A Good Week for U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts
If the plot was successfully disrupted, then we may have dodged an attack on the scale of Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.
There is more good news. The arrest of Zazi has eclipsed a flurry of activity by federal authorities against a number of others on American soil involved in terrorism.
Islamic convert Michael Finton (aka “Talib Islam”) was arrested this week for plotting to blow up a federal building in downtown Springfield, Illinois. Finton drove a van containing what he thought was explosive material and parked it directly in front of the federal offices in the Illinois capital on Wednesday. He then tried to detonate the bomb remotely with his cell phone. Unbeknown to Finton, his accomplice was an FBI agent and the bomb a fake.
On Thursday an illegal immigrant from Jordan, Mosam Maher Husein Smadi, was arrested for attempting to bomb a downtown Dallas skyscraper. Again, Smadi’s accomplice in the plot was an FBI agent who also provided him with a fake bomb. Smadi’s brother was also arrested in California, although it’s not clear how involved he was in the plot.
Also on Thursday, an indictment was unsealed against a Brooklyn man charged with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. According to a press release by the Department of Justice, Betim Kaziu unsuccessfully attempted to join and train with jihadi groups abroad. He was apparently intent on fighting against the U.S. military and made several trips across the globe in furtherance of this goal. He was eventually arrested in Kosovo by local police before being sent back to the US.
Since Kaziu is a U.S. citizen, how this isn’t treason is any one’s guess.
Finally, the indictments against North Carolinians Daniel Patrick Boyd, Hysen Sherifi, and Zakariya Boyd were amended this week to include charges that they were plotting to attack the U.S. Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. Prior to the superseding indictments, the three had only been charged with plotting to aid jihadists abroad.
To recap, this week alone we have news of four separate plots by Islamic extremists to commit acts of terrorism against Americans either on U.S. soil or abroad. It was also revealed that a fifth previously disclosed plot had a domestic target in mind.
Altogether, five people were indicted this week within the U.S. on terrorism-related charges. Five more were arrested.
The best news of all is that none of them succeeded.
It is said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. The number of foiled terrorism plots revealed this week serves as a reminder that the aphorism remains true. And we should be thankful for those who serve on the front line against terror. Whether they fight abroad in the U.S. military or at home in various state and federal law enforcement agencies, they are engaged in different battles of the same war.
So many news about this.
If you see a cockroach in the kitchen,
odds are there are 50 more in the closets.
Our law enforcement are the best,
but our borders have been breached and we are now living with the enemy.
Obama needs to give another Muslim appeasement speech and prosecute our traitorous CIA to the full extent of the law-
Just as soon as they can clear the courtrooms and jails of these ‘would be’ bombers.
Good work all around, especially by the FBI: they consistently has been easily the most reliable, most diligent and less political of all the alphabet agencies when it comes to counter-terrorism. So much so that I’m wondering if the CIA’s lame ass and often pointlessly brutal counter-terrorism department should be moved and placed under FBI jurisdiction. The FBI and CIA do not get along at all, even in a post-9/11 world, thanks to numbnutted stuff like this
Also, since you guys never pass up an opportunity to make cheap shots at Obama, I hope you don’t mind my making one at Bush, especially since, unlike your cheap shots, there is some basis in reality here: it’s just too bad that Obama wasn’t President in 2001 — 9/11 may never have happened.
The “religion of peace”, ain’t it great. This must be killing the NY Times and the crowd of loons who work there. After all, they, the cognoscenti, know who the real enemy is, don’t they?
Hint, they carry signs at public rallies.
I do wonder if the dreaded NSA surveillance program ["spying on Americans"]came into play in any of these various plots.
Also, if the Democrats will continue to push plans for revisions of the Patriot Act and other manifestations of the Fascist State instigated by the notorious theocrat George Bush ?
All in the name of civil liberties of course.
Its good to see good results. It shows the current American administration is on the right track and doing the right things. We can all be proud that they have their eye on the ball.
Thanks.
It turns out Bush, Cheney, Gonzales were right when it came to the Patriot Act. Imagine if the lefty progressives got their way and stopped all forms of wire-tapping and intelligence gathering of terrorist cells in our own backyard?
We’d be in deeeeep kimchi today.
A mere 50 years ago, the total population of Muslims residing in America numbered in the few thousands, and the notion that Jihad posed any threat whatsoever was absolutely zero. Today Muslims number in the few millions, and America is under a threat which will only become more dire as time marches on. This for the sake of our multicultural enrichment.
An alien and inimical culture (Islam) is first permitted and then unquestioningly encouraged to thrive and expand. To prevent their so easily hurt feelings and to forestall any sense that Muslims are being or should be singled out, (lest the Muslims respond with rage and murder), ALL U.S. citizens are now being subjected to increasingly invasive erosions of our dignity and our hard-won civil rights. The laws which guarantee our rights and which Muslims are exploiting to protect themselves from scrutiny, restriction, or expulsion are the exact same laws which the Muslims intend to subvert and destroy as Islam spreads in America.
Our freedom to speak is endangered by Muslim threats of violence …
Our freedom to assembly is endangered by Muslim threats of violence …
Our freedom to travel is endangered by Muslim threats of violence …
Our freedom to to practice our relgion, or to reject religion is endangered by Muslim threats of violence …
And yet our political leadership, along with our malignant media continue to peddle the lie that there’s no linkage between terror, Islam, Muslims, and our eroding liberties in America !
ENOUGH!
Yea, we can all be happy the southern border is wide open, and my post was deleted.
I guess it is me that is the problem. Not moon god worshipers wanting to murder Americans.
ROPMA!
Of course there’s many more islamic jihadist terrorists still in the United States. An official Virgnina state study showed that thousands of hamas, hezbollah and al queda operatives are living freely in Northern Virginia alone. Why they aren’t being executed, arrested or deported is beyond me. I guess we’re worried about “respecting their 1st ammendment rights”. What a joke. It seems only another terrorist attack on this country is going to wake people up.
BC #3 – It is Obama who has been the best friend to terrorists the world over, including domestic ones like his buddy Ayers. His speech in Cairo, his desires for unconditional discussions with Iran’s dictator, his not wanting to be a part of the Day of Prayer right there in Washington and pronouncing to the world that America is no longer a Christian country, while at the same time honoring Islam and allowing terrorists bent on destroying America and the West, out of Gitmo and live like kings at taxpayers’ dime in resort islands — no, don’t blame Bush for 9/11 while giving credit to someone who benefited from Bush’s tough stance against domestic and international terrorism.
If it wasn’t for Bush, these terrorists and would-be suicide bombers would not have been captured today. It was Bush who kept us safe for 8 years after 9/11.
And it was the liberal Democrats including your messiah who fought Bush tooth and nail and were/are against wire-tapping to preserve our security and intelligence gathering.
How dare you try to change history and facts.
I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced it was a good day. When a pipe bomb filled with cordite is defined as WMD by congress, there really is no way to deter the real thing, which used to be The Bomb or NBC–obviously normal law enforcement can’t. Reactive as it is, normal law enforcement doesn’t deter acts of war, much less pipe bombs. As far as I can see, the authorities have been reacting to known suspects, and not the best and the brightest. You never know what you don’t know. With legal torture off the table, I don’t see allot of bean spilling going on by dedicated Muslims on jihad snitching out their brothers in Allah. Doing normal law enforcement means they do time on lesser offenses, lying to the police, and recruit more fellow travelers in Club Fed. So, the democrats want to spend 900 billion on health care “reform” over ten years instead of spending another 900 billion on the war, call it a day, and give amnesty to twelve million illegal aliens as unemployment heads for 10 percent and a 3 trillion dollar deficit. Gee, that sure looks like a winning formula to me, we just have to talk the free lance enemy, having the time of their lives, into saying uncle. Some people just enjoy doing war.
One simple question..what exactly do we get for taking the terrible risk
of permitting muslim immigration into the USA? What do we get for importing
a religion that has 165 explicit page long hymns to martyrs and commandments to wage Jihad and kill infidels?
What do we get for the relentless psychological strain worrying about when a muslim will finally take his religion really seriously and act on those commandments? What do we get for handing off this threat to our children to live with. Whats the payoff for endless Billions spent to monitor this population forever? Some more surly cabdrivers? More hate filled stares on our streets? Oh wait..we get “diversity” thats right …yes indeed.
To 888: Your comments about Obama are not only factless, but delusional (gee, how unusual on a right wing web site.) As far as my comments go, not so much.
When will you slack jawed fools do even a little bit of research? You guys have no idea how bad Bush and his people were, and the extent of the mess they left behind. Seriously….
BC,
Your are not very bright. A lot of folks did not enjoy watching Bush help companies leave America, and push this country into hock to the CI-COMMS.
Don’t you think it is time to move past Bush, and focus on the Marxist in office turing this country into a sociolist state?
Plus, how about the topic on the religion of peace being in the news so much this past week.
Note that Imam Afzali essentially acted as a double agent. He had pledged to work with the FBI, but when push came to shove, he warned Zazi that the FBI was after him, because his ultimate loyalty is with jihad in America. The sacred books of Islam actually encourage this, under the taqiyya doctrine, which you can learn about here if you are not familiar.
At the same time, the FBI planted agents (tricky business) within the jihadists to help track them, successfully, meaning that we do have agents capable of meeting the threat head-on, which is quite reassuring to me.
We have a real on-going war between jihad and counter-jihad in the homeland! We should remember that a war can be won without winning every battle, meaning that, God forbids, a terrorist can still manage to fall through the cracks, now and then. I hope and pray that our counterterrorism agents have indeed all the tools, (and all the courageous and talented personel in language and deceit) they need.
We owe them a big one, and I cannot understand why today’s journalists cannot bring them selves to say so on the front page. Are they intimidated by the jihadists? If you think the question is illegitimate, please explain why.
The U.S. terror war as seen through the eyes of a prisoner
When we first began corresponding with Khalid Awan in 2007, we had no idea why he was serving time in U.S. federal prison. We soon discovered Awan was one of the first of thousands of Muslims taken prisoner in the post-9/11 U.S. “terror war.” As the story began unfolding in our letters, we began to realize that this honest, humble and sincere man was not only innocent, but the ongoing injustice being done to him provides critical insight into the mindless, meanspirited, bureaucratic-yes-men idiocy fueling the illegal U.S. “war on terror” (and just about everything else that is going wrong in this country). At our insistence, Awan wrote his story and supplied us with whatever documents we requested. And now, after three months of cooperative efforts, the story of Khalid Awan can be told. We have come to know Awan as a peaceful man engaged in peaceful work who has been wrongfully accused, detained and repeatedly convicted of crimes he did not commit because he was a Muslim with international connections and an office in New York on 9/11. We present this to you in faith that you will realize a deeper understanding of the levels of complicity necessary for the “land of the free” to tolerate the phony war on terror year after year and in hope that Awan—and all the other million or more political prisoners being held by this country—will one day be reunited with their families.
Khalid Awan # 50959-054
USP Marion
P.O.BOX : 1000
Marion, IL 62959
USA
http://www.freekhalidawan.com/,
http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=3759,
http://awankhalid.com/,
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60600467317