Islamism Series: Coming Soon to a Hood Near You?

How would you like your family’s next-door neighbor to be a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who was trained in a military camp in pre-9/11 Afghanistan? Would it matter if they were declared no longer to be an “enemy combatant” by the Pentagon?

That’s the fundamental question that ought to be going through the minds of Northern Virginia residents this week, amid news reports - including my own New York Daily News exclusive today - that a group from Gitmo may soon be making house in the D.C. surburbs. Officials tell The News the ethnic Turk Muslims from China, known as Uyghurs, will be settled in a Uyghur community in Fairfax, Va. - if Team Obama gives the thumbs up.

While Republicans have unarguably been making political hay out of this news - as well as the release of the Bush-era “torture memos” and President Obama’s plan to close Gitmo by January - they are indeed representing the views of many counterterrorism officials by objecting strenuously to plans to resettle a half-dozen former detainees in the D.C. suburbs.

“There are people in the intelligence community who are concerned about the Uyghurs from a security standpoint,” Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), ranking GOPer on the Homeland Security Committee, told me this week. “They have very real worries.”

Counterterrorism officials I spoke to have expressed concern but no great alarm. Some see a greater threat than others. But at the core of the debate is that it’s not entirely clear how connected the detainees were to a Uyghur terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, before they were nabbed after 9/11.

“How do you say for sure? You don’t, and that’s the problem,” said one U.S. official briefed on contingency operations involving the Uyghur detainees.

Another matter is whether they grew into hardened jihadis during the seven years they’ve been held at Gitmo, though now in a minimally restrictive camp.

“You don’t know what kind of radicalization happened down there,” said Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), whose district is the spot where U.S. officials are looking to relocate the Gitmo group.

Wolf and King complain Team Obama hasn’t told them much. But other officials insist the members have been regularly briefed on Gitmo plans.

As The News reported today, a sweeping security operation by the FBI and Homeland Security Department is in place to keep a watchful eye on the Uyghurs if they’re released in Virginia. But Wolf said the costs to taxpayers of the surveillance will be high for a decade or more, during which time the Uyghurs may become determined to attack the Red Chinese government.

“Will they one day try to kill the Chinese ambassador?” Wolf wonders. “You’d have to do (surveillance) forever.”

“We are not as much worried,” said Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the Uyghur American Association in Washington. “If the Uyghurs (at Gitmo) are released, we will welcome them.”

WRITTEN by James Gordon Meek for the CounterterrorismBlog.org on May 8th, 2009

100 Devastating Days Down

The good news about the 'First 100 Days' of the Barack Obama administration is that there are 100 days behind us, and so we are 100 days closer to the end of this disastrous administration. The bad news is that there remain 1,362 more days in which the President, his policy wonks, and his political allies can do even further damage to the very fabric of the United States of America. Those of us who are Republicans, and particularly those of a more conservative bent, are expected to say things like that. We didn't vote for Obama, will not vote for Obama the next time around, and in fact can see no reason to support any Democrat at this moment, so entrenched is the control and power of the ultra-liberal wing of their party. So for one of us to make such dark, gloomy, negative statements about the Obama administration can easily be written off by his supporters. But there is just one problem for those supporters. They themselves are finding it more and more difficult to actually express the reasons that they support him and his party. It was all so easy just six months ago, when they all had George W. Bush to hate. Bush-bashing was all the vogue and had been raised to an art form thanks to the constant, repetitive, relentless negative coverage given the Bush Presidency by the liberal mass media. Americans, especially Democrats, and even more particularly liberals, wanted 'Change' from Bush and from what they perceived as the negativity of the previous eight years. Had they only stood back and let their brains do the thinking instead of allowing the liberal media, as well as Hollywood and music industry celebrities, they would have been hard pressed to find a real reason to vote for Obama. They would find that presumptuous of me, and would ask what right I had to say that they didn't use their brains in the first place. To that my reply would be that they were simply being disingenuous. I talked to liberals around the time of the election. I never once heard anyone speak of any particular policy or plan of Obama's that they liked, just that it was time for a change, or they would ask me in return about the Bush administration and what had been so great about it. Never mind that the point was moot, that Bush wasn't running. The one thing that they did know was that Obama was going to stop the war in Iraq. So here we are, three months into the Obama administration, and our troops are still solidly in Iraq. Oh, there is a future plan to remove some troops down the road, of course dependant upon the Iraqis being able to fend for their own security. But the fact remains that Obama could bring home every troop tomorrow from the Middle East, and that would not end the war. What the liberals fail to realize is that it takes two sides stopping to end a war, and the radical Islamists have no intention of ever stopping. All our liberal friends need to do is to actually do any amount of serious study in relation to radical Islam, and they would understand this, but they simply refuse to look past their pie-in-the-sky idealism at the sober reality of the situation. In his 'First 100 Days', Barack Obama, the man that they elected for 'Change', has begun to change America at its very core, and not for the better. Obama has seriously handcuffed American intelligence gathering and worsened morale in the military and intelligence infra-structures, thus seriously jeopardizing our very safety. Because he refuses to keep America's military presence active and strong in the Middle East, despite some tough talk on Afghanistan, it is only a matter of time before either Iran actually has a nuclear weapon, or Israel attacks it in what would be a necessary but devastating pre-emptory self-defense bid to avoid annihilation. It is also only a matter of time before the Taliban or some other radical Islamist group takes over Pakistan, already a nuclear power, and thus places the nightmare scenario of an Islamist regime in control of full-blown weapons of mass destruction. Closer to home, he announced the imminent closing of the terrorist holding facility in Guantanamo Bay, yet made no provision for where the dangerous individuals being held there would be released. He knows full well that the vast majority will not be accepted back into their home countries, and that no reasonable nation on earth will take most of them because, well, they are dangerous terrorists. In other words, there is every likelihood that many of these individuals will be released right here into the American population next year. Nice. He went on a Euro-tour and bad-mouthed and blasted our country, much to the delight of the America-despising Europeans, then went to the Middle East and bowed down in deference to the Saudi king, and finally on to South America where he exchanged good will and gifts with one of the most virulent anti-Americans on earth in Hugo Chavez. He is dragging our nation by the hair away from freedom and capitalism and into full-blown Socialism, with the Federal government extending and deepening its reach and effect on every facet of our lives. His handling of financial matters has perhaps amazingly been even worse and potentially as or more destructive. He is pushing a 'cap and trade' plan to limit carbon emissions that would cost every single American household over $3,100 per year, thus destroying his promise of no taxes to the middle-class. He is doing this to prop-up the ultra-liberal 'green' movement that is all feel-good and no substance. The real science says that the earth has had many periods of warming and cooling in its history, and thus will have them again, but also that we are now in a period of cooling, not warming. So what is all this fuss about going 'green', and why do we need billions of dollars of new taxes and fees on Americans to support it? The simple answer is that we don't, and that while natural conservation is an excellent idea to foster for general environmental cleanliness sake it is nowhere near the apocalyptic need that has blown up under the tutelage of Al Gore and his super-liberal supporters. President Bush set a horrible precedent towards the end of his administration by bailing out some financial industry entities with federal dollars rather than letting the market work and letting them fail. Rather than start his administration with a reversal of this Bush error, the Obama administration has taken the idea and run with it, pushing the nation into a series of massive 'stimulus' bailout schemes that will now leave my grandchildren trillions of dollars in debt after Obama himself is long gone. By forcing industries from banking to automobiles to take federal money in exchange for federal control and oversight, the Socialist agenda pushes deeper. All this, and he names an acknowledged tax cheat in Timothy Geitner to be his Treasury Secretary. In his own house, Obama has had a horrible time in trying to fill many other important positions, including the embarrassment now of having a full-blown pandemic hit the world while he has not yet filled the position of Health & Human Services Secretary in his cabinet. No single President in the history of the United States has done more to harm the very heart and fabric of America than this President has done in his first hundred days. It is disheartening to realize that he still has over 1,300 more in which he can do far more substantial damage to our nation. There is some hope that if the country can get a Republican congressional majority elected next year that we can put a brake on some of this, and limit the damage. If not, the dangers both within and without that the Obama administration has opened us up to are frightening to anyone who cares to look past the liberal and administration rhetoric that such talk is simple political demonizing and negativity and at the reality of these Obama administration actions. Still, such political change may become more difficult as Obama has moved control over next year's U.S. Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House in an overt attempt to control the results by political means. Since Census results determine congressional allotments, this is a huge attempt at making a long term power grab by the Democrats. President Obama will take to the airwaves tonight to address the nation, field questions from a majority of reporters representing liberal media organizations, and feed the feel-good lines to his Kool Aid-drinking supporters. But the truth will be that it is 100 devastating days down, and 1,362 truly disheartening and possibly frightening days to go under a Barack Obama administration that it's messianic leader will find more and more difficult to sell with any credibility.

Obama-Dem Mistake #2

It's bad enough that the United States supports by law the murder of our most innocent citizens, the helpless babies aborted by the millions each year simply to make their parents lives a bit easier. As we discussed last week during the 'March for Life' recognition, with the 'Roe vs. Wade' decision by the SCOTUS in 1973 the U.S. began officially supporting the legality of most forms of abortion. But now we are no longer happy with actively supporting this policy creating a culture of death in our own country. Now we are actively supporting the policy worldwide, not just with ideals, but with taxpayer dollars. During the administration of perhaps the greatest President of the last century, Ronald Reagan, the 'Great Communicator' instituted what became known as the 'Mexico City Policy'. In this policy, Reagan made it clear that any recipient of U.S. foreign aid would not be permitted to promote abortion as a method of family planning. According to ABC News, the American "government under Reagan would not provide funding for family planning services to clinics or groups that offered abortion-related services overseas." When Bill Clinton was elected the policy was overturned, but it was reinstated under President George W. Bush and has been in place for the past eight years. In renewing the policy, President Bush stated "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad." This past week, on the January 22nd anniversary of the 'Roe' decision, new U.S. President Barack Obama again reversed the policy. In announcing his decision, Obama once again made the classic liberal Democrat philosophical and moral mistake. He only recognized one party in this process when he said that the decision "protects women's health and reproductive freedom", ignoring the rights and the very life of the unborn child who it is his sworn duty to protect to the best of his ability. The closing of Guantanamo Bay highlighted in last week's 'Obama-Dem Mistake #1' article is likely to result in American deaths. This decision on allowing taxpayer funding of overseas abortions will absolutely result in the deaths of Americans and foreigners. It is hard to believe that any self-respecting Catholic could possibly support Obama or any congressional Democrat who would actively and outwardly support the murder of innocents as a key part of their agenda. It is another clear difference in liberal and conservative positions in American politics. It is a moral stain on the American way of life. And it is clearly the 'Obama-Dem Mistake #2'. As each one is highlighted and explained you can click on the below label of that name to see the full listing of the accumulated mistakes of the Obama administration and the Democratic congress that is supporting them.

Islamism Series: Fort Dix and Beyond

Two headlines blared across the tops of the front pages of Philadelphia's two major newspapers within the past four days. The Bulletin was first when last Thursday their front page headline read "Islamic Terrorists Forming Cells in US", and the Inquirer followed suit on Sunday when in reference to the Fort Dix case the headline read "They were going to do it".

Here are the cold, hard facts for everyone who has not yet caught on to what this 'Islamism Series' is all about: organized Islamic forces with the full backing of some Arab nations and with the tacit support of others are at war with the West. They see the United States, Great Britain, and Israel as their main enemies in this war.

The war did not end with the election of Barack Obama, just as it did not begin with the election of George W. Bush. It will not end with the closing of Guantanamo Bay. It will not end with the withdrawal of American troops from the Middle East. It will not end with the death or capture of Osama bin Laden.

The leadership and forces of Islam have made it abundantly clear how this will end: with the end of our civilization, or theirs. Their dream is to reestablish what they call the Islamic Caliphate under Sharia Law, that Islamic rule by Muslim religious, legal, and cultural laws.

To begin this process they want to destroy Israel and take control of the entire Middle East. Then, united under a leader they will call the Caliph, they wish to spread their influence and ultimately their control to the surrounding regions of Europe and Asia, spread down into Africa, and ultimately the world over, including here in America. They have vowed to see the Islamic flag flying over the White House.

The Inquirer story spoke in reference to the Fort Dix case wherein "five foreign-born Muslims...had intended to carry out an attack on the Army base" (at Ft. Dix, New Jersey.) Jurors interviewed by the Inquirer stated that "the defendants had taken serious steps toward an armed attack on the Burlington County base."

The details of the plots made by these men to attack an American military installation here on American soil are frightening enough. But what perhaps is more frightening is the scene inside the courtroom each day, when jurors stated that "large extended families" of the men were regularly present. One must wonder as to the feelings regarding the United States and the West of these family members and friends, now living here in America and raising families with these same beliefs.

The Bulletin article of Thursday, January 22nd spoke to intelligence sources who claim that the terrorist group Hezbollah is expected to be a major threat here in the United States by 2014. If the idea that this is five years away gives you any comfort, consider this: do any of you plan on not being alive five years from now? Didn't think so.

The article states that an official government report has concluded that the Iranian-backed Islamic terror group "has been forming sleeper cells throughout the United States" that could become operational at any time, and that this threat should be much more potent within those next five years.

For those unfamiliar, a 'sleeper cell' is a group of people who live and blend in with our culture, right in our own neighborhoods and work places. But these individuals, despite their outward appearances and actions, are prepared to join together and attack America whenever they are called upon to be activated to such a purpose.

They basically lay low in the weeds waiting for orders. Those orders might not come for months, years, even decades. When they finally come, the attack could be anything from a major nuclear, biological, radiological, or chemical one against a large target such as a sporting event or a downtown area, to one by more conventional methods such as the use of guns, knives, and grenades at a shopping mall or at a school.

The one thing that these recent articles at the front of Philadelphia's own major newspapers highlights is that Americans of all parties, affiliations, and ideologies need to understand exactly what is going on in this war.

The Philadelphia police department and all police officers within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania received training in 2008 that introduced them to the ideas, practices, and plans of these groups in a course titled 'Radical Islam', so law enforcement is very much aware of the dangers. From the Fort Dix case and prior, and that Hezbollah 2014 threat and beyond, this blog will continue with important and timely articles of interest.

NOTE: Simply click on to the 'Islamism Series' label below to read all entries in the series.

Obama-Dem Mistake #1

There are going to be many of them in the coming days, weeks, months and years (hopefully not too many years.) Major mistakes made by President Barack Obama, the Obama administration, and the Democratic Party power in the congress. Each one of them is going to need to be pointed out and explained. Any number of sources will take on that responsibility, and I am going to ensure that this blog covers the worst of these mistakes. The 'Obama-Dem Mistake #1' began this week with the order to close the prisoner holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, known as 'Gitmo'. For those who are unaware, Guantanamo Bay is located on the southeast edge of Cuba. In 1898, the U.S. established a naval base there, and the 1903 'Cuba-America Treaty' gave the U.S. a perpetual lease on this area. In 2002, three camps were established on the naval base for the detainment and interrogation of prisoners captured on the battlefields in the war on terrorism in the Middle East. There were no appropriate facilities that were acceptable from a security standpoint within the Middle East countries where these combatants were captured for their continued detainment. There was also no way that such individuals were going to be allowed on to U.S. mainland soil, subject to American laws, and allowed to have the American judicial system available to them as if they had the same rights as the average American citizen. These were people who were actively involved in a war against the United States and the entirety of western civilization. They have already been filtered out and it has been determined that there is a high probability that these detainees have particular intelligence or information of a sensitive nature going directly to the security of the United States and/or our troops. Many of them have also been trained to resist normal levels of questioning and usual interrogation methods. Gitmo was selected as a location where these individuals could be kept safe from everyday Americans, and where they could be controlled and interrogated outside the reach of the American legal system. Gitmo has been inappropriately characterized as a 'torture facility' by all of the usual liberal sources such as the ACLU. It is also seen as a linchpin in the overall war on terror, which the liberal community wants shut down. President Obama was elected by these folks, and one of his promises to them was that he would shut down Gitmo and put a halt to any alleged American torture practices. In one of his first acts, he has ordered that Gitmo shutdown to happen within a year, and has ordered that most interrogation be conducted pursuant to the Army field munual. In many cases our intelligence and military officials will now be more restricted when interrogating threats to our national security than are our nations police officers in interrogating common criminals. And as Gitmo is closed down, where will the detainees, all of whom are genuine threats to Americans, be sent? The first recourse will be to attempt returning them to their homelands. But as this has been tried in the past, these nations do not want and will not accept the individuals. Will these individuals simply be released on to the streets of the United States? The ones who do get accepted for return to their homelands, will they return to fighting America? These dangerous individuals are about to become some of the first pawns in the liberal Democrat game. Closing Gitmo and restricting our intel resources is the first mistake of the new Obama-Dem administration. We can only hope that the ultimate price paid is relatively small, and not something even more cataclysmic than the 9/11 attacks.

Islamism Series: The Olympics

This is the continuation of my regular feature
'Islamism Series'. At the bottom of this entry, you can click on the label of that name to read the prior entries.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics began yesterday with the Opening Ceremony, and will continue on through August 24th. For the next two and a half weeks, the athletic dramas of this Olympiad will play out under it's theme "One World, One Dream". But as we have learned in previous installments of the 'Islamism Series', the radical Islamofascists have their own vision of 'One world, one dream' that runs counter to that on display this month in China. The radical Islamists want the world united as one Caliphate under the banner of Islam, run by the Caliph, with everyone either believing in or subjecting themselves to the rule of the Islamists. To this end, every major event held around the world becomes a tempting target for them to flex their muscles, to show that they can and will influence world events by inserting their violent vision into the proceedings if allowed. Particularly since 9/11, every major public event has properly seen a dramatic increase in the scope and cost of the security surrounding those events. From the Super Bowl to political conventions, and everything in between, security is stepped up, and convenience and personal liberties are sacrificed thanks to the terrorists of Islamofascism. Already there have been threats and plots against these Olympics. In an attack that the Washington Post described as being done only by the "ethnic Uighur minority", these terrorists killed 16 police officers and injured dozens of others this week by driving a dump truck into a group of officers who were out for a training jog, then tossing grenades into the police compound. This 'ethnic minority' is Islamic, by the way. The mass media has once again buried this fact from your knowledge under their banner of political correctness. The Uighur militant Islamic group known as the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video coinciding with the Olympics Opening Ceremony in which they showed a burning Olympic logo, an image of one of the Olympic venues exploding, and which included a warning to all Muslims to stay away from Olympic and Beijing-area venues. Among the warnings were calls for Muslims to avoid taking public transportation, and pleas for Muslim peoples to not allow their athletes to attend the games. According to a report by the Bloomberg news organization, China has deployed a 100,000-person strong anti-terror unit for the Olympics, and equipment that includes fighter jets, helicopters, naval vessels, and even anti-aircraft launchers at the main Olympic stadium. Back in January, Chinese officials uncovered a plot to attack the Olympics and confiscated "guns, homemade bombs, training materials and extremist religious ideological materials" during a raid that resulted in the death of two terrorists and arrest of a dozen and a half more. The Chinese government is Communist, and politically repressive, so the show that they are putting on this month with the Olympiad largely masks a host of human-rights problems that should make opponents of America's detainee policy at Guantanamo Bay cringe. But all that the Radical Islamists want is to replace one repressive regime with another, simply changing the ideology from Communism to Islamofascism. So while you are watching the basketball, soccer, track & field, swimming, diving, volleyball, baseball, gymnastics, boxing and other incredible displays of athleticism, and while your chest swells with pride over emerging American Olympic heroes and other human interest stories that emerge, there is another side. Behind the scenes, hundreds of thousands of Chinese and others are working long and hard in an attempt to secure these Olympics from terrorist attacks that have been and are being plotted. Let's wish them the best in that effort against the radical, terrorist Islamists.