Category: Terror War

The Kansas City Star reports that Robert Lorenzo Hester Jr, a convert to Islam, planned an attack in Kansas City on Presidents Day until the FBI put the kibosh on the plan;

During the investigation, undercover FBI employees posing as Islamic State operatives met with Hester on numerous occasions. At their request, he allegedly bought items that he believed were to be used in constructing bombs, including nails to cause maximum casualties.

He was arrested Friday after a final meeting with an undercover FBI employee he believed to be an Islamic State sympathizer, according to court documents.

Hester allegedly predicted that Monday was “going to be a good day for Muslims worldwide” and that it felt “good to help strike back at the true terrorist.”

The article originally called him a “veteran”, but that’s true only the most remote sense of the term;

He joined the U.S. Army in 2012 and completed basic combat training, but during advanced training he was cited for violating numerous Army regulations and received a general discharge in mid-2013.

An Army spokeswoman said that general discharges are typically for “service members whose service is satisfactory, but involved situations where the soldier’s conduct and/or performance of duty were not so meritorious to warrant an honorable discharge.”

I remember that for the past 15 years, the Left blamed President Bush for the 9-11-2001 attacks because he didn’t do anything to make us safer from terrorists after the disastrous Clinton Administration put walls up between law enforcement agencies, compartmentalizing intelligence. Now President Trump has tried to make us safer ahead of any tragic attack by altering immigration policy, and the Left has lost it’s collective mind.

The Washington Post reports that, despite White House pronouncements that there would be no boots on the ground in Syria, US troops are carrying out military operations;

The raid took place Sunday near a small town along the Euphrates River valley, in the vicinity of the city of Deir al-Zour and deep in the heart of Islamic State territory, according to the officials and Syrian activist groups.

The troops, who landed on helicopters, spent about 90 minutes in the area, then left carrying Islamic State captives and bodies, according to witnesses quoted by the website Deir al-Zour 24, which monitors Islamic State activity in that province.

According to U.S. defense officials in Washington, the U.S. forces intercepted a vehicle carrying an Islamic State militant whom the U.S. military hoped to capture and interrogate. One official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an operation whose details have not been publicly announced, said that a firefight broke out and the suspect, along with another person in the car, was killed. No Americans were injured.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully support the application of US expertise in the war against ISIS, what I don’t like is that the Obama Administration was completely disingenuous when they tried to make it look like they could fight ISIS without US troops being directly involved.

UK’s The Week reports that The Haber Turk newspaper is reporting that they have information that the gunman who killed scores of people and injured 65 others in Istanbul the other night was a member of the Chinese Muslim minority group the Uighurs.

He also appeared to have combat experience and could have been trained in Syria, which shares a border with the country, Reuters said, quoting an unidentified security source.

The Dogan News Agency says police have detained 27 people with alleged links to the attacker, including three foreign national families. They add the gunman is believed to be around 25 years old…anti-Chinese sentiment over the troubles has simmered in Turkey, where many Turks see themselves as sharing religious and cultural ties with the Uighurs.

Police say that is him in the picture above and they have his finger prints, they’ve arrested a dozen others who are from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.