The Washington Post reports that authorities are closing in on a US citizen of Pakistani extraction for questioning in connection with failed Times Square car bomb. And now, the NYT reports, they have him.
Authorities were closing in on a man who they said was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, according to a senior Obama administration official. Investigators and agents also were scouring international phone records showing calls between some of the people who might be associated with this and folks overseas, according to a U.S. official who has discussed the case with intelligence officers.
The growing evidence of terrorist connections in the Times Square case led the New York-based terrorism task force to become the lead agency in the investigation, which had been overseen by the New York Police Department, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. That indicates that the failed bombing is being investigated as a terrorist incident with international connections, the official said.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Richard Kolko of the New York field division said in a statement Monday night that the FBI JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] and NYPD are working this case jointly and have been since the beginning. The New York police force, known for its expertise in terrorism matters, is represented on the task force and will remain heavily involved in the probe, officials said.
According to the New York Times, Faisal Shahzad was arrested at a New York-area airport apparently trying to flee. Charges against Mr. Shahzad, who had returned recently from a trip to Pakistan, were not announced. Shahzad was connected to the purchase of the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder which was parked in Times Square with a load of explosive.
Keith Johnson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, believes that even if links are found they are likely to be looser than those which bound the 9/11 attackers to al-Qaeda. The era of the superattack may now have been superseded by an emphasis on numerous smaller attacks, like a swarm.
No one would think of New York as a soft target, with the worlds biggest police force, and some of the best counterterrorism units, said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at Georgetown University. And yet, in the past few years, terrorists are continuously targeting New York, which shows theres no such thing as complete security.
But not only are the threats getting more numerous, they are at least in the public mind, becoming more diffuse. Mentioned among the threats are the Austin, Texas man who flew a small plane into the local office of the Internal Revenue Service in February, killing himself and one other person, and the March arrest of the Christian militia members in Michigan, who allegedly planned to murder U.S. law-enforcement officials.
The War on Terror, if that word may still be used, is suddenly with everybody. Speculation about the identity of the perpetrators has run the gamut. Robert Dreyfuss writing in the Nation said it seems far more likely to me that the perpetrator of the bungled Times Square bomb plot was either a lone nut job or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right. Election Ink said that Anonymous sources have reported that a suspect is currently being questioned in the Bridgeport / New Haven CT area. The suspect is a middle age white male, has a history of strong political views, and considers himself a Tea Party activist. An arrest is expected within days. In a strange twist, the suspect worked in the past as an informant with law enforcement agencies.
Quotes from NY Magazine captured the wide range of thoughts going through the minds of public officials. Mayor Bloomberg said the motive could be anything. The White House actually managed to utter the T word though in this case it primarily meant terrorize.
Attorney General Eric Holder said investigators have some good leads, though he wouldnt elaborate. Bloomberg told Katie Couric he thinks it could have been a domestic terrorist acting alone: If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesnt like the health care bill or something. It could be anything. Kelly said it is too early to tell if this was the act of an individual or a larger network. Whoever it was, the White House used the T-word to describe the bomber: I would say that was intended to terrorize, and I would say that whomever did that would be categorized as a terrorist, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
America is a country with a considerable number of enemies nearly all of whom would sue it for defation should it mention their names. One of the fundamental problems with this investigation and concerns over who is handling it revolves around the problem of who the perpetrator will turn out to be. Unless it happens to be an alien from another dimension, an arrest will explode one of several cherished political world views. If the perpetrator turns out to be a Tea Party male that will be one thing; if it turns out to be an American of Pakistani origin, that will be another. Nobody will be happy. And being happy is the whole point of things today. As Lee Smith pointed out in his essay The Trouble With Proxy Wars, every action and perception is judged in the scales of the political effects in Washington. That balance beam drove actions in Iraq; it is driving actions in Afghanistan and to some extent, it will shape the direction of the Times Square investigation. Wars are no longer fought with victory on the battlefield in mind. Rather they are waged with victory in Washington as the foremost consideration. Smith writes:
How did this come to pass? How did it happen that adversaries like Iran and Syria are able to shape US strategy, so that we have failed to win in Iraq and will fail in Afghanistan and have deterred ourselves from taking action against the Iranian nuclear program, and have jammed up our strategic alliance with Israel? It is because American leadership of the last two administrations failed to act against those states that have attacked our troops, allies and interests. We did we not win in Iraq because states like Syria and Iran did not pay a price for the acts of force they used to shape political effects to their own advantage; when we failed to do so we abandoned our Middle East policy to the mercy of our enemies, who, as we are repeatedly told, can ruin Iraq and Afghanistan whenever they decide to take off their gloves. We did not win because our leadership, abetted by Washington policy intellectuals, is more interested in political effects in Washington than strategic victories in the Middle East. Seen in this light, the only American victory in the region is a pyrrhic one, the bitter harvest of which we may well be reaping for many years to come.
A wide range of actions is precluded because we dont want to go there. Whether it is the question of retaliating against Syria or Iran, using the T or TP word, or questioning the legitimacy of certain religions and agendas, finding the solution becomes driven less by the facts than by allowable political space. Public policy freezes up when it comes face to face with what it cannot abide; the mighty Federal Bureaucracy turns into the stone at the first glimpse of the Gorgons Stare.
MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer is disappointed that the Times Square bomber was not an angry White man from the Tea Party.
"Shepard Smith laid it in the line on Fox News a few minutes ago.
He said This bombing was not stopped. The terrorist was not intercepted. The bomb just failed to go off."
No doubt about it Contessa was just admitting out loud what most far left loons were thinking today when they woke up to the news that a Pakistani native was the car bomber.
Question: Is Shahzad Faisal Barack Obamas type?
Posted by hillbuzz under Uncategorized | Tags: Kal Penn, Shahzad Faisal, what sort of guys does Obama like?, What's Obama's type? |[12] Comments
Drudge is running a photo of the Muslim who tried to kill hundreds of Americans this weekend including scores of children on Times Square by positioning a car bomb just outside the theater that was showing The Lion King.
His name is Shazad Faisal, an agent of The Religion of Peace and he looks like someone our current president would TOTALLY date.
Considering this was Obamas boyfriend in college, and the man he went to Pakistan with in 1981, when Americans were not allowed to travel there under a US Passport:
And actor Kal Penn and the president seem to have broken up, and not on good terms, with Penn spirited away from the White House as quickly as possible recently after abandoning his acting career to be close to Obama in Washington.
Are we getting closer to figuring out Obamas type?
Its been our experience that guys tend to date the same person over and over again generally going for people who remind them of their first crush, or the first person they had a relationship with.
If thats the case, then we wonder who was the guy Obama first crushed on and why the White House felt the need to encourage The National Enquirer and The Globe to rev up the old discredited Vera Baker rumors now to paint the president as a skirt-chasing stud.
There are no coincidences with this White House.
Only questions.
And super-creepy dudes Obama seems to have a major thing for.
AARP and SEIU implicated, too:
http://wtpotus.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/there-are-no-coincidences-anymore/
"So, were Argentina now?
I believe this is called theft in the real world.
The Republicans better make a campaign issue out of this. "
"The government wants everything we have. That much is clear now.
They wont defend the country against terrorism. They wont defend the borders of the country. They want to defund the military. They insist on alienating all our allies and sucking up to our enemies. They refuse to let us drill for oil but insist on bending over backwards to allow foreign companies to drill for the same oil. They wont take their damned boots off the economys neck and they wont do a damned thing about unemployment.
No, all they want to do is build their communist state where THEY get all the good stuff and WE stand outside the fence, begging the government for scraps for the rest of our unhappy lives.
But were supposed to pay for it. Were supposed to give up more and more and more and more and more to help make this horror happen.
I am well and truly sick of these pigs. I never subscribed to the eat the rich idea, but Im starting to find the idea almost attractive.
At just what point do we march on Washington with a real plan for making further business impossible there?"
Question: Are regular Americans starting to wake up to the fact the MSM constantly lies and pushes its own agenda?
Posted by hillbuzz under Uncategorized[38] Comments
Do you think Americans are waking up to the fact the MSM in this country lies and pushes its own agenda?
The MSM fell over backwards trying to claim the terrorist attack this weekend in Times Square was the work of the Tea Party. Thats beyond absurd.
When it was proven that Muslims and the Religion of Peace were, once again, behind an attack on Americans, the MSM seemed beyond disappointed. Contessa Brewer on CNN even went so far as to say she was frustrated that it wasnt Tea Partiers involved, the way CNN and MSNBC wanted it to be.
It was a rare moment of candor for Brewer. And it proved the MSM in this country is Leftist-controlled and agenda-driven.
They want to apologize for and enable Muslims in all their efforts to kill Americans and the MSMs number one goal is to discredit and malign the Tea Party Movement, and all Americans who stand up against this current administration.
Can it be any more obvious?
May 4, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I think its part of a greater awakening. People are looking at Pres Obama, Napalitano, Holder, Pelosi, and the whole gaggle of LSM news anchors with bewilderment.
May 4, 2010 at 2:48 pm
So the LSM actually hopes that a member of the Tea Party Movement will do something violent so that they can write off the entire movement as violent and, therefore, not to be listened to.
Yet the Islamofacists have done various and repeated violent acts against non-military, peaceful Americans and the LSM bends over backwards to remind us that Muslims love peace.
May 4, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Your #2 probably describes millions of people. Ace from Ace of Spades had a brilliant post about a week ago about these sorts of Independents whose political analysis is based exclusively on shunning any distinctions or bothersome information. (Ace as usual put it very eloquently).
These folks do not want to be agitated by any consequential arguments or issues. They want nice.
The media is aimed exactly at these ignoramuses.
Illegals As Useful Tools Of Left
According to David Horowitz's invaluable "Discover the Networks" Web site, NISN has partnered closely with ultraradical groups like Code Pink, the Vanguard Public Foundation and the Institute for Policy Studies, among others, suggesting they've got lots of money. Illegals As Useful Tools Of Left
Obama Administration Reveals Number of US Warheads
by Rodan ( 17 Comments )
Filed under Barack Obama, Military, Tranzis at May 4th, 2010 - 6:00 pm
The Progressive regime of Barack Hussein Obama has revealed the number of warheads the United States has in its arsenal. This comes as no shock as yesterday we had a post stating Obama would do this. He was once a supporter of the Nuclear Freeze movement of the early 1980s and seeks to eliminate these weapons. By publicly stating what we have, he has tipped our hands.
Read the rest: U.S. reveals it has 5,113 nuclear warheads
Barack Hussein Obamas Tranzi Progressive Ideology is dangerous. He views America as just another nation part of some fictitious Global Community.
Update: The media is reporting Obama was funny at the White House Correspondents Dinner. However he used nasty mockery of Conservatives. He actually was pretty nasty.
You be the judge.
VIDEO AT LINK
This is 3rd world style demagoguery wrapped up as a joke. he let his true feeling show.
Tags: Nuclear Disarmament, Nukes
17 Comments »
The Left Has Lost Their Mind Over Guns
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USING LIGHT to heal battlefield injuries?
HOW TO hang a tire swing.
FIGHTING AGAINST a national electric grid? A picture is worth a thousand words. The purple and red are where the wind is:
You can see that the US Southeast especially has weak winds. In my view that part of the country needs nuclear power.