Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat - Thread Twenty-Two

[nwctwx]

Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat

Thread Twenty-Two (Index)

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Google News : Google Images : News Hotlinks

The Threat Matrix

The title refers to a daily report given to the president of the United States detailing the most serious terrorist threats against the country. To tackle those threats, the government has formed a top-notch task force to infiltrate the terror cells and cut off the danger.

"Every morning, the president receives a list of the top ten terrorist threats - this list is known as the threat matrix."

We here at FR are trying to be in conjunction with the daily reports around the world that involve threats. We try to provide a storehouse of information that takes hours of research.

YOU be the judge and get informed!

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Connect these dots, now
Full Story

"We should have secured the Mexican border."

That could be the pitiful lament we hear from negligent U.S. officials if Al Qaeda pulls off an attack on the United States using weapons of mass destruction smuggled across our southern frontier.

Were that horrendous event to happen, leaders in the administration and Congress would be justly hit with the same question that was perhaps unjustly cast at them and their predecessors after the unprecedented Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: Why didn't they connect the dots?

Related:
Bordering on Nukes?
'Bin Laden has fatwa for nuclear attack'
Jihadists Anticipate Imminent Nuclear Strike Against U.S.

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"I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat."

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Threat Matrix "TM'er" Tips	Link to Thread Twenty-One "Code Red Implications: Code Red - Stay Home and Await Word." From Tm'er and Freeper ~MamaDearest~	Cindy's Links of Interest
TM Code of Conduct		ExSoldier's Invaluable Tips
TM's 'Be on the Lookout'		Godzilla's Summaries
Threat Matrix Book List		Arabic Image Links

[Cindy]

OFF TOPIC...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1304521/posts

"Target incurs wrath for Salvation Army ban"
Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 12/18/04 | Mike Tierney


Posted on 12/19/2004 7:06:27 AM PST by madprof98

[Cindy]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,141920,00.html

"Humbug! Christmas Steeped in Controversy"
Sunday, December 19, 2004

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THE CHRISTMAS LINKS PAGE
http://www.truthusa.com/CHRISTmas.html

[freeperfromnj]

Happy belated birthday! Glad you had a great day.

[liberallyconservative]

Extremely close. Smyrna is a suburb on the north side of Atlanta, in and around the I-285/I-75 interchange. Basically, where Smyrna ends, the north side of Atlanta begins.

[liberallyconservative]

Sorry Davey, didn't see your post at #3554 before I posted.

[liberallyconservative]

Sorry Davey, didn't see your post at #3554 before I posted.

[tmp02]

Al-Qaeda Issues Statement Regarding the Coming Days
Source: Al-Qaeda Network | 11:27:49 PM


Al-Qaeda has issued a statement today claiming that the coming days will "write new lines" for the enemies of Islam. They call on all members of Al-Qaeda to attack all foreign entities and enemies of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. The entire statement is below.

MACHINE TRANSLATION

In the Name of Allah, the Benificent, the Merciful

The praise of Allah praises it and we seek help from it and seek refuge with Allah from the evils of ourselves and from the sins of our works, who Allah demolishes then no misleader to it and who misleads then no guide to it, and we testify to no God except Allah and that Muhammad Abdou and its messenger told the message and did the honesty and the advice of the nation and their leaving on the white proof their night as their daytime except dead deviates from them ..

This a prayer for all waiting militants in the Arabian Peninsula, to all these that sold cheap themselves for God's sake he became great and rose, and stood in all tyrants face that killed a nation she is dearer and prevent with the guidance of the messenger of Allah peace be upon him ...

This is a call of them for the solidarity for hitting all of the foreign targets in the Arabian Peninsula, and hitting all tyrants strongholds everywhere until the messenger of Allah island finishes from the polytheists and from the tyrants supporters God willing Glory be to Him, and he is to a relative God Willing .

Then it is a call to targeting the oil sources, that did not serve the Islamic nation, but they served the nation enemies, then the tyrants are still insisting on making the Islamic land a place it is absent-minded in it the unbelievers and the polytheists from everywhere ..

The coming days will write new lines in the fight against the tyrants and the Islam enemies ..

And he who wronged will know any return they turn back .

The Al-Qaeda Network is in the Arabian Peninsula
Saturday 7 / 11 / 1425 hijriÜ
The agreeing 18 / 12 / 2004 AD


http://www.trackingterrorism.com/Default.asp?dismode=article&artid=1245

[tmp02]

Bin Laden takes credit for Soviet fall, says U.S. next

By DAVID MCHUGHE, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

sama bin Laden claims to have bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as an Islamic guerrilla fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Could he do the same to another hated superpower - the United States?

The al-Qaida leader's latest purported communication drove home the point by calling on militants to stop the flow oil to the West and praising a Dec. 6 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil producer.

In an audiotape posted on an Islamist Web site Thursday, a man who U.S. officials believe was bin Laden accused Westerners of subjugating the Middle East to plunder its oil.

"Go on and try to prevent them from getting oil," the speaker said. "Concentrate your operations on that, especially in Iraq and the Gulf."

It was believed to be the first time a purported bin Laden tape in effect called for attacks on the oil industry. But he has flaunted the economic theme before, recalling in his most recent video how Afghan mujahedeen "bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt" and taunting the U.S. government over the size of its budget deficit - which peaked at $413 billion last year.

Experts suggest bin Laden's claims to be undermining the United States economically are largely propaganda, noting the flexible U.S. market economy is a far cry from the creaky, bureaucratic Soviet giant.

Still, the economic argument gives bin Laden a tool he can use to rally his supporters and inflate his aura of success by claiming damage caused by other factors as his own handiwork.

As Bin Laden put it in his video aimed at Americans just days before the Nov. 2 presidential election: "The real loser is you. It is the American people and their economy."

The al-Qaida leader cites the experience of Afghan mujahedeen fighters "in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers" to drive the Soviets out.

Bin Laden was among U.S.-supported Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, backed with money and weapons in hopes of weakening Russia, the United States' opponent in the Cold War.

The Soviet comparison is aimed as much at bin Laden supporters as at Americans, says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand Corporation. "That's how he motivates and animates people and addresses morale - telling them, 'No one thought we could achieve that feat, and by the same token no one thinks we can achieve this feat of defeating the United States, but we will,"' he said.

Spurred by the new audiotape, Muslim radicals using chat rooms on Islamic Web sites debated Friday what weapons could be used to attack an oil tanker in the strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.

Bin Laden "sees us as poised on this precipice, and he's going to push us into the abyss," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Rand Corporation.

Retired Gen. William Odom, a scholar at the Hudson Institute and an expert in the Soviet collapse, said bin Laden's analogy is off base since the Soviet Union collapsed for reasons other than Afghanistan, including the weakness of its state-run economy.

As far as spending on Iraq, Odom said damage to the U.S. economy is attributable to the Bush Administration embarking on a costly war. In the fall 2003, Congress approved $87.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $25 billion more last spring, and Bush is expected to request another $75 billion to $100 billion early in 2005.

"If we're stupid enough to go off and do something like that, bin Laden can justly crow about it," Odom said. "But I don't think he can take credit for having caused it."

Odom believes no al-Qaida strategy can topple U.S. dominance.

"In an operational sense, U.S.-made policies, not bin Laden's actions, have risked putting the United States in a very serious situation," he said.

Terrorists "have never brought down a liberal democracy," Odom said. "Terrorists like bin Laden can cause trouble but they're not a strategic problem, they're a tactical nuisance."

Princeton University economist Alan Krueger said, "The U.S. economy is too large and diverse to be sunk by terrorism."

"The U.S. government budget is overflowing with red ink because of the Bush tax cuts and the aging of the baby boom generation, not because of Osama bin Laden," Krueger said in an e-mail.

On the video, bin Laden asserted al-Qaida is the cause of U.S. losses in battle: "All we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaida,' in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to private companies."

Hoffman noted that bin Laden also tried to take credit for U.S. economic difficulties after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks that toppled the World Trade Center, including the sharp drop of the NASDAQ stock market and corporate scandals such as Enron.

Bin Laden has "an excellent understanding" of economic targeting, said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrew's University in Great Britain. But he would need a bigger strike to hurt the United States - one aimed at a critical part of the economy, such as shipping or financial exchanges, he said.

"Unless they strike at the stock exchange, unless they strike at the exact critical nodes in our infrastructure, I think the economy can certainly absorb that," Ranstorp said.

This summer, federal authorities raised the terror alert for financial institutions after uncovering an alleged al-Qaida plot to attack the Citicorp building and the New York Stock Exchange in New York; the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington; and the Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark, N.J. The alert has since been lifted.

Intelligence indicated al-Qaida had conducted surveillance of the buildings, U.S. authorities said. Although the information dated back several years, counterterrorism officials noted that al-Qaida has a record of extensive planning and plotting.

http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041219/NEWS/212190342/1004

[DAVEY CROCKETT]

No problem :-)

[JustPiper]

Seems like the threatened attacks are in the ME:
(We best find an alternative oil source from all FNC is saying)

Unite Against America, Saddam Urges from Prison Cell
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3907680

Indonesia Blasts Likely Meteor Shower-Expert

Sun Dec 19, 6:05 AM ET World - Reuters

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Several loud blasts believed to be caused by a meteor shower echoed across the Indonesian capital Jakarta and nearby towns early on Sunday, startling residents who reported seeing flying objects in the sky.

Police said they had found no evidence that the blasts were caused by bomb attacks. An official from the Indonesian space center LAPAN told the official Antara news agency the explosions were likely to have been caused by a meteor shower.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041219/wl_nm/indonesia_blasts_dc

Then there's Najaf and Karbala:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041219/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_041219182927

[JustPiper]

Blurbs only:

MOSCOW (AP) A little known Russian group, Baikalfinansgroup, has bought Yukos' core production unit at auction for $9.3 billion.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) An Iraqi official says three employees of the organization running next month's elections have been killed in an ambush on their car in Baghdad.

[JustPiper]

In a large scale emergency, 911 is laughable anyway.

911 did prove that. Just like SS, 911 needs an overall. Just like our taxes, they need to be abolished. Just like illegal aliens and the policies, they need to build walls.

My wife has been a 911 dispatcher for 10 years. She's very good at her job. We have 2 ambulances to cover a population of 60,000 people.

Thank your wife for a job well done! 2?! 2?! OMG!

[MamaDearest]

Wednesday was a great day and I DO look forward to many, many more!

Every day we have with you here is a better day for us. :)

[JustPiper]

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20041101.middleeast.sageman.understandingterrornetworks.html

[JustPiper]

Sure, Chgo grew into hundreds of suburbs,townships etc.
So then Smyrna is close geographically

[crabbie]

What a nice thing to say.:):):)

[crabbie]

Thanks, FFNJ, it was terriffic!

[JustPiper]

The Grace of God and prayers. I cannot express the happiness you shared with me, Congratulations my friend!

“Healing Fairy Angel of the Earth”
...the spirit of the Healing Angel Fairy of the Earth, for you to know the depth and the joy with which you are loved, and to resolve to love self as much as you feel loved in looking upon this image. for it is for you. It is a gift unto you, for you well deserve it. You are much loved, take this love into your own heart, to heal your own self with it. . Amen."

[JustPiper]

thanks! So Cindy is right, Smyrna is to be kept an on eye on, isn't there also a Smyrna VA?

[crabbie]

and Amen, JP.

The whole situation blows me away. My husband keeps reminding me.

I told my surgeon that I wasn't surprised but knew because I had alot of faith. He answered something about some other patients having faith, too, and it is better to have it.