U.S. Probe Spots 9 Terror Suspects in Merchant Marine

Netscape news & CNN ^ | 4 March 2004 | Caroline Drees

[An.American.Expatriate]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 14-month investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard and FBI has uncovered nine merchant mariners with possible terrorist links, raising renewed concerns that U.S. ships and ports are vulnerable to attack.

Coast Guard spokeswoman Jolie Shifflet said on Thursday that "Operation Drydock," prompted by national security concerns after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had also led to the arrest of about a dozen others whose active arrest warrants for crimes from minor misdemeanors to attempted murder had long gone unnoticed.

The Coast Guard said it investigated the records of more than 200,000 people who hold U.S. merchant mariner credentials.

It also revoked or suspended the licenses of roughly 200 other commercial seamen for a range of offenses, Shifflet said. None of those arrested, dismissed or suspended had been linked to terrorism.

[An.American.Expatriate]

Heads Up!!

[MindBender26]

You have described the impossibility of trying to defeat the guerrilla in the field. If you protect the airlines, they will go after the ships. If you find the seamen, they will infiltrate the chemical workers or whatever.

Every guerrilla army (forget the term "terrorists." This is simply a guerrilla army with no limits on their targets.) must have the support of a host country or entity.

You cannot defeat the guerrilla in the field, but you can defeat him by making the price too high for the support country or entity. For example, we could not have won at Yorktown without the French fleet offshore to interdict the British fleet.

In this case, the support comes (came in the case of Iraq) from certain countries and a larger, trans-border group of Islamic fundamentalists.

No matter where they are found, they must be destroyed. Not impeded, not injured; they must be destroyed.

When that happens, the symptom of terrorism goes away.

[FairOpinion]

"No matter where they are found, they must be destroyed. Not impeded, not injured; they must be destroyed."

===

Exactly.

Thank God, that Bush and Rumsfeld recognized this early on and is proceeding accordingly.

"This is not a criminal action," the secretary of defense told Bush over a secure line. "This is war."
Rumsfeld's instant declaration of war, previously unreported, took America from the Clinton administration's view that terrorism was a criminal matter to the Bush administration's view that terrorism was a global enemy to be destroyed.
"That was really a breakthrough strategically and intellectually," recalls Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. "Viewing the 9/11 attacks as a war that required a war strategy was a very big thought, and a lot flowed from that."
Rumsfeld wanted a war that was fought with ruthless efficiency: special forces, high-tech firepower, a scorecard for killing or capturing terrorists. He had no desire to become the world's jailer.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1083532/posts


God help us, if Kerry gets elected and takes us back to the ineffective Clinton approach.

[endthematrix]

So we really don't know squat about the nine?