Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’

Injured soldier outraged suspected shooter receives salary while his family financially struggles in recovery

The Department of Defense confirms to NBC 5 Investigates that accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan has now been paid more than $278,000 since the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 32 injured. The Army said under the Military Code of Justice, Hasan’s salary cannot be suspended unless he is proven guilty.

If Hasan had been a civilian defense department employee, NBC 5 Investigates has learned, the Army could have suspended his pay after just seven days.

Read more by Scott Friedman at nbcdfw.com

Before we get too far away from the Marathon bombing, it needs to be acknowledged that this was yet another incident in which the average American proved crucial.

It wasn’t overweight and aging police Tac squads, lumbering around in their armor through a shut-down city, clumped together as perfect targets for an IED, crowded four to a doorway as they spoke to residents, with no sign of lookouts or adequate cover. The Boston PD was lucky they were not up against trained terrorists. A couple of Quds or Hezb’allah operatives and the casualty list would have been much higher. The department’s methods need to be thoroughly overhauled.

Read more by J.R. Dunn at American Thinker

What are we being asked to give up?

Admit that you were transfixed by surveillance video of Boston’s brother bombers. It was quintessential “Gotcha!” for the noblest of causes.

Testament to technology trumping wrongdoing, it gave cause for relief. Knock on wood, too, that the cops could track the cell phone left in the Mercedes SUV hijacked by one bomber. And those Google Maps aerial shots of the boat were pretty neat, right?

The same technology, of course, can catch your everyday non-terrorist running a red light, parking illegally at a Dunkin’ Donuts or smooching with someone not your spouse.

Cameras follow us like gum stuck to a shoe. But while official Washington is fixated on law enforcement efficiency in the wake of Boston, you might wonder about the precautions taken by those protecting us. That’s especially true given the rise of facial recognition, zoom technology, biometrics and the overall ability to track us from one camera to another, right across town.

Read more by James Warren at NY Daily News

We now have had a number of terrorist attacks on the homeland — though the administration often refers to them in ridiculous euphemisms like “workplace violence” — and the behavior of the administration, including our lavishly funded FBI and Homeland Security Administration, and our richly rewarded media stars remains so predictable I’ve decided to spare you the time it takes to unravel the unending lies and poppycock we are regularly fed about these horrors, lies, and blundering that only increase our danger.

This week’s bombing of civilians at the Boston Marathon in which three people, including an 8-year-old child, perished upon being torn to bits and 250 were wounded, some most grievously, followed the template set by the other Islamist incidents on Obama’s watch. The media stumbles over itself trying not to see why we were attacked while glorifying terrorists, showing them in the most innocent-looking youthful pictures they can find, interviewing irrelevant credulous neighbors and chums and blaming innocents (us) for the acts of terror. The federal government in large part, starting with the White House, is no better. HSA Secretary Napolitano urges us, “see something, say something” but the major media and all the president’s men (and women) seem to operate under a different order, “See, hear, and speak nothing of the Islamist evil that threatens us.”

Read more by Clarice Feldman at AmericanThinker.com

America is facing a jihadist enemy. It is an enemy that has proven it can inflict more civilian casualties on the United States than any other foreign enemy in almost 200 years.

Just last week this enemy killed 3 innocent people, wounded more than 100 and paralyzed a major American city.

Yet, our obsession with political correctness, with a strong desire not to offend our enemies makes our self-defense immeasurably more difficult.

Read more by Jay Sekulow at FoxNews.com

Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.

Read more by Chris Cassidy at BostonHerald.com

Are you fed up with the antiseptic slogan, “If you see something, say something?”

The authorities expect us to report suspicious backpacks, but stay silent as the tomb about the nature of the men who put them there.

We’re instructed to speak up about a bloodied man’s movement under a boat tarp, but to shut up about the ideological movement that drove him to commit his carnage.

Well, as it happens, I’ve seen quite a lot of things over the last few years that I’d like to say something about — enough things to break a heart and to kill a country.

And after the Boston Massacre committed by two immigrant jihadis, I’m going to say them.

Read more by Stella Paul at American Thinker

In response to Rand Paul’s letter asking whether “the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial,” we now have an answer. Attorney General Holder responds, in a word “Yes.” Of course, it is caveated with ‘extraordinary circumstances’ and ‘necessity’ but as Mike Krieger so subtly summarizes: “the military can assassinate U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.” As NBC reports, the letter from Holder surfaced just as the Senate Intelligence Committee was voting 12-3 to approve White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan to be CIA director. The vote came after the White House agreed to share additional classified memos on targeted drone strikes against U.S. citizens overseas. As Rand Paul commented, “this is more than frightening… it is an affront to the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”

Read more at ZeroHedge.com

A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” — even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.

Read more by Michael Isikoff at NBC News

An old-time trial lawyer once said, “When your case is weak, shout louder!”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouted louder when asked about the Obama administration’s story last fall that the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. ambassador’s quarters in Benghazi, Libya, was due to an anti-Islamic video that someone in the United States had put on the Internet, and thereby provoked a protest that escalated into violence.

Read more by Thomas Sowell at IBD

A federal judge has ruled that President Barack Obama’s administration doesn’t have to publicly disclose its legal justification for the drone attacks and other methods it has used to kill terrorism suspects overseas.

Two New York Times reporters and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a 2011 request under the Freedom of Information Act that sought any documents in which Department of Justice lawyers had discussed the highly classified “targeted-killing” program.

Read more by DAVID B. CARUSO at AP.com

In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report.

Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder granted the center the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and other data, and to store it for up to five years, even without suspicion that someone in the database has committed a crime, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story.

Read more Kim Zetter at Wired.com

From http://lucianne.com

The hits just keep coming….

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Stand down?

You can’t be serious.

As I noted a few days ago it appears that our “purpose” in maintaining that “safe house” in Libya was that we had thousands of MANPADs — man-totable anti-aircraft missiles — “loose” over there, and were trying to find them and basically buy them back (read: bribery.) Therefore, we knew damn well that the so-called “annex” in question was a high-value target to anyone who had a stick in their ass about America, as it contained both weapons and lots of money — two commodities in high demand in that part of the world.

At least three men, including two now-dead ones, ignored the order to stand down and attempted to defend the consulate. They died defending American soil despite orders to not do so. Worse, during the attempted defense they managed to get a laser designator on the people firing on the annex and yet they couldn’t get anyone to put ordnance on that location.

So exactly who refused help?

It is looking increasingly likely that the person responsible for this is President Obama himself, personally.

Read more by Karl Denninger at Market-Ticker.org

Obama has been telling the nation tales since his election.  In fact, his entire life has been one long story with him as writer, director, producer, and star — you could call it “A Barack Obama Production.”

It’s not that he hasn’t told us stories; it’s that the ones he has told bear little resemblance to reality.

After all the suffering America has experienced while he was busy getting the “policy right,” there is no one left who still believes in Barack’s brilliance.  After watching him in two debates sans teleprompter, his reputation as humanity’s greatest orator has evaporated along with his lead in the polls.

From the 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed and the 46 million people now on food stamps, to the decline in workforce participation and the explosion of people on disability, many now realize the fallacy of his reputedly deft decision-making skills.  His claim in the last debate of having created 5 million jobs rings hollow to an electorate seeing fewer people working today than when Obama took office.

Yet, the story he insists on telling America is that he saved us.

Read more at American Thinker