Kentucky lands grant to protect bingo halls from terrorists
Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money.
The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base, said John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming.
The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash, Holiday said.
But to some, the idea of protecting bingo halls from terrorists is nonsensical.
"It's almost ludicrous," said Rick Bentley, a Henry Clay High School sports booster as he volunteered last Thursday at a noisy, smoke-filled Lexington bingo parlor. "The thought would never even enter my mind."
Holiday, who applied for the grant, said that terrorists do not currently profit from charitable gaming in Kentucky to the best of his knowledge.
"But the potential there, to me, is just huge," he said. "You can earn a lot of money very fast and deal entirely in cash."
With more than 1,300 organizations licensed to raise money through gambling, charitable gaming raised $51 million in 2003.
Holiday said if the grant stretches far enough, he also wants to offer forensics accounting training to his 10 auditors.
http://www.tkb.org/NewsStory.jsp?storyID=91561
Archived. Excerpted.
Gitmo Gulag? Serious bad guys at Guantanamo would love to kill you. Have a nice day.
The Free Lance Star ^
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba 10/23/2005
It is important to keep in mind that these men, while exceedingly dangerous and even pathological in their desire to kill Westerners, are generally well-educated and broadly traveled.
Several detainees have advanced degrees in law, engineering, and medicine from American and European schools like the University of London.
Others are highly skilled technical experts with advanced training and knowledge of electronics and demolitions. (Some of these are contributing to our knowledge of al-Qaida bombs found in Iraq.) Many of these men occupied the top al-Qaida echelons, and met frequently with bin Laden.
A lot of these men came from middle-class or wealthy families.
They come from 17 different countries, but a great many are Saudi Arabian.
They are not driven by poverty, unemployment, or class deprivation. They are motivated by a virulent form of Islam that promotes jihad and death to Western civilization.
They will kill Americans--including women and children--without conscience, for they are convinced that restoration of the Islamic caliphate is their sole mission on this Earth.
Many readers will have heard stories about detainees sleeping in air-conditioned berths, while the American troops guarding them sweated in tents.
You may have heard that American soldiers were eating MREs while the terrorists dined on three "hots" daily, providing about 2,600 calories of carefully varied food.
Those stories were correct.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1508177/posts
Steven Emerson to Testify at U.S. Senate Hearing on Saudi Arabia - CANCELLED
UPDATED at 11:00 am ET: Steven Emerson was scheduled to testify tomorrow before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing titled, "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War on Terror?” But the committee staff has told me that hearing has been cancelled due to other pressing committee business (NOTE: changed from "postponed" in earlier post based on committee website).
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