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On September 12, 2001, Americans were nearly unanimous in their belief that terrorism was a very real and serious threat to our country. September 11, 2009, eight years later, after not only no new terrorist attacks on the United States, but some thwarted terrorist activities, we have grown complacent on terrorism, and we have adopted attitudes along the way that are so soft on terrorism that the likelihood of an attack inside the United States is as great today as it was in 2001. Since the eighth anniversary of 9-11 two months ago we may, in fact, have already experienced...

The “Overseas Contingency Program” – more commonly known as the “war on terror” – is back at the center of the political world, thanks to the uncertain prosecution of the war in Afghanistan. As President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Congress and the generals in the field contemplate the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t consequences of Afghanistan, terror has reappeared in the American vernacular. “America is still a salient target and attractive target for terrorists,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA counter-terrorism official. And while words like “Islamic terrorist,” “jihad” and “Muslim extremist” have been scrubbed from administration chatter, we remain...

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. --George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four It all started earlier this year, when the Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, told a German Magazine during an interview: I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to ‘man-caused’ disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want...

“This is not so much a matter of “the people’s right to know” as it is a matter of needlessly endangering the lives of our brave troops — 99% of whom have had no role in any interrogations or allegations of detainee abuse.” See more Obama reversals below Obama - Against the VETS before he was For the VETS!

WASHINGTON – A newly unclassified Department of Homeland Security report warns against the possibility of violence by unnamed "right-wing extremists" concerned about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty and singles out returning war veterans as particular threats. The report, titled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," dated April 7, states that "threats from white supremacist and violent anti-government groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts." However, the report goes on to suggest worsening economic...

Recent arrests in a mistaken killing point to the perilous presence of gangs The order was clear: Kill the guy in the Astros jersey. But in a case of mistaken identity, Jose Perez ended up dead. The intended target — the Houston-based head of a Mexican drug cartel cell pumping millions of dollars of cocaine into the city — walked away. Perez, 27, was just a working guy, out getting dinner late on a Friday with his wife and young children at Chilos, a seafood restaurant on the Gulf Freeway. His murder and the assassination gone awry point to the...

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India has for the first time directly accused Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency -- the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) -- of involvement in last year's Mumbai attacks. "The perpetrators planned, trained and launched their attacks from Pakistan, and the organisers were and remain clients and creations of the ISI," Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said in a speech in Paris on Thursday that was picked up by the Indian media. In January, India handed Pakistan what it said was evidence linking "elements" in Pakistan to the November attacks on India's financial capital, in which 10 gunmen killed 165...

Reporting from Tyre, Lebanon -- Hiba Qassir dreams of making movies. She's ambitious and precocious enough. At 18, she's taught herself how to edit video and sound on a computer, and has her sights set on directing gripping social and psychological dramas. But if the movie business doesn't work out, that's OK. She has other dreams: perhaps to become a cop or a pilot. Or maybe a suicide bomber. "Martyrdom is the shortest way to heaven, and the history of martyrdom is not like any history," Hiba says. "It made victory. We wouldn't have achieved victory without these martyrdoms."

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090107-4.html For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary January 7, 2009 Remarks by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley at the Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS Washington, D.C. White House News National Security Council In Focus: National Security 10:40 A.M. EST MR. HADLEY: Thank you, John, very much for those kind words. I'm honored to be here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I thank you for the research you conduct, the analysis you provide, and the policy ideas that you develop. In less than two weeks, a new...

National Security: If you wonder why the U.S. hasn't had a serious terrorist attack since 9/11, two words should suffice: President Bush. But will his success continue? An alarming new report raises some concerns.Even Bush-bashers, whose numbers these days are legion, must agree that his aggressive vigilance against the terrorist threat has worked. Despite large-scale attacks by fundamentalist Muslim fanatics against London, Mumbai, Bali and other cities, the U.S. has been spared further civilian atrocities. Bush's push for the Patriot Act, his move to try terrorists under military tribunals, and his brave decision to let Gen. David Petraeus pursue the...

An article in yesterday’s New York Times by Public Editor Clark Hoyt, “Separating the Terror and the Terrorists,” is a nauseating example of the paper’s moral relativism applied to the war on terrorism. Hoyt tries to rationalize The Times’ reluctance to apply the “terrorist” label to people who take hostages, blow up bystanders and shoot 5-year-old girls in their beds. Hoyt admits “The Times is sparing in its use of ‘terrorist’” when reporting on Palestinian atrocities. In an effort to be even-handed, the paper has decided to call the murder of Jews inside the 1948 boundaries of Israel “terrorist,” but...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=52311 Emergency Response Units Won’t Perform Law Enforcement, Official Says By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Dec. 12, 2008 – The Pentagon’s three new rapid-response task forces will assist civil authorities during possible terrorist attacks or natural disasters, but they won’t perform law-enforcement missions, a senior Defense Department official said here yesterday. Some people have surfaced concerns that active-duty soldiers, who make up the core of the first 4,700-member joint task force established in early October, could be used to perform police functions, which would be in violation of the...

An increasing number of counterterrorism specialists say the nature of the attack is clearly different from the South Asian norm and possibly even by any global measure. And because it is was so successful — a score of armed men holding an entire country to ransom for three days — it may become a model for the next wave of jihadi fighters. Colonel Jonathan Fighel of Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism is among those who has pointed out that the Mumbai attacks are “unusual not only for India, but also on the international scale.” The subcontinental norm has been a...

SAN'A, Yemen — Authorities arrested at least 25 militants with suspected links to Al Qaeda in connection with the deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital, a senior security official said Thursday.

A former Italian president says his country had allowed Palestinian terror groups to roam free in exchange for not attacking Italian targets. Francesco Cossiga's admission confirmed claims of such a deal revealed last week in an interview in the Corriere della Sera newspaper with Bassam Abu Sharif, the former chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In a letter published Aug. 15 in Corriere della Sera, Cossiga described a "secret 'non-belligerence pact' between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance organizations, including terrorist groups" such as the PFLP. The deal, he said, had been devised by Prime Minister...

Iraq's Christians have taken up arms and formed new militias in a desperate effort to defend their beleaguered communities from an onslaught by Islamic extremists. In the five years since the Anglo-American invasion of 2003, murders and abductions have driven about half of the 800,000 Christians who once lived in Iraq to flee the country. Checkpoints manned by civilians armed with heavy machine guns and assault rifles have received official backing in Christian villages on the Ninevah plain in northern Iraq, where their presence dates back to the missions of St Thomas the apostle. Father Yusuf Yohannes combines the duties...

Homeland Security: Forced to defend its growing terrorist watch list, the FBI let slip a chilling fact that should silence ACLU grumblers: America is teeming with 20,000 terrorists.After 9/11, federal authorities estimated that as many as 5,000 terrorists were living in the U.S. The new figure is jarring not only because it's four times as large but because it's based on real persons, not estimates. It's not something headquarters wanted to publicize. Officials had downplayed the threat so as not to spook the public. The spin had been that Britain has the homegrown problem, not us. But that was before...

John Murtha grudgingly admits the surge is working in an interview in Pittsburgh but misrepresents facts about the Iraqi war. What follows is what was left on the cutting room floor. (Video Included)

Osama Bin LadenNew Yorkers last week were reminded yet again of the horrors of the 9/11 attacks, when their unrepentant mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arraigned in Guantanamo Bay. But few are aware a tectonic shift has taken place beneath the headlines in the wider war on terrorism - one that could within a few years significantly lower the likelihood of terror returning to New York's streets. This is because Al Qaeda has gotten itself into hot water with the one constituency that it cannot afford to alienate: its fellow jihadists.Over the past year, a growing number of very consequential...

Iraq is making “notable progress” in the security, political and economic fields, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the annual review conference of the International Compact with Iraq today. “If I were asked to use one word to describe the situation in Iraq today, I would choose the word ‘hope,’” Mr. Ban said, speaking in Stockholm to the meeting on the Compact, the five-year plan to promote peace and development in the strife-torn country http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26836&Cr=iraq&Cr1=

Law enforcement officials and security experts are warning against the threat of homegrown terrorism as several cases involving alleged American jihadists enter the courts. "The public is getting complacent," New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly tells FOX News. Full article

WASHINGTON, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Democrats accused U.S. President Bush on Saturday of fanning terrorism fears shamelessly as he was about to lose certain authority to wiretap foreign suspects without a court warrant. Bush, for his part, flailed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives for what he called putting U.S. security at risk for political motives in an election year. The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, responding to a Republican blitz on the issue, said there should be no question in anyone's mind that U.S. intelligence agencies retained the right to take "all actions necessary to protect" U.S. security....

Historians credit left-wingers with coining "politics of fear" to belittle Sen. Joseph McCarthy's campaign against communists in the U.S. government. The phrase went into hibernation in the 1960s, a torpidity even warmonger-in-waiting Lyndon Johnson's daisy-girl ad couldn't disturb, only to reemerge in the 1980s to denigrate Ronald Reagan's Cold War-winning strategy. These days, the phrase has become the lefties' No. 1 rhetorical trump card against the war against Islamic terrorism. To them, Americans have more to fear from the Bush administration than from the terrorists who seek to bring America to heel. Sen. Barack Obama uses it in almost every...

A former business professor accused of taking part in a Palestinian terrorist network was sentenced Wednesday to more than 11 years in prison for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. The defendant, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 49, a former associate professor of business at Howard University in Washington, was taken into custody by federal marshals immediately after the sentencing. In a passionate, arm-waving statement before sentencing, Dr. Ashqar painted a grim picture of the suffering of Palestinians in the occupied territories and said that some of his own relatives had been killed or jailed. He said he would rather go...

Criticisms of post-9/11 efforts to protect the United States from attack range from claims that America is more vulnerable than ever to the contention that the transnational terrorist danger is vastly over-hyped.[1] A review of publicly available information on at least 19 terrorist conspiracies thwarted by U.S. law enforce­ment suggests that the truth lies somewhere in between these two arguments. U.S. agencies are actively combating individuals and groups that are intent on killing Americans and plot­ting mayhem to foster violent extremist political and religious agendas. A review of the data suggests several important conclusions: Combating terrorism is essential for keeping...

Greg Schisler of Humble, Texas has commissioned a Purple Heart Trike built to honor wounded war Veterans through his Dream Trike project. Mr. Schisler will take the bike on a tour to visit 40 U.S. military bases and make appearances for Veteran’s groups. At the end of the tour, in September 2008, a Purple Heart recipient will be chosen to receive this special trike.The Purple Heart Trike will then be customized to accommodate the special needs of the soldier it is awarded to.The Dream Trike project is accepting nominations of Purple Heart recipients from the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy,...

President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq .Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not. Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders. Therefore, when the war broke...

<p>Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane's Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.</p>

It is the time of the year once again for Americans to mourn the loss of friends, family members and co-workers and to remember all who died on September 11, 2007. But while most of us hold the anniversary as a reminder of those who have passed and of the dangers that still exist everyday, Osama bin Laden has been spending his time grooming his beard and reading up on current events so that he can release a new video to the public. This year, bin Laden was nice enough to distribute two videos within a week, which together contain...

The Victory Caucus has joined with a coalition of other pro-victory groups to sponsor the Stand by the Mission petition below. We ask that you add your signature to the petition so that we can demonstrate to Congress and the world that the American public is committed to victory. Stand by the American Mission in Iraq Iraq is now the central front in the War on Terrorism - not because Americans want it to be but because America's enemies have said so and made it so. Al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias are determined to drive the United States out of...

The Peace Racket Bruce Bawer An anti-Western movement touts dictators, advocates appeasement—and gains momentum. If you want peace, prepare for war.” Thus counseled Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus over 1,600 years ago. Nine centuries before that, Sun Tzu offered essentially the same advice, and it’s to him that Vegetius’s line is attributed at the beginning of a film that I saw recently at Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center. Yet the film cites this ancient wisdom only to reject it. After serving up a perverse potted history of the cold war, the thrust of which is that the peace movement brought down...

Van Nuys, Calif. — Carolyn Blashek is constantly sending her gratitude to the men and women serving in the military overseas. Blashek founded Operation Gratitude after she tried to join the military, but was told she was too old. Her goal: to show people in the service that they have not been forgotten back home by sending personal care packages directly to members of the United States armed services all over the world. The care packages include a variety of items from sunscreen to socks, candy to toothpaste. But, you may be surprised to know what the most important item...

Senior Bush administration officials are engaged in active discussions about closing the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay... President Bush has stated publicly his desire to shut down the facility, which has drawn significant criticism and damaged the United States' reputation internationally... Key discussions have centered on how to repatriate roughly 75 remaining detainees who have been cleared for release or transfer, how to put roughly 80 detainees on trial... While there have been preliminary talks of bringing them to military detention centers in the United States, there has been significant opposition from Vice President Cheney as well as...

Guantanamo Saudi 'kills himself' Reuters | Thursday, 31 May 2007 A Saudi Arabian prisoner has died of an apparent suicide at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the US military said. "The detainee was found unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards. The detainee was pronounced dead by a physician after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted," the US Southern Command in Miami said in a statement. The military did not indicate how the prisoner died nor release his name. He is the fourth detainee to die of apparent suicide at the detention camp, which opened in January 2002...

Terror Arrests in Fort Dix Plot FORT DIX, N.J. May 8, 2007 - Six ethnic Albanians have been arrested in a plot to storm the Fort Dix installation in Burlington County. Five of the suspects were arrested in Cherry Hill. They will be arraigned later today in federal court. Officials say it will happen in either in Camden or Newark. Investigators say the suspects planned to use automatic weapons to storm the base and kill solders. The men were lured into a secret meeting to purchase AK-47s from an arms dealer, who was secretly cooperating with the FBI. Officials say...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — At least five people were arrested on charges they plotted to attack the Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible," federal authorities said Tuesday. The suspects were scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Camden later Tuesday to face charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. servicemen, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey. Five of them lived in Cherry Hill, about 10 miles east of Philadelphia and 20 miles southwest of Fort Dix, he said. "They were planning an attack on Fort Dix in which...

NEW YORK -- Six men from New Jersey have been arrested in an alleged terror plot against soldiers at Fort Dix, according investigators. Investigators said the men planned to use automatic rifles to enter Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as they could at the N.J. base. Fort Dix was just one of several military and security locations allegedly scouted by this group, authorities said. Investigators told Newschannel 4's Jonathan Dienst that these arrests are the result of a tip to the FBI and use of an informant to track the suspects. Authorities were alerted in January 2006 after...

The State Department said progress since 2001 was "mixed".

The idea that poverty breeds terror appears obvious; how could it be otherwise? And people as different as the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharraf, have also noted a link between poverty and terrorism. In fact, there is now robust evidence that there is no such link. That does not mean, however, that economics is irrelevant. First, to the question of poverty. Of the 50 poorest countries in the world (see list at right) only Afghanistan (and perhaps Bangladesh and Yemen) has much experience in terrorism, global or domestic. But surely that is the...

Rudy says the Bush Administration made a mistake by calling it a war on terrorism. Says we should be calling it terrorism's war on America. And he has a point. It won't matter whether or not the Democrats succeed in pulling our troops off the battlefields of Iraq, the war against America rages on. The Islamic fascists will continue waging a war of terror against us or against any free Christian or non Muslim nation simply because they hate us, hate our religion, hate our freedom and wish to see us dead. However, he fails to see another war being...

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Tuesday threatened to retaliate against the United States if it tried to capture its Damascus-based leader, Dr. Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah. On Monday, Washington announced that they would offer a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Shallah. The same amount was also offered for a member of Lebanese Hizbullah, Mohammed Ali Hamadei. The alleged Lebanese Hizbullah member took part in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 that resulted in the killing of U.S. sailor Robert Stethem.

If not the most skillful of embezzlers, Samuel "Sandy" Berger is a far more formidable character than the media would have us believe. When he made his now-storied sorties into the National Archives, he risked his career and his reputation in so doing, and he knew it. Rest assured, he would not have done so were the secrets to be preserved not worth the risk of pilfering them. True to form, the major media refuse to even ask the most fundamental question: Just what secrets would justify so much personal exposure? Having read the report on Berger by the House...

A federal judge slapped a would-be terrorist, who plotted to blow up the Herald Square subway station, with 30 years behind bars yesterday - heeding calls from prosecutors who said the young radical was "perfectly willing to have people die." Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, was convicted in May of conspiring to place an explosive device inside a garbage can or under a bench in the crowded West 34th Street subway station, which sits just beneath Macy's flagship department store. He wanted to bomb the station in retaliation for war abuses against Iraqis. "The defendant's role was central . . ....

DO WE need a nuclear deterrent to terrorism? Nelson DeMille makes the suggestion in his new book, "Wild Fire," whose sales are spreading like, well, its title. It debuted at No. 2 on the Times bestseller list, No. 1 at the Wall Street Journal and No. 1 at Publishers Weekly. It's another work of fiction by the man who already has more than 30 million books in print. But this one has people talking about a very real subject: How to stop Islamic extremists from attacking American cities. "It sounds radical, but what we're trying to do is keep Washington,...

Who can disagree with the report of the Iraq Study Group? It says, “Iran should stem the flood of arms and training to Iraq,” and “Syria should control its border with Iraq to stem the flood of funding, insurgents and terrorist in and out of Iraq”. It would be wonderful if Iran and Syria did those things, but unless some reasonable means of making them do so is advanced, saying that they “should” is airy wishfulness rather than strategy. Welcome to the non-reality-based world of bipartisan commissions. Even commissions flying under the banner of realism, such as the James Baker/Lee...

With ...John Kerry's recent "botched joke" about our enlisted personnel, I've been reminded that skepticism toward the military is not uncommon in our country. New York City is no exception to that sentiment as I've noticed lately while thinking about the military a bit more than usual. Last year, our son applied and was offered admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Such a choice was not expected in our family, and it was all but unheard of at our private New York City high school. However, with the help of the college counselor, and, actually, the enthusiastic...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "countefeit and illegitimate regime that cannot survive", in a live broadcast on state television. "The Zionist regime is counterfeit and illegitimate and cannot survive," he said in a spech to a crowd in the town of Islamshahr in southwestern Tehran. "The big powers have created this fraud regime and allowed it to commit all kinds of crimes to guarantee their interests," he added.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's start off here with the wrist-slap that Lynne Stewart got yesterday from a Clinton appointed federal judge. It's not just the judge in this case, though, who needs to be examined. Lynne Stewart represented the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman. She violated canons of legal ethics. As part of his sentence, he is not allowed to communicate with any of his terrorist buddies. She, his lawyer, did it for him. She could have received up to 30 years in jail, but she gets 28 months. She's going to appeal that. She'll remain out, I think, on...

Sri Lanka suffered its worst suicide attack when Tiger rebels blew up an explosives-laden truck next to a convoy of sailors, killing at least 103 people and wounding 150 more, police have said. The government said the "barbaric" act, which coincided with heightened international efforts to restore a 2002 truce, meant the Tamil Tiger guerrillas were not interested in talks scheduled to take place next week in Switzerland.

Twenty-five years ago, at 12:40 p.m. on October 6, 1981, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, aged 63, was mortally wounded as he reviewed a military parade commemorating Egypt's "victory" over Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. His attackers, Muslim fundamentalists, tossed two hand grenades and directed automatic weapons fire into the reviewing stand. Sadat's deputy, Hosni Mubarak, was nearby but escaped unscathed. I can't recall where I was that Tuesday in October. Maybe in my office in the shadow of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. Perhaps at NYU, where I was a graduate student. What particularly fascinates is...