Tag Archives: Osama bin Laden

Afghanistan’s Benghazi: Grieving Families Want Answers

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CH-47_Chinook_flying_night_visionBy Diana West:

Grief and politics don’t mix. When raw, aching grief and the dirtiest kind of politics meet, a hot volcano of pain and outrage erupts that is unstoppable. But it is necessary. It is the only way things might ever be clean again.

I am thinking of recent casket transfer ceremonies that have taken place at Dover Air Force Base, where senior administration officials have used the solemn occasions – Benghazi, the shoot-down of Extortion 17 – less to comfort grieving families than to lay blame, to establish a narrative, to lie.

Think of Sean Smith’s mother. Think of Tyrone Woods’ father. After the Obama administration’s hugs came the Obama administration’s stonewalling. They still don’t have answers about what happened in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

We don’t either.

We still don’t know who in the U.S. government gave the order not to rescue Americans under fire for eight and a half hours, and how and why such an unconscionable order was given. We still don’t know who convinced senior White House officials to tell grieving parents meeting their children’s caskets that a video-maker, not jihad against the West, was to blame for the assault that took four American lives – or what the political motivation was.

This is a national disgrace.

But before Benghazi, there was Extortion 17, the call sign of a Special Operations mission in Afghanistan on Aug. 6, 2011. Three months after the strike on Osama bin Laden, 30 Americans – including 15 from the bin Laden strike-team unit, Navy SEAL Team 6, and two other SEALs – were killed in the costliest single-day loss for the U.S. military in the Afghanistan war, and the largest SEAL loss ever. A “lucky shot” in the dark brought down the old CH-47 Chinook helicopter attempting to land them in the middle of an ongoing battle in Wardak Province. Or so the U.S. military claims. The families are not so sure.

Then again, they’re not sure about anything. The runaround, the lies, the callous disregard they have received at the hands of the government and military is similar to Benghazi, maybe worse.

“We go to Dover to see bodies, and we’re all in the hangar down there,” Charles Strange, father of slain SEAL Michael Strange, recalled last week before a rapt audience at the National Press Club, where several Extortion 17 families gathered to call on Congress to investigate. “And President Obama comes up to me and he says, ‘Mr. Strange’ – and he grabs me by the shoulders – ‘Michael changed the way America lives.’ I grabbed Mr. President by the shoulders and I said: ‘I don’t need to know about my son, I need to know what happened, Mr. President.’

Strange continued. “The Secret Service guys grabbed me. I’m crying. He went to give me a hug. I whispered in his ear: ‘Mr. President, Is there going to be a congressional inquiry?’ And Mr. President whispered in my ear – and I could feel his lips touch – and he said, ‘Mr. Strange, we’re going to look into this very, very, very deep.’ Well, I haven’t heard nothing.”

Nothing that makes sense, anyway. A military investigation led by then-Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Colt (since promoted to major general) tells us there was no “eye in the sky” that night. Why not? No forces had been sent in to prepare the area. Why not?

More sickening was the fact that rules of engagement prevented suppressive fire from being aimed at the tower firing on the Chinook. Billy Vaughn, father of slain SEAL Aaron Vaughn, recalled how a three-star admiral explained this breach to the grieving families: U.S. forces couldn’t fire back, the admiral said, because “we want to win hearts and minds.” As Mr. Strange later put it: “What about my heart? What about my mind?”

American hearts and minds don’t count with this U.S. government – and that is our national tragedy until we change the government.

What commander is responsible for assembling so many SEALs in one inadequate aircraft, for this particular landing site, for a mission many believe was in fact unnecessary? Extortion 17 took off three months after the strike on bin Laden, three months after the Obama administration blew SEAL Team 6′s cover in the bin Laden raid, three months after intelligence indicated the Taliban were out for revenge. “The chain of command” was responsible, the families were told. Who were they? No answer.

Why was there no gunship escort that night? What happened in the final minutes of Extortion 17? The black box was never recovered, the military insists. Really? What about the seven Afghan soldiers who joined the mission at the last minute, replacing Afghans previously scheduled to fly? No one knows the identities of this last-minute group, or why they flew that day. More troubling still, military investigators didn’t interview Afghan commanders to find out.

Why not? To win their “hearts and minds,” too? The word for that is “submission.” Such submission also explains the appalling inclusion of an imam at the casket transfer ceremony in Afghanistan – a ceremony preceding the transport of the dead bodies, American and Afghan, to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they would finally be identified. (This makes families wonder whether American sons lay in caskets draped with the Afghan flag.) There, in the midst of an otherwise ecumenical ceremony (devoid of any mention of Jesus Christ), the imam invoked Allah, while establishing that Muslims reside in heaven and non-Muslims reside in hell.

Standard Islamic fare, to be sure, but this is the same supremacist basis of the jihad that killed the men of Extortion 17. No wonder the families are doubly outraged.

As should we all be. Congress must investigate Extortion 17 and find out exactly what happened, and who bears responsibility. It is the very least we can do for our people.

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Keeping Our Heads in the Sand After Boston

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IPT News
May 14, 2013

 

The Obama administration’s policy banning references to “Islamic extremism” and “jihad” in discussions about terrorism drew criticism during last Thursday’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Boston Marathon bombings.

The bombings “should again teach us that the enemy we face is violent Islamist extremism, not just al Qaida,” said former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. “Osama bin Laden is dead. And the remaining leadership of al Qaida is on the run, but the ideology of violent Islamist extremism is rapidly spreading.”

The Boston investigation already has shown that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “adopted the outrageously false narrative of violent Islamist extremism, that Islam and America are involved in a struggle to the death with each other,” Lieberman said.

It has been more than five years since the Department of Homeland Security, under the Bush administration, issued a directive about “the difficult terrain of terminology” as recommended by unidentified academics and Muslim American activists. “Jihadist” and “Islamist terrorist” were identified as terms to be avoided. Jihad “glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have, and damages relations with Muslims around the globe,” the memo said.

By identifying them as mere extremists or criminals, they lose some of the luster that attracts recruits, the argument goes.

Is it working? How can you tell?

Anecdotally, this strategy did nothing to dissuade the Tsarnaevs, or any of the otherhomegrown terrorist plotters in recent years. The policy’s effectiveness is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. But skeptics, such as Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program Director Jeffrey M. Bale, say the language policy is illogical.

“Why, after all, would Muslims look to non-Muslims to interpret their religion for them, or for guidance about how to identify and label Islamists?” Bale said in response to an email from the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “Indeed, if we call jihadists ‘criminals,’ it may actually have the counterproductive effect of garnering more sympathy for them given the levels of anti-U.S. and anti-Western hostility throughout the Muslim world.”

Jihadists routinely make it plain that – while religion may not be the sole factor driving them to violence – their Islamic beliefs and identities dominate their thinking. “We in the West just don’t seem to want to believe what they constantly say,” Bale wrote. (Read his full response here.)

Read more at IPT

Q & A: “The Jihadist Plot” by John Rosenthal

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By Diana West:

I will never forget the unmitigated horror of watching as the United States openly switched sides in the 2011 “Arab Spring,” abandoning allies in the war on terror (jihad) to support those same jihadist forces instead. There was precious little company in the press gallery on this one as US media, shouting slogans of “revolution” and “democracy,” blindly failed to perceive or actually covered up the obvious truth: The US, with NATO, was now supporting the Other Side — the same Other Side that had struck us in 9/11, killed and maimed our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threatened Western liberty everywhere. It was in this crazy atmosphere, John Rosenthal’s independent reporting from Europe provided essential information and context.

John’s long-awaited book, The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion,  is now out from Encounter. It contains much new information on this shameful, perplexing, dangerous episode — whose jarring reverberations, by the way, have yet to play out.

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Here is our Q & A.

DW: Whose side is the United States on in Syria?

John Rosenthal: Objectively, we are on the same side as Jabhat al-Nusra in the Syrian conflict. The administration’s listing of Jabhat al-Nusra as a terror organization changes nothing in this regard and amounts in fact to a kind of sleight of hand. It allows the administration to claim that it is supporting
the Syrian rebellion, but somehow not its “extremist” component. But this distinction is completely bogus. The response to the listing from other rebel brigades — many of which hastened to express their solidarity with Jabhat al-Nusra — makes this clear. Jabhat al-Nusra is part of the
mainstream of the Syrian rebellion. If it is extremist, then so is the rebellion as such.

DW: You explain in your book that in mid-2011, the US changed sides in the so-called war on
terror, which was originally mounted as a war against Al Qaeda; and, moreover,
that the US media missed this story. Could you state the case in brief?

JR: The US changed sides in the “war on terror” during the 2011 Libya conflict
and it did so in two senses. In the first place, it did so by virtue of
forming an alliance with some of the very same Islamic extremist forces that
it had been combating for the previous decade. As I show in the book, the
military backbone of the rebellion against Muammar al-Qaddafi was formed by
cadres of the so-called Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The LIFG was
listed as an al-Qaeda-linked terror organization by both the US government
and the UN Security Council. It was, in effect, the Libyan chapter of
al-Qaeda and had a long shared history with the al-Qaeda “mothership” of
Osama bin Laden. Several of the leaders of the rebellion had in fact been
previously detained by US authorities, either during the invasion of
Afghanistan or in subsequent covert counter-terror operations. In the Libyan
war, the US and its NATO allies were providing air support to troops led by
these very same people.

The second sense in which the US changed sides in the “war on terror”
concerns terror itself as a tactic. I know you are not a fan of the
expression “war on terror” and I agree, of course, that it is very
problematic. But, as I say in the book, the expression at least had the
advantage of making clear that the US abhorred terror as a tactic,
regardless of the ideological background of the groups employing this
tactic. But from the very first weeks of the Libyan rebellion — well before
it was possible to know just who the rebels were — there was already
abundant evidence that the rebels were employing terrorist tactics. This
evidence included videos documenting torture, the summary execution of
detainees, and at least one beheading — a beheading that was particularly
horrific by virtue of the fact that it occurred in public in front of a
cheering crowd.

It would have previously been impossible to imagine the US making common
cause with groups that decapitate their perceived enemies. In the meanwhile,
in Syria, it has become the new normal, and apparently no one is shocked
anymore to hear about Syrian rebel forces that behead Syrian soldiers or
real or perceived supporters of Bashar al-Assad. During the Libyan war,
however, the media — including both old and new media — for the most part
simply ignored the evidence of rebel atrocities. What I heard at the time
was that it was not possible to “verify” the videos. But the fact is that
they made no effort to verify them. Moreover, media like CNN had no problem
broadcasting “unverified” videos that allegedly documented atrocities
committed by pro-Qaddafi forces. Those videos, by the way, almost surely
showed atrocities that were likewise committed by the rebels.

Similarly, at least until the rebellion triumphed, the American media either
ignored or hushed up the al-Qaeda connections of the rebel leadership. They
did so even though one rebel commander, Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, was happily
holding forth to European reporters about his jihadist past in Afghanistan
and his support for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

DW: Switching sides required other core trade-offs as well. One point you make that underscores the disavowal of Western values that took place in the Libya War concerns the leading role played by NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen. You called Rasmussen’s role the greatest irony of the whole war. Could you elaborate?

JR: Before he was appointed as NATO Secretary General, Rasmussen was undoubtedly best known internationally for his role in the famous “Mohammed cartoon” controversy. The cartoons were, of course, first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. At the time, Rasmussen was the Danish prime minister. When, in October 2005, representatives from several Muslim countries appealed to him to do something about the publication of the cartoons, he stated that he did not have the power to do anything about them and he did not want any such power. It must be said that not all Western leaders were as unequivocal in their defense of freedom of expression. Rasmussen and Denmark thus drew the wrath of radical Muslim clerics like none other Yusef al Qaradawi and the wrath of those Muslim masses that followed Qaradawi’s injunction to “rage” against the cartoons.

What most people do not know, however, is that the unrest that broke out in Libya in early 2011 had one of its main roots in just such a protest against the “Mohammed cartoons.” The protests that sparked the Libyan rebellion were called for February 17, 2011, which is why the rebellion is commonly known as the “February 17 Revolution.” But the 2011 protests were called to commemorate protests that occurred in Benghazi five years earlier, on February 17, 2006, and the object of the earlier protests was precisely the “Mohammed cartoons.”  More specifically, the 2006 Benghazi protestors were enraged about a member of the Italian government, Roberto Calderoli, who had appeared on Italian public television wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon of Mohammed printed on it. If albeit made in more flamboyant fashion, Calderoli’s point was the same as Rasmussen’s: that freedom of expression is non-negotiable. Thousands of young men descended upon the Italian consulate in Benghazi, attempting to break into the building and setting it on fire. Eventually, the Libyan security forces at the consulate opened fire in order to protect the Italian diplomatic personnel inside. A reported eleven people were killed.

In 2011, Rasmussen as NATO chief would facilitate the triumph of a rebellion whose fundamental values are absolutely antithetical to the values that he defended in 2005 as Danish prime minister. At some level, I imagine he must know this. If no one else, his Italian colleagues will surely have told him about the background to the 2011 protests. It is really a remarkable case of an individual and his convictions being completely overwhelmed by the position he holds. Rasmussen is a kind of tragic figure.

DW: Who is Abu-Abdallah al-Sadiq?

JR: Abu-Abdallah al-Sadiq is the historical leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. He was a confidante of Osama bin Laden. Indeed, he is reported to have been with Bin Laden at Tora Bora in late December 2001, as American and allied forces laid siege to the al-Qaeda leader’s mountain hideout. The LIFG ran its own jihadist training camps in Afghanistan prior to the American invasion. In 2004, al-Sadiq was detained in a covert American counter-terror operation in southeast Asia. He was subsequently repatriated to Libya and turned over to the custody of the Libyan government. In 2010, he was amnestied by the Libyan government as part of a terrorist “rehabilitation” program. I suspect that the American government encouraged Libya to “rehabilitate” al-Sadiq and other imprisoned LIFG members. We know, in any case, that the American ambassador was present at a ceremony “celebrating” his release.

The international public finally got to know al-Sadiq about a year and a half later, in August 2011, though under a different name. “Al-Sadiq” was a nom de guerre. Now he was known as Abdul-Hakim Belhadj and he was the new military governor of Tripoli. Intensive NATO bombing had forced Muammar al-Qaddafi and forces loyal to him to abandon the Libyan capital and had allowed rebel forces to walk in and seize control of the city. Al-Sadiq/Belhadj was the leader of those rebel forces. Just seven years after detaining him, America and its NATO allies, in effect, conquered Tripoli on al-Sadiq’s behalf.

There is much more at Diana West’s blog

 

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Bin Laden’s Death is a Dangerous Anniversary

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Bin Laden DeathBy Alan Caruba:

Thursday, May 2, is a day to be especially watchful. Jihadists are particularly fond of celebrating anniversaries and on that day in 2011 Seal Team Six found and killed Osama bin Laden. September 11. 2001 is now an indelible part of U.S. history and on September 11, 2012, jihadists attacked and killed an American ambassador and three others.

The threat that Islam presents to America in particular and the world in general is beginning to influence what non-Muslims think of this death cult.

In a recent commentary, the Dr. Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, referred to the process by which opinion in democratic nations turns against Islam as “education by murder.”

Dr. Pipes was sanguine regarding the American response to the Boston Marathon attack. He did not foresee any increase in security measures or a greater preparedness for what he called “sudden jihad syndrome” violence. Even so, he said “High profile terrorism in the West—9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan, London—moves opinion more than anything else.”

A new report about the Islamist terrorist threat, “Al Qaeda in the United States”, issued by the Henry Jackson Society, a British-based think tank, noted that, of the 171 al Qaeda related or inspired acts of terrorism from 1997 to 2011, 54% were by American citizens, some naturalized, but more than a third (36%) were born in the U.S., concluding that this statistic dispels the myth that the terrorist threat is primarily external.”

I keep wondering how long it will be before Americans will begin to take seriously the threat that Islam represents. The list of attacks is a long one such as the 1982 attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut and the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine Barracks after Reagan sent them there as peacekeepers. The first attack on the World Trade Center was in 1993. In October 2000, the USS Cole was attacked. On September 11, 2001, the second attack killed 3,000 Americans. When George W. Bush came into office, he told his national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice, that he was “tired of swatting flies.”

Yes, the list of attacks is a long one: Terrorist Attacks in the U.S. or Against Americans

Terror Never Left America’s Shores

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images (53)

 

By Michael Widlanski:

Terror did not return to America at the Boston Marathon, because terror never left.

There have  been more anti-US attacks and abortive attacks (not including Iraq and Afghanistan) in the last four years than in the previous seven years after 9-11.

This is not a statistic that is widely cited at government briefings, in the  main news media nor on most college campuses, because our government, media and educational elites would like to pretend that the terror problem ended with Osama Bin-Laden.

“People shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts,” asserted President Barack Obama, but he and his top aides have  spent the better part of the last two years on a mistaken conclusion.

They have pretended that there really was no terror problem, but only an Al-Qaeda problem, and that that problem was solved  because, they said, Bin-Laden’s death was a death blow for terror.

They were wrong then, and they are wrong now, dead wrong. Terrorists often send us reminders just when we think we have beaten them.

Israel saw this happen several times in fighting Islamic terror. So did Britain in its experiences with both Irish and Islamic terror. And now the US is learning that fighting terror is not a sprint but a marathon.

The then-head of Israel’s Shin Bet (Karmi Gillon) bragged about killing the main terror planner of Hamas in 1996. As he pat himself on the back, Hamas launched suicide bombings that convulsed Israel for several more years until the suicide bombers were uprooted in a massive Israeli military operation in 2002.

Israel pioneered targeted killings, drones and other high-tech anti-terror methods, but it learned you cannot defeat terror just with high-tech. There is no substitute for the tough and painstaking collection of intelligence and grinding work on the ground.

President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and other officials in the Obama Administration have done their best to inhibit the collection of such intelligence, while they have at the same time launched probes or proceedings aimed at counter-terror warriors in the CIA and the top units of the US military.

Read more at The Algemeiner

Dr. Michael Widlanski, is the author of  Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threatpublished by  Threshold/Simon and Schuster. He was  Strategic Affairs Advisor in Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, and he will be a visiting professor at University of California, Irvine in 2013-2014.

WELCOME TO THE GLOBAL JIHAD

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rescuers_blood_APby FRANK GAFFNEY:

Authorities in Massachusetts have identified suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday as Dzhokhar and (the now-deceased) Tamerlan Tsarnaev, two brothers of Chechen descent originally from Kyrgyzstan. Many Americans haven’t heard of the place; most couldn’t find it on a map. Nearly all would be unable to say why people from there would want to kill people from here.

Welcome to the phenomenon of global jihad. It is time to dispense with the illusion that we are safe from foreign threats because we have put, as President Obama repeatedly insisted during the last campaign, “al Qaeda on the path to defeat,” thanks to the death of Osama bin Laden and the drone-delivered thinning of the ranks of his lieutenants.

The Chechen jihadists in Boston may or may not have been associated with, or even inspired by, bin Laden’s terror network. But in the days and weeks to come we are likely to discover that they identify with its goals: 1) imposing the supremacist Islamic doctrine ofshariah – a totalitarian, brutally repressive and anti-Constitutional ideology – on the entire world, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. And 2) recreating a caliphate (or a similar theo-political entity) to rule according to that doctrine.

The same is true of other violent jihadists of the Sunni and Shia stripes, including, respectively, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and the regime in Iran. Ditto the so-called non-violent Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, that organization – which is the mother-ship for virtually all modern Sunni jihadists – favors an approach better described as pre-violent: The Brotherhood is perfectly prepared to use violence when it will be effective. Until then, they will adopt other measures (which they call “civilization jihad”) to create conditions that would be conducive to the realization of the goals they share with all other Islamists.

My preliminary read on the Brothers Tsarnaev is that they, too, were committed to the triumph of shariah. And whether they were associated with one or the other of these groups, factions, or sects, or if they were self-taught and operating alone, it seems likely that they embraced that doctrine’s requirement to wage jihad against infidels – something they evidently did with pressure-cooker improvised explosive devices near the Finish Line on Monday.

Literally by the minute, we are learning more about their backgrounds and behavior. With luck, we will also know shortly whether they were aided by accomplices or organizational infrastructure that may still pose a threat.

What we know already, however, is that there are perhaps hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of others like them around the world. Folks who believe that their god commands them to engage personally in holy war against the infidels and non-shariah-adherent Muslims (whom they call apostates).

What is particularly worrying is that this is not a new revelation. We have been on notice of this fact since well before 9/11. And yet we have at times ignored it – or, in some cases, denied it assiduously. And that is not simply true of average Americans. It has been the widespread practice within administrations of both parties, beginning in earnest under George W. Bush and metastasizing greatly in the Obama presidency. (For a detailed treatment of how this has happened and why, see www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.comand The Muslim Brother in the Obama Administration www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org.)

We have thus systematically violated one of the cardinal principles of warfare dating back at least to the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tsu, who warned that you cannot defeat an enemy you do not know. Worse, we have allowed an enemy we could and should have known long ago to dictate to us what we are allowed to understand, think, and do about them.

For example, the Obama administration has purged the files and training materials of federal law enforcement, intelligence, homeland security, and defense agencies of information that might “offend” Islamists. That would include knowing such truths as that it is the orthodoxy of Islam (although a practice not embraced by all Muslims) to engage in jihad to advance the supremacy of shariah.

Even more alarming, the U.S. government now operates under guidelines for training in “countering violent extremism” (the euphemism it adopted in lieu of the Bush administration’s preferred euphemism for jihad, “terrorism”) that make matters infinitely more dangerous: those using federal funds for such training must now first consult with “community partners” about the trainers and their materials. Those partners appear to beMuslim Brotherhood operatives and front groups.

Read more at Breitbart

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Boston Bomber’s Mosque Has Muslim Brotherhood Ties

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Islamic Society of Boston (Photo: Google Maps)

Islamic Society of Boston (Photo: Google Maps)

By Ryan Mauro:

Dzhokar Tsarnaev, who has been arrested for the terrorist bombings in Boston, attended the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) in Cambridge, a mosque with strong Muslim Brotherhood links. The ISB Cultural Center, which is at a separate location, is even run by a group that federal prosecutors said in 2008 “was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

An ISB attendee reports last seeing Tsarnaev there during Ramadan last year. It is unclear if his brother, the other bomber, also attended the mosque. The ISB has links to the Muslim Brotherhood, has had radical leadership and promotes anti-Western themes.

Islamic Society of Boston's invitation to event with author attacks the West's War on Terror

For instance, the Islamic Society of Boston recently invitedjournalist Victoria Brittain to speak at the mosque, who in an article she wrote on MichaelMoore.com wrotethat the War on Terror is a “war on Islam” and that Muslims in the West face widespread persecution. In her article, Brittain also criticized British security services who “returned to a post-9/11 stance on overdrive” in the aftermath of the 2005 London subway bombings, referred to as the “7/7″ attacks.

ISB teaching is largely based on Islamists like Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi and Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood cleric who influenced Osama Bin Laden. It was reportedin 2008 that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Pakistani Islamist group, Jamaat-e-Islami, “are the prominent belief systems. The popular websites used by members, and recommended by mosque leaders, are mostly fundamentalist, and rabidly homophobic.”

Read more at The Clarion Project

Is Saudi Funding Behind the Boston Marathon Bombing?

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sheikh-saleh-bin-abdulrahman-al-husseinCitizens United:

The following links demonstrate that the Saudi government funds a global network of Islamic extremism, and exports the radical ideology (Wahhabism) that formed Al Qaeda.  This global network provides an endless supply of recruits for Al Qaeda in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Africa, and the Taliban in the Af-Pak region.  The Taliban’s fight against the US attracts recruits from all over the world, including Chechnya, the ethnic origin of the Boston Marathon bombers.  This link indicates that Saudi money has been financing Islamic extremism in Chechnya, and this post provides evidence of the brothers involvement in Islamic extremism.  For example, one of the brothers (Tamerlane) was named after a 13th century jihadist who is compared to Osama bin Laden.  The comparison to bin Laden is based on the use of violence to spread Islam.

The first CSPAN clip below is terrorism expert Alex Alexiev.  He lays out compelling evidence of the Saudi government’s financing of global terrorism.  Alex is a former director of the National Security Division at the Rand Corporation, and a consultant to the CIA and Defense Department.  He was also a leading expert on Sovietology during the Cold War and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy.  Mr. Alexiev said the CIA, in 1996, cited dozens of Saudi charities that were funding terrorism, and “without huge amounts of Saudi money in the past three decades, our problem of terrorism wouldn’t be anywhere as acute as it is.  It [Saudi Arabia] is the lifeline of terrorism.”   Clip1

The next CSPAN clips are from a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Af-Pak region.  Obama’s special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, was testifying before the committee.  When committee members provided evidence of Saudi’s funding the Taliban, Holbrooke said “we do not have a program to close that down”.  Clip2, Clip3, Clip4   This hearing was six years after Senator Jon Kyl, during a Judiciary Committee hearing, cited Saudi Arabia as the “monetary lifeblood of today’s international terrorists.”  But President Obama didn’t have a program to shut down Saudi financing.  Oops!  In this next clip, Holbrooke admits that US and Pakistani intelligence agencies helped set up terrorist organizations.  Clip5

This link is an article written by Curtin Windsor, former U.S. Ambassador and Special Emissary to the Middle East during the Reagan administration.  It’s well sourced with many footnotes and is  titled “Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and the Spread of Sunni Theofascism”.  Check out the section on page 8 titled “Causes of American Inaction”.   In the section on American inaction, Windsor says Prince Bandar bin Sultan helped mask the threat of Saudi sponsored terrorism.  In the PBS documentary “Black Money“, Prince Bandar plays a central role in global corruption relating to the arms trade.

After the 911 attack, some families who lost loved ones refused payments from the US government and sued the Saudi government.  The Texas law firm Baker Botts, a partner of which is James Baker, former Secretary of State under Bush 41, represented the Saudi government against 911 families.   John O’Neill was director of counter terrorism at the FBI prior to the 911 attack.  He repeatedly warned of an Al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil, but frustrated by US officials who ignored his warnings, he went to work as head of security at the World Trade Center and was killed on 911.  To hear his story, watch the PBS documentary, “The Man Who Knew“.

In spite of compelling evidence implicating the Saudi government in global terrorism, the Bush and Obama administrations insist that Saudi Arabia is a US ally in the War on Terror.  Hmmm?  American citizens must question the US/Saudi alliance and demand accountability for the resulting loss of American lives, treasure and freedom.   For more info, check out the sections “Closing the Loop on Terrorism” and “American and Chinese Communism, a Partnership” in Knowledge is Power.

The Saudis have been using their huge reserves from oil exports to increase the influence of radical Islamic doctrine in the US government, universities, media coverage and even grade school curriculums. They fund radical Islamic mosques in the US and groups that attempt to install Shariah law in the US. Watch this webinar to learn more:

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North Caucasus jihadists’ money traces back to Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden

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Flag of the Majlis of Muslims of Ichkeria and Dagestan

Flag of the Majlis of Muslims of Ichkeria and Dagestan

Money Jihad:

The seed money of major North Caucasus or Chechen terrorist groups such as the Caucasus Emirate, the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigated (IIPB), the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (SPIR) and the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs (RSRSBCM) can all be traced back to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Although we don’t yet know to which groups the two Russian-born brothers of Chechen descent who were identified as suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings may belong, it’s important to take a look back at the origins of the money behind the North Caucasus jihadist network overall.

Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade

The Council on Foreign Relations says that, “According to the U.S. State Department, the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade is the primary channel for Islamic funding of the Chechen guerillas, in part through links to al-Qaeda-related financiers on the Arabian Peninsula.”

The Middle East Forum has more on IIPB:

In October 1999, emissaries of [IIPB founder Shamil Basayev] and [mujahideen leader] Ibn al-Khattab traveled to Kandahar where bin Laden agreed to provide fighters, equipment, and money to conduct terrorism and aid the fight against Russia. Later that year, bin Laden reportedly sent substantial sums of money to Basayev, Ibn al-Khattab, and Chechen commander Arbi Barayev to train gunmen, recruit mercenaries, and buy ammunition.

The United Nations says that, “With Al‑Qaida’s financial support, Al-Khattab also mobilized fighters from Ingushetia, Ossetia, Georgia and Azerbaijan to fight in Chechnya and Dagestan.”

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Jihad in Boston

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It has now been revealed that the Boston Marathon bombers were two Muslims from southern Russia near Chechnya: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a firefight with Massachusetts police early this morning, and his brother Dzhokhar, who as of this writing is still at large.

Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev

Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev

As more and more material comes to light about the pair, their motivations become clear. On a Russian-language social media page, Dzhokhar features a drawing of a bomb under the heading “send a gift,” and just above links to sites about Islam. Tamerlan’s YouTube page features two videos by Sheikh Feiz Mohammed. According to a report published in The Australian in January 2007, in a video that came to the attention of authorities at the time, Mohammed “urges Muslims to kill the enemies of Islam and praises martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad.”

Tamerlan also says, “I’m very religious.” He notes that he does not drink alcohol because Allah forbids it: “God said no alcohol,” and that his Italian girlfriend has converted to Islam. Even his name indicates the world from which he comes: Tamerlan Tsarnaev is apparently named for the Muslim warrior Tamerlane. Andrew Bostom wrote in 2005 that “Osama bin Laden was far from the first jihadist to kill infidels as an expression of religious piety….Osama lacks both Tamerlane’s sophisticated (for his time) military forces and his brilliance as a strategist. But both are or were pious Muslims who paid homage to religious leaders, and both had the goal of making jihad a global force.”

Combine all that with the fact that the bombs were similar to IED’s that jihadis use in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a jihad car bomb in Times Square jihad car bomber, used a similar bomb, and that instructions for making such a bomb have been published in al-Qaeda’sInspire magazine, and the motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers are abundantly clear. It is increasingly likely also that they were tied in somehow to the international jihad network, as is indicated by how they fought off Boston police early on Friday with military-grade explosives – where did they get those? And where did they get the military training that they reportedly have, and displayed in several ways during the fight Friday morning?

Yet despite all this, the mainstream media continues to obfuscate the truth. NBC doesn’t see fit to mention any of the brothers’ connections to Islam in their profile of them. CNN warns that “it should not be assumed that either brother was radicalized because of their Chechen origins.” And this, of course, follows days of speculation about how the bombings appeared to be the work of “right-wing extremists,” “Tea Partiers,” and the like. According to Victor Medina in the Examiner, “Esquire Magazine’s Charles P. Pierce attempted to link the bombings to right wing extremists similar to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. In another, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen speculated that the type of bomb device could link it to right wing extremist groups.” Salon hoped that the bomber would turn out to be a “white American.”

Read more at Front Page

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