Category: Terror War

Pinto Nag sends us a link to CNN in regards to the FBI warning the troops about posting personal information to the internet on social media and websites like this. Like you didn’t know, right? It’s not a good idea, anyway, because our domestic terrorists like the Lemon Party Triad will publish pictures of your family and your homes along with driving directions so they can back to their lives being something that they’re not. But, I digress;

“We also request members of the military review their online social media presence for any information that might attract the attention of violent extremists,” the bulletin said, advising that members of the military “use caution and practice operational security when posting.”

The new FBI bulletin includes a concern that ISIS members are “spotting and assessing” individuals in the U.S. who they believe may be interested in carrying out attacks on U.S. soil against members of the U.S. military, a U.S. counter-terror official tells CNN.

The bulletin language warns of “individuals overseas spotting and assessing” individuals in the U.S., based on their social media postings in support of the group. The warning encourages members of the military to “exercise operational security” in response to such threats, including reviewing their online social media postings so as not to make themselves easier targets.

Sounds just like dealing with Bernath, et al. If you’ve taken security measures to successfully protect yourself from Bernath and Wittgenfeld, that will probably confound al Qaeda, too.

In other baseless terrorist warnings, Fox News says that “unnamed security experts” are warning that al Qaeda is clawing it’s way back into the news by threatening to hijack five passenger aircraft to crash into European cities before Christmas;

“We’ve been told that five planes are being targeted in a high profile hit before Christmas. They’ve been waiting for the big one,” one unnamed airport security source told the newspaper.

The Department of Homeland Security has not yet responded to a request from FoxNews.com for comment.

One source who spoke with Fox News questioned the credibility of the claims.

I think hijacking planes is so 2001 and it will take another ten years for folks to get so complacent for that to be an effective weapon once more. I’m pretty sure the “lone wolf” attack that seems to be the rage this decade is more popular and a bigger threat.

The Army Times reports that about 250 paratroopers from the 1/505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82d Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq for “security operations”;

They will deploy for nine months to the Central Command area of responsibility to conduct security operations.

[…]

The soldiers are not part of the 1,500-troop increase authorized Nov. 7 by President Obama.

The article says that they’ll be deploying in late December. So, I guess my prediction of a brigade from the 82d deploying to Iraq by Christmas was more than a little off – 250 troops is barely more than two companies.

This isn’t satire as near as I can tell. It comes from AFP which reports that Areeb Majeed a 23-year-old Indian who went to fight with ISIS, went AWOL when the terrorists made him scrub toilets and perform other menial tasks instead of sending him into battle;

The engineering student flew home Friday to Mumbai where he was arrested and charged by India’s elite National Investigation Agency (NIA) with terror-related offences.

Majeed told NIA officers he was sidelined by the jihadists for whom he fetched water and performed other lowly tasks such as cleaning toilets, instead of taking part in the deadly offensive like he wanted, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Funny how that works, huh? I’m sure there are thousands of American soldiers and Marines who can commiserate with him.

On another Indian website, DNA, he tells how he spent money to join ISIS and discovered that they considered Indians to be physically weak and only one of the four Indians that he travelled with to Syria were accepted into weapons training;

The other three, including Areeb, were asked to join IS social media team and were also given the task of cleaning and collecting water. At no point was Areeb allowed to go to the war front for direct combat.

It was during this period that his mindset started changing against the IS because there was no place for the teachings of the Holy Quran in the IS camps. The jihadis simply butchered people and raped women.

All the four friends soon got scared, stressed and depressed about their situation. Their imagined jihadi heaven had become hell. In July, Areeb got injured in random firing and sustained bullet wounds on his back and shoulder.

Privates are all the same, I guess, pissed because he can’t kill someone, pissed that he can’t go to sick call when he gets shot by “random firing”, so he goes over the hill. I hope they make him scrub toilets in prison, too. He seems to be experienced at that.

Reuters reports that just a few weeks after NATO troops abandoned Camp Bastion which is near Kabul, Afghanistan to the ANA, the Taliban attempted a fairly large attack on the base. The Taliban also attacked a guest house for aid workers near the base;

Taliban attacks are intensifying as the U.S.-led coalition prepares to withdraw most of its soldiers by the end of 2014.

At least two people were killed in the second attack in three days on expatriate aid workers’ housing, and authorities fear hostages may have been taken inside the compound in Kabul’s western Karte Seh district.

Gunfire and explosions could be heard late into the evening and police said the building’s second floor had caught fire.

At least two insurgents with suicide vests were also killed, one by his own explosives and the other was shot, Qadam Shah Shaheem, commander of the Afghan army’s 111 Military Corps Kabul, said.

I’m wondering who could have foreseen that the Taliban would get more froggy as our withdrawal deadline got closer? I mean, who, besides everyone with a pair of eyes and memory that lasts more than a few minutes.

The St Louis Dispatch reports that the FBI arrested two men who plotted to blow up the Gateway Arch along with a prosecutor and the police chief. They needed more bombs than the FBI sold them, but they had to wait for their funding source to build a bit;

Sources close to the investigation were uncertain whether the men had the capability to carry out the plans, although the two allegedly did buy what they thought was a pipe bomb in an undercover law enforcement sting.

The men wanted to acquire two more bombs, the sources said, but could not afford to do it until one suspect’s girlfriend’s Electronic Benefit Transfer card was replenished.

The terrorists’ names are Brandon Orlando Baldwin and Olajuwon Ali Davis and Baldwin has recently been going by Ali, so I don’t know what would be their motivation without speculating.

The FBI also snagged one of the terrorists on a straw purchase charge when he tried to buy two handguns for his little terrorist buddies. I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to believe that the only people selling bombs out there are the FBI.