Category: Terror War

I guess the French recognize heroism when they see it. Just days after three Americans and a Briton rescued hundreds of people from a Moroccan gunman, French President Francois Hollande presented the Legion d’Honneur at the Elysee presidential palace to British businessman Chris Norman, Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos. For some reason, he also presented the award to U.S. Ambassador to France Jane D. Hartley, and Hollande called President Obama to thank him, for whatever Obama did to stop the criminal. I guess it’s like when Obama took out bin Laden;

French President Francois Hollande on Saturday offered his “heartfelt thanks” to his US counterpart Barack Obama for the “exemplary conduct” shown by three US citizens who overpowered a suspected jihadist gunman on a packed Amsterdam-Paris train, the Elysee said.

Their actions helped prevent “an extremely serious” incident, Hollande’s office said in a statement.

I guess that after this attack, the London railway attack in 2005 and the Madrid train bombings in 2004, terrorism “experts” are starting to spot the vulnerabilities of trains to terror attacks, according to the New York Times;

A 2011 report by the Department of Homeland Security found security gaps at many Amtrak stations. Congress and security experts have long debated whether to institute screening systems at railroad stations similar to those at airports, but plans have gone nowhere — largely because of cost and resistance from passengers.

Amtrak, particularly on its high-speed train, the Acela, has cut into the airlines’ share of passengers in the busy Northeast corridor because of frustrations with airport screenings. Between New York and Washington, Amtrak said, 75 percent of travelers go by train, a share that has grown steadily since the Acela began service in 2000 and airport security tightened after 2001.

Well, European gun control doesn’t seem to be working, so yeah, let’s add more government interference to train travel. If I can’t drive, I won’t go, anyway.

The world seems to be in awe of the three Americans who tackled Moroccan Ayoub el-Khazzani on a train the other day and beat him to within an inch of his life in order to subdue the heavily armed, but poorly trained, terrorist. People in this country are rightly proud of U.S. Airman Spencer Stone and National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and their friend, Anthony Sadler, a student who answered the call to action in order to protect hundreds of people they didn’t know.

The whole incident is a metaphor for the war against terror. Government does it’s best to protect the people from the animals with gun-control laws, no-travel lists, and general law enforcement, but the war against terror is actually fought in the streets, in strip malls, in the delis, in the train cars around the world by common citizenry – the targets of terrorism. Laws don’t hinder the lawless.

We’re constantly told how American gun laws aren’t consistent with the laws of the rest of the “civilized world” – that here are too many privately-owned weapons in the hands of citizens. However, the “civilized world” is the major target of the creatures who flaunt laws to spread their terror. Much the way that the terrorists who do succeed to terrorize us in this country target “gun free zones”, our mini-civilized areas.

I lived in Europe for nine years in the 80s, and I got the feeling that Europeans accepted terrorism as a part of their life. In Paris, when we visited, the tour guide warned us that ten bombs went off in the city every day, on the average. We went in a department store and had to go through metal detectors and have our packages searched, you know like we do now in our government buildings these days.

The Europeans stood by wringing their hands in the 90s when the Serbs were murdering Bosnians and Kosovars waiting for the Americans to take the lead. This administration stepped aside to give the Europeans a chance to lead in Libya and Syria in this decade – to tragic results.

Those same Europeans were expecting their governments to protect them on that train the other day, too, but somehow, law enforcement failed. El-Khazzani circumvented several laws written to protect the law-abiding people to smuggle those weapons on a train. He was also on 3 government “watch lists” but he wasn’t being watched. He had recently traveled to Syria for training, but he had apparently slept through the classes on weapon maintenance and his immediate action drills. Luckily.

Americans are criticized for being cowboys, but it’s always Americans who step into the breach. While I agree that we shouldn’t have to be the policemen of the world, but, in the words of Ronald Reagan, if not us, who?

Well, there’s a clearer picture of what happened on that high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris yesterday. It seems that it wasn’t Marines at all who stopped the terrorist from unleashing his dastardly plot. According to Fox News;

Anthony Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State University, was traveling with childhood friends Spencer Stone, of Carmichael, California, and Alek Skarlatos, a National Guardsmen from Roseburg, Oregon, when they heard a gunshot and breaking glass.

Spencer Stone tackled the fellow while he was charging down the hallway trying to charge his weapon, he had a box cutter and sliced Stone with the weapon. That’s when they beat him unconscious and tied him up. Stone’s injuries aren’t life-threatening. Another passenger was injured and he’s expected to recover, too.

French Interior Minister Bernad Cazenueve, speaking in Arras where the train was diverted, said the Americans “were particularly courageous and showed great bravery in very difficult circumstances,” and that “without their sangfroid we could have been confronted with a terrible drama.” He also called for caution before jumping to conclusions.

From The Guardian;

Skarlatos, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan with the national guard, told Sky News the gunman’s AK-47 had jammed and that he had not known how to fix it.

“If that guy’s weapon had been functioning properly, I don’t even want to think about how it would have went,” he said. “We just did what we had to do. You either run away or fight. We chose to fight and got lucky and didn’t die.”

Because terrorists are just stupid – they watch too many movies.

The French authorities are still trying to figure out the Moroccan’s motivations, but I think that we can guess.

The Hill reports that the Navy will pull the USS Theodore Roosevelt from the Persian Gulf in October. The Roosevelt is providing about 20% of the air strikes against ISIS. It’s replacement, the USS Harry Truman won’t arrive in the Gulf until later in the winter. The Pentagon has it all figured out, though. They say that, because the fickle Turkish government has allowed the US use airbases there, finally, they can fill the gap left without a carrier that way.

A U.S. official said the reduced presence there isn’t out of lack of need, but due to fewer carriers available and the prioritization of the Asia Pacific.

“All I can say is that in the short-term, we need a continuous presence. The demand is out there, the [combatant commander] is asking for it, and the [Pacific Command] commander is asking for it. They’re asking for it. There’s just not enough peanut butter to spread around,” the official said.

“So what are you going to do? You’re going to give what you can. You’re going to prioritize based on what the president wants us to do, what the [defense] secretary wants us to do, and allocate those forces to meet those needs,” the official said.

Coincidentally, the Pentagon has also decided that they’ll pull out the Patriot air defense batteries from Turkey in October, too. Meaning that any aircraft that we have in Turkey will be less safe from missile attacks from Syria and ISIS.

It also emphasised that Washington remains “committed to supporting Turkey’s air defence capabilities, including against ballistic missile risks and threats… and its security and regional stability.”

A US defence official stressed that the move by the US military was for the purpose of force modernisation.

“It does not reflect a decision by the NATO Alliance to reduce support for Turkey’s air defence,” the official told AFP.

You know, it almost seems intentional, as if ISIS is moving our board pieces around for us.

In recent weeks, Al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda in Syria, kidnapped thirteen members of the US-trained Syrian rebels known as Division 30. AFP reports that Al-Nusra released seven of their captives;

In a statement circulating on social media, Division 30 said seven of its members had been freed by Al-Nusra after being captured in late July.

“Seven Division 30 fighters who were being held by the brothers in Al-Nusra Front have been freed,” the statement stamped by the unit said.

“We welcome this noble initiative and urge the brothers of Al-Nusra and hope that they will release in the coming hours the group’s commander and other fighters,” the statement continued.

I guess al Qaeda is trying to look like a more reasonable choice compared to ISIS, because we all know that if it had been ISIS that had captured the Division 30 troops, they would be in pieces by now.

CBS News reports that the Pentagon is investigating whether or not those 11th century cretins in ISIS are using mustard gas against peshmerga forces;

It is unclear if the gas was leftover from Saddam Hussein stockpiles or if they were brought over from Syria, which would be the two likeliest sources of the gas, said a senior Department of Defense official. The official said the reports are credible because of prior information, but did not elaborate.

Mustard gas is considered an “antiquated” weapon that must be used in very large concentrations to be lethal, the official told CBS News.

Yeah, well, what are we going to do about it? ISIS knows that we didn’t do anything to the Syrian government when they used chemical weapons against rebels, so we won’t do anything to ISIS, either. Hussein didn’t use chemical weapons against US troops in 1991 or 2003 because he knew that the retribution would be forceful, but ISIS isn’t dealing with a Bush, are they?

And, oh, yeah, how could the mustard gas they’re using originated with Hussein? He didn’t have any WMDs, remember?

Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno is on his way out and everyone wants to ask him questions. The Washington Post is happy that he disagrees with Trump that we should actually make the war in Iraq and Syria a “war for oil”. Stars & Stripes quotes Odierno when he wants to embed US troops with the Iraqis and the peshmerga in the war against ISIS. AFP says that Odierno thinks that Iraq should be partitioned in order to be made more peaceful.

However, no one is quoting another portion of all of these interviews; the part where he says that the second war against Saddam Hussein was necessary. Not only does the general who served four years in that war say that the war was necessary, he also says that all of the Iraqi generals that he talked to thought that were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, too. I saw that portion of the interview on the news this morning, but funny how I can’t find him quoted, or find the video on the internet.

Geez, I wonder why.