This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Terror War

  • Napolitano: OK, you’re safe now (Updated)

    A besotted TSO gave us a heads up from the bar in the St Louis airport about the following video.

    Disregarding the fact that a message about an impending attack was posted on a Yemeni-based al Qaeda website, Janet Napolitano denies that the incident was an indicator of a larger plot, and that as long as we, the traveling public, continue to do the government’s job, we’ll all be safe.

    When Crowley asks Napolitano how Abdulmutallab got through security with a fricken bomb, Napolitano says there’s no evidence he was improperly screened. WTF? If he got through security with a bomb, he was improperly screened, numbnuts.

    Even though Abdulmutallab’s father warned the US State Department that his son was planning something, Napolitano said it wasn’t enough to move the clown from a big list to a smaller list (as if the size of the list is another excuse for the government to abrogate their responsibility). Why is there even a list if technology at Homeland Security is less functional than my Outlook search feature? It looks like TSA baboons could “Google” a name and get a more accurate result than using the TIDES database.

    Napolitano is a national treasure and now she can now get back to finding right-wing terrorists with SPLC’s help.

    UPDATE: Ditz says “What?”

  • Can we stop pretending now?

    Back in June, the FBI admitted that they were investigating Carlos Bledsoe before he shot two soldiers in Little Rock, AR.

    The investigation was in its preliminary stages, authorities said, and was based on the suspect’s travel to Yemen and his arrest there for using a Somali passport.

    Early last month, after Nidal Hasan shot scores of his fellow soldiers at Fort hood, we were treated to nightly admissions from federal government law enforcement agency representatives who paraded across our TV screens doing the “infantry salute” while telling us that Hasan hadn’t been considered a threat to anyone.

    In the wake of the latest attempt on innocent Americans, the Christmas fireworks display on Northwest Flight 253, we’re hearing more of the same drivel from federal apologists;

    Four weeks ago, Abdulmutallab’s father told the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, that he was concerned about his son’s religious beliefs. This information was passed on to U.S. intelligence officials.

    Abdulmutallab received a valid U.S. visa in June 2008 that is good through 2010.

    His is one of about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and was created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials said they lacked enough information to place him in the 400,000-person terror watch list or on the no-fly list of fewer than 4,000 people who should be blocked from air travel.

    His father, for Pete’s sake, warned our protectors in the federal government. Are you going to tell me that we just yesterday learned about his trips to Yemen before he boarded the flight to Amsterdam? Really?

    There’s a reason it’s called a TERRORIST WATCH LIST. You illiterate baboons in the Federal government are supposed to WATCH people on the list – it’s right there in the name! Maybe you could if you weren’t so damn busy looking for a tube of toothpaste in checked luggage so you could put the tube in a baggie and leave a scolding message in the luggage.

    Can we please stop pretending that we’re not at war and that no one except tiny blue-haired Baptist grannies from Alabama present us with a threat?

    While we’re at it, can we please stop pretending that this is not a religious war? The Left frames it in terms of a class war – the terrorists have no choice but to fight the evil West because they’re so poor. Hasan was a college-educated doctor (educated at tax payer expense, by the way). Abdulmutallab, was educated at university in Great Britain, lived in a $4 million apartment, was the son of Nigeria’s leading banker.

    So can we just stop pretending that this war isn’t happening?

  • Idiot bombs (Updated)

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt to bomb a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, but I shudder to think what’s going on behind those beady little eyes of TSA officials. I’ll admit that I have a special hatred for the peckerwoods who man the security gates at airports.

    When I flew to Panama on election day, 2004 wearing my Vets For Bush t-shirt, I was harassed at Reagan National Airport by several TSA nimrods with searches and then again at Miami. Uncharacteristically, I complied with their nimroddery but it coalesced my pure, burning hatred for those glorified, overpaid rent-a-cops who would otherwise be on welfare.

    I’m absolutely delighted that the White House has finally recognized a terror attack.

    A White House official said the incident was an attempted act of terrorism.

    How long have we waited for an act of terror to be called an act of terror, attempted or otherwise? Of course, TSA, who has billions of dollars of equipment and thousands of employees, none of which is in Nigeria where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded with his chemicals strapped to his leg, is trying to prove they’re on the job;

    Federal officials imposed stricter screening measures after the incident.

    TSA is window dressing for the war against terror. Their only job is to present the appearance of our Federal government’s commitment to our safety which means that much of their “security measures” are harassment.

    Nothing pisses me off more to open my checked bags at my destination to find my lotions and creams in a plastic baggie with a note of admonition from the federal government. Seriously? Search my bags, but don’t leave me a note about putting my toothpaste in a baggie.

    Officials at Detroit’s airport are warning travelers that it’ll take them 3 hours to get through security there today. Why? Are they shutting the barn door after the horses all got out?

    UPDATE: So the brilliance of the FAA comes through. The new restrictions on passengers are, according to Fox News, passengers must remain in their seats an hour before landing, no access to carry on bags an hour from destination, no carry on items will be allowed on passengers’ laps an hour from landing. None of those things would have prevented this particular attack.

    Why can’t we have restrictions like, oh, I don’t know, no one on terror watch lists is allowed a visa, people coming from weak security airports get screened again when they get to civilization. I’m sorry, am I making too much sense again?

  • Hasan’s imam thought to be dead

    The radical Virginia-based imam who is thought to have encouraged Nidal Hasan to shoot scores of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood is rumored to be among the casualties of a US missile assault in Yemen today, according to Al-Jazeera;

    Among those thought to have been killed in the raid early on Thursday was Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim preacher linked by US intelligence to a gunman who killed 13 people at a US army base in Texas.

    “Anwar al-Awlaki is suspected to be dead [in the air raid],” an unnamed Yemeni official was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.

    ABC reports that, before he was killed, al-Awlaki told Al-Jazeera that Hasan’s first email hinted at his planned assault at Fort Hood;

    Awlaki claims that Hasan initiated the e-mail correspondence with a message on Dec. 17, 2008. “He was asking about killing U.S. soldiers and officers,” says Awlaki. “His question was is it legitimate [under Islamic law].”

    That is completely contrary to the story that US intelligence services have told us. O don’t place much value in reports from Al-Jazeera or from radical clerics, but the FBI needs to release those emails to us. Something about this whole story stinks. The deception has begun right from the first shot in this incident – and This Ain’t Hell has been caught up in the effort to keep the story from the American public.

  • Taliban leader’s pronouncement coincides with his butt getting kicked

    A top Taliban commander told the Associated Press that he’s moving to meet the US surge in Afghanistan;

    Waliur Rehman told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Monday night that the Pakistani Taliban remain committed to battling the army in South Waziristan tribal region, but they are essentially waging a guerrilla war.

    Rehman is a deputy to Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, and the man in charge of the group’s operations in South Waziristan.

    “Since (President Barack) Obama is also sending additional forces to Afghanistan, we sent thousands of our men there to fight NATO and American forces,” Rehman said. The Afghan “Taliban needed our help at this stage, and we are helping them.”

    Of course the thing he didn’t mention is that Pakistan has forced his troops out of Pakistan. And the Taliban’s surge has gone unnoticed by the US military;

    “We have not noticed any significant movement of insurgents in the border area,” [Col. Wayne Shanks, a U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan] said.

    In the meantime, a CNN poll indicates that although most Americans are opposed to the war, they also support the “surge” of US troops;

    Fifty-nine percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday morning said they favor the president’s plan to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, with 39 percent opposed.

    “Most of those who oppose Obama’s plan would like to see the U.S. immediately withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

    The survey indicates that a majority of the public opposes the war, with 55 percent of respondents opposed and 43 percent in support of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

    So, as long as we’re there, we might as well win, Rehman’s ghost ninjas notwithstanding.

  • Gitmo in Illinois protest

    Two great friends of this blog, Bev Perlson and Debbie Lee, were on Fox and Friends this morning to talk about their protest against moving Guantanamo detainees being brought to Thomson, IL;

  • Just let ’em all go

    While the Obama Administration had us distracted with the health care debate this weekend and the plan for putting Gitmo detainees in IL, the media had us fixated on snowfall and cops with guns, under the table the Justice Department was releasing some Guantanamo detainees back where we got them.

    One of our readers, bdaman sent us a BBC link (since our own media doesn’t seem too interested in the war against terror these days)

    “These transfers were carried out under individual arrangements between the United States and relevant foreign authorities to ensure the transfers took place under appropriate security measures,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.

    “Consultations with foreign authorities regarding these individuals will continue.”

    Yemenis account for almost half of the 198 detainees who remain at the US military base in Cuba. But officials fear many could re-join militant groups if sent back to Yemen.

    Well, “officials fear”, but apparently none of them are in the Justice Department. Uncle Jimbo of Blackfive and In The Crosshairs fame tells us about the most disturbing of this weekend’s bunch;

    This is not some poor bastard who was scarfed up in Afghanistan and sold to us by some warlord. We conducted a raid into Somalia specifically to capture this guy and now he is just back on the street? I kinda doubt it was the military changing their minds that he was a High Value Detainee, so we have the Attorney General and his friends in the terrorist fellow travelers camp to thank for this.

    But this isn’t important enough for our own media to cover, so there are lots of questions that won’t be answered. At The Weekly Standard Blog, Thomas Jocelyn writes;

    In other words, the DOJ and Foggy Bottom control transfer decisions, not the military officials who have been responsible for detaining, interrogating, and analyzing the intelligence collected on each Gitmo detainee. That is not surprising. Lake’s comments reinforce what we’ve known for some months. The DOJ, in particular, plays a leading role in President Obama’s interagency review board, which in turn makes transfer decisions.

    So the war against terror is just another police action with the politicians and law enforcement agencies operating as the military. Naw, that doesn’t scare me.

  • Fort Hood murderer prevented from praying

    Nidal Hasan’s lawyer, John Galligan claims that his client was prevented from praying on the phone with his brother and that violates his civil rights;

    The military has imposed restrictions requiring Hasan to speak only in English on the phone or with visitors unless an interpreter is present.

    Which makes sense, because Hasan has been in contact with radical groups and may have been influenced by a radical iman to commit his heinous crime. It’s not a civil rights violation if he’s allowed to do something with limits and he doesn’t comply with those limits.

    I’d remind Galligan that his client prevented 13/14 people from ever praying again.