Cowboys and moslimes...
Posted on 07/30/2012 4:08:57 PM PDT by AuntB
WASHINGTON — Improvised explosive devices, like those that have killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, pose a growing threat across Texas and the United States, leading to calls for urgent cooperation between U.S. military experts and civilian law enforcement officers.
Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, director of the Pentagon's so-called Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, alerted Congress in classified testimony this month to the mounting IED threat at home.
He also highlighted the challenges his team faces trying to train stateside law enforcement agencies to detect, disarm and defeat the devices.
“The domestic IED threat from both homegrown terrorists and global threat networks is real and presents a significant security challenge for the United States and our international partners,” Barbero warned a subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Of 880 terrorist attacks in North and South America last year — most in Mexico and Colombia — 109 were carried out by IEDs that killed or wounded 245 people; 18 were carried out by vehicle-born IEDs that killed or wounded 180 people, according to statistics maintained by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In the United States, there were 24 terrorist attacks last year that killed 13 people and wounded 33, according to the report by NATO's Center of Excellence for Defense Against Terrorism.
But legal restrictions on the activities of U.S. armed forces are slowing crucial collaboration, insiders complain.
Federal laws dating to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limit the use of U.S. armed forces in domestic law enforcement and training, an impediment some members of Congress want to change.
The Pentagon's specialized $1.9 billion-a-year IED organization has “saved many servicemen's lives by teaching lessons learned in blood on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan,” say Republican Congressmen Peter King of New York, Daniel Lungren of California, and Michael McCaul of Texas, leaders of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
“Their hard-won knowledge should now be shared with American lawmen facing these same deadly threats at home.”
“To me it's crazy that the guy who is the expert on IEDs overseas can't coordinate with the Texas Rangers,” adds McCaul. “The military is unable to coordinate with state and local law enforcement, leaving a gaping hole in our security.”
Evidence of the threat has surfaced repeatedly. A car bomb was disarmed in New York City's Times Square and explosives were discovered in ink cartridges aboard two U.S.-bound commercial cargo planes in 2010. Improvised explosives in an airline passenger's underwear nearly brought down a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009.
The suspect in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre, James Holmes, deployed IEDs in his apartment, authorities said.
With Mexican drug cartels using car bombs in cities bordering Texas, officials along the southwest border are increasingly concerned about ready-to-go devices being smuggled into the United States.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, citing the widening threat, has pressured the Pentagon to help train officers to detect IEDs and also is seeking FBI approval for the Texas Rangers to establish a statewide unit to deal with explosives.
But his efforts have run into bureaucratic resistance, according to knowledgeable officials.
“It is essential that all state troopers be skilled in the detection and interdiction of (devices), precursor chemicals and component parts,” McCraw said. Texas Rangers and DPS criminal investigation agents have training “to detect IEDs and their components in the course of their investigations, whether the targets are Mexican cartels or serial murderers,” he added.
“Deeper cooperation is absolutely essential,” insists McCaul, a former deputy state attorney general. “I think military and government lawyers are being too cautious. We want to fix that.”
stewart.powell@chron.com
KABOOOOOM! Coming to your hometown.....
“The domestic IED threat from both homegrown terrorists and global threat networks is real and presents a significant security challenge for the United States and our international partners,” Barbero warned a subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security.”
Exaggerate the threat, scare people and before you know it we’ll have TSA checkpoints and military patrols across the USA. All for nothing except control (of us).
Exactly. If we don’t want stray dogs pooping all over our carpet any fool should know to close the stinkin’ door.
LLS
I am not making a direct threat myself... I am just rendering an opinion that I know to be fact.
LLS
You hit the nail on the head. The majority of Americans will say they don’t mind being checked out by the military as long as it keeps them safe. We’ve become a nation of pansies.
By all means keep the Mexican border open Barry.
After all they do jobs Americans won’t do, like gardening around office buildings. They may just want to plant something.
“Exaggerate the threat, scare people and before you know it we’ll have TSA checkpoints and military patrols across the USA. All for nothing except control (of us).”
You think the threat is exaggerated? Hell, we don’t have ‘checkpoints’ at the border! That’s what we need, and every one trying to come in gets bounced back! Hard! So they remember next time. “They” won’t need to control ‘US’...all the foreign terrorists/cartels are going to kill us first!
Do you understand they’ve been using IEDs along the border for quite some time? Do you understand that Mexico has the deadliest city in the WORLD...that more beheadings and murder of journalists happen in Mexico than anywhere? Do you understand that ANYONE can come over that border and stay here UNquestioned??
It’s up to US to see that these elected jack asses enforce the laws instead of forcing all of us into some TSA dance!
We need to vote out all of them that refuse to close that border, and that includes the traitors in the GOP..and that is MOST of ‘em.
Example..
#
California Iraqi-Mexican crime ring busted, police say
Thu Aug 18 20:08:59 2011 · by Whats the Matter with Kansas? · 75 replies
Reuters ^ | August 18,2011 | Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Peter Bohan
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Police in southern California have arrested 60 people and broken up an Iraqi criminal ring accused of selling drugs, machine guns and improvised bombs out of an immigrant social club, authorities said on Thursday. The swoop by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and local police targeted a network operating out of El Cajon, which is near San Diego and close to the border with Mexico.
Cowboys and moslimes...
You're joking, right?
I mean from 9/11 to the election of a guy named Baraq Hussein was only 7 years....
Bring it.
Let's get this over with.
ping
related
Mexican Cartels Using IEDs
KRGV ^ | 04/09/2010 | Will Ripley and Lisa Cortez
Posted on Fri Apr 9 10:46:22 2010 by SwinneySwitch
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2489897/posts?page=5
I expect before very long we will soon learn what the citizens of Isreal live with every day....withOUT the security they insist on at their borders, etc!
LLS
I’m sorry... I liked that and stole it!
LLS
i'd like to take credit for it, but can't... it's from a joke Three strangers awaiting their flights strike up a conversation in the airport passenger lounge in Bozeman, Montana. One is an American Indian passing through from Lame Deer. Another is a Cowboy on his way to Billings for a livestock show. And the third is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived at Montana State University from the Middle East who is headed to a training conference in Detroit.
Their discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon, the two Westerners learn that the Arab is a devout, radical Muslim who supports Osama Bin Laden's Jihad, so the conversation falls into an uneasy lull. The cowboy leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table and tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face. The wind outside is blowing tumbleweeds around, and the old windsock is flapping; but still . . . no plane comes.
Finally, ! the American Indian clears his throat and softly, he speaks, "At one time here, my people were many, but sadly, now we are few."
The Muslim student raises an eyebrow and leans forward, "Once my people were few," he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"
The Montana cowboy shifts his toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says in a drawl, "That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet, . . . but I do believe it's a-comin'."
But some Americans will take such actions as a threat and perhaps use their skills to defend America any means
I thought the same thing. If one IED blew up on interstate 95, many people would clamor to have the Gov't take away their rights to free travel, and for DHS to monitor every move people make in an automobile.
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