RCP: The Dream of Muslim Outreach Has Become a Nightmare

Victor Davis Hanson (h/t: JHD) - When President Obama entered office, he dreamed that his hope-and-change messaging and his references to his familial Islamic roots would win over the Muslim world. The soon-to-be Nobel Peace Prize laureate would make the U.S. liked in the Middle East. Then, terrorism would decrease. --But, as with his approach to racial relations, Obama's remedies proved worse than the original illness.

Read more at RealClear Politics

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Obama Would Rather Declare War on the English Language than Speak of Islamic Terrorism

(Hat tip: KimR) - First there were the 13 people killed in 2009 by an Islamic jihadist at Foot Hood in Texas. Then came Chattanooga, Garland (also in Texas), San Bernardino, and now the atrocity in Orlando. Each time the suspects were motivated by Islamic extremism. Each time President Obama and his team failed to identify the motive for the attacks as radical Islam.
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Terrorism and North Korea Dominate Nuclear Talks in Washington

(Hat tip: KimR) - The annual Nuclear Security Summit, aimed at reducing the world's nuclear weapons, gets underway Thursday in Washington with President Obama hosting a series of meetings with the leaders of several Asian nations to talk about efforts to prevent North Korea from becoming a bigger threat. Read more at NBC News Read More......

The Art of National Suicide

(Hat tip: KimR) - America can still avoid sharing Europe’s fate. But only if we take action.Because of what Europe has become, it now has few viable choices in dealing with radical Islamic terrorism. Its dilemma is a warning to Americans that we should turn away from a similar path of national suicide. Read more at National Review Read More......

Kerry on Gitmo Detainee Who Returned to Terrorism: ‘He’s Not Supposed to Be Doing That’

(Hat tip: KimR) - Secretary of State John Kerry lamented Wednesday that a terrorist who the Obama administration released from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay subsequently returned to fight for al Qaeda, telling lawmakers "he's not supposed to be doing that." Read more at the Washington Free Beacon Read More......

The Closing of Barack Obama’s Mind

If you want to witness an adamantine mind at work, you could do a whole lot worse that observe the 44th president of the United States. Barack Obama is the most rigidly ideological president of my lifetime, a man who has a nearly blind adherent to a particular ideology (progressivism). It's a disturbing, if at times a psychologically fascinating, thing to witness.

Read more at Commentary
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Belmont Club: The Long Cold Civil War

Following developments in the San Bernadino attack and the upcoming elections in Venezuela, Richard Fernandez showcases a feature of leftist ideologues... an overwhelming unwillingness to change course when the facts on the ground don't support their agenda. He refers to the phenomena as a civil war with the fact-based demands of the right.

A few hours ago, president Obama was still unable to provide a probable motive for the San Bernardino attack which left 14 people dead. “At this stage we do not yet know why this terrible event occurred,” he said. Now the FBI has officially started a counter-terrorism investigation into the events.

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Why Does the Left Continue to Insist that Islamic Terrorism Has Nothing to Do with Islam?

(Snip) If you Google "Christian terrorism," you're probably a jackass to begin with. But if you do -- bidden not by your own drive to jackassery but by the natural curiosity inspired by this "news"letter -- you'll find lots of left-wing trollery about how the worst terrorist attacks on American soil have been committed by Christians.

Read more at National Review
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"The American Blood Is Best, and We Will Taste It Soon"

Fox News reports that jihadi web sites are rejoicing over today's terrorist attacks in Paris. The line we have heard more than once from ISIS-related sites is, "The American blood is best, and we will taste it soon." The French are tougher than many realize, but they are not the primary targets of Muslim extremists.

Read more at Powerline
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BREAKING NEWS: Unarmed US Marines 'take down' gunman onboard a high-speed train

A group of unarmed US Marines on board a high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris foiled a terrorist attack after a gunman opened fire with an assault rifle, wounding three people. The 26-year-old Moroccan national, who was known to security services, came out of the toilet brandishing the gun and opened fire. Fortunately, three US Marines were nearby and overpowered him before he could massacre passengers.

Read more at the UK Daily Mail
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See No Terror, Hear No Terror, Speak No Terror (Obama on Cuba)

Today President Obama further opened the financial floodgates from the U.S. to the world’s most notorious deadbeat nation—who is also a “State Sponsor of Terrorism.” --Quotation marks are now required around the term “State-Sponsor of Terrorism” when referring to Cuba because just this morning, as the 45 day notification period to Congress expired, President Obama officially removed Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, where President Reagan had placed it in 1982.

Read more at Townhall.com
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Terror suspect Christopher Cornell: "I'm so dedicated that I risked my whole life"

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - The Green Township terror suspect has opened up about his plot to attack the U.S. Capitol. ✧ During the hour-long conversation with Tricia Macke, Cornell, 20, referred to himself as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah. ✧ "I'm with the Islamic State," Cornell said. "I'm very dedicated to establish the Sharia in America, to wage war on the kafr (an Islamic term for ‘unbeliever') and raise the word of Allah above all." ✧ "I'm so dedicated that I risked my whole life," Cornell said.

Visit Fox 18 Now for videos, interviews and commentary on home-grown terrorists. Read More......

What can a mere rifle do?

Long, long ago US Special Operations Forces (SOF) extensively studied what you can do with a sniper rifle, beyond just killing people. And they discovered that some items are highly vulnerable to what’s called in the trade a “standoff attack”. ✧ Someone, in the United States, has gone beyond studying targets and has attacked at least one of them in this way; the FBI and other agencies are investigating, and playing their investigation very close to the chest. Hold that thought while we can consider what a mere rifle can do, and in a while we’ll tell you what a rifle or rifles did last April.

Read more at Weaponsman.com
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Group Run by al Qaeda Terrorist Invited to Brief Dems on Drone Policy

AMERICAN MILITARY NEWS
Representatives Alan Grayson (D., Fla.), Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), and Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.) were scheduled to meet with Mohammad Al Ahmandy, the Yemen director of Al Karma, a non-governmental organization whose president and founder, Abdul Rahmna Naimi, was designated as a terrorist and al Qaeda supporter in December by the U.S. Treasury Department. Additional members of the organization have been designated as terrorists or are wanted on terrorism charges in other countries. ✧ The November meeting was scheduled to discuss U.S. counterterrorism policy, to include the use of drones in Yemen. The U.S. State Department denied Al Ahmandy’s request for a visa and the meeting did not occur. ✧ When questioned for comment, offices of Lee, Schakowsky, and Grayson either deflected inquiries, blamed the other offices, or not respond. Read more at American Military News... Read More......

U.N. Leader Blames U.S. for Boston Bombing

U.N. Leader: U.S. ‘Israel First Ethos’ to Blame for Boston Bombing - While our nation continues to deal with the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings, which killed three people and wounded more than 260, jihadists and their sympathizers gloat, rationalize or turn the blame for the bombings back onto the United States and Israel. Leftists, who were so quick to accuse Tea Party members or right wingers for the bombings, have remained mostly silent as the truth of the Islamist roots of the bombing suspects became known. ✧ The suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now dead, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now in custody, were described by one U.S. government official as “aspiring jihadists.” They were led to their alleged evil act by their understanding of their Muslim faith. Tellingly, on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described his world view as “Islam.” Read more at Front Page Magazine... Read More......

Do Recent Events Show the World Is Falling Apart, or Reaffirm Timeless Principles?

By Timothy H. Lee - To some people, recent events suggest that the world as we know it is falling apart. ✧ But think of it another way. Paradoxically, today’s events simply reaffirm timeless principles. Moreover, they reassure us that recommitment to those principles offers a remedy. ✧ Consider: The nation’s credit rating just declined for the first time in history. The floor suddenly dropped from stock markets. Unrestrained rioters terrorized England and set it aflame. Moammar Gadhaffi remains in power, months after President Obama promised that the Libyan military effort would be measured in “days, not weeks.” ✧ Can anyone truly consider these events surprising, given the public policies that led to them? Only if one dismisses the laws of economics, morality, physics and human nature. Read more at Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF)... Read More......

Interesting local letters

Gazette-Times, 12/15/2010 by Linda Weimer - Letter: There’s nothing funny about soda that references Communism. (Also read some interesting comments.

Gazette-Times, 12/15/2010 by Jane Newton - Letter: Thanks to FBI, TSA; local Muslims could start anti-terrorism effort. Read More......

Hoekstra: Obama Must Get Tough with North Korea, Iran

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says the United States needs to treat North Korea like the “rogue nation that it is” or risk a nuclear arms race in the region. He also tells Newsmax.TV “it’s crazy” not to profile airline passengers — and vows that Congress will thwart President Barack Obama’s “ill-guided mission” to try terrorist suspects in civilian courts. Read more at NEWSMAX... Read More......

CIA Book

VIA EMAIL, 11/3/2010 (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - As President George W. Bush's top speech writer, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). ∴ Now, his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster", How the CIA Kept America Safe (Regnery), has been published. ∴ Here is an excerpt from "Courting Disaster":

Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi . A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: "I am with KSM."

Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable "pocket litter."

Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions, informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer. But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer. Instead he is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location.

Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.

Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them that Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals. He has trained to resist interrogation. When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: "Soon, you will know."

It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding.

His resistance is described by one senior American official as "superhuman." Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative-for reasons that will be described later in this book.

He begins telling his CIA debriefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists,

KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.

In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean .

Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.

In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of Aug.9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find A USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:

* United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 p.m.;
* Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 p.m.;
* Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 p.m.;
* United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 p.m.;
* United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 p.m.;
* American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m; and
* American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.

They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.

Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude.

And still fewer realize that the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Editor's Note: For other foiled terrorist plots, see page 9 of Courting Disaster.

In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda

Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the information our government had about al Qaeda-how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks-came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.

Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: "The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work."

Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."

Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon."

And John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, replied : "Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes."

On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S. personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.

The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly:

"You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially nonconcurring". The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency.

A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists. This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors –including Obama's own director, Leon Panetta -- objected. George Tenet called to urge against the memos' release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, 'Don't do this.'"

In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully-and then ignored their advice.

With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America's national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.

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Act for America: A Muslim shatters political correctness

ACT FOR AMERICA, 10/8/2010 via email - "What Muslims in America can do" by Dr. M Zuhdi Jasser - You may get a hundred different answers from a hundred American Muslims about what it means to be an American Muslim. The controversial Islamic center near ground zero, while pouring salt in a yet widely open national wound, did begin to awaken us to the yet unfought war of ideas within the "House of Islam." Many of us reform-minded Muslims have been waging that war of ideas for most of our adult life, long before 9/11. But time has shown that we cannot wage this battle alone.

It may not seem to matter much for a faith community that is barely 1 percent of the population, but American Muslims carry an invaluable ability to influence the ideologies of over 1.5 billion Muslims - over a fifth of the world's population. Until middle America realizes how our national security hangs in the balance of that intellectual war within Islam, our security will never improve.

The last 12 months have seen the most arrests and attacks of radical Islamists on Americans since 9/11. This was confirmed to Congress last month by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who also finally acknowledged the growing homegrown threat of radical Muslims.

Sadly, many of my co-religionists called on by media to speak for American Muslims too often wallow in denial simply deflecting any responsibility by distancing themselves from radicals or myopically equating Muslim radicals to those of other faiths. They willfully ignore the main ideological conveyor belt towards radicalism - political Islam.

Most Americans no longer accept these detached irresponsible dismissals from leading American Muslims. They see so many examples of American Muslim clerics who condemn terror out of one side of their mouth while deceptively amplifying victimology, Islamophobia, anti-Americanism and morally vacant justifications from the other.

Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, for example, condemned 9/11 in the national media and was hailed as a moderate Muslim while at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque of Northern Virginia in 2001. Most, however, refused to look with any critique at his theo-political ideas - a political Islam with high risk of radicalization. Today, he is one of the greatest threats to America creating such violent traitors as Nidal Hasan. His sermons and teachings are a clinic on homegrown radicalization and yet they still fill some Islamic bookstores with no hint of any counter-ideological movement from leading American Muslim organizations. Since so many leading well-financed American Muslim groups are sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood's ideas, they are certainly not going to lead a movement against political Islam and for the separation of mosque and state.

In our conversation at Drake University this week, I hope we focus on the fact that at the center of the growing threat to our national security is this battle within the House of Islam. American Muslims need to accept and spread the meme that it is time to get shariah (Islamic law) out of government and bring the ideas of modernity and Enlightenment to the Islamic faith we love.

We need to take the offense in ending the ideas of jihad, the "ummah" as nation, and the "salafi" dream of returning everything to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Until we Muslims take on the responsibility of separating history from religion and mosque from state, the threat will not dissipate.

Dr. Jasser is the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, based in Phoenix, Ariz. Contact: info@airdemocracy.org, October 6, 2010

THE OTHER SIDE
[Fox News Channel's video excerpt: Imam Anjem Choudary - "We do believe as Muslims the East and the West will one day be governed by Sharia. Indeed we believe that one day the flag of Islam will fly over the Whitehouse."]

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