al-Qaeda members captured entering U.S. from Venezuela

Steve Balestrieri reports in SOFREP,

Three members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group were stopped and apprehended trying to fly into Dallas while using passports from Colombia. The three entered Colombia via Venezuela.

The three al-Qaeda members who are from Syria, entered Colombia in La Guajira, in northeast Colombia. The three men were able to obtain actual passports as they had documentation experts located in the country. The RCN channel was the first to break the story.

The three Syrian citizens were able to obtain a civil registry, identity card, and passport in a network detected by the Registry and already investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office. The identities of the arrested terrorists have been released.

Read more here.

Is Al Qaeda stronger than ever?

Nabih Bulos writes in the L.A. Times that

Seventeen years after Sept. 11, Al Qaeda may be stronger than ever.


...U.S. policies in the Mideast appear to have encouraged its spread.

The author writes about the group's current status in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.
Read more here.

From Washington DC to Benghazi to Damascus

Sundance has an incredible post at The Last Refuge here.

The Obama administration's politicization of the bin Laden documents: "Obama and his advisers saw the enemy they wanted to see, not the one they were actually fighting."

Stephen F. Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn write in the Weekly Standard about The Final Obama Scandal. It is about the hundreds of thousands of documents found in Osama bin Laden's compound during the May 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The press statement that accompanied the release this month made an unexpected declaration: This batch of newly released documents would be the last one.

...Sources who have described the cache to THE WEEKLY STANDARD over the years have claimed that the number of captured documents, including even extraneous materials and duplicates, totals more than 1 million. ...this last batch of 49 documents brings the total number released to 571.

..."[Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and the old administration may want this to be closed, but it's far from closed," says Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). "Now the truth will begin to come out. It's just the beginning."

...Based on his conversations with analysts who have worked on the documents, Nunes believes that many of those not yet released will contradict Obama administration claims about al Qaeda, its relationships, and its operations.

Why do the documents still matter? Over the course of eight years, President Obama and his advisers repeatedly downplayed the jihadist threat. The story of how bin Laden's documents were mischaracterized and mishandled offers important insights into how the administration pushed a deceptive narrative about al Qaeda and its branches around the globe. The jihadist threat grew—not diminished—over the course of the Obama administration. To this day, America and its allies continue to fight al Qaeda everywhere from West Africa to South Asia.

Because of its barbarism, massive land grabs, and multiple attacks in the West, the Islamic State (ISIS) dominates headlines these days. The Islamic State makes itself easy to see. But al Qaeda, the organization that birthed ISIS, is still alive and thriving, often masking the extent of its operations and influence. Since 2011, al Qaeda has grown rapidly in jihadist hotspots such as Syria, where today the group has 10,000 or more fighters, its largest guerrilla army yet.

...The Obama White House wanted people to believe that al Qaeda's "core" leadership had little sway outside of South Asia. But in the final months of Obama's presidency, with the undeniable reality of al Qaeda's growth and strength, his officials began to tell a different story.

Testifying before the Senate on June 28, 2016, Brett H. McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, discussed al Qaeda's arm in Syria, al-Nusra Front. "With direct ties to Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, Nusra is now al Qaeda's largest formal affiliate in history," McGurk said.

So the Obama policy failed, for reasons that were entirely predictable, and the administration continued to downplay al Qaeda's role in Afghanistan long after they had evidence that contradicted their own assessments. None of this kept President Obama from declaring in May 2013 that "the Afghan war is coming to an end."

If many Americans have forgotten about Afghanistan, following the lead of their president, al Qaeda has not. And now the Trump administration inherits an Afghanistan with an entrenched and emboldened al Qaeda, still working side by side with the Taliban.

Perhaps the most egregious example of the Obama administration's politicization of the bin Laden documents concerns the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda. In the statement accompanying ODNI's latest release, we are told that the documents therein demonstrate bin Laden's "hatred, suspicion of Iran." The statement further claims that this antipathy "mirrors themes in previous releases" from bin Laden's compound. Indeed, the Obama White House used the bin Laden documents to portray al Qaeda and Iran as mortal enemies.

...bin Laden chastised one of his subordinates for openly threatening attacks inside Iran. He explained:

You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.

...bin Laden chastised one of his subordinates for openly threatening attacks inside Iran. He explained:

You did not consult with us on that serious issue that affects the general welfare of all of us. We expected you would consult with us for these important matters, for as you are aware, Iran is our main artery for funds, personnel, and communication, as well as the matter of hostages.

...Obama and his advisers saw the enemy they wanted to see, not the one they were actually fighting. They routinely ignored the first rule of warfare: The enemy gets a vote. There's no telling how many current intelligence assessments have Obama's misunderstandings baked into them. The Trump administration will have to correct and replace any Obama-style analyses that outlive his presidency.

There is no better place to start than by releasing Osama bin Laden's files. Al Qaeda is a more complex and sophisticated adversary than Obama believed. The American public deserves to know how the man who launched the 9/11 wars really saw the world.

Read more here.

Leave Italy on your vacation list

Michael Ledeen writes about Italian and Vatican intelligence, and concludes,

So it’s not so easy for al Qaeda and ISIS to devastate Italy. You can leave Italy on your vacation list. Especially the south.

Read more here.

Now what do we do?

I have found a new (to me) satirical blog called DuffleBlog. Joe Zieja writes there,

THE PENTAGON — The US Department of State is in absolute chaos following Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s declaration of war on ISIS, according to sources. The Pentagon remains deadlocked days later, as sources say its foreign policy experts remain unable to decide which of the two groups the US should rush supplies and military advisers to.

“For now,” Kerry explained, “we’ll be standing down all anti-terrorism operations globally, just in case anyone else wants to jump in. We wouldn’t want to bomb our allies. Whoever they are or might become.”

“Usually we expect a gap of twenty, thirty years at least before we have to start killing people we trained,” Defense Logistics Agency analyst Richard Teller said, on condition of anonymity. “This is totally different. We’re not just brushing off intelligence reports that say that they’ll ‘maybe’ want to kill us in a quarter century or so.”

“What do we do?” Teller continued. “Do we kill them while we’re training them? Bob came up with that idea, but he’s an idiot. I have a feeling they’ll stop coming to work if we do that.”

Teller, part of a select team of individuals hand-picked for their logistical experience, is busy coming up with a way to possibly train both groups at the same time, but his isn’t the only proposal.

One convoluted plan involves utilizing Al Qaeda facilitators to move goods to ISIS facilitators, who will in turn train Al Qaeda fighters how to become smugglers. Somehow, Nicaraguan cocaine mules also became involved. Ultimately the plan was scrapped due to the overwhelming amount of American-made materiel that would have to be moved to the Middle East and sold to brokers at extremely high black-market prices.

“I see no issue at all with this plan,” said Sandra Hemsworth, a Lockheed Martin representative.

Still, despite hours of planning meetings and hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into think tanks around the Beltway to help solve the problem, the question still remains: who is going to get the goods?

Read more here.

In the Middle East, the time of the True Believers appears at hand.

So writes Patrick J. Buchanan at CNS News. Buchanan analyzes who has the will to fight, and who does not.

In almost all of the wars in which we have been engaged, those we back have superior training, weapons and numbers. Yet, for whatever makes men willing to fight and die, or volunteer for martyrdom, the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and the Taliban have found the formula, while our allies have not.

To be a martyr for Allah, to create a new caliphate, to expel the infidels and their puppets, these are causes Islamic man will die for. This is what ISIS has on offer. And the offer is finding buyers even in the West.

What do we have on offer? What do we have to persuade Iraqi Sunnis to fight to return their Anbar homeland to the Iranian-backed Shiite regime in Baghdad?

Of our Arab allies, the Qataris, Saudis and Gulf Arabs are willing to do air strikes. And the Kurds will fight -- for Kurdistan.

But if the future belongs to those willing to fight and die for it, or to volunteer to become martyrs, the future of the Middle East would seem fated to be decided by Sunni tribesmen, Shiite militia, ISIS and al-Qaida, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

In the Middle East, the time of the True Believers appears at hand.

Read more here.

Choosing to ignore harsh realities

Bridget Johnson continues her fine reporting at PJ Media:

The former vice chief of staff of the Army warned the Senate Armed Services Committee today that al-Qaeda has “grown fourfold in the last five years.”

“AQ and its affiliates exceeds Iran in beginning to dominate multiple countries,” retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane testified.

Using a term that the Obama administration now eschews, Keane called radical Islam “the major security challenge of our generation.”

That leads to an “unmistakable” conclusion that “our policies have failed,” Keane added.

“And the unequivocal explanation is U.S. policy has focused on disengaging from the Middle East, while our stated policy is pivoting to the east,” he said. “U.S. policymakers choose to ignore the very harsh realities of the rise of radical Islam. In my view, we became paralyzed by the fear of adverse consequences in the Middle East after fighting two wars. Moreover, as we sit here this morning, in the face of radical Islam, U.S. policymakers refuse to accurately name the movement as radical Islam. We further choose not to define it, nor explain its ideology, and most critical, we have no comprehensive strategy to stop it or defeat it.”

Read more here.

Obliterate them!

Roger L. Simon does have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State: obliterate it! And while we are at it, also obliterate

Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, al Nusra, and on and on. Sunnis and Shiites? Don't take sides. Let them obliterate each other.

And most importantly of all, we should reinstate the economic boycott of Iran even more tightly than it was before while informing the bloody mullahs and the Iranian people that we support regime change now, not pussy-foot around about it as Obama did when the students were marching in the streets of Tehran (the most morally reprehensible behavior by an American president in my lifetime). We can’t allow the mullahs to profit from our dismantling of ISIS. And if they don’t get the message, use lethal force

Read more here.

Andrew McCarthy on terrorism

Andrew McCarthy nearly fell out of his chair watching a replay of a discussion between George Will and Charles Krauthammer, in which Will didn't see Boko Haram as a terrorist group. McCarthy defines terrorism:

Terrorism is the use and threatened use of mass violence in violation of the laws of war in order to coerce a government or society into policy changes or the acceptance of some ideological agenda.

A terrorist organization is distinguished from a militia by its failure to comply with the laws and customs of war—particularly, its intentional targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Al Qaeda has military objectives, too; so does every terrorist organization. The fact that a terrorist organization has “military objectives” is beside the point if it pursues those objectives through mass-murder attacks in conjunction (with) other operations distinguished by their extreme cruelty—like brutally murdering scores of school boys and turning young girls into sex slaves, as Boko Haram does.

Boko Haram’s official name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, meaning “People (or The Group) Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teaching and Jihad.” The short handle Boko Haram reflects a part of this overarching Islamic supremacist mission: “Western education is forbidden.” (Note the wishful thinking of progressives repeatedly peddled over the past few days: Boko Haram, we’re told, is not an Islamist group; they are just a backward-thinking political group opposed to education. In fact, what they oppose is Western education; they are all for Islamic education because they are an avowedly Islamist group.)

This jihadist ideology does not recognize national borders, so it is foolish to portray it as content to wage local wars for political control of this country or that. It sees the world as Dar al-Harb (the realm of war) versus Dar al-Islam, in which the latter must conquer the former. In fact, as I noted here at Ordered Liberty a few days ago—citing Tom Joscelyn’s Long War Journal partner, Bill Roggio—Boko Haram’s leader, Abubaker Shekau, explicitly threatened the United States (in sympathy with al Qaeda) in 2010: “Do not think jihad is over. Rather, jihad has just begun. America, die with your fury.” Like al Qaeda, Boko Haram sees itself as at war with the West and non-Muslims generally, not just with the Nigerian government.

I will be presumptuous again regarding what George Will may be thinking because I have expressed a similar frustration for many years. I’ve always objected to the term “War on Terror.” My problem with it is not just that “terrorism” is a tactic rather than an identifiable group of people, and therefore that the term “War on Terror” conveys a reluctance to name the enemy we are fighting against. It is also that the imprecision of the term “War on Terror” easily lends itself to mission creep: You start out fighting jihadists who mass-murdered Americans and the next thing you know you’re in a (now) thirteen-year-old futile experiment to bring Western democracy to sharia societies—a mission that very few Americans would have supported using our troops for but one that slipstreamed behind the effort to fight “terror.” After a while, under the same spell of political correctness that produced the term “War on Terror” in the first place, the government is institutionalizing procedures that undermine liberty under the guise of combatting “terror”—e.g., intrusive, non-particularized, unreasonable searches of everyone who wants to get on a plane or enter a building, 99.999 percent of whom clearly pose no threat to anyone.

If what George Will is saying is that we should be clear in what we mean by “terrorism” so that we have an accurate understanding of who the real enemy is, he is right. But you do not advance your understanding, or your security, by failing to call real terrorists terrorists. Boko Haram jihadists are real terrorists and their organization should have been designated as a terrorist organization several many years ago.

Read more here.

al Qaeda plot uncovered

An al qaeda member taking a load off, watching CNN and enjoying the demise of America.
The Onion comes up with a wonderful satirical piece:

WASHINGTON—Putting the nation on alert against what it has described as a “highly credible terrorist threat,” the FBI announced today that it has uncovered a plot by members of al-Qaeda to sit back and enjoy themselves while the United States collapses of its own accord.

“We have intercepted electronic communication indicating that al-Qaeda members are actively plotting to stay out of the way while America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” FBI Deputy Director Mark F. Giuliano told the assembled press corps. “If this plan succeeds, it will leave behind a nation with a completely dysfunctional economy, collapsing infrastructure, and a catastrophic health crisis afflicting millions across the nation. We want to emphasize that this danger is very real.”

“We have intercepted electronic communication indicating that al-Qaeda members are actively plotting to stay out of the way while America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” FBI Deputy Director Mark F. Giuliano told the assembled press corps. “If this plan succeeds, it will leave behind a nation with a completely dysfunctional economy, collapsing infrastructure, and a catastrophic health crisis afflicting millions across the nation. We want to emphasize that this danger is very real.”

Responding to the allegations, a spokesperson for al-Qaeda reportedly confirmed the terror group’s plot and praised the American people as martyrs of the highest order.

2012: The most active year for terrorism on record

Rodrigo Sermeno writes that Congress has been getting reports from terrorism experts that

According to data compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, more then 6,800 terrorist attacks killed more than 11,000 people in 2012, making it the most active year of terrorism on record.

Bill Braniff, a terrorism analyst at the University of Maryland, said the six most lethal groups in 2012 – the Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda in Iraq, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and al-Shabaab – were responsible for approximately 5,000 deaths.

One of these Salafi jihadist groups, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), recently seized control of parts of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi located in Iraq’s Anbar province – the site of a long and bloody battle for U.S. forces during the Iraq war.

We have met the enemy, and he is us

Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post about the Navy Seals who took down an al Qaeda killer in Fallujah, and were rewarded with a court martial. The al Qaeda killer

had been responsible for the shocking 2004 murders of four American military contractors — one of them an ex-SEAL — whose bodies were then burned, dragged through the streets and hanged from a bridge.

Three SEALs were charged with serious crimes. All of them — Matthew McCabe, Jonathan Keefe and one known by the pseudonym “Sam Gonzales” — were cleared, but in “Honor and Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Navy SEALs Who Captured the ‘Butcher of Fallujah’ — and the Shameful Ordeal They Later Endured” (Da Capo Press), his follow-up to his previous Navy SEALs bestseller, “Lone Survivor,” author Patrick Robinson asks why they were court-martialed in the first place.

Sting operations keeping us safe

Have you ever heard of Inspire Magazine? It is affiliated with al Qaeda and is written in English language. It teaches how to make bombs, and encourages lone wolf attacks like the recently failed one in Wichita. The dude who tried to bomb the airport was a proud reader of Inspire.

The F.B.I. did a sting operation. Undercover agents had been working with the would-be airport bomber in Wichita. Some defense lawyers question the use of those tactics, manipulating mentally unstable people to commit crimes they would otherwise not have the wherewithal to undertake. So far, though, juries have convicted and sent to prison several people targeted in those counter terrorism investigations.