Bloodthirsty Liberal

Not often you see a headline like that.

Can you guess who she blames for the verdict?

A Pakistani neuroscientist was convicted on Wednesday of attempted murder for trying to kill American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan.

Federal prosecutors said the neuroscientist, Aafia Siddiqui, 37, grabbed an M4 rifle in a police station in the city of Ghazni, Afghanistan, on July 18, 2008, and fired on American officers and federal agents.

After slightly more than two days of deliberations, a jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan found her guilty.

As the jurors began leaving the courtroom, Ms. Siddiqui, who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, turned in her chair to face them.

“This is a verdict coming from Israel and not from America,” she said, holding her right index finger in the air. “That’s where the anger belongs. I can testify to this, and I have proof.”

Ms. Siddiqui was then led out of the courtroom while the judge and lawyers for both sides discussed a sentencing date.

Ms. Siddiqui peppered her trial with colorful outbursts that caused her to be removed from the courtroom on several occasions. Her competency — first to stand trial, and then to take the stand — were also major points of contention in the case.

But Ms. Siddiqui was allowed to testify last week, and she claimed that the prosecutors’ assertions that she fired a weapon at officers was “the biggest lie.”

The weapon was never in her hands, said Ms. Siddiqui, who explained that she was merely trying to escape from the station because she feared being tortured. She had been arrested the day before and was found to be carrying documents on how to make explosives and a list of New York targets, officials said.

We’re feeling kind of proud here in Boston.

- Aggie

I disagree with almost everything that Richard Cohen writes, but he’s right about terrorism

Interesting that he is able to understand the nuances - or lack thereof - of fighting terrorism in Lower Manhattan by opening the city up to financial disaster and potential physical attacks, but can’t see how that plays out in Israel. A simple blind spot, I suppose. But that’s a digression.

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, or whether it is reciting terrorists their rights, or whether it is the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America’s critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

And so it goes. This is the astonishing conclusion:

The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems to have bent over backward to prove to the world it is not the Bush administration and will, almost no matter what, ensure that everyone gets the benefit of American civil liberties. But the paramount civil liberty is a sense of security and this, sad to say, has eroded under Barack Obama. Repeatedly, the administration has shown poor judgment. Abdulmutallab’s silence is a scream that something is wrong.

Remarkable. Does this guy live in Manhattan? His kids maybe? I’m asking because he is so sensible and so sensitive to the security needs of the area, but that respect for security and a the need to live life in a fairly normal manner certainly isn’t a theme from past columns.

Whatever the reason, glad to have him on board. After all, a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.

- Aggie

Obama administration considering moving terror trial outside of Manhattan

I can’t figure out why the residents of Manhattan are upset about this? Is it the great big target being painted on their fair city, or is it the cost? Or maybe it is both. I am scratching my head.

Facing mounting pressure from New York politicians concerned about costs and security, the Obama administration on Thursday began considering moving the trial of the chief organizer of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks out of Manhattan, administration officials said.

President Obama said through a spokesman that he still believed a civilian criminal trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has admitted planning the attacks, and four accomplices could be conducted “successfully and securely in the United States.” He did not mention New York specifically.

Mr. Obama left the decision on possible alternate sites to the Justice Department, which was scrambling to assess the options, administration officials said.

A decision to move the Sept. 11 trial from Manhattan would be a retreat by the administration from its calculated choice in November to bring the defendants to a courthouse just blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.

This administration can’t tie its shoelaces.

- Aggie

Confident with Barack Obama and Janet Nepolitano protecting the public

Federal officials say there is no imminent threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, but a source cites a “palpable level of angst” among those in the intelligence community.

“I have not seen people this ramped up on the terror front like this for probably two years,” said the source, who is familiar with the probe into Christmas Day’s attempted airplane bombing.

Information gained since the botched terror attack last month on a Northwest Airlines flight has U.S. officials concerned that al Qaeda in Yemen has “trained and equipped … viable operatives” to strike U.S. targets, including those unrelated to aviation, the source said.

The source said the investigation into the electronic communications associated with Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged in the botched attempt to bomb an airplane, initially took officials in different directions.

Now, the source said, “the spider web” is starting to come together. Officials believe there are viable operatives — described by this source as “people who are trained, equipped, resourced, with instructions — maybe not with a ‘go order’ but all of the pieces are in place.”

The source added that officials don’t know where the operatives are but believe that there are “a lot” of them. The source said investigators have at least seven names. A second source said officials have identified at least some of the operatives but would not give numbers.

The first source did not believe a lot of new information had come in since Christmas, but said that, as officials followed threads, information that previously did not appear to be significant now appears to be.

The concern extends beyond aviation, and AbdulMutallab has told investigators the other operatives were trained to attack more than planes, the source said. All the “normal vectors” are on the table — trains, etc. — but the belief is they would like to attack planes just to prove that they can, the source said.

I’m sure it will be fine.

- Aggie

This one is real

The People’s Mujaheddin is sick and tired of being called a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. So leaders of the terrorist group settled on a uniquely American strategy for handling this problem: They sued.

Yes, the group has done its share of assassinations, bombings, embassy attacks and killings of U.S. troops. But that was long ago, and now the People’s Mujaheddin wants to let bygones be bygones. It says it has devoted itself to democracy and nonviolence, and it would like very much to be taken off the State Department’s list of international terrorist groups.

Friends of the People’s Mujaheddin Organization of Iran — a.k.a. MEK, a.k.a. Mujaheddin-e Khalq, a.k.a. National Liberation Army of Iran, a.k.a. National Council of Resistance, a.k.a. Organization of the People’s Holy Warriors — assembled in a fifth-floor courtroom at the U.S. courthouse in Washington on Tuesday to hear Andrew Frey of the firm Mayer Brown plead their case.

“Today’s PMOI is unique among foreign terrorist organizations,” the lawyer told a three-judge appellate panel. “The organization has foresworn violence. We walk the walk. There have been no terrorist acts by PMOI for eight years.”

But couldn’t the attacks resume? “The fact that terrorist activities are bad if they happen could be said of the Girl Scouts,” Frey reasoned.

The People’s Mujaheddin as Girl Scouts. Only in America.

You see, folks, you need a special mindset to even imagine something like that happening in a court of law. And with the Obama administration, we have achieved that mindset.

- Aggie

First they were Swine Flu Central, now two individuals have been arrested on terrorism charges

Two men were arrested Friday by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in connection with the case of Najibullah Zazi, accused of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction on U.S. soil.

The FBI identified them as Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay.

Authorities had seized the passport Thursday of Medunjanin, 25, a Bosnian immigrant who was previously questioned in connection with the case against Zazi.

Authorities say Zazi, 24, who has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges, planned to be in New York and use an explosive device on September 11, 2009.

I wonder if it is because the community protects them? Are rents cheaper? What the heck is it?

- Aggie

He called his dad to say goodbye forever

And Dad went to the CIA to report this fact.

The accused “underwear bomber” made a dramatic final call to his father that he found so alarming, the father approached Nigerian officials who took him directly to the CIA’s station chief in the Nigerian capital, sources told ABC News.
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What did he say that prompted the bomber’s father to alert the CIA?

Current and former officials of the Nigerian government, including a source close to the suspect’s family, say Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, called his father from Yemen with the warning that it would be his last contact.

It has previously been reported that the man’s father, prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, went to Nigerian and American officials Nov. 19 to warn them that his son had been radicalized by Islamic militants in Yemen.

Details have emerged about Abdulmutallab’s final phone call that highlight President Obama’s statement that there were “systemic failures” of the country’s security system.

ABC News’ sources said that during Abdulmutallab’s final call, he told his father the call would be his last contact with the family. He said that the people he was with in Yemen were about to destroy his SIM card, rendering his phone unusable.

A senior U.S. official briefed on the matter tells ABC News that the phone call prompted the father to contact Nigerian intelligence, fearing that his son might be planning a suicide mission in Yemen. The Nigerian officials brought Mutallab directly to the CIA station chief in Abuja Nov. 19.

The next day the embassy sent out a thin report to U.S. embassies around the world warning Adbulmutallab may be associating with extremists in Yemen.

The CIA official compiled two more robust reports following the meeting with the suspect’s father. One was sent back to CIA’s Langley, Va., the other remained in draft form in Nigeria and was not circulated until after the attempted attack on Christmas Day, according to a U.S. official.

In what has been seen as a possible failure to stop the bomber from boarding a U.S.-bound plane, the alert prompted counterterrorism officials to put Abdulmutallab’s name into a database of more than half a million others that the U.S. suspects of ties to terrorism, but they did not put him on the country’s no-fly list. The information also was not shared with Yemeni intelligence officials, the Yemen government has said.

The president was expected to receive preliminary reviews on the security failure today. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly indicated details of the review would not be released.

I feel so much safer with President Obama in the White House. Don’t you?

- Aggie

Finally, something that really is unprecedented

You may not have noticed, because most of the plots were foiled, but 2009 saw an unprecedented surge in terrorism events on U.S. soil. When analysts tally these events, they refer to anything from a disrupted plot to U.S. citizens traveling abroad to seek terrorism training or a lone gunman running amok in the U.S. And by the calculations of Rand Corp. expert Brian Jenkins, more terrorist threats were uncovered in the U.S. in 2009 than in any year since 2001.

“There appears to be an increase in [terrorist] activity in the U.S.,” warns Jenkins, who calculates that there have been 32 terrorism-related events on these shores since 9/11 and that 12 of them occurred in 2009.

Some of the more noteworthy events of 2009:

• In January, Bryant Neal Vinas, a Long Island, New York, convert to Islam, pleaded guilty to helping al-Qaeda in a plot to blow up a train in Penn Station.

• In late 2008, Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali-American college student from Minneapolis, became the first American suicide bomber on record when he killed 29 people in an attack in Somalia. Earlier in the year, the FBI revealed that at least 20 Somali-Americans from the Minneapolis area had traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabab, a radical militia tied to al-Qaeda. Five Somali-Americans are believed to have died in fighting there this year, and Somali officials say at least one more unnamed U.S. citizen has become a suicide bomber for al-Shabab.

And so it goes. Go to the link if you’d like to read the entire depressing list.

Elections have consequences, boys and girls. They have consequences in Gaza (see previous posts) and they have consequences here at home.

- Aggie

Darn

How many terror attacks have we suffered under Obama so far? Fort Hood, plus the “failed” Christmas Day terror attack make two. Am I missing any others? If a terror attack is unsuccessful because Captain Underpants didn’t blow a hole in the aircraft, is it still a terror attack? Or is it merely a sucky day on the golf course?

Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants are planning terror attacks from Yemen, the country’s Foreign Minister said today.

Abu Bakr al-Qirbi appealed for more help from the international community to help to train and equip counter-terrorist forces.

His plea came after an al-Qaeda group based in Yemen claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas Day airliner bomb plot.

Meanwhile, all we can say is: Ouch!

- Aggie

What idiots

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.

American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi.

It would seem that art therapy only works about half the time.

We have a local radio personality, Howie Carr, who makes fun of goofy pc stuff by discussing it in a snarky, falsetto voice. I hear him now saying: Art Therapyyyyy…

- Aggie