Category Archives: U.S.A.

15 Year Old Egyptian Convert to Christianity Sends Plea to Obama

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hat tip to R.E.A.L

peterathanasiusdina Cairo (AINA) — 15-year-old Egyptian girl Dina el-Gowhary, who converted from Islam to Christianity, has sent a plea to President Obama, complaining of mistreatment by the Egyptian Government and asking for his mediation. “Mr President Obama,” she writes, “we are a minority in Egypt. We are treated very badly. You said that the Muslim minority in America are treated very well, so why are we not treated here likewise? We are imprisoned in our own home because Muslim clerics called for the murder of my father, and now the Government has set for us a new prison, we are imprisoned in our own country.”

The handwritten Arabic letter, posted on Coptic websites, also says “I am 15 years old but I still have hope that my message will reach President Obama.”

The el-Gowhary family was barred from leaving Egypt on September 17, 2009 without any legal reason. They were told, however, that the order came from a higher authority (AINA 9-26-200).

Dina, is the daughter of 57-year-old Maher el-Gowhary, also known by his Christian name Peter Athanasius, who embraced Christianity secretly 35 years ago. In August, 2008 he filed the second ever lawsuit of a Muslim-born Egyptian against the Egyptian Government to officially alter his identification documents to reflect his new Christian identity. He lost the case in June 2009. According to the Court ruling, the religious conversion of a Muslim is against Islamic Sharia law and poses a threat to the “Public Order” in Egypt. (AINA 6-16-2009). He appealed the ruling.

Maher and Dina have been living in hiding ever since he filed his lawsuit because Muslim clerics have called him an apostate and several Fatwas (religious edicts), for ‘spilling his blood’ have been issued. He frequently changes where he lives to evade being killed, and friends supply him with food. “We cannot sleep, eat or go out in the street,” he said. He believes that the authorities are putting pressure on them (he and Dina) to re-convert back to Islam, “but this will never happen, even if we have to live on the streets. We love our Lord Jesus, and we have left Islam for good.”

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), in conjunction with Copts United, presented el-Gowhary’s case to the UN Human Rights Council in its 12th session in September 2009.

Maher visited the Canadian Embassy to see if he can get religious asylum. He found an Egyptian receptionist there in her Hijab, so he left. The Egyptian staff at Western embassies in Cairo are under the control of State Security.

Maher lashed out today at the Egyptian Government, asking for his Egyptian nationality to be taken away if it is the reason why the Government is adamant on depriving him of his basic rights as an Egyptian citizen. He told Copts United “if the Egyptian nationality is the cause of my imprisonment within my home and being unable to move, then I do not want it.” He added that it would be more honorable for him to hold the nationality of any other country rather than the Egyptian one “Where I live together with my daughter suffering imprisonment within the walls of my apartment and without any freedom.”

By Mary Abdelmassih

Iranian front group sent funds to Canada: U.S.

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From The National Post

Charity sending money to Canada is an Iranian government front: U.S.

McGill, Carleton among recipients

Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A woman walks past an anti-U.S. mural in Tehran Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images A woman walks past an anti-U.S. mural in Tehran

TORONTO — An organization the United States alleges is a front for the Iranian government has been bankrolling programs in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, charity records show.

The Alavi Foundation sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Canada before U.S. justice department officials went to court last Thursday to seize the group’s assets.

While the New York-based charity says its mission is to promote Islamic culture and the Persian language, U.S. prosecutors say it is secretly controlled by Tehran and have arrested its president.

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court alleges the foundation was closely tied to an Iranian government bank involved in building Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

“For two decades, the Alavi Foundation’s affairs have been directed by various Iranian officials, including Iranian ambassadors to the United Nations, in violation of a series of American laws,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Charity records show the foundation was active in Canada as well. The top Canadian recipient of Alavi funds was the Toronto Farsi School, which has received almost $130,000 from the foundation since 2005.

A spokesman for the school said he may have to shut down without the Alavi funding. “This is very important for us,” said the man, who did not want his name published. “We are trying to keep the language alive.”

McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies also received $120,000 from Alavi over the past three years. Professor Christopher Manfredi, the Dean of Arts, said the money paid for a Persian language program and supported several students. But he said the foundation was not involved in the operation of the program or the selection of students.

Carleton University received a single donation of $10,000. The College of Humanities approached the foundation to sponsor a 2007 conference in celebration of Molana Jala ad-Din Mohammad Molavi Rumi, a 13th-century Persian theologian. “There is no ongoing relationship between Carleton and the foundation,” said Steve Blais, the university’s media relations officer.

The Alavi Foundation disbursed millions to North American mosques and Farsi-language programs but it was also suspected of links to the Iranian regime. The FBI has been investigating its relationship to Bank Melli, which allegedly provides banking services to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the militia that trains, equips and finances such terrorist groups as the Taliban, Hezbollah and Hamas. The bank is also accused by the U.S. Treasury of facilitating the purchase of components for Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

The president of the Alavi Foundation, Farshid Jahedi, was arrested last December for obstructing justice after he allegedly destroyed documents he was required to produce to a grand jury looking into the foundation’s links to Bank Melli.

National Post

sb***@**********st.com


Vlad Tepes’s prediction for the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed

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Before reading my prediction, I would recommend reading the Stratfor Analysis and the Washington Times one as well and then hopefully, my prediction will make some sense.

Khalid Shiek Mohammed

First of all, the prosecution has been put in an impossible position. They have to get a conviction to avoid massive anger by the public, and they have to do it with a likely uncooperative CIA etc, as the evidence may both make these agencies look bad in the public eye for reasons such as water-boarding etc. as well as the fact that a great deal of the evidence may compromise existing operations and tip off various groups both within the US and terrorist cells overseas. This was one of the reasons given that the one person so far taken to a civilian court over 911 was allowed to walk from a German court. So its quite possible that the agencies with the evidence will not provide it. Other reasons will likely include the fact that this evidence was never collected with the methods standards or intentions of a criminal proceeding. So it most certainly will not make the cut unnecessarily embarrassing all in the process.

It should also be noted that intel agencies have turned on US administrations before. The FBI for instance had a grudge against Nixon and supplied one major US newspaper with a carefully crafted series of leaks which became known as ‘Watergate’.

Some years later, the CIA was displeased with G. W. Bush’s choice on how to conduct the Iraq war and leaked material to the NYT in order to create hostile public sentiment and it worked rather all too well.

I can easily see an environment where the constraints placed on security agencies by the Bush admin, and now being turned against them by the Obama admin, will make them happily take the only logical course open to them.

Refuse to cooperate with the prosecution, allow Mohammed to walk, and see the fastest decline in popularity of a US president in all of history.

As I see it, public perception will be that the refusal to cooperate with the prosecution will be on orders from the white house. People typically see the government as monolithic hence the preponderance of 911 conspiracy theorists. When the prosecution has no decent evidence to convict, and they likely would have had none even if the CIA and so on wished to cooperate, it will be seen as evidence of an administration that does not have American interests as front and centre.

I suspect that the CIA would rather see Khalid walk because he wasn’t read his Miranda rights as opposed to walk after a humiliating 8 month massively public condemnation of the nature and methods of the CIA itself, when it was actually doing its job according to the rules of the previous administration.

Eeyore for Vlad. Nov 17 2009

Please feel free to comment, add corrections or alternate ideas.

Here is a radio interview on point. Description and link below:

On our radio show last Saturday     
on the Obama administration’s decision to try five top terrorists, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in federal court in New York for their “crimes,” i.e., making war against the United States. It’s a great interview, I think, and as high-level a discussion as you will ever hear of the issues raised by that potentially fateful decision. Not because of my skill as an interviewer, but because Andy is uniquely qualified to speak authoritatively on the subject. In a better world, he, rather than Eric Holder, would be making such decisions. So here it is: the podcast of our interview with Andy McCarthy.


Stratfor: Deciphering the Mohammed Trial

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Deciphering the Mohammed Trial

November 16, 2009 | 2035 GMT


Graphic for Geopolitical Intelligence Report

By George Friedman

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in federal court in New York. Holder’s decision was driven by the need for the U.S. government to decide how to dispose of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. Naval base outside the boundaries of the United States selected as the camp in which to hold suspected al Qaeda members.

We very carefully use the word “camp” rather than prison or prisoner of war camp. This is because of an ongoing and profound ambiguity not only in U.S. government perceptions of how to define those held there, but also due to uncertainties in international law, particularly with regard to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Were the U.S. facility at Guantanamo a prison, then its residents would be criminals. If it were a POW camp, then they would be enemy soldiers being held under the rules of war. It has never really been decided which these men are, and therefore their legal standing has remained unclear.

War vs. Criminal Justice

The ambiguity began shortly after 9/11, when then-U.S. President George W. Bush defined two missions: waging a war on terror, and bringing Osama bin Laden and his followers to justice. Both made for good rhetoric. But they also were fundamentally contradictory. A war is not a judicial inquiry, and a criminal investigation is not part of war.

An analogy might be drawn from Pearl Harbor. Imagine that in addition to stating that the United States was at war with Japan, Franklin Roosevelt also called for bringing the individual Japanese pilots who struck Hawaii to justice under American law. This would make no sense. As an act of war, the Japanese action fell under the rules of war as provided for in international law, the U.S. Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Japanese pilots could not be held individually responsible for the lawful order they received. In the same sense, trying to bring soldiers to trial in a civilian court in the United States would make no sense. Creating a mission in which individual Japanese airmen would be hunted down and tried under the rules of evidence not only would make no sense, it would be impossible. Building a case against them individually also would be impossible. Judges would rule on evidence, on whether an unprejudiced jury could be found, and so on. None of this happened, of course — World War II was a war, not a judicial inquiry.

It is important to consider how wars are conducted. Enemy soldiers are not shot or captured because of what they have done; they are shot and captured because of who they are — members of an enemy military force. War, once launched, is pre-emptive. Soldiers are killed or captured in the course of fighting enemy forces, or even before they have carried out hostile acts. Soldiers are not held responsible for their actions, but neither are they immune to attack just because they have not done anything. Guilt and innocence do not enter into the equation. Certainly, if war crimes are in question, charges may be brought; the UCMJ determines how they will be tried by U.S. forces. Soldiers are tried by courts-martial, not by civilian courts, because of their status as soldiers. Soldiers are tried by a jury of their peers, and their peers are held to be other soldiers.

International law is actually not particularly ambiguous about the status of the members of al Qaeda. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them because they have not adhered to a fundamental requirement of the Geneva Conventions, namely, identifying themselves as soldiers of an army. Doing so does not mean they must wear a uniform. The postwar Geneva Conventions make room for partisans, something older versions of the conventions did not. A partisan is not a uniformed fighter, but he must wear some form of insignia identifying himself as a soldier to enjoy the conventions’ protections. As Article 4.1.6 puts it, prisoners of war include “Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.” The Geneva Conventions of 1949 does not mention, nor provide protection to, civilians attacking foreign countries without openly carrying arms. Continue Reading →

Ft Hood Update: Purple Hearts for the Fallen After All?

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This is an issue that I feel quite strongly about for a variety of reasons. So I was very glad to see Diana West writing on it. It is important at so many levels that people, especially military personnel who are killed by jihadis whether it is on US soil or not, but perhaps especially if it is on US soil, receive the Purple Heart medal. To not do so, victimizes these brave men and women a second time. People who already were willing to risk their lives for the defence of their nation, are buried or injured without even acknowledgement of their circumstance. And why? Is it to avoid offending the enemy? Perhaps much worse than that, is to avoid actually even naming the enemy for fear both of some kind of backlash against Islam and its never ending demands for the transformation of Western civilization to accommodate their choice of beliefs, and perhaps to avoid empowering them in some way. Once we admit who they are, we have to pay attention to them.

Taxonomy, I have always felt, has potential for tremendous evil. It would appear much of the current US and Western nations policy concerning a very real and multilateral threat from Islam is taxonomic in nature. Simply categorize it the way you want and hey presto, it isn’t a problem. Except when they kill everyone all over the place and change all your laws, customs, and freedoms.

Eeyore for Vlad

Purple Heart for Private Long please.

Written by: Diana West

A positive development in the quest for recognition that Hasan’s jihad on Ft. Hood was an act of war: US Rep. John Carter, the Republican who represents the Texas district that includes Ft. Hood, is introducing a bill to grant combatant status to those killed and wounded by Hasan (“allegedly”) on Nov. 5.

Pvt. William Long, killed by an avowed jihadist outside a Little Rock Army-Navy recruiting station, and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, wounded,  deserve to be on that list as well.

But Carter’s bill is the correct first step. Whether the bill passes in a Democrat-controlled Congress is the question. And whether it is debated fully to take in a free-speaking discussion of jihad, Islamic ideology and, Exhibit A, Hasan’s Islamically correct slide show, is the question, too.

From today’s Austin American-Statesman:

U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, will introduce a bill today that would grant combatant status for victims of the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood.

“The attack on Fort Hood was a planned terrorist attack, the same as the attacks against our forces overseas,” Carter said in a news release Monday. “Our wounded and the families of those who lost their lives should receive the same treatment, recognition and benefits as if the attack occurred on a U.S. military installation in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Carter’s district includes Fort Hood.

If granted this distinction, victims’ families would be eligible for greater compensation. The families of soldiers killed in the shooting would receive the maximum life insurance benefit, and permanently disabled victims would receive more disability payments. Currently, families of the soldiers killed are to receive a $100,000 tax-free death gratuity, according to an Army spokesman at Fort Hood.

In addition, military victims would be eligible for the Purple Heart under the bill, and civilians injured or killed could receive its civilian equivalent, the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom, which was established by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2001 to honor the victims of the attacks on the Pentagon. The medal is usually given to Department of Defense employees, but the secretary of defense has the authority to bestow it upon any civilian killed or injured defending the country.

Carter spokesman John Stone said the congressman hopes the measure passes quickly.

“We anticipate this will be a noncontroversial bill, and we may be able to convince the committee chairmen to expedite the process,” Stone said.

Non-controversial? I hope he’s right.

Has CAIR Violated the Iranian Assets Control Regulations?

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by Frank Gaffney

On November 12 2009, the federal government moved to seize four mosques and a New York City skyscraper owned by the Alavi Foundation, a group allegedly under the direct control of the Iranian government. The following day, the Washington Times exposed the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) for allegedly lobbying on behalf of the Iranian government in violation of the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act. We believe that a third U.S.-based group may be guilty of illegal ties to Iran under the Iranian Assets Control Regulations: the Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

On November 18, 2006 and November 23, 2008, CAIR held their gala annual fundraisers at the Marriott hotel in Arlington, Virginia. We’ve posted previously that the Interests Section of Iran attended both events. Because the U.S. and Iran do not have diplomatic relations, the Interests Section of Iran, sponsored by the Embassy of Pakistan, functions as the defacto embassy representing Iran’s government.

At the 2008 event, we recorded video of Master of Ceremonies and then CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Ahmed Bedier giving personal thanks to “the Interests Section of Iran” for their support:

Here’s more evidence that the “Interests Section of Iran” supported the CAIR fundraiser: the “Thanks to” pages of the 2006 and 2008 printed programs list the “Interests Section of Iran.”

Please click the link above to get the rest of this story. There is a lot more there at Big Government on this and this is a story of importance. Please do check and feel free to send this link or the original one out to any and all contacts you have.

Thank you.

Eeyore.

Salim Mansur on the Fort Hood massacre: the Islamist war against America

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Some purport that the Fort Hood killer Major Hasan is a poor unfortunate, a victim of a peculiar psychosis, a stress related, mind- disorienting affliction. Meanwhile, Islamists have been quick to deny Hasan’s connection to Islamic extremism. They defensively apply their stock response that ‘endless crimes are committed by non-Muslims against others regularly’ and imply a biased media coverage. In typical fashion,  The Canadian Charger writes under a headline banner:

It’s wrong to blame Muslims for what criminals do

`Aside from the fact that he is a psychiatrist and he was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan, there was little other information about Major Hasan. What conclusion will the majority of people draw from this coverage of a tragedy?

Non-Muslims shoot multitudes of people regularly – especially in America – but the perpetrators’ religious affiliations seldom becomes a focal point of media coverage.

Eric Rudolph and a significant number of others, bombed abortion clinics in the U.S., claiming to be good Christians, fulfilling God’s will.

—–

One, two buckle my shoe! Here is another perfect attempt at Islamist slight of hand:

‘While the Obama administration has refrained from using “Islamic” when referring to terrorism, the Fort Hood massacre is providing fodder for talk and radio shows, and websites which exploit such isolated incidents to ratchet up Islamophobia’. CC.

—–

Thankfully there are others who do not rely on such bullshit in their assessment of a killer intent on murdering as many innocents as possible in the name of Allah through jihad.

From The Ottawa Sun

“The massacre in Fort Hood, Texas, was an act in the war the Islamists declared some three decades ago against America, the great Satan in particular, and the west in general”.

Comment Columnists / Salim Mansur

Jihad sparked accused Fort Hood killer

By SALIM MANSUR

Last Updated: 14th November 2009, 2:40am

The massacre in Fort Hood, Texas, was an act in the war the Islamists declared some three decades ago against America, the great Satan in particular, and the west in general.

At what point in his life Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — 39 years of age, Muslim by birth to a Palestinian-American immigrant family and a psychiatrist serving in the U.S. military — became in his own mind a loyal soldier of the global Islamist jihad (war) is highly relevant as are other details of his private life in piecing together the psychological profile of this accused mass murderer.

It seems there can be no mistaking that Nidal Hasan went out as an Islamist warrior to kill as many infidels before he found his martyrdom.

A majority of Americans and most people in the west for any number of reasons, including multiculturalism and political correctness, are dismissive of the view that a war is being waged against them by a segment of the global Muslim population that seemingly has no political standing anywhere in the world.

This would not be the first time the liberal fallacy — the idea that since war is irrational, no rational people will deliberately ignite war — endangers a country against those dedicated to the politics of violence, as are the Islamists in our time.

Islamist terrorism is not an alien off-shoot within Muslim history. It is instead a mutation of a violent strain of Muslim religious thought and practice that might be traced back to the earliest years of Islam.

The basis of Islamism is in the binary thinking of its proponents, that the world is divided into two warring halves — those who accept the fundamentals of Islam and act upon them to establish society accordingly and those who reject Islam.

In recent years, such thinking resurfaced in political movements within the Muslim world which oppose the secular and liberal values of the modern world.

Henchmen for Islamists, religion is politics and national identity and the purpose of their jihad until victory or death is to establish in the here and now Islamic rule associated with Muhammad and his companions in the first decades of the 7th century Arabia.

In achieving this goal, the Islamists are prepared to use any means. The world is witnessing the Islamist version of political authority in Iran under the ayatollahs and their henchmen, in Saudi Arabia under the compact of a tribal dynasty and the fanatic Wahhabi sect of Islam and got a glimpse of it in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

America, with Israel in tow as the little Satan, stands in the path of the Islamists. For Islamists, defeating the two Satans means driving them out of the Middle East.

Those Muslims who repudiate Islamism on the basis of their faith and their views on politics are considered apostates by Islamists and are to be hunted down as they did with president Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan.

Nidal Hasan acted on his Islamist belief as did the 19 Arab-Muslim terrorists on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. He should be considered a war criminal and not a tragic victim of some mental illness and what he did was treason against his country.

sa**********@******ia.ca

U.S. seizes skyscraper, 4 mosques tied to Iran

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From The New York Times

U.S. Moves to Seize Properties Tied to Iran

Published: November 12, 2009

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan began legal action on Thursday to seize properties in Queens and across the country where several mosques are located in a broad move against a nonprofit organization that was accused of illegally providing money and other services to Iran.

The organization, the Alavi Foundation, owns the land on which the mosques sit, as well as a majority interest in an office tower at 650 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which has also been slated for seizure by the government.

The authorities accused the Alavi Foundation of spending millions of dollars to obtain and develop the properties, in violation of federal laws that ban trade with Iran.

In addition to the Queens property, which is at 55-11 Queens Boulevard and houses the Imam Ali Mosque, the government sought forfeiture of the foundation’s ownership in seven other properties, several of which house mosques. Another of the properties is a 36-story granite-and-glass tower at 52nd Street known as the Piaget Building.

The prosecutors did not specify how much money they were seeking to be forfeited, but they said that the foundation had tried for years to hide its relationship with the government of Iran. The prosecutors described meetings between the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and the foundation’s president. The two men met periodically, in a closed room, at the center in Queens, the complaint said.

The government, in a complaint filed in Federal District Court, made no allegations against the mosques or other tenants of the properties owned by the foundation.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the office of the United States attorney, Preet Bharara, said that they remained free to use the properties.

“There are no allegations of any wrongdoing on the part of any of these tenants or occupants,” said Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman. “No action has been taken against any tenants or occupants of those properties.”

A lawyer for the foundation, Daniel Ruzumna, said: “The Alavi Foundation is disappointed that the government decided to bring this civil forfeiture action. The foundation has been cooperating fully with the government since the investigation began. The foundation intends to litigate the government’s claims and expects to prevail when the litigation is over.”

The prosecutors’ action came on the same day the White House said that President Obama had renewed longstanding economic sanctions against Iran, Reuters reported. The president said, “Our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal.”

Worshippers at the Imam Ali Mosque were stunned by the news of the government’s action, which they said they learned of only from reporters outside.

The mosque is in a white two-story building that also houses the Razi School. A forfeiture notice had been taped to the front door.

“This is a place of worship; anybody can come to pray, that’s it,” said one congregant, Ali Naderi of Queens. “We do believe this allegation is not true.”

He said the mosque was a nonprofit organization and received support from the Alavi Foundation and others. “We don’t own this place,” he said. “We are a community and we come for worship.”

Mr. Naderi said 600 to 700 families attended the mosque regularly.

A man who answered the phone at Imam Ali Mosque on Thursday night said, “No one is here; everybody is praying,” and abruptly hung up.

“Because information is lacking, this might well cause yet another wave of fear in the Muslim community,” said Adem Carroll, chairman of the Muslim Consultative Network, an advocacy group. “It would be sad if word in our community starts spreading that the government will shut us all down. Already some think this is a war against the religion; that is a very unhelpful perception.”

The mosques — also on Alavi Foundation property in Maryland, Texas and California — receive space and financial support from the foundation, said one person affiliated with the organization who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

On its Web site, the foundation says that it has promoted “Islamic culture and Persian language, literature and civilization” for more than 30 years, through grants and other activities.

Al Baker, Anahad O’Connor and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

New York to try 9/11 mastermind

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From The Telegraph U.K.

9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to go on trial in New York

President Barack Obama said the September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be put on trial in New York City.

Published: 12:24PM GMT 13 Nov 2009

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to go on trial in New York

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Photo: AP

Speaking in Tokyo, Mr Obama said Mohammed, the self-proclaimed organiser of the al-Qaeda terrorist plot that killed almost 3,000 people in 2001, would face “exacting” US justice.

Bringing such notorious suspects to US soil to face trial would be a key step in Mr Obama’s plan to close the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr Obama initially planned to close the centre at the US naval base on Cuba by Jan 22 next year, but his administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

It is also a major legal and political test of Mr Obama’s overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom.

The New York case may force the court system to confront a host of difficult legal issues surrounding counter-terrorism programmes begun after the 2001 attacks, including the harsh interrogation techniques once used on some of the suspects while in CIA custody. The most severe method – waterboarding, or simulated drowning – was used on Mohammed 183 times in 2003, before the practice was banned.

The US attorney general Eric Holder is due to annonce that a major suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, will face justice before a military commission, as will a handful of other detainees to be identified at the same announcement, an official said.

The transfer of the detainees from Guantanamo to New York is not expected to happen for many more weeks because formal charges have not been filed against most of them.

STRATFOR: The Hasan and Fort Hood case

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Global Security and Intelligence Report

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In last week’s global security and intelligence report, we discussed the recent call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahayshi, for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West. We also noted how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.

The next day, a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.

Even though the targets of Hasan’s attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.

Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim who, according to STRATFOR sources and media accounts, has had past contact with jihadists, including the radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki is a U.S.-born imam who espouses a jihadist ideology and who was discussed at some length in the 9/11 commission report for his links to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Awlaki, who is currently living in Yemen and reportedly has contacts with al Qaeda, posted a message on his Web site Nov. 9 praising Hasan’s actions. Despite Hasan’s connections to al-Awlaki and other jihadists, it is unknown at this point if he was even aware of al-Wahayshi’s recent message calling for simple attacks, and therefore it is impossible to tell if his attack was in response to it.

However, one thing that is certain is that investigators examining Hasan’s computer hard drive, e-mail traffic and Internet history will be looking into that possibility, along with other indications that Hasan was linked to radicals.

We noted last week that by their very nature, individual actors and small cells are very difficult for the government to detect. They must somehow identify themselves by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to the authorities, attend a militant training camp or conduct correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny. In the Hasan case, it now appears that Hasan did self-identify by making radical statements to people he worked with, who reported him to the authorities. It also appears that he had correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki, whom the government was monitoring. Because of this behavior, Hasan brought himself to the attention of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the CIA.

The fact that Hasan was able to commit this attack after bringing government attention to himself could be due to a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that it is tactically impossible for a government to identify every aspiring militant actor and to pre-empt every act of violence. The degree of difficulty is increased greatly if an actor does indeed act alone and does not give any overt clues through his actions or his communications of his intent to attack. Because of this, the Hasan case provides an excellent opportunity to examine national security investigations and their utility and limitations.

The Nature of Intelligence Investigations

The FBI will typically open up an intelligence investigation (usually referred to as a national security investigation) in any case where there is an indication or allegation that a person is involved in terrorist activity but there is no evidence that a specific law has been broken. Many times these investigations are opened up due to a lead passed by the CIA, National Security Agency or a foreign liaison intelligence service. Other times an FBI investigation can come as a spin-off from another FBI counterterrorism investigation already under way or be prompted by a piece of information collected by an FBI informant or even by a tip from a concerned citizen — like the flight instructors who alerted the FBI to the suspicious behavior of some foreign flight students prior to the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation will open a preliminary inquiry, which gives the agent a limited window of time to look into the matter. If no indication of criminal activity is found, the preliminary inquiry must be closed unless the agent receives authorization from the special agent in charge of his division and FBI headquarters to extend it.

If, during the preliminary inquiry, the investigating agents find probable cause that a crime has been committed, the FBI will open a full-fledged criminal investigation into the case, similar to what we saw in the case of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers in Detroit. Continue Reading →

Cost of refusal to deal with reality can be measured in lives.

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One of the little mental applets I run in the background of my mind as a general rule, is trying to estimate the difference between some kind of objective reality, and how we as individuals or as a species decide to view events. Certainly the cost is in some kind of proportion to the difference. To borrow from a very old phrase, if you cannot tell the difference between shit and shinola, you will have very stinky shoes.

In this case, president Obama seems unable or unwilling to recognize who the enemy is with respect to the shooter at Fort Hood. This very refusal, it is now clear as day, is exactly the reason this attack happened. Everyone knew that this man was sympathetic to Islam and it’s goals and political ambitions. He was already under investigation for his terrorist ties among other things. But political correctness made it impossible for him to be removed from his position of power, access, and authority and ultimatly to the deaths of over a dozen US servicemen and injury to dozens more.

President Clinton for similar reasons was unable to prevent the attack on the WTC on September 11 2001 because his administration was not prepared to deal with the facts of the first attack on that same building by that same group for the same reasons less than a decade earlier.

For each of us, our refusal to admit where reality ends and our fantasies begin has a personal cost. Sometimes in mere money but as often in health and lifespan such as smoking or other habits we may cling to. But in a leader, the cost is exponential and to all of us.

During WW2, Adolph Hitler had a curtain built into his car so that if he was forced to drive through a bombed out area, he could draw his curtain and would not have to see the devastation wreaked on the German people. When Churchill was told about German rocket damage, he would take a car to the spot immediately and examine what the Nazi forces had done in order to best asses the damage and better determine the right course of action.

It is likely this one thing more than any other that won the war for the allies and against the Nazis. Reality, trumps fantasy when it comes to tactics.

Obama needs to have this explained to him.

Or perhaps it is as Shakespeare so eloquently stated it in the character of the king of Denmark in Hamlet:

“Madness in great ones, must not unwatched go”

Eeyore for Vlad

American Imam praises Hasan; ‘Muslims who condemn attack are hypocrites, committing treason against Islam’

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From msnbc

Imam tied to 9/11 hijackers praises Hasan

Alleged Fort Hood shooter is conscious and talking at Army hospital

updated 1 hour, 56 minutes ago

FORT HOOD, Texas – A radical American imam on Yemen’s most wanted militant list who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers on Monday praised alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero on his personal Web site.

The posting on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military base last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Awlaki said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to “follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

“Nidal Hassan (sic) is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people,” Awlaki wrote.

Two U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press the Web site was Awlaki’s. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence collection. Awlaki did not immediately respond to an attempt to contact him through the Web site.

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is accused of killing 13 and wounding 29 in a shooting spree Thursday.

Authorities say Hasan fired off more than 100 rounds before civilian police shot him in the torso. He was taken into custody and eventually moved to an Army hospital in San Antonio, where he was in stable condition and able to talk, said Dewey Mitchell, a Brooke Army Medical Center spokesman.

Fifteen victims remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and eight were in intensive care.

Read full story here