York Times had reported that Mr. Biden had chaired a videoconference on Oct. 6, 2010 where he had advanced the idea of replacing Iraqi president Jalal Talibani, a Kurd, with Ayad Allawi of the nonsectarian Iraqiya party as a counterweight to Prime Minister al-Maliki. Talibani would be shifted to the post of foreign minister as a consolation prize, a plan that elicited a retort of “Thanks a lot, Joe,” from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ultimately Talibani refused to step aside.

During the conference, Biden proclaimed, “Maliki wants us to stick around because he does not see a future in Iraq otherwise. I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA (status of forces agreement).” Biden was ultimately proven wrong.

In September 2011, President Obama said that he would like to keep between 3,000 and 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, but, according to the Washington Post, he had not begun negotiations three months before the withdrawal deadline. That November, the Washington Post reported that the vice president was in Iraq seeking to negotiate a continued American presence in Iraq. Many critics pointed out that retaining such a tiny, ineffective U.S. force in Iraq might prove more dangerous than a complete withdrawal.

Author and military expert Max Boot savaged Obama in the Wall Street Journal for not taking the negotiations seriously. Boot noted that President Bush was able to get a deal for a status of forces agreement in 2008 when even more U.S. troops were in Iraq. Boot noted that the immunity issue was covered by a Memorandum of Understanding rather than a treaty in other Middle Eastern countries where American soldiers are deployed.

Boot also pointed out that Obama frequently undercut his own negotiators. By frequently bragging about his plans to “end the war in Iraq,” Obama signaled to Iraqis that he was not serious about maintaining a presence. Further, the Iraqis knew that the number of troops that Obama was willing to commit were far less than the 20,000 deemed necessary by military leaders. Iraqi leaders “were not willing to stick their necks out for such a puny force,” according to Boot, “that may not even have been able to adequately defend itself, much less carry out other missions.”

Even before U.S. troops left, Iraq began to fall into Iran’s orbit. In June 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran was wooing the leaders of three key U.S. Middle East allies: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2012, Iran began overflying Iraqi airspace on an almost daily basis in order to deliver arms and supplies to the Assad regime in Syria. CNN described in March 2013 how Secretary of State Kerry had discussed the matter with al-Maliki, who noted that the Iraqi Air Force had a very limited capability to stop the overflights. Three months later, the Iraqis warned Israel against transiting Iraqi airspace during any attempt to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities according to the Times of Israel.

The Iraqi government is now widely acknowledged to be sympathetic to Iran. The Huffington Post reported in June 2012 that Iran is likely propping up the al-Maliki government behind the scenes. Debka File calls Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “pro-Iranian” and says that the Iraqi defeats in Anbar were humiliating for Iran which had “heavily backed the Iraqi army offensive.” After the debacle in Fallujah and Ramadi, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported that the Iranian government had pledged support for Iraq’s fight against “terrorism and extremism.” Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad is also an Iranian proxy while al-Qaeda supports rebel factions attempting to oust him. The dynamic is partly one of Sunni versus Shia. Al Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim organization while Iran and the Iraqi government are primarily Shiite.

In the end it appears that the expiration of the status of forces agreement provided Barack Obama with a way to fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw American soldiers from Iraq. The immunity issue provided a convenient way to blame the Iraqi government for the failure to reach an agreement. The president’s delegation of negotiations to Vice President Biden, a man that former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said was “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” is perhaps the best indication of how little importance Obama attached to Iraq’s security. Where Obama preferred to withdraw and abandon America’s influence in the Middle East, Iran was more than willing to assume the role of the Middle East’s dominant power.

 

Read the original article at Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Why did Obama go to Congress on Syria?

 

Late last week, President Obama abruptly decided to send a request for authorization to use force in Syria to Congress. The about-face came after several days of claims by aides that the president did not need permission from Congress to act. In fact, in a speech on Saturday, President Obama still denied that he needed permission from Congress and sources in the Administration told Press TV that the president had already made up his mind to strike Syria, even if Congress failed to give its approval.

Why did the president decide to seek congressional approval if he believes that he doesn’t need it and his mind is already made up? Obama has a long history of overstepping his constitutional authority in domestic matters so why does he suddenly feel the need to go to Congress when there is ample precedent for conducting limited attacks without congressional approval? Two years ago when Obama went to war in Libya, he not only did not ask for congressional authorization for the initial use of military force, but did not comply with the time limits of the War Powers Act, denying that U.S. forces were engaged in hostilities under the law, a position that Politifact said “violates our standards of common sense.”

There are three reasons that Obama may have moved the ball into Congress’ court. The first is that he wants to use the issue to split the Republican Party. There is an intense debate between the GOP’s foreign policy hawks and the party’s libertarian isolationist wing. Prominent Republicans like John Boehner, Lindsay Graham and John McCain have lined up to support the attack on Syria while Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have spoken out against it. Marco Rubio, who has advocated aiding the Syrian rebels for two years, seems to think that Obama’s response is too little, too late according to US News.

The downside to this strategy is that it has split Democrats as well. For the past half century, the Democrats have been the anti-war party (with the notable exception of President Clinton’s intervention in Bosnia). Florida Democrat Alan Grayson told the Australian that he believes as many as half of all Democrats will vote against the authorization.

Another motive may have been to share the blame if the intervention goes badly. President Obama’s foreign policy has led to a string of disasters from the expansion of Iran’s sphere of influence to include Iraq to the resurgence of al Qaeda and the rise of radical Islamism in many formerly secular Arab nations. Obama may well be looking at protecting himself politically if limited strikes ignite a wider war or lead to a victory by al Qaeda-supported rebels.

A key to understanding Obama’s flip-flop is the strong public opposition to attacking Syria. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sept. 3 shows that only 19 percent support an attack on Syria. Fifty-six percent oppose any intervention. A Washington Post/ABC poll released the same day showed 59 percent opposed. Opposition was almost identical for both Republicans (55 percent) and Democrats (54 percent), but stronger (66 percent) among independents.

A final possibility is that Obama is having second thoughts about attacking Syria and is hoping that Congress will deny the authorization to attack. Almost as soon as Obama announced his decision to attack, Administration sources began to leak information that indicated that the attacks would be very limited and half-hearted.

Yesterday, Obama tried to walk back his statement from a year ago that Assad’s use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that would “change my calculus” on intervention in Syria. According to Politico, the president’s new line is that “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.” Obama continued, “So when I said that my calculus would be altered by chemical weapons, which the overall consensus of humanity says is wrong — that’s not something I just made up. I didn’t pick it out of thin air. My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line, and America and Congress’s credibility’s on the line.”

Although four months ago, White House officials made clear that the red line was “absolutely” the president’s, Obama is obviously having second thoughts in the face of overwhelming opposition. In spite of strong rhetoric from officials that the strike will happen regardless of Congress’ approval, it is unlikely that President Obama would make such an unpopular decision after being turned down by Congress.

A congressional defeat of Obama’s request may be likely. Political analyst Charlie Cook told the Financial Times on Tuesday that he would be surprised is the authorization passed Congress. A Washington Post analysis found the Senate split and heavy opposition in the House. Many members of both houses are still undecided.

Having stirred up a hornet’s nest of strong bipartisan opposition as well as finding little international support, President Obama may actually be hoping for Congress to deny his request. A loss in Congress would give the president the ability to avoid attacking Syria and the ability to save face by blaming Republican lawmakers.

Originally published on Elections Examiner

Boston bombing exposes threat of homegrown Muslim terror

The Tsarnaev brothers’ brief reign of terror has shed light on a growing threat to the safety of Americans: homegrown Islamic terrorists. While the brothers were originally from Chechnya, their family had been in the U.S. for almost a decade according to the N.Y. Times. The brothers, age 15 and 8 at the time, were already Muslim but were almost certainly radicalized long after they became American immigrants.

Homegrown radicals are people who were either born in the United States or who immigrated here prior to becoming terrorists. In many cases, homegrown Islamic radicals become radicalized in isolation. Rather than attending mosques, they listen to and read sermons of radical mullahs on the internet. Many homegrown radicals were converted to radical Islam by the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in the U.S. He later fled to Yemen where he was killed in 2011 by a drone strike. Some homegrown radicals were born into Muslim families; others converted to Islam later in life.

Unlike some early post-9/11 attacks and arrests, homegrown terrorists are not always directly affiliated with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. They may not have traveled to Pakistan, Afghanistan, or other Middle Eastern countries for training. They often receive information from jihadist internet sites such as al Qaeda’s “Inspire” online magazine, but may not receive direct instructions from al Qaeda leaders. In some cases, al Qaeda may not even be aware of the homegrown radical’s existence.

One of the most famous instances of homegrown terrorism was the 2009 Fort Hood massacre in which Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people and wounded 32 others. After the attack, it was revealed that Hasan, a native Virginian, had been in email contact with Anwar al-Awlaki. Hasan, who had attended the same mosque as two of the September 11 hijackers, reportedly jumped onto a desk and yelled, “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” before he began shooting.

Homegrown radical terrorists go back far further, however. In late 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo murdered 10 people in sniper attacks around the District of Columbia. The Baltimore Sun detailed how Malvo’s writings described the pair’s “jihad” against the United States even though prosecutors did not consider Islamic terrorism a motive. The N.Y. Times described how Muhammad planned to extort millions of dollars from authorities with their sniper attacks and then use the money to set up jihadist training camps and fund more attacks.

The list of unsuccessful terror attacks by homegrown terrorists is already long. In 2009, a Tennessee native and Muslim convert shot and killed a soldier at a recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark. Also in 2009, the FBI broke a terror ring in Raleigh, N.C. headed by an American convert to Islam. Another high profile homegrown terrorist plot was the attempt to blow up a Portland, Ore. Christmas tree lighting ceremony in 2010. The man had corresponded via email with Al Qaeda leaders prior to the attempt. An army private from Texas who attempted to bomb Fort Hood in 2011 had planned to use similar devices similar to those that the Tsarnaev brothers built. That same year two Arab-Americans plotted to attack synagogues in New York City. Also in 2011, a New York convert to Islam attempted to attack government buildings around Bayonne, N.J. with pipe bombs. In 2012, a Muslim convert from Brooklyn made death threats against the creators of “South Park” after the show depicted the prophet Mohammed. That same year a Massachusetts man plotted to bomb the Pentagon with a remote control airplane.

Georgia was home to at least one homegrown Islamic radical. In 2011, Jameela Barnette of Marietta mailed a bloody pig’s foot to Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and a Curious George doll to Greg Ball, a state senator from New York. Ms. Barnette, who referred to herself as a “Messenger of Allah and Defender of Islam” told Examiner that her actions were based in her Muslim faith. She said that she believed that suicide bombings and terrorist attacks are justified. Barnette died on Christmas Day 2011 when she ambushed police officers with a gun and knife as they responded to a panic alarm in her home.

The problem of homegrown terrorism is not based on race or skin color. Ryan G. Anderson was a white Muslim convert and a U.S. Army National Guard tank crewman who tried to spy for Al Qaeda in 2003. According to the Defense Human Resources case study, Anderson told undercover agents, “I wish to desert from the U.S. Army. I wish to defect from the United States. I wish to join al-Qaeda, train its members and conduct terrorist attacks.”

Colleen LaRose, also known as “Jihad Jane,” was also a white Muslim convert. In 2009, LaRose received orders from Al Qaeda, again via the internet, to kill a Swedish artist who had blasphemed Mohammed by drawing his head on the body of a dog. LaRose worked with two other homegrown terrorists on the plot and actually traveled to Europe to stalk her prey. She was arrested when she returned to the U.S.

A World Opinion poll of Middle Eastern Muslims shows that an average of about 30 percent supports groups that attack Americans. According to a Pew poll of American Muslims, eight percent believe that suicide bombing is often or sometimes justified and five percent have a favorable view of al Qaeda.

The study estimates that there are approximately 1.5 million Muslims over the age of 18 in the U.S. Slightly more than half are males and approximately 30 percent of the males are 18-29 years old. Although there are female suicide bombers, the majority are young men and the 18-29 age group is a high risk category. If, of the estimated 243,000 young American Muslims, only five percent are potential radicals, that still leaves over 12,000 possible homegrown terrorists.

The Boston Marathon bombing may signal a new phase in the War on Terror in which al Qaeda takes full advantage of the resources provided by homegrown American radicals. In the years since September 11, the terrorist group has been unable to launch another successful attack in the United States. Several attempts at complex, coordinated attacks have been foiled by security agencies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The success of the low tech and simple assault in Boston may inspire al Qaeda to reassess its strategy, focusing instead on instigating large numbers of small attacks using homegrown bombers and gunmen.

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/boston-bombing-exposes-threat-of-homegrown-radical-islam

Boston bomber linked to radical Muslim cleric

The International Business Times reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the FBI’s Suspect Number One for the Boston Marathon Massacre who died today after an early morning gun battle with police, was influenced by a radical Muslim cleric in Australia. Tsarnaev’s Youtube channel contains numerous links to videos featuring Feiz Mohammad. Tsarnaev and Mohammad also apparently shared an interest in boxing.

Feiz Mohammad is a member of the fundamentalist Wahabi sect of Islam according to The Australian. In 2005, the police investigated Mohammad for his DVDs, the “Death Series” and “Signs of the Hour.” The Australian reports that the Australian Federal Police looked into whether the series broke sedition laws and incited violence. In the videos, Mohammad called Jews “pigs” and denounces non-Muslims as “kaffirs,” which he says is “the worst word ever written, a sign of infidelity, disbelief, filth, a sign of dirt.” He also called upon Muslim children to “put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom.”

Mohammad is well known in Australia for blaming women for rapes in 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald quotes Mohammad as saying that rape victims had “no one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world…” with “strapless, backless, sleeveless, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses, miniskirts, tight jeans: all this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature.”

In 2010, Mohammad gained international notoriety when he called for the beheading of a Dutch politician. Geert Wilders was the producer of a film that was critical of Islam. He also said that the prophet Mohammed was “a warlord, terrorist and pedophile” according to The Age.

According to the International Business Times, there are no known direct links between Mohammad and al Qaeda, but he has broadcast sermons from Anwar al-Awlaki, the group’s spiritual leader, on his website. Awlaki was killed by U.S. predator drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

Tsarnaev’s fascination with Feiz Mohammad provides a possible motive for the terrorist bombing in Boston earlier this week. As more information about the Tsarnaev brothers becomes known, their purpose in carrying out the attacks may become clear.

Originally published on Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/article/boston-bomber-inspired-by-radical-muslim-preacher

Islamic links to Chechen terrorists in Boston are likely

Yesterday the FBI publicly released photos of the two men believed to be responsible for the Boston Marathon massacre on April 15, which killed three people and left more than 100 wounded. Today, the FBI reported that one of the two men has been killed in a gun battle in Massachusetts. The men are reported to be brothers from the Chechen area of southern Russia by RT. Chechen radical Muslims are responsible for a long list of terror attacks. Given the nature of the attack and the history of recent attempted terrorist attacks in the United States, it is likely, although far from certain at this point, that the two men are Islamic radicals.

The two men are reported to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother, Tamerlan. Tamerlan was the suspect reportedly killed by police after a gun battle and car chase through Watertown, Mass. last night.

The nature of attacks suggests the possibility of involvement by Al Qaeda sources outside the United States as well. Bomb making is a very technical task, which may explain why many homegrown terrorists use weapons such as guns that are more readily available in the United States. The Pakistani immigrant who attempted to detonate a car bomb in New York’s Times Square in 2010 received explosives training in Pakistan, but the bomb still fizzled.

Bombings have long been a favorite tactic of Islamic terrorists and the tactic has come of age during the Iraq War. A common tactic has been to detonate a second bomb near the scene of the first explosion targeting security forces and rescue workers. The Boston attack included two bombs.

The nature of the bombs themselves also suggests Islamic terror. An army private who attempted to bomb Fort Hood in 2011 had planned to use similar devices. The plans for the bombs in both the Fort Hood plot and the Boston attack are available online in the Al Qaeda magazine, “Inspire.”

The target of the Boston bombings also suggests Islamic terror. While domestic secular terrorists sometimes do commit bombings, they usually have specific targets. Ku Klux Klan bombings targeted black churches. In the 1960s, the leftist Weather Underground targeted police and government buildings. Antigovernment terrorist Timothy McVeigh targeted the federal building in Oklahoma City. Eric Rudolph normally attacked abortion clinics, but on one occasion bombed a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta. He is best known for the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics. While the bomb was placed in a park, Rudolph called police with a warning before the bomb exploded in an apparent attempt to minimize the loss of life.

Islamic terror, however, often focuses on creating a large death toll. Public gatherings are popular targets for Islamic terrorists. Past targets include airliners, restaurants, subways, churches, synagogues, mosques, and crowded marketplaces. These targets are designed to make a political or religious statement by killing as many people as possible. This seems to have been the motivation of the Boston bombers.

Originally published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/article/one-boston-terrorist-killed-islamic-terror-links-likely

Voters need truth about Benghazi cover-up before election

An emerging aspect to the Benghazi attack story is the Obama Administration’s cover-up of the truth. From the beginning, President Obama and members of his administration have claimed that the attack was the spontaneous work of a mob protesting an anti-Islamic film. It is now apparent that the Administration knew even as the attacks were going on that it was a preplanned terrorist attack.

For over a week after the attack, President Obama and other government officials clung to the fiction that the attack was a reaction to “Innocence of the Muslims,” a film ridiculing Mohammed that had already been on Youtube for months. Charles Woods, the father of Ty Woods, one of the Americans killed in the attack, told radio host Lars Larson that Secretary of State Clinton vowed to have the filmmaker “arrested” and “prosecuted” in apparent disregard for the First Amendment.

In a timeline of the attacks and their aftermath posted on Oct. 26, Factcheck.org points out some of the flaws in the Administration’s claims. There was no mob at the Benghazi consulate in spite of President Obama’s claims to the contrary. State Department reports say that everything was calm until the attack started at approximately 3:40 p.m. At 6:07 p.m., while the attack was still in process, the State Department Operations Center emailed the White House and the Pentagon as well as several other agencies to tell them that Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack continued until about 8:30 p.m. when Libyan security forces drove off the surviving attackers. The attack continued for approximately four to five hours.

Even though there were reports of al Qaeda involvement even while the attack was still in progress, President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and other Administration officials persisted in blaming the film for over a week after the attack. There is no reasonable reason to deny al Qaeda’s involvement for national security reasons since the fact that there was no mob was common knowledge in Libya. The only logical reason to shift the blame to Youtube and away from al Qaeda is for President Obama’s political benefit.

Examiner previously described reports that the Obama Administration denied requests to increase security before the attack. Now there are reports that requests for assistance during the attack were denied as well. Fox News reports that CIA operators were denied permission to assist the Americans under attack inside the consulate. The unnamed sources “on the ground in Benghazi” said that a small team heard the shots from a safe house and requested permission to help. They were ordered to “stand down,” but several members of the team, including former Navy SEAL Ty Woods, ignored the order and were able to evacuate survivors from the consulate, possibly preventing even greater loss of life.

When they returned, the safe house itself came under attack. The CIA team again called for help and were again denied. The Fox News report indicates that a team member on the roof with a laser target designator asked for an airstrike by an AC-130 Spectre gunship. More than seven hours after the initial attack began, a mortar attack on the CIA safe house killed Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, another former SEAL.

The Fox report notes that the CIA denied the report. “We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi," said spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood. "Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

The Fox report also states that two American surveillance drones were on the scene during the attack. In spite of the fact that these drones could send real time information and video to Washington, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that officials had no clear idea of what was going on and could not provide assistance.

As yet unconfirmed are reports that General Carter Ham, commanding officer of the U.S. Africa Command, was relieved of his command because he was about to ignore orders not to help the Americans in Benghazi. Rumors are swirling that the general had a rapid response unit ready to go when he was ordered to stand down. The general responded that he was going to aid the consulate anyway. Less than thirty seconds later, the general’s executive officer relieved him and assumed command. The rescue mission did not take place. Defense Secretary Panetta previously claimed that Ham advised against a rescue mission.

Coverage of the rumor in the Washington Times notes that the Pentagon claims that Ham’s removal was planned in advance. Nevertheless, the article also states that Ham was in his post for only a year and a half. The normal tour length for such a command post is three years.

The reports of the circumstances surrounding General Ham’s dismissal are unconfirmed at this point, but given the other untruths coming from President Obama and his Administration they are plausible. In contrast to Obama’s claims that a Libyan mob killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, it now appears that the only Libyan mob was the one that found Stevens, at that point still alive, in the ruins of the consulate and took him to the hospital according to the Associated Press. At that point, U.S. and Libyan relief forces were still not on the scene.

Mark Thiessen of the Washington Post reported on Sept. 13 that the president’s public schedule showed that the last “daily” intelligence briefing that the president received was on Sept.5, more than a week before the attack. A spokesman for the National Security Council did point out that a printed copy of the President’s Daily Briefing is delivered to the president every day.

Additionally, the Long War Journal reports that a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and al Qaeda member was involved in the attack. Sufyan ben Qumu was transferred to Libyan custody in 2007. He was released by Qaddafi’s government in 2010.

On Friday, in response to repeated questions about the allegations, the president answered as quoted by USA Today, “Well, we are finding out exactly what happened. I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.”

The FBI team dispatched to investigate the attack did not arrive in Libya until Oct. 4, three weeks after the attack. According to the New York Times, the Obama Administration blamed the delay on the Libyan government.

The investigation of the entire Benghazi matter is ongoing, but will not be complete until after the election. This is unacceptable. Voters deserve to know the truth about the attack in Benghazi and they should know before the election.

Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/article/voters-deserve-truth-about-benghazi-cover-up-before-election?cid=db_articles

Benghazi security scandal may sink Obama campaign

On Wednesday, October 10, Congress began hearings on the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In the aftermath of the attack, Obama Administration officials claimed that the attack was the spontaneous response to “The Innocence of the Muslims,” an internet video that also allegedly sparked protests in other Muslim countries.
Doubts were cast upon the administration’s story almost immediately. According to timelines compiled by CNN and USA Today, the president of Libya contradicted Obama’s movie claim on September 16. It was not until September 18 that an administration official, Director of National Intelligence Matthew Olsen, acknowledged publicly that the attack was a terrorist attack. It was not until September 26, more than two weeks after the attack, that the attack was carried out by Al Qaeda. The Obama Administration also denied that there was any intelligence that the attack was imminent and that officials had no knowledge of the impending danger.
Now State Department officials are testifying before congress that both claims were not true. According to CNN coverage of the hearings, Eric Nordstrom, the former regional security officer, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he had made repeated requests for more manpower at the Benghazi facility. At the time of the attack, there were five security officers, three who were assigned to the consulate and two who had traveled with Ambassador Stevens. Nordstrom had requested a total of twelve agents.
According to Wall Street Journal coverage of the hearings, Lt. Col. Andrew Wood of the Utah National Guard and former commander of the Site Security Team, security was actually cut at the consulate prior to the attacks. The 16 member team was replaced by Libyans trained by the State Department.
The State Department disputed Nordstrom and Wood’s testimony. House Democrats noted as well that budget cuts by Republicans had led to diplomatic security funding below what the White House had requested.
The congressional testimony is supported by Ambassador Stevens own journal, which was discovered by CNN. According a Huffington Post report, the journal showed that Stevens was concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism and Al Qaeda in Libya. Stevens noted that there were constant threats to security and even believed himself to be on an Al Qaeda hit list.
The reports of the Obama Administration’s failure to take Al Qaeda seriously and protect American diplomats are explosive. This is especially true considering that they come only a month before the presidential election. President Obama is already slipping in the polls after his lackluster debate performance last week and the new revelations about the Libya attacks present a new obstacle to his recovery.
If the matter is not pursued in the press, it almost certainly will be by Mitt Romney and the Republicans. The unfolding story of the Benghazi attacks and how they occurred will certainly be an issue in the upcoming presidential debates. The third debate between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney is dedicated to foreign policy and will be held on Oct. 22. The subject will probably also be raised at tonight’s vice presidential debate between Vice President Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan as well the town hall debate between Obama and Romney on Oct. 16.
President Obama has largely avoided fallout from several other administration scandals. He was elected in spite of his ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and ‘60s radical Bill Ayres. The Solyndra scandal never totally captured the attention of the press and media. The president was able to maintain his distance from the Fast and Furious program, in which the federal government allowed illegal guns to cross the border into Mexico. One of those guns resulted in the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The publicity surrounding the Benghazi security scandal may mean that President Obama is unable to avoid damage to his reelection campaign.
Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/article/benghazi-fallout-threatens-obama-campaign

More 9/11 myths

In memory of the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the casualties in the war against the terrorists since then, the Atlanta Conservative Examiner is addressing some of the conspiracies surrounding 9/11 in the hope that sanity will prevail and that Americans can once against unite against a very real and common enemy instead of wasting time and resources chasing phantoms. Six Georgians died in the attacks, eight Georgians died in Afghanistan and 124 Georgians were killed in Iraq. Let us honor their memory and the sacrifice of the thousands of other Americans and Georgians who served or were wounded in action by fighting the real enemy: Al Qaeda and radical Islam.

After the recent Atlanta Conservative Examiner article, “the truth about the September 11 attacks,” there was a lot of feedback, both from conspiracy believers and skeptics. Conspiracy believers pointed out several conspiracies that were not addressed in the article. Some of these other theories and claims will be addressed here.

A potentially explosive claim made by one conspiracy site is that the cockpit door on American 77, the flight that hit the Pentagon, was monitored on the flight data recorder and that this data showed the door was never opened. The site claims that the FDR data was obtained from the NTSB under the Freedom of Information Act and that the cockpit door parameter shows that the door did not open in flight. The site claims that this information was discovered eight years after the fact by an Australian researcher.

This claim cannot be closely examined because the link on the site’s page that purports to allow a download of the FDR data is a dead link. As a professional pilot, I can say that it is unlikely that the cockpit door was monitored on the FDR. Prior to 9/11, cockpit doors were not hardened as they are today and it is unlikely that they were monitored.

An acquaintance who worked in the training department at Delta Air Lines before and after 9/11 agrees that cockpit doors were probably not monitored. He suspects that the monitoring parameter on the FDR, if it actually existed at all, may have represented an electric mechanism that allowed the pilots to unlock the cockpit door without getting out of their seats. This mechanism could be monitored, but the door could also be opened manually.

He also notes that the sound of the door opening might have been picked up on the cockpit voice recorder. Unfortunately, CVRs only record for about 30 minutes. Additionally, according to the NTSB report, the CVR was extensively damaged and the magnetic tape inside was “fused into a solid block of charred plastic.” A photo of the CVR shows the damage from the crash.

Another claim is that Marvin Bush, brother to President Bush, was in charge of security at the World Trade Center on 9/11. This claim is easily disproved. The real head of security for the WTC was John O’Neill, a retired FBI agent. O’Neill was killed in the attacks. Ultimately, the WTC was owned by the Port Authority of N.Y. and N.J. so the Port Authority Police were responsible for security.

911myths.com goes further to debunk the Marvin Bush claim. Bush’s company, Securacom (later called Stratesec), did have a contract to help

install security systems in the WTC after the 1993 bombing. This contract ended in 1998 according the company’s SEC filings. Bush left the company in 2000, and despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that Wirt Walker, the firm’s current head, is a Bush relative. Even if Bush’s company had been actively working at the WTC on 9/11, it would be irrelevant since the towers were attacked from the outside by airliners. Additionally, the mere presence of a Bush family member is not evidence of any crime or conspiracy.

The conpiricists charge that the WTC must have been destroyed by explosive charges, claiming that it was the first time in history that a steel building collapsed from a fire. In particular, they point to Building 7, which was not struck by an airliner, and the fact that the buildings seemed to fall straight down, rather than to the side. In reality, no steel skyscraper had ever been hit by an airliner before. No steel-framed buildings had ever been left to burn for six hours without firefighting.

Charles Zimmerman, a Ga. Tech educated Structural Engineer, explains what happened: “Under normal temperatures, the bolted connections of the beams to girders or columns are simple shear connections and do not induce any significant tension in the bolts. However, under much higher sustained temperatures, the steel beams begin to sag like a cable, which introduces tension forces into the bolts in addition to the shear forces for which they were designed, causing brittle failures of the connections. If it is a girder connection to a column, it may cause an entire bay of floor beams to collapse onto the next lower level. The impact load of a floor collapsing onto the floor below is a dynamic load and is a much greater force than just its weight, because it is a moving load. This creates a collapse mechanism called "pancaking" which can continue all the way down the building with one floor collapsing onto the floor below, causing it to collapse, and so forth. While the loss of floors at some levels of a building reduces loads on the columns that once supported them, it also increases their unbraced lengths, which weakens their strength and their ability to support the floors above the removed floors. So the columns begin to fail at the levels [where] floors are lost and the entire building above begins to collapse.”

Zimmerman continues: “Where the fire was located on WTC 7, there were a number of collection girders and trusses to allow more open spaces uninterrupted by columns at lower levels, such that the failure of one of these collection elements due to the heat of the fire made it more vulnerable to progressive collapse. The Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was likewise vulnerable to progressive collapse for this reason, but from blast rather than fire loads.”

With respect to the failure of the Air Force to intercept the airliners, Col. Marc Sasseville, one of the first fighter pilots launched on 9/11, recently told his story in the Wall Street Journal. Sasseville was given the authority to shoot down threatening aircraft. The problem was that his aircraft, launched on short notice, had no missiles and carried only training ammunition. Sasseville decided that if he had to, he would try to disable a hijacked aircraft by crashing his fighter into it.

Additionally, there was not enough time to perform an intercept in most cases. According to the 9/11 Commission report (pp.32-33), in the case of American Flight 11, the first place to be hijacked and the first to crash into the WTC, there were only 27 minutes between the notification of the hijacking and the crash. United Flight 75, the second plane to hit the WTC, crashed 11 minutes after the hijacking was discovered. American Flight 77 went the longest between discovery of the hijacking and crashing at 32 minutes, but NEADS (Northeast Air Defense Sector) was only notified by the FAA three minutes prior to the crash at the Pentagon. United Flight 93 was discovered to have been hijacked 29 minutes before it crashed. NEADS was not notified by the FAA until after the crash. On all except UAL 175, the transponders were turned off by the hijackers, making it more difficult to track the planes. On UAL 175, the hijackers evidently tried to turn off the transponder, but only succeeded in changing it to a different code.

Another claim made on some sites is that the phone calls from the hijacked aircraft could not have happened because that technology had not been invented on 9/11. The reality is that phones were installed on airliners as early as the 1980s. As the planes flew lower to approach their targets, even personal cell phones may been able to make calls.

There are further holes in the 9/11 conspiracies as well. Apparently no one has developed a rational motive for anyone except al Qaeda to have carried out the attacks. If it was as an excuse to attack Iraq, then why blame Osama bin Laden, attack Afghanistan, and then wait 18 months to invade Iraq? Claims that it was to provide a rationale for cracking down on civil liberties or installing a U.S. dictatorship have been proven false by events. Likewise, no New World Order has arisen from the ashes of the WTC. Theories about Israel’s involvement seem similarly fanciful.

Osama bin Laden admitted to the attacks in a video message in 2004. Al Qaeda had a history of attacking American targets that included the 1993 WTC bombing, bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. In a prelude to the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda agents assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, on September 9, 2001. This was meant to enable the Taliban to crush the Northern Alliance and prevent U.S. aid against the Afghan overlords. Conpiricists typically ignore these facts or else claim that they are hoaxes, as they do to anything that does not fit their narrow worldview.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the reasoning of the conpiricists is the existence of the conspiracies themselves. Would a government or entity that would sacrifice 3,000 people allow its actions to be made public? It seems more likely that such an organization would squelch the publication of books and movies that exposed their nefarious deeds and make the authors quietly disappear. Perhaps Alex Jones and his fellow conspiracy mongers should watch out.

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Ten years after 9/11, US is winning war on terror

Ten years after the September 11 attacks, the U.S. is winning the war on terror. In the fevered days after the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, most Americans were holding their breath, waiting for the next explosions. They never came.

It was not because al Qaeda did not try. Al Qaeda was successful in launching attacks in other countries. The 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali killed 180 people. In 2003, al Qaeda bombs killed 58 and wounded 750 in Istanbul. In 2004, a series of bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 190 and wounded 2,000. The 2005 attack on the London subway killed 56.

There have been numerous terror plots disrupted by U.S. and allied intelligence agencies. By one count, 39 al Qaeda plots have been foiled in the United States since September 11. Some of these plots were high profile such as the “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, in December 2001 or the “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in December 2009. Most frequent fliers will recall the liquid bomb plot against airliners from August 2006 since it marked the beginning of the ban on all but the smallest liquids for airline travelers.

Fewer will remember the cargo bomb plot disrupted less than a year ago in October 2010 in which terrorists tried to ship bomb-laden packages on cargo planes. There were also plots to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. in May 2007, to blow up fuel tanks at Kennedy airport in June 2007, and attempted car bombings in Times Square in May 2010 and at a Portland, Ore. Christmas tree lighting in November 2010. Miraculously all of these attempted terror attacks were thwarted.

The fact that the terrorists have not struck America again is largely due the valor and sacrifice of American and allied soldiers, sailors, airmen, and intelligence officers. In addition to freeing two countries, they have decimated al Qaeda’s leadership beginning with beginning with Mohammed Atef, an al Qaeda lieutenant killed in Afghanistan in November 2001. September 11 plotters Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were captured in Pakistan. Attacks on al Qaeda’s command and control culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden himself in Pakistan on May 1, 2011.

All of this was accomplished without the loss of civil liberties that many feared. The much maligned PATRIOT Act was reauthorized in 2005 and 2011 with bipartisan votes. The act was amended to assuage concerns about civil liberties. There have been no pogroms or harassment of American Muslims. The omnipresent and rabid criticism of President Bush is evidence that dissent was not crushed. Newspaper coverage of classified programs shows the lack of censorship. Unlike during the Civil War, habeas corpus was not suspended. With the exception of increased screenings at airports, there has been little change for most Americans. Even the soldiers armed with automatic weapons that were present at airports after the September 11 attacks are long gone.

President Bush deserves credit for bringing the nation together in the days after September 11. President Bush’s steadfastness in the darkest days of the war, when even members of his own party were calling for a withdrawal from Iraq, eventually led to the surge that pacified the country. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq removed Saddam Hussein, a mass murderer and sponsor of terrorism, and may have ultimately helped to fuel the Arab Spring uprisings.

President Obama also deserves credit for his part in the war on terror. Obama ordered the attack on Osama bin Laden and ordered his own surge in Afghanistan and stepped up drone attacks on fighters in Pakistan. Obama also deserves credit for reneging on his campaign promise for a precipitous pullout from Iraq.

The new face of terror is the homegrown terrorist. Several recent terror attacks have been carried out or attempted by local Muslims who became radicalized over the internet without planning or direction by al Qaeda leaders. Although several al Qaeda agents and cells had been discovered earlier, Abu Nidal Hasan’s Fort Hood rampage in November 2009 was the first high-profile terror attack by a homegrown radical. Earlier that year, members of a terror cell in North Carolina were accused of plotting attacks.

Georgia is not without radicals. In 2009, two Georgia Tech students, Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee were convicted of making videos to scout locations for terror attacks. Sadequee had been previously arrested in Sarajevo in 2005 with plastic explosives and bomb making materials as part of “al Qaeda in Europe.” Earlier this year, a Marietta woman admitted mailing a bloody pig foot and anti-Semitic ramblings to New York congressman Peter King.

The Augusta Chronicle recently reported that in the ten years since September 11, $460 million has been spent protecting Georgia from terrorists. Half of this money has been spent in Atlanta where the state capitol and the international airport make inviting targets. This amount, spent over ten years, represents less than six percent of the amount that President Obama and the Democrats spent in one year on their stimulus bill. It was only 42 percent of Georgia’s $1.08 billion share of the stimulus money. The homeland security money was arguably a much better investment.

Although the war on terror will likely continue for the foreseeable future, it is evident that the United States is winning. In spite of numerous attempts, al Qaeda has not been able to attack America in ten years and most of al Qaeda’s senior leadership is either dead or imprisoned. American freedoms and civil liberties have been preserved.

The constantly changing face of terrorism means that there are constant new threats, from car bombs to sniper attacks to nuclear weapons. Threats come of lone wolves hiding in American society as well as state sponsored terror groups. Perhaps the biggest danger – and irony - is that the war on terror has been so successful that most Americans no longer feel threatened.

 

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The truth about the September 11 attacks

As the U.S. approaches the tenth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, it is time to put to rest the myriad of conspiracy theories that have surrounded both the attacks and the U.S. response. Radicals from both the extreme right and left have sought to propagate these theories in order to further their own aims. Not coincidentally, many of these conpiricists have also made handsome profits from books and films that purport to dispel the lies about 9/11.

The attacks, which were the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, resulted in the deaths of 2,996 people. Several Georgians were also killed in the attacks. Maynard Spence of Douglasville, Harshad Thatte of Norcross, Adam White of Atlanta, and Claude Michael Gann of Roswell died in the World Trade Center. Leslie Whittington of Atlanta died when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. U.S. Army Maj. Steve Long of Georgia died in the Pentagon.

Five years after the attacks, Popular Mechanics released a definitive analysis of many of the conspiracy claims. Much of the information in the book “Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up To Hard Facts” is now available for free online at PopularMechanics.com. The website 911myths.com also debunks many of the conspiracy theories around the attacks.

The Popular Mechanics report notes that only 14 American fighter planes were on alert in the 48 contiguous states on the morning of September 11. Further, intercepts of civilian aircraft were not common for air defense fighters. In the decade before the attacks, the one and only civilian aircraft intercepted by fighters in U.S. airspace was the Learjet carrying golfer Payne Stewart, which flew uncontrolled from Florida to South Dakota before crashing after the cabin depressurized. PM reports that it took an F-16 one hour and 22 minutes to make the intercept.

In answer to the skeptics’ claim that the damage to the World Trade Center buildings was too widespread to be caused by a single aircraft strike on each tower, PM responds that thousands of pounds of jet fuel atomized on impact and traveled throughout the buildings. The burning fuel spread flames through elevator and utility shafts. Flames reportedly exploded through the elevator doors in the lobby moments after impact. The 1500 degree flames from burning jet fuel was not strong enough melt steel, but it did reduce the steel frames of the towers to about ten percent of their normal strength.

PM notes that at least one conspiracy site cropped seismology charts to support the notion that controlled demolitions toppled the towers. The full charts clearly show the impacts of both aircraft followed by the collapse of the towers. Extensive damage to surrounding buildings also lends credence to the fact that the collapse of the towers was a chaotic, catastrophic event.

Conspiracy theorists have charged that the Pentagon was hit by a missile rather than an airplane, citing the small size of the hole in the wall. PM points out that both wings of the aircraft were sheared off by the impact and that the 75 foot wide hole that is consistent with the size of the airliner’s fuselage. A separate 12 foot hole was likely made by the landing gear.

In contrast with conspiracy claims that no aircraft wreckage was recovered at the Pentagon, there are both photos and eyewitness accounts of

aircraft wreckage. Allyn Kilsheimer, a structural engineer and blast expert who arrived on scene shortly after the crash, is quoted in the PM article, “I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box. I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

In Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed, a white jet reported in the area is revealed to be a business jet that was descending into nearby Johnstown. Air traffic control asked the jet’s pilots to investigate Flight 93 and they subsequently orbited the crash site at 1500 feet.

PM reports that the debris pattern of the Flight 93 crash site is consistent with a surface impact given the flight path and wind direction at the time of the crash. Lighter debris was thrown up and carried downwind for several miles. Similarly, an engine was found 300 yards downrange. This is consistent with the mass and velocity of the engine at impact.

Reports on a conspiracy radio show that claimed an F-16 pilot shot the airliner down were revealed to be lies. Ed Jacoby, director of the New York State Emergency Management Office, was with the pilot reported to have fired the missiles at Flight 93. The F-16 and pilot were tasked to return Jacoby from a meeting in Montana to Albany, N.Y. where he could coordinate the emergency services response to the attacks. Jacoby categorically denies that the pilot, Lt. Col. Rick Gibney, shot down Flight 93.

An examination of the timing of the attacks backs up Jacoby’s story. The North Dakota Air National Guard operated F-16Bs. The straight-line distance between Bozeman, Mt. and Albany, N.Y. is 1,857 miles. Using the fighter’s top speed listed on the plane’s Air Force fact sheet, 1,345 mph, the trip would take less than an hour and a half, which would barely give Gibney time to get in position to shoot down Flight 93 at 10:03 a.m. if he took off from Bozeman immediately after American Flight 11 crashed into the WTC at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time. But, according to the Air Force, the F-16B’s range is only 1,407 miles and that range could only be achieved by flying at slower speeds. It is likely that Gibney had to rendezvous with an aerial tanker, which would further slow down the flight to Albany. It is also highly unlikely that Gibney was ready to launch immediately after the first WTC attack. In fact, Gibney first had to fly from his base at Fargo, N.D. to Bozeman to pick up Jacoby. There is simply no way he could have been over Pennsylvania in time to shoot down Flight 93.

Logically, the conspiracy theories do not add up. An obvious reason is that the government and the military were clearly caught by surprise. According to the official timeline on National911Memorial.org, President Bush, who was visiting students at a Florida elementary school, was notified that a plane had crashed into the WTC at 8:50 a.m., four minutes after American Flight 11, the first hijacked airliner, had crashed. United Flight 175 crashed at 9:03 a.m. and the president was notified two minutes later.

The Secret Service did not evacuate Vice President Cheney from the White House to a secure bunker until 9:30, one minute before American Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. The nationwide ground stop for all flights was issued at 9:42 a.m. and the White House and Capitol were evacuated at 9:45, an hour after the attacks began. The last commercial flight in U.S. airspace did not land until 12:16 p.m.

In the years after the attacks, President Bush faced much criticism for his slow reaction to the attacks. If the U.S. government were complicit in the attacks, the reaction of all levels of government, including President Bush, would have been much more swift and certain. When the president left Florida aboard Air Force One, he was taken to Offutt AFB in Nebraska after a stop in Louisiana. The president’s location was kept secret for much of the day due to an anonymous phone call that was interpreted as a threat against Air Force One. President Bush did not make his memorable address to the nation until later that night.

Equally illogical is the culprit behind the 9/11 attacks. If, as some charge, the attacks were a smokescreen to justify an invasion of Iraq, then why implicate Osama bin Laden, a Saudi exile that few had ever heard of, and the Afghan Taliban? If Iraq were truly the target of the conspirators, it seems that the evidence would have pointed toward Saddam Hussein, a known supporter of terrorists. As it was, the invasion of Iraq did not take place until March 19, 2003, a year and a half after September 11.

Finally, 9/11 conspiracy theories can be compared to a real government conspiracy, Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was an operation carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, ostensibly to track the smuggling of weapons to Mexico. In reality, ATF allowed criminals to make “straw purchases” of thousands of weapons, which were then taken to Mexico where ATF lost the trail. Weapons from the program were used to murder a U.S. Border Patrol agent in December 2010.

In contrast with 9/11 conspiracies, there is ample evidence of the government’s culpability in Fast and Furious. Whistleblowers came forward almost immediately and a congressional investigation was begun. If government workers objected to the cover-up of one death in Fast and Furious enough to risk their jobs to bring out the truth, it is likely that a conspiracy large enough to cover-up the hijackings of four airliners and that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians would also generate a large number of whistleblowers seeking justice. No whistleblowers have come forward and investigations are limited to members of the political fringe such as professional conspiracy monger Alex Jones and Cynthia McKinney, a former Georgia congresswoman turned Green Party presidential candidate who is perhaps best remembered for striking a U.S. Capitol police officer.

In truth, there was a conspiracy around the September 11 attacks. It was conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists. The

very date of the attacks, September 11, is prominent in Muslim history as the anniversary of a catastrophic defeat of the Turks outside the gates of Vienna, Austria in 1683. The defeat ended Turkish dreams of controlling Europe and marked the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Bin Laden and his zealots hoped that September 11, 2001 would be the beginning of an Islamic jihad to throw Americans and other westerners out of Muslim lands as a first step in establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate.

 

Note:  With the exception of the 9/11 memorial engraving, the photos are from the September 11, 2001 Attacks collection on Wikimedia.org.

 

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