 The Pentagon’s 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was “sanitized” to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday. The report, released last week, says that the Army’s middle management missed signals about Nidal Malik Hasan in the months leading up to the mass shooting. But missing from the report is any discussion of what Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said was the a “crisis” with Islamic terrorism.
Hasan allegedly wore ritual Muslim garb shouted “God is great” in Arabic when opening fire on a group of soldiers on the base — facts Carter said should have been disclosed in the report to help soldiers identify such signs in the future. A search of the report does not turn up any mentions of Islam. “People are afraid to speak out and label someone because they’ll be accused of being a racist or accused of profiling or being prejudiced against a certain religion or race of people,” Carter told POLITICO. “But in a time of national crisis, which I believe we are in, all identifiers must be discussed.” Carter’s complaint fits into a larger narrative that Republican lawmakers have been driving in the past few months.
The Obama administration, GOP legislators have said, has been irresponsible in its handling of terrorists, from their decision to close down Guantanamo Bay to the planned adjudicating of a 9/11 mastermind in New York City. In an election year that is already shaping up to be rough for Democrats, Republicans are sure to use such decisions to paint President Barack Obama and his Congressional allies as weak on homeland security. “We want the world to know that we are not prejudiced, even to the people that hate us,” Carter said. “That’s craziness.” Politico
 AN INTENSE security review is under way as the Obama Administration considers holding a trial in Washington for the Guantanamo Bay detainee suspected of planning the deadly Bali nightclub bombing. The move would bring one of the world's most notorious terrorism suspects to a courthouse just steps from the Capitol, officials say. Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, was allegedly Osama bin Laden's point man in Indonesia. Until his capture in August 2003, he was believed to be the main link between al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah, the terror group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. Other terrorism trials also might be held in Washington and New York City under a proposal being discussed within the Obama Administration, according to US officials. The officials said the decision could come in a matter of weeks. Authorities have begun reviewing the security measures needed to bring Hambali and others before a Washington federal judge, the officials said. Conducting a trial in the nation's capital would be a symbolic repudiation of the policies of former President George Bush, who portrayed Hambali as a success story in his administration's program of interrogating terror suspects in secret CIA prisons overseas. Mr Bush said such interrogations, which included the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding, helped crack alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and led authorities to Hambali. The Age
 Shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001; back when such attacks were almost universally considered to be acts of war and not just crimes committed by “alleged suspects”, there was a lot of talk of the terrorists winning or losing. It was often said that if people in the West did this or did that, the terrorists would win. Those days are long gone. Although there have been a few such comments since the Christmas Day attempt to bring down Flight 253, they have been few and far between. Perhaps this is recognition of the fact that the current administration and congress in Washington do not treat terrorists as enemies with whom a war is ongoing. It could also be that this “war” is easy to forget; although the militaries of the United States and its allies are engaged in fighting, it is easy for everyone else to simply ignore what is taking place. In the above context it was somewhat surprising to see David McCaig, the head of the Association of Canadian Travel Agents, being quoted in the media as saying last week that the terrorists were winning.
McCaig was particularly referring to the use of full body scanners and searches where passengers are patted down all over their bodies except in the crotch area where Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab kept his explosives. It will be years until this war ends, if in fact it ever ends, but looking at its progress during the last 12 months in terms of winning and losing battles, it is easy to conclude that the Islamic fundamentalists had a hell of a good year. The terrorists won when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. While John McCain seemed more concerned with reaching across the aisle to Democrats than enacting policies that would appeal to more conservative voters there is no doubt that he would have prosecuted the war more seriously than the Obama administration is doing. Obama ran on a platform of hope and change. Once elected, he “hoped” that the Islamic fundamentalists would “change” and not attack a country who was led by a nice guy like him. Obama was of course wrong. The terrorists won when Obama’s first announcement as president was that he was going to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. The terrorists, as everyone else did, realized that he made the decision without deciding what to do with the detainees that were being housed in Cuba. The terrorists won when the administration stopped using the term “war on terror” and began to refer to it with cutesy phrases such as “man made disasters”. The terrorists won when Janet Napolitano, who had no expertise in security, was made Secretary of Homeland Security. The terrorists won when Eric Holder was appointed as Attorney General. Holder had practiced law with a firm that defended some of the Guantanamo detainees. The terrorists won when Obama travelled around the world and apologized for all the problems that were caused by the United States. This was especially true of his Cairo speech where he made it clear that Muslims, who are not a threat to the West, were much more worthy of priority than the jihadists who seek destruction. The terrorists won when Barack Obama dithered and dawdled and seemed not to care about how many, if any, more troops should be sent to Afghanistan. The terrorists won after Adulmatallab’s attempt to blow up Flight 253 when Barack Obama decided to stay on vacation in Hawaii. Even though the president could do everything from Hawaii that he could have done from Washington, it gave the perception that Obama is a weak leader who didn’t take terrorist attacks seriously. The terrorists won when Obama’s first comment from his sunny vacation paradise was that the carefully planned attack was “an isolated incident”. The terrorists won when Secretary Napolitano went on television the following Sunday and stated that “the system works”. The terrorists won when the TSA came up with comical solutions to protect airline passengers. They could not be told or shown where the plane was during their trip and for the last hour would have to remain in their seats during the last hour with nothing on their laps, save their neatly folded hands. The terrorists won when the American media heaped praise upon the president for being so brave as to actually use the word “war” in public. One thing was clear; when Barack Obama returned from his Hawaiian vacation, he was scared. Unlike some U.S. senators he can’t bribe the Islamic fundamentalists with stimulus slush funds. Nor can he bully the attackers like he tries to do with Israel; nor can he simply ignore the terrorists as he does with the student uprisings in Iran. Obama may have finally realized that the fundamentalists are a threat not just to the United States but to his legacy. All he could do was blame everyone else while throwing out the line that “the buck stops here”, knowing that the sycophantic media would praise his leadership skills. Like it or not, the terrorists are winning. And they probably had a few good laughs along the way. CFP
 What red flags? They still don't know why the military promoted Hasan and didn't act on "concerns". What concerns? His devotion to Islam? What would have been done had he been reported for his pious and devout love and devotion to Islam? Not only would he still have been promoted, anybody who reported him would have been demoted, a racist! An Islamophobe! An anti-Muslim bigot! The military gives korans to GITMO killers. Soldiers get their asses kicked, court martialed or worse if they diss jihadis' korans here or abroad. Obama gives jihadis constitutional rights! Who can anyone in the military go to if a Muslim soldier is devout without getting ruined? Who would anyone go to? Gates? Diversity Casey? Better yet, Hesham Islam? Has any military spokesman spoken openly about jihad in the Fort Hood Islamic attack? Steve Coughlin, call your office. Uh, never mind. Pentagon Review Doesn’t Explain Fort Hood Gunman’s Promotions A Defense Department review of the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood fails to determine why accused gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan advanced in rank despite concerns about his competence. WASHINGTON (January 11, 2010)—A Pentagon review of the deadly Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Center that left 13 dead and 29 wounded fails to determine why accused gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was promoted in spite of worries over his competence, The Associated Press reported Monday. While the doctors who oversaw Hasan's medical training voiced concerns about his strident views on Islam, he continued to get positive performance evaluations. The review, obtained by The Associated Press, found that no one challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance, even though his views raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States. The report is to be delivered to Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the review because it's not complete.
Nothing has changed. Keep scratching your heads, asshats. With thanks Atlas
 To be sure, after a few initial misguided statements, Obama did get somewhat serious about the Christmas Day attack. First, he instituted high-level special screening for passengers from 14 countries, the vast majority of which are Muslim with significant Islamist elements. This is the first rational step away from today's idiotic random screening and toward, yes, a measure of profiling -- i.e., focusing on the population most overwhelmingly likely to be harboring a suicide bomber. Obama also sensibly suspended all transfers of Yemenis from Guantanamo. Nonetheless, Obama insisted on repeating his determination to close the prison, invoking his usual rationale of eliminating a rallying cry and recruiting tool for al-Qaeda. Imagine that Guantanamo were to disappear tomorrow, swallowed in a giant tsunami. Do you think there'd be any less recruiting for al-Qaeda in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, London? Jihadism's list of grievances against the West is not only self-replenishing but endlessly creative. Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa commanding universal jihad against America cited as its two top grievances our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi suffering under anti-Saddam sanctions. Today, there are virtually no U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. And the sanctions regime against Iraq was abolished years ago. Has al-Qaeda stopped recruiting? Ayman al-Zawahiri often invokes Andalusia in his speeches. For those not steeped in the multivolume lexicon of Islamist grievances, Andalusia refers to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom -- in 1492. This is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy and therefore committed to unending war with America not just because it is infidel but because it represents modernity with its individual liberty, social equality (especially for women) and profound tolerance (religious, sexual, philosophical). You going to change that by evacuating Guantanamo? Nevertheless, Obama will not change his determination to close Guantanamo. He is too politically committed. The only hope is that perhaps now he is offering his "recruiting" rationale out of political expediency rather than real belief.
With suicide bombers in the air, cynicism is far less dangerous to the country than naivete. Read more at TownHall
 For al Qaeda and other terrorists across the globe, Obama is the gift that just keeps on giving. The fanatical Muslim terrorists who are intent on wiping out every man woman and child that doesn’t accept Allah as God was just handed another victory by the President of the United States. In response to yet another threat from the al Qaeda faction in Yemen responsible for training the panty bomber who tried to take out a U.S. bound jet on Christmas day, the Obama administration decided to close down our embassy in Yemen. “The U.S. Embassy in San’a is closed today, January 3, 2010, in response to ongoing threats by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula … to attack American interests in Yemen,” the embassy said in a message on its Web site. Obama’s counter-terrorism expert also informed the nation on Sunday that the United States would not be opening up a new front in Yemen to battle the increasing presence of al Qaeda there. This mirrors the Obama administration’s response to ever increasing threats from terrorist murderers: if we just ignore them, maybe they’ll go away. President Obama has made it official. Faced with murderous threats from fanatical Muslims, America will cut and run. Al Qaeda and assorted terrorists the world over are rejoicing. Yet again. These barbaric animals are laughing out loud at the policies President Obama and his buddies have enacted since he became president of the greatest country in the world. First, Obama did what Democrats do when faced with an uncomfortable reality. They redefine it. Obama abolished the war on terror with a stroke of the pen. Presto, we now have man-made catastrophic events, not to be confused with the bogus global warming catastrophic events. This was followed by the left’s favorite response to any crisis not of their own making: dialogue. Despite the fact that ‘reaching out’ is considered a distinct sign of weakness by our enemies and has never worked, Obama scored political points by convincing half the nation that he could effect world peace through the sheer force of his personality. Obama’s dialogue did accomplish something, however. It allowed him to appear to be doing something, when in actuality he was merely avoiding the hard decisions associated with real leadership. This man of action then handed terrorists legitimacy, along with all the legal rights American citizens have fought and died for. Enemy combatants, for the first time in history, will be tried in civilian courts in New York. In the same neighborhood they demolished on 9/11. How cool is that, terrorists say. This insane policy does have a silver lining. It just might encourage terrorists in Yemen and Afghanistan to surrender. That way they can leave the blood and guts battlefield and wage jihad from the worldwide platform being afforded (courtesy of U.S. taxpayers) by a New York courtroom. Again, courtesy of Obama. Who knows, terrorists might just be able to accomplish more effective jihad from within America. Just think of the recruitment opportunities in American jails. Yahoo! Then again, these animals may just opt to stay on the battlefield overseas. After all, Obama’s new rules of engagement have severely hampered U.S. fighting men. All al Qaeda has to do is hide behind women and children and they get a virtual free pass. And if by chance they get caught killing Americans and they aren’t mirandized, well, its off to Gitmo, where they’ll have a chance to rest up and regroup. Once they gain 20 pounds or so, they’ll be shipped back home where they pick up right where they left off. Unless, of course, Obama is successful in closing Gitmo, in which case the terrorists will have to make do with 3 squares and cable TV from Chicago until they get shipped home to the same old goat meat and drafty caves. No wonder our enemies are laughing. As the Taliban indoctrinate kids as young as five years-old into being killing machines, Obama focuses his efforts on sanitizing and avoiding a fight to the finish that our enemies wage as a war and Obama wages as an exercise in rhetoric. As the Left steps up their efforts to sensitize males, our enemies breed warriors and come ever closer to obtaining the technology and materials needed for a nuclear weapon. America will then have no choice but to follow Obama’s policy of appeasement. And the terrorists will have won. And America will be no more. If you’re not scared yet, let me offer you this visual exercise: Imagine Obama and his buddies coming face to face with a coven of jihadists. Which side is going to win? Obama’s words or the terrorist’s sword? NewsReal Blog
 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received help from Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch in carrying out his attack, but he was also inadvertently helped by, in President Obama’s words, the “human and systemic failure” of the United States’ counter-terrorism apparatus. More and more information is coming to light showing that major vulnerabilities continue to exist leaving the country open to attack. The government had suspected that Abdulmutallab had ties to terrorists for at least two years.
In early August, the CIA later picked up information about an individual called “The Nigerian” who was suspected of meeting with terrorists in Yemen to plan an attack. Then, in November 19, Abdulmutallab’s father, a former minister in Nigeria’s government, went to the U.S. embassy in Abuja and told the CIA about his son’s extremism and ties to Yemen. The dots were not put together, and to make matters worse, the State Department system to track active visas did not alert the proper officials that Abdulmutallab had a visa to travel to the United States. The next day, when Abdulmutallab’s father’s tip was sent back home, the State Department again did not warn about his visa, enabling him to later travel to the U.S. from Amsterdam on the flight he would try to destroy. The State Department responded by saying the responsibility to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa fell under the National Counterterrorism Center. An anonymous U.S. intelligence official involved in the investigation reacted by describing the State Department as providing the Center with “very thin information” that didn’t rise to the standard required for a visa to be revoked and have him placed on the no-fly list that would have prevented him from boarding the airliner. The U.S. should have been aware of Al-Qaeda in Yemen’s tactic of using plastic PETN explosives that can get through metal detectors, as Abdulmutallab used in the Christmas Day plot.
The group previously used that same type of bomb on August 28 when it tried to assassinate Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Interior Minister. Although Abdulmutallab made his way past the metal detectors with the PETN-based bomb, other technology could have prevented the explosive from making its way onto the plane. A machine that uses a burst of air to analyze substances, dogs, full-body scanners, or even a typical search with swabs could have detected it. The plot itself even has roots in an intelligence and political failure. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which declared responsibility for the attempted bombing, has been strengthened by the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. Said Ali al-Shihri was released in 2007 and went to Saudi Arabia’s infamous terrorist “rehabilitation” program, and then became the deputy-leader of Al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, the one that worked with Abdulmutallab. Muhamad Attik al-Harbi is another former prisoner who joined Al-Qaeda’s ranks in Yemen, although he later went back to Saudi Arabia and left the group. Another was killed by the Yemeni military. Similar intelligence failures allowed Major Nidal Malik Hasan to commit his November 5 shooting attack on Fort Hood in November that killed 13 people.
When he was supposed to be giving a lecture about psychiatry, he talked about Islam, saying that infidels would go to hell and suffer punishments like having burning oil poured into their throats. His former classmates say that he stated that he was more loyal to Sharia Law than the U.S. and that he spoke in support of suicide bombings. As a psychiatrist, he spoke to superiors about bringing war crimes charges against some of his patients who served in the military. Hasan attended the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, at the same time as two of the 9/11 hijackers when Anwar al-Awlaki was the imam. Al-Awlaki is now known to be an Al-Qaeda recruiter currently residing in Yemen, and he ties these two plots together. He is believed to have given his blessing for the Christmas Day plot, and Hasan exchanged at least 18 emails with him in the six months prior to the attack. After the shooting, al-Awlaki praised Hasan. The FBI was monitoring al-Awlaki’s communications when they became aware of Hasan, who told al-Awlaki that he was eager to join him in the afterlife. The FBI saw that Hasan was making postings on radical Islamic websites, one of which hailed the effectiveness of suicide bombings and another he argued that they were heroic and did not contradict Islam. The FBI has reportedly found that Hasan had links to other people suspected of being connected to terrorism. Despite all of this information about Hasan’s activities, an investigation was not opened. The Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas Day airliner plot should serve as reminders that we are only one intelligence failure away from a calamity taking place. FPM
 by Daniel Greenfield Last decade it was the first year of a new millennium, and now it’s the first year of a new decade.
It is a decade that begins in the shadow of terrorism, in the shadow of Islam. Nidal Malik Hasan’s killing spree and Umar’s attempted attack on Northwest 253 mark an uptick in domestic terrorism, even as the suicide bombing struck CIA agents in Afghanistan to showcase one of the worst attacks on the US in Afghanistan. That they all took place within a short time of each other, under Obama, is likely no coincidence at all. Obama had his window to show whether he would be a capable leader or not. The terrorists took his measure. Now the real testing has begun, first with “lone wolves” and the testing phase is likely to be followed by a large scale organized attack. And naturally the government’s weakness toward terrorism has only helped the terrorists.
Former Gitmo detainees are helping Al Queda run their civil war in Yemen. Despite this Obama’s Attorney General insists on trying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court, and Obama insists on exporting and importing Gitmo terrorists. Most Americans however want to see strong measures used against terrorists. 58 percent of Americans want to waterboard Umar. The surveys also show that a third of Americans think Al Queda is winning and that most support US control over security measures at foreign airports. 65 percent believe torture works. 58 percent think that Obama’s release of the CIA memos endangered national security. 63 percent blame political correctness for allowing Hasan to carry out his massacre at Fort Hood. Essentially the numbers suggest that a loose majority of Americans is to the right of Obama and the media on such basic issues. Barely a third rank the government’s response to the Airplane bombing positively. Those numbers mean that Obama has lost on national security. The question is how key will national security be in 2012. That puts the US into an Israel type scenario in which terrorists can help dictate the course of a US election, and in which the Obama administration might be tempted to cut behind the scenes deals with Al Queda to avoid an attack during the election season. Meanwhile in another setback for Washington D.C.‘s crusade against soldiers and contractors, the charges against the Blackwater security guards have been tossed out. A federal judge threw out all charges on Thursday against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007, saying the U.S. government had recklessly violated the defendants’ constitutional rights. Naturally the same people who celebrated when 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was scheduled for a civilian trial and Osama’s bodyguard Salim Hamdan was set free, are outraged over this. The bottom line is that the Blackwater guards responded to an attack and defended themselves. In the aftermath of which evidence was covered up, and the State Department chose to use them as a sacrificial goat. Continuing the roundup, Elder of Ziyon handily discredits the now commonly circulated claim that Israeli weapons caused birth defects in Gaza. The claim has been repeated on Al Jazeera and a lot of left wing blogs. Palestinian Arabs keep trying to claim that Israeli weapons in Operation Cast Lead caused all sorts of genetic mutations in Gaza. Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, director of the Emergency Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, tells Palestine Today that there have been over 75 cases of babies born with heart defects in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead. A quick calculation shows that, in the US, about 0.9% of all babies are born with congenital heart defects (36,000 a year.) In Gaza, this would translate to over 500 babies born with such a condition every year. Perhaps those evil Israeli chemical and radiological weapons had a positive effect on Gaza children! But more insidiously, Hassanein claims that these weapons have caused Gaza men to have abnormal sperm, low sperm counts and, tragically, infertility. To many Arabs, this could be worse than birth defects, as it attacks the very source of their manliness, and nothing is more important than that. But indeed there are mutants in Gaza. They just weren’t caused by Cast Lead or Israeli weapons. They’re caused by MARRYING YOUR COUSINS. More at CFP
 SANAA: Yemeni forces raided an al-Qa'ida hideout and set off a battle yesterday as the government vowed to eliminate the group claiming it was behind the Christmas bombing attempt on a US airliner. The fighting took place in an al-Qa'ida stronghold in western Yemen, haven for a group that attacked the US embassy in the country in 2008, killing 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians. A government statement said at least one suspected militant was arrested. "The (Interior) Ministry will continue tracking down al-Qa'ida terrorists and will continue its strikes against the group until it is totally eliminated," Deputy Interior Minister Saleh al-Zawari told senior military officials at a meeting in Mareb, another province believed to shelter al-Qa'ida fighters. The attack came as US officials said the Pentagon was drawing up urgent plans for increased military co-operation with Yemen, including possible retaliatory strikes against al-Qa'ida targets. He acknowledged, however, that Yemen would need technical and intelligence information to carry out such attacks, and senior Pentagon sources said fresh target lists were being drawn up in case US President Barack Obama called for them. The US has never publicly acknowledged the rapid build-up of its military presence in and near Yemen since last year but sources say that attacks already mounted by Yemeni government forces on al-Qa'ida training camps would have been impossible without American hardware and know-how. Future strikes could involve the use of US drones, fighter jets and ship-launched cruise missiles. The US military has formidable firepower on permanent standby in the form of carrier battle groups stationed in Bahrain, and unimpeded access to Yemen from bases in Djibouti and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Pinpointing those who groomed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for his suicide mission in the Arab world's poorest country will not be easy but the movements of known militants and the would-be bomber's responses to interrogators have provided leads. Two former inmates of Guantanamo Bay detainee camp who were returned to Yemen via Saudi Arabia in 2007 are thought to have assumed the leadership of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, the group that claimed responsibility for the attempted airline bombing. Muhammad al-Awfi and Said Ali al-Shihri are believed to have been the targets of a pair of airstrikes on suspected terrorist training camps in the east of the country before Christmas that the Yemeni government says killed more than 60 militants. Reports that the pair were killed on Christmas Eve have not been confirmed. The AQAP leadership was the target again yesterday in the raids by Yemeni forces. Abdulmutallab has reportedly told his FBI interrogators in Michigan that he attended a gathering of young men "all covered up in white martyrs' garments" in Yemen shortly before he left the country. The American response to the near-catastrophe over Detroit has veered from casual reassurance to angry recrimination and thinly veiled threats of military action in less than a week. US investigators said Abdulmutallab told them he received training and instructions from al-Qa'ida operatives in Yemen. Yemen's government has said Abdulmutallab spent two periods in the country, 2004-2005 and from August to December of last year, just before the attempted attack. Yesterday's clashes took place in Hudaydah province, an al-Qa'ida stronghold along the Red Sea coast. A security official said the target was a house owned by an al-Qa'ida sympathiser. The official said the owner was arrested, a suspected al-Qa'ida member was injured and several militants who fled were being pursued. Before yesterday's clashes, Yemeni forces backed by US intelligence carried out two major strikes against al-Qa'ida hideouts, reportedly killing more than 60 militants. The Australian
 Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is a columnist for National Review and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. FP: Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. First things first, let me ask you this. If our government was serious about fighting Islamic terrorism and saving lives, wouldn’t Abdul Mutallab be getting water-boarded just about now? We know that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed – which included waterboarding – forced KSM to give up crucial information that ended up preventing countless terrorist attacks and saving an infinite amount of innocent lives. It allowed, for instance, the U.S. to capture key al- Qaeda terrorists and to thwart a planned 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles. But now, thanks to the Obama administration and its approach to the terror war, Abdul Mutallab will probably be getting a lawyer and not have to say anything. This, naturally, drastically increases, rather than minimizes, the possibilities of a future terror attack on our soil and against our citizens. Your thoughts? Hanson: I don’t think right now the question is over interrogation techniques, but rather not giving this foreign national would-be mass murderer full rights, as if he were a common criminal rather than a non-uniformed soldier at war. Mutallab apparently, has been happy to tell all he knows without even being interrogated formally, which makes the entire foiled attack even more absurd: a Nigerian radical Muslim buys with cash a one-way ticket, carries no check-in luggage, was previously reported by his own father as a threat to America, and boards a plane to America after previous stays in Yemen? Before we even get to questions of interrogation, how about first some sanity? And in reaction to all this, Secretary Napolitano nonchalantly talks about the system working like “clockwork”? I think very soon we will hear of no more “overseas contingency operations” and “man-made disasters”—and no more Janet Napolitano as head of our homeland security. And when the next official struts and says “Bush did it”, the public will sigh “Thank God, he did”, since in comparison with the seriousness with which the prior administration dealt with terrorism, the Obama team seems to consider radical Islam an interesting catalyst for a civil liberties debate. “Reset” button probably won’t be used any more either—the phrase is too ironic now, and would mean going back to our anti-terrorism policies from 2001-9, which are preferable to the present mess. In political terms, one cannot ask millions of Americans to take off their belts and shoes, and then not put someone like Mutallab on a no-fly list. FP: The fate of Gitmo? Hanson: With over 100 Yemenis in Guantanamo, I doubt the facility will be closed; perhaps it will be virtually closed like the Iranian deadlines to stop building a bomb, or the health-care deadlines. I doubt too that Khalid Sheik Mohammed is ever tried in New York; that partisan gambit will be quietly Guatanamoized. More at FPM
 Funny how that keeps happening. "Al-Qaeda 'groomed Abdulmutallab in London'," by Sean O'Neill and Giles Whitell for Times Online, December 30
The Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect organised a conference under the banner "War on Terror Week" as he immersed himself in radical politics while a student in London, The Times has learnt. This story does not address the possibility that Abdulmutallab could have encountered "extremism" indigenous to Nigeria, or that anyone but al-Qaeda could be the source of his interest in violent acts of jihad. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, a former president of the Islamic Society at University College London, advertised speakers including political figures, human rights lawyers and former Guantánamo detainees. One lecture, Jihad v Terrorism, was billed as "a lecture on the Islamic position with respect to jihad". It is worth noting amid Abdulmutallab's involvement in events like this that he had sought advice on when it is permissible to deceive non-Muslims. Security sources are concerned that the picture emerging of his undergraduate years suggests that he was recruited by al-Qaeda in London. Security sources said that Islamist radicalisation was rife on university campuses, especially in London, and that college authorities had "a patchy record in facing up to the problem". Previous anti-terrorist inquiries have uncovered evidence of extremists using political meetings and religious study circles to identify potential recruits. It emerged last night that Mr Abdulmutallab featured on the periphery of one counterterrorism intelligence operation in Britain. US intelligence authorities are also looking at conversations between him and at least one al-Qaeda member. The event he organised took place in January 2007 and included talks on Guantánamo Bay, the alleged torture of prisoners and the War on Terror. He is the fourth president of a London student Islamic society to face terrorist charges in three years.
One is facing a retrial on charges that he was involved in the 2006 liquid bomb plot to blow up airliners. Two others have been convicted of terrorist offences since 2007. Death coaching: Mr Abdulmutallab left UCL last year. The Times has learnt that his attempt to renew his student visa in May this year was based on an application to study "life coaching" at a non-existent college. That visa refusal may have saved Britain from an attack. His terrorist training took a new turn in August when he moved to Yemen, ostensibly to study Arabic, and was schooled by al-Qaeda there...
 For six years the burning cause of the American left was the fate of the captured terrorists being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Civil rights lawyers, pundits and Democratic congressmen joined voices to denounce military tribunals, detention of captured terrorists without access to their ACLU lawyers and of course that unholy terror of MSNBC commentators, waterboarding. And they got their way. The Bush Administration, that for all its faults that had at least cared about protecting Americans against Islamic terrorism, under pressure from the courts gave in, and when the official candidate of Islamic terrorists, MSNBC commentators and ACLU lawyers took office, it was all over but the suicide bombings. Barry Hussein signed the order closing Guantánamo Bay, released many of its residents, and gave civilian trials to others. And thus far of the terrorists who have been released, one in seven has returned to terrorist activity. And that number likely underestimates the true picture by quite a lot. In 2006 Thomas Wilner, the lawyer for a number of the terrorists, penned an emotional article for the Los Angeles Times calling Gitmo, an American Gulag and a living nightmare. Naturally of course all his Kuwaiti clients were innocent little lambs who just happened to be hanging around Afghanistan before being snatched up into the cruel and unfeeling maw of the US military industrial complex, inhumanly tortured and deprived of their humanity. Two years later after his release, one of Wilner's innocent lambs, Abdallah al-Ajmi, hailed as the "Lion of Guantanamo" murdered 13 Iraqi policemen in a suicide bombing. Naturally instead of admitting that he had worked tirelessly to release a Jihadi terrorist from Gitmo, leaving him free to kill, Wilner instead blamed the US government for turning his formerly lamb-like client who had been picking flowers in the valley of Kandahar into a violent terrorist by imprisoning him in Guantánamo Bay. This of course is the usual sort of thing that defense attorneys claim when their completely innocent clients who had previously torched an orphanage and bombed a bus full of nuns, are released and unsurprisingly go back to doing exactly what they were doing before. "It's the prison life that did it, your honor," the lawyers argue. "If only my client hadn't been caught and sent to the hole, he'd still be a lamb." In 1980 many of the same liberals who fell in love with the Gitmo killers embraced a murderer and bank robber named Jack Abbott. They praised his literary skills and fought for his release. Norman Mailer helped publish his book. Susan Sarandon named her son after him. Less than two months after his release Abbott demanded to use a restaurant restroom. He was refused by the night manager. In turn Abbott stabbed the man to death. His defense was that his dehumanizing treatment in prison had made him incapable of acting in any other way. But what had become a laughable defense to most Americans, was brushed off not just for Abdallah al-Ajmi or the other innocent lamb/terrorists of Guantanamo Bay who went back to their old profession once they were shipped back to Yemen, Kuwait or Russia-- but for Islamic terrorism in general. It is the most common defense used on behalf of Palestinian Arab terrorism, when every charge is met with, "But what choice do they have. Israel built a wall and imprisoned them. They're only responding to the dehumanization inflicted on them." The presumption behind this defense is that the terrorists are always innocent victims and their terrorism is the consequence of oppression by their targets. An argument often accompanied by the W.H. Auden citation from his poem September 1, 1939; "I and the public know, What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done, Do evil in return." Often those quoting the stanza remain unaware of the poem they are quoting from, and its awful relevance. September 1, 1939 was the date of Hitler's invasion of Poland. The previous line that is generally left out by the bleeding hearts who cite Auden, "What huge imago made, A psychopathic god" is of course a reference to Hitler. Even with German troops marching into Poland, Auden still hid Nazi Germany behind the rhetoric of victimology, painting the Nazi forces as much victims as oppressors. But it might be just as well to draw from W.H. Auden's poem, Spain, written in support of the Soviet Union's work in the Spanish Civil War. "To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder." The necessary murder of course is that murder which must be committed in the name of a cause, as differentiated from imperialist murders which are committed to stop the people who are committing murders in the name of a cause.
The suicide bombings of Muslim terrorists today, like the Red Terror, are one of those necessary murders being committed by the Jack Abbotts with beards and keffiyahs running around the world today. After 13 dead in Mosul whose families he has never visited, his lawyer of course has no regrets. "Guantanamo took a kid -- a kid who wasn't all that bad -- and it turned him into a hostile, hardened individual," Wilner said. The kid in question being Abdallah al-Ajmi, a Jihadist who had tried to fight in Chechnya and then Afghanistan, threatened his own lawyer and on release, went to fight in Iraq and murdered 13 Iraqi police officers. The real story of course as always is behind the scenes. Thomas Wilner and his prestigious law firm, Shearman & Sterling, are not some gang of bearded radicals huddling in an East Village basement office. They're a prestigious law firm whose bill was footed by the Kuwaiti government. Shearman & Sterling did not simply have managing partners like Wilner represent captured terrorists, they launched a massive lobbying campaign on their behalf.
 by Daniel Greenfield The thirteen US soldiers murdered at Fort Hood were killed by the bullets fired by Malik Nidal Hassan, but there were those who helped Nassan fire his bullets, who did everything but hold his gun and pull the trigger for him.
The initial FBI review has found that the Justice Department guidelines for opening a criminal investigation were too high, in turn investigators have said that it now requires a very high standard of evidence in order to convict a terrorist plotter. Pursuing charges before all the evidence is in hand can backfire – suspects have sued authorities before, claiming they were falsely imprisoned victims of witch hunts… Five Muslim immigrants were convicted last year of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey, but they were acquitted of attempted murder after prosecutors acknowledged they were probably months away from acting.
... In January 2006, agents watched as a young man suspected of links to terrorists walked out of an Atlanta Home Depot with materials that could be used to make a bomb. They knew Syed Haris Ahmed had researched bombmaking techniques online and shaved his head, as some jihadis have done before an attack. However, they decided to wait to arrest him and keep building a stronger case – and risk a potential terror attack. Not being able to stop a terrorist before he strikes. Not being able to remove Muslims who are engaging in threatening behavior on a plane. Not able to take action against a terrorist plot for fear that the terrorists will be allowed to walk free. That is what the domestic version of the War on Terror looks like today. Those are the wages of Lawfare, the legal campaign on behalf of terrorists waged by well known liberal legal advocacy groups such as the ACLU, and the much wider base of liberal organizations and newspapers who lobbied on behalf of captured terrorists and republished every single one of their claims of torture… to the extent that the Al Queda manual made it a default for captured terrorists to cry abuse once on trial. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver, who was captured together with Al Queda operatives, became a cause celebre for liberals and liberal groups from Amnesty International to People for the American Way to the American Jewish Committee to George Clooney who was interested in making a movie about him and starring as his lawyer.
They turned Salim Hamdan into a martyr and breathlessly repeated every single one of his statements. And they won. They won with Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld. And they won again at trial. Hamdan was freed a few months after sentencing to return to Yemen. The liberal establishment had fought its hardest for Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard… and they won. America lost. That wasn’t the only time they won.
From day one every terrorist in Gitmo, every terrorist plotter seized on American soil plotting to murder Americans had the liberal establishment in their corner and fighting on their behalf.
From trial lawyers queuing up to defend them to the editorial pages of every liberal newspaper in America clamoring that they had been victimized, that the charges against them were worthless and that America had besmirched itself by not bowing to the wishes of the aforementioned trial lawyers. And they won. From Abu Ghraib to Gitmo, from Hamdan to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they won. They successfully smeared US soldiers and interrogators and CIA agents as monsters, torturers and kidnappers.
They successfully portrayed Al Queda terrorists as sensitive victims and martyrs of a latter day Gulag. The same press that wouldn’t report on any of Castro’s atrocities a few miles south of Guantanamo Bay if you put a gun to their heads, put on their novelist hats and transformed butchers into loving fathers, and dedicated fanatics into misunderstood patriots. And they won. More at CFP
 NEW YORK – The Obama administration announced today that it will purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois for the purpose of holding some of the detainees currently remaining at Guantánamo.
Though the administration is leaving unsaid which detainees will be moved there and for what purposes, the information it has provided indicates that some detainees might be held for military commission proceedings in Illinois while others might be held at Thomson indefinitely without charge or trial.
The administration has stated that "any detainees at Guantánamo who continue to be held, and for whom no prosecution is planned, will be held only under authority granted by Congress in 2001 under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, as informed by the law of war." However, the so-called war on terrorism is not a traditional war, having no temporal or geographical boundaries.
The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU:
"The creation of a 'Gitmo North' in Illinois is hardly a meaningful step forward. Shutting down Guantánamo will be nothing more than a symbolic gesture if we continue its lawless policies onshore.
"Alarmingly, all indications are that the administration plans to continue its predecessor's policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial for some detainees, with only a change of location. Such a policy is completely at odds with our democratic commitment to due process and human rights whether it's occurring in Cuba or in Illinois. In fact, while the Obama administration inherited the Guantánamo debacle, this current move is its own affirmative adoption of those policies.
It is unimaginable that the Obama administration is using the same justification as the Bush administration used to undercut centuries of legal jurisprudence and the principle of innocent until proven guilty and the right to confront one's accusers.
"It is also greatly disturbing that the administration will continue the use of military commissions, which are no more acceptable in Illinois or any other U.S. state than in Guantánamo.
Despite some improvements, the commissions still fall far short of the legal standards necessary to comply with constitutional and international standards, allowing, for example, the use of coerced and hearsay evidence that would not be allowed in federal court. The proceedings will achieve neither reliable justice nor a restoration of America's credibility around the world.
"The administration must also make very clear what category of detainee will be transferred to Thomson in the future and what kind of prison conditions will apply. Detainees not charged with a crime should not be subject to punitive conditions meant for sentenced prisoners who have been found guilty in a court of law, and all conditions must comply with the Geneva Conventions.
"The administration will no doubt be looking to Congress for legislative buy-in for this facility, and as both branches work together, we strongly urge lawmakers to legislate responsibly and not set any policies or precedents for indefinite detention on U.S. soil, or create any violation of the Geneva Conventions.
"The Obama administration's announcement today contradicts everything the president has said about the need for America to return to leading with its values.
American values do not contemplate disregarding our Constitution and skirting the criminal justice system.
After detaining hundreds of individuals without the basic due process rights that define our justice system for almost eight years, it is time to charge suspects where evidence exists and repatriate and transfer the rest to countries where they won't be tortured."
 Their loyalties, if this is true, were with Islam, not with the United States. That should not be surprising: it is a staple of Islamic thought that loyalty to one's fellow Muslims trumps all other loyalties. "Another spying scandal at Gitmo," by Paul Sperry for the New York Post, December 1 (thanks to Pamela): A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches.
This could taint some of the evidence at the "9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees. Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003.
The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army linguist Ahmed Mehalba, an Egyptian native, were later convicted of stealing or mishandling classified documents.
Six years later comes a new problem with Muslim personnel who have virtually unfettered access to detainees and intelligence at Gitmo. Professional military security and intelligence officials at Gitmo did the preliminary probe, then prepared a classified summary and are now briefing top officials and members of Congress in Washington.
An active FBI criminal probe is also under way. The possible new spy ring involves several Arabic linguists, some also Egyptian and Syrian immigrants. They're suspected of, among other things:
* Omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of interrogations.
* Slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Koran.
* Coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators.
* Meeting with suspects on the terror watchlist while back in the United States.
Officials say some of the suspected "dirty" linguists -- who met privately in a locked mosque at Gitmo -- have had access to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other high-value al Qaeda detainees.
"Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian-contractor and military-linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo," states a copy of a classified Gitmo briefing, prepared in May for the FBI, CIA and Congress' intelligence committees....
 by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters It's not true that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. Even dead terrorists aren't good. But at least they're dead. And that helps. But political correctness has possessed Washington. It's so bad that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who's done a great job in many other respects, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this." Well, folks, there's no other way out of this all-or-nothing struggle with fanatics. Three thousand years of history teach that there's no alternative -- none -- to killing fanatics in large numbers when your enemies are ablaze with religious zeal. What Gates and countless others really mean is that we're unwilling to kill our way out of this assault on our civilization. So the terrorists keep on killing us. We tell ourselves that one more charm offensive, one more inept aid program, one more surge of troops who aren't allowed to fight will persuade terrorists on a murderous mission from their god to lay down their arms and run for alderman. We refuse to see the world through terrorist eyes. Instead, we superimpose liberal-arts-faculty values on bloodthirsty zealots, asking what we've done to make them so angry. The result? We grant captured terrorists more rights and better treatment than nonviolent offenders in a US county jail. We cater to them at the gentrified prison at Guantanamo (yet the global media insist that Gitmo's just a big torture chamber). We tell ourselves we'll impress our enemies with our humanitarianism. But how many Gitmo prisoners have turned pacifist or expressed regrets? If you were convinced that you were doing God's will, would you be budged by a captor who gives you priority health care, a religiously correct diet, special worship privileges and free legal counsel? Allah has made his enemies weak .
The laws of war provide for the battlefield execution of illegal combatants -- those who refuse to wear uniforms or identifying insignia or who commit atrocities. Instead, we give them flu shots before American citizens can get them. When a madcap ideologue such as Attorney General Eric Holder tells Congress we mustn't be afraid to try terrorists in our judicial system, he gets it exactly wrong. The terrorists believe we're afraid to kill them. And they're right. So we'll get the upcoming propaganda bonanza of the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his terrorist barbershop quartet. And we'll squander hundreds of millions of dollars on special security precautions in Manhattan. The inevitable outcome? We'll make heroes of the terrorists throughout the Muslim world. Meanwhile, down in Texas, terrorist assassin Maj. Nidal Hasan's lawyer is already making a mockery of our judicial system. Hasan will become a terrorist icon, too. And even if Hasan, KSM and the boys are all convicted of multiple counts of premeditated murder, they won't be executed for many years to come -- if ever. How does this deter fanatical enemies? Our insistence on treating terrorism as shoplifting that got a little out of hand does not protect Americans. Terrified of the new global reality, Washington refuses to accept that we're no longer dealing with the political terrorists of the 20th century -- some of whom could, indeed, be won over or bought off. We're now dealing with religious madmen hungry for an apocalypse. And our government and the media scramble to deny that Islam has anything to do with it. The poor terrorists just have grievances. If Khalid Sheik Mohammed has a heart attack during his trial, he'll get better health care than most Post readers. Paralyzed from the waist down, Maj. Hasan will get priority on rehab treatment over our vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. Bring terrorists to Manhattan? They should never have made it to Gitmo. Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon." NYPost
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Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved.
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The Pentagon’s 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was “sanitized” to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday. 
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