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News/Politics 4-23-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread, you decide. Here’s a few from me…

Once again, the FBI, DHS, and INS dropped the ball. From TheDailyMail

“The Department of Homeland Security was  dragging its feet on processing Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s U.S.  citizenship after a routine background check revealed he had been questioned by  the FBI in 2011.

Tamerlan, 26, filed an application for  citizenship six months ago but immigration officials had not yet made a decision  on his case at the time of the Boston Marathon bombings.

Authorities knew the alleged bomber had a  domestic violence charge on his record but the fact he had been grilled by  federal agents is reportedly what threw up red flags, halting the progress of  his application.”

And he wasn’t deported because…….?

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TheAP finally reports the obvious…….

“Two U.S. officials say preliminary evidence from an interrogation suggests the suspects in the Boston Marathon attack were motivated by their religious views but were apparently not tied to any Islamic terrorist groups.”

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You can read the criminal complaint against bomber #2 here, from TheWeeklyStandard

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Canada has thwarted a terrorist attack, with the help of DHS. From TheTorontoSun

““Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in innocent people being killed or seriously injured,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police official James Malizia told reporters in Toronto.

The RCMP said it had arrested Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 35, of Toronto, in connection with the plot, which authorities said was not linked to the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three and injured more than 200 people last week.

Neither is a Canadian citizen, but the police did not reveal their nationalities.”

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More here from TheNYDailyNews

“Two suspected Al Qaeda terrorists were busted Monday in Canada before they  could wreak havoc on the rails by blowing up a New York-to-Toronto passenger  train.

The plan hatched by Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser — and directed by Al  Qaeda operatives based in Iran — was derailed by the Mounties before it ever got  out of the station, officials said.”

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Meanwhile the rebels our govt. is backing continue to commit atrocities against Christian minorities in Syria. From AssyrianInternationalNewsAgency

“Syria’s Christians fear an Islamist takeover should the current government be overthrown. During the ongoing civil war there has been a well-documented rise in the number of salafi-jihadist groups operating in Syria that pose a direct threat to Syria’s Christian community.These militant opposition forces espouse an Islamist ideology, which incorporates elements of Wahhabism and Salafism and whose stated goals and objectives are by definition hostile towards Christians. Firsthand accounts from Syrian Christian refugees in Lebanon reported by award winning investigative journalist Nuri Kino detail the horror in which they described kidnappings, rapes, harassment, theft and other violent reprisals at the hands of Islamist groups.

Those who survived reported “just being Christian is enough to be a target,” disproving theories that violence and kidnapping directed towards Syrian Christians is purely incidental or for economic reasons. One individual openly declared “We’re not poor. We didn’t run from poverty […] we ran from fear.”

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Two Bishops have been kidnapped by rebels as well. From Reuters

“Two prominent Syrian bishops, who had warned of the threat to religious tolerance and diversity from the two-year conflict in their country, were kidnapped on Monday by armed rebels in the northern province of Aleppo, state media said.

SANA news agency said the Syriac Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Archbishops of Aleppo, Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, were seized by “a terrorist group” in the village of Kfar Dael as they were “carrying out humanitarian work”.”

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John F. Kerry, reporting for duty…….

From AmericanThinker

“While  speaking in Istanbul, Turkey, Secretary  of State John Kerry compared the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings with  the terrorists who attacked IDF forces aboard the ship Mavi Marmara in  2010.”

“Speaking  at Istanbul, Turkey, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a jarring comparison between the victims of the Boston Marathon terror bombs and terror activists from the IHH  group who were killed  when they attacked IDF forces aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010.

Kerry  told his hosts in Turkey that he understands the pain of the  families whose  loved ones were killed aboard the Marmara – and added  that he can understand  their pain well, having just dealt with the  families whose loved ones were  slain in Boston.”

Is it really any wonder our govt. supports the terrorists in Syria, Egypt, and Libya? They don’t seem capable of even telling the difference between the parties involved. Their ideology blinds them to the obvious.

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24 thoughts on “News/Politics 4-23-13”

  3. An e-mail from Wes Purden (Editor emeritus of The Washington Times. I would like to post the link. But for some reason, links from my e-mail take us back to my in-box.

    The bottom of the slippery slope
    BY WES PRUDEN
    We’ve finally located the terminus of the slippery slope. It’s on a side street in Philadelphia, in a modest three-story red-brick building, where a painted sign advertises dental, family planning, family practice, gynecological and physical therapy services. This is under an illustration of two happy parents, swinging a small child between them.
    But there are no happy children within these walls. This is an abortion clinic made infamous by a doctor on trial for his life, charged with killing seven infants who survived abortions, and a woman who died during “the procedure.” ……………
    ……..Prof. Shields thinks that the doctor, vile though he may be, is probably guilty under the law only of two relatively minor offenses. State law requires a second medical opinion for a third-term abortion and Dr. Gosnell did not get one. State law further requires that a doctor must try to save an infant who survives an abortion, and Dr. Gosnell did not do that, either. Given the permissive attitude toward abortion – even the president of the United States smiles on them, and as a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama declined to vote for legislation protecting an infant who survives an abortion – executing Dr. Gosnell is not likely. Given the law as decreed by judges, he may beat the rap.

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  5. AJ, I’m not sure what you’re getting at on the first item. I don’t see any dropped ball here.

    “And he wasn’t deported because…?” Perhaps because he had a green card, making him a legal permanent resident, and there were no grounds for deportment.

    Being questioned by the FBI didn’t make him guilty of anything, and the questioning didn’t turn up anything actionable. They did appropriately go slow on the citizenship application.

    The domestic violence charge is more troublesome, but I’m not sure it’s grounds for deportment for a green card holder.

    On another note, how do you making the “rolling eyes” emoticon? I’d love to put one up in response to the dangerous t-shirt article. Oh, brother…

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  7. I see, in an article by R. Emmett Tyrrell, in The American Spectator that April is “National Financial Capability Month”. They’re supposed to teach youths “how to budget responsibly”. Meanwhile, each American household is $53,377 further in debt than when Obama got here.

    😦 The number of double-letters in RET’s name confuse my spelling.

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  9. He also was married to an American; I don’t know if that makes a difference now or not.

    After reading what Adios wrote about marriage in the Daily Thread, it might be worth noting the older bomber was a stay-at-home dad while his American wife worked 70 hours a week as a home health aide. 😦

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  10. Further regarding what Kevin has to say about the “FBI dropped the ball” allegation – how many people does the FBI investigate each year, and how often do they deport people that we don’t know about, thus keeping us safe? What is their success rate? I would hazard a guess that it’s very high.

    When they do prevent incidents, and nothing happens, it isn’t news (most of time, anyway).

    No screening is ever going to be perfect, and it is much too easy to criticize in retrospect.

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  11. Kevin,

    This guy was a walking red flag, with numerous issues. He failed a DHS background check.

    The domestic violence charge is grounds to deport, but the AG has discretion.

    The Russians informed the FBI that he met several times with miltants while there. Yet the FBI decided he was clear. The Russians work with us on few things. Terrorism is one of the few. When they give a tip, there’s a reason for it.

    He also traveled outside the country using an alias. Another waving red flag.

    🙄 is : roll :

    no spaces.

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  12. Anon….

    And why don’t we know this info? Because they won’t tell us. How are we to know how well they are doing, and how much, when they keep that info away from the public. The only time we hear anything is when they want to toot their horn, or like this time, they screwed it up. How deep did they dig on the Russian info? Other than the interview, which they won’t discuss specifics of, what did they do?

    It will be interesting to see how they handle the numerous FOIA requests they’re getting. My guess is everyone gets black pages of redacted, and useless info that won’t answer the questions either way. Like with Fast and Furious.

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  13. This should have also raised a red flag with the FBI.

    http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/boston-bombing-suspect-posted-video-al-qaeda-prophecy-youtube

    “The YouTube page includes religious videos, including one of Feiz Mohammad, a fundamentalist Australian Muslim preacher who rails against the evils of Harry Potter. One playlist includes a video dedicated to the prophecy of the Black Banners of Khurasan, which is embraced by Islamic extremists—particularly Al Qaeda. The prophecy states that an invincible army will come from the region of Khurasan in central Asia.

    “This is a major hadith (reported saying of the prophet Muhammad) that jihadis use; it is essentially an end-time prophecy,” says Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “This is definitely important in Al Qaeda’s ideology.” In The Black Banners, the book by former FBI agent Ali Soufan that is named after this prophecy, Soufan describes it this way:

    Khurasan is a term for a historical region spanning northeastern and eastern Iran and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and northwestern Pakistan. Because of the hadith, jihadists believe that this is the region from which they will inflict a major defeat against their enemies—in the Islamic version of Armageddon.”

    Time has a little more info on what the Russians told them.

    Older Boston Suspect Made Two Trips to Dagestan, Visited Radical Mosque, Officials Say

    “Two years ago, while visiting his family in the Russian region of Dagestan, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the prime suspect in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, was flagged as a potential extremist by Russian security services. The only evidence they had were his regular visits to a mosque that gets more than its share of attention from police. Since its construction in 2000, the mosque’s broad, emerald-colored dome has been the center of the region’s Salafi community, which adheres to a more orthodox brand of Islam and, over the years, has been a hangout for men killed in shootouts with Russia’s counterterrorism forces.

    According to a source close to the Russian security services who specializes in religious radicalism, Tsarnaev attended services at the mosque on Kotrova Street during both of the extended visits he made to Dagestan over the past two years. That is why Russia’s Federal Security Service, the agency better known as the FSB, sent a warning to the FBI in 2011 to be aware of Tsarnaev’s possible links to extremism.”

    “According to the source in the regional capital of Makhachkala, who spoke to TIME on Monday, Tsarnaev was monitored by Russian counterterrorism forces for at least one month in 2011 and throughout his six-month stay in Dagestan last year. “There wasn’t enough time [in 2011] to come to any conclusions about the extent of his involvement [in Islamist extremism],” the source says, asking to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter. “So we asked our American colleagues to follow up.”

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  14. And also, you can’t ignore the obvious issue that may have hampered the FBI investigation as well. In the FBI’s defense, Political correctness may have limited their response and handling of the info. That would be because of the current admin and DoJ policies, not the FBI’s.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/23/blind-eye-conciliatory-fbi-policies-toward-islamis/

    “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s failure to recognize political Islam as a driver of jihadist terrorism is partly to blame for the FBI not identifying one of the Boston Marathon bombers in 2011 as a security risk, according to U.S. officials and private counterterrorism analysts.”

    ““The fact is religion has been expunged from counterterrorism training,” said Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism specialist with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The FBI can’t talk about Islam and they can’t talk about jihad.”

    Added Patrick S. Poole, another counterterrorism specialist, about FBI policies on Islam: “I have zero doubt it affected their investigation of Tsarnaev.”

    A U.S. official said FBI policies of playing down Islamic links to terrorism resulted in the FBI not identifying Tsarnaev, 26, or his brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, who was charged with last week’s bombing, as Islamist terrorists.”

    “Critics said the FBI’s failure to properly investigate Tsarnaev was a repeat of the bureau’s lapse in missing advance signs of the Islamist radicalization of accused Fort Hood massacre shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan.”

    Hasan also had contact with radicals and jihad videos. And it’s still being ignored. Work place violence is/was/and will continue to be a garbage copout that ignores the obvious. Seems to me like history is repeating itself..

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  15. The FBI has been influenced by the Muslim outfit, CAIR, and other groups on the Left not to associate militant Islamics with the Muslim religion. The piety of the Left that the Islamic militants are not influenced by the Muslim religion issue is absurd. Whether it’s the Soviet Union or radical Muslim Militants, the Left becomes enamored of vicious Anti-Americans.

    AJ is spot on with his criticism of the FBI and the fact that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a walking red flag radical Muslam Jihadi. The only outfit that knows well how to identify dangerously militant Muslims is the New York City police department that is routinely vilified by the liberal media

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  16. We may not know things because there are plenty of things we don’t need to know.
    Those in charge probably foil lots of terrorist and terrorist-wanna-be attempts all the time.

    The reason we don’t hear about them is 1. they don’t want to frighten people over things they cannot control 2. copycats.

    I spent 20 years of my adult life holding the “need to know,” lightly in my hand. There are just a lot of things that will not benefit anyone if I’m worried.

    Here’s a blog post I wrote on the subject: http://wp.me/p1ektw-T1

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  17. Michelle,

    I get “need to know” and all that. But when our govt is playing politics and bowing to PC nonsense, we need to know. The purging of Islam and all mention of it from terror investigation policies leads to things like this. If you force investigators to ignore the obvious, then you can expect continued results like this. We don’t need to know every detail, but when failures occur, we need to know why.

    We have a right to know when this happens and what’s being done to correct it. Even one failure can have horrible consequences. He couldn’t pass a background check, yet they ignored the radical ties? Politics should not play a part in these investigations, yet they clearly have. There are red flags all over this guy.

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  18. The surviving bomber has been talking, thankfully.

    http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/23/17877288-boston-suspect-we-learned-how-to-make-bombs-from-inspire-magazine?lite

    “The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon attack has told investigators that he and his brother got instructions on building bombs from an online magazine published by al Qaeda, federal law enforcement officials told NBC News.

    Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that the brothers read the instructions in Inspire, an online, English-language magazine that terror monitoring groups say al Qaeda began publishing in 2010.

    The magazine has twice included articles on building bombs with kitchen pressure cookers — the method investigators say Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, used in the Boston attack.”

    And what’s the deal with “trying to workout” a meeting with the wife of #1? Is there not justification to just bring her in as part of the criminal investigation? Why wait so long to speak with someone who could potentially answer alot of questions?

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  19. Monday morning quarterbacking is easy. However, its understandable that the FBI missed some of the so-called red flags. The Russians have probably flagged numerous Chechens living in America leading the FBI not to overexert themselves. Domestic abuse, unfortunately, isn’t always taken as serious as it should — domestic abuse is an indicator of other issues but too often its brushed aside. Delaying citizenship indicates the system was working just too slow.

    I’m still a bit skeptical of the Cdn attack for reasons I mentioned yesterday. Its interesting that al-queda in Iran is being blamed yet Iran and al-queda don’t get along. Although Iran allowed al-queada from Afghanistan to settle in Iran they limit their activity. They deported Bin Laden’s son and documents from Bin Laden’s Pakistan residence indicated a tense relationship between Iran and the bin Laden clan. One of the accused plotters had an Al-queda in Iraq flag on his LinkedIn site, indicating someone might have gotten Iraq and Iran mixed up.

    This reminds me. Someone once said war is God’s way of teaching America geography and this seems to be the case now. The Czech ambassador released a statement clearing up the difference between the Czech Republic (member of NATO and EU and loyal US ally) and Chechnya (member of the Russian Federation). A satire site used the opportunity to once again make fun of Sarah Palin.
    http://dailycurrant.com/2013/04/22/sarah-palin-calls-invasion-czech-republic/

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  20. Although the media seems willing to assess the FBI’s performance in light of the Boston bombings, no one seems to be discussing the dismal failure of self-regulation, self reporting and the OSHA in light of the West, Texas explosion. The latter led to the death of 14 people in an entirely preventable explosion.

    From the linked article;
    The plant had 1,350 times the legally allowed amount of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, yet hadn’t informed the Department of Homeland Security of the danger. Likewise, the fertilizer plant did not have sprinklers, shut-off valves, fire alarms or legally required blast walls, all of which could have prevented the catastrophic damage done. And there was little chance that regulators would learn about the problems without the company reporting them: Not only had the Occupational Safety and Health Administration not inspected the plant since 1985 but also, because of underfunding, OSHA can inspect plants like the one in West on average only once every 129 years.

    Where’s the manhunt to capture the owner of this company. The 14 deaths should lead to manslaughter charges.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mike-elk-the-texas-fertilizer-plant-explosion-cannot-be-forgotten/2013/04/23/48eb770c-ac26-11e2-b6fd-ba6f5f26d70e_story.html

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  21. In a slower news cycle, you’d see lots on that aspect.

    But, hands down, a terrorist bomb blowing up children an their families at one of the largest marathons in the nation simply trumps that — journalistically for now, at any rate.

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  22. Little Bush missed a great opportunity after 9/11. We had problems with crazed Muslims (Al Qaeda). The Russians had problems with crazed Muslims (Chechens). The Chinese had problems with crazed Muslims (Uighurs) Bush should have cut a deal with those two countries that each would always support the others when any of the three was dealing with crazed Muslims. Maybe the Russians could have taled him out of the debacle that was the Iraq War.

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