Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

BAGHDAD, July 6 -- A wave of attacks in Baghdad and areas north of the capital Sunday shattered a relative lull in violence, killing 16 people and injuring 15 a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared that Iraq's government had defeated terrorism.

Labels: Iraq, Iraq war, Nouri al-Maliki, terrorism

... as job losses mount, even those still on payrolls have felt the pain: employers are cutting hours for their full-time employees and shrinking salaries, just as workers face record-high prices for gasoline and food.

The unemployment rate stayed steady in June at 5.5 percent, the highest level in four years. The elevated figure dispelled speculation among some economists that last month’s half-percentage point jump, the biggest monthly spike in 22 years, was a statistical anomaly.

...In the last 12 months, the economy had seen a net gain of only 15,000 jobs, the lowest net increase since November 2003.

The Democratic presidential candidate promised that he would “restore broad-based, bottom-up growth that benefits all Americans.”

“I will provide working families with a middle-class tax cut; fight for affordable health care and college tuition; work to help raise workers' wages, and invest in infrastructure, education and a clean energy future to create millions of new jobs,” he said.

Sen. John McCain also noted that Americans are feeling the pain of a struggling economy and said that “Washington can no longer abdicate its responsibility to act.”

“To get our economy back on track, we must enact a jobs-first economic plan that supports job creation, provide immediate tax relief for families, enact a plan to help those facing foreclosure, lower healthcare costs, invest in innovation, move toward strategic energy independence and open more foreign markets to our goods,” the Arizona Republican said.

Both sought to paint the other party as responsible for the woes.

“Last night, President Uribe and the defense minister did brief us that the operation was going to take place today,” said McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, who was visiting Colombia Wednesday to promote a free trade agreement and to discuss drug trafficking.

“Today, I spoke by phone to President Uribe. He told me some of the details of the dramatic rescue of the people who were held hostage. Three Americans are now free and Ingrid Betancourt is now in good condition,” said McCain. “I’m pleased with the success of this very high-risk operation.”

Bush administration officials told Hunt Oil last summer that they did not object to its efforts to reach an oil deal with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, even while the State Department was publicly expressing concern that such contracts could undermine a national Iraqi petroleum law, according to documents obtained by a House committee.

Last fall, after the deal was announced, the State Department said that it had tried to dissuade Hunt Oil from signing the contract with Kurdish regional authorities but that the company had proceeded "regardless of our advice." Although Hunt Oil's chief executive has been a major fundraiser for President Bush, the president said he knew nothing about the deal.

Yesterday, however, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released documents and e-mails showing that for nearly four months, State and Commerce department officials knew about Hunt Oil's negotiations and had told company officials that there were no objections. In one note, a Commerce Department official even wished them "a fruitful visit to Kurdistan" and invited them to contact him "in case you need any support."

That guidance contradicted the administration's public posture. The Bush administration made an Iraqi national petroleum law, which has still not been adopted, a top priority last year in the hope it would more tightly bind the country's regions together and open the way for international oil companies to invest in much larger oil fields south of Iraq's Kurdish region. The State Department said, and continues to assert, that it opposes any contract with a regional Iraqi authority in the absence of a national petroleum law.

Labels: Barack Obama, Colombia, dictators, FARC, John McCain, news and current affairs, Robert Mugabe, Rush Limbaugh, terrorism, the Bush recession, u.s. economy, Zimbabwe

BOGOTA -- The rescuers came wearing Che Guevara T-shirts and logos declaring them delegates of some obscure organization. They didn't look much like an international humanitarian brigade. And they weren't.

They were the Colombian intelligence agents who pulled off ''Operation Checkmate,'' one of the greatest military capers in Colombia's history -- a mission that would finally liberate the world's most famous hostage from the hands of leftist rebels in the jungle.

Without firing a single shot.

''Who are these people? What kind of international commission is this?'' former hostage and once-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt remembered thinking. ``Are we clowns in another circus? I didn't want any part of it.''

In a military operation described as ''unprecedented'' and ''perfect,'' the Colombian armed forces Wednesday infiltrated the top command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- Latin America's oldest insurgency -- and tricked rebels into handing over Betancourt, held hostage for six years, and three American defense contractors, held for five years.

It was an effort the White House says it knew about and helped support.

The hostages, the rebel group's most-prized possessions, were held in chains in jungle camps in the hopes the government would swap them for guerrilla prisoners. The three Americans -- Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves -- were scuttled out of the Andean nation and were set to arrive Wednesday night in San Antonio. ... Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said the ruse that also freed 11 Colombian soldiers and police officers was straight out of an action flick, and added that the mission garnered even more spoils: ''César,'' Betancourt's guerrilla warden all these years, was captured and placed under arrest.
More details of the raid:

More details from the defense minister

He said the military infiltrated the FARC's top hierarchy and arranged for a transfer of hostages on the ruse that they were going to be handed over to Alfonso Cano, the rebel group's maximum leader.

... The government mole arranged for the hostages to be brought together from three different locations to one camp, and then taken in a helicopter the FARC believed belonged to a friendly aid group that would transport the hostages to Cano.

... The chopper was piloted by intelligence officers dressed as leftist sympathizers. Betancourt said the hostages thought they were being picked up by some kind of international humanitarian organization to be taken to the FARC high command.

''Our hearts broke. More captivity. Another transfer,'' Betancourt said in a dramatic press conference minutes after embracing her mother. ``Every time we heard helicopters my pulse would race. Run, hide, gather your things. But this helicopter was white. It was exciting.

''It was surreal,'' Betancourt said, describing the bizarre white helicopter and the strangely dressed men who came for her. ``They had logos that certified they were a delegation of who-knows-what.''

She and the others were handcuffed as they boarded the chopper, which she described as ''humiliating.'' Once aboard, something happened so fast Betancourt missed it.

But then she saw ''César'' -- the ''cruel despot'' who guarded her -- subdued on the floor of the helicopter. The pilots turned and said the words she and the others had waited so long for:

``We are from the army. You are free.''

''The helicopter almost crashed; we jumped, we screamed and we cried,'' she said, lavishing praise on the military, the defense minister and President Alvaro Uribe.

In Colombia, John McCain shows off his "Top Gun" look

The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company's board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University's National Security Archive as an "illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country's most notorious civilian massacres."

Following a Justice Department indictment last year, Chiquita admitted to illegally funding the paramilitaries and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. Chiquita's payments to the AUC began in 1997 and lasted seven years; roughly half of the funds came after the group was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in 2001.

And McCain is under fire from labor leaders over his support for a free trade pact with Colombia (the stated reason for his trip south.)

The New York Times is calling McCain's FARC convergence a "happy coincidence," but not everyone is so sure. The skeptics are lining up online, with many awaiting the gauzy photo-ops of McCain with Colombian president Uribe, and with the rescued hostages. Even many media types were scratching their heads this week over the McCain trip, just before the Fourth of July, to do what, push unpopular free trade? It's definitely a head scratcher, and given what we've witnessed over the last four years, one could easily see the Bush administration briefing their candidate on this being a great week to go to Colombia...

Labels: Colombia, FARC, free trade, international news, John McCain, terrorism

On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain's chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an "unfortunate event," says Black. "But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us." As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," says Black.

"I cannot imagine why he would say it; it's not true," the Arizona senator said. "I've worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent anther attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear."

Citing his work to establish a commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, as well as his membership on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain added: "I cannot imagine it, and so, if he said that _ and I don't know the context _ I strenuously disagree."

Black, interviewed by reporters as he stood outside McCain's fundraiser, said: "I deeply regret the comments. They were inappropriate. I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration."

Will Black hang on? I suspect so. They've got pretty loose standards over there at Camp McCain...

Labels: 2008 election, Charlie Black, John McCain, presidential candidates, terrorism, the party of fear

elf-proclaimed al-Qaeda commander Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, he would welcome the martyrdom of execution for masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.

``This is what I wish,'' Mohammed, speaking in English, told a judge who warned that he might be executed if convicted. ``I am looking to be martyred for a long time.'' Mohammed said he was rejecting legal representation and will defend himself. ``Nothing shall befall us, save for what Allah has ordained for us.''

Mohammed, 43, identified in the 9/11 Commission report as the ``principal architect'' of the strikes, is accused of murder with four co-defendants who also appeared in court. The charges carry the death penalty. Mohammed said he and his co-defendants were tortured following their capture by U.S. forces and now face a proceeding that ``is inquisition, it is not trial.''

``After torturing, they transferred us to inquisitionland in Guantanamo,'' said Mohammed. ``We don't have a right to anything.''

The five defendants are charged with conspiring to finance, train and direct the 19 hijackers who seized four airliners used in the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon outside Washington. They are charged in the deaths of 2,973 people killed in the attacks and the crash of one airliner in Pennsylvania.

Translated to Arabic

The men spoke to each other and laughed as they pointed to reporters seated in a glassed-in spectators' gallery. ``It seemed to be a reunion'' of the suspects, Navy Commander Suzanne Lachelier, who represents Ramzi Binalshibh, 36, told reporters during a break.

Lachelier said it was her ``impression'' that Mohammed was orchestrating his co-defendants to refuse counsel. Binalshibh was the only defendant to sit in court with his legs shackled to a bolt in the courtroom floor, a restraint Lachelier said is ``protocol'' for a detainee who is medicated. A court order forbids disclosure of the drug or why he is taking it, she said.

Trial judge Marine Colonel Ralph Kohlmann repeatedly warned civilian defense lawyers to be seated and admonished them for being argumentative.

``Don't ever interrupt me,'' he told one defense lawyer, Thomas A. Durkin, who also represents Binalshibh. ``You are way off point.''

Labels: 9/11, military tribunals, terrorism

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke gave Padilla, a man inextricably linked to the Bush administration's war on terror, a prison term of 17 years and four months for participating in a South Florida-based conspiracy to aid Muslims in ``violent jihad.''

The judge's decision to grant far below a life sentence was a blow to the government. Cooke reasoned that Padilla's crime was not tantamount to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

''There was never a plot to harm individuals in the United States,'' Cooke said. ``There was never a plot to overthrow the U.S. government.''

Padilla, 37, a U.S. citizen accused of training with the global terrorist group al Qaeda, stared blankly as Cooke condemned his ''harsh'' treatment as an ''enemy combatant'' in a Naval brig before his transfer to Miami to face terrorism charges. Cooke deducted the time Padilla spent in military custody -- 3 ½ years -- from his total sentence.

''I do find that the conditions were so harsh that they warrant consideration,'' Cooke told a crowded courtroom of lawyers, media and family members.

Padilla's mentor, Adham Amin Hassoun, a Palestinian who had met him at a Fort Lauderdale mosque in the 1990s, and Hassoun's colleague, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a U.S. citizen of Jordanian descent, were sentenced to 15 years and eight months, and 12 years and 8 months, respectively.

On Tuesday, she called the crimes committed by the three men ''very serious.'' Still, she stressed they caused no harm to anyone or anything in the United States.

Cooke further said that while they conspired to help Islamic extremists abroad, they also sent food, medicine and clothing to embattled Muslims. She also said that Hassoun, 45, and Jayyousi, 46, were educated men -- one was a computer programmer, the other an engineer -- who had no criminal history. On the other hand, she noted that Padilla had a violent criminal record as a Chicago gang member before moving to South Florida.

She said the government's proposed life terms were out of sync with past punishment for more serious domestic terrorists. She cited the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, the ''20th hijacker'' in the Sept. 11 assaults, who was sentenced last year to life imprisonment. She also noted the case of Terry Nichols, who also received life for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. By comparison, Cooke cited the case of Yahya Goba, a Yemeni American who trained with al Qaeda and received 10 years after pleading guilty to providing ''material support'' for the terrorist group.

She also mentioned the case of David Hicks, who was released from an Australian prison in December after completing a U.S. sentence handed down at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He was caught fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan in December 2001 and spent more than five years at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba, before agreeing to be transferred to Australia to serve out a nine-month sentence.

That allegation, among other accusations, was not pursued by prosecutors at trial because of national security reasons.

• Padilla convicted
• Tug of war
• Padilla update
• The Madness of King George
• Color me skeptical...

Labels: Jose Padilla, terrorism, war on terror

MIAMI -- A federal judge warned the Bush administration Friday not to fast-track the deportation of a Haitian man acquitted of terrorism conspiracy charges because he may be called as a witness in the retrial of his six former co-defendants.
"I have to protect the rights of these defendants, and I intend to do so," U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard said at a hearing.

Lenard also said the identities of the jury to be chosen next month for the second trial will be kept secret from prosecutors, defense lawyers and the public because of improper contacts and leaks in the first trial. The mother of one defendant was given a list with "X" marks next to the names of six jurors.

"This was a cause of great concern to me," the judge said. "At this point, it is unknown to the court what that list was about."

The retrial is set to begin Jan. 7 for six men accused of plotting with al-Qaida to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices in hopes of starting an anti-government insurrection. The first two-month trial resulted in a hung jury Dec. 13 for those six and an acquittal on all charges for 32-year-old Lyglenson Lemorin, a legal U.S. resident originally from Haiti.

A day after the trial ended, Lemorin was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and transported to a detention center in Lumpkin, Ga., where officials have begun deportation proceedings. An initial hearing in that case is set for Jan. 8.

Defense lawyers intending to call Lemorin as a witness asked Lenard to prevent ICE from whisking him out of the country quickly, and Lenard agreed.

Lemorin, 32, a lawful U.S. resident, [emphasis added] remains behind bars -- far from his Miami family -- in the tiny town of Lumpkin, Ga., a deportation center 150 miles south of Atlanta.

On Thursday, Lemorin's wife learned from The Miami Herald that federal authorities have charged her husband with unspecified ''administrative immigration violations'' and that he has been placed in ''removal proceedings'' that could lead to his deportation to his native Haiti.

''He has kids here, and we really need him home,'' said Lemorin's wife, Charlene Mingo Lemorin. ``He can't do anything for us in Haiti. Everything was settled by the jury. He was found not guilty. It's like the nightmare is not over.''

Family members say they are upset and dumbfounded because Lemorin has lived in South Florida for more than two decades and has no criminal history.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined to discuss Lemorin's alleged immigration violations.

''He was detained by ICE, and for safety and security reasons, we can't say where he is,'' agency spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez told The Miami Herald.

... The day after he was acquitted [December 13], immigration agents whisked Lemorin away to Miami International Airport.

Lemorin -- born in Haiti, raised in Miami and the father of two children who live in Little Haiti -- told his family and attorneys that he feared the agents were going to put him on a plane to his native Haiti.

Instead, they drove him to the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade County. Then came an overnight drive to the Stewart detention center in Lumpkin.

Leonard Fenn, who temporarily represented Lemorin in the immigration case, expressed outrage over the government's actions.

''We're presuming they're claiming there is reason to believe he was a supporter of terrorist activities or a terrorist himself,'' said Fenn, who got on the case through Lemorin's criminal attorney, Joel DeFabio.

''It's outrageous -- a complete misallocation of government resources,'' Fenn said.

Immigration experts said that under the USA Patriot Act, adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a lawful U.S. resident such as Lemorin may still be locked up and possibly deported on terrorism-related charges -- even if they cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in federal court.

Miami attorney Cheryl Little, who heads the Florida Immigration Advocacy Center, said Lemorin's arrest by ICE may be ''overreaching but not unprecedented'' in the post-9/11 era, in which non-U.S. citizens acquitted at trial on drug-trafficking or other charges are sometimes picked up and dumped into the immigration legal system. Her center agreed to represent Lemorin, whose first immigration court hearing is set for Jan. 8.

Lemorin's attorneys and family now fear he will be charged with the same terrorism-related conspiracy offenses in immigration court, where an administrative judge -- not a jury of his peers -- decides his fate.

There is no principle of double jeopardy barring his prosecution on the same charges, and the burden of proof is based on a weaker civil standard, the weight of the evidence tipping one way or the other.

Labels: injustice, Liberty City Seven, terrorism

The Jacobins shared a defining ideological feature. They divided the world between pro- and anti-Revolutionaries — the defenders of liberty versus its enemies. The French Revolution, as they understood it, was the great event that would determine whether liberty was to prevail on the planet or whether the world would fall back into tyranny and despotism.

The stakes could not be higher, and on these matters there could be no nuance or hesitation. One was either for the Revolution or for tyranny. ...

... Confronted by a monarchical Europe united in opposition to revolutionary France — old Europe, they might have called it — the Jacobins rooted out domestic political dissent. It was the beginning of the period that would become infamous as the Terror. ...

...Among the Jacobins’ greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism — Le Patriote Français was the title of Brissot’s newspaper — and to promote their political program through a tightly coordinated network of newspapers, political hacks, pamphleteers and political clubs. ...

... Insisting that their partisan views were identical to the national will, believing that only they could save France from apocalyptic destruction, Jacobins could not conceive of legitimate dissent. Political opponents were treasonous, stabbing France and the Revolution in the back.

To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government’s police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 — “domicilary visits,” they were called — were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, “when the homeland is in danger.”
... If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.” Saint-Just’s pithy phrase (like President Bush’s variant, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself”) could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.

On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.

Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term “terrorist” has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hate freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to “Islamofascism.”

A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.

Labels: history, Jacobins, neocons, terrorism

Labels: 9/11, September 11, terrorism

• Tug of war
• Padilla update
• The Madness of King George
• Color me skeptical...
  

Labels: Bush administration, enemy combatant, Jose Padilla, law, terrorism

Labels: Al Gore, al-Qaida, Barack Obama, current affairs, gays, Iraq war, news, Plamegate, Robert Novak, terrorism, Venus Williams

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration won't dismantle the controversial war-crimes tribunals at Guantanamo Bay for alleged terrorists, including Canada's Omar Khadr, despite rulings by two military judges tossing out all charges, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.

"The government is looking at a number of different options," said John Bellinger, legal adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. But scrapping the tribunals and putting the terrorist suspects on trial, either in federal court in the United States or in military courts martial, isn't among them.

Instead, the government has quickly assembled a court to hear an appeal of the dismissal of charges against Mr. Khadr, accused of killing for al-Qaeda, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, alleged to have been a driver for Osama bin Laden.

"Judges have been appointed and the court is prepared to receive appeals," said Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. But Cdr. Gordon said he couldn't provide the names of those named to the Court of Military Commission Review. It was created by Congress last year, but had no judges or staff until the government scrambled in the wake of Monday's surprise rulings by the military judges.

The Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee strongly criticized the Justice Department for obstructing an investigation of the Bush administration's warrantless spying program. The statement came after the committee scheduled a hearing next week to authorize subpoenas related to the shadowy government program.

"The warrantless wiretapping program has operated for over five years outside of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and without the approval of the FISA Court. The Committee has continued to ask for the legal justification for this sweeping and secret program, and has continually been rebuffed by inadequate and at times, misleading, responses from this Justice Department," said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a statement sent to RAW STORY. "The information we have requested has been specific to the legal justification for this program and is firmly within the Committee’s oversight jurisdiction."

Leahy's statement came after his committee had announced earlier in the day that it planned to "authorize subpoenas in connection with investigation of legal basis for warrantless wiretap program," according to the committee's website. The meeting will occur on Thursday, June 14. ...

Labels: Bush administration, civil liberties, NSA, terrorism, war on terror, warrantless wiretaps, worst president ever

(CBS) NEW YORK While questions continue to arise about the alleged plot to blow up a fuel pipeline beneath JFK Airport and surrounding neighborhoods, some are questioning why New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn't had a louder voice since the plot was foiled on Saturday.

On Monday, Bloomberg finally weighed in, but his response was not what some would have expected.

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life," he said.

That "What, me worry?" attitude pretty much sums up Bloomberg's advice to New Yorkers on the terror plot. As far as he was concerned, the professionals were on it, so New Yorkers shouldn't let it tax their brains.

"You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist," he added.

When U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf described the alleged terror plot to blow up Kennedy Airport as "one of the most chilling plots imaginable," which might have caused "unthinkable" devastation, one law enforcement official said he cringed.

The plot, he knew, was never operational. The public had never been at risk. And the notion of blowing up the airport, let alone the borough of Queens, by exploding a fuel tank was in all likelihood a technical impossibility.

And now, with a portrait emerging of alleged mastermind Russell Defreitas as hapless and episodically homeless, and of co-conspirator Abdel Nur as a drug addict, Mauskopf's initial characterizations seem more questionable -- some go so far as to say hyped.

"I think her comments were over the top," said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "It was a totally overstated characterization that doesn't comport with the facts."

Greenberger said he has no argument with police pursuing and stopping the alleged plotters.

"I think they were correct to take this seriously," he said. "... But there's a pattern here of Justice Department attorneys overstating what they have. I think they feel under tremendous pressure to vindicate the elaborate counterterrorism structure they've created since 9/11, including the Patriot Act."

"Obviously they're talking about stuff," he said. "But did they have the capabilities or training to do it? The answer is obviously not. It seems to me the reason the London plot worked is these guys had gone to an al-Qaida training camp. ... To become an effective terrorist, generally you have to go to a training camp. Timothy McVeigh was an effective terrorist because he could draw on his years of military background."

In this case, the alleged plotters had no money and never succeeded in hooking up with the head of an Islamist group in Trinidad called Jamaat al Muslimeen, according to the criminal complaint. While alleged mastermind Defreitas told the FBI informant that he learned to make bombs in Guyana, there is no other indication of technical expertise. Friends say he supported himself by selling incense on street corners and collecting welfare.

Steven Simon, a terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the government's hyperbolic descriptions -- whether of this case or of the alleged plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago -- could erode public confidence in law enforcement and lead to confusion about the terror threat.

"First, it creates the public impression that the adversary is just a bunch of losers who do not have to be feared," he said. "Second, the fact that these hapless people are angry enough to seek to attack the U.S. raises the issue of other more competent, well-organized groups that might be escaping police detection."...

Bloomberg's kind of thinking, compared by a local New York City TV news show to the "What, me worry?" attitude of Mad Magazine's jug-eared mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, was exactly the kind of smugness practiced by government officials in the pre-9/11 era — dangerously outdated as we wage a global war on terror.

America's founding fathers warned that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, but in the 21st century it may very well become the price of life, too. ...

• Terrorism 101
• It's not just me
• The terrorist nobody knows
• The Global Law Enforcement Action on Terror
• The plot thins
• Di terrorist dem...
  

Labels: Bloomberg, Republicans, terrorism

US authorities said Saturday they had averted an attack that could have resulted in "unfathomable damage, deaths, and destruction," and charged four alleged Islamic radicals with conspiracy to cause an explosion at the airport.

But according to the experts, it would have been next to impossible to cause an explosion in the jet fuel tanks and pipeline. Furthermore, the plotters seem to have lacked the explosives and financial backing to carry out the attack.

John Goglia, a former member of National Transportation Safety Board, said that if the plot had ever been carried out, it would likely have sparked a fire but little else, and certainly not the mass carnage authorities described.

"You could definitely reach the tank, definitely start the fire, but to get the kind of explosion that they were thinking that they were going to get... this is virtually impossible to do," he told AFP.

The fuel pipelines around the airport would similarly burn, rather than explode, because they are a full of fuel and unable to mix with enough oxygen.

"We had a number of fires in the US. All that happens is a big fire," he said. "It won't blow up, it will only burn."

Even if the attackers had managed to blow up a fuel tank, the impact would be limited, he said, citing the example of North Vietnamese forces attacking US fuel dumps during the Vietnam war.

"They hit the fuel tanks with pretty big rockets. You would get a big fire but not a big explosion other than the rocket." ...

Previous:

• It's not just me
• The terrorist nobody knows
• The Global Law Enforcement Action on Terror
• The plot thins
• Di terrorist dem...

Labels: Bush administration, terrorism, war on terror

Since last August, there had been a period of calm. The screaming hair-on-fire pronouncements about terror plots that may have had real plotters but no real conceivable chance of actually happening... ceased. That the period, spanned the time between the 2006 mid-term elections, and the week we reached exactly 18 months until the 2008 presidential election -- just a coincidence. Our third story on the Countdown...from the mind-bending idea that four guys dressed as Pizza Delivery men were going to out-gun all the soldiers at Fort Dix...to the not-too-thought-out plan to blow-up J-F-K Airport... here we go again.

Previous:

• The terrorist nobody knows
• The Global Law Enforcement Action on Terror
• The plot thins
• Di terrorist dem...

Labels: Bush administration, terrorism, war on terror

U.S. law enforcement officials said Defreitas was nowhere near being capable of mounting an attack. He didn't have explosives, money or an executable plan. But one of the most alarming aspects of the case is that a man of such meager means made as much progress as he did, authorities said.

"It is a bit worrisome when someone like this, who is a bit washed up, is able to go out and solicit funding and the blessing of others who are more organized and experienced," said a Justice Department official familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It is a bit frightening."

Defreitas was portrayed in news accounts Sunday as a lonely figure, a man who made money selling books on street corners and shipping broken air-conditioning parts to Guyana. He is divorced and estranged from his two children, according to the reports.

"People around here never see that man," said a Trinidadian woman who runs a 99-cent store next to his apartment building on Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn. "I'm right here 15 years…. The people in the building never see the man, so where did he come from?"

Her shop caters to people in the neighborhood who stop by for toothpaste, toy water guns and hair gel. The woman, who did not want to be named, said the local Caribbean community was close-knit so it was strange that no one she knew remembered Defreitas, not even residents in his building.

The neighborhood is largely populated by African Americans, Latinos and immigrants from the West Indies.

On Rockaway Avenue, employees at four grocery stores, a check-cashing business and Jay's West Indian Restaurant, which serves oxtail and curried goat dishes, said they had no idea who he was. One screamed at a reporter: "This is harassment. I tell everyone, I did not know that man!"

Defreitas' building is a faded four-story row house with a broken intercom that buzzes incessantly. Neighbors said the building was known to house drug addicts. Knocks on his door and others in the building went unanswered Sunday.

Labels: terrorism, war on terror

Nearly all the Democratic presidential contenders as well as other heavyweight Democrats have spoken out against the war on terror, preferring it to be a police action against terror.

On a global scale: terrorist activity and violence has grown worse, not better since 11 September 2001. Average levels of terrorist violence that would have been considered extreme in the period prior to 9/11 have become the norm in the years since. And there is no sign that this trend is abating. This much is evident from a review of the terrorism incident database maintained by the Rand Corporation for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), which is funded by the US Department of Homeland Security. Surveying incidents for the period January 1998 through 11 August 2006 shows that:

- The rate of terrorism fatalities for the 59 month period following 11 September 2001 is 250 percent that of the 44.5 month period preceding and including the 9/11 attacks. This figure has been adjusted to account for the different length of the two periods and it implies an increase in average monthly fatalities of 150 percent. (Only in January 1998 did the database begin to include both national and international terrorism incidents.)

- The rate of terrorist incidents for the post-9/11 period is 268 percent that of the period prior to and including 11 September 2001. This implies a 167 percent increase in what might be called the average monthly rate of incidents.

- A fair portion of the increased activity is related to the war in Iraq -- but not all. Removing Iraq from the picture shows an increase in the average monthly rate of terrorism fatalities of more than 10 percent for the post-9/11 period. The increase in the rate of incidents not counting Iraq is 75 percent.

The question was simple: "Would you like to die as a martyr?" The putative terrorist unhesitatingly replied yes -- there was no greater way to die in Islam.

The right answer put the man in the midst of a terrorist plot conceived as more devastating than the 9/11 attacks. He was soon making surveillance trips around John F. Kennedy International Airport -- the "chicken farm," as the planners dubbed their target -- and visiting the Trinidad compound of a radical Muslim group.

On Saturday, the insider -- a twice-convicted drug dealer -- was revealed as a government informant whose surreptitious work undermined a plot to destroy the Queens airport by exploding a jet fuel pipeline. The case demonstrated the growing importance of informants in the war on terrorism, particularly as smaller radical groups become more aggressive ...

...The four Muslim men accused in the JFK plot didn't turn to Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan for support after targeting the airport, home to an average 1,000 daily flights and 45 million passengers annually.

Instead, according to a federal complaint, the informant and defendants Kareem Ibrahim and Defreitas visited a compound belonging to the Jamaat al Muslimeen, a radical Muslim group based in Trinidad. When Defreitas discussed his radical "brothers" with the informant, he made it clear they were not Arabs, but from Trinidad and Guyana.

The complaint also made clear how deeply the informant had infiltrated the small band of would-be terrorists. While Defreitas, a retired JFK airport cargo worker, made four reconnaissance missions to the airport with the informant, federal authorities captured each one on audio and video equipment.

Last year, informants played a major role in two other terror cases. In June 2006, an informant posing as an al-Qaida operative helped bring down a plot to blow up the Sears Tower. Five of the seven men arrested in that alleged terrorist group were U.S. citizens.

And in May 2006, an NYPD informant's testimony led to the conviction of a man plotting to blow up the busy Herald Square subway station in midtown Manhattan.