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

Category: Terror War

  • Ukraine arrests right-wing French terrorist

    Ukraine arrests right-wing French terrorist

    Gregoire Moutaux

    Fox News reports that the Ukrainian intelligence service SBU arrested Frenchman Gregoire Moutaux at the Yahodyn border crossing between Ukraine and Poland late last month. They had been monitoring him since December when they sold him five machine guns, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 275 pounds of TNT, 100 detonators and other weapons to carry out his dastardly plot to attack European Championship soccer tournament in France, Euro 2016.

    Apparently, he disagreed with France’s immigration policies and the spread of Islam, so he was going to show them how much he disagrees;

    The SBU “has managed to foil a series of 15 terrorist attacks which were planned to target France before and during” Euro 2016, said Vasyl Hrytsak, the security agency’s chief.

    […]

    Extremist attacks are a major concern for French authorities as they prepare to host the month-long tournament at stadiums in the Paris area and eight other cities from Friday through July 10. Islamic State extremists have threatened France during the tournament, but authorities haven’t confirmed specific dangers.

    France is deploying a 90,000-strong security force for the tournament, and President Francois Hollande said Sunday night that the threat of attacks won’t stop it from being successful.

    From the UK’s Daily Mail;

    ‘He could have caused carnage,’ said the source, who also described Moutaux as ‘a farm worker from the Lorraine district of France, who objected to his country being taken over by immigrants.’

    Moutaux was a confirmed Islamophobe and anti-Semite, and specifically wanted to targets mosques, synagogues, and ‘large crowds building up around Euro 2016.’

    I guess that the Islamists wouldn’t like that very much – you know – being the target for a change. But, I’m against anyone who is innocent of wrong-doing being the victim of an unwarranted attack. Send Greg to fight ISIS instead.

  • Taliban captured in Arizona

    Taliban captured in Arizona

    Fox News reports that Representative Duncan Hunter found evidence that a Taliban operative was captured by Border Patrol agents in Arizona last year along with five Pakistanis and two Mexican smugglers after they crawled under the border fence from Mexico. He told officers that he had traveled to Brazil, then to Peru and then up the Central American isthmus. He was stopped once in Panama and then released when his identity didn’t pop hot on any computers.

    According to a letter sent Wednesday from Hunter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, all six were initially served with an “Expedited Removal.” The Afghan national “sought U.S. immigration benefits, and was processed as having credible fear after he stated his life was in danger,” Hunter wrote.

    However, according to the letter, the individual was in fact identified in a separate database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), as having terror ties.

    Hunter wrote that the individual was said to be “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. and/or Canada and has family ties to members of the Taliban.”

    For an unknown reason, the individual was not initially watch-listed in the separate Terrorist Screening Database, according to the letter – and so these associations were not initially noticed.

    Officials apparently noticed the error in time, as the individual remains in U.S. custody in Arizona.

    Hunter says that the location of other seven guys who were caught with him is unknown. So that’s reassuring.

  • Just Another Refugee Making A Living In the USA

    Just Another Refugee Making A Living In the USA

    Yusuf Abdi Ali
    Isn’t it great?  We have a wonderful  story today from the DC Metro area.

    It’s a story of a man fleeing chaos in Somalia.  He moved to America decades ago, around the time that Somalia descended into chaos.  He’s now a lawful permanent resident.  He’s made a wonderful life for himself here in America.

    In fact, he’s been working as a security guard at a DC area airport for several years – Dulles, to be precise.  If you’ve flown in/out of Dulles in the past few years, there’s at least a small chance you’ve seen him inside the security perimeter at that airport.

    Sounds nice, doesn’t it?  Heartwarming, even.

    Until you find out that the man involved – Yusuf Abdi Ali – is a former official of the brutal Mohamed Siad Barre regime in Somalia.  He was named in 2006 as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging serious human rights violations – specifically, of overseeing torture, as well as personally conducting it.  The acts Ali has been accused of committing may well qualify as war crimes under both US and international law.

    And it gets even better.  Apparently the US government has been aware of the allegations against Ali for “years”.  However, per his employer somehow Ali passed all required security background checks to work at Dulles.  He was only recently suspended from duties and placed on administrative leave.

    Fox News has an article giving more details.  IMO it’s worth reading.

    But don’t worry.  We’ve got a good handle on refugee vetting, and on controlling who is allowed entry into the USA!

  • ‘Extremist Islamic movement’ in Latin America

    ‘Extremist Islamic movement’ in Latin America

    ADM_Kurt_W._Tidd

    The Hill reports that US Southern Command’s commander, Admiral Kurt Tidd, is expressing concern about the incursion of Islamic extremists into Central and South America;

    He also said there is some movement of migrants from the Middle East to Latin America.

    “I think we are beginning to see people coming into this hemisphere who have very, very questionable backgrounds, and our law enforcement agencies are paying close attention to that,” he added.

    Tidd said leaders acknowledged at a regional security conference in January that Islamic radicalization is a problem.

    Back in 2007, we wrote about how Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, booted Christian missionaries from that country and replaced them with Iran-financed Hezbollah missionaries among the indigenous folks there. So there’s really nothing new about this other than the fact that Southern Command is just now taking notice.

  • Playing the numbers game in Afghanistan

    The Obama Administration has restricted the number of US troops that are deployed to Afghanistan so that the public is fooled into believing that they are drawing down our presence in that conflict. However, according to the Washington Post, those restrictions are impacting maintenance and training of organic components that would normally deploy. So, the Pentagon is forced to use contractors to fill the gaps;

    According to an Army document, the use of civilian labor in one of the Army’s combat aviation brigades, or CABs, in Afghanistan has had negative side effects because the contractors are being used in lieu of the brigade’s maintenance soldiers. Those soldiers should be deploying with their units, but are not because of the “constrained troop level environment” in Afghanistan, the document says.

    […]

    According to the Army document, three CABs have deployed to Afghanistan since 2013 with reduced maintenance staffs. A typical CAB usually deploys with 1,500 soldiers but can swell above 2,500 depending on the mission. In 2013, a brigade deployed with 1,900 troops, but as U.S. forces were reduced in Afghanistan, only 800 deployed in 2015. Despite the reduction in troop levels, the brigade was still expected to maintain and fly its roughly 100 aircraft.

    Using civilian contractors in the global war against terror is nothing new, except, in this case, it’s being used to intentionally deceive the American public about our involvement in Afghanistan.

    While U.S.-led combat operations in Afghanistan officially ended in 2014, last fall, as the Taliban gained momentum throughout the country, President Obama agreed to keep about 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through 2016, and 5,500 into 2017.

    According to the Post, there were 26,000 civilian contractors in Afghanistan in April, half of whom are assigned to logistics and maintenance duties – more than twice as many civilians as troops are in Afghanistan. Gives that Nobel Peace Prize a special kind of luster, doesn’t it?

    Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

  • Two injured in war against ISIS

    Two injured in war against ISIS

    last convoy out of Iraq

    Two more US troops were injured in Iraq and/or Syria this past weekend. The Pentagon insists that they weren’t involved in trigger-pulling operations, but rather in the rear, according to the Military Times;

    Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said both troops were injured by indirect fire while conducting train-advise-and-assist missions.

    “In both cases, these were people operating behind the forward line of troops. They were not on the front lines; they were not engaged in active combat…The troops’ injuries were severe enough to prevent them from being returned to duty, Davis said.

    More newsworthy this weekend, perhaps, is that the President finally admitted that US troops are involved in combat operations, that we’ve actually lost troops in combat, despite the fact that whole rest of the world has recognized that fact. From Stars & Stripes;

    The losses of Navy SEAL Charles Keating IV, Delta Force soldier Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler and Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin had previously been called combat deaths by White House and Pentagon officials. Obama’s comments Friday appeared to be the first time that the president himself has acknowledged them as combat deaths.

    “These three men were killed in combat while they were supporting local forces in Iraq,” Obama said.

    I guess he saw it in the news.

  • Afghan Taliban Appoints New Leader

    The Afghan Taliban have announced their new leader.  This was due to last week’s death of their former leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a US RPA strike.

    That new leader is Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, formerly one of Mansour’s deputies.

    Akhundzada is considered a “hawk” and a fundamentalist.  His selection is probably a signal that the Taliban has no intent of reconciliation with the existing Afghan central government.

    But cheer up:  we have things well in hand in Afghanistan today.  I guess the current      gang of fools running US foreign policy        Administration were 100% correct to limit the 2009 Afghan surge to half the forces requested by the Pentagon.

    Yeah, right.  And I’m the rightful heir to Persia’s Peacock Throne, too.

  • Alexander E. Blair pleads guilty to bomb plot

    Alexander E. Blair pleads guilty to bomb plot

    Alexander E. Blair

    About a year ago, we talked about John T Booker, who plotted to detonate a bomb at Fort Riley, Kansas. originally, Booker had planned to join the Army and initiate a “blue on blue” attack when the opportunity presnted itself, but he was thwarted by a recruiter who thought he was just a little too nutty to put in uniform, so his plans changed. Booker pleaded guilty last winter in a deal that would result in 30 years in prison. He had a co-conspirator in his notorious plot, well, he had one co-conspirator who wasn’t an FBI informant anyway – Andrew Blair. Blair pleaded guilty yesterday according to the Associated Press;

    According to prosecutors, Blair lent John T. Booker $100 to pay for storage of a bomb that Booker planned to detonate in April 2015 outside of the Fort Riley military post, which is about 60 miles west of Topeka. Booker planned the IS-inspired attack with two contacts who were actually confidential FBI informants, and when he tried arming the bomb, which was fake, FBI agents arrested him.

    Prosecutors say Blair and Booker met at a Topeka mosque in January 2015 and that they shared similar views about waging jihad against the U.S. military.

    During the hearing, Blair conceded that he believed Booker was working on behalf of the Islamic State and meant to kill as many soldiers as possible.

    Blair is looking at five years for not reporting Booker’s plans to authorities.