On Friday, Feb. 17, a long-term FBI sting operation culminated in the arrest of a would-be terrorist while he was en route to the U.S. Capitol to carry out a suicide bombing. Amine el Khalifi, a 29-year-old Muslim from Morocco who entered the U.S. with his parents on a trip to Disney World 1999 and illegally overstayed his tourist visa by over a decade, had | Read More »
JUST WEEKS AFTER the attacks of September 11, 2001, a small number of elite special operators were inserted into northern Afghanistan. The Degüello, by Special Forces veteran Scott Zastrow, tells the story of the first unit to deploy: ODA 555, or ‘Triple Nickel,’ an A-Team from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky’s 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Accompanied by an Air Force combat controller, the ten-man team infiltrated | Read More »
U.S. officials have reportedly confirmed that deadly bombings in the Syrian cities of Damascus (in December and January) and Aleppo (Friday) were the work of al Qaeda in Iraq, whose members were acting with authorization from al Qaeda central head and Osama bin Laden successor Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to McClatchy: The Iraqi branch of al Qaida, seeking to exploit the bloody turmoil in Syria to | Read More »
TEN YEARS HAVE passed since terrorists hijacked airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In that period, America has fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, carried out hundreds armed drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen (among other locations), and conducted covert operations around the world, all in the name of what President George W. Bush termed the “Global War on | Read More »
Five years, three months, two weeks, and three days ago, Hamas militants from Gaza tunneled under the sequestered Strip’s border with Israel and popped up near the Kerem Hashalom crossing, where they attacked an Israeli tank, killing two crewmembers and injuring five. The militants grabbed Corporal Gilad Schalit from the tank, and escaped back into the Gaza Strip with him. He had been a captive | Read More »
AT A TIME when so many books on politics, religion, and world events are little more than puffed-up pamphlets which are simultaneously high on hyper-partisanship and low on facts, J. M. Berger‘s Jihad Joe, a treatment of the radicalization and actions of American Muslims who have dedicated themselves to “violent jihad” (the author’s chosen term), is a breath of fresh – and troubling – air. | Read More »
The far-left Center for American Progress (CAP) today released a report on the “Islamophobia network” it claims is responsible for the “genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda” in America, which coincidentally began, the report claims, ten years ago (“[S]even foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America,” writes Faiz Shakir at the CAP’s ThinkProgress blog). It’s both typically ironic and | Read More »
Note: This is an updated version of my original post on Naser Abdo and the Fort Hood terrorist plot which was prevented last week. The updates have been made in-text due to an increase in the amount of information available on the case. A second terrorist attack on soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered last week, and its plotter, | Read More »
The headline of the day is that a second terrorist attack on Fort Hood, Texas in under two years was discovered this week, and its plotter, Private First Class Nasser Jason Abdo, arrested before the attack could be carried out. The latter fact, of course, differentiates this plot from the successful attack carried out by Major Nidal Hasan in November 2009, when the Army officer | Read More »
The terrorists responsible for the Three-Ounce Liquids and One-Quart Ziploc Baggie rule at US and some international airports have finally been convicted in UK court, after three trials and millions of pounds in investigation and prosecution costs. The last three defendants in “longest and costliest terrorism prosecution in British history,” the Sports Drink Suicide bomb plot case, were convicted yesterday in London of “plotting to | Read More »
Please excuse the disorganization — and lack of paragraph phormat — in this post; it’s just a dump of a few things that have been bouncing around in my head since the Christmas attack (and, in some cases, longer). For years, Democrats have told us that one of the biggest problems in America is that we’re not taken care of well enough by our government. | Read More »
Though it falls outside his original target of being within 100 days of taking office, President Barack Obama is keeping a pre-inauguration promise by “mak[ing] a major speech from an Islamic capital” this week in Cairo, Egypt. Obama made what was considered by many to be the safest (and most “obvious”) choice in selecting Cairo for his “high-profile speech that would seek to mend rifts | Read More »
The faux outrage over “torture” during the Bush War on Terror (I refer to it as the “Bush” war because, under Obama, we’re apparently replacing the “Global War on Terror” with the “Multiple-Day Standoff on Man-Caused Disasters”) is no more becoming of the left now than it was two, three, or four years ago. Co-opting the word “torture” to include methods far less offensive than | Read More »
Author’s note: This is the third installment in a seven-part series analyzing the Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan front in the War on Terror. The administration’s white paper can be seen here, and previous installments in this series can be seen here. THE SMALL NUMBER OF TRAINED, reliable, and effective Afghan National Security Forces presents a serious holdup in the effort to secure Afghanistan | Read More »
Author’s note: This is the second installment in a seven-part series analyzing the Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan front in the War on Terror. The administration’s white paper can be seen here, and part one of this series, “Examining Obama’s Afghan Plan: Introduction,” can be seen here. PRESIDENT OBAMA’S IMPENDING ‘SURGE’ in the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has been public knowledge for | Read More »
AFTER NEARLY TWO YEARS of campaigning on a platform of hasty withdrawal from Iraq and a refocusing of American efforts on Afghanistan, a country Democrats have spent years referring to as the location of “the real War on Terror,” President Barack Obama has come out with an overview of his administration’s strategy for the region. Unfortunately, as often seems to be the case when Obama | Read More »
Politico has a report today on Democrats’ effort to transfer the violent terrorists currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay to facilities within the U.S. “It sets us back in the war on terrorism to be maintaining Guantanamo,” said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), who’s heading an investigation of the facility for the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. “It will enhance our reputation to close it down and to | Read More »
Late Saturday evening, a car containing 100kg (220 lbs) of explosive compound was deposited in the outer parking lot of Lev Hamifratz mall in Haifa, Israel. The car was parked in a crowded section of the parking lot next to structural pilings holding up a portion of the mall, and the explosives were mixed with ball bearings to ensure maximum human and structural damage from | Read More »
Yesterday in the broad daylight of mid-morning, a dozen masked terrorists carried out an attack on a police-escorted convoy carrying Sri Lanka’s national cricket team to the stadium in Lahore, where they were to compete against Pakistan (Note: Click here for map of region showing Sri Lanka’s location). Six players were wounded, and five members of their police escort, which included “several” vehicles filled with | Read More »
Faced with a losing battle against strengthening Taliban elements in its Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA), the Pakistani government officially threw in the towel last week on its already halfhearted efforts to combat terrorism in the key Malakand Division of the country’s northwest, agreeing to a peace treaty with local Taliban leaders that paves the way for terrorist-administered Shari’a law | Read More »
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