Controverisal House Hearing on Islam Divide Democrats, Republicans
NJ.COM: WASHINGTON — The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said today during a hearing on Islamic radicalization that denying a link between Islam and terrorism “defies credulity,” while Democrats countered that the hearing itself was counterproductive in the fight against terror.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the Long Island congressman who chairs the committee, cited an assessment by U.S. counterterrorism officials that the greatest threat to U.S. security was from supporters of al Qaeda, the radical Islamic group that launched the 9/11 attacks. No one was suggesting that all Muslims were terrorists, King said. But, he said, “To deny that there’s any correlation between the Muslim faith and the biggest threat to this country today defies credulity.”

“When they’re looking for the Russian mob, they go to Breighton Beach and Coney Island,” King said, referring to Russian immigrant neighborhoods in Brooklyn. “That’s just good police work.” » | Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger | Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Ridiculous! Young Boy Strip-searched by TSA*

HT: Always On Watch >>>

Related >>>

* TSA

Securing America

James Corum: Barack Obama Should Fire His Homeland Security Chief At Once
TELEGRAPH BLOGS: How many screw ups does it take for the Obama administration to fire a grossly incompetent cabinet member? Well, apparently more than two.

At Christmas, when a brave passenger prevented the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from blowing up a US airliner, President Obama’s Homeland Security chief – Janet Napolitano – immediately reassured the public. She insisted that “the system worked”.

Nonsense. Unless you believe that the US airline protection system is dependent on quick-witted Dutch tourists, it failed entirely, a fact which was proved again when the event was fully evaluated by investigators.

Since the lives of the public are literally in Napolitano’s hands, a major mistake like this arguably merits a sacking. But perhaps even cabinet members ought to be allowed one big screw up.

But now Napolitano has done it again. After another attempt to set off a terrorist bomb, in Times Square, Napolitano was at it again with her “everything is just fine” theme. In an interview with ABC News the day of the attempted attack Napolitano asserted that “Times Square I think is now safe”. She also insisted that there was no evidence that this was “anything other than a one-off” event. Finally, she tried to reassure the public by commenting that the bomb “doesn’t look like it is a very sophisticated one”. Read on and comment >>> James Corum | Friday, May 14, 2010

R.O.P. Strikes Again*! Times Square Car Bomb: Security Slip Let Faisal Shahzad Board Plane
THE TELEGRAPH: The suspect in the failed car bomb attempt on Times Square was allowed to board a plane and almost make it out of the country despite being on a no fly list, it has emerged.



Faisal Shahzad had boarded a jetliner bound for the United Arab Emirates before federal authorities arrested him. Although under surveillance since midafternoon, he had managed to elude investigators and head to the airport.

The night's events, gradually coming to light, underscored the flaws in the nation's aviation security system, which despite its technologies, lists and information sharing, often comes down to someone making a right call.

As federal agents closed in, Mr Shahzad was aboard Emirates Flight 202. He reserved a ticket on the way to John F. Kennedy International Airport, paid cash on arrival and walked through security without being stopped.

By the time Customs and Border Protection officials, using a no-fly list updated on Tuesday, spotted Mr Shahzad's name on the passenger list and recognised him as the bombing suspect they were looking for, he was in his seat and the plane was preparing to leave the gate.

At the last minute, the pilot was notified, the jetliner's door was opened and Shahzad was taken into custody.

After authorities pulled Mr Shahzad off the plane.

He later claimed to have been trained at a terror camp in Pakistan's lawless tribal region of Waziristan, according to court documents. That raised increased concern that the bombing was an international terror plot.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that Mr Shahzad was cooperating with investigators and had waived his Miranda rights, which grant him the right to a lawyer and full US constitutional legal rights. >>> | Wednesday, May 05, 2010

*But Bloomberg wants Americans not to connect the dots! Fighting the Jihad this way, the West is going to need infinite resources, to say nothing of immeasurable patience and understanding. He wants the people of New York – and the rest of the West, I suppose – to “turn the other cheek”, indefinitely! So keep on turning that cheek folks! – © Mark

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Terrorism Suspect, Charged, Said to Admit to Role in Plot : A Pakistani-American man arrested in the failed Times Square car bombing has admitted his role in the attempted attack and said he received explosives training in Pakistan, the authorities said Tuesday. >>> Mark Mazzetti, Sabrina Tavernise and Jack Healy | Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Related:

Obama appoints two devout Muslims to Homeland Security posts. Presumably to keep Americans safe! Go figure! >>>

Statement by Secretary Napolitano on President Obama's Intent to Nominate David Heyman as Assistant Secretary for Policy and her Appointment of Arif Alikhan as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development >>>

Obama Ignores Terror Threat at His Own Peril
FOX NEWS: Communism is gone but Islamic radicalism and jihadism are with us. President Obama will have to find an effective way to deal with this new threat or the American people will find someone else who can.

In the wake of “11/5,” the attack at Fort Hood, Barack Obama faces a tough choice--like it or not.

The 44th president must choose to confront an unpleasant reality, head on--or else it will run him over. The issue is the threat of terrorist violence, here on the homefront.

Terrorism, and the debate over how to respond to terrorism, was the defining issue of the 43rd presidency. And now it’s apparent that Obama, too, will spend the bulk of his presidency confronting terror, from Afghanistan to new battlezones, such as central Texas.

Obama and fellow Democrats would rather, of course, talk about health care. But over the next few years, the Fort Hood shooting is going to be a bigger story, since it is connected to our relations, good and bad, with the entire Islamic world, including nuclear Pakistan and almost- nuclear Iran.

For his sake, and for ours, Obama needs to understand that sometimes even presidents don’t get to decide the agenda -- the agenda is decided for him. In such a situation, the question is whether or not the president can adapt to the new era and its new challenges.

So this president needs to launch an aggressive investigation, digging into every aspect of Thursday’s shooting rampage that left 13 dead and dozens injured. How did it happen? Who bears responsibility? And, most importantly, what must we change now? Otherwise, if Obama simply talks about health care and “cap-and-trade” and “don’t ask, don’t tell” and all the other staples of his 2008 agenda, he will be left in the dust by the cyclonic events of 2009 and beyond. And in the wake of the 11/5 shootings, his presidency could be blown away by a whirlwind of damaging leaks, embarrasing reports, and well-justified fears.

Obama will always have his base of support, of course, especially in the media. Taking their cues, as ever, from the siren song of secular liberalism, the Mainstream Media would rather talk about health care, with an occasional digression into gay marriage. As documented by the Media Research Center, MSM reporters are mostly loathe to draw anything outher than politically correct conclusions about the religious and ethnic dimensions of the Fort Hood mass murder.

Thus the MSM is likely to be left in the dust by more fearless, more energetic media. Columnists Dick Morris and Eileen McGann were blunt in their e-mail headline: “Ft. Hood Attack Was Terrorism.” And also on Sunday morning, the top dozen headlines at WorldNetDaily, a popular conservative Web site, dealt forcefully with Fort Hood. So while the MSM is bemoaning “stress,” “PTSD,” and “over-extension,” WorldNetDaily is offering an entirely different narrative, featuring headlines such as “Muslims: ‘America’s chickens have come to roost,’ U.S. Islamic street preachers declare Fort Hood victims got just desserts,” and “Shooter advised Obama Transition: Fort Hood triggerman aided team on Homeland Security task force,” and “Military jihadists fill ‘every branch’: Ultimate 5th column penetration, warns best-selling ‘Muslim Mafia’ [author]” One additional piece was penned by Joseph Farah, the Arab-American editor of WND, whose headline blared, “PC sickness killed our soldiers.” How will the commander-in-chief react to that?

Having bungled his first public remarks after the news of the killings at Fort Hood, Obama is already on the defensive. So, most likely, he and his staff will seek to change the subject as quickly as possible.

But if they try doing that, getting back to, say, “the public option,” they will fail. Because the issue isn’t going away. As Georgetown University terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman said over the weekend:

“I’m not saying it’s part of an organized campaign or a systematic strategy, but we're seeing a sea change when we have once a month a plot that is related somehow to Afghanistan, Iraq or what these people see is a war against Islam. It's too easy to dismiss them as unstable individuals when they have expressed strong religious beliefs with politics. That's the essence of the radicalization we're facing.”

In other words, Fort Hood was not a random event; it was part of a pattern. >>> James Pinkerton | Monday, November 09, 2009

Homecoming
NEWSWEEK: With a surge in the number of American residents joining Al Qaeda, its menace to Homeland Security is now more acute than at any time since September 11.

In the eight years after September 11, and especially during the Bush administration's first term, Americans became all to [sic] accustomed to a diet of orange alerts, sensational terror arrests, and breathless press conferences announcing the thwarting of yet another serious plot. But months and years down the line, it often emerged that such plots may not have represented such grave threats after all: terrorism suspects were charged with less serious offenses or released altogether; plotters turned out to have little or no capacity to launch attacks; and, often, when juries did convict, it emerged that entire conspiracies were reliant on the helping hand of undercover law-enforcement agents.

But 10 days ago federal agents in Denver foiled an alleged plot on U.S. soil that, for the first time, appears to have posed a true and severe threat to the U.S. homeland. Najibullah Zazi, a permanent resident of Afghan nationality, pled not guilty Tuesday in his arraignment in Brooklyn to charges including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. He is believed to have trained to make bombs with Al Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan and to have initiated plans—apparently without assistance from undercover agents—with others in the United States to perpetrate a terrorist attack in New York City. The FBI, in other words, has just thwarted the most serious plot, by far, on U.S. soil in the last eight years.

And this is just the beginning. The threat from Al Qaeda to the U.S. homeland is arguably more acute now than at any time since September 11. This is not because Al Qaeda has become a stronger foe. (On the contrary, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has actually been weakened in the last two years by intensified U.S. missile strikes against its leadership in FATA and a sharp backlash among Muslims worldwide against its violent excesses.) It is because a growing number of Americans have gone to FATA, the global hub of Al Qaeda's terrorist operations, to join the jihad in Afghanistan—something which was very rare until recently—and Al Qaeda, opportunistically, has recruited them for attacks on their country. The number of American residents who had joined or trained with Al Qaeda …>>> Paul Cruickshank | Newsweek Web Exclusive | Tuesday, September 29, 2009